INTERSTATE 495 cuts through a wide swath of Massachusetts, starting close to the New Hampshire border, swinging west out to Hopkinton, then turning east near the Rhode Island border as it heads towards Cape Cod, stopping in Wareham. 

State Rep. Jim Arciero knows the roadway well, since it cuts right through his House district, which includes the towns of Chelmsford, Littleton, and Westford, where he lives, just southwest of Lowell. 

He used it to travel the state when he was the House chair of the Housing Committee. First appointed in February 2021, he was a newcomer to the issue and undertook a listening tour. “We started from Hyannis to Pittsfield, and essentially learned more about the housing crisis,” he said. 

Four years later, he plans to do it all over again, this time with transportation as the topic. House Speaker Ron Mariano last week announced the committee chairs for the 2025-2026 legislative session, placing Arciero as the House chairman of the Transportation Committee. (On the Senate side, President Karen Spilka kept Lynn’s Brendan Crighton as the committee co-chair.) 

Asked about priorities, Arciero stayed away from specifics and indicated he wants to listen to what residents and longtime players in transportation have to say. 

His colleagues say Arciero is a pragmatist who’s willing to listen, while Beacon Hill observers note that he was already a key player in the Legislature who helped shepherd Gov. Maura Healey’s multibillion housing bill to her desk. The bill carried billions of dollars in spending authorizations and incentives to boost building construction, invested in the state’s public housing system, and eased regulations for accessory dwelling units (ADUs), also known as granny flats. 

He now takes over the House side of the Transportation Committee as policymakers weigh the future of transportation in Massachusetts. The issues range from massive projects to replace roads and bridges to pulling the MBTA away from the fiscal brink as it struggles to get back on track after the pandemic. 

Bill Straus, the previous House transportation chair, said Arciero is well-suited to the job since the issue of housing is just as complicated, if not more so, than transportation. Both jobs come with a mix of municipal-level interests, other lawmakers and advocacy groups pressing their particular causes, and a broad public interest in the topic. 

Straus, who represented the South Coast community of Mattapoisett, opted against running for reelection last year, retiring after 32 years on Beacon Hill and 11 years as the House chair of the Transportation Committee. 

Arciero faces a bigger challenge than Straus did as chair given to the upheaval in Washington, DC. The federal government has often partnered with Massachusetts on large projects, pledging big pots of money for everything from the Green Line extension that opened two years ago to the upcoming overhauls of the Cape Cod bridges. But in February, the Trump administration released a memo calling for directing transportation funding in a way that gives “preference to communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average.”   

 “It’s now an open question about what’s the relationship going forward with the federal government,” Straus said. 

Arciero’s appointment comes as legislators are sizing up Healey’s transportation plan, which involves using revenue from the millionaires tax to spend $8 billion over the next 10 years. The plan calls for $687 million for MBTA operations, $110 million for the regional transit authorities that some residents in Arciero’s area rely on, and $2.5 billion for road and bridge repairs, among other items on the state’s transportation punch list. 

Arciero, a former state Senate aide and a Democrat first elected in 2008, ran unopposed last election cycle. He has only occasionally faced Republican challengers over the last decade. As a lawmaker, he has largely voted with his fellow Democrats and rarely bucked legislative leaders.   

State Sen. Lydia Edwards, who co-chaired the Housing Committee with Arciero during the last legislative session, said he will bring a perspective to the transportation committee that is different from Boston-centric lawmakers such as herself, a fact echoed by Straus. “I would say to transportation advocates, consider his fresh perspective to be a good thing,” she said. 

Brian Kane, the executive director of the MBTA Advisory Board, a transit-oriented watchdog, said he hopes the transportation committee continues its oversight role that started during Gov. Charlie Baker’s administration, and considers whether there should be a new independent state entity to keep close tabs on the MBTA. 

The committee should also look at the structure of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT), which Kane called a “disjointed” set of agencies. Different payment systems exist across transportation modes. He noted, for example, CharlieCards, which are used to get on MBTA trains, are not available at Registry of Motor Vehicles locations. 

“We still have pieces of ceiling falling from tunnels in Boston,” he added, referring to chunks of concrete falling onto the Massachusetts Turnpike under the Prudential tower in late February. MassDOT officials said after inspections that the tunnel is safe and blamed the weather, the recent freezing and thawing cycles having led to the loose concrete. 

Along with a major highway in his House district, Arciero also has two MBTA commuter rail stations, in Chelmsford and Littleton. As a result, all three communities in his district also fall under the controversial MBTA Communities law, which calls for cities and towns to ease zoning regulations for multifamily housing close to public transit. 

The 2021 law, which sits at the intersection of both housing and transportation, has drawn challenges from some towns opposed to the state mandate. Middleborough and Marshfield officials filed lawsuits, sparked by Auditor Diana DiZoglio’s determination that the MBTA Communities Act is an “unfunded mandate” from the state. Officials in Wrentham are also weighing legal action. 

Arciero disagreed with the determination. He noted that state officials have provided 125 MBTA communities with more than $7 million in grants or assistance to help draft the zoning changes. “I don’t see a tremendous cost on the communities,” Arciero said. 

Jennifer Smith contributed to this report.