Harvard’s Inadequate Transportation Benefits

Over the past decade, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has quietly charged ahead with a slate of progressive improvements to student and employee transportation benefits. To deliver on its sustainability and climate commitments, MIT has made public transit completely free for employees and introduced large discounts for Bluebike memberships and MBTA passes for students.

Meanwhile, on this side of Cambridge, transportation benefits have stagnated or actually gotten worse. Harvard still doesn’t subsidize transit passes at all for undergrads, and the University-wide Bluebike discount has actually shrunk since 2013.

As a result, MIT students and employees enjoy superior benefits that enable convenient, sustainable commutes and travel around campus.

MIT students, for example, have access to more affordable Bluebike membership pricing ($45 vs. $98 at Harvard) and bigger MBTA pass discounts (50 percent vs. an average of approximately 14 percent at Harvard), along with a more expansive shuttle network. The disparity is no less dramatic for faculty and staff benefits: MIT has long offered completely free MBTA passes to all employees along with bike commuter benefits that are more flexible than Harvard’s.

MIT is practicing what it preaches when it comes to institutional climate policy. Unfortunately, Harvard cannot say the same. Our institution’s inaction undermines the credibility of its commitment to protecting the climate, leaving our neighbors in the community worse off in the process.

Transportation benefits that reward riding public transit, walking, and cycling reduce car use and steer people towards more sustainable transportation options. The livable communities that prioritize these non-driving modes tend to be healthier, safer, more affordable, and more beautiful.

In the absence of useful transportation benefits, students and employees are destined to stay reliant on cars. Indeed, in 2022, the percentage of Harvard commuters coming to campus via car was higher than it ever was before the pandemic. This is a failure that is well within the Harvard administration’s capacity to correct. It seems, however, that they currently lack the will.

And positive steps from Harvard could go a long way. Employees and students in Massachusetts face skyrocketing housing costs so severe that many are giving up on the region altogether. Policies encouraging walking, cycling, and transit use would mitigate the effects of the cost of living crisis by increasing the geographic area in which affiliates can live and still participate fully in campus life.

Harvard’s tremendous power in Cambridge and Boston comes with an obligation to act in the interests of the broader community. The City of Cambridge has moved aggressively to prioritize progressive transportation policies that make low-carbon, safe, and affordable travel possible. Harvard’s inaction, in addition to depriving its own affiliates of necessary benefits, flies in the face of these community efforts.

So, why hasn’t Harvard, an institution that claims addressing climate change is core to its mission, taken more decisive steps? Inaction on transportation benefits, unfortunately, seems in line with the track record of the Office for Sustainability, which still hasn’t provided an update to the 2015–2020 climate plan that lapsed without a replacement two years ago.

Transportation benefits, however, are an area where the University can make targeted, swift changes to policy in the near-term. The success of MIT’s program settles the question of feasibility. Harvard’s decentralized administration might be a hurdle to implementation, but it’s not an acceptable excuse for inaction. If Harvard’s outdated organizational structures leave it helpless to address twenty-first century challenges, the structures must be changed.

What should Harvard’s action look like? MIT has laid out a compelling blueprint, which Harvard should emulate. But Harvard should go further.

Harvard should provide fully subsidized MBTA passes for all employees and students, taking advantage of a program allowing institutions to pay after the fact for trips taken by affiliates. It should also integrate Charlie Card technology in all Harvard ID cards, not just those of undergraduates.

But the T isn’t convenient for all commuters. Harvard should provide fully subsidized Bluebike memberships and invest in more stations to increase capacity and bolster the campus network. The University should also stop forcing employees to choose between bike and transit benefits, and expand shuttles to include thoughtful services like MIT’s grocery store and airport routes.

Finally, Harvard should be more willing to take bold action at the University level. The current lack of a University-wide policy requires 13 schools to evaluate transportation benefits separately, which is inefficient and confusing. Developing sustainable transportation policy at the University level will maximize the leverage that Harvard's scale provides.

Administrators can and must act on each of these recommendations immediately. If Harvard begins the next academic year without a renewed set of sustainable transportation policies in place, it will suggest deep administrative dysfunction and lack of a meaningful commitment to the climate and to Harvard’s neighbors in the community.

Lucas J. Peilert is a first-year student at Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School.