Boston

Digital work at City Hall sits in DoIT. In August 2026 the mayor named Shin-pei Tsay its chief information officer. She earlier led the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics, the city’s civic research-and-development lab, and as chief research and data officer launched the city’s first data strategy. She replaces Santiago Garces, who left for Harvard after four years in the post.

Streets sit with the Streets Cabinet and its Traffic Management Center, which times the signals. Its leadership has turned over. The Chief of Streets, Jascha Franklin-Hodge, left days after the November 2025 election, and his deputy Nick Gove held the post on an interim basis. From 3 August 2026 Wu replaced Gove with Chris Osgood, chief of streets under Mayor Marty Walsh, again as interim. The Environment Department runs the building-emissions law and the city’s bulk purchase of electricity.

From our library

Boston's streets projects have stalled under Wu, long a transit champion (Boston Globe, 15 Mar 2026)

Why dozens of street projects were put on hold.

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Several services Bostonians use daily are shared with other places. Bluebikes, the bike share, is publicly owned, operates in 13 municipalities and is run by Lyft; 352 of its more than 600 stations are in Boston. The MBTA is led by Phillip Eng, its general manager, who is also the State’s interim transportation secretary.

The research partners are close by. Northeastern University’s Boston Area Research Initiative (BARI) runs civic research and a data portal on the city, and held its 10th annual conference in 2026. Northeastern’s Burnes Center and NuLawLab helped write the city’s guidelines on generative AI.

From our library

City of Boston Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) Policy

Municipal AI rulebook evolves 2023‑2026, co‑crafted with Northeastern, ACLU; adaptable for EU AI Act.

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Watchdogs have formal seats. The ACLU of Massachusetts, a civil-liberties group, sits by ordinance on the board that advises on the city’s surveillance technology. Transit and street groups such as TransitMatters, LivableStreets Alliance and Transportation for Massachusetts have criticised the pause in the city’s street projects. Fight for the Future, a national digital-rights campaign, follows the police plate-reader trials.

Private money is counted State-wide. Massachusetts start-ups raised $16.7bn of venture capital in 2025, 12% more than in 2024, while local venture firms raised only $3.1bn, their lowest since at least 2015. MassChallenge, an accelerator founded in 2009 and based at Fan Pier on the waterfront, says it has supported more than 5,000 start-ups. The companies most visible in the city’s own projects are Google for traffic signals, SoundThinking for gunshot sensors, and Motorola Solutions and Axon for plate readers.

From our library

Boston dropped Flock, but it's not giving up license plate readers (MassLive via Governing, 22 Sept 2026)

The plate-reader trial that leaked and the trials that replaced it.

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Michelle Wu, a Democrat, has been mayor since 2021. She won a second term in November 2025 with 93.23% of the vote, after her challenger, Josh Kraft, withdrew following the preliminary round. In January 2026 the 13-member City Council, which passes the city’s ordinances and budget, elected Liz Breadon its president by 7 votes to 6.

Boston steers its climate work through the Climate Action Plan, which carries the 2030 and 2050 goals, and Climate Ready Boston for the coast and heat; there is no separate smart-city plan. For its own staff it has written rules on generative AI: guidelines in May 2023, a full policy in January 2025 and version 2.1 in March 2026. Staff must be trained before they get access to the city’s AI tools. We found no published evaluation of how they are used.

Many decisive levers sit at the State House, the seat of the Massachusetts government. In July 2026 the State gave the MBTA $530m from its Fair Share surtax, an extra tax on incomes above $1 million. Average weekday ridership had risen by over 21% in two years, to 945,332 in May 2026.

From our library

$530M from state millionaire tax will go to Boston-area transit agency (Smart Cities Dive, 24 July 2026)

State millionaire tax allocates $530 M, eliminating 220+ speed limits and spurring 21% ridership rise.

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Cities may not use speed cameras without a State law. In late July the State Senate added a limited authorisation to an economic development bill, which then went to a conference of the two chambers. In January the Senate had rejected, by 33 votes to 5, an amendment mirroring Wu’s plan to shift more of the property tax onto commercial property.

Washington has taken money back. In September 2025 the federal transport department withdrew a $20m grant for safety, transit and tree-planting on three Roxbury corridors. Its letter said the project’s small investment in electric-vehicle charging did not fit its priorities, and the city sued on 28 September 2026. Broadband money still flows through the State. In February 2026 the federal telecoms agency, NTIA, approved $18.8m under BEAD, the national broadband scheme, for 2,565 unserved or underserved homes and businesses in 251 communities.

Surveillance is where Boston’s rules are tested hardest. In 2020 the City Council, with Wu among the sponsors, unanimously banned city use of face surveillance. In 2021 it required a published policy and a yearly report for each kind of surveillance technology the city uses. There are now 26 such policies, 19 of them for the police.

The police trial of Flock plate-reading cameras in 2025 tested those rules. Data sharing was switched off in the contract, yet within three days officers found that outside agencies could search Boston’s plates through a nationwide lookup the vendor had enabled in error. The city dropped Flock and began trials with Motorola Solutions and, from about June 2026, Axon. Critics say those trials skipped the council approval the 2021 ordinance requires.

From our library

2025 City of Boston Annual Surveillance Reports

The city’s yearly account of every surveillance technology it uses.

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Nick Collins, a Massachusetts state senator, defended the pilots, which “are made to test and get the kinks out of a new practice”. His condition: “there’s got to be a balance to ensure people’s rights are protected”. On speed cameras the next decision is the State’s. Governor Maura Healey, a Democrat who proposed them in two budgets, faces the Republican Mike Minogue in November 2026.

Routes 23, 28 and 29, bus lines through Roxbury, Dorchester and Mattapan, have been free to ride since 2021 and 2022, a service the city buys from the MBTA. By the city’s figures the three routes carried nearly 23,000 fare-free trips each weekday in 2026. After fares were dropped on Route 28 in 2021, its ridership recovered to more than 12,000 a day, over 90% of the pre-pandemic level. Boarding by all doors cut time at stops by about 20%.

From our library

Free MBTA bus routes extended through end of year, Wu announces (Boston.com, 9 June 2026)

The fare-free routes the city buys from the MBTA, extended to December 2026.

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The city’s mid-programme report found 26% of riders saving at least $20 a month; we found no independent evaluation. The $8m that repays the MBTA its lost fares is federal pandemic-recovery money (ARPA), helped by savings from the MBTA’s low-income fares, and runs to December 2026.

BERDO, the Building Emissions Reduction and Disclosure Ordinance, sets falling emissions limits for about 5,500 large buildings, down to net zero in 2050. For the 2024 data year, 67% of the buildings covered, with 76% of the floor area, reported their emissions. As one route to compliance, owners over their limit may pay $234 a tonne into a fund for low-income and minority neighbourhoods the State designates. Reports against the first limits were due on 15 August 2026, three months late; we found no published results by mid-October.

From our library

BERDO Review Board Meeting Presentation, 25 August 2025 (City of Boston)

How many large buildings report their emissions under BERDO.

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Boston Community Choice Electricity buys power in bulk for more than 200,000 households and businesses, enrolled unless they opt out. Against the standard rate of Eversource, the private utility that runs the local grid, the city puts the average saving at $150 a year from February 2021 to December 2025, over $250m in all.

Project Green Light is a Google Research partnership with the Traffic Management Center: Google proposes signal timings from Maps driving data, and city engineers review them. By May 2025 signals at 114 congested intersections in 20 neighbourhoods had been adjusted, and the city reported 13.5% less delay there and about a fifth fewer unnecessary stops.

Riders on Bluebikes made 2.6 million trips in Boston in 2025, and in East Boston summer trips rose from 16,700 in 2019 to 61,700 in 2025 as the number of stations doubled. An expansion of 100 Boston stations, about 40% more, had 79 in place by June 2026.

BOS:311 is changing systems behind its own schedule. The move to a new back end began in October 2025 and was meant to finish by mid-2026, yet in mid-October 2026 the old public dataset was still receiving cases.

Street Bump, a 2011–14 app from New Urban Mechanics, logged bumps from drivers’ phones. It found sunken manhole covers 4 times as often as potholes, and the city fixed 1,250 of the worst with the utility companies; the app is no longer active.

The street programme is the lever the city holds itself. Early in 2025 Wu ordered a 30-day review of all street changes, and a bus lane on Boylston Street was removed. Officials then told Streets staff to stop most design and construction work until her office approved it. In March 2026, 11 current and former Streets staff told the Boston Globe that dozens of projects were waiting.

TransitMatters, a transit advocacy group, pointed to two square redesigns whose federal pandemic money expires at the end of 2026; Wu said they “will get done”.

In July 2026 Louisa Gag, a city employee who worked on bike-share and road-safety policy, was killed by a truck while cycling on Tremont Street. Wu then brought in the interim chief and an advisory group of advocates and former officials. At the end of July one advocate, Ben Siegel, was still asking her to restart more than a dozen stalled projects.

Two of Boston’s levers come with numbers residents can check: the free buses it buys from the MBTA and the power it buys in bulk, both resting on contracts or temporary money. Its own tools have counts too, from shorter delays at retimed signals to Street Bump’s repaired manhole covers. The emissions law has so far produced filings, not published results. The streets, which the city holds outright, were paused; since July they have an interim chief and an advisory group, but we found no restart date.