Move over Big Dig, the MBTA is in hot contention for the State’s Priciest Boondoggle title.

The notoriously over- budget Big Dig highway project was initially estimated to cost $2.5 billion when it began in 1991. It ended up costing a whopping $14.8 billion when it was finished  in 1997. Transportation officials later put the estimate of the complete cost of the Big Dig (allowing for principal and interest) at some $24.3 billion.

Now, MBTA officials put the price of fixing the mountain of issues that have plagued the transportation agency at a head-smacking $24.5 billion.

The T’s assessed the state of its trains, tracks, signals, construction equipment, etc. and the findings were grim, according to the State House News.

Nearly two-thirds of MBTA assets are not in good repair. Passengers who’ve been booted off dead trains and herded on to buses, or waited far too long for the next train to inch toward them on one of the many slow zones could attest to that. It wasn’t just trust in the system that was breaking down.

The T concluded it would cost $24.5 billion to fix those issues – and that’s just to address current woes, not infrastructure maintenance, expansions and other projects.

That price tag, incidentally is almost two and a half times more expensive than the last capital needs assessment in 2019 under former Gov. Charlie Baker. Officials said the price hike is due to construction inflation and MBTA assets aging faster than they are being replaced.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly where the sweater started to unravel, but years of safety problems, promises to address them, and the ultimate shortfall in doing so in a timely manner kept the focus on the catastrophe du jour, and not so much on the big, troubling picture.

Should the agency have devoted so much energy and money to expansion projects amid such disrepair? Possibly not, but what has been made painfully clear is that communication was not the T’s strong suit.

The new sheriff in town, MBTA General Manager Phil Eng ripped off the bandage, saying in a statement “The MBTA is one of the oldest transit agencies in the country, and while there are a number of contributing factors, it’s clear that years of underinvestment have added to the cost of bringing our system back to a state of good repair.”

He added that his team is “committed to aggressively addressing our immediate needs.”

We believe him, Eng’s got a good track record of getting things done. But the price tag and the problems are still sobering. Subway and trolley tracks make up the bulk of things on the “poor condition” category. Repairing those alone will cost about $2 billion.

The $24+ billion is going to have to come from somewhere, and this couldn’t have hit at a worse time. While the State Legislature has kicked the $250 million dollar shelter funding can down the road, Massachusetts needs to come up with that cash as well.

The chickens have come home to roost, and while there’s egg on many faces from past MBTA leaderships, it doesn’t change the fact that passengers and taxpayers are again left holding the bag.

Editorial cartoon by Gary Varvel (Creators Syndicate)