They probably thought more people riding=more money for the T, while failing to consider that even if 50 million people packed into the T each day their funding would just get cut even more for a new highway and we would be back at square 1. Their thought process isn’t totally stupid, in a perfect world more riders WOULD equal more funding and better service. But we don’t live in a perfect world, we live in Massachusetts, where we canceled a gigantic public transport scheme (the urban ring project) because all the funding got directed towards the worlds most expensive example of induced demand. Who needs a project that’ll have a ridership of 300k per day and remove 50k cars from the road when we can build an highway that doesn’t actually fix the problem, and just puts it underground?