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Random musings from a Midwesterner in Beantown.
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Green Line extension faces delays
The Green Line extension to Somerville was introduced in the 1990s as a remediation project after the Big Dig’s far-reaching negative impacts on the already substandard air quality. Since then Somerville officials have grown frustrated with the state’s foot-dragging.
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
A letter from Fred Salvucci
This appeared in the Boston Globe I think:
Finishing the Big Dig
By Fred Salvucci - January 25, 2006
AS THE highway elements of the Big Dig near completion this month, we need to recognize that the job is only half done. Yet the state is considering changing course and walking away from the commitment to continuous improvement of affordable transit that was assumed in the Big Dig traffic and environmental projections and promised through four gubernatorial administrations as conditions of the Big Dig construction.
With construction fatigue setting in and Big Dig bashing fashionable, it's worth stopping to ask the basic questions: What if we hadn't done it? What happens if we don't complete the job? What if we'd listened to the critics and professional complainers in the first place?
Boston life would be very different. By this point, a reconstruction and repair would have been completed on the elevated Central Artery.
We would have incurred billions in cost for that inevitable repair, had massive traffic headaches without the use of the road during construction, and we'd have:
No Ted Williams Tunnel.
No Zakim/Bunker Hill Bridge.
Interstate 93 in Boston would still be the most overloaded link of highway on the entire US Interstate system.
The more than $5 billion of federal highway funds that gave the Massachusetts economy a huge boost in the 1990s would have gone to other states, and with it, thousands of construction jobs.
The South Boston Waterfront District -- today the most attractive smart growth opportunity in the United States -- would be the same inaccessible jumble of abandoned rail yards and parking lots we had 20 years ago.
Instead of planning for the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, the Fitzgerald Expressway would still be an ugly elevated road through the North End.
The region's economy would be choking, along with the air, as gridlock of up to 14 hours a day frustrated the movement of goods, services, and employees.
Not all Big Dig criticism is wrong, but criticism should be considered like the label on the cereal package: measured by weight, not by volume. For example, the worst leak, a mistake caused by contractor error and failure of oversight, was corrected and paid for by the contractor, not the taxpayer. But the focus on the highly visual leak distracts attention from the much more important failure of the state to keep pace with the improvements to public transportation that were part of the original plan.
Over 35 years ago, after major public debate and discussion, Governor Francis W. Sargent initiated a new direction in urban transportation, relying primarily on the improvement of public transportation, the environment, and the quality of life in urban neighborhoods and downtown. The premise was that Boston should break from the national path exemplified by Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Detroit and embrace our own legacy of high urban density complemented by the Olmsted park system and served by public transportation. Further, to recognize that, given the near impossibility of expanding highway capacity in our densely settled region, we must focus on improving public transportation as the most effective way to counter the growing roadway congestion and support economic growth.
The one major strategic highway investment to be considered was the replacement of the aging and ugly elevated Central Artery with a depressed road, permitting the city to create both more reliable travel and an improved environment, and the addition of a new tunnel to Logan. This balanced strategy has been the basis of over 30 years of massive investment in infrastructure renewal, the most recent component of which has been the Big Dig. Has it been working?
Looking at the dramatic change in the Boston skyline from 1970 to the present suggests that the transportation strategy has accompanied a massive revitalization of the city's economy. But what about today and tomorrow?
What are these uncompleted transit commitments, how important are they, and how much foot-dragging has there been? To name three initiatives critical to the emerging life sciences economy:
The Blue-Red Connector. This short extension of the Blue Line from Bowdoin to Charles Street would provide people from East Boston, Revere, and Winthrop direct access to the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Red Line, improve system connections to the Green and Orange Lines, and reduce crowding at Park Street and on the Red and Green Lines. Part of the MBTA's ''Ten Year Plan" since the 1980s, this is now proposed to be postponed indefinitely.
The Urban Ring. Envisioned to improve public transportation access around the downtown, serving the most vibrant cluster of university/hospital/research in the world and the state's most rapidly growing sub-center, stretching from BU Medical, Roxbury, Longwood Medical, Boston University, Harvard's Allston initiative, MIT/Kendall Square, Lechmere, Somerville, Everett, and Chelsea, Logan, and the South Boston Waterfront District. By now, the MBTA was supposed to have implemented ''Phase I" (improved bus service), but these ''improved services" come once every 25 minutes, so infrequently that the public doesn't use them. Notwithstanding the fact that Representative Michael E. Capuano secured $500 million in federal money to study a tunnel under Longwood Avenue, the state now proposes a 2019 timetable for the Urban Ring.
The ''Inland Route." Improved rail service to Worcester, Springfield, and on to New York was supposed to get serious attention in 1991 to jump-start the Springfield and Worcester economy, but nothing happened. Fortunately, it has recently been receiving renewed support from newly appointed state Transportation Secretary John Cogliano, but there is still no timetable.
Underlying the physical improvements was a commitment to keep transit fares affordable, rising at less than the rate of inflation, and to implement stricter parking restrictions in central areas, to reduce excessive auto use.
There's much more. The state is slipping on the timetable to extend the Green Line to Somerville, expand the Orange Line fleet, complete the Silver Line, and expand the bus fleet.
What if we don't finish the job? The consequences would be:
Great difficulty in implementing any significant projects. Who, in the future, would trust mitigation commitments in a complex project if the state fails to deliver the necessary complementary transit projects it committed to as a condition of securing approval for the Big Dig, after the highway work is complete? How can the private sector be expected to invest in ''smart growth" if the state reneges on the transit improvements it has promised continuously over the past 15 years?
We will see the reemergence of traffic congestion that will strangle our economic growth, and air quality will worsen.
We will lose billions in federal funds, and thousands of construction jobs.
Criticisms notwithstanding, the Big Dig was a good idea. So are the transit commitments that were essential to our environmental permits, and to our balanced strategy. At great expense, construction disruption, and engineering and construction ingenuity, the Big Dig has placed us within striking distance of a sustained smart growth strategy for economic development with improved environmental quality. We should finish the job by implementing the transit commitments and expanding affordable transit.
Finishing the Big Dig
By Fred Salvucci - January 25, 2006
AS THE highway elements of the Big Dig near completion this month, we need to recognize that the job is only half done. Yet the state is considering changing course and walking away from the commitment to continuous improvement of affordable transit that was assumed in the Big Dig traffic and environmental projections and promised through four gubernatorial administrations as conditions of the Big Dig construction.
With construction fatigue setting in and Big Dig bashing fashionable, it's worth stopping to ask the basic questions: What if we hadn't done it? What happens if we don't complete the job? What if we'd listened to the critics and professional complainers in the first place?
Boston life would be very different. By this point, a reconstruction and repair would have been completed on the elevated Central Artery.
We would have incurred billions in cost for that inevitable repair, had massive traffic headaches without the use of the road during construction, and we'd have:
No Ted Williams Tunnel.
No Zakim/Bunker Hill Bridge.
Interstate 93 in Boston would still be the most overloaded link of highway on the entire US Interstate system.
The more than $5 billion of federal highway funds that gave the Massachusetts economy a huge boost in the 1990s would have gone to other states, and with it, thousands of construction jobs.
The South Boston Waterfront District -- today the most attractive smart growth opportunity in the United States -- would be the same inaccessible jumble of abandoned rail yards and parking lots we had 20 years ago.
Instead of planning for the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, the Fitzgerald Expressway would still be an ugly elevated road through the North End.
The region's economy would be choking, along with the air, as gridlock of up to 14 hours a day frustrated the movement of goods, services, and employees.
Not all Big Dig criticism is wrong, but criticism should be considered like the label on the cereal package: measured by weight, not by volume. For example, the worst leak, a mistake caused by contractor error and failure of oversight, was corrected and paid for by the contractor, not the taxpayer. But the focus on the highly visual leak distracts attention from the much more important failure of the state to keep pace with the improvements to public transportation that were part of the original plan.
Over 35 years ago, after major public debate and discussion, Governor Francis W. Sargent initiated a new direction in urban transportation, relying primarily on the improvement of public transportation, the environment, and the quality of life in urban neighborhoods and downtown. The premise was that Boston should break from the national path exemplified by Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Detroit and embrace our own legacy of high urban density complemented by the Olmsted park system and served by public transportation. Further, to recognize that, given the near impossibility of expanding highway capacity in our densely settled region, we must focus on improving public transportation as the most effective way to counter the growing roadway congestion and support economic growth.
The one major strategic highway investment to be considered was the replacement of the aging and ugly elevated Central Artery with a depressed road, permitting the city to create both more reliable travel and an improved environment, and the addition of a new tunnel to Logan. This balanced strategy has been the basis of over 30 years of massive investment in infrastructure renewal, the most recent component of which has been the Big Dig. Has it been working?
Looking at the dramatic change in the Boston skyline from 1970 to the present suggests that the transportation strategy has accompanied a massive revitalization of the city's economy. But what about today and tomorrow?
What are these uncompleted transit commitments, how important are they, and how much foot-dragging has there been? To name three initiatives critical to the emerging life sciences economy:
The Blue-Red Connector. This short extension of the Blue Line from Bowdoin to Charles Street would provide people from East Boston, Revere, and Winthrop direct access to the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Red Line, improve system connections to the Green and Orange Lines, and reduce crowding at Park Street and on the Red and Green Lines. Part of the MBTA's ''Ten Year Plan" since the 1980s, this is now proposed to be postponed indefinitely.
The Urban Ring. Envisioned to improve public transportation access around the downtown, serving the most vibrant cluster of university/hospital/research in the world and the state's most rapidly growing sub-center, stretching from BU Medical, Roxbury, Longwood Medical, Boston University, Harvard's Allston initiative, MIT/Kendall Square, Lechmere, Somerville, Everett, and Chelsea, Logan, and the South Boston Waterfront District. By now, the MBTA was supposed to have implemented ''Phase I" (improved bus service), but these ''improved services" come once every 25 minutes, so infrequently that the public doesn't use them. Notwithstanding the fact that Representative Michael E. Capuano secured $500 million in federal money to study a tunnel under Longwood Avenue, the state now proposes a 2019 timetable for the Urban Ring.
The ''Inland Route." Improved rail service to Worcester, Springfield, and on to New York was supposed to get serious attention in 1991 to jump-start the Springfield and Worcester economy, but nothing happened. Fortunately, it has recently been receiving renewed support from newly appointed state Transportation Secretary John Cogliano, but there is still no timetable.
Underlying the physical improvements was a commitment to keep transit fares affordable, rising at less than the rate of inflation, and to implement stricter parking restrictions in central areas, to reduce excessive auto use.
There's much more. The state is slipping on the timetable to extend the Green Line to Somerville, expand the Orange Line fleet, complete the Silver Line, and expand the bus fleet.
What if we don't finish the job? The consequences would be:
Great difficulty in implementing any significant projects. Who, in the future, would trust mitigation commitments in a complex project if the state fails to deliver the necessary complementary transit projects it committed to as a condition of securing approval for the Big Dig, after the highway work is complete? How can the private sector be expected to invest in ''smart growth" if the state reneges on the transit improvements it has promised continuously over the past 15 years?
We will see the reemergence of traffic congestion that will strangle our economic growth, and air quality will worsen.
We will lose billions in federal funds, and thousands of construction jobs.
Criticisms notwithstanding, the Big Dig was a good idea. So are the transit commitments that were essential to our environmental permits, and to our balanced strategy. At great expense, construction disruption, and engineering and construction ingenuity, the Big Dig has placed us within striking distance of a sustained smart growth strategy for economic development with improved environmental quality. We should finish the job by implementing the transit commitments and expanding affordable transit.
Saturday, January 21, 2006
Jan 28, Feb. 25 - "Rethinking Urban Transportation"
You are invited to a free citizens Forum at the Museum of Science entitled
"Rethinking Urban Transportation". Choose either date.
Co-sponsored by LivableStreets Alliance.
RETHINKING URBAN TRANSPORTATION A FREE FORUM AT THE MUSEUM OF SCIENCE
Saturday, January 28
2:00 - 5:00 pm
Saturday, February 25
2:00 - 5:00 pm
. Is your commute exhausting?
. Do you wish the subway went more places?
. Is traffic getting worse?
. Are you paying too much for gas?
. Is parking becoming hard to find?
What will transportation in Boston look like in 20 years?
Join others in your community in a thoughtful and lively forum. In this three-hour session we'll hear from professionals about technologies and programs that have the power to revolutionize the way we travel in the city. Group activities will help us assess our priorities and explore the future in an informal and collaborative setting.
RSVP: forumrsvp@mos.org, 617-589-4250
Location: Museum of Science, Boston
Registration: limited to 60
Refreshments: provided
http://www.livablestreets.info for more information.
Forum is funded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a non-regulatory federal agency within the U.S. Commerce Department's Technology Administration.
LivableStreets Alliance (LSA) is a non-profit organization advocating for a comprehensive transportation network that improves the quality of urban life in Boston. LSA takes a big-picture, collaborative approach to the city's transportation challenges and opportunities, supporting transit, biking, and walking. We are committed to transportation that is safe, reliable, and sustainable - one able to accommodate all groups, including children, the elderly, the underserved, and the handicapped.
LivableStreets Alliance is guided by the belief that strong, diverse, and equitable urban transportation options have the power to make Boston a more vibrant and dynamic city.
"Rethinking Urban Transportation". Choose either date.
Co-sponsored by LivableStreets Alliance.
RETHINKING URBAN TRANSPORTATION A FREE FORUM AT THE MUSEUM OF SCIENCE
Saturday, January 28
2:00 - 5:00 pm
Saturday, February 25
2:00 - 5:00 pm
. Is your commute exhausting?
. Do you wish the subway went more places?
. Is traffic getting worse?
. Are you paying too much for gas?
. Is parking becoming hard to find?
What will transportation in Boston look like in 20 years?
Join others in your community in a thoughtful and lively forum. In this three-hour session we'll hear from professionals about technologies and programs that have the power to revolutionize the way we travel in the city. Group activities will help us assess our priorities and explore the future in an informal and collaborative setting.
RSVP: forumrsvp@mos.org, 617-589-4250
Location: Museum of Science, Boston
Registration: limited to 60
Refreshments: provided
http://www.livablestreets.info for more information.
Forum is funded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a non-regulatory federal agency within the U.S. Commerce Department's Technology Administration.
LivableStreets Alliance (LSA) is a non-profit organization advocating for a comprehensive transportation network that improves the quality of urban life in Boston. LSA takes a big-picture, collaborative approach to the city's transportation challenges and opportunities, supporting transit, biking, and walking. We are committed to transportation that is safe, reliable, and sustainable - one able to accommodate all groups, including children, the elderly, the underserved, and the handicapped.
LivableStreets Alliance is guided by the belief that strong, diverse, and equitable urban transportation options have the power to make Boston a more vibrant and dynamic city.
Friday, January 13, 2006
While Green Line slows down, NorthPoint speeds up
From the Herald (looks like it got munged a bit--sorry):Backers of the massive $2 billion NorthPoint project are speeding up plans to build a new Lechmere T station in an effort to boost future condo and office sales at the East Cambridge development site. The move to start construction as early as next year -- rather than in 2010 or 2011 -- could also accelerate plans to eventually extend the Green Line into Somerville and West Medford.
[...]
Developers will build a new T station east of O' Brien Highway, where they're now constructing the first two condo buildings within the planned transportation-friendly NorthPoint.
NorthPoint will pick up most of the expected $35 million cost to build a new station - which will include space for trolleys, buses, parking and retail. Once finished, developers would take over the old T site and redevelop it.
A project director at Spaulding & Slye said a new T station had always been planned as NorthPoint's "front door.
The most recent plans had called for construction of a new station in 2010 or 2011 "at the outside." Now it looks like construction may start within 18 months.
Developers are starting work on designs for the station and nearby roadwork.
A new T station will make the entire project -- which could eventually have 5 million square feet of housing, office and retail space -- more attractive, she said.
Sunday, January 08, 2006
T eyes revamp of confusing fare system
Now that the MBTA has named its new-fangled cashless card system for a folk hero -- Charlie who couldn't get off an old MTA train for lack of a prehistoric ''exit fare" -- you would have thought that the T had eliminated such a strange practice long ago. Wouldn't you?
Full story on Boston.com.
Full story on Boston.com.
Thursday, January 05, 2006
Curtatone's focus for next term
No rampant political rhetoric, no feisty jabs and no grandiose plans colored Mayor Joe Curtatone’s inauguration speech Monday. Just the facts, ma’am.Full Story: Somerville Journal via Town Online.
Phoenix on Transit developments
The T: we love to hate it; we hate to take it; we take it everywhere. The nation’s first subway system has inspired songs ("The MTA Song" [Charlie on the MTA], "T DJ," and "Fuck the T"), Web sites (http://www.badtransit.com/, transportavenger.blogspot.com), and a general appreciation of functioning escalators. Over the next 10 years, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) will present us with more to sing about, and more to gripe about — from operational changes in how we pay our fares and what kinds of trains we ride (See "More Cards and Cars"), to the completion of long-planned system-wide expansions that could increase daily MBTA ridership and help the struggling agency climb out of debt, while improving both our public health and our transit experiences.
Full Story: The Boston Phoenix
Full Story: The Boston Phoenix
