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Random musings from a Midwesterner in Beantown.
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.
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