Deval Patrick: Build Phase III of the Silver Line before the Green Line extension

By Arborway on Mon, 08/13/2007 - 3:32pm

Imagine you are the governor of Massachusetts. The head of your mass transit agency comes to you with a plan to spend over a billion dollars on something nobody in the community wants, something that will require you to destroy a huge swath of one of the most famous parks in the world, along with some intact, perfectly useable infrastructure that will cost you $600 Million to replace with a lower-capacity alternative.

Now imagine that you have another plan that will bring reliable, high-quality, high-capacity service to a community that really, desperately wants it.

Which one would you make a priority? Deval Patrick has an answer.

After years of projects falling victim to foot-dragging, lies and the T's "We can't!" attitude, it's amazing to see the state, city and MBTA actually committed to a transit project - even if nobody actually wants it. Then again, it might have something to do with a parking garage and the state and city's attitude towards mass transit which can be best summed up as "delay and dismantle". Delay any meaningful projects and dismantle as much existing infrastructure as possible. I think mass transit in the Boston area has reached a new low point.

Topics:

Free tagging:

Ad:

Like the job UHub is doing? Consider a contribution. Thanks!

Comments

Remember....

By Weebs on Tue, 08/14/2007 - 8:35am.

TOGETHER WE CAN!!

Dodo Bird

By Gareth on Tue, 08/14/2007 - 11:18am.

I already knew the Silver Line was the dumbest thing evah. A bus pretending to be a train. When I take the Silver Line to Logan it always makes me think of a Dodo Bird -- big, stupid, too slow to get out of its own way. The Silver Dodo is pretending to be a train because Beacon Hill thinks the people who live in Roxbury are so stupid that as long as the city calls it a Line instead of a Bus, and put it on different maps, they'll think it's a fair replacement for the train they used to have. I'm surprised they didn't give it a recorded choo-choo sound.

What I didn't know was that there are already usable tunnels for rail service from Boylston, and that they're now planning to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to tear them up to put the Silver Dodo in there. So it's not just lame, but expensive? We've got to pay extra for this stupid bus? WTF?

The Sierra Club report (.pdf) lays the issues out pretty well. Another interesting blog entry (a whole interesting blog, for that matter) is from somebody called (I guess) Vanshnoookenraggen .

This thing with the Silver Line isn't just pathetic, it's pathological. Why does Beacon Hill have such a hard-on for this dodo bird?

Utterly ridiculous!!

By independentminded on Tue, 08/14/2007 - 11:45am.

C'mon now, Deval Patrick. The people here in the Bay State elected you into office to do a job!!
Let's get at it!! The people in Somerville and Medford have waited long enough for the Green Line Extension! Let's get to it. Frankly, I agree that the Silver Line is the most pretentious thing on the public transportation system. A bus pretending to be a train! C'mon now...if anything should wait at this point, it's the Silver Line Phase III business.

Silver Lie Phase III: Is This for Real?

By The Real Howard S. on Wed, 08/15/2007 - 4:10pm.

When I first read this story I had to check two things: First, was this written on April First, when it might have been a joke. Second, was I reading The Onion when I thought I was reading The Globe. But no, the article was legitimate. Governor Patrick is living in another universe, one so far removed from ours that the concept of "one plus one equals two" is not valid there. As all of the other commentators on this site have said, the bus tunnel is economically unfeasible, and if it is built it will have few riders. Scrapping the existing Phase I and Phase II segments and replacing the whole system with a light rail line might work -- it would be cheaper -- but it doesn't appear that the Governor has given this option any thought.

I no longer live in my native Boston, but I do follow its politics closely. I am going to write to the members of my Congressional deloegation asking them to support legislation to prohibit the use of any federal funds for this outrageous project.

I'm going to have a

By Arborway on Wed, 08/15/2007 - 7:20pm.

I'm going to have a rationale for the obsession with the Silver Line in the next day or so. I started writing one up for you guys, but this is turning into a much bigger project than I anticipated.