Green Line Extension not quite dead yet, but it's on life support and the power just went out

Late Night service was good as gone as soon as it hit the chopping block. Not really surprising..

What's sad is there's really a need, and it's not just for the bar goers.

Case in point, I was having a discussion with someone just the other day about the need for 24 hour service and gave a prime example.

The T has these special 'first run' buses that run 30 minutes or more BEFORE subway service starts in the morning. Some of these are the 57, 89, 93, and the 117. (I know there's more of these, but these are what i can remember off the top of my head). These buses (the ones I listed above) all 'converge' at Haymarket so people can make connections to them to get where they are going long before a train ever rolls down the tracks.

There reason why I bring this up is that Saturday morning, I had to ride the first 117 for a work emergency. The 117 departs Wonderland (@4:30), follows its same route via Chelsea Center (@4:45) to Maverick (@4:55), then continues on to Haymarket (to meet the convergence of buses @5:03), and does return trip via Logan (@5:17). And the bus was packed to the gills with people and was standing room only. And it's all service workers.. people going to work. And this was a Saturday!

It's always like this.. I've rode this particular bus before, since it is the first bus out in the morning from Chelsea. And the next bus (a 111) isn't for until 5:15. Plus once we get to Haymarket there's a mad dash to make your connection to other buses (they do typically wait for all the buses to show up so people can make their connection), so there's a big need.

The regular buses (non-late night) at night aren't any better. I can't tell you how many times that I've been on a standing room only 111 or 116 last run of the night.

So there's a definite need for late night.. or better.. all night service, even if its a few extended bus routes that run hourly (yeah yeah I know.... Night Owl but this would be different). It's sad that it's going to go, there's definitely a need there for the service workers. But whatever, it doesn't seem like the T or Baker and his team care all that much about getting this to work. Sad.

World Class, Baby!

I have to agree and thus thumbs up both here.

On one hand, it is extremely true that this is overpriced by nothing else than contractors price gouging. The Amateur Planner said it best with his comparison. There is absolutely no way in hell this project should cost this much. This indicates that this project can very well be able to be contracted out and done at a billion dollar less than the current projection. From this view, it would be disgusting if we resolve this by finding more funds to pay for it. It would be basically agreeing to let them rob us - and we even went to the bank to withdraw more money to let them take after they sucked everything from the house.

But at the same time. It is absolutely scary that we are playing with full-on cancellation. That when we look at the history of the MBTA, we can't really take confidence that the outcome will the ideal scenario where the contractor backs down from their absurd price and we get GLX built in a reasonable price (well for recent American standards). Getting GLX built at an absurd, massively inefficient cost is terrible. But not getting GLX at all isn't a great prize either.

Except you assume the T management has the best interests of the riders and of the economy in mind.

They dont.

Honestly half the people working in any given transit agency would love to get rid of riders because it makes their trains slow down.

The only analysis I read on it was that "it failed." There has to be a more in depth report or what have you on it, right? Else, it just comes off as "eh, label it a failure so we don't have to keep funding it"...an easy way to slash the budget.

Economic resiliency.

This comes down to economic resiliency, The MBTA is critical to the functioning of the city's economy - the train wouldn't just be "nice", GLX determines whether or not Somerville can develop as both a commuter town and an economic center in its own right. It's a critical project for that city, and a project where the city of Somerville hasn't been a perfect, but they haven't been the ones who got so absurdly fleeced by a contractor. That's on the State and no one should accept the State pleading incompetence as the reason for why a project that's been on the drawing boards since the early 1900s (seriously....GLX was identified as a rapid transit-ready extension over a 100 yards ago) can't come to pass.

With GLX, there's a release valve in Somerville for residents and business that can't afford downtown rent. With GLX, Union Square and Brickbottom have the services to expand as employment clusters. Without it, major economic development is confined to Cambridge and downtown Boston which doesn't allow the effects of a successful economy to spread beyond property price increases and doesn't allow peripheral cities to secure their economic futures. If and when we go through another downturn, the lack of GLX will be far more stark than it is today.