In the wake of the USOC pulling out of the Boston 2024 Olympic bid, we are already seeing a narrative form that Boston likes things small, is too provincial to think globally, and is scared of wide scale city changing projects. I would argue against this, the Olympics was the wrong project at the wrong place at the wrong time. But there are other places we can look to for inspiration when it comes to fixing our infrastructure.
New York is showing us what real leadership on infrastructure looks like. It has taken what has been an eyesore that has become a national punchline and committed itself to completely transforming that out of date airport into a 21st century transportation hub. Fully linked to mass transit including new rail lines, bus terminals, and a direct ferry service to Manhattan.
Travelers would also have better options to get to La Guardia; Mr. Cuomo said the plan called for a rail link between the airport and a subway station in the Willets Point section of Queens, as well as re-establishing ferry service to the airport.
It would also significantly decrease delays, like the O’Hare expansion has in Chicago, by reconfiguring the flight paths themselves.
The plan went beyond aesthetics: The airport buildings would be moved south, closer to the parkway. The move would allow the creation of roughly two miles of new taxiways that officials said would help alleviate the airport’s chronic delays.
And despite the $4 billion pricetag, there is universal political consensus behind the project
There seemed to be even more unanimity about the need for a better La Guardia, which the governor characterized as “un-New York” because it is “slow, dated” and “almost universally derided.”
‘slow, dated, universally derided’ sounds like something closer to Boston
The project will create 8,000 construction jobs and several hundred permanent ones, and alongside the Tappan Zee bridge, shows a state government willing to commit money to public infrastructure projects. Boston and the surrounding region have many, many, unmet infrastructure needs. Instead of relying on the dying casino industry or the now faded pipedream of a Boston olympics, maybe we can make the smart bet on committing to fix the problems actually in front of our faces.
David says
for how awful LaGuardia airport is as a facility, and also in terms of how difficult it is to get into Manhattan once you land. Logan, despite its flaws, is so much better. Good for NYC for committing to fixing it.
petr says
… “Let’s not be compared to a third world country” isn’t a “real” infrastructure vision. We can’t define our vision by how desparate we’re willing to let things get…
Works of nobel note require effort and real vision and risk of a crashing, even ignominious, failure, not some default attack of the vapors: “heavean! We can’t let things get that bad! What will the actual third world think!?!?!?”
A rugged people, and thro’ soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
‘T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
rcmauro says
Relevant to the discussion below, after two grueling world wars and the loss of an empire, that nation still managed to build the Channel Tunnel. Massachusetts, let’s get cracking on that North-South rail thing.
nopolitician says
I know that many of the readers of this blog are Boston-centric, but one only has to look a little outside of Boston to realize how bad our infrastructure is. The most obvious problem – which I am shocked that more people aren’t exploding over – is the Mass Turnpike.
I drove the Pike on a Friday a few weeks back from Boston to Springfield. The trip took over three hours! It was stop-and-go from Boston to Sturbridge! I did the same thing a few months ago, and again, a three-hour trip.
I now loathe driving to Cape Cod because the Pike, usually from Sturbridge to 11a, is absolutely jammed. I know people that went to the Taylor Swift concert in Foxboro last Friday, and I got similar complaints – three hours to get there from Springfield.
I’m not suggesting that we should expand the highway – but how about trying to alleviate the traffic by improving rail service? It would seem to make sense to run a train from Springfield to Boston (given that there are so many damn cars making the trip with a single rider), but the train trip is actually something like 4 hours, which is ridiculous.
Boston is just 90 minutes from Springfield, but because of all the traffic just getting into the city, it’s a trip that I no longer like to make, in fact, one I expressly avoid.
scott12mass says
You could have gotten off and gone on Rt 20. It runs roughly parallel to the Pike but it gets a little dangerous. There’s two lanes going east, two going west with a thin yellow line separating cars going 60mph. Because the Pike still charges, a lot of tractor trailers use 20 to save a few bucks so it makes it more interesting. Locals know to ride the right lane. We were promised the state would put in dividers for the last 25 years, they did do some in Auburn but the state just pulled the funding for farther west (Charlton). Guess the money is needed closer to Boston.
stomv says
Two lanes each way, double yellow line, no divider?
Speed limit is probably 45. Enforce it, and at least you’ve dropped it from 60 to low 40s. Sure, people tend to drive 10 over, but with 2 lanes no shoulder, any time anyone drives more slowly (because they respect the limit, because they’re turning, whatevs) it slows everyone else from 45 down to something a little less.
If the speed were less, it’d be both more safer and less attractive to those bypassing the Pike.
abs0628 says
I hadn’t heard about the LaGuardia project but it’s great news, perhaps one of the few good things Cuomo has been involved in 😉
That said, we absolutely need to be repairing and expanding our infrastructure, especially transit. As nopolitician says above, we need to get people off the roads — because we absolutely cannot build our way out of this with more roads, especially not if we value trees and open space at all.
There’s high speed rail between Paris and Southern France, so one can live or harvest fruit/veg in the morning in the south and be in Paris before lunch. There is no reasonable reason that we couldn’t have high speed rail from the Berkshires to Boston, or from Boston to the Cape, or from Boston to New Hampshire, or from Lowell to Waltham. Imagine what that would do for 95, 93, and the Pike — especially if, as is my dream/fantasy, we did it by taking out a lane from each of those roads and built a train line on the side — so people stuck in hellacious traffic could see with their own eyes that the train is a better option — and more of them would make that choice, thus lessening traffic and shortening driving commutes — to say nothing of pollution and dealing with climate.
More and better transit is our only way forward if we want to remain competitive in a global economy. The sooner we face that and invest in it, the better. If we don’t, there are lots of other cities/regions in our country and overseas that are going to start — and already are — looking way more attractive for anyone under the age of 50. If we don’t want to decline as a region economically and socially, we need to get on this stat.
SomervilleTom says
Conventional trains, reaching peak and sustained speeds of 60-80 MPH and spaced 10-20 minutes apart, are more than sufficient to make a huge dent in the highway burden between Boston and the Berkshires, Boston and Concord NH (with stops in at least Lowell, Nashua NH, and Concord NH) and Boston to the Cape (where “the Cape” means Provincetown, not Hyannis).
Amtrak already runs trains between South Station and Portland, hitting the Maine coast at Old Orchard Beach. We already have commuter rail between Newburyport and Boston (North Station). That could be extended to Portsmouth with intermediate stops in, for example, Rye NH and Salisbury MA. The Massachusetts coast north of Salem currently is essentially unreachable during summer weekends, because of grid-locked traffic.
None of this is “hard”, in any technological sense, and that’s why I’d prefer to avoid the “high speed rail” distraction.
We need modern conventional locomotives, modern conventional coaches, a dedicated right-of-way (NOT shared by freight trains), signals, crews, and stations. It really is a question of money and priorities.
This is well within our reach — we need only to decide to pursue it.
nopolitician says
There is plenty of overhead associated with taking the train – getting to the station, checking in, then unboarding at the end, arranging for Boston transportation. A 90-minute drive isn’t going to be replaced by a 120-minute train ride. Yes, 120 minutes is better than 180 minutes, but we should be able to do better. We may not need to do 500mph, but 120mph should not be out of the question.
SomervilleTom says
It’s hard to average better than 70 MPH on a highway. A train that easily accelerates to 80 is not going take 120 minutes for a trip that car does in 90. It’s worth mentioning that having our state police actually enforce a maximum highway speed of, say, 75 MPH on our interstates would make our highways a whole lot safer and save at least some of the delays that happen when some moron wraps his car around a bridge abutment at 90.
I think the term we’re talking about is “timetable speed” — the timetable departure times between stations divided by the distance between them. The limiting factor in our current MBTA is NOT the top speed of the trains, it is the enormous segments of track where the train is limited to 15 MPH.
We saw this in the Acela. Nearly all of the timetable speed increases of the Acela were accomplished by removing speed restrictions, the long wait in New Haven to change from overhead to diesel, and so on. The fancy tilt-train hi-tech stuff that made the Acela so expensive are used in a TINY fraction of the trip — even there, the Acela is only marginally faster than conventional equipment.
I think we’re on the same page about the requirements. I think we need a reasonable standard. Something like “within 20% of the average trip time by car in the absence of highway traffic”. We then talk about a 120 trip between Boston and Hyannis ALL the time — that compares very favorably to the 300 minute ordeal on typical summer weekends.
nopolitician says
I’m talking about door-to-door. I currently choose between hopping in my car and getting to my destination anywhere in Boston in 90 minutes – except when the traffic makes it take 3 hours.
If I have to go to the train station, I need to get there at least 15 minutes early, and then the train will likely stop at least a couple of times on its way into the city. I will then need to get off the train and either find a cab, rent a car, or take the T to my final destination.
That will be at least 120 minutes door-to-door by train.
A train to Hyannis would be great too. Again, I think that in order for it to work, we should shoot for speeds that are better than driving, rather than simply “better than driving when there is gridlocked traffic”.
stomv says
I think your door-to-door analysis is the right one. But, folks weigh things differently.
I’d much rather 30 minutes of walk/bus/T and 90 minutes of Amtrak than 90 minutes of driving. If I’m by myself, I net an extra hour to read (I can’t read in a car for 1.5 hours; in the Amtrak trip for .5 hours). If I’m with my family, I only have .5 hours of two kids that are bored and unentertainable, rather than 1.5 hours. On the train, we can read, color, play cards, and otherwise interact. It’s good time.
I’m not claiming that everyone will choose a 2 hour multimodal trip over a 1.5 hour car ride. But some will. Given that highway congestion is nonlinear with number of cars, removing just 10% of the vehicles can result in a massive reduction in delays for autos.
There’s another benefit too. Once a family owns a car, that family tends to find uses for it. Families own cars for lots of different, complex reasons, but one reason why city folks own cars is because they’ve got to drive far away from the city. For some of them, good rail would eliminate that reason for owning a car, and for some of them, that would be enough for them to choose to not own a car in the first place, isntead opting for ZipCar et al. End result: not only is there less congestion on the Pike the day before Thanksgiving, but there’s also less congestion on Storrow other times, too.
jconway says
Another great reason to avoid cars in Chicago-and one of the few places where my current state is ahead of my home state. Watched Friends of Eddie Coyle paired with Sam Adams Summer Ale on my 90 minute train ride home yesterday.
petr says
Horrible horrible idea. I take the train out of North Station on a regular basis and we already get a fair portion of drunk fans after Red Sox in the Summer and Bruins or Celtics in the winter. The Fitchburg line can take over 90 minutes. The conductors already have their hands full, leaving them, as well as the more sober patrons, at that mercy of those getting more drunk is just a wretched idea. I can’t see it happening without a police presence… In addition,the commuter rail, at least on the fitchburg line, bathrooms routinely break and/or get stopped up. I can’t remember going more than three days without some problem, even in the newer cars. Beer on trains would add so much more pressure to this that I’m feeling sick to my stomach just thinking about it.
I know you’re probably a responsible drinker and your taste in movies seems to be getting better, but I can’t see how allowing beer on trains is at all a good idea.
jconway says
There are vendors right outside the platforms that sell it, so it generates revenue back to the train system, they also reserve the right to ban it during special events or to designate alcohol free cars, and they do both frequently. With the right rules in place, everyone can get along. A bar car might be a valid compromise, though they were phased out in New York and Chicago since they were money losers.
SomervilleTom says
In the early 1990s, I worked with colleagues who commuted daily from Long Island to downtown Manhattan (the financial district) using the LIRR.
Several said the same thing: They got on the same train at the same time each morning (around 7a). The attendant knew them and brought them “their usual” (coffee and a danish) at their seat. They enjoyed a leisurely breakfast, reading the NY Times, and arrived at the WTC at 8a or so. On the way home, again on the same train each evening (5:30p, as I recall), a different attendant knew them and brought them their “usual” (beer and nuts, or wine and nuts). They enjoyed a similarly pleasant ride home, and arrived at 6:30p or so. They walked to and from their then-affordable 4BR colonial, their children attended good public schools, and they lived in lovely neighborhoods (I didn’t hear about spouses).
I had similar experiences on the pre-Acela Amtrak between NYC and Boston Monday morning (5:00a or so from the Rt 128 station) and Thursday evening (6:15p departure from Penn Station). I traveled “business class”, which meant I had a nice seat and a cafe at the end of the car. The attendant knew me and did the same drill.
This seems somewhat relevant to the thread, because I chose the train after several successive nightmares trying to get from the financial districk to La Guardia in bad weather (November/December) for the Thursday night trip.
My suggestion for dealing with drunken sports fans is to shut down the Red Sox, Celtics, and Bruins. 🙂
jconway says
Why would any sane person choose sitting in traffic over that? And yes drunk sports fans are inevitable wherever there are professional sports. I think people will drink before and after they get on the train, letting them drink on the train is a way to capture revenue and to impose some order, kinda like the whole, getting rid of prohibition thing in the first place…
SomervilleTom says
By the way, a conventional train can easily do 120 MPH, pretty much anywhere a “high speed” train can do the same.
The benefit of high speed rail comes from trips of 2-3 hours with no stops. That’s not likely to happen within Massachusetts (2 hours at 150 mph is 300 miles — about twice the east-west size of our state).
stomv says
Were it so, s’tom. Were it so.
SomervilleTom says
Indeed, were it so. The Downeaster runs, of course, from North (not South) station.
abs0628 says
If there was a good/pleasant commute option from Springfield/Lowell/Worcester/Lynn, etc — cities that need new residents/revitalization and have low cost housing compared to Boston — you better believe more young people and frankly people generally would stay in Mass and make that choice rather than say moving to Minneapolis or somewhere else where the cost of living and quality of life are more in balance and where the local government is actively investing in making that balance better for everyone.
jconway says
No Politician has been a great point person for Western MA needs and transit issues, and there is no doubt in my mind you both make great points about how essential better transit is needed for those sectors.
We weren’t opposed to big projects, big plans, or even big government-just a really bad one. Now that it has been defeated, onto the plans that would help the region. Glad Dempsey, Cohn, and other people are sticking around to continue that fight.
ryepower12 says
projects is the South Station expansion.
That we haven’t been able to get the Post Office on board is asinine.
But, yes, more and better infrastructure, everywhere — with a heavy emphasis on rail. It’s the only way our region will ever have a hope of keeping up with demand, reducing the already-unbearable traffic and keeping people local.
And until we build out our rail system, we should seriously think up anyway to get people to actually use buses — even if we just make them free.
jconway says
I had a friend who worked for Amtrak tell me how baffled he was that this hasn’t happened by now. Those projects, the urban ring, and transit expansion are all the kinds of things we should be aiming for instead of claiming they are a pipedream because of our budget cuts.
perry41 says
Let us remember that the rail link between N & S stations was part of the original plan for the Big Dig. It was the first thing to be scuttled when the cost over-runs started getting seriously out of hand.
SomervilleTom says
The North-South link was demanded by groups like Conservation Law Foundation in exchange for their acquiescence to the Big Dig.
It was never “part of the plan” for the Big Dig. It was instead the topic of various lawsuits, threatened lawsuits, and legislative activity like this 1993 document.
State authorities gave lip service to the proposal, allowed it to be “required” as “mitigation” for the long list of unaddressed objections to the environmental impact of the Big Dig (especially increased automobile traffic), and jettisoned it at the earliest opportunity.
petr says
… that mega-projects are a swirl of compromises, risks and mitigation in a context of competing motivations and impulses? Are you saying the planning of mega-projects involves an ugly process that, essentially, resembles sausage making?
I’m not buying it. They just must have been inept…
SomervilleTom says
Even sausage making has rules. A sausage whose label says that it contains pork and cheese is supposed to have some pork and some cheese in it when delivered, no matter how it is made.
A store that orders pork and cheese sausages (“Käsekrainer“) from a supplier and gets sausages with no cheese will rightfully choose a different supplier for its next order.
The north-south connector (“CARL” in the link I posted) was the cheese in the Käsekrainer (Big Dig) ordered by the public. The supplier (government) never took that requirement seriously. Whether through ineptitude or intent, the result was lots of new lane-miles under the city and no north-south connector — all pork and no cheese.
Insult was added to injury by saddling the MBTA with crushing debt resulting from the mislabeled “Käsekrainer”. Now the same supplier (a conglomerate that happens to control ALL the local cheese producers) is shutting down the entire cheese supply for the region after being forced to halt production of a local favorite all last winter. They promise that their Velveeta processed cheese product (bus service) is a perfectly adequate cheese alternative.
I’m saying that we need a new sausage supplier.
ryepower12 says
and very high up on the list. It isn’t even just a Boston or Massachusetts issue — it’s an East Coast issue.
So, yes, I totally agree.
It’s not quite low hanging fruit, though, because it will cost several billion. Worth it given its national implications, but it’s not something MA could do alone.
I say the South Station expansion is low hanging fruit because it would cost millions, not billions, and it would increase South Station’s capacity by 50%, which it badly needs.
HR's Kevin says
Note that simply adding more platforms may not be enough. Anyone who has spent any time in South Station during the evening commute when there are even minor delays may find it difficult to fight their way through the throngs waiting for their trains. To fix that, we need more space in the station and/or in front of the platforms.
stomv says
is that the trains can be at their platform a bit earlier — “resting” awaiting being sent off for more minutes. That means that they can be announced sooner, and that people will board sooner, thereby freeing up space in the station itself.
SomervilleTom says
Another enhancement, that may or not not (I actually don’t know) require more platforms, is to make the “spot” for each train each day (what location on what platform) constant.
Railroads throughout Germany, the Czech Republic, and Austria have been doing this for decades. It allows passengers to congregate at the platform location where they will board. It results in fewer people needing to fight their way through throngs — more people are simply part of a well-placed throng.
I am under the distinct impression that the US (and local) practice of withholding the platform “spot” of each train until just before boarding is an anachronism perpetuated by “tradition” rather than demanded by physical constraints. It is also a practice that greatly lengthens the time it takes to get people on and off trains during congested times.
SomervilleTom says
For the past few weeks, Amtrak and commuter service from NJ into NYC has been abysmal because the century-old tunnels that join NJ to NYC, and that suffered severe and currently un-repaired damage from Sandy, are failing.
These are the same tunnels that would have been replaced by the tunnels that current GOP candidate Chris Christie canceled five years ago. Today, on the campaign trail, he berates Amtrak and pretty much everybody else.
The tunnels will be enormously expensive to repair. Like the Big Dig, it makes far more sense, and costs far less money, to replace them. That’s why Amtrak proposed the replacement that Mr. Christie vetoed.
Whatever happens there, I suspect that the N/S connector is going to come behind those tunnels in the national priority list.
Bearing in mind, of course that the GOP is doing everything it can at the national level to destroy Amtrak (as they have been doing pretty much since Amtrak was created).
TheBestDefense says
our own members of Congress, starting with Steve Lynch, for not making the Boston USPS relocation happen and permitting the expansion of the SoSta tracks? Who gives a shit about Christie when our own guy does not do his job but has plenty to say about the failed B2024 bid, a bid that depended on the relocation.
hrs-kevin had it right.
SomervilleTom says
I’m totally on-board with you.
I’m just responding to the hope that national attention will accelerate or enable the desperately required N/S link. It won’t.
bob-gardner says
. . . first proposes a velodrome. Otherwise why would any first-class engineering firm even consider bidding on the project?
sabutai says
I’m sure all their problems will be cleared up thanks to the classic American habit of planning for the long-term and investing in its infrastructure, no motivation needed.
fenway49 says
I’d live to see the day when New York City was touted as a place with a “real infrastructure vision.”
Before anyone buys such a claim I’d advise spending a few years being forced to decide, whenever out past 10 PM in the “city that never sleeps,” whether to take a cab back to the far side of Brooklyn for $40 or spend 2.5 hours waiting in dirty, leaky, rat-infested stations for multiple connecting subways. What we had in Quincy, with people along the Red Line relegated to shuttle buses, is standard operating procedure on the weekend for many lines serving NYC’s outer boros. Facing being cut off from the world every weekend for a year, I bought my first car ever while living there.
In my experience most people who say NYC has a great transportation system have not stayed there longer than a few days, and have not stayed beyond Manhattan or the immediately adjacent cluster of now-hip neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens. It’s heartening, though, that Andrew Cuomo (who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the schoolchildren of NYS) is ready to commit real money to making the lives of business travelers easier.
ryepower12 says
airports never have much trouble securing big investments from governments given all the .1%ers who use them.
In a lot of ways, the Big Dig was sold to many people as something that would make getting to the airport dramatically easier for large numbers of Boston communities… and, of course, it did.
Would the Big Dig have happened without the huge Logan-flavored components?
jconway says
Compared to what our policymakers are doing it is a vision.
There are definitely downsides to Cuomo’s emphasis on edifices over policies as a legacy, but it beats having a Governor and Legislature averse to doing anything lest we risk raising taxes on the wealthy. To their credit, something Cuomo and to a greater extent, Jerry Brown are willing to do.
Critics of No Boston Olympics said we didn’t want big projects, I am arguing we just didn’t want that big project, but let’s come together around our actual priorities and get it done.