Recently estimated at about $2 billion – which doesn’t include the cost of financing – the full cost of adding seven new trolley stations in East Cambridge, Somerville and Medford could wind up as much as $1 billion over budget, MBTA Interim General Manager Frank DePaola told reporters on Monday. Officials who briefed the MBTA’s Fiscal and Management Control Board on Monday afternoon are now looking to renegotiate with the contractor and alter the plans.
White Skanska Kiewit (WSK), the company awarded construction of the project under a unique procurement process, now estimates construction of those first three stations to cost $898 million, throwing into question the affordability of the plan to build a total of seven stations ending near Tufts University.
“Everything’s on the table, and everything includes canceling the project, but that’s not where we want to go, but we need a project we can afford to build,” Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack told reporters Monday.
*bolding my addition
My takeaways:
There are five things I would ask folks to consider before opposing this project.
1) It’s a federally required project
The Big Dig settlement REQUIRED a mass transit expansion for Somerville to offset the pollution from big dig construction and new highways
2) It’s an investment in the future
The MBTA is a mess, cutting back on expansion limits the constituency to the inner city-we need suburban expansion to expand the political constituency and ridership for mass transit. Its a win win-more voters will vote for it, more local officials will want it, and when ridership expands the financial sustainability increases. Not to mention getting cars off the road.
3) It’s a revenue problem not a spending problem
The MBTA was artificially saddled with pension debt, in a similar way to the postal service, and used as an ATM by politicians to pay for other programs. It’s part of a starve the beast ideology, cut services so they suck, cut taxes, and then tell folks the services suck since government is still too big-cut and repeat many more times over.
4) Proof that privatization increases costs and PACHECO Law still needed
Folks want to eliminate the Pacheco law which forces private contractors to prove their services will be more cost effective than a public and/or union backed project. This shows why private bidders frequently underestimate costs to be competitive and then lock you into jacked up rates. Same thing happened on the commuter rail.
5) Definitely Audit the shit out of this group
I am not saying fiscal responsibility goes out the window, I am saying this project is too important to let this setback kill it. But definitely audit WSK and perhaps find a way to reopen the bidding if it shows deliberate overcharging. Bechtel definitely got away with deliberately overcharging for the Big Dig-a fiasco that happened under Charlie Baker’s watch I might add when he was Weld’s budget manager.
Just because it’s getting expensive and complicated, doesn’t mean it can’t be managed right or costs can’t be brought under control. It’s a project that is essential to the health of the region and it’s future.
Christopher says
I’ve never enjoyed riding the Green Line with all its lurching.
Also is there a list of proposed stations or a map of the proposed route? The article only mentioned a couple.
SomervilleTom says
The rough ride of the older routes will be hard to improve.
The D line is marginally better, above ground, because it is the right-of-way for an former conventional rail line. It is also much smoother than the other three.
It’s hard to imagine how to improve the underground portions without a Big Dig scale (or larger) rebuild.
jconway says
Linked here
petr says
It should read “Green Line Extension in Jeopardy Due to Complete Cowardice.”
This is not any different from the mysterious expanding-maybe-shrinking-maybe-expanding-maybe-shrinking deficit that Deval Patrick maybe-kinda-sorta did nothing about (except that he did.) Charlie Baker wants us to think that events are forcing his hand but the truth is he doesn’t want to do it but is afraid to outright state that simple fact. It’s passive aggressive governance.
Pay the cost to build the thing. If the contractor fucked up the cost estimates then make the overage come out of his pocket or let the feds nationalize the company for being incompetent and finish it. Punish the contractor for doing it wrong, don’t punish the CommonWealth by not doing it at all.
jconway says
And James Aloisi has a great case at Commonwealth for how we can fix this.
Apparently, the proposed new stations are the big balloons, and as he pointed out:
petr says
Because Newton and Brookline don’t have commuter rail feeders lines connecting to the green line unlike that which will connect to the Green Line Extension (Lowell and Fitchburg). In point of fact, it is not just a light rail corridor, it is the intersection of light rail and commuter rail. At present, Lowell doesn’t connect to anything but North Station and Fitchburg connects only at Porter Sq and North Sta. The commuter rail (Worcester) that goes through Brookline and Newton connects (I think) at Back Bay and South Station only. You can bet that if we wanted to connect the commuter rail to Brookline and Newton the existing stops would be woefully insufficient.
Downsizing the stations will be downsizing the ridership and will, in fact, moot any advantages to doing the project in the first place. Aloisi might try to think a little more outside his particular box…
SomervilleTom says
There ought to be, but there isn’t. For example, the proposed new Green Line station at College Ave in Medford has to actually erect barriers to separate the new Green Line platforms from the parallel existing commuter rail tracks. A transfer station between the commuter rail and the Green Line was explicitly ruled by the town of Medford during the planning process.
I think access requirements are an important factor in the stations proposed for the Green Line extension. Not just from the new platforms to the trains, but also from the surface streets and sidewalks to the new platforms (most of right of way is significantly below grade).
I agree that the new stations are probably over-designed. They need to be more than just strips of asphalt and/concrete, though. Ball Square is very different from Brookline Village.
Christopher says
Since they are separate systems anyway all that needs to happen is for the two stations to be in sight of each other. You could get off the Green Line at College Ave. and board the CR at West Medford right along with anyone who walked to the West Medford station, or vice versa, right? It’s not like between colored lines when you have to stay inside to avoid double-paying and thus use Haymarket rather than North Station to transfer between Green and Orange pre-Big Dig.
jconway says
The map I linked to doesn’t show it, but googlemaps has the proposed site of the College Ave station over the existing commuter rail as 30 min away from West Medford. What Tom was talking about was a new Commuter platform folks could get off at to transfer to the Green line and vice a versa like at Porter Square at College Ave (unless I am wrong).
Now if the original proposal had been approved there would’ve been another Mystic Parkway with the line terminating at West Medford, which would’ve allowed the transfer you are thinking of Christopher.
SomervilleTom says
Medford specifically and explicitly said they did NOT want the Green Line terminus to be a transfer station to/from the commuter rail.
Christopher says
I’m not up on Medford geography and with Tom talking about barriers I was imagining a platform each for GL and CR basically right next to each other, but with the Berlin Wall deliberately built between the two so you couldn’t just cross the street without going the long way around.
SomervilleTom says
The commuter rail tracks are parallel to the new Green Line tracks through the station. The commuter rail does not stop at the station.
The renderings (I’ll find a url if I can) show a fence and jersey barrier blocking access to the commuter rail tracks. There is no commuter rail stop planned, and no platform.
jconway says
I wonder if it’s the same apprehension that led to Arlington sinking the Red Line so many years ago (aka ‘those people’ that use subways *might* come into their community)? Or fear of having to spend money? Probably the typical combination of the two that this state always seems to sink itself with.
perry41 says
It wasn’t just Arlington. There was a railroad right-of-way all the way to Hanscom Field, so Lexington joined the negativity. The scare tactics included, along with “those people,” the expansion of noisy civil aviation at Hanscom with a direct rail link to Cambridge and Boston. Neither Arlington nor Lexington wanted to be the end of the line, with traffic, etc., that would go with it. The rail right-of-way quickly became a rail-to-trails bike path, with the tracks dug up so nobody could change their mind later.
jconway says
But I wonder if it was the best use of the space. A direct rail link to Hanscom as an alternative airport would have made it an enticing alternative to Logan for many travelers. Like Chicago Midway, which also has a direct subway link as does O’Hare, it could handle domestic flights while Logan did international and bigger domestic lines. The irony is many of today’s Arlington residents would probably kill for a spur.
You gotta wonder if we would’ve been better off keeping a lot of that infrastructure. A lot of the abandoned A Line to Watertown and the Arborway branch of the E Line. A lot of the old B&M lines too.
paulsimmons says
It occurred in the context of siting the Compressed Natural Gas facility at the Arborway Yard.
The City and the MBTA played the local activists like fiddles, and just to be on the safe side tore up the tracks from Heath Street to Forest Hills.
And those who believe a Big Dig mitigation agreement to be enforceable in the face of governmental opposition should consider that reconnecting the Green Line from Heath Street to Arborway (or Forest Hills) was part of the same mitigation package.
SomervilleTom says
The hardest part of constructing a new right of way is establishing a reasonably level path. The conversion from track to “linear park” is not hard to reverse (leaving aside the zoning and land use issues).
My understanding is that Concord, Lexington and Bedford all worked hard to block expansion of aviation at Hanscom, while the state attempted to pursue it.
jconway says
If BRAC ever were to kill it everyone will be running around like chickens with their heads cut off screaming ‘think of the jobs!’. It makes sense to build it into a regional airport now, and connecting it directly to transit would make it an attractive alternative.
I am sure the rail-trail has a constituency that enjoys using it now and would likely rally to ‘Save the Minuteman’, and there are also chunks of it that are in the way, like a big portion of Arlington Center where the track separates and would have to run through Mass Ave to connect over.
petr says
… Silly me. I thought, since they use the same corridor they’ll de facto tie them together. I guess I under (over?) estimated the shortsightedness of the extension planners and local NIMBY-otics… In fact, without coupling the subway and commuter rail together I fail, utterly, to see the point of the extension.
This just means more costs down the road when people keep asking “why didn’t you tie them together” and then they ultimately do, ass-backwards and probably at quadruple the cost, end up re-retro-fitting the stations to tie them all together and support the amount of people.
SomervilleTom says
Exactly correct.
drikeo says
The Commuter Rail needs to blow through Somerville to get to points beyond in a timely fashion.
And they wouldn’t want to make multiple stations on the same right of way to serve as dual MBTA/Commuter Rail stations. Save that for the Green Line terminus (which hopefully winds up at Rte. 16), which maybe someday becomes part of an outer ring as well. No need to be accommodating transfers all the way down the line.
jconway says
Though I agree the 16 terminus would make more sense as a dual station than College Ave for the reason you cite.
SomervilleTom says
The commuter rail trains that go through Porter Square seem to accommodate that stop without undue complaint. Porter Square is not the terminus of the Red Line. The same commuter rail that passes through the Porter Square station passes nearby the Alewife Red Line terminus. The commuter rail trains stop at Porter and do not slow near Alewife.
I see no evidence in the hearing minutes that this had anything to do with the decision to keep the commuter rail separate through Somerville and Medford. There are instead frequent references to Medford concerns about “preserving the quality of life”, “traffic impact”, and “congestion”.
However good or bad this “reason” is (I don’t think it’s very good, judging from the success of the Porter Square transfer station), I don’t think it was a factor in the College Avenue decision.
drikeo says
I don’t think anyone truly envisions College Ave. as the ultimate terminus for the line. I’ve been under the impression they’re waiting for someone less wishy-washy than Mike McGlynn to come along in Medford to help chop away at the Medord NIMBY crowd that groans about extending the line to Rte. 16 (complaining about trains running on an active rail bed is pure insanity).
Never been any reason to broach a commuter rail stop at College Ave. because that’s not the end game. Somerville wants the Rte. 16 station and probably will get it in the 2020s. If they don’t create a commuter rail stop there, then we can bemoan the bad planning.
Christopher says
…that all colored lines ought to end at about route 128 with multiple stops and the CR have fewer stops, but include the colored line termini. Basically local vs. express routes.
jconway says
McGlynn has been Mayor there for my entire lifetime, he got inaugurated in January 88 and I was born 10 months later.
petr says
… since all northern Commuter Rail lines converge on North Station, and Amtrak, as well as freight, moves along portions of that corridor also, switching concerns trump any need to ‘blow through’ anywhere. On the Fitchburg line, for example, the five miles between Brandeis and Waltham (not a straight line) takes 4 minutes on average whereas the slightly more than three miles between Porter Sq and North Station (a more-or-less straight run and the portion that covers Somerville) takes 11 minutes. Adding stops along the corridor might actually allow more wiggle room for the switching… allowing higher speeds over shorter distances and thus allowing the same amount of overall time with more stops. Or, put another way, it’s not axiomatic that more stops slows the trains down.
fat-city says
Often forgotten is that in the original “Beyond Lechmere” study the GLX went to West Medford Square, where there already is a commuter rail stop. That allowed transfers between the two with zero impact on CR schedules, and no need to build another station.
Porter Square is not really comparable to any connection between the GLX and the Lowell Line. At Porter the Red Line basically goes at right angles to the Fitchburg Line, while the GLX/Lowell Line follow exactly the same route to North Station. The only reason to transfer would be to get to a stop along the GLX such as Lechmere.
The right-of-way is very narrow all around the College Ave stop. The added width needed for a CR platform would require taking a lot of people’s backyards, something the GLX project would be loath to do. In the 80’s there was a CR stop near that location, but it was abandoned due very low usage.
drikeo says
Not that Brookline Village is swarming with activity, but Ball Square is kind of sleepy. BV has got (mostly medical) office space along Rte. 9, Town Hall and the main Brookline Library all located in its nexus. The sort of stop they have at Brookline Village or at Riverside (Cleveland Circle) would be fine for most of the new GLX stops. Union Square and perhaps Washington Street (because of all the development they hope to see near it) are the two spots where they’d need more robust stations.
I’m guessing the big hangup is they probably don’t want to use the on-board payment system currently employed by the B, C and D lines. It really slows down the trains. Can they come up with a way to collect the payments before accessing the platforms without a full station? Seems like they could.
stomv says
affordable housing right there, Brook House (~2000 residents in the single development) across the street, a (small) commercial center, the police station, a county courthouse, and a half dozen bus routes. During morning rush, BVil is the D Line station where potential riders frequently can’t get on because the trains are packed to the gills and the first major exodus is at the following stop, Longwood.
Keep in mind that the D Line right of way is at-grade, and the crossing is at-grade. It’s perfectly fine for able bodied. I’m skeptical that the experience meets modern criteria for wheelchairs though, and my understanding is that many GBX stations require elevation changes, which add substantially to cost.
drikeo says
They’ve got to do at least the sort of elevator set up they’ve got at Park St.
SomervilleTom says
Pretty much every European station we used in late June had elevators and escalators. These are typically simple and unadorned.
The elevators have doors on each end, and two levels. One end is used on the platform, the other used at street/pedestrian level. Elevators are wide, work in each direction, and have concrete stairs alongside.
I see these as absolutely required for the new Green Line stations. I suspect the contemplated stations could meet these requirements and still be significantly less grandiose than the current designs.
Here’s an example of the proposed design for the much-discussed College Avenue station:
That’s a whole lot more than just elevators and escalators.
Christopher says
n/t
fat-city says
The proposed College Ave station is actually a Tufts building that on top of a much smaller T station. With the possible exception of the new elevated Lechmere station, none of the others would be anywhere near as large.
SomervilleTom says
The entire MBTA could readily (in the absence of job-security aspects) shift to the system used throughout Germany, the Czech Republic, and Austria.
To whit, provide passengers with a paper chit widely available throughout the region (they are sold in most convenience stores, sort of the way we sell Lottery tickets in MA). Provide low-cost and reliable machines on each platform (and in stations) that stamp a daily chit with the current day (the passenger needs to do that once per day). Equip each train with one or more similarly low-cost and reliable machines in the middle of each car (NOT blocking the entrance or exit) that stamps a passenger’s chit with the current time.
Given that technology, pay uniformed workers to randomly board trains and manually examine the chits of passengers. Those passengers who have no chit or whose chit is not properly stamped pay a significantly higher fare. It is NOT a criminal offense, or even like a traffic ticket — it is simply a much higher fare.
The effect is to change the culture so that the chit is viewed as a way of obtaining a significant fare discount. A combination of sampling rate and fare differential (higher fare differential allows lower sampling rates that in turn requires fewer inspectors, and vice-versa). Occasional riders who take a chance aren’t viewed as criminals, and other passengers don’t even notice. Riders who attempt to make a habit of not paying quickly learn how expensive their habit is.
The result is that trains and buses are never by delayed fare collection (they are actually almost never delayed for any reason). Even major stations don’t need or have turnstyles or similar mechanisms. The trains run on time, and revenues are collected more accurately and more predictably than in the Boston area.
Oh, and all three countries have significantly stronger worker protections and support for labor unions, persuading me that this approach can be done in a way that does not harm union MBTA workers.
fat-city says
The Minneapolis/St. Paul Metro Transit light rail uses a similar but more high-tech system. The stations do not have turnstiles but do have a pedestal-mounted scanner at each station entry. Riders need to scan a Charlie-card equivalent (GoTo card) before proceeding to the platform and boarding a train. (Just like the MBTA, they also have single use paper/mag strip tickets and various passes for the permanent Charlie-cards.) Every station has at least one machine where you can add value to a card or buy a paper ticket.
After you’ve scanned your card, or bought a paper ticket, you can ride anywhere on the system, buses included, for 2 1/2 hours. From time to time regular city police board trains and verify people have paid by scanning cards or checking the date/time on paper tickets. First offense is $180, and it goes up sharply from there. Fares are about the same as Boston, with a lower rate in off-peak hours.
I was there earlier this summer and the system worked very well. It’s the only way I could image collecting fares on the B and C lines at rush hour.
joeltpatterson says
His people didn’t give us trustworthy numbers about worker absenteeism in the T.
Maybe he’s got this thumb on the scale now, too.
jconway says
A lot of people stand to lose money if it doesn’t happen.
petr says
… take a moment and step back. Think about what you are saying here.
The costs to do the thing are going ‘over budget,’ whatever that means. But the costs to do the thing ARE NOT even discussed in the context of the value of having the thing itself. That value will be reflected in the investments already made and the optimism surrounding someday having this thing seems substantial. (less, of course, my prior objections to the shortsightedness regarding CR-subway connections..)
So, it’s not like people are worried about net loss of money… I don’t know that housing prices will plummet in the absence of the extension… They’ll likely get their money back. They won’t, however, have the increased value that an extension will surely grant. Maybe they count that as a loss. But that’s not really the point. Cost overruns, in the context of value increased just means that the extension will take a little longer to pay for itself… it doesn’t mean don’t do… In fact, if the value is substantially increased it makes absolutely no sense to either not do it or to scale it back at all. The only excuse to not do it is because you didn’t want to do it in the first place. The only reason to scale it back is… I dunno. I can’t see any reason to scale it back. It makes no sense.
jconway says
I think policymakers at the top levels see things like this and race for the hills. We see how Baker reacted to the winter crisis of the MBTA by proposing even more painful cuts to the MBTA and finding a way of blaming labor unions for bad weather. They might see this as an opportunity to drown another project of ‘big’ government while it’s large enough to fit in the bathtub.
I am cynically suggesting that these developers will be able to successful make their case for the project. Of course the project should be done for it’s own sake and property developers profits shouldn’t be the first consideration, but this is Massachusetts we are talking about. It bends over backwards for these guys, and hopefully, it will help save a project the entire community can benefit from.