Declaring that “it would be Boston leading the United States,” Mayor Martin J. Walsh gathered with Olympians and Paralympians Monday night as the city continues its press to host the 2024 Summer Olympic Games.
“It’s an opportunity for us to plan what the future of Boston will look like,” Walsh said, noting that the Games would bring long-term benefits to the city’s infrastructure.
The mayor was assisted by members of the Boston 2024 Partnership, which is working to bring the Games to the city, in the event at Blazing Paddles restaurant, within walking distance of Boston’s best-known sports facility, Fenway Park.
Walsh also argued that hosting the Olympics would kick-start projects across the city by giving them a deadline.
In making his pitch Monday, Walsh said the city would establish a sustainable hosting plan that others could use to help bring down costs in the future. The mayor and Partnership also said Boston would bring awareness to issues such as global warming by focusing on them when developing facilities and transportation plans.
Ah, I see. Spending billions of dollars on white elephant stadiums and on lavish perks for the grotesque members of the International Olympic Committee makes sense because … it’ll increase awareness about global warming? That might be the worst argument I’ve heard yet.
Let’s get a couple of things clear. First, the International Olympic Committee is one of the worst organizations in the world. If we’re serious about an Olympic bid, it means we’re in bed with these guys for the next decade. You thought Steve Wynn was bad? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. The corruption attending casinos is small potatoes compared to what the IOC has managed over the years.
Second, the Olympics is a huge party thrown by and for (but not funded by) the 1%. Yeah, there are a few sporting events that are fun to watch, but that’s not really what it’s about. If you’re lucky, you might get a ticket in row ZZ to one of the second-string track and field events (not that there’s anything wrong with the hammer throw). But rest assured, you won’t be at the finals of the gymnastics competition, nor will you be at any of the lavish cocktail parties. The most you’ll probably get out of a Boston Olympics is a fistful of cash because you decided to leave town and were able to rent out your house at exorbitant rates to some visiting one-percenter who got the tickets that you couldn’t get.
Third, very recent events should serve as a warning that things haven’t changed much. You might have heard that Oslo (Norway) recently withdrew its bid to host the 2022 Winter Olympics (following the earlier withdrawals of Stockholm, Krakow, and Lviv (Ukraine)), citing among other things the lack of public support, the gargantuan price tag, and the hilariously over-the-top demands the IOC places on host countries. The IOC has pushed back on the story about the demands, arguing that these are only “suggestions and guidance … on how to improve the games experience for all,” not requirements. LOL.
Oslo’s withdrawal means that the only candidates left standing for the 2022 Games are Beijing and a place called Almaty in Kazakhstan. It has not gone unnoticed that every location in which something like small-d democracy exists has taken itself out of the bidding.
Those who want a Boston Olympics will no doubt argue that Boston needs to upgrade its public transit system, and committing ourselves to the Olympics is the only way to guarantee that we’ll actually do it. I find that argument to be pathetic. If everyone agrees that we need to fix the MBTA, then maybe we should just do it.
Mayor Walsh said that a Boston Olympics is “an opportunity for us to plan what the future of Boston will look like.” Gee, Marty, you’re the Mayor. Shouldn’t you be doing that anyway?
My three questions:
Why are they all so convinced it’s a great idea?
Why did David D’Alessandro change his mind about it?
Why are Deval and Walsh on board? Deval won’t be in office, and Walsh might not be either.
Maybe 50 years ago, the Olympics was an event of national pride with people competing for the sport, but no more. Those days are gone. Today it’s all corporate marketing, back room deals and extortion. I say no, no Olympics for Boston.
Can we get that as a t shirt?
That sentence makes more sense than anything coming out of the mouths of the proponents pushing this the hardest, some of whom would be poised to make millions off the games.
If we want to fix the mbta… let’s just freaking do it. Period.
… that we haven’t already, isn’t likely indication that we will ‘just do it,’ or, frankly, that we really ‘want’ to do it. ‘Want’ is a word fraught with political peril and prefacing it with the conditional ‘if’ seems sorta like asking for trouble.
Exigencies, sometimes, present us with both an abstraction of the needs and requirements and path to get there: a bridge collapse, for instances, galvanizes interest and anxieties about ‘infrastructure’; Californias rolling blackouts of the early 00’s did the same for energy regulation; somebody, circa 2007 said “if we want to fix the {banking, housing, financial] sector, just do it.” ; the big dig was preceded by unacceptable levels of traffic…I hope you see my point. Olympic tourism might be both impetus and test case… who knows? But I don’t see — if it hasn’t already — our present situation auto-magically finding the impetus to fix itself. It might come down to the Olympics lighting a fire underneath us, or a tunnel collapse doing the same, but absent one or the other of these things, I don’t see spontaneous construction busting out all over anytime soon.
I’m sympathetic to David’s argument that this is largely for the 1%-ers but would counter with a dedicated, and pretty steep, tax: if they want it, they have to pay for it. If they don’t want to pony up, then we don’t do it. Still leaves the problems of the MBTA in place, however.
to create a need other than the Olympics.
Court cases. Getting the right Speaker/Senate President/Governor combo. Other events. Other big projects (ie the Big Dig) pushed through nationally. Etc.
All of that also ignores the huge progress we’ve seen improving the MBTA and adding stations, etc. The green line extension, the entire Silver Line, and now the Silver Line getting extended into Chelsea, etc.
These are all some incredibly big changes that have happened over a number of years, so we don’t always view them as momentous as they are.
I mean… Chelsea getting the Silver Line? For a city with very limited transportation access, that’s huge.
Slow and steady isn’t sexy, but if that’s the approach that’s necessary, then so be it. It’s better than an approach that will suit the IOC’s needs (which may differ tremendously from Greater Boston’s) while bankrupting our future.
… but I was referring to your rather blanket assertion from above:
If you now wish to agree with me and say that the need is there and the motivation can –an ought to — be manufactured so be it. But that was not your original position.
To be fair to the pro-Olympic people, I think what they really mean is, “We will never fix the T, unless we can use this as a lever.”
Collectively (in the broadest sense, the entire Commonwealth), we don’t want to fix the T. It would cost a hell of a lot, and be really inconvenient for a long time. Other factors, like the prevalence of telecommuting, take some pressure off the T. There is enormous will to fix it among its regular customers (like me), but anyone hefty enough to be a mover and shaker in this effort doesn’t ride the T. They look at certain stats, and it’s economics, and it seems good enough.
“its economics” — just can’t let that stand.
at the next governor’s debate. “Will you ride the T to work everyday?”. To be fair to them though I imagine the state police would have a fit about it.
Somehow the state police managed to protect him.
The Green Line service, during those years, was substantially better than it is today.
That is awesome.
It’s a few different kinds of naive to insist that all we’ve got to do to fix the T is fix the T. It required a political fistfight in 2013 just to get mildly inadequate transportation funding in this state.
We’re so far behind with the T, it’s hard to know where to start: saddled with Big Dig debt, aging car stock, antiquated signalling system, system-wide lack of reliability. That doesn’t even get to big ticket items like the Green Line extension, the Red-Blue connector, the North-South connector, the outer loop, adding high-speed service to edges of metro Boston where lower income families have been forced to move due to gentrification.
Simply put, it’s going to be half measures done in piecemeal fashion unless there’s a deadline hanging over our heads. Relatively speaking, the Patrick administration has done a lot of work to upgrade the T and it’s only really nibbled at the edges of the problem.
One of the great pulling success out of failure stories in Olympic history is Montreal. The 1976 games were a legendary money loser, but the Metro system got built as a result and it’s become the nervous system for one of the more dynamic and thriving cities in North America. The Metro may have been worth it.
On the other hand, Boston should only bid for the Olympics if it’s going to push back hard against the IOC. For instance, Rowing will happen on the Charles River. Deal with it. Fans may have to travel an extra hour or two for mountain biking or kayaking. Existing venues will have to do for a lot of sports (e.g. the Garden, Fenway, Gillette, Agganis Arena, Conte Forum, Matthews Arena, Bright-Landry, Alumni Stadium, Harvard Stadium, Schoolboy Stadium). We’re not blocking off highway lanes for exclusive IOC member usage or giving IOC members their own separate airport entrance or coordinating street lights to prioritize IOC traffic. We’re also not issuing an edict that people smile all the time at IOC members.
I’m not sure where they could build an Olympic stadium or an Olympic village, that’s really my main reservation. Yet perhaps those things could be done and then turned into much-needed housing (like London’s Highbury Square in the case of the stadium), then I’d be willing to consider it.
I’m neither a firm no nor a firm yes. I kind of like that that a potential bid has got folks in high places thinking forward. Maybe it generates good ideas we implement regardless of the Olympics. And if Boston can generate a unique bid that pushes back against IOC nonsense and delivers much-needed metro and regional infrastructure, then I’d say it’s worth consideration. I don’t know that it can be done or that it would be accepted, but I am curious to see what a Boston bid would look like.
So in other words, Boston should only bid for the Olympics if it doesn’t actually want to win the bid and host the Olympics?
… Assuming, for the nonce, that you’re saying the IOC will punish any ‘pushback’…
With the Oslo snub that David referenced the IOC has both an image problem and a continuity — perhaps even an existential — problem and might need 2024 to go without hiccups or problems of any kind just to keep themselves looking respectable (never mind redemption) and so there is more leverage there (and less IOC-as-Doctor-Evil) than you might be willing to countenance…
I am not engaging in a philosophical conception with you about the moral character of the IOC. I am engaging in an in depth discussion of my own experience working to advance Chicago’s bid past their parameters and my own take on why that was an entirely unsuccessful experience. Even a failed bid leaves white elephants-mainly the airport and hospital we demolished that have yet to be redeveloped 7 years later. Not to mention Boston doesn’t have an Obama library to fall back in if it loses it’s bid (two of the three cites considered for his bid are on the remains of the IOCs). Feel free to grapple with my substantive opposition on the thread I started.
I think if Boston’s going to bid, it should come up with a socially responsible plan that leaves the city/region better off than it was beforehand and comes as close as possible to breaking even. Basically drum up an Olympics done right plan and see if the IOC bites on the notion that it’s going to run short on potential hosts if it doesn’t establish that there’s a big upside to being the host.
I recognize that desperation is probably the only way the IOC picks that sort of bid, but it could look over at FIFA, which is getting lambasted for turning down a completely reasonable 2022 World Cup bid from the U.S. in favor of a preposterous and dripping-with-corruption bid from Qatar, and decide sensibility makes for great PR.
Again, I don’t expect that would happen. In fact, for reasons you listed in your other post, I imagine Boston wouldn’t even become the official U.S. entry for the 2024 games. Mostly what I’m saying is err on the side of Boston if we’re going to put together a bid. Show them there’s a smarter, better way to do these things.
But full honestly would mean recognizing there is no such thing as a socially responsible Olympics, if there ever was . And a credible bid will cost the city millions in preparation. I would favor a truly objective feasibility study to see if we could actually build a bid by 2024. I suspect that study would demonstrate that Boston is nowhere near being an Olympic tier city, and might be sobering enough to get policy makers to realize that even Pittsburgh is starting to outpace us when it comes to innovative urban policy.
Maybe the study would show us how to put in an even stronger bid down the line.
But full honestly would mean recognizing there is no such thing as a socially responsible Olympics, if there ever was . And a credible bid will cost the city millions in preparation. I would favor a truly objective feasibility study to see if we could actually build a bid by 2024. I suspect that study would demonstrate that Boston is nowhere near being an Olympic tier city, and might be sobering enough to get policy makers to realize that even Pittsburgh is starting to outpace us when it comes to innovative urban policy.
We just need the right Speaker/Senate President/Governor combo, then it’s done.
We’ll get there.
Not sure who you are disagreeing with there. I agree that transit is doable in Boston, I disagree that the Olympics are the only way to get it, and I strongly disagree that Boston has a realistic shot at getting the Olympics. Anyone who thinks that clearly hasn’t spent enough time in a different city.
I just came back from Pittsburgh, they got half our population and even they are so much better prepared than we are. Getting around that city was a breeze, they are added to the long list of cities that have better transit systems than the T, their cabs and transit systems easily took credit cards, their Mayor was a proud Uber and Lyft supporter, and their airport had a direct transit linkage to the city, in this case a true BRT. Not to mention its obvious Germans and not Puritans were their city founders when it came to booze and night life regulations. Just a fun little city with energy and a strong plan for this century. Everything Boston isn’t at the moment.
whoops
when all is said and done.
If we aren’t ‘in it to win it,’ then I think we should cut our losses and bail out now.
And even losing bids can leave white elephants all over the place and holes in the ground.
That is one of the few arguments in that are even remotely plausibe, at least to me. I am not sure there will ever be the political will to fix the T, without some outside factor like this. As far as, if you want to fix the T, then fix the T– this has never worked yet in modern times, and I see no reason to think that situation will change in the forseeable future.
The cost is relatively cheap in the grand scheme of things, but it would require raising some revenue… and we don’t have a legislature currently willing to do that.
Not a lot. Just some.
Most of the “big” projects — South Coast Rail, Blue Line extension, etc. — are relatively inexpensive in the grand scheme of things.
Upgrade costs would be expensive as one big number, but taken over the many years of doing it… very manageable.
About the only very expensive (but hugely important for any city to have a modern transportation system) is linking North and South Station, but everything else could be done relatively simply and affordably.
Very good chance he’ll still be mayor then. How cool would it be to be the mayor of an Olympic host city!
… , or London, or Beijing. There is no way a city of 650,000 people can afford what cities of 8.4 million (London), 6.4 million (Rio), and 21 million (Beijing) did, often with difficulty even with their federal governments paying the tab. For those of us outside Boston, the memory of the Big Dig sucking up all infrastructure funds for a decade or more is still fresh. If Walsh succeeds in his quest for a summer Olympics, once again the State of Massachusetts, not Boston alone, will be paying … only this time for a massive party and ego trip for state politicos and inside-495 business interests. This is a monstrously bad idea that will leave us with another massive, decades-long hangover that will hurt infrastructure projects, education, and about everything else in the state budget. Personally, I believe the IOC should build permanent summer and winter Olympic facilities in Greece and Switzerland, respectively, and put temptation out of the reach of over-eager politicians everywhere.
Rarely. They make the same mistakes over and over.
EGO. The egos of political and business leaders. I just wonder: As a city and state, don’t we have bigger things to worry about than hosting the Olympics? The amount of time, effort, resources that are necessary to pull this off is daunting. We barely pulled off a national nominating convention. Are we up to this? Are there more important things that our leaders could spend their capital (business, political, financial) on? I think so.
‘Cept the ’18 winter olympics will be in the small-d Pyeongchang, South Korea. And 2020 summer is in small-d Tokyo, Japan.
I think your argument works against itself: if the IOC is as bad as you say — and I’m not saying you’re wrong — then the refusals of many cities to participate is entirely a component of the political process in which the IOC operates and the IOC will be forced to adjust or to die. This may put — from a political point of view — whomever is in the 2024 running into the drivers seat.
Unless, of course, you’re straight up advocating for no more Olympics. Ever. Anywhere… Are you? I suppose you could make the argument that bad actors on the national stage like Putin and the Chinese Communist Party, willing to throw rubles and renminbi willy nilly to get the games, skews the outcomes. Ok. That’s possible. But that’s corruption of the world (in what realm have the Russians and the Chinese ever played nice?) and not necessarily indication of the Olympic system itself being bad. Beijing, I think, went off well, but Sochi was, actually, quite an embarrassment, not least to the IOC itself, and the snub from Oslo just sorta underlines that.
Personally, I’m very very sad that the I never got to see the IOC try to take on Tom Menino… That would have been a spectacle to see…
I know ideally if something needs doing we should just do it, but who among us hasn’t been prompted by a hard deadline where we otherwise would just do something when we get around to it?
Also are the people we see in the stands at other Olympics really all the 1%? I’m having a hard time believing that.
I just finished housecleaning because I have some guests coming over. Reminding myself:
1.) If I want to clean my house, I could just do it anytime, without the pressure of guests coming;
2.) I stuck a bunch of clutter in the closet and I have to remember to put it away sometime;
3.) This type of housecleaning is like fixing up the city for an Olympic bid …. NOT actually the best approach.
4.) Also… I like the people who are coming to my house but I don’t think I like the IOC.
BTW the other day I got a phone poll asking me if I wanted more construction in my neighborhood and if I supported an Olympic bid for Boston. I said no thank you.