A new poll from WBUR and MassINC shows that, over the past month, support among Boston-area residents for bringing the 2024 Olympics to Boston has nosedived. As a result, one of the key claims made by Boston 2024 to the USOC – that Boston residents strongly support a Boston Olympics – has been badly undermined.
Here’s the short version of the WBUR poll:
As you can see, support has decreased off by 7%, while opposition has increased by a more substantial 13%, so that a 46-44 plurality of respondents now oppose bringing the Olympics to town.
Even larger is the shift in the city of Boston itself. A month ago, WBUR found that Boston residents backed the Olympics 50-33. Now, city residents oppose the bid, 43-48. Opposition has increased by 15% over the last month.
These results are not especially surprising in light of this month’s epic collapse of public transportation in and around Boston. Here’s MassINC pollster Steve Koczela on the results:
“It has to do with voters now having a new appreciation of how bad the MBTA actually is and seeing the impacts of the storm and thinking there are other priorities in which money would be better spent,” Koczela said….
“There’s just questions about what people would get out of it,” Koczela said. “And if you talk about fixing the T, that’s something tangible, that’s something, particularly right now, people really can relate to as far as benefiting themselves.”
Importantly, these results are directly at odds with a key claim in Boston 2024’s bid documents, which now must be seen as obsolete. I wonder if Boston 2024 has any obligation to update these documents. Here is what they told the USOC:
Bidding for and hosting the Games in the Boston area are generally popular ideas…. In Boston alone, nearly 60% of residents favor the proposal to host the Olympics in the city…. Even before hearing details about the proposed bid, residents are receptive to the idea, and support jumps to a clear-cut majority after residents receive more information.
Maybe that was true a couple of months ago, though I think it’s dubious. It’s certainly not true now.
The message from this poll, and from Bostonians of all stripes over the last few weeks, seems to me pretty unmistakable: FIX THE T FIRST. The MBTA has to work. If that means shelving Olympic dreams while the legislature, the Governor, and the Mayor of Boston focus their energies on both short-term and long-term plans for getting the MBTA back in some semblance of working order, so be it.
And one more thing. Let’s kindly dispense with this frankly idiotic notion that an Olympic bid will somehow force us to do a better job of planning for the city’s future. That argument has never made much sense to me, and the last month I think pretty much demolishes it. If our elected leaders are not now fully convinced that the MBTA must be fixed, regardless of whether there is also a sporting event coming ten years down the road, then they have no business holding public office.
Anybody who thinks that beach volleyball in the Common is a good idea shouldn’t have a major role in planning for Boston’s future. Just saying.
Another note on planning: I’ve found it very troubling that GoBoston2030, the city’s planning initiative, is fully funded by the Barr Foundation. IF it’s a major city initiative, it should be funded by the city, in order to assure that it is, in fact, in the public interest.
Going back to the poll, the more people learn, the more they can tell that they’re getting a raw deal. We’re tired of the snow and tired of the snow job, too.
…but 46-44 against this far out is hardly stick a fork in it territory, though I agree the state of T could easily hurt our chances.
(a) I am not “rooting for failure.” Those are your words, and they are false. I have always been, and remain, skeptical.
(b) As with most polling, the key point is not the horserace number, though that is obviously bad for Boston 2024. The key point is the movement, which is unmistakably against the Olympics.
Going back to the ” target=”_blank”>first Sage Poll, the support for a Boston Olympics has always been qualified and soft.
The link to the Globe article referencing the Sage poll is here:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/01/16/poll-percent-support-boston-olympics-percent-oppose/i7hPCpItSRogNVBRp1Gq1L/story.html>
David has been pretty judicious about the whole thing.
The trend line is everything. It had a big chance out of the gate but started to slide. Now the thing to watch is whether the poobahs can pull enthusiasm out of the ditch as the clock ticks.
If we didn’t have such a sub par mediocre poohbah class, I’d be fine with it.
But revisiting the long sad tale of the T and the hilariously bad financial engineering picks made by a different psuedopod of the poohbah class in the past pretty well sinks it. Especially when we start to see opposing poohbahs who are oddly, less mediocre.
I’d be fine with a more insightful, dynamic, astute poohbah gaggle instead of these dissolute dumbos who carry on like refugees from the Black Adder Georgian series. And when you throw in the scheming, craven universities, forget it. And one of my family was a BU founder so it’s not like I’m unfamiliar with the things.
…but I’ll grant that you’ve been calmer than many opponents.
…I got a downrate on an Olympic comment that I probably would not have gotten if I said something similar about a primary election horserace poll:(
he took offense at your headline directed at him
I realize you’re rooting for failure…
so he downrated you. Where is the problem in downrating a claim that you know what someone is thinking when as David has stated repeatedly he is looking to be convinced by B2024. I was going to downrate you for that offense too but I decided not to pile on.
in an area where more than 40% of the population is against it. The IOC i carries a lot of blame for this. They created an Olympic Games that is overwhelming from a cost and logistics standpoint. The Games have lost sight of their origins in the modern era.
The moneyed folks pushing this, if successful, would never worry about the financial hangover that has affected EVERY Olympic city in recent memory. Very simply, it’s impossible to put on a summer Olympics for what the pushers are saying, and it looks like Bostonians are finally realizing it. Now, we just have to get that message through to the Governor, the Mayor, the Speaker, and the Senate President.
There’s a hashtag for that.
“Let’s kindly dispense with this frankly idiotic notion that an Olympic bid will somehow force us to do a better job of planning for the city’s future. That argument has never made much sense to me, and the last month I think pretty much demolishes it. If our elected leaders are not now fully convinced that the MBTA must be fixed, regardless of whether there is also a sporting event coming ten years down the road, then they have no business holding public office.”
I guess because there is nothing in the past of Massachusetts politics to indicate that people respond to problems at the behest of big money, rather than actual need. It’s not idiotic to think that our elected representatives are so venal as to care more about national news coverage than people getting to work on time. Maybe I am just too cynical.
that the Olympics will force us to the fix the T is that we’d be bidding for a summer Olympics. So the specifically cold weather problems, like switches that freeze, motors that short out when they come into contact with snow, and inadequate snow removal equipment, don’t seem likely to be a priority. In fact, they could be back-burnered in favor of more summer-specific issues, like making sure that air conditioning works. I mean, I’m all for good A/C, but the damn thing has to work in the winter too.
If anything, the system has comparable problems, especially in the dreaded red line junction near Columbia, in summer. It really wants like 40 to 70 and anything out of that range exasperates it.
This is particularly noticeable at the all important Blue line where gremlins run amok in the section between Wonderland and Orient Heights.
The little toon town trolley things of the green line can bite the dust in any weather although Riverside is tolerable and the Orange line run looks like all the cars have rust eczema and it can also nose dive at inopportune times.
The core underground parts of the system in down town Boston tend to be reliable but you never know.
The MBTA didn’t function all that well this summer either. Just sayin…
I remain “open minded” as I have said about the bid overall: I think it is too soon to draw conclusions. But it is not too soon to conclude that (a) the T is second-rate and declining, and (b) that there is no reasonable likelihood that its performance will change given the status quo. There is no way Baker, who wants to cut its funding, and the legislature under DeLeo will enable the system to access the billions it needs. The Olympics might (or might not!). Restructuring it is a quasi-public entity might. Without an Olympics, however, or restructuring, the likelihood is it will continue to decline. So that is worth considering.
when the transportation plan for 2024 Boston seems to be both private buses and privatize some lanes of both city and highway roads so that those private buses move quickly?
Yes, there were issues in the summer as well, but whole lines were not shut down for days/weeks at a time when the roads were in crappy condition.
And that view might warrant revision. The T is second rate and has been declining for decades.
It was early April of 2013 when the Red Line kept going with its doors open.
Funny how no results from that “investigation” were ever published (at least that I saw). I never did find out:
– Would the car have been taken out of service AT ALL if the rider hadn’t videotaped it?
– What was the motorman (or whatever the appropriate gender-neutral term is) doing during the FOUR STOPS that the car ran with an open door?
– What happened to the automatic system that is supposed to stop the train, or at least alert the motorman, when a door is open?
I couldn’t help noticing how confidently Joe Pesaturo predicted that things will be getting better: “It’s important to note that the Governor’s Transportation Finance Plan provides funding to replace the oldest cars (1969) in the Red Line fleet”.
That was nearly TWO years ago, April of 2013. The new cars weren’t actually ordered until late last October. Any bets on when they’ll actually be in service and WORKING?
Talking about Olympics while we are still WEEKS away from “normal” third-world T status and still without even a plan for improvement that those who control the funding agree with is, in my view, irresponsible lunacy.
And no, sabutai, I do NOT think you are too cynical.
… that an Olympics bid will somehow force us to do a job of planning… We can’t really qualify ‘job’ with ‘better’ if ‘job’ equals ‘none’.
The fear is that <something external is needed both to identify problems with clarity (if you listen to Baker and DeLeo there’s barely acknowledgement of the issue) and provide metrics for sane movement forward. How else are we going to know we’re succeeding? If DeLeo and Baker can’t be so much as bothered to acknowledge the problem they can’t be expected to acknowledge, much less manage, the solution.
Absent external metrics we could find ourselves going from horribly bad to simply bad and calling that success… Sorta like we did with ‘forward funding’.
I agree that handing priorities, goals, and vision over to the IOC may cause us to move in SOME direction. I think it’s hugely over-optimistic to think that that direction will be “forward”.
We certainly do need metrics. I think the IOC is among the worst possible sources for those.
… Can you, perhaps, point me whomever it is you think said we should be “handing priorities, goals and vision over to the IOC.” It certainly was not me. When I used the term ‘metrics’ I meant the specifications of a system much like the government does with building codes and in which there is very great room to insert our vision. To host an Olympiad, says the IOC, you must have a transit system of such and such capabilities with this and that in the way of speeds and thus and so in the way of robustness, etc. I do not think that confines us to a particular vision as much as letting us know when we’ve achieved something approximating the vision we use. That’s what I mean by ‘metrics’. In fact, the externally derived metrics in question form a spur to our vision. That’s sorta the point. By way of example how building codes do not express vision consider Daniel Liebeskinds original, breathtaking, vision for the remaking of the World Trade Center in comparison to the scabrously vicious monstrosity put up in it’s stead: both buildings met the code but one represents a vision of beauty and aspiration and t’other represents a festering stink of Pataki shortsightedness and fear.
The IOC made some specifications for the London underground 2012, for example, without being the contractor for the implementation. London went ahead and made changes to the system in a way London found acceptable. This fit into the Olympic metrics well. The Tube carries some one billion people a year and, as of today, the IOC has nothing more to do with it besides having measured whether it reached Olympic standards.
We could certainly use the IOC metrics and fail miserably, ending up –much like NYC’s World Trade Center– the poorer for it. Nothing is guaranteed. But if we respect Einsteins dictum that “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them,” we have to invite other thinking if we hope to solve the problems.
this one doesn’t decide anything. One problem with polls is that they often do a poor job measuring the depth of feeling.There isn’t any deep enthusiasm for hosting the Olympics, as far as I can see. If Boston2024 starts putting on an aggressive sales campaign and enough politicians get on board, the numbers might change.
What this poll does is create a stink around Boston, and thus its bid. Optically at least, it’s a reason for the IOC to reject the bid.
The only poll that counts is the one
on election dayof bored one-percenters seeking a a little glory.In the Crimson, no less. It’s Chris Dempsey and George Lee Humphrey (MBA 59).
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2015/2/19/harvard-boston2024-olympic-bid/
But the English majors are still on board.
In this case, the poll was taken at a time when we are suffering through the implosion of the “T”, and the problems of the city and state cleaning up after the storms. With a robust public transportation system seen as critical to a successful Olympic bid, our feelings that the state and local government has the willpower and ability to improve this system are about as low as they can be. I think those feelings are being reflected in the latest poll.
-polling trends aren’t
-sometimes the snapshots in time can be very useful in revealing strongly-held fears the population has that are likely to remain (such as the fear that vast quantities of public money being spent for a private games).
-the issues that are causing the population to sour on the Olympics aren’t going away, and the concern surrounding them are only likely to grow as people learn more about what the games mean and as more details are revealed.
If they haven’t secured an absolutely massive amount of support for the games now, what exact hope do they have for that to change in the future?
I mean… they’ve spent more than Martha Coakley, with worse results.
When I was a young crackpot, giants yet walked the earth here. James Gavin ran Arthur D. Little.
He jumped out of an old school prop plane in the middle of a moonless night before D Day into a swamp in Normandy. And he was pretty young for a General.
And now we got what… ?
If our Poohbah flotilla had an Isabella S Gardner or George Patton III’s kid, I’d be a lot more enthusiastic than I am.
Instead we get a bunch of jacked up uber yuppies with grand ideas but a lousy handle on the distance between Harvard and Castle Island.
As I never tire of repeating, they are more like Raglan at Balaclava.
… what your point, here, is… except, maybe, to pepper the gumbo.
I don’t know much about Gavin except that his claim to fame, and his claim the loyalty of the men he commanded, lay in his precise, very willful, refusal to play or act the giant. I daresay he might well have considered your attempt at encomium invidious.
If your goal is to point out that leadership in 2015 ain’t what it was in 1960 I’m not sure the comparison to Crimea in the 1850’s is at all germane.
I think he’s saying “they suck”.
I think you, EB3, me, and many others are saying the same thing.
You know my mind on these things.
Our current crop of presumptive leaders in the legislature, higher ed and in commerce are a bunch of pampered clods who can barely use Google maps with much skill.
Raglan’s failure was said to be dispatching a battle order from a yacht in the harbor after looking at the wrong map. It’s perfect.
It is reassuring to know a kid from Scituate has such an intimate knowledge of the mind of someone who died in Baltimore in 1990.
You should share these insights in a broader arena. I see a book deal. Get busy!
And here are a whole bunch of other invidious encomiums to critique when you got a sec.
Make sure you tell those fools in Holland to change their place names back.
To give you a leg up, here’s a handy translation of invidious encomium into Dutch “hatelijke lofrede”.
Try to speak it like you’re Daffy Duck fulminating about unmitigated fabrications as that really impresses em.
… that the specific and the general meet in the space where your resentments lie: that I say, if some might think your failed attempt at encomium is invidious means I think any successful encomium is likewise invidious.
James Gavin possessed a rare, and wilful, immunity to adulation and hagiography. That, however, has not stopped you from making that attempt. Invidious is as invidious does.