Well, Transportation Secretary Pollack gave a mighty intriguing talk to a real estate group — folks with a real interest in a strong transit system, since transit boosts real estate values. Would love to see the specifics:
Transpo Secretary Pollack Tells NAIOP: Big Thinking AND Big Spending Ahead | MASSterList.
… There is spending capacity, and Pollack indicated that a new five-year spending plan, which she will announce soon, will exceed $1 billion per year in spending.
… “The opportunity we have right now is we have to rebuild all our transportation networks. Transit networks, roads networks or bridge networks. If we just rebuild what was there in 1960s, 70s or 80s then we have lost a huge opportunity and our return on that investment will be that we’ll have a transportation system that we had in 1970 but we’ll have the economy that we’ll have in 2020.”
I didn’t want to just paste the whole article — do click the link.
I haven’t reviewed the committee’s report yet – will do tonight. See Shirley Leung and Evan Horowitz for quick and dirty listicle-summaries. A few thoughts for now:
- The failure of the MBTA to spend $2.2 billion between 2010-2014 is at once appalling but also hopeful. What was preventing it from going into maintenance? Where can it go now?
- How compatible is Pollack’s plan with the 2013 21st Century MassDOT plan? Pollack’s remarks about adjusting our transit ideas for our future needs as opposed to 1970’s needs are intriguing, but do we reinvent this thing with every new administration?
- As Leung notes, it’s critical to bring the MBTA under the control of the Governor’s office. You have to know who’s in charge, and whose job it is to fix things when they go wrong — and indeed, to whom to give credit when things are good. I’ll be more than happy to give credit to a Republican governor if there’s marked improvement over the next few years. This is about quality of life, not zero-sum politics.
- Contra the report, fare increases should be kept low, as they are now. We should not try to get more blood from the stone of low-income people who depend on the T because they can’t afford cars. Regressive revenue measures should be resisted. Yes, Boston has fairly low fares compared to other systems — and it should stay that way.
Make the T a whole lot better, reap the extra revenues from increased ridership, then maybe fare increases.