From today’s Globe
Supporters were never able to ignite much visible passion for the Games, and the public debate descended into a joyless cost-benefit analysis of financial risks and rewards, which seemed to inspire only dissenters. [emphasis added]
Sorry we did the math.
Please share widely!
I always saw this as vision vs. Debbie Downers. Sometimes you have to “just do it” and trust that the pesky math will take care of itself if the will is there. We DID discuss bottom lines rather than inspiration too much IMO.
This is how Republicans budget for tax cuts. Well, just assume the economy will grow, causing tax revenues to actually rise! Just do it, and hope the pesky math will take care of itself. In fact, lets cut taxes and expand Medicare– everything will be just peachy. Hey let’s start a war as well– we can work out the pesky math on how to pay for it some other time.
This is a manifestly bad way to make public policy. The logo above says “reality based community” because the posters here, at least in theory, resist this kind of manifestly bad public policy.
Thank goodness the voters of the Commonwealth are smarter than our elected officials.
You might be super excited about that new home your buying and how wonderful it will be for your kids, etc. but you better have made sure that it makes financial sense before you commit yourself. Same goes with the Olympics. We cannot let excitement about a mega-event cloud our judgement about the costs and benefits.
Boston 2024 made this worse by pretending there were no costs, and grossly exaggerating the benefits, but in the end it really came down to the fact that they didn’t have a plan for the Olympics that would not have cost billions of dollars of public money.
Now, let us move on to fulfilling more practical visions, first and foremost a better transportation infrastructure for Boston and the region. The Olympics would never have paid for that in the first place, so there is no reason for us to drop the ball on that.
You don’t go out and put an offer on a house before discussing it with the rest of your family. “Hey, everyone, I put in a bid on this great house and… oh! Look at that! The broker just texted me and the seller accepted our offer! We’re moving to a great house! Let me tell you all about it!”
I think this was a key part of what doomed the effort from the beginning, regardless of the details: People don’t like it when you spring s**t on them. Christopher mentioned doing some things out of order before. Boston 2024 got the public involved during the wrong point of the process.
… ‘Cause BMG’s own hrs-kevin long lamented that there was no math to do and that this, rather than the math you did, was the reason for distrust. Meh. This is just further proof, as if any more was needed, that the opposition muddied the water with whatever accusation was handy.
There was a lot of misdirection (“Look, Sochi!”) and a lot of of misinformation (“Boston2024 never talked to the people it wanted to fuck outta their land…” ) and even some outright lying (“They’re going to emminent domain up the joint”).
But, as long as we’re not letting the issue get clouded with facts, continue trying to pat yourselves on the back for doing the math that couldn’t be done. Try not to hurt yourself doing that…
It’s true that Boston 2024 never gave us complete numbers, but the numbers they did give us made it very clear that massive public spending was going to be required and that much of that burden was going to fall on the City of Boston itself.
… on proving my points for me? You’ve sung every tune in your songbook… even the ones that contradict each other. I rest my case.
I’ve known wind chimes that were less mercurial than you.
Let’s work on ways we can assess future policies that benefit the city we can agree on.
I think boosters have a partially correct point when they argue against the reactionary element that opposed the bids-the Howie Carr opponents who oppose spending money on anything outside their cul de sac, they were a minority while I think the official No Boston Olympics group was a progressive force organized by progressive organizers who wanted principles of affordable housing, infrastructure investment, and sustainable smart growth rather than an event for the wealthy guiding our development policies for the next decade.
I think you agree with those guiding principles and argued passionately that the Olympics would meet them, now with the bid off the table, it’s important we come together to insist that those principles remain. The temptation to do nothing to keep taxes low will continue to lure too many folks in Massachusetts and it’s one we can argue against together.
n/t
…to the italicized portion of the sentence in the Globe quote in the diary? It seems to have disappeared.
n/t
I think it’s that simple. Let’s not forget that the last bits of snow have only recently melted. The memories of a failed mass transit system and impassable roads are too fresh in the minds of many to even consider taking the Olympics.
Vancouver has a similar population as Boston and was able to regionalize it’s bid. If we do the things we are supposed to do anyway, like improving infrastructure and mass transit and building up our housing capacity, we will be in a much better position to make this case down the road. We shouldn’t do those things just to get the Olympics, we should do them to keep Boston and the region competitive and improve it’s livability. But you can’t put the cart before the horse, as Boston 2024 did, or argue that the Olympics is a free lunch.
…who supplied the downrate, and no surprise, I was right:(
I downrated without comment this truly awful idea, but since you want details, here goes. Take a look at the events that are part of a Winter Olympics and you will quickly see that neither Boston nor the entire state of Massachusetts can handle them without an even bigger drain on taxpayer dollars and all of the other reasons that contributed to the B2024. Including the other NE states means tens of thousands of people daily driving from Boston hotels to more northern states because there are not twenty thousand extra hotel rooms in northern NE. Yuck.
http://www.topendsports.com/events/winter/sports/
Appropriate alpine skiing venues are just the start of the problem. We don’t have them in the area now and after another fifteen years of climate change there will be even fewer places for alpine and cross country skiing in NE. Where does the ski jump go? Bob-sledding? The luge? The nordic combined event, (ski jumping combined with cross country) is not plausible in the region. Speed skating requires facilities not available in the region, another white elephant like the proposed velodrome that nobody wanted.
Today we learned that Beijing got the IOC nod for 2022, over Almaty, long after everyone else dropped their consideration of hosting, and even the Chinese dictatorship will be hard pressed to sell the games to their population.
This was just a bad idea, regardless of who made it.
Reality-based commentary
I can respect that reasoning and largely agree with it, I was basically arguing a political point, which is that, since the boosters are so sad they couldn’t get their Olympics, they should examine why so many people were against the bid and support the priorities we want to see funded which will actually put us in a better position down the line. But a big asterik to my first post, which I’ve mentioned elsewhere but failed to mention there, is that we have to expect the IOC begin to reform itself and the way it does business as more and more democratic countries opt out.
As you astutely put it, the 2022 bidding process was a joke, and Beijing’s to win largely by default (how great are the mountains there? Can’t see them through all the smog on most days…). It’ll also be interesting to see how the international judicial process plays itself out vis a vis FIFA and whether it has any coattails on the IOC.
But to be absolutely clear, I think from a simply infrastructure and capacity perspective, we are a good decade or two away from even being able to host, whether hosting is itself a good idea, is largely up to which direction the IOC chooses to go-the road to reform or to double down on the status quo that largely leaves democratic nations out of the running.
…the thing to do is explain yourself.
did I not just do that? And no, I do not need to explain every time a bad idea is floated here. There is a reason that the button is labeled “disapprove.” I disapproved for what seemed like obvious reasons but you once again made it personal.
The position of the post, stated in the header, was that a Winter Olympics is “doable in the near future.” In most places where I go, someone who proposes a multi-billion dollar project needs to explain themselves, not wait for other to show the idea was bad from the start.
I don’t take that downrate personally, I have mentioned the facts elsewhere but I left them out in that particular, but it shouldn’t be incumbent on TBD to ferret those comments out. It has been obviously personally elsewhere, and plenty of others besides me have disapproved of that when it happens. Hopefully we can learn to get along, I bare no ill will towards him or frankly anyone else here, and largely think this system allows us to self police since the editors don’t have the time or money to moderate as much as they used to.
I hope you understand that my comments were directed at Christopher for his nasty little note, and now a subsequent one. I know you did not take it personally as you noted you largely agreed with my comments. Christopher seems intent on policing my use of the “disapprove” button, something he has mentioned on a few instances.
The reasons aren’t necessarily obvious to all.
have to explain every stupid comment to every person here. Again, I remind you that there is a “disapprove” button for a reason. I regret that you are unable to see the reason that comments like this one and many others get downrated by me and other BMG members, but your incapacities are not my problem.
That’s my whole point. You seem to be the outlier in terms of the generosity of your downrates. Most of us don’t use it simply to say we disagree on the merits without explaining ourselves. I’ve started to get used to it though even to the point of seeing downrates from you as almost a badge of honor:)
…but the insults. For example “your incapacities” above sounds like you think I’m intellectually disabled rather than addressing the merits, which is out of bounds and violates at least my interpretation of rules against personal attacks.
just ask for an explanation, you made another snarky comment. Personally, I am not offended by anything you say but it is worthwhile to point out to others your role as self-appointed censor. And maybe it will cause you to think before your post as often as you do.
Upon review I technically didn’t ask where’s your explanation, but you took the hint nevertheless.
Vancouver has much better winter weather than here but is close to the mountains so you get the best of both worlds.
And they lost money like all the other ones, I am just inviting the folks who really wanted them to join those of us that rejected them in advocating for the bench marks we need anyway-better housing and transit-and maybe we can be competitive in a decade or two for s more realistic bid. Expecting the Olympics to either come without that groundwork or the groundwork to come because of the Olympics was a fatal error in the recent bid, one future bids will do well to avoid and bid advocates would do well to learn from.
I don’t know a lot about skiing, but I am not convinced Olympic-level events are possible even in the White Mountains. Vail, maybe…but Mount Sunapee?
The winter Olympics were held in Lake Placid NY in 1932 and 1980. I’m not sure how the Adirondacks compare with the White Mountains for Olympic events. I thought I remembered Stowe, VT being the site of games, but I guess I am mistaken about that.
In terms of vertical drop (I’m no skier either, but I think that’s a reasonable benchmark), the mountains of Vermont and Maine seem comparable to NH. Not Sunapee, by the way, but Cannon, Wildcat, Loon, and Waterville Valley are all in excess of 2,000 feet. Killington VT heads the list at 3,050 feet.
The vertical drop (different list) of Squaw Valley, site of the 1960 Olympics, is 2,389 feet — behind the following New England ski areas (I note that the second list cites smaller vertical drops than the first for shared locations):
– Sugarloaf (ME): 2,410
– Sugarbush (VT): 2,552
– Smuggler’s Notch (VT): 2,610
– Killington (VT): 3,050
– Lake Placid (NY): 3,216
My wife, who is a skier and who grew up skiing in the Alps (Innsbruck, in particular) says that New England mountains are, to her, more challenging than both the Alps and the west (Rockies, Olympics, etc) because of the weather — it is routinely much colder on a New England mountain, and the winds are often stronger.
All in all, it sounds to me as though Olympic-level events are quite possible throughout Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine (in addition to New York).
Finally, just as an infrastructure note, the Boston and Maine railroad ran a “snow train“, terminating in North Station, on weekends during the winter from 1931 through 1971:
The old right of way is still apparent along portions of the Lake Winnipesaukee shore, and the Hobo Railroad still operates tourist trains in the Lake Winnipesaukee region and the White Mountains.
Now that cities are rushing to get streetcars back in operation, Cincinatti is thinking of finishing its never opened subway system left vacant in the 30s, and urban planners are going back to the streetcar suburb model of mixed use development. Plenty of rail lines are left vacant around the area, I know in Cambridge there has been a vigorous debate between letting the Grand Jundction Railroad tracks become part of a future urban ring or doing rail to trail.
It would be insane to do a rail-to-trail on the Grand Junction right-of-way.
It’s an in-place working rail link joining the Alston yards (and the South Station yards) with the still very active North Station yard complex. The MBTA uses it to move equipment between the North and South station routes.
While it will never work as a “North-South connector”, it can provide direct access to Cambridge, Somerville, and points north from points west. Commuters on the Worcester/Framingham line could get directly to the Cambridge biotech hub (Kendall/Central square).
I’m not sure about an “urban ring”, but it would allow DMU service to join the Fort Point/Seaport area (and points south) with all of the above.
The political opposition in Cambridge to incorporating the Grand Junction into the MBTA is short-sighted and self-serving.
Just pointing out that’s he debate right now.
However, the frequency of service might be limited by the potential for disruptions at the Kendall Square street crossings. Perhaps the tracks could be depressed, although I am sure that would be expensive….
The Kendall Square street crossings are already disrupted by hordes of MIT students and local workers walking across the street. I suspect any limits on service will have more to do with dealing with the dense pedestrian traffic along the right-of-way than disrupting traffic.
The opponents cite traffic disruptions, and ignore the gridlock that already happens every day. I find this complaint particularly hilarious (in an ironic way) given that the city of Cambridge kept MA ave a construction zone during most of the last decade (or longer!) because of sewer construction, and most streets in the city are already a disaster at drive time because half the streets in Cambridge are torn up for sewers. “Disruptions” is a symptom looking for a “problem”.
The use of this branch for commuter rail is more likely to take cars off the street and improve the quality of life for pretty much everybody (and especially the passengers) than to make the already awful traffic any worse.