Jay Fitzgerald of the excellent MASSterList (“an ensemble of news and commentary about the Legislature, Politics, Media, and Judiciary of Massachusetts from major news organizations as well as specialized publications”) rejects Charley’s withering criticism yesterday of the do-nothing position of the powers that be Baker and DeLeo on the Commonwealth’s deteriorating infrastructure. Charley’s conclusion: “[Y]our commute is going to suck, forever.”
The leaders are just representing the people, Fitzgerald says:
Plenty of blame to go around for the state’s infrastructure woes
Blue Mass Group isn’t happy about the new A Better City report, which warns how Greater Boston’s rickety infrastructure can’t handle the region’s expected population growth and needs in coming years, and tears into Gov. Charlie Baker and House Speaker Robert DeLeo for not doing enough to prepare the state for the future. “To be blunt: There is absolutely no ambition, no intention, no vision, no proposal, no agenda, from either our Governor or Speaker, for providing the necessities of our region going forward. None. They’re just not going to do it.”
But to be equally blunt: Most lawmakers on Beacon Hill, overwhelmingly controlled by Democrats, don’t want to give the MBTA a dime more until its dysfunctional management and operational practices are overhauled (see items below, btw). Meanwhile, former Gov. Deval Patrick not so long ago proposed a large gasoline tax increase to pay for infrastructure improvements. Guess what? The Democratic-controlled legislature balked and passed a more modest plan. Then voters, in a statewide referendum, rejected tying future gas-tax increases to the inflation rate. Blame Baker and DeLeo? Please.
Both are right, but Charley’s criticism is more constructive. Without infrastructure improvements, the Commonwealth, and especially the greater Boston area, will strangle. Imagine Boston without the T, or with just one harbor tunnel: far less prosperous; far less liveable. “Route 128” means “Massachusetts high technology industry” in common parlance. If our subway was as good as Hong Kong’s you’d be home in half the time. If our rail system was as good as China’s, it would take just over an hour to get to New York by train. If our Internet was as fast as Korea’s, people in Western Massachusetts would read this article twice as quickly for a fraction of the price. One reason there are fewer good jobs in America than there were is because much of the world has caught up to our infrastructure, and many countries have passed us. Result: jobs go there.
On the other hand, pouring good money after bad is just a waste. It’s obvious the T needs structural reform — quasi-public listed corporation or some other similarly fundamental reorganization — if it is to reverse its current decline and once again become the world-class system it was a century ago. Voters did indeed reject an increased gasoline tax: there are alternatives.
If we stay still, however, we lose because we are part of a dynamic, constantly changing national and world economy, many parts of which are surging past us. Walls won’t save us. Also, nature degrades all existing systems: we have to keep investing just to stay in place. The job of leaders is, in part, to educate people about these hard realities. To the degree they don’t, we’ll all fail — our commutes will, indeed, suck forever — and Baker and DeLeo will go down in history as the ones who watched.
It’s one thing to absolve the legislature of punting on the Patrick initiative. A lot of digital ink has been spilt here on that. It’s another thing entirely when the voters themselves reject a far more modest proposal, then it’s time to reasses. I think directly tying revenue to reforms is the only way to go about it. I’ve long been skeptical the kind of privatization that happened in Hong Kong is feasible here, but I do think we can manage the T better using private sector practices to make sure the bulk of the money goes to new and improved service.
The T is not a jobs program, it’s a critical component of our business and innovation identity and the only way we can truly be a first tier global city is with a first tier world class transit system. Death by a thousand cuts is not the answer, neither is throwing more money that’s worse for wear. We need to fundamentally reform the very structure of the T to justify the higher taxes and revenues required to truly save and expand it. Every community should benefit from its transformation.
This line of reasoning is an insult to the intelligence: it is wholly circular reasoning — if you won’t fund it properly, dysfunctional management will happen and operational practices will suffer. Duh.
The MBTA has not been funded properly for DECADES. To use the fragility resulting from improperly funding it to refuse to fund it properly is A WHOLLY RIDICULOUS argument. Anybody who makes such an argument, lawmaker or otherwise, should get a STFU time-out to go sit in their own special Trump tower of incompetence and wallow in the shame of their intellectual forfeiture.
Fund it. Throw money at it. Bring the money in by the truckload and hand it out by the bucketful. Make the system work by funding it and, as you do this, impose and require real leadership and functional management and operational practices will meet or exceed expectations.
Duh
And they have appropriation power, not the governor.
So what makes you think they will toss away buckets of money now?
First… it’s not ‘tossing away’. It’s an investment and the money spent will reap returns.
Secondly… what makes you think I’m absolving any Democrat in this? They are all complicit. My complaint here is the argument used to refuse forward motion is ridiculous. Perhaps legacy Democrats used this argument also. Perhaps they used other, equally ridiculous arguments. That’s neither here nor there with respect to forward motion.
“Dysfunctional management” is one of those catch-all phrases that lets everyone off the hook.
I’d support it over the status quo, which many have observed is already hurting us, and will bring slow-motion decline to eastern Massachusetts compared to global and even national competitors. But the record suggests Fitzgerald is right about unwillingness to increase funding let alone adopt your solution. Perhaps the argument is a makeweight, or circular, but the reality, so far as I can see, is that your proposed solution is not likely to advance. Therefore, we need other ones.
…Refusing, for reasons that are specious, to move forward is not an invitation to move forward for reasons that are spurious. Maybe they just don’t want to move forward. The sheer ridiculousness of their arguments is a function of how unwilling, or unable, they are…
Perhaps the powers-that-be-are just plain shitting-their-pants scared to move forward: overwhelmed by the enormity of the task and uncertain in their own capacities and capabilities. Fazed. Dazed. Cowards.
If that’s the case neither your ideas nor mine are likely to advance.
Not this voter, since I agree it is the right thing to do. That said, this means they either prefer the status quo, which I doubt, or they do not trust the current organization to use the new revenues in a fiscally sensible way. All of these issues are linked.
Housing is too expensive in the city so more people need to move further out, but transit is lousy in many of these communities. Buses need to be more frequent and need dedicated rights of way. It’s ridiculous the 459 which takes so many Latino workers from Lynn to Boston gets stuck on 1A. I’m sure there are many long range bus routes that could be easily converted to BRT. If we want our Gateway cities and more dense housing in the suburbs they have to be on transit corridors. Portland has done this and it’s housing costs are substantially lower than ours, Seattle is beggining to do this to ease its housing burden. Time for Boston to get ahead of the curve.
Fix the governance, and as you do that, increase funding. And don’t treat the MBTA as a job bank – instead, make sure it provides good services precisely to residents who rely on the MBTA to get around.
And, I’ve got to say, investment needs to be spread more magnanimously to the less affluent areas of the state. The state does not end at Rte 495.
What will it take to bring biotech, computing and healthcare jobs farther out than the Boston cluster?
Infrastructure! Fast trains. The question answers itself.
I went to last week’s conference by the MA Smart Growth Alliance. and Karen Polito was a featured speaker. I think that she and Baker are putting a lot of energy into positioning themselves as the champions of our “not-Boston” communities. We are going to get nowhere if the Democrats champion a Boston-centric doctrinaire no-sprawl policy. I think it’s much smarter to focus as well on potential regional nodes and build up political support for transportation investment across the state.
“Fast trains”, if they existed, could allow people to get in an out of cities like Pittsfield, Springfield, and Worcester. They also allow people to live in Boston and work in Worcester.
I think you’re right on the money with your observation that we need a statewide plan that helps ALL parts of the state.
I think that Polito and Baker are putting a lot of energy into positioning themselves as the champions of our “not-Boston, -New Bedford, -Springfield, -Worcester, -Salem, -Lowell, or -Fall River” communities. Maybe that’s just my bias of expectation, but I can’t imagine the Baker administration going after high speed rail so people who live in Worcester can work in Boston. A suburb of Worcester? Sure, maybe.
and if the Speaker and the Governor are still in office in 2020 (the first year that revenues from that tax will be available), we’ll get to see their spending proposals for the revenue, the permissible uses of which are “for quality public education and affordable public colleges and universities, and for the repair and maintenance of roads, bridges and public transportation.”
It’s critical we all work to pass that change.
You need to have people on staff who can ride herd on infrastructure contracting. That’s the critical financial part and I haven’t heard any great ideas from anyone in charge yet. (Someone prove me wrong.)
Don’t we have an Auditor? And yet somehow the Green line goes over budget $1B …
All props to Jay F and Massterlist. They are great. Always glad to have productive pushback.