An NYT headline that should please the No Boston Olympics folks.
Of course, absent something to rally around like the Olympics the possibility of comprehensive improvements to our declining infrastructure — especially restoring the MBTA to developed-world standards from its current emerging market also-ran status — have passed from unlikely to almost zero (looking at you, Governor “no paradigmatic improvements for the MBTA on my watch” Baker, and the “not on mine either” legislative leadership). Despite brave words from No Boston Olympics (“We need to move forward as a city, and the decision to drop the Boston 2024 bid allows us to do that on our own terms, not the terms of the USOC or the IOC.”) I haven’t seen any moving forward organized by the Forces of No — certainly not on their (c) 2014 website.
But a bid by Rome, which hopes to follow a similar low-cost model, may already be in jeopardy: The city’s new mayor, Virginia Raggi, has very publicly objected, saying that Rome’s municipal deficit is too vast to consider hosting the Olympics. “Historical data from the Olympics, discounting eventual episodes of corruption, shows us that the costs are not sustainable,” she said in June. “Other cities have already withdrawn their bids for these reasons. And I don’t think they were thinking about corruption or Mafia infiltrations.” She was probably referring to Boston, which last year ended its effort to host the 2024 Games over anxieties about the cost.
Actually, in the case of Boston folks were, in fact, worried about political corruption and organized crime, among other concerns, but never mind, point taken.
Remember all the doomsday prophecies about how our Bill of Rights would be trampled and for reasons passing understanding Olympic rules would supercede our Constitution? Well, a federal judge in Brazil has ruled that protesters are in fact able to demonstrate peacefully in Olympic venues because the Brazilian Constitution protects such. While time, place, and manner restrictions may be reasonable I distinctly recall suggesting that one or more of our judges may in fact decide our Constitution still applies even during the Olympics. Now we have evidence that it could happen.
1) The UIP opposed taxpayer funding for the games and has a bold approach to transportation funding in its platform embraced by our candidates for office.
2) The Olympics would not have led to substantial long term investments in Boston’s infrastructure nor would the narrow timetable enabled them to be completed
3) The Widett Circle “Mid Town” development is still continuing, demonstrating that this was the key goal for the municipal
players involved. It is unclear if the City of Boston has any commitment to ensuring the availability of affordable and middle income housing in this new neighborhood or if it has developed a transit oriented strategy for developing it.
4) No Boston 2024 is an inactive organization. But other groups that opposed the Olympics are still working to create a more livable community, affordable housing, and transit oriented development. In addition to my organization there is the Jamaica Plain New Economy Transition Project, Livable Streets, the MBTA Riders Union, the Dudley Square Neighborhood Association, and many others that are working to create the kind of dense housing and transit oriented development the city needs.
5) The few elected officials with the courage to speak out, especially Tito Jackson, are still advocating for the kinds of policies we need. I might add Mayor Curtatone proposed a sensible compromise in Commonwealth that would have regionalized the games and made them more politically popular and spread the development benefits in a more equitable way. His proposal to create a regional planning council for the Greater Boston Area is still on the table and should be utilized to ensure the entire region can effectively lobby on its own behalf for federal funding while doing the kind of long term planning Boston 2024’s vision failed to articulate.
to this post appears in today’s MassterList.
Even if the alternative to the Olympics is no great expansion to the MBTA in any foreseeable time, that is better than leaving the MBTA with hundreds of millions or billions in new debt for projects that aren’t high priorities for the system. (Because no IOC-focused project would be.)
Ditto the city, state, etc. etc. etc.