Jack Spillane: Finding a way out of Massachusetts transportation hell
By Jack Spillane
Posted Mar 9, 2019
“If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists — to protect them and to promote their common welfare — all else is lost.”
— Barack Obama
Thirty-years on, we’re all hoping that Charlie Baker has finally gotten the state’s act together on South Coast Rail.
During the past couple of months, we’ve read that the so-called Middleboro route — or the long route as it may be come to be called — is close to 100 percent designed and that the train connection from New Bedford to Boston will finally be built by 2022. It may be indirect, and there may not be enough room at South Station to accommodate trains very often, but at least it will be something for those who have had enough of the highways.
Almost 70 years on, Route 24, the main highway artery connecting Southeastern Mass to Boston was recently dubbed the “Highway from Hell” in this newspaper. Built as a narrow interstate with long straightaways, its entrances and exits don’t work safely and development has grown up so thick there is little room to fix them.
We are rapidly approaching transportation gridlock in eastern Massachusetts and instead of coming up with a thoughtful plan to fix the problem at a macro level, we seem to be continuing to squabble about who’s going to pay for what and whether we can afford to do this or that. Building an incremental patch here; and coming up with a temporary plan there. But no overall design for a 21st century transportation plan.
Winston Churchill is famous for saying Americans will always do the right thing, but only after they’ve tried every other option.
And that seems to be where we are as far as transportation planning in Massachusetts. We’re determined to try every other option except directly fixing the problem.
So the Baker administration floats a proposal to raise fees on the MBTA and the immediate reaction from the people who use the service most is loud opposition unless the dysfunctional system is first greatly improved. They’ve argued that rapid-transit users should not pay for all the improvements when many highway motorists and Uber and Lyft users continue to enjoy a mostly free ride. Maybe more would use rapid transit if motorists paid their fair share of what it really costs to operate the state’s roads and bridges.
While we’re on the subject of equity of transportation costs, why is that those who live in the suburbs west and north of Boston have forever paid tolls while those who live in some of the wealthiest communities in the state just south of Boston have paid nothing? Why is it that in 2019 you can’t take a train from south of Boston and continue on through northern New England without getting off and having to take a taxi or subway so you can get back on that same train to go north?
You may say these things are just too expensive for America, but Europe and China and Japan, all with smaller economies, seem to be able to afford state-of-the-art, efficient transportation systems. But for our government, it is said to be an insoluble problem.
Three years into the Trump administration, we’ve yet to see a bill pass Congress to fix America’s aging infrastructure. The current battle between philosophical conservatives and progressives is about whether transportation upgrades should extend and renew the current federal inter-state system, or begin to move to a privatized system. Gov. Baker’s administration has let the word out about possibilities for a privatized road system alongside the Southeast Expressway. Which, of course, has always been a long way from an expressway.
I’m skeptical about turning over the ownership of the nation’s roads, bridges and trains to a private sector that ends up as just another monopoly. But maybe that’s just me — it seems like a recipe for taking the cable television approach and applying it to the highways and rail systems.
But whatever we do, we’ve got to fix the transportation system in Massachusetts. It is holding the state back. It is tying up all of our lives.
Jack Spillane is the Sunday and editorial page editor of The Standard-Times and SouthCoastToday.com
https://www.southcoasttoday.com/opinion/20190309/jack-spillane-finding-way-out-of-massachusetts-transportation-hell
FROM 2016:
Route 24 bus lane debated as South Coast rail alternative
By Andy Metzger / State House News Service
Posted Aug 9, 2016 at 2:09 PM
One approach state transportation officials discussed includes buses that may require a special lane along Route 24.
BOSTON – As the MBTA wrestles with expensive and involved options for extending commuter rail train service to Fall River and New Bedford, members of the T’s governing board urged a creative approach that could include buses.
“I’m trying to make sure at the end of the day we don’t discriminate against bus,” said MBTA Fiscal and Management Control Board Chairman Joe Aiello.
The region has for decades sought South Coast Rail, a project endorsed by the Legislature that would bring the Boston-based rail service further south to the cities along the state’s southeastern coast.
Rep. Bill Straus, a Mattapoisett Democrat who is House chairman of the Transportation Committee, argued that rather than incorporating buses to the region, the T should instead settle on a route for rail service and then begin a “starter service,” mirroring how commuter rail was introduced to Worcester.
State transportation officials pushed back against the urging of Aiello and control board member Lisa Calise to consider buses, saying traffic along Route 24 and other highways to the South Coast would require the addition of a special bus lane.
Calise said traffic does not develop until the ring of Interstate 495 around Boston’s suburbs and told the News Service her suggestion is buses that would not require special lanes and would link up with a commuter rail stop along the existing routes.
“The traffic is everywhere today,” Straus told reporters, arguing any plan incorporating buses would require adding a lane because of existing congestion. He said, “Adding another lane is not practical.”
Disputes remain over the two potential train routes for linking Taunton, Fall River and New Bedford by rail to Boston’s South Station. One would require contentious environmental permitting and carries a cost estimate of $3.4 billion; the other envisions a major overhaul of the Southeast Expressway and the railways that now run alongside it.
“We should be willing to look at tricky, complicated investments for bus alternatives,” Aiello said.
Before the routing issue resurfaced this summer, the state had settled on a route that would require for the first time electrifying commuter rail engines, routing them through Stoughton and the Hockomock Swamp, which the state deems an “irreplaceable wildlife habitat,” in southeastern Massachusetts.
After determining that path would cost $3.4 billion with start of service pushed out to 2029 or so, state transportation officials dusted off another plan to extend rail service from near its current terminus in Lakeville. That route would avoid the complicated permitting of adding rail to a protected swamp and might not include the Army Corps of Engineers’ requirement for electrification. The commuter rail is a diesel fleet.
Straus prefers the Middleborough-Lakeville route, but that plan would require southbound trains to head west somewhat north of the existing Middleborough-Lakeville station, home to a transit-oriented residential development.
“I’m absolutely not in favor of moving the Middleborough-Lakeville Station,” said Lakeville Republican Rep. Keiko Orrall, who told the control board the T could “hopscotch” trains to keep the existing rail station. She said, “We have created housing around that station. It’s a smart-growth area.”
Straus told reporters the Middleborough-Lakeville route would involve a more straightforward permitting process and allow for a faster start as train track exists along the entire route.
“To keep two options out there seems to me a diversion of Commonwealth resources,” Straus said, setting December as the time when the state should settle on one route for South Coast Rail.
A presentation by the MBTA’s director of energy and environmental affairs, Andrew Brennan, said the Middleborough-Lakeville route could take six-to-eight years, the same timeframe that permitting would cost for the Stoughton route.
“This stuff is pretty complicated,” said Aiello. “Six to eight years can easily turn into seven to nine, eight to 10.”
The MBTA faces a capacity problem if it adds service on the Middleborough-Lakeville route, as there is a bottleneck on the tracks along the Southeast Expressway just south of South Station. Straus said only running a few trains to and from South Coast cities during rush hour would be an acceptable way to start service.
T officials have suggested the capacity problem could be solved by adding lanes to the expressway and building a rail tunnel under the highway – to house two commuter rail lines, double the existing single commuter rail track.
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