Probably airing an unpopular opinion here given the vibe, but I can understand why it's taken so long for the city to do the right thing and give this project the official green light. The 28X proposal was like the
Hindenberg (highly recommend
SB Mass's piece on that for context). The political backlash was real with all the state and local electeds coming down on Governor Patrick and MassDOT. It's only natural that A) any public agency would need several years for things to cool off beyond trying again, and B) there would need to be strong political support before proceeding. To get that second part, any agency would need to do an act of contrition by the public process (which the city
seems to have done). I'm sure there's been plenty of political wrangling behind the scenes, too. By all measures, Wu's achieved that now. You read the
press release City Hall put out the other day, and it's all the king's horses and all the king's men getting behind this project now. It's no small thing to get a second chance for a big project like this.
I'm not saying that this shouldn't have happened 15 years ago (because it should have and would have been life-changing for thousands of people in a real way), but that's these are the shitty limitations of the system we have here.