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I haven't been able to find the actual Barr Foundation grant language to see what they've tasked the study group to do. But I hope to hell they insisted that the study be narrowed down to the baseline: examine the pros and cons of each location and the bare bones cost for each location. We...

OK, I laughed out loud, I admit it.

Re: North-South Rail Link Well, actually it's not just that we can't handle the growth of the last several decades. it's that we reached a wall about three decades ago. Basically, it was a massive failure to have done only the car portion of the Big Dig, not both. If we were only going to...

Re: North-South Rail Link I agree with you wholeheartedly. I’d spin that differently, but I’d be hairsplitting so never mind… close enough. NO NO NO NO NO!! OK, I’ll try, because you are right that the messaging is critical, and has largely been flawed, even by people like Dukakis. My...

Re: North-South Rail Link No, No, No. Please go upthread and delve into the fuller explanations of NSRL. It is NOT about allowing people to go through or to avoid transfer, though these are nice tangential benefits. Our CR system has severe bottlenecks at NS and SS. They can only be...

Re: North-South Rail Link Thanks for the response post, Arlington, that was helpful - and I did also get caught up on the one you were posting at the same time I posted.

Re: North-South Rail Link I think I understand your logic on all this, but do you really think there is any chance of the GLX getting displaced for Red at this point? Seems like < 1% probability to me. And if GLX either can’t be displaced and/or won’t be, then you’re either heading to...

Re: North-South Rail Link Search upthread for posts from F-Line for in depth detail. My short version: Among many other benefits, NSRL shifts burdens away from Green, Orange, and Red lines in the inner core area where the station crowding is negatively impacting dwell times, especially at...

Also, F-Line posted a very reassuring note over at railroad.net. The short version: the state is on top of this site and its NSRL implications. BPDA isn't going to be allowed to screw it up.

I disagree that this needs to be any particular height. It IS a highly visible site, so it'll be a drag if anything boring goes in at whatever height. But the ROW underneath it must absolutely drive all else. If that constraint allows it to go higher than what's on either side, I'd be fine...

Agreed, but it's a negotiation where the developer should tread carefully. Yes, they are accommodating the ROW, so I would support seeing the state show flexibility and let something be extracted. But the public interest of that ROW is so potentially transformative to the entire region that...

Fully agreed that the various engineers are doing a lot of incredible work around town to shoehorn buildings into tough spots. And I am confident something excellent could be built on the Hook Lobster site without impeding the NSRL option. If things go wrong in the way I worry about, it will...

I think you're possibly being too sanguine. As F-Line has explained repeatedly at the NSRL thread, there are only two possible routes for the NSRL, and after much vetting, the one that heads along the channel shoreline and then cuts back to under the Big Dig via the Hook Lobster site is the...

Re: North-South Rail Link What an epic blunder it would be to foreclose out such a systemic upgrade option for the sake of one building.

Re: 115 Winthrop Square | Financial District I'd like quality: engaging streetscapes, interesting architecture whether viewed from up close or afar, uses that make sense for their immediate and more general context. If no tower ever tops 800', that's fine. If no tower ever tops 700', that's...

We've been over this repeatedly, no need to raise it again and again. I think we probably have near-perfect consensus that we'd all rather see something done with it other than continuing to sit vacant. But as has been hashed over repeatedly: It'll get filled when the property owners decide...

Re: 115 Winthrop Square | Financial District And if that happened - big giant emphasis on IF - then that would be a $100M firewall suddenly dropping to a $0 firewall. They could try declaring bankruptcy with the specific entity that did the SF tower. Might work to firewall it, might not...

Re: 115 Winthrop Square | Financial District Your post is entirely accurate but your conclusion reaches too far. There is no such thing as a firewall big enough to protect a firm from every possible scenario. To take just one glaring example: Lehman Brothers. Lehman had vastly more...

Re: 115 Winthrop Square | Financial District Also, the sentence here is accurate except for the past tense on "bit". The risk they took is biting them in the ass. It will be a series of bites in the form of many payments to lawyers and if they're lucky and their lawyers are good, the bites...

Re: 115 Winthrop Square | Financial District I wasn't talking about how they'd guarantee no sinking in Boston. I agree with your take on the Boston tower. And given that bedrock is not so incredibly deep here, that won't be unusual. I'm talking about financial guarantees. They'll have to...