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Re: T construction news Why does this cost $20 million?

They claim that the problem with the tunnels is the pavement above them is too heavy. So they're ripping up the pavement and replacing it with lighter pavement. Does this sound dubious to anyone else? They also mention replacing granite curbing. Maybe the Globe got it wrong and they're...

We can try to assess fault and argue about it; It's true that the Democrats were in charge and the problems did occur on their watch. I'd say the problem is underfunding and not mismanagement, and the D'Allesandro report agrees, but whatever. This is a pointless discussion unless it's seen in...

How many people do you think are going to live/work in TOD on the South Coast within range of a train stop? And how many of those people will just happen to have destinations or origins within walking distance of the train? And now how many of those people would prefer a train to a car when the...

The entire T commuter rail system has, what, 150k daily riders? And you think SCR is going to get 50k? Whatever you're smoking, I want some.

I like it. My ideas for fares: Automatic increases Fares should increase like the IRS tax brackets. There's a dollar amount for each type of fare and pass that is pegged to the CPI, and that number goes up automatically each year. But that number is not what the public sees. The public only...

And we have better institutions, less corruption, and better governance than the average state out there. And that has little to do with the political party in charge (take a look at Rhode Island) and a lot to do with our independent political culture and higher incomes. Romney won over...

I gotcha. I fully support the idea that it should be done right or not at all. But will double-tracking and shorter headways increase ridership so much that the project will have a decent cost per rider? It seems like it would still have the problems with trip times and the cost is ridiculously...

This seems to be the general consensus here. But everyone always wants stuff to be cheaper and faster. It seems to me like the changes to the project people here want (double tracking, for example) would raise costs, not lower them. I guess I'm not really understanding what peoples'...

I don't disagree with your conclusions (South Coast Rail = bad), but the headway thing is absolute nonsense. It assumes people don't know how to look at a train schedule, which is silly. It would be like saying if a plane from Boston to Atlanta only leaves four times a day, and the trip time is...

Why all the opposition to South Coast Rail? I'm not a fan of it either, just wondering why so many here who are normally pro-rail are so opposed.

I wasn't making an anti-train argument, just an anti-train-to-the-Cape one. If the idea is to get people to take the train to vacation there, I think that's unrealistic. If the idea is to lure Boston commuters or if there's demand for a train for other reasons, that deserves study.

Ditto all of this. Once you're down the Cape, there's just no good way to get around without a car. That's not gonna change. There's lots of nice little town centers, but the train wouldn't go to most of them. The type of people who go to the Cape wouldn't be the type to transfer to a bus from...

A Cape train is pointless. You can't get around down the Cape without a car. For the money you'd be much better off replacing the Sagamore Bridge with a wider, more modern bridge and giving the Bourne a rotary flyover.

Yes. That's how it works when you have a poorly structured government with an excessively large, part-time, unprofessional, unpaid legislature. Studies have shown that this type of legislative structure begets high turnover, poor policy, and poor policy correlation with the ideological views of...

You can get from Boston to Albany in 1 hour by plane and 3 hours by car. Do you really think it would be possible to get a high-speed train remotely close to competitive with a plane or a car for a non-outrageous sum of money? And even if you did, how much traffic do you really think it would...

Atlanta's MARTA is very pleasant, efficient, and user-friendly compared to the T. Assuming they can transform the T into a 30 year old system with just 3 types of rolling stock, docile unions, sufficient funding, and low debt, we should be in great shape.

MassPort is financially self-sustaining not because they are more efficient or particularly well-run than the MBTA (they aren't), but because they have a more steady revenue stream and more control over that revenue stream. And MassDOT doesn't run the MBTA, they just share a board of directors...

Lots of good ideas here - I like F-Lines in particular. A few notes: - Mileage based exit numbering will be happening, see Section 2E.31 of the 2012 Massachusetts MUTCD amendments: - Numbered routes usually (but not always) designate MassDOT-owned and -maintained routes. That's one...

Agreed, it seems like we're getting into Rube Goldberg machine territory here. Someone should come up with a type of vehicle in which you can load a lot of people, that transports people along fixed routes for a small fee.