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Just ran across a new (?) page on the Boston city website on development costs and modular housing. The good news is that there is an acknowledgement the city is paying a premium for construction over the private sector, the bad news is that they only seem to identify off-site construction as a...

$176 million for 266 units, or $660,000 per unit. And if this source is to be believed, there is a total of 241,242 sq ft coming out to $730/ft^2. While I don't exactly expect BHA to match private sector costs, I'd hope for them to get a bit closer. BHA is doing a lot right, from explicitly...

I expect significant roadway changes as part of the the second "P0924" project. The city and BTD have been floating new designs for Comm Ave between Packard's Corner and BC for at least a year now and indicated that they plan on doing that roadway work concurrently with B Branch upgrades. This...

I completely agree that one of the main problems here is that we have no idea what is being scoped into these projects. But there is no world in which $280 million is a reasonable price tag for 1 mile of street-running light rail, regardless of scope. Feel free to correct me, but $50 million...

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/03/15/metro/boston-mayor-michelle-wu-streets-cabinet-project-pause/

I also doubt it will cost $200 million (it absolutely shouldn't), but it was more for a point of comparison. The E Branch improvements should be about 25% of the cost of the B branch ones, and even if there's other funding tucked in, that price tag is completely ridiculous.

This wasn't clear in my original post, but I was talking about acquiring brand-new fully diesel busses, with the only restriction being that they eventually move to biodiesel. The main point is allowing the Legislature/T to say they are de-carbonizing without the investments/reforms needed for...

My understanding was that any sort of platform screen doors require CBTC signalling so that trains can consistently stop in the exact same place. That should be true for the Green Line post GLTPS phase 2, but not any other lines. Are there ways around this limitation, or will this just be an RFP...

Maybe this is just cope, but there is no way that's correct. In the very next line item, the cost to upgrade (at least) 10 B Branch stations to fully support 2-car Type 10 vehicles is "only" $200 million. That also includes track and power improvements for ~4 miles, compared to less than 1 for...

How many of these problems could be resolved if the T was allowed to keep using diesel busses as long as they ran on biofuels? While it's not strictly carbon-neutral, it's a lot closer and should require significantly less capital costs. I can't find good data on what the cost premium would look...

That's a completely valid point, given how low property taxes are in much of the state. But again, what's wrong with eating into the taxes on market rate units? The city never faces a decline in revenue, just a postponement. And if a city wants that revenue faster, they can reduce their IZ...

Could you walk through these calculations some more? It seems like it's off by about an order magnitude. For context, here's the densities of two recent projects: Energizar (Chelsea) - 250 MW/1,000 MWh on 3.7 acres (68 MW/acre) Medway Grid BESS - 250 MW/500 MWh on 10.6 acres (24 MW/acre)...

The Globe does address this somewhat, but again with conjecture. The millionaires tax has kept increasing in revenue, but blockbuster (and unsustainable) market returns likely play a role. There are real questions about what would happen in a down market year, let alone correction/bear market...

There does not need to be no property taxes on IZ units indefinitely. The taxes just need to be reduced enough, for long enough, to pay for the units. In the Portland example earlier, those property tax exemptions are for 10 years and are either for the increased property value or just the value...

Developers would make profit hand-over-fist... by building out much needed housing, a significant portion of which would be income-restricted? That sounds like a phenomenal situation where everyone wins. I want new housing more than I hate developer profits, and I wish that more people...

Oregon recently passed a state law requiring municipalities fully fund and inclusionary zoning (IZ) requirements they have. Portland has done this primarily through a set of property tax exemptions that end up being in the $200k - $250k range per affordable unit. The seems like it would be a...

While I agree with your assessment of the Associations involved here, this discounts the options available to the city. Off the top of my head: The state could pass legislation explicitly saying historic districts don't cover streets/sidewalks unless otherwise stated. This was already done in...

The data appears to be from the census bureau, and can be seen with this visualization tool: https://www.census.gov/construction/bps/visualizations/datatool/index.html. Note: This is number of units permitted, not completions (or BPDA approvals). It is a bit of a leading indicator of...

I'm pretty sure this means "only a majority is needed to get to an IDP threshold of 13%", and not "no community will have an IDP threshold of more than 13%". The first one is nice, but mostly in the sense that the state probably should not be setting the thresholds for city council votes (towns...

The full answer is that the Massachusetts building code defines a high-rise as any building over 70 feet, and thus wooden balloon framing is no longer allowed. This causes large cost increases that don't pencil out until buildings get much taller, typically in the 12-15 story range. There are...