Sorry, that's an opinion, not a logical fallacy. An opinion can be debated with evidence, but a logical fallacy is wrong in and of itself. Two different things. Fact: SSX isn't on the table until ~2035. Fact: the Olympic bid would likely require it be done by 2024. If you have another fact showing SSX would be done by 2024 regardless of the Olympics, you're free to present it, but that doesn't make this argument a logical fallacy.
It's a fact that SSX is on the table right now because there's money allocated for it and an EIR is being produced. The same thing can be said for GLX and a number of other projects, mind you, but it is a fact that the project is moving forward.
Whether it gets done in any reasonable amount of time, I can't say. But it is a fact that the project is moving forward, even if at a glacial pace. And the ultimate point of my argument is this:
Last year when the transportation bill was up for renewal, Governor Patrick and Secretary Davey outlined absolutely everything we need to do to the T, and basically everyone agreed with what they laid out. Then it came time to allocate the money, and the State House gave them about 1/3 of what was asked for. So, why not just pay for all the fixes/expansions we know we need without bringing in the Olympics? We tried that already, and it didn't work. What makes people think trying the same thing again would get a different outcome?
You're absolutely correct in that even though most everyone agrees that there's a problem and in spite of that, nobody wanted to fund the solution. That's a problem, and it's a problem that we need to solve.
I want us - the city, the region, everyone who uses mass transit and therefore has a stake in that - to focus on
that. Because that's a problem today, and it's still going to be a problem in 2024 whether or not we host this damn thing. When we all wake up September 1, 2024 and put Boston 2024 into the history books, we might have cleared the backlog of vital infrastructure projects, but the city isn't a static place. We can never arrive at the point where transit won't need to expand or adapt anymore, we can never arrive at the point where nothing needs to be maintained anymore, and because we embarked on all the necessary projects under the pretext of getting the city up to top form for the Olympics - we're right back where we are today with a paralyzed political body and nothing getting done again.
I don't think it's a logical fallacy to ask what the plan is for solving political gridlock and forcing these things to get done without the threat of a failed Olympics looming overhead, when the argument is being made that the Olympics are necessary to get anything done at all.
At best, that's deferring the problem for a decade, and deferring things is a big part of why our infrastructure is (in some cases quite literally) crumbling beneath us today. I'm not interested in shrugging my shoulders and saying "well if this will get the projects done then I'm on board." I'm interested in figuring out how we get past
this.
So you say, but the State is now something like 14 years behind on the GLX and Red-Blue and we've seen essentially zero elections turn on the question of SIP-implementation. Don't confuse your personal frustration with any sort of tipping point general motivations. And to the extent that any voters have influence, it is the swing voters of Lexington/Concord (rich, liberal, car-based enclaves).
City (transit) voters are ignored because they don't swing.
What you assert here is actually more in line with Equilibria's point: that the Political system would be happy to drag its feet on SSX until 2035, dangling it in front of suffering commuters, getting re-elected by saying "I'm working on it, but you know Beacon Hill...", and never actually funding it ('cause that takes money and political will).
This is the problem that needs addressing. I want the region to come together, Boston 2024-style, to solve this problem.
In fact, I will even pull an about-face and give my full-throated support to Boston 2024, so long as we solve this problem
first. Let's move ourselves forward to a time and place where it doesn't take the Olympics to get things done, and then I'll gladly jump on board.
But I don't want anything to do with the Olympics so long as we "need" them for any reason.
How do you know what's going to "give" is just letting the system "die"? We had years upon years of pressure from our current breakdowns. On some viewpoint, your logic would say the pressure should have forced the state to take action on problems like the Orange line trains 5 years ago, if not earlier. Yet, we are at least 5 years away assuming no delays or issues. You may very well be underestimated how willing we will tolerate South Station going overcapacity, no Red-Blue, no signal modernization, or anything. From my viewpoint, the only incidents outside of big publicity events that forces politicians to take real action is not systematic overload, is if people start dying.
It hasn't even come close to getting as bad as it could get. The system is still functional. Sure, things break, and the trains are all too full, and people bitch on UHub and at the water cooler... but for the most part, the T continues to run, and you can rely on it to get you home eventually.
You mention people dying - wait until the derailments start happening, or one of our particularly deficient bridges collapses. Wait until the next idiot who can't put his phone down crashes a Green Line trolley in the Central Subway. Wait until the rolling stock is all so dated and dire that it's a gamble every time you board the train whether it's going to just straight up die before you make it to your stop. Wait for "30 minutes late" to become the new on-time.
I promise you, this all can get so much worse. We haven't even had a taste of how bad things are capable of getting. The consequences of deferring action aren't linear - they're exponential. We've made deferring action into an art form here in this town - but trust me when I say that the bill is coming due eventually.
Like I said before... I'm really, really not looking forward to that. I don't want to live or work or play in a place that says "eh... not worth dealing with it" to on-time-performance metrics plunging below 40%.
But if that's what it's going to take to get people to wake up and start dealing with these things as actual problems, then I've made peace with the fact that there's a lot of painful commutes in my future. I don't like it, but I'm prepared for it.
Good to hear you were nowhere near the city when this happened, and are basing your opinion on the LOCKDOWN CNN bullshit. I live less than a mile away from where he was shot.
Other than in the active shooter section of Watertown, there were no roadblocks, or much of anything else. To shelter in place was a suggestion, as you note. I voluntarily gave my employees the day off at my old restaurant, since I assumed there would be no business. Even so, I was able to drive to the store just to check on everything with no problem. In the morning when I left, there was still speculation he had gotten across the river and was in my neighborhood. Even so, no issue.
Later in the afternoon, a few friends walked/drove over and we hung out on my roof watching the helicopters ferry people in and out of the Home Depot parking lot. Again, they had no issue getting here, even as the caravan of Humvees streamed down the Pike right in front of my house.
From what I hear, while quiet, things were largely business as usual in the southern side of the city.
I have no reason to doubt you, but I just wanted to take a moment to explain my side of this.
I commute by Amtrak from my home in Rhode Island into downtown Boston every weekday. I've been doing it for a couple of years now.
The morning that the manhunt started, exactly one southbound Amtrak train left the city of Boston before they shut it down. Northbound Amtrak trains were being pulled from service anywhere they could reasonably terminate them. That was the information I received from my friendly neighborhood station employee when I asked them what was happening.
I received an email from my then-university notifying me that the T was entirely shut down, that a shelter-in-place/stay-away advisory was out for the city, and that all my classes were canceled. I was advised to turn around if I could and not to bother if I hadn't yet left.
At the time I was a full-time student. I had no job other than my classes and I therefore had no reason to try and drive up to the city. Furthermore, the only information I had at that time was the advisory and the fact that mass transit had been shut down.
I hope you can forgive me for drawing what I felt and do still feel is a reasonable conclusion of "there's an effective lockdown in place" based on the information I had available to me about what was happening 85~90 miles away from where I live. I had no way of knowing that life pretty much continued as normal, because the only information I had to me suggested that was emphatically not the case.
