Boston 2024

[Equilibria]

Operating an Olympics requires a dense, high-frequency net of transit in good repair. Boston does not have that, it will not have it by 2024, and Boston 2024 has been incredibly silent about how they intend it to work.

I generally agree with your assessment of Boston 2024's understanding, but this isn't really true. Sochi operated an Olympics without transit, and moving around wasn't one of the many identified problems there. Atlanta had and has a single transit line connecting their venue sites. Chicago has approximately Boston's system and was planning to make it work. Rio de Janeiro doesn't have what anyone would call a "dense, high-frequency net of transit." Neither did Athens or Sydney. London, Barcelona, Tokyo, and Beijing do.

Boston 2024 has been silent about this because they haven't really studied it yet. Their documents make that clear. They just hired an ex-MBTA Chief to build their actual bid, so I hope the ambiguity gets resolved, but just to be clear, this can be done with the system we have right now. Anything that happens between now and 2024 makes it easier, but as long as it doesn't happen during a blizzard in July, Boston will be able to handle this load.

 

[whighlander]

An 8-car multilevel set (the maximum run with current T equipment) can carry 8x180 = 1440 passengers. So that means running fully loaded sets every 7 minutes, for three hours......Operating an Olympics requires a dense, high-frequency net of transit in good repair. Boston does not have that, it will not have it by 2024, and Boston 2024 has been incredibly silent about how they intend it to work.

EGE -- I don't know where you get your theoretical capacity demand numbers since you seem to think that the Olympics is everywhere a full Gillette stadium all the time with one stadium transferring to another -- it doesn't work that way

The dynamics of very large short duration events is different than continuous demand -- Boston actually handles large crowds of Olympic scale quite frequently:

• Annually:
  • 500K for the Marathon -- single day
  • 500k to 750k for First Night -- single day
  • 500 k for 4th of July -- single day
  • 250k for the Head of the Charles -- 2 day
  • 3000K for Harbor Fest over 5 days period
• Occasional Sports Championships [9 in the past decade or so] which draw up to 1000K spectators for a few hours
• Occasional Tall ships [last big one in 2000] had over 7000k spectators over an essentially week duration

All of the above occur without a catastrophic breakdown of the City or the T

The Olympics is essentially two really busy days [Open and Close] with a fairly high level of attendance in the intervening two weeks [with some peaks and valleys]

will it be a challenge -- Yes -- is it doable -- Yes

By the way the Tall Ships are returning in 2017 -- 50 ships from 20+ countries with Boston the only US destination -- perhaps a good test run for the IOC

 

[stellarfun]

At the London Olympics, there were 8.8 million tickets sold. (London did not have golf. Boston assumes 50,000 at The Country Club for any day, and I believe the M/W competition is a total of eight days. Let's assume everyone drives a car to the club, hard to say where they'll park, but no matter.)

Assuming soccer elsewhere, assume 7 million tickets for Boston / MA venues.
16 days of competition, an average of 425-450,000 ticket holders every day.

To that add some percentage of the 70,000 volunteers that London had. Assume the media, the teams, Olympic officials etc., and all security personnel will not use public transit.

Lat's say that 350,000 ticket holders use public transit daily, and 25,000 volunteers use public transit daily. 375,000 x 2 = 750,000 Olympic-related passengers using the T daily over 16 days.

Assume non-Olympic subway, commuter rail, and green line ridership is half of a normal workday, or 430,000 riders. Assume that includes workers who would not typically take the T, but are told not to drive and park if they work in large areas of Boston.

So 750,000 Olympics related and 430,000 non-Olympics passengers daily is a daily ridership on heavy rail and light rail of 1.2 million.
_________________________________________________
London Rail ran 250 extra trains every day, on average.

 

[whighlander]

At the London Olympics, there were 8.8 million tickets sold. (London did not have golf. Boston assumes 50,000 at The Country Club for any day, and I believe the M/W competition is a total of eight days. Let's assume everyone drives a car to the club, hard to say where they'll park, but no matter.)

Assuming soccer elsewhere, assume 7 million tickets for Boston / MA venues.
16 days of competition, an average of 425-450,000 ticket holders every day.

To that add some percentage of the 70,000 volunteers that London had. Assume the media, the teams, Olympic officials etc., and all security personnel will not use public transit.

Lat's say that 350,000 ticket holders use public transit daily, and 25,000 volunteers use public transit daily. 375,000 x 2 = 750,000 Olympic-related passengers using the T daily over 16 days.

Assume non-Olympic subway, commuter rail, and green line ridership is half of a normal workday, or 430,000 riders. Assume that includes workers who would not typically take the T, but are not told not to drive and park if they work in large areas of Boston.

So 750,000 Olympics related and 430,000 non-Olympics passengers daily is a daily ridership on heavy rail and light rail of 1.2 million.
_________________________________________________
London Rail ran 250 extra trains every day, on average.

Stel -- there are going to be a lot of buses -- not trains

 

[FK4]

At the London Olympics, there were 8.8 million tickets sold. (London did not have golf. Boston assumes 50,000 at The Country Club for any day, and I believe the M/W competition is a total of eight days. Let's assume everyone drives a car to the club, hard to say where they'll park, but no matter.)

I don't know what the numbers were for the ryder cup but allandale farm became a huge parking lot for many cars. It's doable.

 

[stellarfun]

EGE -- I don't know where you get your theoretical capacity demand numbers since you seem to think that the Olympics is everywhere a full Gillette stadium all the time with one stadium transferring to another -- it doesn't work that way

The dynamics of very large short duration events is different than continuous demand -- Boston actually handles large crowds of Olympic scale quite frequently:

• Annually:
  • 500K for the Marathon -- single day
  • 500k to 750k for First Night -- single day
  • 500 k for 4th of July -- single day
  • 250k for the Head of the Charles -- 2 day
  • 3000K for Harbor Fest over 5 days period
• Occasional Sports Championships [9 in the past decade or so] which draw up to 1000K spectators for a few hours
• Occasional Tall ships [last big one in 2000] had over 7000k spectators over an essentially week duration

All of the above occur without a catastrophic breakdown of the City or the T

The Olympics is essentially two really busy days [Open and Close] with a fairly high level of attendance in the intervening two weeks [with some peaks and valleys]

will it be a challenge -- Yes -- is it doable -- Yes

You know little or nothing about an Olympics schedule. You might want to look at Wiki calendars for London or Rio.

On the Opening Ceremony day at London, there was one competitive event, archery. The reason they don't hold events on opening day is so the athletes can march and attend the ceremonies. So the lightest attendance day for the entire Olympics is the day of the Opening Ceremonies.

On the closing ceremony day in London, there are competitive events, including, you guessed it, the marathon. There were 15 medaled events on the last day, including the men's basketball final.
_______________________________________________
All those events (e.g., Boston Marathon) you cited were free (or largely so). The great majority of those attending were residents of Greater Boston, most of whom could access their viewing point without too much trouble. Most of the events were on holidays.

Crowd estimates of free events are typically inflated, often greatly so, by the event's sponsor. The London Olympics ticket count was a turnstile count.

 

[rinserepeat]

Boston assumes 50,000 at The Country Club for any day, and I believe the M/W competition is a total of eight days. Let's assume everyone drives a car to the club, hard to say where they'll park, but no matter.

It's a stop on the 51 bus - which goes between Forest Hills and Cleveland Circle. It's actually a fairly pleasant 30 minute walk from Cleveland Circle - and a fairly scenic 40 walk from Forest Hills (although lack of sidewalks from that direction makes this walk "interesting"). I'd assume they'd run shuttles from both locations, though. I'd also think that since Brookline is ramping up their bike network that this mode might also be feasible for a few people...

Haven't they also hosted some pretty major events there?

 

[Equilibria]

http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/b...mpics-plans-include-volleyball-in.html?page=2

Hosting these events in Western Mass. is a fine idea. Providing any infrastructure money whatever to get there is not. Shuttle buses on the Turnpike will work fine for getting whoever wants to watch out there, and tying the Olympics to High Speed Rail through the Berkshires is, frankly, delusional.

BDC just did an article about how the London 2012 Games blew up their budget (mostly due to much less realistic projections than Boston 2024 is using). This is how Boston will blow ours.

 

[bigeman312]

Yikes. Well, upgrades to allow high-speed rail between Springfield and Boston is a good idea at least, especially as part of a Boston-Chicago or Boston-Toronto priming. Double especially if it includes massively needed upgrades to the Worcester Line.

 

[MBTAddict]

http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/b...mpics-plans-include-volleyball-in.html?page=2

Hosting these events in Western Mass. is a fine idea. Providing any infrastructure money whatever to get there is not. Shuttle buses on the Turnpike will work fine for getting whoever wants to watch out there, and tying the Olympics to High Speed Rail through the Berkshires is, frankly, delusional.

BDC just did an article about how the London 2012 Games blew up their budget (mostly due to much less realistic projections than Boston 2024 is using). This is how Boston will blow ours.

Couldn't agree more. I love that Boston 2024 is pushing a walkable urban Olympics, and I hate that any legislator outside 495 is pushing a sprawling, disconnected Olympics.

 

[Equilibria]

Couldn't agree more. I love that Boston 2024 is pushing a walkable urban Olympics, and I hate that any legislator outside 495 is pushing a sprawling, disconnected Olympics.

You can hate that it's happening, but don't hate them for doing it. Advocating for their District is their job, the same way that turning them down is MassDOT's job.

 

[MBTAddict]

I understand that, but I think that bothers me is that they are advocating for things in their districts that would hugely balloon the cost, and I feel like when that cost balloons, they will then say "Nope, see, it's too expensive, we can't do it."

 

[George_Apley]

I understand that, but I think that bothers me is that they are advocating for things in their districts that would hugely balloon the cost, and I feel like when that cost balloons, they will then say "Nope, see, it's too expensive, we can't do it."

Yup. But what they really mean is "it's too expensive AND it doesn't help out my district any". It's one of the difficulties in any democracy. Human nature dictates that we don't want to spend a lot of our money on something that only we perceive only other people will benefit from.

There's not a lot of analysis going on behind that sentiment. It's gut instinct. It doesn't matter that there are way more people in Metro Boston than in the Pioneer Valley. Residents of the PV don't see any benefit to them if their tax dollars are going to fix up infrastructure in Metro Boston. Nevermind that the whole region is generally dependent on the economic success of Boston, and the economy of Boston will fail if it has poor public transit.

This doesn't even get into regional rivalries and bitterness. That dimension makes it even harder.

 

[datadyne007]

I've always been in favor of just chopping off Western MA and making it its own state. I forget it exists half the time. Let's see how well they do without Boston. Maybe we'll let them rejoin us if they admit to learning their lesson.

 

[393b40]

I've always been in favor of just chopping off Western MA and making it its own state. I forget it exists half the time. Let's see how well they do without Boston. Maybe we'll let them rejoin us if they admit to learning their lesson.

Are you me? I've been thinking about how that could be done recently. Voter referendum? Pretty much everything west of Worcester should be its own state.

 

[bigeman312]

Are you me? I've been thinking about how that could be done recently. Voter referendum? Pretty much everything west of Worcester should be its own state.

It would have to be passed by Congress, which is very unlikely to happen in today's age. I'm pretty certain that hasn't happened since the Civil War.

Also, can you imagine how tough the "regional bitterness" that we're talking about is in California? They are definitely on a list of states that could be partitioned, and is a better candidate than Mass.

 

[davem]

Give everything west of Worcester to CT, and then preemptively invade and take over RI (since they're coming for us anyway, right?) to make up for the land loss.

 

[Scalziand]

Cool, the Huskies could get another home basketball arena.

 

[West]

Anyone besides me remember the great moped dispute that led parts or all of Block Island to seek secession back in 1984? My grandmother was still alive then, and as a life-long Rhode Islander but not a Block Island resident, she was cheering them on. Just to see someone poke a finger into the state legislature's eye.

Very brief overview of the history of state secessions in US history:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_partition_proposals

Within that Wiki page, the part on Block Island is pretty meager, but if you google it you can find other articles with more depth. I remember it as the entire island trying to secede. And after MA and CT offered to take them in, VT also piped up ("hey, we're the only New England state without a seacoast, let's fix that!!"). And then rumor had it that Colorado said "hey, they could be East Colorado!!"

The RI legislature backed down in the end and allowed for local regulation of the stupid mopeds (worst vehicle concept in human history, IMHO, except maybe the Trabbi). My recollection is that the RI constitution actually allowed for secession much better than most state constitutions. And constitutional lawyers were opining that if another state were willing to take them in, it might not even need Congressional approval at the federal level - the US Constitution provides an express procedure for admitting new states, which is what happened when Maine split off from MA or West Virginia split from Virginia. But a patch of land seceding from one state to join another? The Constitution is mum on that concept, and where that document is mum on any given concept, the default assumption is that you can do it unless some state/local law prohibits it. And apparently the RI and MA (and CT, VT, CO, etc) laws don't prohibit it either.

Back on topic, splitting off Western MA will not fix all that ails the 2024 Olympics bid as it now stands. It might help a little bit, perhaps even more than a mere little bit.

 

[FK4]

I've always been in favor of just chopping off Western MA and making it its own state. I forget it exists half the time. Let's see how well they do without Boston. Maybe we'll let them rejoin us if they admit to learning their lesson.

I think Western Mass brings in a lot of tourist money. The biggest drag on the state is the central part... poor, high unemployment. They're the ones who really get forgotten here.