Boston 2024

[Equilibria]

At some point, I hope the Globe finds an opponent more legit than Zimbalist. It's possible that he gave some details about why he's skeptical and the author just chose not to include them, but you need to do better than "They have their heads in the clouds" when the other side is giving you some - some - substance.

Other interesting things:

- Widett is fully confirmed in this article, no uncertainty anymore. That will be in the bid book.

- Tufts is identified for the first time as the aquatics center host, and it doesn't sound like they want assistance for it. Good use of GLX, though there are closer schools. Better to not pay for it, though.

It's worth noting that in the last 2 Olympics, aquatics was a very prominent set of events. Both London and Beijing built architecturally interesting buildings right next to the main stadium and village. I'm sure Tufts will build something nice, but there won't be a starchitect, and the other international bids will have one.

- Federally-funded security is a new wrinkle, as is the promise by Boston 2024 to indemnify the City against cost overruns.

- "Don't worry, once we get the US bid we'll talk to you all" is not an acceptable answer to the lack of public involvement, John.

 

[FK4]

Yeah, and how bout

However, those costs, Fish said, are already accounted for in the state’s long-term transportation strategy. The Olympic plan will be designed to take advantage of projects already approved in a $13 billion transportation bond bill, signed by Governor Deval Patrick in April, that includes rail expansion and new MBTA trains to replace creaky old cars on the Red and Orange lines.

“That money has already been allocated,” Fish said, though for Boston 2024 to meet its deadlines some of the projects may have to be accelerated.

Riiiight. That commuter rail to New Bedford is really gonna help get these athletes from A to B.

I'd just as soon not see the Olympics come to Boston, ever. But on the bright side, maybe if Harvard got invested it would build momentum for a Green Line North Allston to Harvard Sq extension.

 

[Equilibria]

Yeah, and how bout



Riiiight. That commuter rail to New Bedford is really gonna help get these athletes from A to B.

I'd just as soon not see the Olympics come to Boston, ever. But on the bright side, maybe if Harvard got invested it would build momentum for a Green Line North Allston to Harvard Sq extension.

He didn't say ALL of the projects, dude. He mentioned Red Line cars, and Tufts implies GLX. Other than that, they'll be using SSX and in all probability Red-to-Blue.

 

[FK4]

He didn't say ALL of the projects, dude. He mentioned Red Line cars, and Tufts implies GLX. Other than that, they'll be using SSX and in all probability Red-to-Blue.

I was being sarcastic. That money Patrick signed for may cover the GLX and the new OL and RL cars and that's about it for stuff useful to the Olympics. The GLX will get people to Tufts, assuming the aquatics center. That's it. Red-Blue isn't even on the horizon right now as far as the politicians are concerned.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

I just want to take a moment to remind everyone of a post made by John A Keith a month and a half ago.

Um. They had to shut down the Orange Line when the DNC came to town. What's to stop them from shutting all lines down when the Olympics come to town, thereby negating the need for any public transportation improvements?

Since that post has been made, we've learned of rumblings (unsubstantiated hearsay, of course) that the IOC considers Boston's reaction to the Watertown manhunt (which in fact included, IIRC, a full shutdown of the MBTA network) impressive and a strong point in "favor" of Boston. We know that the IOC is also known for demanding - by law - that a network of Olympics Lanes reserved for Olympics traffic only be created and enforced, as was done in London.

Frankly, Equilibria, to reference the post you made in response to the quoted post, I do believe that these people are Dickensian villains. Several of the demands they have made and continue to make of host cities are on the absurd and comical level of storybook villainy and I would not at all be surprised to find out that one or more among the IOC's number makes a past time out of tying damsels in distress to railroad tracks.

And as it turns out, the current system assuming state of good repair (i.e., fix what's busted but don't bother to expand anything) is more than capable of handling Olympics traffic if you also make the assumption that all other traffic is excluded from the system. That Red-Blue isn't on the radar and that the overwhelming majority of projects we could reasonably assume make up that $13B fall into the "maintenance" category (and the rest are much smoke and little fire projects like South Coast FAIL) and that as we draw closer to the release of the bid it becomes less and less likely that any projects not already on the docket are going to get added to it, it similarly in my mind becomes less and less likely that this fool's errand is going to deliver us one damn thing that we wouldn't have gotten done anyway on the transportation improvement front.

Even without the sort of active involvement by governments in suppressing activity because security, or, something, when the Olympics comes to town it has a way of grinding all activity in the city to a halt. Look at what happened to London. Imagine what will happen here with multiple levels of government taking an active role in "securing" the city.

I maintain that this is the worst thing to happen to the city in 200 years, and you can write me off as fear-mongering if you want to - but do consider that there's a strong interest in "securing" the city, Watertown-style, for the Olympics and it's not a tremendous logical leap to go from Olympics-only lanes to an Olympics-only rapid transit network.

Consider also that the hype machine is speaking out of both sides of its mouth here. It says this is good for getting our infrastructure up to top form, but makes a selling point out of the fact that the infrastructure improvement money is already allocated and its allocation has not a damn thing to do with the bid.

How do you reconcile the idea that we "need" the Olympics to get things done with the idea that this Olympics bid isn't going to advance many things (or anything, as it's starting to appear like) not already on the master plan for 2025~2030 anyway? That's a rhetorical question addressed to nobody in particular.

 

[Equilibria]

I just want to take a moment to remind everyone of a post made by John A Keith a month and a half ago.

That post was insane then, and it's insane now. You can believe all you want that the IOC are "Dickensian villains," but please bear in mind that they're often dealing with real storybook villains in the people who run the host cities. Russia, China, and Brazil are all run by governments that have trampled people and eagerly thrown money at the IOC. I know that you have no faith that Boston will behave differently than Putin, but that's silly.

As to the idea that the T will mostly carry Olympic traffic for three weeks, yes. That's pretty likely. I don't think anyone from Boston 2024 is arguing otherwise. The city will effectively shut down, as London, Sydney, Atlanta, and others before it did. Those cities did not crash their economies by doing so. The report about the IOC is fairly unsubstantiated, and referred to someone there being impressed with the security response to the bombings and manhunt, not with the State repressing its citizens' movements.

 

[Shepard]

To me this is the keg point made by CBS

Consider also that the hype machine is speaking out of both sides of its mouth here. It says this is good for getting our infrastructure up to top form, but makes a selling point out of the fact that the infrastructure improvement money is already allocated and its allocation has not a damn thing to do with the bid.

Major transit expansion - and I mean MAJOR transit expansion - is the only reason I would ever support this. Now they are saying "slightly expedited transit improvements" - so while they are promising little cost (debatable) they are also promising few real benefits (undeniable).

 

[Equilibria]

To me this is the keg point made by CBS



Major transit expansion - and I mean MAJOR transit expansion - is the only reason I would ever support this. Now they are saying "slightly expedited transit improvements" - so while they are promising little cost (debatable) they are also promising few real benefits (undeniable).

You have to remember, though, that the public costs are also tied directly to transit improvements - the billions that the State will spend are going entirely to SSX, GLX, etc. - The budgets of those projects make up the public contribution.

If Boston 2024 walks back from transit improvements, then they're also walking back from the "public boondoggle" so many people expect. At that point, we're having an argument about whether we should allow a $4.5 billion private investment to put on a sporting event for three weeks that would leave Tufts with a new pool, BC, BU, and Harvard with renovated athletics facilities, etc. If the stadium is at Widett, that's also going to spur a fair amount of private investment in that part of the South End and Southie around Broadway Station.

I don't think anyone ever promised the moon here - Fish has been saying all along that expediting and ensuring the completion of things like SSX is the infrastructure benefit of the project. Taking that as an example: if the Olympics drive Congress to force a settlement on USPS to allow the new tracks and development above them, is the revitalization of Fort Point Channel enough of a benefit to justify three weeks of traffic ten years from now? How about Red/Blue, which is just a public push by MGH away from being back on the table? How about investments in the Worcester Line to Allston (since that would be transit link between venue hubs at Columbia Point, Widett, and BU/Harvard)?

Other than Red/Blue, those things were in Patrick's plan - it's more than just SCR. The Olympics gives those projects a deadline and wakes politicians up to the new cost of endless procrastination.

When you start saying things like "they're offering little real benefit," that does get to the heart of the issue: I want this to happen because it's a chance for the city to do something special and profound. To me, it's worth three weeks of hassle for that to happen here. I don't want it to bankrupt the City, but I don't think it's going to, and I see things like SSX and Allston DMUs as benefits above and beyond the benefit of simply doing this here. Holding the Olympics in Boston is a benefit, not a cost that has to be paid off by building every dream MBTA extension ever.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

That post was insane then, and it's insane now. You can believe all you want that the IOC are "Dickensian villains," but please bear in mind that they're often dealing with real storybook villains in the people who run the host cities. Russia, China, and Brazil are all run by governments that have trampled people and eagerly thrown money at the IOC. I know that you have no faith that Boston will behave differently than Putin, but that's silly.

And I know that you believe that Norway, Japan, South Korea, Great Britain, Canada, France circa 2006, and Greece circa 2004 all join Russia and China and Brazil on that lofty pantheon of modern-day dictatorships, but that's every bit as silly.

The argument that the IOC behaves the way it does because they're "often" dealing with iron-fisted governments either falls apart or becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when you realize that they don't change their act at all no matter who is at the other end of the negotiating table. They have no real remorse for their character issues, because in spite of every single sane government opting out of 2022 for a variety of reasons the most they've bothered to change up their tune is make nods towards more fiscally "reasonable" Olympics. They haven't done a damn thing to backpedal away from this list, which are just some of the comically absurd demands I was referring to.

If anyone has "no faith" that Boston would behave differently than Russia, it's not me - it's the IOC. But it's far more likely that they're not doing this because they need to keep Putin or Rousseff or Xi Jinping in line, rather, they're doing this because they don't give a shit about their image in the eyes of 'regular people.'

As to the idea that the T will mostly carry Olympic traffic for three weeks, yes. That's pretty likely. I don't think anyone from Boston 2024 is arguing otherwise. The city will effectively shut down, as London, Sydney, Atlanta, and others before it did. Those cities did not crash their economies by doing so.

So, again, we're right back at the rhetorical question. If this doesn't buy us any investment into the infrastructure that wasn't going to happen anyway and if the city is just shut down (and a large portion of its renting citizenship tossed out on their ass by landlords looking to cash in on short-term Olympics rentals, but that's a separate problem) to make room for the Olympics and if we come out of this thing on the other side with one or two new athletics facilities for the universities, one Olympics Village worth of new housing (read that as "not substantial") that might have happened anyway based on how much new build is happening, three weeks worth of lost productivity/economic opportunity cost, and vague promises that John Fish is going to back up the truck so that the effect of all this on public coffers is neutral...

Then what's the point? Why do this? Because we have something to prove to the world? Some misguided sense of martyrdom, wanting to save somewhere else the pain of having to swallow this thing? Perhaps even because we're so desperate and hopeless and cynical that we feel there's no possible way even something as simple as replacing our dated subway rolling stock can happen without the pressure of an international event?

I'm not sorry to say that each of those is a more pathetic reason to accept Boston 2024 than the last one. The bid has already gone to great pains to insist that it's walking away from what is in my mind the only valid reason to host the Olympics, that being, to get the "impossible," high-impact statement projects like full electrification on top of the North-South Rail Link done right now.

The report about the IOC is fairly unsubstantiated, and referred to someone there being impressed with the security response to the bombings and manhunt, not with the State repressing its citizens' movements.

Those two things are absolutely synonymous when the security response features a total public transportation shutdown and "strongly suggested" shelter-in-place/stay-away orders. Were there roadblocks in place on that Friday morning? I, of course, wasn't about to drive all the way up to Boston just to find out, so maybe someone else who was here at the time can let us know. I can't imagine that there weren't.

 

[underground]

Personally, of all the arguments against the Olympics, I find the tin foil hat security conspiracy theories the least persuasive. Kudos to CBS for not dropping another "this is the last time I post in this thread" though.

it's not a tremendous logical leap to go from Olympics-only lanes to an Olympics-only rapid transit network.

Right...

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

Personally, of all the arguments against the Olympics, I find the tin foil hat security conspiracy theories the least persuasive. Especially when they're packaged with some manufactured outrage about how our civil liberties were "trampled" post Marathon bombing.

And thinking they'll shut down the T is just not dealing with reality. They need the T for the Olympics, so we invest in the T, so that people can move from venue to venue, and then they'll shut it down? Because that's ever happened ever? Seriously, please come back to planet earth.

Shutting down the T won't happen. Restricting T use to Olympics travel only on the other hand is quite likely, as the IOC has made quite the habit of demanding that things have all non-Olympics purposes excluded!

Besides, that's only a sidebar to the important thrust of the argument I'm making here - which is that there is no real reason to do this if the entire bid is getting formed up around the idea of minimal lasting impact, as Shepard said.

Zeitgeist and world-classiness in my mind do not constitute valid reasons to engage in what is now being sold as a three-week distraction nicely packaged and wrapped up mostly in things that all would've happened anyway - like the transportation improvements that we shouldn't worry about finding money for because all the money was allocated for reasons entirely unrelated to a bid.

 

[underground]

Restricting T use to Olympics travel only on the other hand is quite likely, as the IOC has made quite the habit of demanding that things have all non-Olympics purposes excluded!

A) Citations please
B) This is a complete slippery slope logical fallacy. Do you think the Olympics will be adding six rings to their logo because they already have 5? Following your logic, they must.

 

[Equilibria]

The argument that the IOC behaves the way it does because they're "often" dealing with iron-fisted governments either falls apart or becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when you realize that they don't change their act at all no matter who is at the other end of the negotiating table. They have no real remorse for their character issues, because in spite of every single sane government opting out of 2022 for a variety of reasons the most they've bothered to change up their tune is make nods towards more fiscally "reasonable" Olympics. They haven't done a damn thing to backpedal away from this list, which are just some of the comically absurd demands I was referring to.

Yes they have. Firs off, the last 4 Olympics to be held in North America - Vancouver, Atlanta, Salt Lake City, and Los Angeles - are considered to be some of the most fiscally responsible ever put on. The IOC now has documentation identifying lower-cost bids as a priority in light of the 2022 problem: http://www.usatoday.com/story/sport...to-joint-bids-and-new-sports-events/19209485/.

The environment right now is not dissimilar to what it was when Los Angeles hosted the most successful Olympics ever. The IOC is embarrassed and looking to prove to future hosts that not every Games in the 21st Century will be a debacle. US hosts have provided that opportunity in the past due to the massive private financial resources and existing athletic infrastructure in American cities.

If this doesn't buy us any investment into the infrastructure that wasn't going to happen anyway and if the city is just shut down (and a large portion of its renting citizenship tossed out on their ass by landlords looking to cash in on short-term Olympics rentals, but that's a separate problem) to make room for the Olympics and if we come out of this thing on the other side with one or two new athletics facilities for the universities, one Olympics Village worth of new housing (read that as "not substantial") that might have happened anyway based on how much new build is happening, three weeks worth of lost productivity/economic opportunity cost, and vague promises that John Fish is going to back up the truck so that the effect of all this on public coffers is neutral...

The benefit to infrastructure is that the damn projects happen. That's the benefit. Without the Olympics, you get SSX in 2035. With them, it's done in 2024. That's the political reality of that project, particularly with its champion out of office in January and replaced by a Republican who is surely going to want to walk back his policies.

Thanks for reminding me about the Olympic Village, because I forgot to list the fact that UMass Boston gets a residential campus out of this deal. It's not "not substantial new housing," it's dormitory space for an aggressively-expanding public university that provides low-cost higher education to city residents.

The reason we do this is because we aren't closed-minded enough to put less than a month of hassle ten years down the road ahead of doing something historic. Cancel the Marathon, if that's your attitude - it ties up traffic for a full day - A FULL DAY - every year. Why do we need rolling rallies for our sports teams? They just close down roads and tie up the T! Heck, why have the Red Sox at all? It just slams the Green Line in the evenings when I'm trying to get home!

Shutting down the T won't happen. Restricting T use to Olympics travel only on the other hand is quite likely, as the IOC has made quite the habit of demanding that things have all non-Olympics purposes excluded!

They have a well-documented demand that a lane be reserved on roads between venues for Olympic travel. They have absolutely no record of demanding reserved transit, and given the crowds involved they would be idiots to ever add one.

 

[underground]

I can't believe a person in Massachusetts could happily say "but it'll happen eventually anyway". Right, all those long promised and desperately needed projects that have been on tap for decades are right around the corner!

 

[Arlington]

CBS must keep in mind that the games will be in August...when T ridership is already typically ~9% (110,000 rides *per day*) below the April/May peak.

see page 9 in these reports:
MBTA Nov 2014 Scorecard
MBTA Nov 2013 Scorecard

10% may not sound like much, but congestion/crowding work like the "straw that broke the camel's back"...its the last percent that congests a system.

And in in 2004, another 370,000 trips stayed home for the Dem Convention:

[For the 2004 Democratic] convention [in Boston] enough [commuters] decided to stay home that the threatened traffic jams never materialized. As some businesses closed or revised their work schedules, a large number of commuters adjusted by either telecommuting or taking summer vacations. Tourists likewise stayed away in large numbers. Based on the traffic and train station counts from our previous studies, we estimate that approximately 575,000 people commute into Boston each day. Based on these assumptions we estimate that Boston lost approximately $7.5 million in commuter spending during the four days of the convention.

That's 184,000 workers who telecommuted or took vacation, reducing demand on the system by at least 370,000 trips per day.

Between regular vacation and special commuting/vacation patterns, something like 500,000 commuter trips "won't happen" during the Olympics.

Now, many of those people will come "right back" into the system as spectators...but that's the point...they won't congest the system as both workers *and* spectators *simultaneously*. These uses "take turns". They do not all crush the system at once.

And then when that 500,000 (or million) trips come back as Olympic trips, they are NOT on a 9-to-5 schedule! Travelling to events in disparate locations and times, they spread themselves out throughout the day and across the metro area, filling seats that'd usually go empty at midday, and seats that'd go empty in the "backhaul" direction (spectators "going out" to Tufts for swimming...even if they did so at rush hour...would do so in what is the "empty back-haul" of the "commuter" system)

Atlanta's bus system failed because it was before the GPS-and-live-traffic era--under-trained drivers didn't know their routes and got lost.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

Yes they have. Firs off, the last 4 Olympics to be held in North America - Vancouver, Atlanta, Salt Lake City, and Los Angeles - are considered to be some of the most fiscally responsible ever put on. The IOC now has documentation identifying lower-cost bids as a priority in light of the 2022 problem: http://www.usatoday.com/story/sport...to-joint-bids-and-new-sports-events/19209485/.

The environment right now is not dissimilar to what it was when Los Angeles hosted the most successful Olympics ever. The IOC is embarrassed and looking to prove to future hosts that not every Games in the 21st Century will be a debacle. US hosts have provided that opportunity in the past due to the massive private financial resources and existing athletic infrastructure in American cities.

Five, because Vancouver hosted the Winter Olympics twice (2010 and 2002.)

Again, the move towards fiscal rationality - which I did acknowledge in the post you quoted - didn't carry with it any real attempt to distance themselves from their questionable character/behaviors. But that's a sidebar to the main argument I'm trying to make so let's just move on from it.

The benefit to infrastructure is that the damn projects happen. That's the benefit. Without the Olympics, you get SSX in 2035. With them, it's done in 2024. That's the political reality of that project, particularly with its champion out of office in January and replaced by a Republican who is surely going to want to walk back his policies.

First of all, the technical reality of the situation here is that something has to happen a lot sooner than 2035 because South Station is very quickly nearing capacity.

But I asked this question of you before and didn't really get a satisfactory answer, so I'll ask it of you again. Let's follow this line of thought to its logical conclusion and assume that indeed, no project can get done quickly without the massive pressure of something like the Olympics, and by doing the Olympics, we expedite SSX and GLX and Red-Blue and the fleet replacement (and maybe CBTC) so that it's all done in 9.5 years instead of 20.

What happens when the new list of must-build-eventually transportation projects begins growing? By this same line of thinking that says nothing gets done without the Olympics, anything left off the bid - like Blue to Lynn or Orange extension in both directions - is doomed to years of political horse-trading and general inaction even once we reach the point where its need is simply undeniable. What then? Do we wait for our shot at the second Boston Olympics or some other event on that scale? That's not at all sustainable.

Rather than waste time on an Olympics bid because of some misguided sense that this is the only way to get these things done quickly, I'd like to see the city and its leaders - from the politicians to the business owners and all the way on down the line - focus on solving the gridlock instead. Because whether or not it turns out we do need the Olympics pressure to come together and solve our problems, we should not have to need them.

Thanks for reminding me about the Olympic Village, because I forgot to list the fact that UMass Boston gets a residential campus out of this deal. It's not "not substantial new housing," it's dormitory space for an aggressively-expanding public university that provides low-cost higher education to city residents.

See above. UMass Boston is going to have to build something comparable if it continues expanding eventually anyway.

Of course, there is a sizable subset of the population who would like to see the growth of UMass Boston slowed or stopped - but this is not the town/gown relations argument thread, it's the Olympics one, so let's move on.

The reason we do this is because we aren't closed-minded enough to put less than a month of hassle ten years down the road ahead of doing something historic. Cancel the Marathon, if that's your attitude - it ties up traffic for a full day - A FULL DAY - every year. Why do we need rolling rallies for our sports teams? They just close down roads and tie up the T! Heck, why have the Red Sox at all? It just slams the Green Line in the evenings when I'm trying to get home!

The Marathon is a long-standing and accepted part of Boston history and culture and also falls on what I believe is a recognized Massachusetts state holiday. It's not comparable to a full-city effective shutdown for the three-week Olympics party.

And even though I am indeed a fan of sports, I'm a bigger fan of not getting edged out of Green Line cars because there's no room left between all the people heading to Fenway. That having been said, Fenway game day traffic is a symptom of our incredibly fragile mass transit infrastructure that can barely handle its regular loads - the subways in the Bronx don't get slammed nearly as badly as the Green Line does for Yankees games, and Metro in DC somehow handles Nats games just fine. Solve the Green Line capacity's crisis and you go from "slammed" to "very very busy" and that makes a world of difference, as Arlington touched upon.

 

[underground]

What happens when the new list of must-build-eventually transportation projects begins growing? By this same line of thinking that says nothing gets done without the Olympics, anything left off the bid - like Blue to Lynn or Orange extension in both directions - is doomed to years of political horse-trading and general inaction even once we reach the point where its need is simply undeniable. What then? Do we wait for our shot at the second Boston Olympics or some other event on that scale? That's not at all sustainable.

This might be the most over the top slippery slope logical fallacy I've ever heard. We'd need another Olympics because we used one Olympics to finish the first batch of projects? How does that argument makes sense? So because Tip O'Neil got us the Big Dig, we can only have major projects with Tip O'Neil, and since Tip O'Neil's dead, we won't have any more projects. That's the logic your using here.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

This might be the most over the top slippery slope logical fallacy I've ever heard. We'd need another Olympics because we used one Olympics to finish the first batch of projects? How does that argument makes sense? So because Tip O'Neil got us the Big Dig, we can only have major projects with Tip O'Neil, and since Tip O'Neil's dead, we won't have any more projects. That's the logic your using here.

It's the exact same logical fallacy that's in play when statements like "the political reality is that the difference between SSX opening in 2035 or before 2024 is whether or not we get the Olympics." It's patently untrue. The system can't survive another 10 years of inaction before we even start talking design-build. Not at South Station. Not for Red-Blue. Not for signal modernization (and that one might not even be on this list, I need to double check.) Because the system can't survive another 10 years of inaction, the pressure will begin mounting as the delays get worse and more immediate economic harm is done to the city through the direct effects of lost time and the indirect effects of people who have a choice choosing differently.

Something has to give.

That's my point. The argument that we need the Olympics to get anything done doesn't hold water.

 

[Arlington]

The system can't survive another 10 years of inaction before we even start talking design-build.

You say things like this too much. There is no "voice of 'the system'". There is only the political culture that oversees it. And inaction mostly suits them just fine. The Olympics would change the culture of inaction.

 

[underground]

It's the exact same logical fallacy that's in play when statements like "the political reality is that the difference between SSX opening in 2035 or before 2024 is whether or not we get the Olympics." It's patently untrue.

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.

The argument that we need the Olympics to get anything done doesn't hold water.

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?