Commuter Rail to New Hampshire?

[jklo]

GLX is the only one completed in the past 40(!) years.

And that only happened because the Landlords demanded it so they could justify jacking up rents.

The whole point of NH is cheaper SFH (and the border towns are not cheap at all anymore); and if (when) we have a recession and they can't WFH anymore they aren't going to clamor for rail. They'll be moving to some other part of the country.

 

[ant8904]

And that only happened because the Landlords demanded it so they could justify jacking up rents.

No, that's wasn't how it happened. We were all here, including you, following along GLX's. Do you not remember how much it kicking and screaming to make GLX start? Do you forget the years of lawsuits, how long it was footdrag to actually start, how it still almost died except the board voted to value engineer it instead. Do you remember chatting in that thread as we watch Stephanie Pollack, same woman who her younger self pushed to make it a legal mandate, tried to get the board to cancel the project? I still remember watching that livestream and chatting in the GLX with others here.

GLX barely happened. The people who made it happened was the people behind the Conservation Law Foundation and Somerville/Cambridge. And when it almost died anyways, Somerville and Cambridge offered money to cover some of the costs directly. You could then double down saying it was the landlords behind it, but that kinda flies against the general implied depiction of landlords' level of political influence. Barely cobbling enough influence and political capital rather than getting enthusiastic support isn't the common assumption of landlord's political influence.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

I think the difference between the projects is that almost everyone who lives near the path of the Orange Line WANT that extension. It's just a matter of getting the money and the political will to get it done.

For commuter rail to Nashua, I'm willing to bet the opposition is considerably stronger as NH has proven that they are not train-friendly.

Polling in New Hampshire for commuter rail has consistently run strongly in favor. It's their broken zoo of a short attention-span Legislature and super-gerrymandered Executive Council that can't get through one single election cycle without contradicting themselves on transpo policy, and the relatively power-limited governors don't end up sticking their necks out very far for much of anything lest the Council gets its revenge on them. Public support being in favor is why the zealots controlling the state government keep trying to pass poison-pill measures to prevent transit from ever being built. It's a totally fear-based tribal ideological reaction, and it literally wouldn't be this extreme if they weren't at some significant level intimidated by the consistent positive public polling. The public wants them to spend money and raise money for this; the kool-aid these politicians drank tells them not to spend money--and definitely not raise money--on anything ever.

NH is a failed state, not a failed populace. Which is why City of Nashua trying to broker with Massachusetts on a go-it-alone effort might actually be the only way they can get this done; they're bypassing their own hopelessly dysfunctional state.

 

[jklo]

Polling in New Hampshire for commuter rail has consistently run strongly in favor.

Because the voters in Nashua like the idea of it but have no idea how long it is or how expensive it'd be. The rest of the state would likely be against it, esp if they found out the costs and would be totally fine with driving to a CR stop if they wanted to use it for some reason.

What would help NH would be an abundance of good high quality jobs at home. But unless there's some reason to think employers would start favoring older workers, there's little reason for that to happen.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Because the voters in Nashua like the idea of it but have no idea how long it is or how expensive it'd be.

Yes, they do. It's been studied ad nauseam. The costs and schedules are very much known-known.

The rest of the state would likely be against it, esp if they found out the costs and would be totally fine with driving to a CR stop if they wanted to use it for some reason.

Which is contradicted by every bit of polling for the last 20 years that shows broad support.


Jesus, your usual hottake trolling shtick is coming up extra-lame this week.

 

[aquaticko]

As a recipient of the extremely temporary favor of the gods which created conditions for New Hampshire, as it is, to exist, I can say with total certainty: New Hampshire is/was a bait-and-switch of a state existent solely upon the failure of Mass to build enough housing. You had cheap real estate in the 70s-90s luring people over the border to raise their kids more affordably; you have expensive education facing those same people, now and for the past three decades. "Come here for cheaper living", while providing almost zero job opportunities that didn't piggyback on Boston's inherent strengths.

Now that it's been "built out" to the extent that very generous single-family zoning allows, there is no path forward for the state that doesn't ultimately rely on even greater dependency on Greater Boston. The passion with which the commuter rail there is resisted is proportionate to the extent to which NH pols know that this is the case. New Hampshire is, for all intents and purposes, a parasite state to Massachusetts' policy failures. As soon as those are fixed--far more than Vermont or Maine--I don't know why anyone would live there, said in all deference to my own nostalgia for it.