My reading of that number is that it includes everything involved in the double-tracking, except the new flying junction just north of Park St in Dorchester. That's a little bit of inference, though, so that could be incorrect.
Nonetheless, $40m + the cost of a new Red Line flying junction is a small price to pay to solve this major bottleneck.
I think that number was probably including the RL junction (which is acceptable if the impact to the RL is not severe). One section seemed to be talking about the need for station reconfiguration in Quincy, I thought as a prerequisite for double-tracking, which is what confuses me about whether that's included in the double-tracking $40 million or if that's part of the $50 million station work figure (not that that's necessarily a deal-breaker, just that I'd like to know what exactly we're talking about).
You're throwing out speculation as fact. You have no idea what ridership will be but would rather embark on a decades long re-review instead with no promise or even better odds that the Corps will reach a different conclusion! Okay for you, but not so much for the people needing the service, no?
As far as I know, you're the only one saying "decades-long re-review". I'm not unaware of how slow bureaucracy can move, but if you're going to claim that it's going to take
decades you should probably explain where that idea's coming from. The much-maligned Corps mangling of the Stoughton alignment was less than twenty years ago; that the state didn't bother to challenge that at the time or in the decade-plus since doesn't mean that a.) they
couldn't have, b.) that it would never have worked, or c.) that it would have taken multiple decades.
You previously complained about people talking about whether the South Coast "deserves" the service, now you turn around and talk about the people who need the service, almost as if their needs are the only ones in the state, and sounding as though there's no transportation options from the South Coast to Boston at all (the thread is replete with reference to buses, though their schedule and price competitiveness with CR is not something I'm in a position to assess). I have no objection to an argument based on "there's a need for transit" combined with "this is the best way to do it" combined with "this is an efficient use of transportation funding", but all three of those things require facts and evidence to bolster the arguments. Talking about it in a Simpsons-esque "oh won't someone please think of the people" way isn't an empirical argument, it's a political-emotional argument that essentially boils down to questions of who "deserves" what; and while that's a valid
political argument, it comes off as a bit rich from someone who literally complained about just that line of commentary.
Furthermore, the population served by this service has to be greater than running the train to the beginning of the Cape. The tracks don't go further than Hyannis maybe? Yet you want to prioritize their access to transit over the South Coast? Why exactly?
"The population served by" is not equal to "ridership". For one thing, the travel times are not equivalent, and given that Buzzards Bay (and potentially onwards to Hyannis) would be a single branch off the Old Colony main rather than two it would get twice the capacity that either Fall River or New Bedford could ever get on Phase II because of the split, meaning that the schedule has the potential to be
far more robust. It's anecdotal, I know, but I live close to a CR stop and an annoying-but-not-too-far distance from the Orange Line, and routinely (pre-Covid) took the Orange Line because its schedule was far more convenient, even though it was harder to access. So not only does design-induced poor scheduling make the service less convenient (and therefore dampens ridership), it's entirely possible for a lower-population area with better service to have higher ridership than a higher-population area with poor service.
The part that's driving me crazy about this is that
we don't have to choose! The only reason we have to weigh Buzzards Bay/Cape versus FR/NB (with some Middleborough collateral damage thrown in for good measure) is because the state went the lazy, cheapskate route that forced that choice. Build SCR via Stoughton like they were supposed to, rid of the stupid Corps cruft, and both Fall River and New Bedford
benefit from better schedules than they could ever get with Phase I,
and you don't screw over Buzzards Bay in the process.
I acknowledge that the state's failure to challenge the cruddy Corps decisions in the 2000s over the ensuing years means that we are unfortunately left in a situation where the South Coast would effectively be asked to wait a bit longer for transit in order to do it the right way. That's regrettable, and that's the fault of successive administrations. It does not, however, justify a born-flawed build that inherently screws over Buzzards Bay and the Cape, with a significant chance of killing Phase II stone dead (keeping the Buzzards problem around forever) if the ridership is a severe disappointment.
Finally you're argument about unlimited resources is the true strawman here so I will put it to you. Name me a project that impacts more people that is being delayed directly because of SCR? Not speculation, but in actual reality?
Stating the
fact that the state has limited resources to spend on transportation (indeed, on anything, given that states can't print their own money) isn't a strawman. I note with amusement your effort to change the argument to one that I wasn't making, but I didn't say anything about other, more impactful projects being delayed. My argument was about the efficient, effective, appropriate allocation of money to generate the most return on investment; doing SCR badly by building it in a way that makes it less useful than it could be while simultaneously screwing over the prospects of an unrelated proposal (Buzzards) is a bad use of money. All it does is get SCR built in a lesser fashion with a nice side dose of potentially killing both full-SCR and Buzzards/Cape. (Oh, and given that the data's not in a position to analyze, it's entirely possible that the Buzzards/Cape service which is directly being delayed would impact more people, because raw population isn't the number to go on here.)
If you want to argue that spending money on a poor-quality version of a project, just so it gets done sooner, damn the consequences, is what should be done, that it's the right move, by all means, argue it. Such arguments do have a tendency, however, to devolve into ones of who "deserves" what, which tends not to lend itself to empirical answers.
And you know this..... how? Elitist, much?
I imagine that such comments reflect that most people who can afford to live closer in to the core tend to do so. I can't speak to whether there's elitism in that, though I will say that I tend to doubt that there are huge numbers of high-demand, well-paid workers who
would live in FR/NB if only it had Commuter Rail service. That doesn't mean that workers won't use and benefit from the service, let alone that it shouldn't be built, but it is a generally-accurate reflection of how people tend to behave. (I for one don't think it's in itself elitist to note that people with the means to do so often behave in elitist ways.)
I'm not here to dunk on people, but over the years many of you were sure this project would never happen. You'll have to forgive me if I take your current predictions with a grain of salt...
That's fair enough. Speaking for myself, though I suspect some of the others here may share the sentiment, I for one didn't expect the state to agree to build something so inherently, stupidly, and needlessly flawed as Phase I. Don't get me wrong, I
hope that the ridership is excellent. But I can't bet on it, and I can't really say I approve of a project with this much collateral damage, especially when there's a very distinct possibility not that ridership is as projected (and even based on the projections the costs-per-rider are through the roof) but that it underperforms a-la Greenbush and takes Buzzards/Cape and Phase II with it, and leaves SCR itself the lowest-hanging fruit on the chopping block at the next CR budget crunch.
