General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

[datadyne007]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Boston Globe: Credit, debit machines shut down at MBTA subway stops



Wow. Talk about a major deterrent for anyone trying to patronize Friday night service, including college students who might be going out on the town for the first time.

Definitely bad timing for a credit processing outage. They came back online around 1am according to a Tweet from the T and are active for today.

 

[CantabAmager]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Pollack is starting to make waves about transit taxes. Globe is running two articles today about "value capture".
Here's the first one, a Leung column

And here's the second, more informative piece from Tim Logan
(as always, don't read the comments if you don't want to spend the day pissed off and cynical)


I'm glad this is finally getting some play - it's 20 years too late - but, hey, I'll take it. Pollack makes a good point that new builds traditionally subsidize roadway improvements - and they do so according to ITE trip generation manuals which have a checkered history (from what I understand) in severely overestimating induced car trips for new builds. Would appear the levies that Sec. Pollack is asking for are not on a scale that can seriously abet expansion - and the model offered by Wynn is an operating subsidy, not capital transfer - but if those millions can be employed for a beefed up preventative maintenance (and/or accelerated maintenance) regime, they'll pay back their weight gold and then some.

 

[bigeman312]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Pro: transit funding!

Con: disincentive to transit-oriented development!

I have no magic wand solution, and I am gung-ho about the need for transit funding, but it is important to recognize what types of activities our society inentivizes and what activities are financially discouraged. This proposed tax seems only to apply to those whose businesses are transit oriented. On one hand, they are the ones benefiting most from transit! On the other hand, we should be encouraging transit-oriented activity, and this would be another cost-related barrier-to-entry for a company (like mine) to move from Waltham to Cambridge - a move that any urban planner would embrace as positive.

EDIT: spelling

 

[JeffDowntown]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Pro: transit funding!

Con: disincentive to transit-oriented development!

I have no magic wand solution, and I am gung-ho about the need for transit funding, but it is important to recognize what types of activities our society inentivizes and what activities are financially discouraged. This proposed tax seems only to apply to those whose businesses are transit oriented. On one hand, they are the ones benefiting most from transit! On the other hand, we should be encouraging transit-oriented activity, and this would be another cost-related barrier-to-entry for a company (like mine) to move from Waltham to Cambridge - a move that any urban planner would embrace as positive.

EDIT: spelling

So there is some really flawed logic in only taxing the transit oriented development, as though they are the only ones benefiting from the transit.

Yes, a development at a transit node benefits from the transit node being there. But take the Kendall example sited in the Globe. Sure the businesses there benefit from transit being available. But so does ever automobile commuter coming to that location, because all those people on transit are not competing for road space with the single driver cars. So transit has improved the commute of every single driver coming into Kendall.

So perhaps, rather than taxing the transit oriented businesses, we should be taxing the parking that is close to central transit nodes (not terminal nodes that collect distant drivers for transit transfer)... since those drivers got a huge benefit.

 

[bigeman312]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

^This is exactly the type of discussion we need. Too often taxes are levied (for noble causes like transit funding) without any thought as to what behavior it incentivizes or discourages. The only consideration was, "what can raise money and what can be justifiably sold to the public." I understand that this is necessary, but I demand more. We should be mindful of discouraging good development. This tax would discourage transit-oriented development.

 

[Arlington]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Pro: transit funding!
Con: disincentive to transit-oriented development!

If it results in more transit being built faster, it is also good for TOD, despite individual property owners not getting quite the gratuitous shower of wealth they feel they're entitled to because they were "smart" in anticipating where transit might go.

 

[bigeman312]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

If it results in more transit being built faster, it is also good for TOD, despite individual property owners not getting quite the gratuitous shower of wealth they feel they're entitled to because they were "smart" in anticipating where transit might go.

C'mon Arlington. We both know you're smart enough to post a more nuanced take. It is a good thing if building big, dense, urban developments next to transit is profitable. Playing victim against a big, bad developer and demanding their bottom line's be hurt, only discourages TOD.

And you and I both know: transit and TOD need to both happen. If we discourage dense TOD, transit can not effectively serve the suburbia we would be left with. In the absence of good transit, TOD will not be effectively served. So yes, you need both. To blindly hurt one in the name of the other is foolish.

The goal should always be to make it profitable to build "good" developments. We've had many agreements on here. We both see "good" development as urban, transit-oriented, dense, walkable, yadda yadda yadda. Yes, that means some people might be showered with wealth by building the developments that we. want. to. see.

 

[JeffDowntown]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

C'mon Arlington. We both know you're smart enough to post a more nuanced take. It is a good thing if building big, dense, urban developments next to transit is profitable. Playing victim against a big, bad developer and demanding their bottom line's be hurt, only discourages TOD.

And you and I both know: transit and TOD need to both happen. If we discourage dense TOD, transit can not effectively serve the suburbia we would be left with. In the absence of good transit, TOD will not be effectively served. So yes, you need both. To blindly hurt one in the name of the other is foolish.

The goal should always be to make it profitable to build "good" developments. We've had many agreements on here. We both see "good" development as urban, transit-oriented, dense, walkable, yadda yadda yadda. Yes, that means some people might be showered with wealth by building the developments that we. want. to. see.

One area that is a great example of adverse consequences would be transit oriented affordable or mid-market housing. The economics are marginal at best in Boston as it is, tax it for transit subsidies and none of it will get built.

 

[Arlington]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

So recapture the transit costs through a Land Value Tax (taxing solely the value of the land, not improvements).

Tax the land at high rate designed to recover the value that transit adds to "location, location, location" while at the same time taxing improvements within the TOD TIF district at a lower rate (imagine near-zero or at least much better than non-transit-accessible real estate's rate).

Taxing land also discourages hoarding of parcels as empty parking lots (and discourages surface parking, generally).

Meanwhile, you are picturing a conventional Property Tax on the whole value of property. You are correct that Property Taxes discourage improvements like TOD and actively encourages disinvestment (knockingn buildings down) and the games that Don Chiofaro is playing with his Aquarium parking garage--he can afford to keep it as a garage (a transit-accessible garage!) because as a crappy old thing its taxes are low even as it throws off abundant cash. Tax the Land (call it the Aquarium TOD TIF district) and shift the burden to the land but dangle low taxes on a tower and suddenly he's motivated to tear down the garage and build a tower to ease the bite of the tax on his land.

Left with surface parking or just scruffy single-level stuff, owners realize that the Land Value Tax is proportionately too high a % of what they have invested. Their solution is to average down by shifting new-construction/renovation dollars to the parcel, the more the better since it it tax-advantaged and averages them down further. (or to sell to a developer)

There is also a SERIOUS flaw in the Seaport where we basically got all the "TOD" but the McCourt family pocketed ~$200m dollars *for just holding 25 acres of land* (not being the eventual developer) That value was created by our transport spending (Silver and Big Dig), not by any work the McCourts ever did (in fact, they held it as surface parking for perhaps longer than they should have, as they were waiting for a bigger future payoff...a split rate tax discourages this kind of land hoarding and encourages immediate & larger improvement)

Worse, the Seaport will strangle on its traffic and lose its TOD bias because we don't have the money to upgrade the Silver Line (larger fleet, T-under-D), and all the Land-Value upside created State investment has disappeared into either private hands or into the Boston City general fund (where it loses its "pay it forward" dynamic)

 

[whighlander]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

So recapture the transit costs through a Land Value Tax (taxing solely the value of the land, not improvements).

Tax the land at high rate designed to recover the value that transit adds to "location, location, location" while at the same time taxing improvements within the TOD TIF district at a lower rate (imagine near-zero or at least much better than non-transit-accessible real estate's rate).

Taxing land also discourages hoarding of parcels as empty parking lots (and discourages surface parking, generally).

Meanwhile, you are picturing a conventional Property Tax on the whole value of property. You are correct that Property Taxes discourage improvements like TOD and actively encourages disinvestment (knockingn buildings down) and the games that Don Chiofaro is playing with his Aquarium parking garage--he can afford to keep it as a garage (a transit-accessible garage!) because as a crappy old thing its taxes are low even as it throws off abundant cash. Tax the Land (call it the Aquarium TOD TIF district) and shift the burden to the land but dangle low taxes on a tower and suddenly he's motivated to tear down the garage and build a tower to ease the bite of the tax on his land.

Left with surface parking or just scruffy single-level stuff, owners realize that the Land Value Tax is proportionately too high a % of what they have invested. Their solution is to average down by shifting new-construction/renovation dollars to the parcel, the more the better since it it tax-advantaged and averages them down further. (or to sell to a developer)

There is also a SERIOUS flaw in the Seaport where we basically got all the "TOD" but the McCourt family pocketed ~$200m dollars *for just holding 25 acres of land* (not being the eventual developer) That value was created by our transport spending (Silver and Big Dig), not by any work the McCourts ever did (in fact, they held it as surface parking for perhaps longer than they should have, as they were waiting for a bigger future payoff...a split rate tax discourages this kind of land hoarding and encourages immediate & larger improvement)

Worse, the Seaport will strangle on its traffic and lose its TOD bias because we don't have the money to upgrade the Silver Line (larger fleet, T-under-D), and all the Land-Value upside created State investment has disappeared into either private hands or into the Boston City general fund (where it loses its "pay it forward" dynamic)

So who get's taxed for Massport's Enormous investment in Logan?

Arlington, any kind of complex opaque tax policy encourages work/run arounds and mostly benefits those who have a lot of capital and screws the small businesses unable to afford the consultants, lawyers, Big-X accountants, lobbyists and such who manage the maneuvering

If you want efficient utilization of resources {e.g. land} keep taxes low and simple

PS: the single most important real estate asset of the Seaport / Innovation District -- I-90 offering a one seat 5 minute ride to Logan

 

[bigeman312]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

So recapture the transit costs through a Land Value Tax (taxing solely the value of the land, not improvements).

Tax the land at high rate designed to recover the value that transit adds to "location, location, location" while at the same time taxing improvements within the TOD TIF district at a lower rate (imagine near-zero or at least much better than non-transit-accessible real estate's rate).

Taxing land also discourages hoarding of parcels as empty parking lots (and discourages surface parking, generally).

Meanwhile, you are picturing a conventional Property Tax on the whole value of property. You are correct that Property Taxes discourage improvements like TOD and actively encourages disinvestment (knockingn buildings down) and the games that Don Chiofaro is playing with his Aquarium parking garage--he can afford to keep it as a garage (a transit-accessible garage!) because as a crappy old thing its taxes are low even as it throws off abundant cash. Tax the Land (call it the Aquarium TOD TIF district) and shift the burden to the land but dangle low taxes on a tower and suddenly he's motivated to tear down the garage and build a tower to ease the bite of the tax on his land.

Left with surface parking or just scruffy single-level stuff, owners realize that the Land Value Tax is proportionately too high a % of what they have invested. Their solution is to average down by shifting new-construction/renovation dollars to the parcel, the more the better since it it tax-advantaged and averages them down further. (or to sell to a developer)

There is also a SERIOUS flaw in the Seaport where we basically got all the "TOD" but the McCourt family pocketed ~$200m dollars *for just holding 25 acres of land* (not being the eventual developer) That value was created by our transport spending (Silver and Big Dig), not by any work the McCourts ever did (in fact, they held it as surface parking for perhaps longer than they should have, as they were waiting for a bigger future payoff...a split rate tax discourages this kind of land hoarding and encourages immediate & larger improvement)

Worse, the Seaport will strangle on its traffic and lose its TOD bias because we don't have the money to upgrade the Silver Line (larger fleet, T-under-D), and all the Land-Value upside created State investment has disappeared into either private hands or into the Boston City general fund (where it loses its "pay it forward" dynamic)

This.

 

[cbrett]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

So who get's taxed for Massport's Enormous investment in Logan?

Arlington, any kind of complex opaque tax policy encourages work/run arounds and mostly benefits those who have a lot of capital and screws the small businesses unable to afford the consultants, lawyers, Big-X accountants, lobbyists and such who manage the maneuvering

If you want efficient utilization of resources {e.g. land} keep taxes low and simple

PS: the single most important real estate asset of the Seaport / Innovation District -- I-90 offering a one seat 5 minute ride to Logan

While the danger of pricing out small businesses is an issue and could be considered a type of gentrification, you can't say with a straight face that someone who owns land in downtown Boston is a member of this group. Focus the land tax in key areas throughout the city which are benefiting from improved transit (Seaport, Wynn, Aquarium, etc.) to encourage the " the consultants, lawyers, Big-X accountants, lobbyists " to pitch in their fare share. If you're so worried about Mom and Pop being screwed over here, then why not price the land tax exponentially? The owners of a small triple-decker or convenience store will own much less land than the much larger lots of major corporations who aren't chipping in their fair share of the transit load. Moreover, taxing based on land size would encourage increased density and mixed use through redevelopments taking advantage of this premium on land.

Edit: Forgot to ask how the low taxes enabling parking lots and garages can be considered the most efficient utilization of land. If anything, keeping a property tax encourages the least efficient use of space, as the most economically feasible developments are those which cost the least to construct rather than those which best utilize space.

 

[CantabAmager]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Article (copied in full) from Bloomberg that I just got around to digging out - it deals mostly with the 2nd Ave subway, but is just so annoying apposite to our current situation vis-a-vis GLX, and the MBTA in general (also featuring an appearance by everyone's favorite Big Dig consultants, Parsons Brinckerhoff)

U.S. Taxpayers Are Gouged on Mass Transit Costs

By Stephen Smith
Aug. 27 (Bloomberg) -- If the first segment of Manhattan’s Second Avenue subway opens on schedule in 2016, New Yorkers will be reminded that it was once “the line that time forgot” -- a project more than 75 years in the making, with no end in sight. It should be remembered for another failing as well: It will be one of the most expensive subways in the world.

Tunneling in any dense urban environment is an expensive proposition, but the $5 billion price tag for just the first two miles of the Second Avenue subway cannot be explained by engineering difficulties. The segment runs mainly beneath a single broad avenue, unimpeded by rivers, super-tall skyscraper foundations or other subway lines.

American taxpayers will shell out many times what their counterparts in developed cities in Europe and Asia would pay. In the case of the Second Avenue line and other new rail infrastructure in New York City, they may have to pay five times as much.

Amtrak is just as bad. Its $151 billion master plan for basic high-speed rail service in the Northeast corridor is more expensive than Japan’s planned magnetic levitating train line between Tokyo and Osaka, most of which is to be buried deep underground, with tunnels through the Japan Alps and beneath its densest cities.

The numbers for California’s proposed high-speed rail system are similarly shocking.

California Bloat

The French rail operator SNCF told the California High-Speed Rail Authority that it could cut $30 billion off the project’s $68 billion estimated price tag. San Francisco can barely build underground light rail for the price that Tokyo pays for high-capacity subways. Los Angeles’s planned subway to the sea will be a bit cheaper, but is still very expensive considering the area’s lack of density.

The budgets for other types of urban public-works projects can be just as shocking. Who can forget Boston’s Big Dig, the $24 billion highway boondoggle? But mass-transit networks stand to lose most from out-of-control infrastructure costs.

A huge part of the problem is that agencies can’t keep their private contractors in check. Starved of funds and expertise for in-house planning, officials contract out the project management and early design concepts to private companies that have little incentive to keep costs down and quality up. And even when they know better, agencies are often forced by legislation, courts and politicians to make decisions that they know aren’t in the public interest.

Comparing American transit-construction practices with those abroad yields a number of lessons. Spain has the most dynamic tunneling industry in the world and the lowest costs. In 2003, Metro de Madrid Chief Executive Officer Manuel Melis Maynar wrote a list describing the practices he used to design the system’s latest expansion. The don’t-do list, unfortunately, reads like a winning U.S. transit-construction bingo card.

Perhaps the most ostentatious violation of Melis’s manual of best practices is expensive architecture in stations. “Design should be focused on the needs of the users,” he wrote, “rather than on architectural beauty or exotic materials, and never on the name of the architect.”

American politicians have different priorities. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is spending $3.8 billion on a single subway station at the World Trade Center designed by Santiago Calatrava, a Spanish architect known for his costly projects. If New York could build subways at the prices that Paris and Tokyo pay, $3.8 billion would be enough to build the entire Second Avenue subway, from Harlem to the Financial District.

Spain’s Model

Melis also warned against “consultants who consultant with consultants and advisers who advise advisers,” something American planners would do well to learn. He said he didn’t hire any “large firm of consulting engineers” as general project managers for his Metro de Madrid expansions, and that designers weren’t allowed to interfere with, or bid for, their own construction contracts.

Not so in the U.S. Parsons Brinckerhoff, perhaps the biggest name in the nation’s transit construction industry, is both the lead-design contractor and project manager for California’s planned high-speed rail line, and the company stands a good chance of winning construction contracts for its own designs.

As if that conflict of interest wasn’t bad enough, the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s new CEO, Jeff Morales, arrived at the agency after a stint as senior vice present at Parsons Brinckerhoff, where he worked on the authority’s business plan.

Parsons Brinckerhoff, like all the other multinational contractors and construction companies that win bloated contracts in the U.S., can do good work. Its rail projects for Hong Kong’s Mass Transit Railway were built at a reasonable cost, and its participation in Turkey’s Marmaray rail tunnel across the Bosporus in Istanbul shows that it can deliver affordable results in forbidding terrain. But absent the right incentives and oversight, even the best private companies will resort to rent seeking.

Larry Littlefield, who has worked in logistics and as a budget analyst at New York City Transit, also suggests the U.S. legal system is an obstacle to designing and building affordable infrastructure. (The U.K. and India share a common-law legal heritage with the U.S. that is heavy on judicial review, and they also have trouble controlling costs.)

New York government agencies are saddled by procurement rules dating back generations, Littlefield says, when corruption in infrastructure projects was endemic. Reformers demanded objective and easily policeable standards, which often meant lowest-price bidding rules. Bidders compete mostly on price, not quality.

Speed Matters

In Madrid, on the other hand, cost was given only a 30 percent weight when picking designers and builders, according to Melis. Speed was weighted at 20 percent. Melis praised quick execution as necessary for an efficient, affordable project. (Compare this with multigenerational projects, such as California’s high-speed rail and New York’s Second Avenue subway.) The remaining 50 percent was determined by the technical merits of proposals and the staff’s subjective considerations.

Littlefield also argues that judges in New York routinely side with contractors in disputes with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. “In the private sector, if you rob your customer, you will suffer a hit to your reputation and possible losses in the courts,” he said in an interview. “Not so if you rob an agency like the MTA. Then it’s all rights and no responsibilities.”

The MTA must continue to award contracts to the lowest-price bidder, and without the ability to hold bad contractors accountable, Littlefield said, the agency turns to “writing longer and longer and longer contracts, expressly prohibiting every way it has been ripped off in the past.” The byzantine contracts that come out of this process drive entrants away, limiting competition and pushing up costs.

Littlefield holds out hope, however, that transit agencies are capable of building with reasonable costs and timelines -- at least when they have to. “Remember how fast and how cheap they rebuilt the 1 train after 9/11? That’s what they’re capable of. But it just doesn’t happen otherwise.”

(Stephen Smith is a writer based in Brooklyn, New York, who covers land use and transportation. The opinions expressed are his own. Read Part 2 here.)

Read more opinion online from Bloomberg View. Subscribe to receive a daily e-mail highlighting new View editorials, columns and op-ed articles.

Today’s highlights: the editors on why Republicans should quit talking about a moocher class and on the abuse of drug users in China and Southeast Asia; William D. Cohan on former executives wanting higher taxes; Noah Feldman on why colleges need affirmative action; Albert R. Hunt on Mitt Romney and the movement conservatives.

To contact the writer of this article: Stephen Smith at smithsj@gmail.com.

To contact the editor responsible for this article: Katy Roberts at kroberts29@bloomberg.net.

I'd also add the Bent Flyvebjerg has some interesting pieces about Melis' point concerning the speed of implementation. Flyvebjerg estimates about a 5% increase in cost for every extra year of implementation - I have that paper, just need to dig it out, it's somewhere buried in a bunch of bookmarks.

 

[Scalziand]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Two reasons that i can see for costs increasing as projects take longer.

-plain old inflation
-overhead

 

[CantabAmager]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Two reasons that i can see for costs increasing as projects take longer.

-plain old inflation
-overhead

Mitigation, as well - and New England/NYC seems to fall to subject to massive mitigation pay-outs in a way few other places do. The longer the implementation time, the greater the danger of project creep, community mitigation demands (fx: Blue Hill Ave Station, GLX trolley yard), and general disruptions to effective management the above too cause.

 

[bigeman312]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Once again, MBTA maps out growing budget deficits

The MBTA has sketched out a growing deficit within its transit system that would balloon to $427 million in four years, as expenses far outpace growth in ridership and revenue.

News of the looming budget deficits arrived two years after the Democrat-controlled Legislature attempted to finance transportation through a 3-cent gas tax hike and a few other measures, two of which were subsequently repealed.

Part of the deficit includes the $88 million it will take to quit using capital funds, from debt and federal grants, to pay the salaries of roughly 530 T employees who work on construction, vehicle design and engineering, among other tasks.

...

Well....more of the same. The T is in an absolute financial crisis.

 

[CSTH]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Article (copied in full) from Bloomberg...

U.S. Taxpayers Are Gouged on Mass Transit Costs

A huge part of the problem is that agencies can’t keep their private contractors in check. Starved of funds and expertise for in-house planning, officials contract out the project management and early design concepts to private companies that have little incentive to keep costs down and quality up. And even when they know better, agencies are often forced by legislation, courts and politicians to make decisions that they know aren’t in the public interest.

Because private sector.

 

[whighlander]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Because private sector.

CSTH -- don't forget this statement

government agencies are saddled by procurement rules dating back generations, Littlefield says, when corruption in infrastructure projects was endemic. Reformers demanded objective and easily policeable standards, which often meant lowest-price bidding rules. Bidders compete mostly on price, not quality.

Why does the writer think that the infrastructure corruption is any less endemic today?

I think that the BIG DIG showed us that all levels of corrupt, wasteful and ineffecient practice was involved:

• at the Top with Parsons Brinkerhoff managing itself
• absurd deals with the Unions
• Police Details
• payoffs to the CLF in mitigations
• the shoddy work leading to the deadly ceiling panel collapse in the Ted
• the anecdotal numerous swimming pools with Big Dig tiles
• etc., etc.

We must be ever vigilant as Michael "he never saw a Tax he didn't like" Stanley Dutaxus was spotted at the State House promoting Big Dig V2.0 accompanied by his unlikely sidekick -- "Big Red" aka "let's take a swim in the Charles" Weld

 

[Arlington]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

At Assembly, of the cost of the $57m Heavy Rail station, 25% came from FRIT (and 0% came from Somerville), so my complaint isn't only that the landowners (whether developers or surface-lot operators) profit from State-created propinquity, but also that the municipalities have come to believe that their only contribution is "planning" but not funding.

[for Assembly Square]Construction is estimated to cost up to $57 million, of which $22 million (plus an optional $3.5 million extra) will be from the state's Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development. The remaining cost is divided between federal funding including the FTA Section 5309 New Starts program ($16 million) and the developer of Assembly Square ($15 million), Federal Realty Investment Trust (FRIT).

As in the Seaport (where the freeloading municipality was Boston) and at Assembly (where the contributed-nothing municipality was Somerville) the municipalities for the GLX (Somerville plus Cambridge (at North Point) and Medford (at Ball & near Tufts) all stand to pocket a whole bunch of long-term property tax proceeds and yet are asked to contribute nothing, or nothing more than their usual assessment to the MBTA.

Shouldn't T "investments" go to the municipalities that promise the highest return to the investor (the State and us as taxpayers), not just to the cities that beg the hardest, lobby the hardest, show the prettiest pictures, or tell the saddest stories?

Knowing what everybody knows now about Assembly Square, which was 25% developer-paid, and New Balance which is 100% landowner paid at $20m and the future West Station, which is 1/3 paid by Harvard as Landowner (or quasi-municipality), all of these are full-on street-grid Transit Oriented Development and show no apparent ill effects from having been contingent on landowner co-payment.

A landowner co-payment is a lot like a land use tax in that both ask for payment from owners based not on the current use (which is often surface parking, gravel, or scruffy stuff) but on the "built-out / transit-served" end state. Except that a landowner co-payment comes in a lump up front (and generally works best when you have 1 big owner doing 1 unified development) and the landowner is not asked for TIF payments later.

F-Line doesn't like this, but in other threads I've said that the Red-Blue connector should see a big MGH and City of Boston copay. MGH obviously benefits from a new Blue station right at its doorstep. While Boston may frequently hit MGH for PILOT payments and horse trading, I'm asking: what has MGH done for THE STATE to deserve the Red-Blue?

Boston stands to reap hundreds of millions from appreciation all along the Blue Line once Maverick and Suffolk Downs are directly connected to MGH and get great access to Kendall/Central/Harvard. Some $m of co-pay is clearly in Boston's interest if it is what tips Red-Blue from "must-build" to "will-build" When I'm Military Governor of this prefecture, we'll create a TIF district within 1/4 mile of every Blue Line station and all along the Maverick/East Boston waterfront and the first $Xm of bonding will be used to fund the Red-Blue connector, and then we look at station upgrades in the Suffolk Downs area to promote TOD there. And Medford will have its arm twisted to get an infill stop on the Orange Line between Wellington and Malden Ctr and real TOD at River's Edge.

Cambridge and the owners of Northpoint should pay more for Lechmere. It is in their interest to see it built sooner.

Somerville, if it had to think in terms of co-pay, would not have been so eager to pacify Brickbottom and preserve its, ahem, artsy-craftsy-industrial complex. It'd have TOD'd it instead.

 

[chmeeee]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

I agree with most of that except the Lechmere piece. North Point gets minimal benefit, they already have a station. It's just moving across the street, which it has to in order to work with the rest of the extension.