Yeah, but... how many of those people are there, really? A couple hundred each weekend? If the train takes 75 minutes with one train every couple of hours on a weekend schedule, will even those people really use it when the roads are sitting there, open and free?
Plenty. I grew up and still live in that area and commute to Boston. 75 minutes seems absurd to Boston for those who live in the Boston area. But for those of us who regularly deal with 1.5-2 hours each way by car, vanpool, or overcrowded/overpriced bus (Dattco and Peter Pan are more expensive than commuter rail), 75 minutes on the train would be a breath of fresh air. Especially with BBY connections (which South Station buses don't have). I think that A) the initial ridership estimates are low. and B) ridership would increase given the continuing spread of the metro due to Boston workers being priced out of the closer 'burbs.
The weekend, like other lines, would see decreased demand. But ridership would still be there. Plenty of people would choose the train as an alternative to driving in and dealing with parking in the city. That's a much more daunting task for people who aren't regularly driving in the Boston area. It would be the same as any other suburban/exurban line (Newburyport, Fitchburg, Worcester, Providence, Plymouth, etc). I do believe there would be a small contingent of people leaving the city to go to New Bedford/Fall River. No, those places aren't premier destinations, but there's enough going on (especially in New Bedford) to warrant some interest and generate some traffic.
You're making an argument about whether NB and FR should have rail, period, but that's not really the issue. The issue is whether NB and FR should have rail at $3.5 billion, when that money could go to so, so many more worthy MBTA projects.
I agree. $3.5 is too much.
I just talked about this latest SCR news with a friend who went to school at UMass Dartmouth and has been pretty well plugged into the South Coast political scene over the years. I asked him why they wouldn't just accept a phased build to a Taunton park-and-ride like F-Line and others have talked about here every so often. (All the better if they could do so off of the Middleborough line, as proposed in the article, while taking the money they would have spent in permitting hell and instead working to double-track the Savin Hill bottleneck.)
My friend said that the South Coast delegation could never take this home to its constituency because it would be seen as "losing" to Taunton. OK, then. Two things here: 1) The rest of the state, I think, would be surprised to learn that there is any meaningful difference at all between Taunton and FR/NB; and 2) I for one was pretty bowled over by the Napoleon complex that these two cities' residents would collectively have to have in order to believe that Taunton, of all places, is an adversary of theirs.
Eh, your friend is close on some points, but also off the mark a bit on the Taunton/adversary talk. That's just not true. The Taunton area delegation and the South Coast delegation are pretty close. In fact, the Fall River/New Bedford/Taunton triangle is pretty tightly connected. If there's a "rivalry" it's between New Bedford and Fall River. Not with Taunton.
The reason the South Coast delegation (and populous) has a problem with a phased approach (which, by the way, is how it should be built), is because they believe that a 2nd phase will never happen. They believe it will die after Taunton. So it's more a paranoia issue than it is a "Napoleon complex." This region, whether entirely justified or not, feels that they are consistently put on the back burner, and they feel a phased build to Taunton first is a death sentence for any Fall River/New Bedford connection. To be clear, I'm not saying I agree (I don't. It should go to Taunton- the city that really benefits the most from SCR- first).
So in case you're curious, the entire region is beyond all hope of rationality. No amount of increase in the price tag will be sufficient to register an appreciable drop in local support for this ugly beast. If it is to be killed, it will have to be killed by a governor who has no hope of winning those cities anyway. Hmm, I wonder who might fit that description?
That's a bit much, no? There's pretty stiff opposition in the area. Many people find the price tag to be absurd. Many outside of the urban cores have a NIMBY stance on any rail traffic and feel that it will bring (gasp!) "undesirables." Many in the cities don't feel it will ever happen so they don't pay close attention anymore.
You are right about the latter part though. The Patrick administration was clever enough to make it appear that necessary upgrades (mostly for freight) were "progress" on the South Coast Rail project, even though they would have happened regardless. "Looking into" the Middleborough alternative is one way for the Baker administration to distance itself from the hefty price tag of the proposed project without having to tell South Coast voters that he's pulling the plug. If he's reelected, that's when the plug will be pulled. It will come in the form of "after researching Middleboro as an alternative, it's not feasible at this time..." But definitely not until after the election. He has to appear to be doing his due diligence.
