Green Line Extension to Medford & Union Sq

[F-Line to Dudley]

I have updated the press release from MassDOT in full now that they have posted it online. See above.

Also, my heart goes out to the hundreds of hard-working ‪‎GLX‬ contract employees at WSK, AECOM/HNTB, HDR/Gilbane & Stanton who are receiving pink slips today. They are collateral damage from their companies gaming the CM/GC system and getting caught.

Yeah. But if WSK et al went into this with sole purpose of gaming the system to make taxpayers the collateral damage, they would already have no qualms with screwing over their own rank-and-file whenever the spirit moved them. That's S.O.P. for sociopath corporate execs in this day and age. Sadly, we have to treat that like it's a constant...not a variable that can somehow be controlled.


But this is exactly what they should be doing. There's no easy back-out with the taxpayers already pissed with the sunk cost. They want something tangible salvaged from this, and they want vengeance for the bad guys. The contractors were bad actors, and used a gaping hole in the bidding regs to game the system via the free market. They are now being punished with the same free market they used as a weapon against MA taxpayers. They either have to:

1) Re-bid fairly and continue the project, but lose a massive chunk of gratuity on the top and have to explain that to their shareholders...who will punish them for being sloppy enough to get caught.

2) LOSE a re-bid to a competitor who is a (better) actor within the rules, suffer direct and fair-and-square harm on the free market, and face reckoning from their shareholders.

3) Lose a re-bid to a competitor OR not have any chance at re-bid at all because of project cancellation, but get blackballed on future bids for every other public project including every non-transit civil engineering realm (and there are innumerable such bids ongoing and pending), suffer fair-and-square direct harm on the free market as getting shut out of the Boston market indefinitely hands hundreds of millions in future business to their competitors, and face reckoning from their shareholders.


RE: #3...that is just about the only face-saver the pols can attempt in a cancellation scenario that spares them to some degree from becoming the taxpayers' Plan B target of vengeance, since we know "but it could've been worse" is a nonstarter. That means that unlike the Big Dig contractors who faced zero consequences for future bid chances from their criminal activity on CA/T bidding--to consternation of voters statewide--the pols need to put on a show about making an example out of them on future bids. It's the only way the outrage can be satiated enough for the pols themselves to not go in the crosshairs starting with the Sept. 2016 and lasting right through the '18 cycle. The math clearly shows how negligible a turnout uptick it takes to turn a safe path to reelection into a ballot box fatality, and these guys know their electoral math.

The "free market" gets its just desserts, or the voters give out just desserts. The pols aren't going to waive their chance to steer that outrage machine, and all signs this morning point to vengeance against the contractors being their choice for navigating this.



And no, I don't think this is a prelude to cancellation next summer because every competing contractor now has a chance to win big biz on a re-bid where they had crippled chances last time because of the immaculately-planned fuckery WSK et al. played with the process loopholes . That IS the magic hand of the free market doing its thing.

I maintain because of all ^this^ this thing will get built...all of it, not the Union retreat that is not the easy answer some people lazily assume it is. It placates the voters by salvaging something tangible (actually, everything tangible) from a bad situation, doles out the vengeance where vengeance is due, and leaves the top-level pols smelling like a rose and firewalled against any negative changes in the math. THAT'S playing Voter Psych 101 like a boss. I'll feel bullish about the future if they succeed on that gameplan.

 

[ant8904]

You guys don't get it.

NOBODY IS LISTENING to the "Well, it could've been worse" half of that message. By the time you have said that Joe Taxpayer is already mid-rant about how the government has pissed more of their tax dollars away and tuned out the second half of your statement. "Well, it could've been worse" isn't a comfort, it's a reinforcing dose of negativity.

Again: can somebody cite an ACTUAL EXAMPLE

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If you can't back up this supposition about voter psychology re: gov't waste with some real examples, it's sticking head in sand with some dangerous wishful thinking.

This discussion of voter psychology and political strategy now a bit off-topic given we know their new move now. But I still want to make a few responses.

You're making suppositions about voter psychology as much as anyone else here. To say "Joe Taxpayer is already mid-rant about how the government has pissed more of their tax dollars" if Baker had cancelled is much an unbacked supposition as "Joe Taxpayer is already in mid-rant that liberals set up a project 1bn overbudget".

One piece of data in my experience is the type of goes into mid-rant about government overspending also tend to be the type that screams "damn liberals and their spending" They can very well turn a blind eye to a Baker $750bn sunk cost and view as him saving by $1bn (which they won't see it as "theoretical") overrun plus the non-sunk but planned costs.

I also want to point out that the Christie example is still valid. Regardless of the immediate pivot. He still caught plenty of flak, he avoided damage because there are other issues and events that can well influence voters in the years after.

...And my point did not require GLX to be canned with no mitigation. He could have canned it but still pivoting like Christie did if that action really saved him so much.

...And finally, my point also wanted to point out that what you said ran on the assumption Baker would play in that political calculation. Plenty of politicians made dumb moves in the past. Even if you're 100% right in your assessment of how political suicide it is, it does not mean Baker would truly recognize that.





All that said, fortunately he seems to be choosing to re-bid. A painful choice, but I think is the most logical (barring WSK just backing down to a lower amount so we don't have to waste another year) between not wanting to be a chump with accepting a rip-off while also still want to see it happen.

 

[Texasian]

At the meeting yesterday, someone suggested a 40% saving if only one of the CR tracks is moved. I'd say, ideas like this, combined with a normal bidding process will lead to the whole extension being built, all be it with scaled down stations and a two or three year delay.

Are folks saying that moving one of the CR tracks would save 40%? Or are they saying that a combination of design changes including changing track layout could save up to 40%?


Arup design docs

From what I can tell, they're saying that the current track work on the Lowell line accounts for ~40% of costs. This could be brought down through a redesign, but it isn't a silver bullet.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Are folks saying that moving one of the CR tracks would save 40%? Or are they saying that a combination of design changes including changing track layout could save up to 40%?


Arup design docs

From what I can tell, they're saying that the current track work on the Lowell line accounts for ~40% of costs. This could be brought down through a redesign, but it isn't a silver bullet.

Since most of the Lowell Line track-shifting work is also a prereq for the flood mitigation culvert work that's in the sunk cost category, I seriously doubt there's meaningful savings fussing around there. A rounding error at best.

Maybe they're talking keeping GLX on one side of the tracks where it flips sides, but I'm not sure that's avoidable or else they never would've designed it that way in the first place. You'd have to dig real deep into some really boring EIS docs, but I'm pretty sure it spells out somewhere in there the engineering reasons why flipping from west side to east side of the CR tracks somewhere mid-stream is a necessity.

 

[Scalziand]

As far as I can tell, the Millers River culvert goes up the Fitchberg line to Union Square, and doesn't touch the Lowell ROW.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

As far as I can tell, the Millers River culvert goes up the Fitchberg line to Union Square, and doesn't touch the Lowell ROW.

Medford Hillside to Magoun Square area. Bigtime stormwater management work in the cut to fix longstanding problems. And pump stations in the Washington St. vicinity that's in the fill that used to be the inland bay the Millers emptied into.

 

[Scalziand]

Thanks for those specifics. Should make searching easier.

 

[Transitmass]

I'm wondering what people think about this suggestion from Ari Ofsevit (the Amateur Palnner) to close the Fitchburg line for a year:

http://amateurplanner.blogspot.com/2015/12/saving-glx-by-temporarily-cutting.html

From my understanding the work rules for construction around an active rail line is a major cost driver. Would stopping Fitchburg trains at Porter during construction make an appreciable difference to costs and if so is it a workable plan?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

I'm wondering what people think about this suggestion from Ari Ofsevit (the Amateur Palnner) to close the Fitchburg line for a year:

http://amateurplanner.blogspot.com/2015/12/saving-glx-by-temporarily-cutting.html

From my understanding the work rules for construction around an active rail line is a major cost driver. Would stopping Fitchburg trains at Porter during construction make an appreciable difference to costs and if so is it a workable plan?

Blogger (or my stupid browser) ate two attempts at replying to Ari in the blog comments, so I'll mentally copypasta it here. . .


No, it wouldn't work. Reason why is the Alewife Maintenance-of-Way yard, the home of all of commuter rail's hi-rail pickup trucks and specialty work equipment. On any given off-peak, you'll see the hi-rails slipping between Fitchburg slots to/from BET for their shift assignments. And most days (especially during leaf train season) the work train makes an appearance to grab whatever specialty equipment is needed for that week's track work du jour.

GLX land-clearing has already fucked up the storage situation at BET, to point where the T has had to stuff all the out-of-service and seldom-used work cars it kept around there up in Billerica or clogging up sidings out in Woburn. They are more reliant on Alewife access than ever because the nooks and crannies for stuffing things are fast-disappearing.


Worse...on every line that doesn't have overnight freight traffic or nocturnal equipment moves, they need to send out a hi-rail inspection team at 4:00am to do a drive-by for things that may have gone bump in the night. Malfunctioning crossing or signal equipment, tree limbs on the tracks, snowplow mounds that need to be cleared, stuck drawbridges, roadkill deer or drunk hobos (or roadkill hobos and drunk deer), ensuring nobody tampered with a hand-throw siding switch. These are the guys who stamp out 4 out of every 5 "FUBAR'd commute" incidents before the first revenue train ever pulls out, and before you even wake up. On the northside, that's every line except the outermost Fitchburg and outermost Haverhill where freights roam 24/7...and Lowell which has some overnight freight and nocturnal equipment deadheads most nights.

If you severed MOW HQ and had to stage those inspections from mid-line sidings away from crew bases, you can forget about scheduling the 5:00am from Rockport, 5:22 from Newburyport, 5:05 and 5:38 from Haverhill/Reading...basically, any train before 6:00am. And you can expect cancellations galore nearly every morning because when they do find that downed limb or busted track circuit it takes a whole lot more effort to triage extra equipment for the fix from scattered/non-central locations with chopped-up access. Because they won't have enough time to do their jobs with necessary cushion before it wrecks somebody's early-bird commute.


I do not think you want that daily situation plaguing the entire northside for 2 years straight. It would be bad enough for the people who can no longer get to the office for 7:00am (helloooo, jammed Leverett Connector at 4:50am!!!), but the customer service furor from rampant canceled trains due to margins being cut too thin on pre- service day inspections + fixes is going to grind patience to a nub.



Also...Ari's idea for Fitchburg re-routes over the Stony Brook Branch via Lowell is a nonstarter. Pan Am hasn't done shit for maint on that so-called "freight mainline" in 25 years, and probably should've been rung up by the FRA for letting all the grade crossing surfaces crumble to spit. So rehab costs for "safe and tolerable" ride comfort are more like $10M, not $1M. Second, the signal blocks and passing sidings are too widely-spaced to support the Fitchburg rush hour schedule as it stands; you'll be whacking and re-spacing trains. Third, every time a 60-car Norfolk Southern autorack train backs up onto the branch to split itself into thirds and shunt cars in/out of into the busy Ayer auto yard you'll be looking at a 2-hour gap in service...several times a day, including spillover into rush. They relocated the auto yard a few years ago down the street off the Fitchburg side of the junction onto the Stony Brook side of the junction specifically so these time-consuming moves could stay away from the passenger track as the autorack traffic out there exploded.

You'd honestly have better luck bustituting the Lowell Line out to Billerica and serving Lowell station-proper via Reading + Pan Am Lowell Branch than you would trying to thread Fitchburg service along that warcrime-on-wavy-rails called the Stony Brook. And bustituting Lowell is a pretty awful idea, so. . .



No easy answers. This isn't a redesign or re-staging fix...the extension layout pretty much is what it is and isn't more than a rounding error's worth improvable. *Maybe* if they revisited the rejected maint yard sites they can simplify Brickbottom ramp city...but I doubt it. The maint yard is the bulk of the 50 properties they already paid for, which the other day's presentation said would be near-worthless to try to re-sell. You certainly can't do past Washington without a Reservoir-size yard. You can't do it without an auxiliary maintenance facility either; Green Line's been short a #3 garage ever since last non-revenue move to Watertown 21 years ago, and has been short #3 and #4 garages since Arborway was cut off in '85. So I don't think there's a Eureka! moment with a carhouse slash-and-burn. EGE has already detailed several pages up the constraints on paring station costs, since positioning in a cut more or less requires some sort of fare lobby with drop-down elevators at each.


At the end of the day this is a procedural fix. There were cost estimates for the design and hardware...and they were blown out because the contractors made a mockery of the bid process. Fix the process with this re-bid that doesn't leave the barn door wide open for rank corruption, and get it back to something resembling a fair bid. THEN start overturning pebbles to squeeze stuff by fussing around the fringes: less architecture-for-architecture's sake, single centered egresses instead of double end egresses, re-itemization of what's absolutely necessary for a Reservoir-caliber carhouse and what isn't, etc. See if we're at least within the pain threshold for go-ahead by then. If the bid process was really that badly rigged for a 40% overrun to appear out of thin air from pure greed, then that's where it's going to be pounded out. Not by trying to find 40% in the bread-and-butter design. Squeeze the right stones for blood first.

 

[datadyne007]

Hearing from internal sources that the contract termination letters were effective today with no charges allowed to the job from today on (stop work order). WSK, HDR/Gilbane, AECOM, etc. laid off literally hundreds of people today, 2 weeks before Christmas. =(

This contract clearing needed to happen, but man is it catastrophic for the hard working planners, managers, architects, engineers, etc.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Hearing from internal sources that the contract termination letters were effective today with no charges allowed to the job from today on (stop work order). WSK, HDR/Gilbane, AECOM, etc. laid off literally hundreds of people today, 2 weeks before Christmas. =(

This contract clearing needed to happen, but man is it catastrophic for the hard working planners, managers, architects, engineers, etc.

Well...they know which greedy S.O.B.'s to blame for this outcome. The "Cheese of the Month Club" membership Xmas bonus came from inside the building.

 

[bigeman312]

I'm confused:

Are they stopping all work immediately? Or are they finishing the work currently being conducted, including Phase 2 (extension to Union and Washington). Or somewhere in between?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

I'm confused:

Are they stopping all work immediately? Or are they finishing the work currently being conducted, including Phase 2 (extension to Union and Washington). Or somewhere in between?

The "sunk cost" contracts like the culvert and road bridge work must continue. These are the "highway robbery above-and-beyond the $750M sunk-cost baseline" contracts for the actual rails/stations/all-that-jazz that got tossed, with Skanska et al. sent to its room without dinner to feel shame.

 

[Shepard]

The Big Dig is like the huge-ass gift that keeps on giving. First it adds tremendous capacity to auto routes into the city at costs that are laughably over budget, and in the process dispenses with all transit expansion options that could've and should've been connected with it (NSRL, TWT 3rd bore, etc). Now the same malfeasance continues, AND the hangover remains, making even relatively small-fry projects like GLX impossible to execute. And the further irony is that small-fry projects like GLX are the result of lawsuits stemming from the Big Dig, led by none other than Stephanie Pollack, who in her role now seems to be at a loss for how to push this forward and may end up killing it.

All this twisted history points to one solution that really can't be ignored any longer: TOLL 93. I'm fairly certain that the Feds could make an exception here to the general policy they have regarding interstate tolls. Even if not, I think legally an arrangement could be worked whereby the highway exits coming onto Atlantic/Purchase are tolled, while highway entry from downtown and highway through-traffic remains free. That ends up being more of a "city-street congestion charge" than a 93 toll, and may be perfectly kosher even in light of Federal guidelines. Functionally it does the trick. If Pollack were serious about getting these things funded, this would be where to look. I think, after this contract crisis is over, that it's got to be the next step in the fight to position transit expansion as a viable and sustainable priority.

 

[commuter guy]

^
Well stated!

 

[Ruairi]

more tweeting from this afternoon's meeting https://twitter.com/ndungca

 

[Arlington]

more tweeting from this afternoon's meeting https://twitter.com/ndungca

When it is said: "The T will look for additional funding from Boston Metropolitan Planning Org, and cities and landowners that would benefit"

I'm pretty sure the MPO part is basically the ~$200m-ish in (Federal) CMAQ money that was pegged for GLX from College Ave to Rt 16. Beyond that, it looks like it is up to Somerville (with a bit of Cambridge and Medford) and its developers (Tufts, US2, and Northpoint, and maybe the City of Somerville as redeveloper of its School/Gilman complex)

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

At least Capuano was there stating for the record that he was on a mission to get more Fed help. That serves several purposes:

-- Good faith at reforming the bid process to get rid of waste means fed money would be better spent. Throwing good money at bad bids isn't just an MA problem or problem with this particular project, and neither is underfunding. It's nationwide. So somebody showing results at cost control becomes a model for those being worthy of the help.

-- He's on the House Transportation and Infrastructure committee + the separate Highways & Transit subcommittee + Railroads subcommittee. And a ranking member of the Housing subcommittee, where GLX's influence on the housing market and land values goes directly to his interests in his most senior-level assignment. Also has the most total committee assignments of any of the delegation, which makes him arguably the most powerful member of the delegation at the moment.

-- He was one of the original champions of the project, and is #3 in seniority (elected '98) in MA's Washington delegation after Richard Neal (elected '88) and Jim McGovern (elected '96). And arguably the most powerful fundraiser (it's either him of Lynch, who on a couple Wall St.-centric committees and gets the predictable donations accordingly).

-- He's sniffed around the Gov.'s office with some degree of interest. So a possible '18 candidate to not motivate to leave the House. And you never know...possible Cabinet appointee for somethingorother since he's got a D+29 seat (almost double the next-bluest) that's at zero risk if he gets bored toiling for a couple more cycles in the gerrymander-locked minority.



All told, it matters that he was there and that he offered to go to the mat for the project. That conditions some of the board's behavior, and obviously with him going on-record about it he's obligated to put on some show twisting arms with the Transportation Secy. and his committees.

 

[mass88]

First off, how the hell could an extension of this size cost $3 Billion?

Second, it seems like some people are completely ignoring the massive increase and are instead looking for ways to pay for the new estimated cost.

 

[George_Apley]

First off, how the hell could an extension of this size cost $3 Billion?

Second, it seems like some people are completely ignoring the massive increase and are instead looking for ways to pay for the new estimated cost.

What? They cancelled the contracts because of the massive increase. I really don't know what you're talking about...