Green Line Extension to Medford & Union Sq

[Matthew]

Except that faregates make the user experience worse, cost a lot more money, and are easy to defeat anyway -- requiring continual monitoring by a paid employee, for all time.

 

[bigeman312]

Except that faregates make the user experience worse, cost a lot more money, and are easy to defeat anyway -- requiring continual monitoring by a paid employee, for all time.

This is an argument about operational problems with faregates as opposed to POP. It does not mean that has anything to do with why constructing and paying for this project has been such a problem.

 

[Matthew]

The outrageous cost has to do with corruption and inability of public agencies to guard against it.

But meanwhile, why not take the opportunity to cut costs in a way that actually improves the outcome, rather than insisting on installing a suboptimal system?

 

[tangent]

I've found that I tend to agree with just about everything Arlington writes on archBoston. There's nobody else on this site whose posts I find myself nodding in agreement to more than his. That being said:

The stations are not the problem.

Even at the MBTA estimated $447 million the stations are way too expensive, forget the $887 million contractor estimate. The cost should be closer to $200 million, or much less even depending on what is included in that.

So no, the stations shouldn't have been a problem, but now they are very large part of the cost problem that threatens to kill this project.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

The outrageous cost has to do with corruption and inability of public agencies to guard against it.

But meanwhile, why not take the opportunity to cut costs in a way that actually improves the outcome, rather than insisting on installing a suboptimal system?

So...

a) Fix suboptimal POP practices across the board and make every station work better?

b) Squint and froth for another flurry of steel-and-concrete design change orders that constitute a "cost-saving" angle out of one's own self-satisfying imagination of just how darn visible moving around a bunch of steel-and-concrete is. But not caring enough about their singular cause célèbre station feature to actually lay out what the real-world cost of leaving vs. changing + design change orders is. Much less folding it into the re-estimate of what bidding without corruption looks like. Wherein the "cost savings" debate becomes not a debate over cost at all, but a personal airing of grievances where anything--no matter how irrelevant or implausible--is game so long as one believes in their talking points more intensely than the next person.

In other words, the last 24 hours on this thread.



I'll start the chorus anew for Saturday:

The stations are not the problem.

 

[WormtownNative]

Even at the MBTA estimated $447 million the stations are way too expensive, forget the $887 million contractor estimate. The cost should be closer to $200 million, or much less even depending on what is included in that.

So no, the stations shouldn't have been a problem, but now they are very large part of the cost problem that threatens to kill this project.

You do realize that with the MBTA estimate that's only $63.8 million per station, right? 7 stations - including a rebuilding of Lechmere. That's $20 million less per station than the Government Center refurb - and these are new stations.

To echo F-Line and many more on here - the stations are NOT the problem.

 

[citylover94]

+1
I just don't get why so many are so eager to replace what are essentially heavy rail quality stations with lesser ones on a line that will be very heavily used.

 

[Matthew]

I don't get why anyone would want to spend even $60 million on an aboveground rail station just to prove a tough-guy point about process ("... it's not the stations!11!1"). That amount is still far too high (except for Lechmere, perhaps, since it's elevated). Something is radically wrong.

The faregates are not 'quality'. They are WORSE for access, and worse for fare-control. Yes, the T should fix suboptimal practices across the board. And why spend tens of millions of dollars on faregates now if you are going to get rid of them later?

Maybe some changes might cost more than its worth, but I'm not convinced that ALL changes are going to cost more. We just fired everyone. I think that the intention is to make changes, and those changes ought to be the kind that save money and improve design.

Most likely we'll get changes that don't save money and worsen design, sadly.

 

[davem]

The stations are not THE problem.

But they are A problem.

Not only are they a waste of money, they're also a waste of space. The T should be aggressively trying to market space above them for development (like Tufts is doing), instead of building more useless boxes. Similar to how Hynes was later built over, they could probably fund the stations through development rights.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

I don't get why anyone would want to spend even $60 million on an aboveground rail station just to prove a tough-guy point about process ("... it's not the stations!11!1"). That amount is still far too high (except for Lechmere, perhaps, since it's elevated). Something is radically wrong.

The faregates are not 'quality'. They are WORSE for access, and worse for fare-control. Yes, the T should fix suboptimal practices across the board. And why spend tens of millions of dollars on faregates now if you are going to get rid of them later?

Maybe some changes might cost more than its worth, but I'm not convinced that ALL changes are going to cost more. We just fired everyone. I think that the intention is to make changes, and those changes ought to be the kind that save money and improve design.

Most likely we'll get changes that don't save money and worsen design, sadly.

Can you point to some math to back up that stance that a station design change is going to save money without crippling the build in a way where cure is worse than disease? Can anyone ranting away about changes in station design being a one-shot solve for all of life's problems point to some specific math in favor of that stance?

You think faregates suck? Then go make the first attempt in this thread at constructing a theory that itemizes the ballpark cost savings (factoring in costs for making change orders to a final design) of cutting those from the stations and showing a tangible net saving to the GLX project. You would be the very first person in this thread to bother going that far to substantiate a gripe about 'unnecessary features'.

Somebody please make an honest first stab at that, because until then this is just some pointless dick-measuring contest of who's got the more obstinate intensity of belief that their own simplistic perception is more fucking right than thou's. Where believing in more fucking rightness becomes the excuse for not even attempting to sketch out an actual cost valuation.

Go ahead. Be the first to hang a real dollar figure on a specific change request. Be the hero that breaks up the last 2 drivel-filled pages held hostage by tough guy double-down posturing and talking point Bullshit Bingo games.

 

[Arlington]

I believe I did upthread. Savings included smaller GL fleet (given faster ops on surface lines elsewhere--potentially no new yard cost either) lower operating costs and higher fare compliance. Nice mix of lower costs for vehicles ($100m) yard & shops ($100m)and stations ($300m). With CM/GC doubling all non-vehicle costs, saving $500m in normal costs was worth about $900m in ripoff costs

 

[tangent]

You do realize that with the MBTA estimate that's only $63.8 million per station, right? 7 stations - including a rebuilding of Lechmere. That's $20 million less per station than the Government Center refurb - and these are new stations.

To echo F-Line and many more on here - the stations are NOT the problem.

"Only" $63.8 million? That is over twice the cost of a new 70,000 Square foot elementary school project. For what? The stations are a BIG problem.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

I believe I did upthread. Savings included smaller GL fleet (given faster ops on surface lines elsewhere--potentially no new yard cost either) lower operating costs and higher fare compliance. Nice mix of lower costs for vehicles ($100m) yard & shops ($100m)and stations ($300m). With CM/GC doubling all non-vehicle costs, saving $500m in normal costs was worth about $900m in ripoff costs

And it was also proven well upthread that the extensions can't operate past Union or Washington without a Reservoir-sized local yard and maint facility, based on how all other lines are sourced to sustain their headways. Lechmere Yard is going away and the E has been short a home yard since Arborway closed 31 years ago, so sustaining + expanding at the demand the Medford extension puts on the system makes that spec the going rate. And having an equipment base means having enough equipment to supply the base without shorting every other service by yanking too many cars away from them. They ID'd that as 24 cars--pretty consistent with what the power pool run out of Reservoir is--as the going rate.

Arguments to the contrary need to dig into specific inefficiencies that will cost less to fix than turning the service plan on its head. Well...2 decades of studies and detailed traffic modeling are on the books about those requirements. So how'd we make it all the way to 2016 before someone had the temerity to point out the obvious: "Oh, you're doing it totally wrong. A little of this, a sprinkle of that...bang, book it, done! Millions saved!". And it netting a total and instantaneous game-changer of a eureka moment. Did nobody think to ever try that before? Or is it just that hard to come up with additional system efficiencies that make gains big enough to enable wholesale feature cuts to GLX without the costs of paying for those efficiency gains outslugging the savings from pet cuts on GLX? Maybe it just isn't that easy or one-dimensional to find a surplus on the ledger by changing the design.


You have to quantify what magic tricks of streamlining and equipment assignment sleight-of-hand is going to cover that gap to the point where these going-rate builds become optional. The carhouse and vehicle requirements didn't magically appear as late-addition luxury addons to the project. They've been specced in real math since the first detailed scoping studies for West Medford in the late-90's. So have the ridership projections that peg these stops at several times the daily boardings of the very busiest non- fare-controlled stops on the system. Real math has to be counterpointed with some sort of testable math. Something a lot more than a "Well, short this and 'run faster' because reasons and mumbo-jumbo [*voice trails off*]. Bada-bing!...$900 million saved!" If you are making the assumption that system-wide ops improvements can lower the cost thresholds, then quantify what the system-wide ops improvements will cost. None of them are free candy. Not even POP when it comes to squaring the service goals with the size of the projected station riderships. And any efficiency improvements impinged by the Green Line's atrocious state-of-repair start running up systemic costs larger than the savings from singular pet cuts on GLX. All manner of "run faster, run more nimble" through the Central Subway is intrinsically linked to that SGR bill.


No. That's no better than taking a worst-case upper bound of $63M per station and assuming that a half-billion or more dollars can magically come off the books by zeroing out more than the stations' total worth. All while refusing to explain what one's own view of 'tolerable minimum' ADA-equipped station should cost as a baseline within the physical properties of site access, and while refusing to make any attempt at incorporating the sunk cost for going back and changing the station designs to this mythical tolerable minimum after final design has already been frozen.

This reason why this thread has jumped into a ditch is because of this pervasive belief that no accounting is ever required when the fucking rightness of one's own personal beliefs and pet cuts is presented as self-evident and infallible. Fucking rightness is not self-evident if someone can't or won't explain how to deliver on the service goals of the project within the cuts they're presenting.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

"Only" $63.8 million? That is over twice the cost of a new 70,000 Square foot elementary school project. For what? The stations are a BIG problem.

Was this elementary school built in a narrow rail cut next to an active commuter rail line requiring utility and culvert work stretching for several linear miles around? Because that's the only way there'd ever be an objective comparison on Planet Earth between an elementary school and a transit station.


You're starting to turn this into the same spamming of impotent rage as in those tiresome Olympics Thread quadruple-dog-downs on a Seaport stadium that was temporally impossible to organize within the bid time limit. Changing an irrelevant word or two and repeating the same dogma again and again at higher volume didn't make things just so with that case. Why would you expect the same to work here?

 

[Randomgear]

As one of the people saying that the stations could be a source of savings, let me be far more clear: complete redesign will likely cost as much as it saves - you gotta pay the design team. Simple value engineering - trimming off an overhang at a station entrance for example - would result in a very small, but visible symbolic savings that politicians can point to and say "see I told you so".
And yes, I do feel for the poor souls waiting for their rides outside the station in the rain.

 

[CSTH]

Was this elementary school built in a narrow rail cut next to an active commuter rail line requiring utility and culvert work stretching for several linear miles around? Because that's the only way there'd ever be an objective comparison on Planet Earth between an elementary school and a transit station.

Starting to suspect that this thing is less 'light rail+heavy stations' and more 'cut and cover subway -(minus) a roof'

 

[citylover94]

Some portions with new retaining wall and widening of the usable width of the ROW to the property lines is almost to that level based on some of the diagrams. Not quite that extreme but it is like building half a tunnel without a roof in some portions.

 

[tangent]

Some portions with new retaining wall and widening of the usable width of the ROW to the property lines is almost to that level based on some of the diagrams. Not quite that extreme but it is like building half a tunnel without a roof in some portions.

But is the retaining wall and widening of the ROW under the budget for the stations?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

But is the retaining wall and widening of the ROW under the budget for the stations?

No. They are separate contracts that have been underway for some time now. Construction of the rail line and construction of the stations are their own line items, and the primary areas of contractor corruption. The wall/culvert contracts that have not been canceled because they're tied in with the drainage fixes, and can't just go under work stoppage while the disrupted ground and culverts aren't stitched back together into fully-functioning state. The majority of the $700M "sunk cost" itemization comes from these un-cancelable environmental contracts that must happen whether the rest of the project goes forward or not.

It's fair criticism as to why these water management projects had to get lumped in with GLX in the first place, but that ship sailed long ago. But no one can just go "fuck drainage" and make all that go away. EPA's going to have one very big beef with Magoun Sq.-area properties being left to flood forever because a job that was started was never finished.

 

[tangent]

As one of the people saying that the stations could be a source of savings, let me be far more clear: complete redesign will likely cost as much as it saves - you gotta pay the design team. Simple value engineering - trimming off an overhang at a station entrance for example - would result in a very small, but visible symbolic savings that politicians can point to and say "see I told you so".
And yes, I do feel for the poor souls waiting for their rides outside the station in the rain.

Yes, need to completely scrap the stations and make them functionally equivalent to D line stops with no stations, no elevators, no indoor area at all... riders cross the tracks to get to the other side, just ramps for ADA compliance, and simple enclosures or bare bones roof to keep riders dry.

Otherwise if the underlying requirements don't change then we are probably talking about a waste of money on redesign work for some nominal savings which would have been better spent just moving forward as designed with new bids.