Green Line Extension to Medford & Union Sq

[F-Line to Dudley]

Are we talking about change orders? I thought they dropped the design team and the plan is for new bids for the stations. So they are either moving forward with designs as-is or we are talking about a complete redesign, which I agree is probably not worthwhile unless you can achieve something like a 4x cost savings.

Bids for construction, not design. The final designs have been complete for a long time now, so there's no cost savings in going back to that drawing board. So to reopen the designs for anything means the new bidders can start racking up change order fees.

But what were the design costs to begin with? Can someone find those numbers?

Spent to-date, or estimated? Estimates are probably on the GLX project site, and dated enough that they'd be non-final (not that design has changed dramatically in the last 5+ years). Unless Baker/Pollack do a document dump with a detailed line itemization, not sure spent-to-date design money is broken out of a lump to be able to calculate stations vs. ROW vs. rail hardware. For state budgets they usually just list "DESIGN - $Xx,xxx,xxx" with totals per fiscal year.

From what I heard on the radio this morning Pollack is calling on stakeholders (ie Somerville, private developers) to step forward with money for GLX. At this point that means no redesign, as-is with the remaining parts of the project to be bid out hopefully at less than what has been estimated.

Yes. And that's because it's less to take the existing design untouched and re-bid it airtight from corruption rather than start over or start making new changes. It's when they get the re-bids that lop 40-50% off that you actually can influence meaningful swings in remaining project cost by targeting features that can be tweaked without change orders. It's pointless to do that before you have bids because...say...finding $20M in pure cosmetic empty calories to squeeze out of all of the stations put together doesn't amount to a hill of beans from a starting point of $2B. It's more tempting to go fishing after the re-bid knocks it back to $1B first.

Process-wise, Pollack can't approach it any other way.

The question then becomes what happens if Somerville doesn't come up with money. We can probably table this entire discussion about station redesign until that point, but I have a feeling Somerville is going to come back and say no and play a high stakes and ultimately futile game of chicken with the governor. At which point there needs to be a plan B otherwise this project is going further down the rabbit hole of endless delays.

A municipality can't come up with the money, so that's an easy one. Furthermore, they can't suddenly start coming up with the money in 2016 with no warning after 20 years of not being asked to do that. So state's being just a wee disingenuous there. I think if Somerville is to assume more responsibility you'd be talking things like streetscaping, traffic pattern alterations on the roadways in front of stations, or the Community Path. As mentioned in the last post, the Path is served up by the retaining walls...so it's baked into the GLX design and definitely isn't something you want to change-order. So maybe some funding for the actual landcaping of what goes on top of those walls shifts to the city and away from DCR or whoever was picking up that tab.

Not huge expenses, just finishing work that a city DPW of their size is capable of taking on. "Plug our billion-dollar debt or pick up a shovel and help us build a transit line" isn't something a municipality can do. But I think the state knows that.

Also...maybe a little more Tufts love at College Ave. But design-wise I don't think there's a whole lot on the station plot they can do. That big footbridge they're building is all off-property and not coupled to anything pre-existing about the station's design. Route 16 station (if we're thinking that far ahead) is probably the one that Tufts fun bux can pick up a bigger portion of, since they're buying up that whole adjacent block of Boston Ave. to sit on in anticipation of the TOD windfall.

 

[datadyne007]

FMCB updates from the Globe's @ndungca:

Board approves giving general manager up to $1 million for contracts for new interim Green Line team.

Board approved those contracts. Now board slated to approve up to $1 million for new interim Green Line project leadership.

Board is slated to vote on an extra $4.09 million for changes in five contracts for Green Line work that has been ongoing.

Cool, they're going to read out a bunch of contracts related to the Green Line in this meeting. Nothing online for anyone to review?

DePaola announces 6 new leaders for Green Line project team. Big decision on future steps would occur on May 11.

Jack Wright, a former MassDOT highway official, is the new interim project manager for the Green Line project.

 

[Matthew]

This is pretty a pretty ballsy statement coming 5 minutes after firing off a tough-guy retort to EGE painting broad brushes such as this:

Don't let all that recent world travel go straight to your head, now.


I don't need anyone's defending, but if you're going to be dragging posting histories far, far off-topic into this to cloak yourself in sanctimony I don't think you want to be encouraging a board search trip down memory lane to some of your more memorable AB tantrums and unprovoked personal attacks.

There's nothing personal in saying that the Boston-area transit world is closed-minded and has gone insane.

Remember, this thread is about a $0.5 billion project that has somehow turned into a $3 billion project. That's insane.

Meantime, people from the Boston-area transit keep on claiming that it is impossible to do things with transit that are, in fact, done routinely around the world. That's insane.

Keep on digging your own hole, Boston. The rest of the world keeps spinning. You're not going to fix yourself by closing your ears, shutting your eyes, saying "nothing can be done differently from what we're currently doing!" and shooting down anyone who says otherwise.

It's often said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results each time. Well, here we are again.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

There's nothing personal in saying that the Boston-area transit world is closed-minded and has gone insane.

Remember, this thread is about a $0.5 billion project that has somehow turned into a $3 billion project. That's insane.

Meantime, people from the Boston-area transit keep on claiming that it is impossible to do things with transit that are, in fact, done routinely around the world. That's insane.

Keep on digging your own hole, Boston. The rest of the world keeps spinning. You're not going to fix yourself by closing your ears, shutting your eyes, saying "nothing can be done differently from what we're currently doing!" and screaming at anyone who says otherwise.

Who is this singularly despotic Emmanuel Goldstein of your imagination known as "Boston-area transit world"? Why is "Boston-area transit world" always at war with "world", except when it's at war with Eastasia? Would one of us simpletons recognize this singular "Boston-area transit world's" face on the street well enough to know to punch him/her/it in the mouth? And who on earth writes a rant phrased like that?



Meanwhile, this thread got 1-1/2 whole pages into a peaceful rhythm before "Boston-area transit world" came in, drank all our beer, and clogged up the john. Stupid "Boston-area transit world"...always ruining everything.³

 

[Matthew]

The Boston-area transit world is composed of the people who are involved in providing, managing, maintaining, advocating for, or discussing public transit (particularly the MBTA) in the Boston area.

Not sure why that's unclear to you.

 

[StillInTheHood]

While I'm well aware of the fact that regulatory requirements - most specifically, the ADA as interpreted by the courts - ensure that comparisons are not totally apples-to-apples, Matthew does make a fair point that we shouldn't just wave away European examples.

Anybody here been to Zurich? Is there anyone who has who doesn't wish we could broom the entire T structure and give the Swiss a decade to sort out the Green Line? They do major projects and commit months in advance TO THE DAY when they will be finished and new service will open/service will be restored. They manage headways precisely. They move a far greater number of trams through HB/Central in an hour than the T does through Park Street. They deal with snow and they tackle grades the T would regard as off limits. They operate in HEAVY mixed traffic. They do all sorts of things a million times better than the T that have little or nothing to do with regulation and everything to do with management.

I'm impatient with arguments that essentially say "the Green Line is sui generis because it carries far more people than LRVs in Buffalo." No kidding. Thing is, it doesn't carry orders of magnitude more people than busy European lines, and it's hard to accept "because ADA" as the answer for why everything necessarily takes four times longer and costs four times as much as in Europe. If they can't manage headways or fare collection or bid processes as well as the Europeans - and clearly they can't - why should we take the design as given/optimum? Show a Zurich resident the timeline and net result of the Government Center re-do and they LAUGH. "Oh, it takes a really long time to rebuild because the trains had to keep running without stopping." Yep. But the best Euro systems have accomplished far more in less time.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

The Boston-area transit world is composed of the people who are involved in providing, managing, maintaining, advocating for, or discussing public transit (particularly the MBTA) in the Boston area.

Not sure why that's unclear to you.

So...why are you directing your rage sprinkler at the web forum called archBOSTON.org over the last item on that list? You left awful, awful Boston. Shouldn't you be blissfully happy to have left that--and its messageboard simpletons--behind, or possibly playfully teasing us about how much happier it is over there in "world". Instead of just being angrier than ever at "Boston-area transit world" and re-crashing AB threads to wallow in it?


For an upstart blogger like yourself trying to carve out a voice on these matters, that isn't even behavior dignifying a ⅛th-dimensional caricaturing of the worldly transpo-blogger intelligensia's tenets of "first-world" practices. Because that would involve an actual comparing of practices. Nope...it's all perfect evil vs. undescribeable pureness in battle of singular "worlds". Nobody is that reductionist.

Chill out. Take a walk. Make this "world" guy from Boston return the $20 bucks he owes you, because that wasn't very nice of him. Whatever calms you down enough to be able to write a coherent thought that doesn't involve attacking the very audience you're addressing.

 

[Matthew]

What do you mean, rage sprinkler? I have described, with visual illustration, the many ways that a certain statement is incorrect. Do you have a rebuttal, or are you going to continue to personally attack me and my choice of words?

I'm no longer a blogger, by the way. Haven't decided if I'll pick it up again. If I feel up to doing background research again, then perhaps I'll write an article sometime. In the meantime, when I post on casual forums like this one, I will post using examples that are at-hand, and I will use off-the-cuff statements sometimes. Because this is a web forum, an informal medium -- not a journal article. Not even a blog post.

Why do I still care about Boston transit, you seem to be asking? Well, I put a large amount of my personal time, over the course of several years, into getting involved with advocating for a better Green Line and better transit (among other things). By this I mean real world stuff -- organizing, speaking, canvassing, meeting with key people, etc -- not online discussion. I didn't just forget all that when I had to leave because of work. I connected deeply with people in the city, and I still consider Boston my home to which I plan to eventually return after this extended trip is finished. Well, if I can afford to live there by then, which may not be true at the rate things are going, unfortunately ...

 

[The EGE]

I'm at the TRB conference this week. Not much related to light rail projects - it's a lot of asphalt and bus bunching papers - but I have picked up some interesting tidbits. One of them was a high-level manager of Denver's FasTracks project, where they've already opened a BRT line last week and will open two-and-a-half electrified commuter rail lines* and a light rail line before the year's out.

Every single rail transit project that Denver has constructed in the last two decades has come in on time and within budget. The A Line to the airport is $300 million UNDER budget. The feds are practically throwing money at them because the bang-for-buck is incredible. They had to make two last-minute major routing changes to the I-225 line and it's still on time and on cost.

What did he attribute their success to? That they don't waste time. They commit to a project, simultaneously round up funding and get stakeholders on their side, and then they build it. They don't waste time talking about it, they don't waste time watching deadlines go past. The longer you wait on a project, the more it costs.

*The first mainline commuter rail system in the US to electrify in nearly a century!

 

[Arborway]

What did he attribute their success to? That they don't waste time. They commit to a project, simultaneously round up funding and get stakeholders on their side, and then they build it. They don't waste time talking about it, they don't waste time watching deadlines go past.

We tried that with the 28X. Community leaders got extremely upset that they weren't approached in just the right way.

There was no time, really. It was a choice between getting money for a shovel-ready stimulus project and moving forward quickly, or not doing anything at all in our lifetimes.

 

[JeffDowntown]

THe Denver example is interesting, but it still looks like an apples to oranges comparison.

You look at pictures of the FasTracks stations, and they are in big, flat, empty spaces. There are very few buildings anywhere near the flat open land. They do not appear to be next to active rail lines, and they have virtually no abutters. Also no ADA access issues.

Seems like a very different density of light rail operation, in a very different urban environment.

 

[citylover94]

It is very different. I have a friend who lives in the Denver area and the light rail near him only runs every half hour or something like that. It is not nearly the same service density as the green line and Denver is a much younger city with much flatter topography and less existing infrastructure to build around.

 

[datadyne007]

THe Denver example is interesting, but it still looks like an apples to oranges comparison.

You look at pictures of the FasTracks stations, and they are in big, flat, empty spaces. There are very few buildings anywhere near the flat open land. They do not appear to be next to active rail lines, and they have virtually no abutters. Also no ADA access issues.

Seems like a very different density of light rail operation, in a very different urban environment.

But the principle of success he's talking about holds true whether its in Denver or Boston: You just stop talking about building the thing and build it. Yes, I agree that the scope of the GLX can't be compared in the slightest to Denver (different environment, frequency, passenger load, etc), but we've shot ourselves in the foot by constantly fighting over this for over a decade, nearly 2, driving up costs year over year with study after study and with even the most basic things like inflation.

 

[Arlington]

driving up costs year over year with study after study and with even the most basic things like inflation.

...and payoffs to people who don't even live particularly close. We may fix this at Union Square. The U2 payoffs to "the neighbors" are from exactly the same font (TOD development revenue/TIF/TID) that in any sane environment would be used to fund the line itself, and not line the pockets of developers and bellyachers.

Our GLX costs general taxpayers too much because somebody got us on the idea that transit had to be a pure, unalloyed win for everybody anywhere nearby, not just a net win.

 

[datadyne007]

The GLX should have been started a decade ago. If it had been built then, before CM/GC even existed (Beacon Hill passed it in 2012, a year after the GLX was supposed OPEN), we would not be in this situation. We talked and bitched about it for too long. The past is in the past, of course, but we have to learn from that going forward.

 

[bigeman312]

Does anybody have any ridership projections by station?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

It is very different. I have a friend who lives in the Denver area and the light rail near him only runs every half hour or something like that. It is not nearly the same service density as the green line and Denver is a much younger city with much flatter topography and less existing infrastructure to build around.

This post explains the political process behind FasTracks pretty well (from the N-S Rail Link thread): http://www.archboston.org/community/showpost.php?p=249086&postcount=475

The political mechanism was way different. Package of transit projects voted on regionally as a package, with a different kind of tax assessment package. It's much more like the Big Dig was sold as a package. What's politically different is that as an upstart system Denver doesn't have to fit the tax assessments for an all-new system to a large pre-existing district. It could be narrow-casted more to the communities served. The communities not as directly served got the carrot of a lower assessment in exchange for not being allowed to bust up the package and pit project-on-project. Structurally the Transit Commitments part of the Big Dig fell apart because it was a breakout of a regional package that then had to be fitted to a sprawling district. And project-on-project warfare between provincial chunks of the district took its toll.

^That^ isn't an easy solve because Massachusetts structurally puts a lot of power in the individual towns, and we have a preexisting sprawled-out transit district. Although ideas for overcoming those structural limitations (the changeable ones at least) are Legislature's job. Cue "womp-womp" sad trombone. If you wanted something like regional subdivisions of the district to be able to package projects in more targeted form that backstops better against self-defeating provincialism, or a layer-cake district of rapid transit + bus territory vs. commuter rail + other RTAs' buses territory...somebody in the House has to give enough shits to float that for a vote. Fiscal Control Board Sponsored By The Pioneer Institute™ doesn't do that.


And, yes, the design-build out in Denver and L.A. was done a million times less encumbered by bloat and too-many-chefs syndrome. But that's not just a Boston thing, or a 'Murica! thing...the U.S. East Coast tends to be so much worse at it than the U.S. West Coast. Proximity to NYC seemingly being the common denominator on how slovenly it gets. And the divide is getting more dramatic despite the same greedy S.O.B.'s buying political favors at the local level in all 50 states.

Job #1, before we get all covered in spittle wondering why U.S. transit isn't exactly like the Germany...last week...might be figuring out why such a regional disparity is opening up...and who's benefitting from that widening disparity. 'Cause, contrary to what some Herald readers may believe, Denver and L.A. transit are heavily union too and heavily influenced by pols taking kickbacks from the would-be low bidders. So why do GLX's and East Side Accesses and gold-encrusted BRT trophies and NEC FUTURE studies-about-studies keep happening here while even a piece of sausage-making as ripe for nonstop manipulation as CAHSR is kinda sorta exceeding expectations at keeping its shit together?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Does anybody have any ridership projections by station?

There isn't an "official" itemization per station to cite like a "this is what Blue Book 2030 will show at Gilman Square". Just more a 2030 projection of as many as 40,000 daily riders on the extension. Some of the old fact sheet flyers on the GLX website sketched out some numbers by stations, but they are sample distributions to illustrate a picture rather than "guess the Blue Book" projections. Unlike a linear commuter rail extension study, the divvying of the pie so heavily depends on how local patterns contour to the new stops, what gets built around the stations, and what service pairings get run out there.

Circumstantial external factors with $0 cost bearing on the project so heavily shape how the pie gets divided that they don't attempt to predicate the build on individual stops that. Rather, it's ensuring that there are no off-scale losers being built (there aren't...these stops are more closely demand-similar to each other than any D stop is demand-similar to any other D stop), and that the facilities are not off-scale big or small (they're not...pretty much same size/configuration on all, making configuration nitpicks a global rather than individual debate).

The only thing they have a firm per-station hand on is Lechmere, which is expected to swell to almost 11K per day by 2030 thanks to more reliable projections offered from full-build Northpoint + more frequencies at its immediate surroundings. No earth-shattering news there; it's what we expected all along.

They project Gilman to be the #2 high-ridership station of any of the newbies by a healthy %, thanks to its placement by the Medford St./McGrath split at the saturation-densest part of East Somerville residential. Union and Tufts get all the glory so this may surprise people, but Gilman has a huge advantage with that major thoroughfare crossroads it sits at. And will be biggest future beneficiary of the efforts to tame McGrath. Lowell and Ball are projected to have lowest boardings due to quiet environs. And Washington/Brickbottom, Union, and Tufts/College Ave. are an evenly-matched jump ball based on who wins the TOD spoils.


Beyond that...distribution of that 40K can spread unevenly around and grow unprojectably faster some places vs. others. For example of how unprojectable this is. . .

• We know today E's are all going to Union and D's to College Ave as the baseline.
• ...but we don't know if that's all there's going to be. Brattle Loop @ GC exists as a pre-existing $0 constant for varying service patterns. Because it's cost-neutral they don't have to clutter the GLX studies with it for self-justification purposes.
  • If end-to-end D's are hard to manage at crush load, throttling D's with mixture GC short-turns becomes necessary. College Ave. will then get counter-balanced with GC short-turns of its own. Which may cut against some stations where there's heavier one-seat demand to, say, Kenmore...but also boost it in other places where you can actually grab an uncrowded trolley home from work from GC.
  • If demand flat-out merits, College Ave. to GC headway boosters can instantaneously be mixed in above-and-beyond. Then you get a unilateral ridership boost on top of all else...but one that's going to skew heavier to some stations with heavier to/from CBD lean than others.

^These^ are no-cost micro adjustments they can make at any time with an internal timetable change, and they won't have a firm idea on what those micro adjustments need to be until Phase (whatever) to College Ave. is on the eve of opening. And tweak from there.


So it's more like you have a pot of up to 40,000 riders. You have some ballpark assumptions on how the pie will divide: Lechmere...lion's share; Gilman...#2 from location; Ball & Lowell...smaller; College/Brickbottom/Union...even match, TOD determines. And the rest of the pie gets sliced by external local conditions and service patterns, not the existence of the thing in the locations where the thing is built.

 

[bigeman312]

Thanks! That is pretty much exactly what I was looking for. I'm not advocating for this, just simply speculating as to what we'll see when they make their decision in the spring:

I wonder if we will see a proposed Lechmere-Washington-Gilman extension as the current phase, with future phases "to be built as funding becomes available." That seems like a Baker-administration thing to do.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Thanks! That is pretty much exactly what I was looking for. I'm not advocating for this, just simply speculating as to what we'll see when they make their decision in the spring:

I wonder if we will see a proposed Lechmere-Washington-Gilman extension as the current phase, with future phases "to be built as funding becomes available." That seems like a Baker-administration thing to do.

Sort of. The phasing chunks are determined by what can they supply for service with or without the carhourse, which is why first phase can only swing Union and Washington, not Union and Washington + Gilman. There isn't wiggle room to change that sequence up.


But you can see why STEP sees this as hand-in-glove with McGrath teardown, and how once the fed funding commitment for GLX got awarded they rapidly sprang into action with fever-pitch McGrath advocacy. Union's got a pretty cut-and-dried TOD upside as-is. Land values and rents are already skyrocketing, redevelopment's already kicked around. But Washington/Brickbottom gets uncapped by boulevardization of McGrath and starting the process of creating a new Square right in front of it. That's where its longer-term future could end up meeting or exceeding that of Union's or College Ave.'s ridership.

Similarly, Gilman's position on the opposite end of that McGrath teardown corridor gets you the kind of upside where a #2 ridership station starts looking more like "transit center", with the 80, 88, 90 and other bus nodes down the street at Union, Washington, Sullivan all ripe for a more integrated recalibration around that sorta concave quadrangle they trace in order to better serve that taffy-elongated "square" that springs up along a boulevarded McGrath.

So many possibilities you can draw up, but it's all predicated on the combo of GLX + McGrath boulevardization and factors external from those builds following through. So Somerville's fervor at shotgunning them makes complete and total sense. And you can see why per-station ridership projections become out-of-scope for the actual GLX project and their ridership focus becomes "cumulative pot" + "maintaining an even keel station-to-station with no low outliers". The wholly external factors irrelevant to project construction or costs like McGrath redev end up radically re-dividing the pie, and the only T relevance becomes the internal timetables and what frequency supplements they send out of existing turnbacks during crush load. Which has no bearing on the project itself...I mean, Brattle Loop turns from the north out of Lechmere have been S.O.P. on every Garden game night for decades. That's an operational constant they can tap at-will if external development factors on the Lechmere-Gilman stretch call for beefier rush hour frequencies on the Medford Branch.