Green Line Extension to Medford & Union Sq

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The Green Line Extension

This is what I hope to be the first in a series of four posts about the poor state of political transit advocacy in the United States, to be followed by posts about free transit, operating aid, and…
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Alon Levy weighs in on GLX's opening.

tldr;...we should feel bad about...something.
 
It looks like it would have been woefully easy to install fare gates here. The current (albeit temporary) validation system is atrocious. I wonder if the city can extract station improvement money from any future developers in the immediate area.
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Alon Levy wrote a post about the GLX (not a fan to say the least) and mentioned that the new fare system was supposed to have been ready for the GLX opening but was pushed back. So these stations will, eventually, get the new fare gates.
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
Alon Levy wrote a post about the GLX (not a fan to say the least) and mentioned that the new fare system was supposed to have been ready for the GLX opening but was pushed back. So these stations will, eventually, get the new fare gates.
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Green Line cars are assumed to be accommodating of all-door boarding in an AFC 2.0 world, hence the center platforms and no fare gates, so no need for fare gates here in the future.

Levy's post seems to be all over the place and rushed (even Twitter is catching some easy oversights - the importance of the Community Path, only using one person they know's opinion on bike path safety, and what city Union Square is in), and has odd suggestions that the Feds should stop giving one of the top American transit systems money until they "get their act together," an act in which the steps involved would place it in the Crazy Transit Pitches thread. I've never been a fan of their writing, especially after the SOGR-Funding-is-Bad think pieces - reads as someone who has surface-level understanding of transit ops in the states and that the Milan Metro is the only system that does it right...
 
stefal said:
Levy's post seems to be all over the place and rushed (even Twitter is catching some easy oversights - the importance of the Community Path and what city Union Square is in), and has odd suggestions that the Feds should stop giving one of the top American transit systems money until they "get their act together," an act in which the steps involved would place it in the Crazy Transit Pitches thread. I've never been a fan of their writing, especially after the SOGR-Funding-is-Bad think pieces - reads as someone who has surface-level understanding of transit ops in the states and that the Milan Metro is the only system that does it right...
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Yeah...the crux of the criticism is that we're too "happy" with it, so we don't deserve nice things. Because in Levy's mind the project is singularly hitched to some sort of validation of Baker's leadership (because he held the fate of the project in his hands)...and thus us being happy with the result means we're totes in love with failed leaders. Like...WTF??? Is there anyone out there calling this one Charlie's triumph after how close of a near-death experience he caused it? It's largely been carried forward in spite of him.

And dear god...the comments section. We should all feel ashamed of attempting this because we didn't mount operationally perfect Regional Rail first. Fuck your "stop spacing...what is LRT for?!?" arguments. The people of Middlesex County would've been practically orgasmic to take significantly lengthened travel times through a half-dozen more intermediate stops safe in the knowledge that they were riding such dead-ass sexy ops practices. Yeah, OK guys. :rolleyes:


The whole piece is a microcosm of how self-loathing advocates are their own worst enemies. Like...okay, the end results are always a little muddled. Is there a greater good being served in the aggregate, or are we doomed to always hate ourselves because we didn't check off platonic ideals in every single category from A to Z? There isn't a city or country on earth who'd satisfy that standard at closer analysis...which is why these pieces end up so relentlessly, ceaselessly dour no matter what project in what country they're looking at.
 
IMO the only failure of the extension, aside from being 10+ years late, is the lack of escalators to Lechmere. Everything else looks good.

Alon is pretty obsessed with costs, and in some cases, thats important, but the political reality these days is that money is made up.

Every single year, they add $20 billion to the war budget. No one blinks. Costs dont matter, what matters is getting your elected official to give them thumbs up to your project. The reason it is like pulling teeth is because 99% of politicians are very very rich and the only "transit" theyve ever been on is the rental car shuttle*.

*Which is why over the last 20 years this country has spent over $20 billion on consolidated rental car centers that eliminate these buses.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
The whole piece is a microcosm of how self-loathing advocates are their own worst enemies. Like...okay, the end results are always a little muddled. Is there a greater good being served in the aggregate, or are we doomed to always hate ourselves because we didn't check off platonic ideals in every single category from A to Z? There isn't a city or country on earth who'd satisfy that standard at closer analysis...which is why these pieces end up so relentlessly, ceaselessly dour no matter what project in what country they're looking at.
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Levy is great when talking in the abstract. But when talking political realities... not so much.
 
stefal said:
Green Line cars are assumed to be accommodating of all-door boarding in an AFC 2.0 world, hence the center platforms and no fare gates, so no need for fare gates here in the future.

Levy's post seems to be all over the place and rushed (even Twitter is catching some easy oversights - the importance of the Community Path, only using one person they know's opinion on bike path safety, and what city Union Square is in), and has odd suggestions that the Feds should stop giving one of the top American transit systems money until they "get their act together," an act in which the steps involved would place it in the Crazy Transit Pitches thread. I've never been a fan of their writing, especially after the SOGR-Funding-is-Bad think pieces - reads as someone who has surface-level understanding of transit ops in the states and that the Milan Metro is the only system that does it right...
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I got deep in the replies on Twitter arguing about the community path. As you said, their arguments against it were all over the place (“just transfer from the bike to the train, bike routes should always be on roads, the community path is unsafe at night” ?!?!). Seems so myopic to blame the path, which was like 2% of the project cost, for the cost overruns. Transit advocates and bike/pedestrian advocates should be allies when it comes to getting people out of cars and increasing mobility. But even setting that aside, if you think of the GLX as a multimodal project that involves two separate train and bike components, you quickly see the cost of the path is neither here nor there for rail cost inflation. If you want the next light rail project to learn lessons from this one, the relevant comparison is the 98% of the money that went to the trains.
 
Anyone else notice the glx update on apple maps is kind of shitty? For some reason its completely covered by the commuter rail line so you cant even see it exists if you zoom out at all. Every other line is drawn next to eachother so you can always see them and where they go, but for some reason the glx line disappears completely behind the CR line. Hopefully they fix this its pretty annoying.
 
I get frustrated with Levy's writings about the GLX, because he goes on about the ridiculous the cost is since it's in an existing ROW, like it was simply a matter of laying down tracks. Which, of course, it wasn't, and this isn't the first time I've pointed that out to him. Makes me take everything else he says about costs with an extra grain of salt.
 
LtKije said:
I got deep in the replies on Twitter arguing about the community path. As you said, their arguments against it were all over the place (“just transfer from the bike to the train, bike routes should always be on roads, the community path is unsafe at night” ?!?!). Seems so myopic to blame the path, which was like 2% of the project cost, for the cost overruns. Transit advocates and bike/pedestrian advocates should be allies when it comes to getting people out of cars and increasing mobility. But even setting that aside, if you think of the GLX as a multimodal project that involves two separate train and bike components, you quickly see the cost of the path is neither here nor there for rail cost inflation. If you want the next light rail project to learn lessons from this one, the relevant comparison is the 98% of the money that went to the trains.
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The bike path is necessary for the inevitable 2 week maintenence shutdowns
 
jass said:
The bike path is necessary for the inevitable 2 week maintenence shutdowns
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The like button doesn't come with a laughing/crying/angry all-in-one option for me to respond to on tis post.

The only part of Alon's argument that I truely agree with is the missed opportunity of keeping John Dalton on the payroll. He saved at least tens of millions of dollars on a project that overran the timeline and had to deal with supply chain/inflation issues due to the pandemic while bringing in a team of 42 people. If you become the highest paid employee at the T, then hire 42 people, and still save more money than you're worth, what does the MBTA have to lose by hiring him for one mega project at a time. He is essentially a guaranteed rebate on their construction costs. He also has said directly that he wants to stay. If anything makes my blood boil about the future of the MBTA, its squandering this type of talent.
 
jbray said:
The like button doesn't come with a laughing/crying/angry all-in-one option for me to respond to on tis post.

The only part of Alon's argument that I truely agree with is the missed opportunity of keeping John Dalton on the payroll. He saved at least tens of millions of dollars on a project that overran the timeline and had to deal with supply chain/inflation issues due to the pandemic while bringing in a team of 42 people. If you become the highest paid employee at the T, then hire 42 people, and still save more money than you're worth, what does the MBTA have to lose by hiring him for one mega project at a time. He is essentially a guaranteed rebate on their construction costs. He also has said directly that he wants to stay. If anything makes my blood boil about the future of the MBTA, its squandering this type of talent.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't he still at the T? Last I heard he's here at least through the end of the year with discussion to follow. No one has said anything about what comes next yet.

 
It was the most backhanded possible compliment, too, since Levy prefaced that Dalton was unemployable in the *civilized* transit world.

As always: we're bad and should feel bad.
 
So has the phase to MVP become more likely? I ask based on Infrastructure bill, the T supposed learning from Dalton, and the desires of Somerville advocates.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
...As always: we're bad and should feel bad.
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You do realize that making people feel perennially uncomfortable, unsatisfied, and angry is a particularly prevalent form of activism these days (especially among younger generations)? I do respect where it is coming from, but at the same time, don't actually agree it is optimally effective in most cases. And it has the unfortunate side effect of making all people on all sides of an issue miserable all the time. Certain 'revolutionary' situations demand that feeling comfortable be set aside. But being a revolutionary means feeling so strongly about an issue that one is willing to accept profound personal sacrifices for one's cause. I don't think many young activists (and my current role introduces me to many of such folks) even know what profound personal sacrifice is. So if we can agree that GLX is a very important, but not quite revolution-inducing, context, then I prefer a much more grounded form of activism: formulate an 80% solution, and absolutely kick butt with execution/implementation to the point where detractors and critics melt away, and the general public (95%+ of stakeholders) engage with that 80% solution and subconsciously say to themselves: "wow, this works. I am good with this. I want more of this." I think the latter is exactly what we have here. Well done.
 
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Does anyone have station cost figures and/or Pearl St sub-station construction costs?
 
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