Green Line Extension to Medford & Union Sq

Re: Green Line to Medford to start in 2011

DominusNovus said:
There are plenty of particular reasons why we are unlikely to see gas drop to that price. Just as there isn't much political support for hiking up taxes, I don't know if there's enough support for the increase in drilling that would be necessary to outpace the global increase in oil consumption. Unless, of course, we can scale up CNG usage enough to impact crude prices.
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DomiNos -- I think that there are more than enough motivations to drive the kind of drilling now going on in ND and PA to spread quite widely -- the US is sitting on a huge amount of oil and even more natural gas. Now the technology of exploration and resource recovery has gotten to the point where the vast reserves are able to be tapped at the current price range.

There are two scenarios for the next decade:
1) US drills and pumps its way back to #1 in the world
2) OPEC fears #1 and drops the price to precude economic recovery of much of the oil needed for #1

Either way you look at it -- I'll bet there's a very good change the price of gasoline is back under $2.00 per gallon in the next 5 years or so
 
Re: Green Line to Medford to start in 2011

whighlander said:
DomiNos -- I think that there are more than enough motivations to drive the kind of drilling now going on in ND and PA to spread quite widely -- the US is sitting on a huge amount of oil and even more natural gas. Now the technology of exploration and resource recovery has gotten to the point where the vast reserves are able to be tapped at the current price range.

There are two scenarios for the next decade:
1) US drills and pumps its way back to #1 in the world
2) OPEC fears #1 and drops the price to precude economic recovery of much of the oil needed for #1

Either way you look at it -- I'll bet there's a very good change the price of gasoline is back under $2.00 per gallon in the next 5 years or so
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Well, I certainly hope that you're right; indications are that the expansion of production in the US, Canada, Russia, Venuezela, China, and even Israel (Walter Russel Mead has some good pieces on this) could help the energy sector greatly.

I'm just not confident that circumstances will go smoothly enough that I'd bet against oil futures, if I had the money to be playing that game.
 
Re: Green Line to Medford to start in 2011

Anyone have the link to that interactive website for the GLX project with maps, animations, etc? I thought it was here but I don't see it.
 
Re: Green Line to Medford to start in 2011

Wow. This is a quiet thread.

I guess I was naive enough to think we already had the money for this project and that was why everyone's talking about how things will look once it's done.

Um, no.

Senator Provost says there are "placeholders" where the actual money should be.

That actual money including funds from casinos. You know, casinos, those things that won't be completed until 2016 ... if ever.

Uh-huh.

Somerville Congressman Capuano continues criticism of Green Line Extension

Somerville — A frustrated Congressman Mike Capuano told Somerville business leaders to “rock the boat” and demand alternatives to current plans to fund the Green Line Extension, which he thinks are unrealistic.

“We’re sticking our heads in the sand thinking this will definitely happen,” Capuano said at a breakfast hosted by the city’s Chamber of Commerce on Oct. 9.

Capuano has been pessimistic about the extension’s funding for some time, telling the Board of Aldermen that “we need to get realist about this” in a December 2011 meeting. While he said at the Chamber meeting that he supports the extension and did not criticize other city leaders, Capuano told the crowd of 50 people that he’s reached out to other political figures with his concerns but none of them shared his sense of urgency.

“I have had conversations [with them] … they have drawn their own conclusions,” he said.

Somerville State Rep. Denise Provost and State Sen. Pat Jehlen said they were concerned about state funding for transportation. But both said they were committed to the current funding plan

“This is not easy, it’s very, very hard,” Jehlen told the Journal in an interview. “That’s why we have to do it together, so we need the support of the public and businesses. It’s way too early to declare defeat.”

At the meeting, Capuano was sharply critical of the MBTA finance plan the board recently submitted to the Federal Transit Authority, describing how the body would pay for the extension. Some money is coming from sources that are expected but unclear, like casino revenues. But the MBTA is also relying on $700 million in funds from the state specifically for the Green Line Extension, and $17 billion overall from a new tax on car mileage. Neither of those figures has been approved, although Gov. Deval Patrick’s recently released 2013 Capital Improvement Plan calls for $51 million in GLX money.

“It is highly unlikely we’ll get the Green Line under this proposal,” he said.

Provost said she agreed that the current plan had “placeholders” for new revenue rather than committed sources. But she said Somervillains should push forward with it anyway. Capuano has been calling for a “conversation” about alternative plans should the state and the MBTA not have enough money, but alternatives are costly too, Provost said. Planners would have to recalculate environmental impacts under alternate plans, and time spent on alternatives delays officials from acting on the existing plan. Both Provost and Jehlen agreed with Capuano that it’s crucial to act now while a governor sympathetic to the extension is in the corner office.
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Read more: Somerville Congressman Capuano continues criticism of Green Line Extension - Somerville, Massachusetts 02144 - Somerville Journal http://www.wickedlocal.com/somervil...iticism-of-Green-Line-Extension#ixzz297ZMu1BX
 
Re: Green Line to Medford to start in 2011

Oops. Good one, then. ;-)
 
Re: Green Line to Medford to start in 2011

This is such a small project in the grand scheme of everything and yet it seems like we are constantly bombarded with insurmountable funding difficulties. Begs the question, where are the studies on ROI, environmental impact, etc. etc. for all of our excessive defense spending? Dedicating even a tiny fraction of that to transportation spending nationwide would get the GLX done many times over. So. Incredibly. Frustrating.
 
Re: Green Line to Medford to start in 2011

Great. Well this just took all the hot air out of any balloon of hope I had for this project being completed. If there's no money, its not going to do get done.

Of course just a week or so ago, the MassDOT goes on and on about being green. Apparently there's not enough green enough to be green and build a green line extension. (Or at least not having real funding available to build it)

I'll probably be dead before I ever see the GLX at the rate this is going...(remember an original extension was apart of BERy's plan in 1945 so its been in the works for decades..)
 
Re: Green Line to Medford to start in 2011

It's sad when you have to move to LA to witness new rail lines being proposed and actually built.
 
Re: Green Line to Medford to start in 2011

^ Even worse if you take into consideration the fact that we're talking about the busiest light rail network and fourth-busiest subway network in the country. It all seems like a freaking no-brainer: the demand is clearly already here - we're just missing any sort of active, concerted support effort.
 
Re: Green Line to Medford to start in 2011

Commuting Boston Student said:
"Equal or Better" is coming to Somerville?

That's my prediction, anyway.
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Actually, yes.

There is currently an attempt (a weak one?) to get buses crammed up and down Somerville until the GLX opens up for service. Wouldn't it be shocking if the buses were all the 'ville got? :rolleyes:
 
Re: Green Line to Medford to start in 2011

Of course the Fed just approved funding for the "Central Subway" in San Francisco. This "Central Subway" is dubbed by the locals as "A Subway for Tourists" since it will only serve the touristy areas (and eventually will go to Fisherman's Wharf) and doesn't serve the general population. It goes thru an area that really doesn't need a subway.. unless you are a tourist.

Yet we can't find funding for a far cheaper project (Central Subway is going to be expensive since its all bore-drilling tunnels), that has a better ROI than the Central Subway?

Some smells rotten in the state of Denmark, and its not their cheese..
 
Re: Green Line to Medford to start in 2011

Doesn't San Francisco already have a Central Subway, on Market Street? Just like ours, it fans out into multiple surface branches.
 
Re: Green Line to Medford to start in 2011

That's the Market Street subway. The Central Subway is a ridiculously overpriced project to connect Caltrain 4th and King to Chinatown, to the tourist trap (Fisherman's Wharf).

Nevermind that Caltrain is supposed to be getting extended to the Transbay Terminal downtown...
 
Re: Green Line to Medford to start in 2011

Matthew said:
That's the Market Street subway. The Central Subway is a ridiculously overpriced project to connect Caltrain 4th and King to Chinatown, to the tourist trap (Fisherman's Wharf).

Nevermind that Caltrain is supposed to be getting extended to the Transbay Terminal downtown...
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Actually, it may be a long time before it gets to Fisherman's Wharf. As it stands, it's a subway extension of a light rail line that pretty much just dead ends halfway to where it should be going.

SF in general has too many transit agencies, and they don't plan for each other. The Caltrain extension and Central Subway aren't redundant, but they also don't meet, which is a pretty spectacular oversight in the planning process. The fact that SF is spending 10 billion dollars to build a downtown multimodal hub (which, as the HSR terminal, would serve as a primary point of entry to the city) that does not connect to ANY mass transit line is almost beyond belief.

As far as the funding priorities, don't blame the Feds. Boston may be on the top of the transit heap, but LA has way more people and is vastly underserved. We think Boston is as well, but you don't have to be a transit geek to see that LA doesn't have a sustainable network. GLX is being held back by Big Dig debt, not DC favoritism.
 
Re: Green Line to Medford to start in 2011

Equilibria said:
As far as the funding priorities, don't blame the Feds. Boston may be on the top of the transit heap, but LA has way more people and is vastly underserved. We think Boston is as well, but you don't have to be a transit geek to see that LA doesn't have a sustainable network. GLX is being held back by Big Dig debt, not DC favoritism.
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I definitely agree that the T is more hamstrung by its own structural and operational difficulties than anything, but just to split hairs, I'm not so sure how underserved LA really is in terms of transportation overall. The T is 75 percent the size of Metro Rail (66 miles versus 88) while it carries more than 2.3 times as many people on the average weekday. Certainly in terms of rapid transit miles per population LA is at the bottom of the barrel; but its transit usage isn't that great given what they already have.

Here's a quick-and-dirty list I compiled after I started wondering where Boston fell in the scheme of usage/network size/etc:
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Whereas LA will need to densify in order to achieve similar ridership and ridership/mile numbers, Boston is in need of physically expanding its network to cover all of the areas that are already more than dense enough to support it. GLX to Somerville is one such expansion that is so sorely overdue it would outperform most of LA's current and proposed network instantly.

That said, what we really need is something like LA's 30-10 Initiative for the MBTA's service area.
 
Re: Green Line to Medford to start in 2011

Well... LA has much better bus ridership. About 3x our bus ridership actually.

It may just take time for their newer rail extensions to pick up.
 
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