Green Line Extension to Medford & Union Sq

[F-Line to Dudley]

Massachusetts: where every project ends up costing double.

Massachusetts: "But at least we're not the Port Authority where it costs quintuple!"


Off-scale procurement is the #1 impediment to civil engineering renewal and improvements in this country. The T is no different from most of the other big boys when it comes to out-of-control construction costs and fucked bid processes. They're arguably no worse than 60th percentile on the spectrum of agencies with fucked project bloat, and but one contributor to a great big coalition of players making this stink to high heaven. It's systemic throughout the whole country, across a whole range of essential civilly engineered infrastructure. Until we can get to the root cause of chronically high U.S. costs, there's not much hope of preventing GLX's from happening all over the place.

At least it's not a worst-of-worst case like East Side Access or the Port Authority Bus Terminal in NYC.

 

[Ruairi]

Correct. They must spend it or return it...all of it. And they have been spending it, on all that culvert and bridge work that's been blitzing along for the past year. The state contribution is staggered out over more fiscal years than the feds, so the fed money is front-loaded.

So, yes, they are literally too far along to back out. Backing out means returning the unspent fed money and writing a check from the state coffers for the fed money already spent. It means breaking dozens of existing construction contracts with stiff penalties. Which I bet are extra-special stiff because of this "money-saving!" design-bid process they used. It means advertising new contracts to stitch up what's already been overturned with shovels. It means long, drawn-out legal fees for the suits that get filed for backing out (note: and if Tufts is in the mix directly or indirectly by supplying the pro bono resources to the opposition, this is a bit more serious than the Conservation Law Foundation's "adorable" Arborway suit). And it means drawing up some sort of half-assed new Transit Commitment to head off the legal challenges...even if it's more bullshit like suburban parking garages that go 2x over-budget.


Backing out means they're still out $½B or more, depending on how hasty/messy a retreat they pull (hint: if we're even having this discussion semi-seriously, bet on it being cromulently hasty and messy). With no mobility improvements, worsening congestion that's going to drain the road budget one pinprick at a time forever (and ding City of Somerville's municipal budget extra-hard), and a real estate mini-bubble that's going to burst in Somerville and Medford from all the pending property value increases that won't be coming. So the real under-the-hood costs are going to sting much worse than the retreat checks the state has to dole out.


This isn't Arborway or the other Transit Commitments. The state had zero fear of breaking those or watering those down to spit. They are scared shitless of backing out of GLX because the write-off costs--direct and indirect--are political career-enders for the people who have to make those decisions. Baker isn't winning reelection if he has to write off Middlesex County as a probable lost cause in 2018; he won the 2014 squeaker because he overperformed in the bluer swath of Middlesex closest to Boston and held to Coakley to her narrowest margin of victory in any of the counties she took. Cambridge, Somerville and Medford are never going to vote GOP...but a record high-turnout hate-vote in those precincts in '18 will sink him, no question.

When it poses a mortal threat to the top of the power structure on their own turf, the pols will act head-on instead of ducking. This is one of the exceedingly rare transit cases where that level of mortal threat is in-play...and it's achieved threat-level because the project has crossed way too far beyond the point of no return to reverse course.

Thanks for the analysis of where we're at now. Out of interest, what do you think will happen? that is, will it go ahead fully and over a reasonable timeframe or will it go ahead on the long finger tied up with litigation and a never ending tendering process? the 3 billion dollar question I guess.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

WBUR recap of the meeting:

http://www.wbur.org/2015/12/01/mbta-green-line-extension-problems

Basically, Skanska gamed out every hole in the bid process and compartmentalized its communication and cost itemization within those loopholes to rob the T blind. Fully legally and above-board, because the process itself was so flawed. A for-profit contractor's whole profit motive on a bid ends up coming from their assessment of the exploits, and then gaming them for everything it's worth. Which gets even easier when the consulting is all outsourced and other for-profit contractors scheming for loopholes are making procurement decisions on the T's behalf that would normally go to in-house staff. Project this out to every other agency that has the same chronic cost bloat problem and the same pattern emerges.

Failure goes entirely on the state for not vetting the bid process well enough to have any clue how fatally flawed and easy to exploit it is. Or...it was willful ignorance so somebody's cronies got a gift that could be cloaked in plausible deniability and shifted onto the Control Board in terms of cuts, not process re-evaluation. Or...a little defective-by-design from Column A, a little defective-by-design from Column B.


All that's missing in this discussion of singularity-of-cromulence is AB's own Howie Carr cartoon caricature showing back up here to blather on about how this is entirely the Carmen Union's fault and how roads always pay for themselves. The Aristocrats!

 

[Alex]

If I understand this webpage correctly the extension to washington street and union with stations will be completed after phase 2/2A which is the current phase. link: http://greenlineextension.eot.state.ma.us/about_phasedSchedule.html

The info on that webpage hasn't been updated since the budget fiasco began. The Lechmere/Union/Washington Street Stations will not even be remotely close to completion when the currently awarded contracts are wrapped up. GMP-4, which is the vast majority of Phase 2 (including a ton of bridge work and all the station work) has not been awarded. Most* of the bridge work we are seeing today (Broadway, Medford Street by the high school, School Street) is just utility relocation. The apparent progress is a bit of an illusion.

*There are two bridges that are being completed as part of Phase 1, which seems close to completion: Medford Street by the Somerville Target, and Harvard Street in Medford.

 

[vanshnookenraggen]

Massachusetts: "But at least we're not the Port Authority where it costs quintuple!"

Yeah but that's active corruption. Mass just seems to be incompetently losing money.

 

[ant8904]

I would saying WSK gaming to the hilt in the bid process is corruption.

So does it sounds like the best case likely scenario is a re-bid. With the danger of total cancellation - while scarily high - is at least buffered that Baker probably don't want to write off all of Middlesex county. I really hope he does not want to emulate Chris Christie. I also really don't want to see this project balloon 1bn more and let WSK get away with this whole thing to the bank.

 

[JumboBuc]

“WSK figured out how to work the system, we allowed them to work the system, and they ended up every time getting their maximum price,” Brian Lang, a member of the T’s fiscal control board, said during Monday’s meeting. “I think that’s fair,” BRG’s Terry Yeager responded.

Could someone remind me again what the difference is between a "consortium" and a "collusion"?

 

[393b40]

So does it sounds like the best case likely scenario is a re-bid. With the danger of total cancellation - while scarily high - is at least buffered that Baker probably don't want to write off all of Middlesex county. I really hope he does not want to emulate Chris Christie. I also really don't want to see this project balloon 1bn more and let WSK get away with this whole thing to the bank.

He's not writing off the entirety of middlesex county. He's writing off the urban voting population of Middlesex county which probably didn't vote for him in the first place. This is an easy win for Baker. If he cancels it he looks like a fiscally prudent watch dog fighting against corruption and a special interest (those dirty/entitled Camberville yuppies). His target base which is conservative suburban Massachusetts will eat it up.

 

[JeffDowntown]

He's not writing off the entirety of middlesex county. He's writing off the urban voting population of Middlesex county which probably didn't vote for him in the first place. This is an easy win for Baker. If he cancels it he looks like a fiscally prudent watch dog fighting against corruption and a special interest (those dirty/entitled Camberville yuppies). His target base which is conservative suburban Massachusetts will eat it up.

Kind of hard to look fiscally prudent when you have to give back $1 Billion in federal money YOU ALREADY SPENT. And have nothing to show for it but gravel right of ways. Oh and probably another $0.5 Billion in contract cancellation and litigation costs. Really prudent indeed.

 

[Arlington]

His target base which is conservative suburban Massachusetts

There's no evidence for this, and, in fact, lots of evidence to the contrary.
1) Baker dropped his categorical no taxes pledge
2) Baker ran fully to the left on social issues
3) Baker ran as a pragmatic (non-profit) administrator, not on any particular ideology
4) Baker appointed Stephanie Pollack, a Dukakis protege
...in fact it is hard to name *any* position that Baker has staked out to appeal to "conservatives".

Maybe they look conservative to you but in any classical spectrum they are Moderate-Independent-Suburbans, same target as every other Weld-Cellucci (or Tisei) campaign: swing voters who like progressive social positions but own a big house in car-dependent locations (but being "green" and urbane types who rode the T while they were at college/grad school they understand the need for large transit system which they rarely use) but still don't like feeling that the first solution to granting their desires is for government to say "we'll pay whatever it takes" cause they know that being rich this is code for "we'll be raising taxes."

Having laid bare what a rip-off the contracting process was, Baker, as pragmatic, non-ideologue manager has to say "We like this project but we don't like the State being ripped off...so will fix the ripoff part"

We can have more nice things if we learn how to procure them cost-effectively.

 

[winstonoboogie]

Kind of hard to look fiscally prudent when you have to give back $1 Billion in federal money YOU ALREADY SPENT. And have noting to show for it but gravel right of ways. Oh and probably another $0.5 Billion in contract cancellation and litigation costs. Really prudent indeed.

They haven't already spent the federal money, the federal application for funding was only approved in January 2015 and the money spent before that was state money. The last project update (before they went public with the cost problems) is here:

https://www.massdot.state.ma.us/Portals/17/docs/sip/2015_SIP_Annual_Report_Final.pdf

and it states:

"On January 5, 2015, the U. S. Secretary of Transportation and the MBTA signed the Full Funding Grant Agreement (FFGA) for the Green Line Extension project, approving $996,121,000 of FTA New Starts funding to support the design and construction of the Green Line Extension project.
The execution of the FFGA was the result of many years of planning, design and pre-construction efforts by MassDOT and the MBTA, in collaboration with the FTA and its PMOC. The federal funding is scheduled to be paid between Federal Fiscal Year (FFY) 2015 and FFY 2022. As noted in the MassDOT Capital Investment Plan for FY 2016, MassDOT and the MBTA will use Commonwealth funds in addition to the federal funding to advance the design and construction activities. With FTA’s January 5, 2015 execution of the FFGA, the balance of the Program (i.e., those portions of Phase 2/2A, Phase 3 and Phase 4 currently not under construction) received approval necessary to advance construction activities with the completion of the design and bidding process."

Here is a link to the "where are we today" powerpoint the Control Board was presented on Monday the 30th:

http://www.mbta.com/uploadedfiles/About_the_T/Board_Meetings/2-WhereAreWeToday.pdf

 

[JeffDowntown]

They haven't already spent the federal money, the federal application for funding was only approved in January 2015 and the money spent before that was state money. The last project update (before they went public with the cost problems) is here:

https://www.massdot.state.ma.us/Portals/17/docs/sip/2015_SIP_Annual_Report_Final.pdf

and it states:

"On January 5, 2015, the U. S. Secretary of Transportation and the MBTA signed the Full Funding Grant Agreement (FFGA) for the Green Line Extension project, approving $996,121,000 of FTA New Starts funding to support the design and construction of the Green Line Extension project.
The execution of the FFGA was the result of many years of planning, design and pre-construction efforts by MassDOT and the MBTA, in collaboration with the FTA and its PMOC. The federal funding is scheduled to be paid between Federal Fiscal Year (FFY) 2015 and FFY 2022. As noted in the MassDOT Capital Investment Plan for FY 2016, MassDOT and the MBTA will use Commonwealth funds in addition to the federal funding to advance the design and construction activities. With FTA’s January 5, 2015 execution of the FFGA, the balance of the Program (i.e., those portions of Phase 2/2A, Phase 3 and Phase 4 currently not under construction) received approval necessary to advance construction activities with the completion of the design and bidding process."

Here is a link to the "where are we today" powerpoint the Control Board was presented on Monday the 30th:

http://www.mbta.com/uploadedfiles/About_the_T/Board_Meetings/2-WhereAreWeToday.pdf

OK, we are only out $206 Million for a gravel path to nowhere, and no off-load of tens of thousands of urban vehicles from I-93 and surrounding surface arteries. That's a relief.

The bid but not yet contracted IGMP 4 would have kicked us over $1 Billion committed.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

He's not writing off the entirety of middlesex county. He's writing off the urban voting population of Middlesex county which probably didn't vote for him in the first place. This is an easy win for Baker. If he cancels it he looks like a fiscally prudent watch dog fighting against corruption and a special interest (those dirty/entitled Camberville yuppies). His target base which is conservative suburban Massachusetts will eat it up.

If it were an 'easy' win for Baker, all hands wouldn't be on-deck trying to save this project. He'd go hands-off all of a sudden.

He won the election because he overperformed in the more populous parts of Middlesex, where Medford-born Coakley was supposed to have dominant home field advantage...in a low-turnout election. He didn't win the election because he won the more populous parts of Middlesex. He kept the margins closer than predicted, and too much of Coakley's base stayed home in these places instead of padding her lead.

Medford -- 59% Coakley, 36% Baker, 18398 total votes cast, 33881 registered voters, 54% turnout
Somerville -- 73% Coakley, 22% Baker, 21205 total votes cast, 44975 registered voters, 47% turnout
Cambridge -- 81% Coakley, 18% Baker, 30,884 total votes cast, 60740 registered voters, 51% turnout.

Those lopsided % margins of victory are predictable...except for Coakley failing at a supermajority of her own hometown (that's sort of the Exhibit A for Baker's path to victory in the county). But look at the turnouts. Somerville stayed home in droves. The People's Republic, which usually musters a lot better than that in even-numbered election years because it's the People's Republic, stayed home. Medford, with the hometown star on the ballot, barely woke up. You don't get hurt losing by those margins in hostile territory if the hostile territory is casting way fewer actual votes than their built-in population advantages would naturally offer. And Coakley couldn't get her base to turn out on her home turf. At all. That was critical...and arguably a turning point...in the whole election.


What keeps Baker up at night re: canceling GLX is pumping those turnout percentages >60% in 2018 in the backlash over the decision. In Somerville, at least, potentially way higher than that. If he goes up against a competitive candidate in '18 (chances are there's not going to be some Jack E. Robinson-type placeholder on the ballot), he doesn't have a path to reelection losing these 3 places by similar 50-60% margins...but with twice the total votes. There's not enough extra turnout to wring out of the smaller bedroom communities that he can count on to turn back a surge in turnout from the cities. Every GOP Gov. in the state the last 25 years has had to minimize mistakes re: inducing "bad" turnout to play the map to victory, and it was harder for Baker in 2014 than Weld in 1990 to contain the hostile territory because of how much the cities have re-grown. It's more of a turnout game than ever, and high-turnout outliers in the cities are bad, bad news for a GOPer's statewide reelection chances.

Piss off Somerville and Medford so they hate-vote against him, and have Cambridge run up the score in tandem with their neighbors...and he loses reelection. Period. And if somebody like hometown hero Capuano decides to try his hand at the nomination flogging GLX as a wedge issue...he loses reelection in a rout.


There is no way a risk-averse tactician like Baker is going to cancel this project with what it does to his '18 map. His actions today trying to pull out the stops to make this work already reflect the obvious mortal threat he'd face pissing off the cities. As is, if he can refinance the project without boning over Somerville he can probably count on high turnout in his favor in 3 years putting him in excellent position for reelection.

These pols aren't stupid when the bottom line is THEM. And there are many, many pols and hangers-on to pols for whom GLX is their asses in the next 1-2 election cycles. This isn't like the other transit pull-outs. The consequences are readily apparent at the top of the power structure.

 

[JeffDowntown]

A savvy competitor could also get the message out that killing GLX keep tens of thousands of urban cars on the road in the last 4 miles of I-93 into Boston. A well targeted campaign along the I-93 commuter corridor could make a solid case that the pullout (by Baker) means dozens of hours per year in extra commuting time for all those Baker supporters up the suburban corridor. Some car-centric voters can be flipped with that kind of message.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

A savvy competitor could also get the message out that killing GLX keep tens of thousands of urban cars on the road in the last 4 miles of I-93 into Boston. A well targeted campaign along the I-93 commuter corridor could make a solid case that the pullout (by Baker) means dozens of hours per year in extra commuting time for all those Baker supporters up the suburban corridor. Some car-centric voters can be flipped with that kind of message.

Here's some more math to illustrate just how loathe Baker is to poke the dynamite monkey in the GLX communities:

Somerville @ 47% turnout, same % breakdown: +10,815 Coakley advantage in raw votes
Somerville @ 60% turnout, same % breakdown: +13,752 Coakley advantage in raw votes

Medford @ 54% turnout, same % breakdown: +4208 Coakley advantage in raw votes
Medford @ 60% turnout, same % breakdown: +4676 Coakley advantage in raw votes

Cambridge @ 51% turnout, same % breakdown: +19516 Coakley advantage in raw votes
Cambridge @ 60% turnout, same % breakdown: +22960 Coakley advantage in raw vote


If everything statewide remained exactly the same...and these 3 municipalities chucked in exactly the same margins of victory...but the voter turnout was just an average of 9⅓% higher in only those 3 GLX-constituent municipalities that stayed home in '14. . .

Baker's margin of victory shrinks from an already razor-thin 40,165 to an even thinner 33,316.

But in the real world, the damage isn't going to be limited there. Boston feels the loss just as acutely, and the Hub had an even more pathetic 41% turnout in 2014 for its 66-30 Coakley advantage, with 158,840 votes cast. Let's take our lab results from the 3 GLX-proper municipalities and push Boston to a still-anemic 50% voter participation. Coakley nets another 26,500 raw votes and now we're knee-deep in recountsville with ~6800 votes separating them.

Yes...canceling GLX can sink him. Just here. Just by making the GLX host cities angry at him. There are not enough conservatives in the 'burbs so impressed by the fiscal responsibility of a project cancellation to decide to go and vote where they otherwise would've had no intention of doing so, so there's no car-centric firewall for this. And furthermore, if this project can be canceled you'll get the South Coasters still clinging to improbable commuter rail hopes turning against him. He ran the table in all the small towns in that project's catchment area, got surprisingly close to a draw in Fall River, and firewalled himself with low turnout in Coakley's New Bedford blowout. Kiss all that goodbye too.


He will never move to cancel the project, because canceling the project is tantamount to canceling the remainder of his statewide political career. In any non-creampuff '18 matchup, the decision ends him...full-stop.

This thing will get built. There will be torturous hand-wringing and re-financing, more delays, and probably every legal maneuver to try to bounce or box in Skanska to try to keep the barn door as closed as humanly possible on contractors gaming the system. But there will be bulldozers and cement mixers making an awful racket at those station sites for the 2018 election season. And probably a loaded gun to somebody's head to get at least *one or two* stations open even if it's a crippled schedule...just as showpiece campaign ad to say "Look, I saved GLX. It wasn't pretty, but we found a way and your patience paid off."

It will happen because there is no other way that gives the Governor of the Commonwealth a career after 1/8/2019. Or several other elected officials and several of his own appointees with aspirations, for that matter. Canceling it is a real, no-foolin career-killer for a whole gaggle of the most powerful pols in the state. And that is why they are handling this with the care of a fully-armed nuke instead of the usual cut-and-run playbook. They're the first ones to get vaporized if it blows.

 

[belmont square]

A savvy competitor could also get the message out that killing GLX keep tens of thousands of urban cars on the road in the last 4 miles of I-93 into Boston.

Since there's only projected to be 15k or so daily boardings at the new stations on the extension (many of those already MBTA riders), how does that translate into tens of thousands of fewer cars on 93?

 

[citylover94]

Maybe if your talking just the phase 2/2A stations but the daily boarding estimates I have seen are for between 30,000 and 45,000 per day. So yeah it might not effect traffic on 93 that much but that is a significant number.

 

[CantabAmager]

Since there's only projected to be 15k or so daily boardings at the new stations on the extension (many of those already MBTA riders), how does that translate into tens of thousands of fewer cars on 93?

26k daily boardings long the extension, so we're looking upwards of the 52+ unlinked trips per day. It doesn't translate into few cars, that's just the way that the CLF was able to shiv the SIP mandate into existence. GLX is pure transit for transit's sake (which is a great thing), but VMT reductions probably aren't as likely an outcome.

Somerville post-"gentrification", pre-GLX disperses about 44.4k workers per weekday. The two major destinations are obviously Cambridge (20% of all resident workers), Boston (30%), and Somerville itself at 17%. The city receives an additional 13.3k commuters per day from surrounding areas. With that in mind, where does GLX slot into the system? It largely takes over from bus-to-rapid transit connections; 64% of Somervillains working in Boston take the T to their job, that's the set GLX caters to and the 7k Somervillains making an internal commute. Only 36% of those working in Cambridge use the T, but Davis-Kendall has developed as major origin-destination pairing (largest non-DT oriented one on the Red-Line), so I'd say there's certainly some Kendall-centric action that GLX can tap into through Lechmere. Less assured, but still a potential.

What will be the impact on cars? I wouldn't hold my breath - and frankly I don't think it's important. Emissions mitigation and reducing VMT was a shotgun marriage at best. Transit doesn't compete outright with automobiles, nor should the success of line be judged by VMT reductions (it has to be in this case for legal foundations, but...ignore that for right now). The last time the MBTA tried to connive people out of cars we ended up with expensive park-and-rides that are able to churn out some ridership, but not as much as a traditional walking catchment and certainly without major impact on personal VMT growth or even the automobile shares for commutes from places like Braintree (lower transit share today than the decade after the SS branch opened).

 

[Matthew]

Remember that just a few percentage of cars could spell the difference between slow moving jam and free flow. Traffic flow is not a linear function, not in the least bit.

Having said that, there's more than enough market for induced demand on 93 to fill any gaps left behind by anyone converted to transit use. As usual, the law of triple convergence applies.

The nice thing will be that many Somervillains and Medfordabrians will be able to travel more easily on transit and won't contribute further to that mess. The even nicer thing will be the change in land use caused by the GLX: denser, more urban development in walkable places leading to lower pollution, healthier outcomes, better business, and happier people.

 

[JeffDowntown]

Remember that just a few percentage of cars could spell the difference between slow moving jam and free flow. Traffic flow is not a linear function, not in the least bit.

Having said that, there's more than enough market for induced demand on 93 to fill any gaps left behind by anyone converted to transit use. As usual, the law of triple convergence applies.

The nice thing will be that many Somervillains and Medfordabrians will be able to travel more easily on transit and won't contribute further to that mess. The even nicer thing will be the change in land use caused by the GLX: denser, more urban development in walkable places leading to lower pollution, healthier outcomes, better business, and happier people.

The GLX transit studies do project reduction in vehicle miles traveled. The ridership projections are not all transit users today. Whether you believe them or not, the projected reduction is more than 25,000 vehicle miles PER DAY. Will that free flow traffic, I do not know, but it is a lot of travel on the major arteries through Medford and Somerville not just I-93, but also 16, 28, 38, probably even 99 in Charlestown... And backup on the surface roads contribute to I-93 backups (they are the bail-out routes).

http://greenlineextension.eot.state.ma.us/about.html