F-Line to Dudley
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Yes. Some of that justified because of the dig abutting Beacon Hill and there being palpable nervousness about what 400 year old booby traps could be lurking underground that could cause every house on the bottom 3 blocks to slide down the hill into the lobby of MGH. Despite the fact that Cambridge St. was widened with its own Medium Dig only about 70 years ago with well-documented utility re-laying and the tunnel footprint wouldn't stretch more than 2 feet into the right traffic lanes. That's prudent for a scoping report that took place well over a decade ago...when they were actively turning up exactly those kinds of nasty surprises in the Big Dig. You never know.
However...it was totally expected that the project would start bleeding off some of that contingency after the initial scoping. And that it was reasonable expectation that performing the EIS would take most of the rest of it off. This is why performing the EIS was in the Transit Commitments, but not the build itself. If they got actionable answers and the final price tag bled off most of that contingency, then it was supposed to be a slam-dunk to git-'r-dun. But that's why they were to be held to the fire to do the EIS on a set timetable. It was the only path for achieving actionable costs.
The rationale for dropping this as if the padded price tag were some immovable object is...as they say...a steaming pile of horseshit. But that's why they're making the killshot after weaseling out of a variety of other (including less expensive) Commitments. They've already long-established that they can act with impunity. If they'd tried this 3 years ago before, say, the Arborway lawsuit had been settled they would've been called out immediately on the framing games with the contingency budget and been sacked for a loss with the Commitment legally reaffirmed. Had to wait until it was watered down to such a farce the game was over...and pound everyone's brains to goo with the poverty cry and gun to the head re: the agency debt.
It sucks, but what can you say...the Legislature has to reform the agency in totally fundamental/sea change ways or status quo bullshit now is going to be status quo bullshit forever. This move is completely consistent with the non- money-saving "money savers" in the budget deal that that simply grind more longstanding internal axes and offer more cover to the most reform-resistant enclaves on the inside.
Ultimately, law-bound projects like commuter rail PTC and advancing on their ADA compliance are law-bound things...they're just mandated, no ifs/ands/buts. Agreement-bound things like South Station expansion and other stuff with Amtrak capital improvements coattails are agreement-bound...they get generous stimulus money for doing their part and face the wrath of federal interests you don't want to be facing wrath from if they're negligent. Don't enter into an agreement with somebody bigger'n you if you aren't going to make good. State of good repair is state of good repair...things don't freaking run at all if you don't maintain the system.
But beyond the strings-attached stuff, it's GLX...then Red-Blue...then Blue-Lynn. Nothing else--save for some of the more meaningful pieces of the Key Bus Routes program--matters for system expansion until those 3 projects are done. That report last month about downtown circulation choking to death in under 20 years if the T does not make an honest investment in better radial circulation was just the first public warning in what's going to be an escalating series of warnings about that looming transit chokehold. Ignore it and one of these days there's going to be a D'Alessandro Report-level report slamming them for it. Red is the fastest-growing downtown line by far, with the SS-area explosion putting a serious--and open-ended--strain that's going to crunch the double-transfer stations HARD. There has to be a direct transfer, and the transfers have to be spread further apart from the gravitational singularities at Park/DTX/State/GC. It's going to get...bad...out there if they don't do Red-Blue as first effort in recirculation improvements. It's absolutely going to have to go back on the project list when the circulation problems become acute enough. But it'll be twice as expensive and take twice as long if they do that, so there's the lunacy of taking it off right now and ducking an EIS requirement that really only serves to LOWER the cost and make it EASIER to expedite the build.
This isn't a nice-to-have. This is consigning the system to pretty hellish congestion by middle of next decade that'll then take 20 more years to address if they succeed at the passive-aggressive move today.
If I were the Mayor and I gave a shit about what my successor was going to have to deal with, I'd be carpet-bombing this one with bluster and forging a public-private bluster alliance with the heaviest of heavies at MGH and Eye & Ear. The bully pulpit works for this case because we all know finances have jack shit to do with what the too-comfy political factions within the T are trying to do here. It would be a bully pulpit vs. bully pulpit fight. And the city is MUCH more effective at bully-pulpiting on a united front when it feels so motivated. The T just isn't structurally united enough to not blink in the face of that. Look what Somerville has accomplished. Hell...look what the dilettantes in the 'burbs have accomplished through organized chaos alone. Somehow Boston developed its own culture of "learned helplessness" in the face of the T's paper-tiger head games. Everybody is an actor playing to some script. It doesn't have to be this way...and some better-motivated pockets (e.g. Somerville) have looked straight at the situation at face value and said, "Pfft!...it ISN'T this way." Because--once more, with feeling--these moves have jack shit to do with finances.
