Here is a report on what they have done to date:
http://www.massdot.state.ma.us/Portals/17/docs/sip/March2012SIPStatusUpdate.pdf
http://www.massdot.state.ma.us/Portals/17/docs/sip/March2012SIPStatusUpdate.pdf
South Coast Rail isn't a mitigation project. And unless something radically changes about it, it is a terrible value proposition.
The requirements were:
Upgrade the Fairmount Line and add 4 stations
1000 new parking places
Red/Blue Connector - Design Only
Green Line Extension
Ant -- in so much as the T is a entity of the DOT and even before it was formally merged into the DOT - -the T was a creature of the Legislature -- where the debt went really was a matter of "robbing Peter to pay Paul" or perhaps "3 Card Monty"
I agree that ethically and morallly any borrowing unrealted to the transit operations should not be part of the balance sheet of the T. However, borrowing associated with the expansion of the T to comply with the CLF's "deal with the DOT" is part of the T's heritage. The Legislature just took a look at the immense cost of the Big Dig (some of which was due to the "mitigation projects") and freaked out -- thinking -- "this thing could cost me my cushy synecure." After calming down with a couple of adult beverages, someone in the "Great and General Court" conceived of the idea of "divide, hide and get away with it" -- they divided the Big Dig's immense costs into sub-projects and squireled parts away in various bins most significantly the T and Massport.
The long term solution as was pointed out by Thomas McGee, (D. Lynn) Chair of the Senate Transportation Commitee is to revamp all of the financial and management structures of the T -- that may include the Commonwealth refunding with its bonding authority some of the debt currently covered through the T's bonding (backed by revenues)
The fundamental problem with the T's financing is that as opposed to Massport that actually is a profitable enterprise taking nothing directly from the taxpayers -- the T is so ineffecient that even if you remove all of the debt service -- its operations cost more than the farebox revenues.
from a Globe Article on the Senate debate
the T is so ineffecient that even if you remove all of the debt service -- its operations cost more than the farebox revenues.
In current parlance -- that is not a "sustainable operation" !!!!
Agreed, and it really pisses me off that commuter rail to Newport is somehow tied up in this money pit.
Hold up.
Does this mean that they were obligated, essentially, to THINK about doing Red/Blue but then not actually do it?
"my compliance is optional because I believe it so and don't fear the repercussions" was the loophole
So why hasn't the CLF been all up the state's asshole again?
Oh, they are...at full force, too. They've threatened a lawsuit over the state's jurisdiction to remove Red-Blue from the list, and have provided crucial backing to STEP on GLX. But they have limited resources, and the state's been acting with impunity to ignore so many of these commitments that they're outgunned pretty much everywhere they don't have the toothiness of a STEP to partner with. So they've had to retreat to trying to preserve scraps, pick the winnable battles, and bitterly concede on stuff like Arborway where continuing to fight long odds there might've jeopardized a GLX via divide-and-conquer.
Ultimately they can only go as far as the Courts will enforce. And the state has absolutely nothing to fear there because it can simply drag out and abuse the substitution provisions in the original agreement to water everything down to the point where umpteen amendments and trade-ins later the projects functionally vanish and the regions they were initially targeting have no improvements at all (or worse than none, in the case of JP now having to breathe in bus garage fumes). Erosion through pressure and time, reaffirmed by precedent with each diluting amendment or negotiating extension. The commitments may have been worded "toothy" by 1990 standards but the courts are more top-to-bottom compromised by political interests and protection of political elites than they were 20 years ago. So the CLF gets sacked for a loss every time they they have to pester or cut another interim deal, by virtue of having to chase a deal. Regressive compromise became its own self-sustaining inertia. And, really, there's nothing the CLF can now do about it except shorten its bench and salvage the winnable ones like GLX.
The tide turned against them a long time ago when prior legal actions failed to reaffirm the "toothiness" of the original agreement. "We're broke" shouldn't even be a valid excuse when they signed a binding agreement to build regardless of present finances, but it's now not only framing the entire conversation on the state's terms but also framing it such that the Arborway surrender is the expected starting point for the CLF in negotiations. GLX was being set up to wilt that way too, but Somerville had some legal nukes of its own it was deadly serious about deploying plus a good political protection racket of its own. That's the only reason why that one is seemingly (we hope) going to have a happy ending. But look at the other stuff that is under active construction...we still don't know how many parking spots are going to be lopped further off the incredible shrinking-size/exploding-cost Salem and Beverly garages, and the service plan side of Fairmount has been watered down to so much uncertainty we STILL have no bloody clue what the actual schedules will be at those shiny new stops or what the metrics for successful completion now are (it's no longer DMU's or 20 minute headways, and with the foot dragging on South Station expansion the service goals are being gradually, artfully, and deliberately divorced from that key dependency...is this commitment any longer bound at all to running a much-increased schedule than what there is now?). Pressure and time, pressure and time...
Hey, everybody's lamenting now how the U.S. Supreme Court doesn't even pretend it isn't shilling for the same narrow interests the money that buys elected officials does. Well, that mentality doesn't exist in a vacuum...it bleeds all the way to the bottom of the judicial system at state and local level too. If political interests don't have anything to fear on the enforcement side of the law, it matters little what the letter of the law is.
The folks behind the CLF are the folks who elected and re-elected the current administration on Beacon Hill
Wow! It's amazing that it only took the handful of people who work at CLF to elect an entire administration.
The major beneficiaries of the GLX replacing existing bus service are
He's the litigious crank from Arlington that loves 1950s transportation planning and wants all public transit, bikes, sidewalks, to be obliterated in favor of the glorious automobile.