What would you do to get the T out of its financial mess?

Your public statements and behavior have already been debated heavily in other forums. You enjoy trolling, so deal with the consequences.

Highways and on street parking for private vehicles are as heavily, if not more, subsidized than public transportation. Any financial argument you want to make against public transportation has to HONESTLY account for the vastly understated costs of the public infrastructure which permits the private transportation options you trumpet. But you aren't willing to acknowledge that.

There is absolutely no sound financial reasoning behind promoting the expansion of vastly expensive, expansive, and inefficient public highways for private vehicles in dense urban areas.
 
Where do you get the idea I'm against public transit. I favor public transit and maximizing use of funding to serve the most riders. The GLX was court imposed and not a decision based on how money best serves riders across the system. Riders served already have bus transportation, so no service population increase. There is only a quality gain which will draw some more riders. Given maintenance backlog impacting quality and many other opportunities for service in the system, the GLX is a bad idea, much like turning Comm Ave into an Interstate, which I would strongly oppose.

I want the MBTA to get more funding, and contributions from local city and towns is an opportunity. The current formula is unfair and areas getting premium service should be paying premium prices. Somerville wants premium service with the GLX and should help pay for it. Cambridge gets premium service and doesn't pay for it - it needs to. The Green Line in Brookline is only marginally better than bus service due to suffering many of same delays motorists, including bus drivers, face.

Constricting major city streets more by turning travel lanes into bike lanes also impacts bus service, which is serving more people than the bike lanes. Thus its a bad idea too. On Mass Ave in Arlington, there are over 6,000 daily bus boardings for about 250 bus trips. Removal of an outbound travel lane (leaving one) to make a bike-only lane for 20-300 daily cyclists (depending on weather) who could have instead rode the T for at least much of their journey, using the T's bike racks.

Constricting major streets in the name of pedestrian accommodation in Boston has not shown increases in that mode or increased safety in exchange for the service decline to motorists including MBTA buses. The 1997 degradation of Mass Ave in Central Square has not improved safety. Its the state's #1 hot spot for bike accidents and #2 for pedestrian accidents. Enormous sidewalks did not seem to shift mode to walking, just favored bars and Starbucks over the retailers and Indian restaurants before. Former customers came far away (by car) to businesses. Loss of mobility and parking kept them away. Drinkers and loiters are more local and less inclined to drive. The poor got priced out of the area by huge price increases.

Bicyclists are the ones opposing the MBTA with bike lanes which degrade service and HubWay programs to compete, while also helping it with bike parking at stations and transporting their vehicles on the MBTA which add users. Making roads flow benefits both bus riders and private transportation, so challenges the MBTA on quality, where it loses when people have a choice. Reducing choice with bus only lanes and usury parking supply and costs is a loss of freedom and choice to make suffering on a T bus or bicycle look more appealing. Net quality of life and productivity suffer just to promote what people don't want by fascist planners who think much like communistic economic planners.
 
Is it too late to reverse my stated opinion on bike lanes? Mark from Arlington just did a better job of convincing me why we need bike lanes than the people I was debating earlier over our need for bike lanes. Brr.
 
Bike lanes don't degrade service, if anything they increase it by removing additional single occupant vehicles from the road which compete with buses. Though I'm sure if bikes weren't the infrastructure topic de jour you'd be complaining that public buses and bus stops cause too many traffic backups and need to be eliminated.
 
Its the state's #1 hot spot for bike accidents and #2 for pedestrian accidents.
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This is very misleading. It is among the top spots in terms of raw numbers, however it also is among the most heavily used streets for pedestrians and bicyclists in the state. There are plenty of other streets with fewer raw numbers of pedestrian and bicycle accidents, however, these streets have fewer total numbers of pedestrians and bicyclists. What really matters is the rate of accidents, not the raw numbers. Add to that the fact that Cambridge is probably the most diligent city in MA to report pedestrian and bicycle accidents (did you know that Boston doesn't report them at all?), and you've got some skewed numbers right there.

And this whole argument about 4 lanes to 3 lanes on Mass Ave in Arlington is getting very tiresome. It's not really 4 lanes now, although it SOMETIMES acts like it is. But there are also no left turn only lanes today. A 3 lane road that includes left turn only lanes can easily be more efficient than a 4 lane road with no turning lanes. But there seem to be a lot of people who equate more space with better traffic flow. It's not that simple. Oh and of course it's the bicyclists who should be forced to change their mode of travel. "Oh but they should just use the Minuteman!" Well then the cars should just use Route 2!
 
One bike advocate suggested considering bike lanes the way climbing lanes take slower vehicles from blocking faster ones. I agree with that. Lanes should be added to existing travel lanes for just bicycles. The key is to add them only, not replace travel lanes that all can use.

CDEN4, so you are claiming that Central Square has more pedestrians than anywhere near Universities in Cambridge or Boston, streets of the financial district, Newbury Street, or anywhere else in Boston? I'd like to see your numbers. Top hot spots are on the massdot web site.
 
Back to the MBTA! I hope all took note of yesterday's bus accident where a 60-foot tandem/articulated bus hit a parked movie set tractor trailer on a curved road made far too narrow by stupid "complete street" advocates. That one will cost the T in lawsuit injuries.
http://www.universalhub.com/2012/least-12-hurt-some-seriously-roxbury-bus-crash

Part of the blame can be put on the City for issuing the parking permit. The tractor trailer was too wide to fit in the narrow parking spaces on a curve and still provide working width for a long bus or other long vehicle to reasonably get by. Bad place to film due to bad road design changes producing enormous sidewalks.
 
Mark02474 said:
One bike advocate suggested considering bike lanes the way climbing lanes take slower vehicles from blocking faster ones. I agree with that. Lanes should be added to existing travel lanes for just bicycles. The key is to add them only, not replace travel lanes that all can use
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Not replace travel lanes that all can use????? You're baiting us right? You just defined "all" as people driving "faster vehicles" (I presume you mean cars).
 
Mark02474 said:
Back to the MBTA! I hope all took note of yesterday's bus accident where a 60-foot tandem/articulated bus hit a parked movie set tractor trailer on a curved road made far too narrow by stupid "complete street" advocates. That one will cost the T in lawsuit injuries.
http://www.universalhub.com/2012/least-12-hurt-some-seriously-roxbury-bus-crash

Part of the blame can be put on the City for issuing the parking permit. The tractor trailer was too wide to fit in the narrow parking spaces on a curve and still provide working width for a long bus or other long vehicle to reasonably get by. Bad place to film due to bad road design changes producing enormous sidewalks.
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So if the driver of one vehicle hits another stationary vehicle that's in its designated spot, it must be the pedestrians fault.

Why don't you just say, you want to be able to drive your car where you want, when you want as fast as you want to a place with free parking and screw everybody else with a different schedule or mode of transport. Then you can get there and complain about gas prices too.
 
Imagine the public transit enhancements Boston could build with that kind of money!
 
^ya, we coulda built a tunnel in place of an overcapacity, crumbling roadway and opened up acres for parkland and development. ;)
 
Once again, someone link an article about a federal project that includes combined present cost & future interest payments in the same price tag in a headline.
Bonus points if you can find one about a defense project.
 
Thanks Statler. I don't get why people roll aggregate, undiscounted future payments into the price tag.

If you buy a $500K home with 20% down and a 30 year mortgage fixed at 5%, you end up paying $100K down + $400K in principal over the life of the loan + $380K in interest over the life of the loan. But you don't tell people you just bought an $880K home. And you certainly don't tell people it cost $880K to build.
 
Sure, it's an unfair comparison, and obviously an alternative crazy transit pitch build wouldn't cost $24 billion up front either. But for $16 billion or whatever the "fair cost" should be, we could have built a Parisian style subway system and simply torn down the artery.
 
HenryAlan said:
Sure, it's an unfair comparison, and obviously an alternative crazy transit pitch build wouldn't cost $24 billion up front either. But for $16 billion or whatever the "fair cost" should be, we could have built a Parisian style subway system and simply torn down the artery.
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$14.5B is the generally accepted number, I think.
Phase I of the 2nd Ave Subway in NYC is projected to cost $5.6B. That's for 3 new stations and I think just under 2 miles of subway track. So, while it would have been nice to put the money into Mass Transit, no one's building a "Parisian style subway system" for $14.5B.
 
Okay, but we could have built GLX and similar extensions on all the other lines, the Urban Ring, converted the Silver Line to Light Rail, and maybe even get started on the Mass. Ave. Subway. That would have been transformational enough.
 
HenryAlan said:
Okay, but we could have built GLX and similar extensions on all the other lines, the Urban Ring, converted the Silver Line to Light Rail, and maybe even get started on the Mass. Ave. Subway. That would have been transformational enough.
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None of the extensions are nearly as vital as the Urban Ring or Silver Line Light Rail, with the possible exception of GLX and I would have preferred GLXC to package the court mandated upgrades with a Heavy Rail conversion.

I would've spent the entire $14.5B on the North-South Rail Link, but on a cynical note, I believe that had we done that, the Central Artery would still be standing tall and proud today.

Tearing it down and calling it a day was never an option.
 
HenryAlan said:
Sure, it's an unfair comparison, and obviously an alternative crazy transit pitch build wouldn't cost $24 billion up front either. But for $16 billion or whatever the "fair cost" should be, we could have built a Parisian style subway system and simply torn down the artery.
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Henry -- and then the city of Boston would have ceased as we know it -- the traffic would have bottlenecked the and backed-up throughout the downtown core -- every major intersection would need full time police officers to try to maintain emergency access

You can argue all you want about the additional costs of the parks, and transit mitigation projects associated with the Big Dig -- bui there can be no realistic argument that the building of the I-90 to Logan and I-93 under the city was not the greatest improvement in transportation in Boston post the original Turnpike extension
 
Westie's somewhat right in terms of I-90 to the airport. But I would've wanted that to be a triple bore tunnel carrying rail to the airport. I would've easily sacrificed the CAT for that.
 
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