More than meets the eye with Healey’s housing initiative | A typically Massachusetts argument for a downtown Boston rail tunnel | MIT student paper retracts op-ed by anti-Israel activists after “major factual inaccuracies” | Truth telling newsletter hits 1 million subscribers |
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Stopping the T’s land grab: Building a downtown Boston rail tunnel could be just the ticket to prevent the troubled transit agency from turning half the city into a train parking lot
Only in Massachusetts would this be one of the political selling points for a multibillion-dollar tunnel project.
To whit: That building a rail tunnel connecting Boston’s North and South Stations would help thwart one of the more outrageous government boondoggles in recent years.
Alas, such is the case with the long-debated North-South Rail Link, which would have the side benefit of putting the kibosh on a growing land grab by the MBTA in Boston’s urban core, where they aren’t making any new land.
Finally connecting the two stations would merge what are effectively separate commuter rail systems to north and south of Boston.
And that, in turn, would give the T the ability to manage its fleet of trains much more efficiently, while also driving a stake through the troubled transit authority’s efforts to lay claims to large tracts of land in the Boston area on which to stick idle trains, Rail Link supporters say.
“If you do the North-South Rail Link, you don’t need as many (train) layover facilities - you certainly don’t need full-blown facilities,” John Businger, a former state rep and vice chair of the North-South Rail Link Working Group, told Contrarian Boston.
Specifically, the MBTA would be able to dispense of its planned rail yard in Widett Circle, a potential 100-acre development site in South Boston that the T forked over $250 million for in 2023, supporters of the rail tunnel say.
And that’s not all, as they say. The rail link would also short-circuit a multibillion-dollar plan to add additional tracks to South Station where the U.S. Postal Service’s huge mail sorting plant now stands - valuable urban acreage that would be far better used for badly needed housing or commercial development.
In fact, the rail link would also eliminate the need for some surface tracks at North Station as well, freeing up acreage there for redevelopment.
Who knows, maybe the T would also no longer need the rail yard that it wants to plunk down in Allston, on land to be reclaimed under a planned, $1 billion straightening of the Turnpike’s route through the neighborhood.
It’s almost criminal in its stupidity, the idea of taking developable land in Boston’s urban core and parking trains on it, even as a dire housing shortage pushes prices and rents to insane levels - but that’s the T for you.
Once eyed for an Olympic stadium during Boston’s short-lived bid to bring the games to town, Widett Circle itself is large enough for a new neighborhood.
Of course, supporters of the Rail Link will tick off many other worthy reasons why the project makes sense, such as enabling someone to live on the North Shore and take a job on the South Shore, or visa versa.
That, in turn, could enable commuters to access less expensive homes farther out from the urban core that is feasible now.
“We have a rail system that is not competitive, which does not connect North and South Station,” Mike Dukakis, former governor and Democratic candidate for president in 1988, told Contrarian Boston.
“It’s a no brainer,” said Dukakis, chair of the North-South Rail Link group pushing for the project.
Pushing back against anti-Israel campus crazies: MIT student newspaper forced to retract an op-ed that accused prof of doing “research for genocide”
Can’t wait for The Boston Globe tear-jerker on so-called pro-Palestinian activists facing persecution on campus.
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