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Where's Dr. Evil when you need him?
By adamg on Wed, 07/11/2012 - 8:25am
The true, final (well, so far) cost of the Big Dig is:
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Comments
A warning
to those looking to slow down big infrastructure projects. The longer you wait, and the longer you take, the more expensive they become.
Still, 24 billion into the local and regional economy is no small beans. I'm sure someone will want to argue that construction worker paychecks are not real jobs, but we can also ask if it helped offset the great depression along with MA's other investments in industry. As much as Red States want to slight the commonwealth, we're sitting pretty, and they are not.
Not to mention alleviating the huge traffic issues downtown and getting through the city. Time is money after all. And infrastructure are assets on our balance sheet.
That doesn't jive with talking points about spending, but if you think the government finances are run like a household; you probably can't balance your checkbook and have no right to tell the government how to balance the economy.
They do, but
Not all big infrastructure projects are a good idea. For example, South Coast Rail needs to die in its current form.
In 2005, EDR Group estimated the economic benefits of the Big Dig at $168 million / year due to travel delay savings. (Not mentioned is whether this accounted for the new bottlenecks).
So, $24 billion / $168 million per year = 143 years.
The cost was massively out of proportion to the benefit. Now, keep in mind that a lot of this was avoidable. The inspector general's report found that Bechtel/Parsons-Brinckerhoff consultants provided a $13 billion cost estimate initially. But politicos told them to knock that down by $6-7 billion. So they did as they were asked and created a new price sheet with many items eliminated. But it turned out that the initial estimate was fairly accurate, close to the final $14.5 billion. If the public could have judged that beforehand, and if they had been represented honestly to the FHWA, then maybe we wouldn't have ended up with an extra $10 billion in borrowing costs.
As to any stimulative effects, well, the spending occurred before the great recession, so I don't think it was relevant to that. And state governments aren't able to provide stimulus in the case of a liquidity trap because they must balance their budget annually. That kind of support has to come from the Federal government (and the Federal reserve) which can take advantage of the extremely low or negative real interest rates and pass counter-cyclical budgets.
Bad cost/benefit analysis
What a myopic, narrow view of the economic benefit of the big dig.
Where is the calculation of increased economic activity, increased property values, increased spending by local visitors and tourists that derive from remedying that horrible green steel wall that cut neighborhoods apart and cut downtown off from the waterfront?
And that's just narrow, direct economic benefits. What about the branding value of the Zakim bridge? What about the aesthetics? What about the fact that people now actively enjoy, in large numbers, what had previously been a pretty scary, creepy, filthy stretch of.... whatever it was.
Oh they tried to do that too
But they didn't really put any hard numbers on it. And the problem is that all of that could have been achieved by knocking the thing down and not building the tunnel. Heck, they did in fact build a surface highway above the tunnel, with a fancy median strip.
But you know, all that GREENSPACE!! There's always lots of people enjoying it.
Well at least one person enjoying it
I have a whole folder of these, taken every so often when I'm down there. And yes, I did try and go to take pictures of places where people were, if I could find them. Largely in the successful bits, like Christopher Columbus Park and North End Park (at least when it's nice out).
Let's suppose the politicians didn't lie to the public and the cost overruns were far more manageable, avoiding all the loan shenanigans. Then at $14.5 billion the value generated would need to approach $360 million / year to equalize after 40 years, which is probably a reasonable lifetime in such a magic universe where politicians and contractors weren't corrupt. So find $200 million / year in non-travel economic benefits and we're talking.
Edit: And given the new bottlenecks generated by the Big Dig, that $168 million / year in travel benefit is probably greatly reduced. But I don't have numbers for that, so you can leave it aside for now.
I can post photos too
Don't have to wait for special events
...For the Common or the Public Garden to be filled with people.
So seeing that we're stuck with this Big Dig mess, the question is: how do we attract people to use the RKG the way people use the Public Garden?
I would start by cutting down the surface artery highway that chokes off the park on either side.
Lunchtime at Dewey Square
It isn't a special event. It is, however, a daily crowd of people lining up for lunch and a break.
A park that gets one use a day
...Is a failure. Oddly enough, it is often the office worker lunchtime-only parks that attract bums for the rest of the day. I wonder if there's some correlation.
Dewey Square end of the Greenway
The once a day lunchtime crowd is the only use the Dewey Square end of the Greenway ever gets, except for when Occupy Boston found it useful. Check it out any other time, like weekends. Its an univiting, unattractive, remote, empty parcel of land that doesn't seem connected to anything, with fume belching cars exiting an unatttractive tunnel area on one side, and that equally remote and empty area of land across the street on the other side surrounding the Federal Reserve building.
It going to take TIME
Wounds don't heal overnight, and slowly the RKG is getting more use. All the parcels between Faneuil Hall and the North End are very heavy in use.
The biggest issues is that there's little if any forward facing retail and food establishments at the southern end (the thing that makes the northern end so successful); being that the RKG used to be a back alley. It's going to take time and renovations for stores to open that face it, to get food trucks in there, and generally rehabilitate the neighborhoods around it. Pearl St. and High street have been majorly improved since the highway came down with eateries, shops and after work pubs; but Atlantic still needs work yet.
It's also one area that really, really needs food trucks until those changes come.
Anyways, I'm wondering when the picture you posted above were taken.
All summer long there seems to be people enjoying the RKG for a good part of the day. The only part thats underused is the garden area across from the Intercontinental, but it's because of poor access design and the fact that it's a walk through garden. Still, people do use it from what I've seen. BSC is always near the underground vent building, having outdoor classes. Across from 1 Financial there's always a food truck, farmers markets, ect.
It's in the folder, and the
It's in the folder, and the filenames are dates. I started back in March.
The latest pics are from a couple weeks ago. I go down to Pearl Street occasionally. It's the only street with anything open after work down there, it seems. The whole Financial District deadness makes me concerned for the future of the RKG, really.
Food trucks, great. Other kinds of vending trucks, great too. They may save us yet. Low overhead, no need to really plan the use of a structure, easily reversible. If I was Mayor, I'd be encouraging more and more, at more times. And clusters of them. Anything to give people a reason to be there.
But I fear that the reason people don't want to be there is the surface artery. It gets quite nasty sometimes. I've nearly passed out from the fumes while taking pictures.
I think
you hit the nail on the head.
It's less of the RKG's fault, then it is of a district that shuts down between 3:30-4:30 every day. The financial district, less a few pubs, is a ghost town anytime after 7PM.
The fancy condo's and hotels that line the waterfront seem to cater to drivers and cab service. I see lots of cars going in and out, but very few people leaving on foot to go exploring.
Not forcing ground level retail and food once against strikes Boston.
As for passing out, we both know that's a little hyperbolic. If anything it was the fumes from the Four Point Channel.
dupe
internet fart, ignore...
yeah but...
I agree with what you've said...but wish it was applied to a different case, as the Big Dig is not exactly an exemplar of smahht govt investment. The reason why that amount of money keeps growing and is tough to pin down is because we're adding in interest -- which basically means pay outs to banks. Yes, money in a banker's pocket might be good for the economy as well, but not as good as money into a laborer's pocket (where it resides for a short time before being spent on the local economy). The more that debt sits around on ledgers the more opportunity for some smahhty-pantz at the state to play like they're a Wall Street highroller and try some interest rate debt swaps or some other stupidity where the Commonwealth (us) is put at risk. And then of course those financial wankerings fail and we end up with more debt and the price of the project again balloons a bit more (yes we're talking to you MBTA).
On top of that the actual services/products (non-financial) have to actually be honestly worth what you're shelling out, which does not describe the concrete used with a lot of the Big Dig nor the other shady practices that filled pockets, increased the price tag and have been an employment program for journalists looking to do scandal pieces on state govt.
The DOT's recent Fast 14 bridge project is a better example of what you're talking about. Worthwhile investment, tightly run, swiftly delivered, supports the regional economy, puts people to work, etc... The Big Dig will go down as a textbook example of the risks of this type of (critical) investment and a "how-to" on how to NOT run a big-ass project. That's the chapter after "how NOT to do urban renewal: the BRA and the West End Case Study." One thing about metro Boston, we certainly know how to lead by (bad) example.
So ...
Why can't we have a Green Line Fast 16?
Surely you jest, Sir (or Madam)!
Don't you know that there is a law which provides that "Green Line" and "fast" cannot - ever - appear in the same paragraph?
Snark aside, that is a really excellent question, particularly when you consider that the rail right of way doesn't have particularly heavy traffic on the weekends. I suspect the answer is going to be something about how the Green Line extension area is in the middle of a residential neighborhood while 93 is less so, yada, yada, but it is still an excellent question.
How about it Governor P. and Mr. D. (we know your people read UHub)?
You were doing well right up until the last paragraph
You're trying way too hard to sound clever.
I'm not taking a political position on this, but the line "if you think govt finances are run like a household" is almost always used as a retort against arguments for a balanced budget amendment or something similar at the Federal level.
As we both know, Massachusetts is one of the overwhelmingly majority of states that require the Gov. to submit and the Leg. to pass a balanced budget.
How does borrowing $7 billion
How does borrowing $7 billion for the Big Dig meet the balanced budget requirement?
As it should.
The Commonwealth can not print money, create currency, nor enact monetary policy.
State finances are still a lot more complex than a checking account, but they also don't have the tools that the federal government has being a fiscal and political union.
The Commonwealth can't go acting all like Norway and get itself out of a economic conundrum.
24 billion into the local and
Bwahahaha! You really think that 24 billion came from Iowa? The federal government did not cut a check for 24 billion dollars. The repeated over-runs in the Big Dig have been dumped right on the taxpayers of the Commonwealth. And the Commonwealth, in its one-party-state wisdom has chosen to dump the bill on the MBTA.
I have a theory
The MBTA is an agency - not the state. At some point they can let the MBTA go bankrupt and it won't affect the state rating (I'm assuming the state hasn't further guaranteed that debt). They can renegotiate all their debt, take away pension bennies and a host of other things and the Governor (whoever it is at the time) gets to play Pontius Pilot and wash his/her hands of the whole thing. Then they just hit the restart button with a clean (or at least cleaner) slate.
Just a theory.
Romney was Guv'nah
and that's a very common thing to do in business. Separate your management of the services with the management of the assets. IE dump all your debt into a shell spinoff meant to take the brunt of the burden and go bankrupt, while the assets are protected elsewhere.
It's part of the MassDOT
The debt and credit rating belong to Massachusetts. Otherwise, an MBTA bankruptcy would probably be a good idea.
Conservation Law Foundation to blame
The Conservation Law Foundation is to blame for the billions of added debt to the MBTA. The MBTA would be better off not having courts tell them how to spend money they don't have, and they could decide based on maximizing return.
When it comes to bike facilities, the environment doesn't count! The Alewife Greenway project for example skirted the issues with impacting wetlands and wildlife by calling it a "restoration" project. I suppose, back to 1935 environmental abuse levels. Now with people and their trash in those sensitive areas, environmental damage there will be restored to when there were chemical plants there.
If the Big Dig were done in recession like 1930's projects, not only would labor prices be more reasonable, but so too would materials. China and middle east building booms sent the prices of everything up.
The state Legislature needs to fix the city/town formula for funding the MBTA to match services, not population. People in Stockbridge don't deserve having to pay for the MBTA with sales taxes, car inspection fees, or anything else. If Somerville wants the $1.3B GLX, they need to put up some green, and its long overdue that Cambridge and Brookline paid for their fair share of the service they get.
Bullcrap
All they did was point out that the work wasn't done as promised.
Tough shit.
I think a double decked 8
I think a double decked 8 lane expressway through Arlington would be a great stimulus project. Don't you?
Go back to the Herald
No, seriously. If you're not going to operate here using facts and just say things that sound good to you without any actual basis in reality, then please stop posting because it wastes time having to reiterate how wrong these nonsensical talking points are and it clouds the water for gullible people who believe it as well as reinforcing the other nonsense spewers.
The debt is the result of "Forward Funding" the MBTA in 2000. Prior to that, the cost of the legal requirements for the Big Dig (that the CLF had to go to court to get the state to acknowledge) was a part of the state's Big Dig budget. Because the state was using the MBTA as its pawn to accomplish the offsets for expanded congestion/pollution from the Big Dig, the state felt it had a patsy when it killed two birds (the growing MBTA budget & the Big Dig cost overruns) with one stone (the Forward Funding and debt transfer bill). The courts have only forced compliance by the MBTA to what the state agreed to for pollution mitigation in order to legally build the Big Dig in the first place.
Finally, public transportation effects everyone in the state either directly or indirectly. Similar to the way our state pays more in federal taxes than it receives back in federal services, Boston area residents pay more in taxes to the state than they receive in services. That money funnels west to places like Stockbridge so that they can drive everywhere even though they live in mountains in the winter. If you want to argue the inequities of state cost, stick with the fact that the Big Dig largely improved the north-south connection through the city, but the road tolls are ONLY collected on the east-west road (and the one north-south bridge that DIDN'T get fixed as part of the Big Dig).
"Finally, public
"Finally, public transportation effects everyone in the state either directly or indirectly. ...That money funnels west to places like Stockbridge"
Yes, to a point. But how much MBTA spending is too much?
MBTA is cheaper per person than Western MA Highways
So, why don't we go to an each pays own? Send a bill to every Western MA resident for Irene clean up ... and use the money to fund the MBTA, which eastern MA paid the most for.
Fair is fair, right?
Forget the Herald, go back to Mars.
I'd love to see the amount of money the residents of Cambridge and Brookline pay if you added up federal and state income, as well as real estate and sales taxes.
What kind of services to these two places get that other towns don't get? A crowded 66 bus route and a green line trolley that takes 5 hours to go 5 miles?
Some of the best transit in the system?
Cambridge gets five subway stops and a light rail stop, and Brookline gets 2 light rail lines that actually function pretty well. Your description of 5 miles in 5 hours doesn't even apply to the B Line, and it especially doesn't apply to the D. Many areas served by the MBTA get nothing more than a 66 level bus service.
Hyperbolic snark but.....
I can get on the commuter rail in Walpole and be at south station in 30 minutes. When I lived in Cleveland Circle, it would take me almost an hour sometimes to make the same trip.
I wasn't a regular MBTA commuter then, and I'm not now, so I can't comment on all the breakdowns I always
Us read about, but I've been extremely impressed with the Franklin line for the 2 or 3 times I use it a month ( from various stations).
I also understand that logistically, the trolleys are simply not going anywhere along those lines.
B
"If Somerville wants the
"If Somerville wants the $1.3B GLX, they need to put up some green,"
Somerville is experiencing a lot more air pollution because of the Big Dig. So is Medford.
If you don't want us to have the GLX, okay.
Shut down 93.
Cite? More cars or fewer
Cite?
More cars or fewer passing through Medford and Somerville on 93?
More hours of moving or stopped/very slow traffic? And which pollutes more?
Somerville and Quincy studies of community health and I-93
Look for citations in PubMed and Google Scholar by Brugge and Spengler.
Regional expenses
No more than people in Boston ought to pay for disaster relief when tornadoes hit the Western part of the state.
What we need are....sharks
What we need are....sharks with frickin lasers on their heads.
We already have the sharks
Just get some of those MIT kids to hook 'em up to lasers (the frickin kind)
If money supposedly buys security...
why am I scared shitless every time I drive through that thing?
You have a incorrect understanding of the actual risk?
At least that's what it seems like from your comment. That's hardly unusual - nearly all of us are guilty of poor quantitative risk analysis at one time or another.
The vast lion's share of risk is simply getting behind the wheel in the first place. The accident rate in the 93 tunnel is several times less that that for the old Expressway (measured either absolutely or by passenger miles carried), and constitutes only a passingly small fraction of the travel risk for the drivers making use of it.
Obviously there have been unfortunate (and in retrospect, avoidable) injuries/fatalities due to errors in the construction and/or design of parts of the tunnel. But there's no call for constipating anxiety if we make sure those are addressed and that proper vigilance and maintenance are exercised (which is the same as we expect of any other major engineered facility).
The article says most of the
The article says most of the extra cost is interest. Why is this suddenly news in 2012? Didn't everyone know there would be interest as soon as they issued the bonds?
Cost in Perspective
Since the Universe itself is estimated to be 14.6 Billion years old. this means that the Big Dig would cost only $1.65 each 'year' (granted, it's an earth year...LOL) from the instant of the Big Bang to today!
sure
but God "prints" the money too, so why would he care what he got charged?
not to mention...
One factor that the article ignored in the cost of the whole thing was the shoddy work that was done that now has to be redone by new contractors. Modern Continental, which provided the bad epoxy glue that caused the ceiling tile to fall and kill that woman, was paid over $3 billion for Big Dig work (which to me is un-freakin-believable) but couldn't return overbilled charges or for the cost of redoing the work because they filed Chapter 11 shortly thereafter. So now more money has to be invested to fix that work. I believe the last fix mentioned this year was new light fixtures, in March 2012, at a cost of $54 million. That's not a drop in the bucket to fix work done poorly. I'd love to see how much of the $450 million that the other contractors agreed to settle on and pay the state back for shoddy work has actually been paid.