Imagine what $510 million could do for the Green Line

By adamg on Wed, 02/07/2007 - 12:19pm

BadTransit considers the $510-million (and counting) Greenbush commuter line, which will serve perhaps 1,800 daily commuters. What if they'd instead spent all that on extending the Green Line to Somerville (or rather, if they'd started doing that 10 years ago) or the Blue Line to Lynn? Think that would have been a better investment?

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Comments

A Lot Of Money

By Suldog on Wed, 02/07/2007 - 1:07pm.

For $510 million, you probably could have bought personal helicopters for all those folks. They'd be off the expressway AND there'd be no trains through people's backyards, either.

Better yet, for that kind of money you might have been able to bribe them to just stay put and never travel into Boston at all.

$510 million? If you can't come up with at least 10 better ideas than rail travel, then you aren't even trying.

Re: Imagine what $510 million could do for the Green Line

By Othemts on Wed, 02/07/2007 - 1:14pm.

I don't go for this kind of kvetching and these "either/or" arguments don't win me over. I want a transit system that is extensive in both rapid transit and commuter rail. Any growth in the system that helps takes cars off the roads is a good thing.

This is a time for kvetching

By Brian on Wed, 02/07/2007 - 2:03pm.

I want extensive mass transit, too, but that's all the more reason to spend what few dollars there are for mass transit in the areas where it will serve the most commuters. Bad Transit makes some commuter rail suggestions that also would have been a better investment and served more riders. Extending the Blue and Green lines has long been identified as a way to reduce automotive dependance and spur economic development. These ideas would have been a much better use of resources than the boondoggle of the Greenbush line. A half a billion dollars to serve considerable fewer than 2,000 new riders? That's absurd to the extreme, and if wasteful projects like this go unchallenged, we'll never get an extensive system of commuter rail or rapid transit lines.

But ...

By John K on Wed, 02/07/2007 - 4:15pm.

But, implicit in building the line is that it will encourage growth along the route of the train. Seriously. It's a catch-22, right? Or chicken and egg, right? People won't move to areas unless there is a railway, yet you won't build a railway unless people are already there.