The Codcast: Salvucci takes new tack on West Station
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Transportation guru Fred Salvucci said on the Codcast that the proposed West Station is needed now to deal with congestion in Kenmore Square and the Seaport District, not future congestion caused by Harvard University’s creation of a new neighborhood in the Allston Landing area.
Salvucci’s position is sharply at odds with the views of the Baker administration, which believes current ridership projections for the station are too low to justify building West Station in the near future. Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack has said it would be wise to hold off on West Station until around 2040 when Harvard’s development plans for the area are more fully formulated.
But Salvucci, who served 12 years as state transportation secretary under former governor Michael Dukakis and now teaches at MIT, said the transit connections offered by West Station are needed now to relieve existing congestion on the Massachusetts Turnpike.
“I’m urging that we look not at the future demand but at the demand that’s identifiable right now in Kendall Square and the Innovation District [also known as the Seaport District]. And there’s plenty of people who need better options than being stuck on the Turnpike,” Salvucci said.
West Station is a small piece of a much bigger project to straighten the Turnpike in the Allston-Brighton area and replace a crumbling elevated section of the highway near Boston University. Salvucci said the current debate about West Station is an opportunity to correct mistakes made when the Turnpike was originally built, splitting apart neighborhoods and eliminating four rail stations and one line of track.
Over time, the Turnpike has filled with cars, and Salvucci said the congestion has prompted many drivers to get off the road and spill into the neighborhoods in order to find a quicker path to wherever they are going. With the rapid growth of Kendall Square and the Seaport District, Salvucci said, West Station is needed to ease some of the pressure on the Turnpike by getting drivers commuting to those locations out of their cars and on to public transit. He said the so-called Grand Junction Line could be used to transport passengers coming from west of Boston to Kendall Square.
“The demand is there. It’s not a theoretical thing. You can count the building permits,” he said. “Those commuters are coming and there’s no space for them on the Turnpike.”
Salvucci also addressed a number of other transit issues. Here’s a small sampling:
Seaport District — Salvucci said Silver Line service within the Seaport District could improve if the buses didn’t have to stop where they come out of the tunnel from South Station at D Street and if they could use a ramp that leads down into the Ted Williams Tunnel that is currently reserved only for State Police and maintenance vehicles.
Salvucci said a tunnel under D Street should be built and Silver Line buses should use the ramp. He said both initiatives were part of original plans for the area. He noted the environmental impact statement for Silver Line service to Logan International Airport assumed the ramp would be used for the buses. “That’s the way it was planned,” he said.
“People are talking about self-driving cars and they’re acting like they can’t figure out how to get a bus down a ramp on to a highway,” he said. “It’s bizarre. We’ve just got to get out of this land-of-a -1,000-excuses mentality and say we’ve got to fix these things.”
Salvucci also noted the original plan for the Silver Line was to eventually replace the buses with light rail vehicles, with tracks connecting the line to the Chinatown Station on the Orange Line and the Green Line near Boylston Station. He said the planning for the conversion to light rail was well underway when the Romney administration killed it. “I think it was criminal,” he said.
“All congestion pricing does is decide the lucky few who get to use the capacity that’s there,” he said, meaning those who can afford to use the roads will. But he said congestion pricing can work if a viable transit alternative can work. He said discussions in Boston about congestion pricing are out of sequence — the transit improvements must happen before congestion pricing is implemented.
Uber/Lyft — Salvucci isn’t a fan of ride-hailing apps for a variety of reasons.
Personally, he won’t use them because the companies don’t provide health care to their drivers.
Professionally, he is concerned about how Uber and Lyft are pulling riders away from public transit, particularly buses, and adding to congestion on the roads – all with a business model that’s unsustainable. He said each ride-hailing trip receives a $2 to $3 subsidy from the app’s investors, suggesting the subsidies won’t go on forever. “There’s no basis to believe [ride-hailing apps are] going to be there 10 years from now,” he said.
BRUCE MOHL
BEACON HILL
Gov. Charlie Baker outlines his vision for the T — making it work. (Boston Globe)
A Gloucester Times editorial called the proposal for community benefit districts a tax hike in disguise.
Baker backs Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s federal marijuana legislation. (MassLive) Even President Trump appears to be on board. (Politico)
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
The US Army Corps of Engineers will dredge Plymouth Harbor in time for the 400th anniversary celebration in 2020, where organizers hope to draw boats from around the world. (Patriot Ledger)
City leaders grappled with their prominent role in immigration issues at a session yesterday of the US Conference of Mayors, which concludes its national conference in Boston today. (Boston Herald)
Southborough selectmen declined to reappoint a member of the Historical Commission because of the “tone and tenor” of an email he sent to officials at St. Anne’s Parish, where one of the selectmen is a parishioner, regarding a development being planned adjacent to the church. (MetroWest Daily News)
A former member of a city “late night” task force says Boston should enact later closing times for bars if it wants to burnish an image as an “international city.” (Boston Herald)
WASHINGTON/NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL
Margery Eagan says the #MeToo movement spells the end of the line for Bill Clinton — or certainly ought to. (Boston Globe)
A photograph from the Group of Seven summit goes viral and invites a host of meanings. (New York Times)
ELECTIONS
Some pointed questioning at a forum among the Democratic candidates for Suffolk County district attorney indicates there is some “sunlight” between them on the issues. (CommonWealth)
Abhijit “Beej” Das, one of 10 Democrats vying in the Third Congressional District, says his thinking has “evolved” since his days at Middlebury College, where writing in a student publication he once likened minority student groups to Nazis. (Boston Globe)
A New York Times editorial endorses ranked-choice voting as a “worthwhile experiment.” Paul Schimek unpacked the case for ranked-choice voting in this CommmonWealth feature last fall, and a local group, Voter Choice Massachusetts, is promoting the idea here.
Saturday’s Pride Parade in Boston featured a healthy contingent of activists working to spread awareness of a November ballot question that would repeal a transgender rights law passed by the Legislature in 2016. (Boston Herald)
BUSINESS/ECONOMY
Today marks the official end of federal rules governing net neutrality, just a day before a judge is slated to rule on the AT&T-Time Warner merger which could be the start of creating telecom giants that could upend the internet and prioritize their own content. (Washington Post)
Area cranberry growers breathed a sigh of relief after European Union officials removed many cranberry products from a list of products subject to tariffs to take effect immediately and placed them on a list slated to go into effect in 2021 if there are no changes. (Cape Cod Times)
The former Polartec factory on the Lawrence-Methuen line is being transformed into a startup incubator. (Boston Globe)
Wuxi Biologics, a Chinese biotech firm, is investing $60 million in a plant in Worcester that will employ 150 people. (Telegram & Gazette)
EDUCATION
Boston charter schools have been on a building boom while Mayor Marty Walsh’s five-year-old pledge to invest $1 billion in fixing district public schools has yet to get off the ground. (Boston Globe)
A Senate committee will recommend establishing a fund to aid students were hurt financially by the abrupt closure of Mount Ida College in Newton. (Boston Globe)
A former Middleboro selectman who owns a brick company is getting the backing of the board for his company to bid as a subcontractor on the new high school project after complaining about being left out by the “design-build” bidding process. (The Enterprise) CommonWealth took a look at the bidding processes a few years back that the state and communities are increasingly adopting to build projects.
HEALTH/HEALTH CARE
A sharp rise in the number of overdoses in Plymouth County — 53 including six deaths in a nine-day period — has area police and emergency responders on alert. (Patriot Ledger)
TRANSPORTATION
Is traffic here as bad as we think? U.S. News & World Report places Boston eighth in its top 10 of worst commutes among the list of its Best Places to Live ahead of Baltimore and Los Angeles. New York City tops the rankings.
Smart streetlights are making a difference in Detroit. (Governing)
ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT
A bill about to be taken up in the Senate would ramp up clean energy development dramatically. (CommonWealth) Marcy Reed of National Grid said a seventh-inning stretch — a time to pause and evaluate — is needed when it comes to clean energy development. (CommonWealth)
Rachelle Cohen says the Conservation Law Foundation has gone from tenacious advocate to litigious bully under president Bradley Campbell. (Boston Globe)
CASINOS/MARIJUANA
Gov. Charlie Baker says people are going to be blown away by the MGM casino in Springfield. (MassLive youtube video)
Andrea Cabral, the former Suffolk County sheriff, is now running a marijuana company. (Boston Globe)
CRIMINAL JUSTICE/COURTS
Videos show police punching suspects they wrestled to the ground in Worcester around 2 a.m. on Sunday. (Telegram & Gazette)
Boston police make an arrest in connection with Saturday’s quadruple shooting at a party in Roxbury. (Boston Herald)
MEDIA
Having a hard time keeping up with all the twists and turns of the Hilary Sargent-Brian McGrory dispute at the Boston Globe? Maybe this analysis of what we know and don’t know can help sort things out. (CommonWealth)
