IT’S PLAYING OUT as a classic chicken and egg situation.
State officials say calls for a commuter rail station in the area of Allston being developed by Harvard as a major life sciences research hub are premature. They want to leave room for a station at the site, but are eyeing a possible opening in 2040 when the area is more built out.
Transit advocates say the Department of Transportation has it all backwards. Building a station now, they say — a project that will be made possible by the planned straightening of a section of the Massachusetts Turnpike that runs through the area — will go a long way toward helping shape the type of development that takes place there, with denser, transit-oriented projects more likely to take root.
TransitMatters, a group of brainy transit advocates who are regular contributors to CommonWealth’s weekly podcast, have been making this argument for months. Last December, they laid out the case for building West Station now in this Codcast conversation.
“The reality of our recent experience in Greater Boston is you build the transit early in order to establish the zone as transit-oriented and then private investment will come and work around that,” Jim Aloisi, a former state transportation secretary and TransitMatters board member, said in the discussion. “That’s exactly what’s not happening in Allston.”
The Globe’s Dante Ramos made the same case in a December column, saying it was bad enough that Boston neglected to include enough rail or bus service in building out its first new neighborhood of the 21st century — the Seaport. “Now, the same thing is about to happen again in Allston, except maybe worse,” he wrote.
Today’s Globe weighs in with a newspaper editorial echoing the call for state officials not to let the opportunity pass to get it right with West Station. “Unfortunately, the Baker administration and MassDOT secretary Stephanie Pollock [sic] appear to be on the verge of a historic letdown, allowing nitpicky quibbles to get in the way of what should be an easy call,” it says.
It points out that Harvard alone has already committed to pay nearly two-thirds of the estimated $95 million cost of a station. And it emphasizes, as others have, that the course taken now may become a self-fulfilling prophecy when it comes to future development.
“Without a crystal ball, it’s impossible for anyone to know what will eventually get built on the land in Allston,” says the editorial. “But it’s safe to bet that whether the station is included will prove a key factor, influencing land-use decisions in the area. There’s a legitimate fear that without a station, those plans will veer away from the dense, housing-rich neighborhood that would help the whole state relieve its housing crunch.”
It sounds like just the sort of argument Pollack would have made in her days as a transit advocate and smart-growth policy expert at Northeastern University or the Conservation Law Foundation before joining the Baker administration. It will be fascinating to see how this debate ends.