IAN BOWLES, MASSINC PRESIDENT: This promises to be a terrific forum. The topic has stirred up a lot of energy, talking about transportation and the Big Dig. That is the role of CommonWealth magazine – to stir up debate. As publisher, it’s a tremendous pleasure and the magazine is journalistic independence at its best. They ignore my history as an environmentalist and run David Luberoff’s piece and he is here to face his critics. We did research into commuting last fall. We are gearing up for an issue just on growth and development issues in early 2006. Thanks to 90 organizations and 70 individuals who underwrite the magazine and help us get our work done. This may be the end of the line for David Luberoff, with all the trouble he has caused. He may never be able to ride another train in this town.
ROBERT KEOUGH, COMMONWEALTH MAGAZINE (MODERATOR): We are here to talk about a sidelight of one of the longest stories in my tenure, the Big Dig. We are here to talk about the projects that went along with it as part of environmental approvals. The project has given us a new highway and tunnels and a new set of transportation services, two branches of the Old Colony line, the start of construction on Greenbush, the Framingham extension to Worcester, and the Ipswich line to Newburyport. There is still more to come – extending the Green Line to Somerville, the connector of the Red and Blue lines at Charles and the restoration of Arborway line in Jamaica Plain. There is uncertainty to these remaining projects. David Luberoff thought the binding attachment of the projects on environmental grounds made no sense 15 years ago and even less sense today. That view infuriated many. Some agree with it. We had an online forum and it was so lively we asked four folks and David to continue it today. Go back to 1990 Fred. Why you think the deal you struck with CLF was a good one?
FRED SALVUCCI, MIT LECTURER AND FORMER STATE TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: My first reaction was to be angry at David and CommonWealth after reading his article. Then I thought putting it into the open might be the best thing. We have not been delivering on the agreements made since 1990. I believe it was the right deal to make during 1990 and what is happening today shows it continues to be valid. There are lots of Three Card Monte approaches to dealing with something that occurred so long ago by summarizing part of the deal for the whole deal. It was not a deal between Doug Foy and Fred Salvucci. It was worked on by a large number of environmental organizations and I signed the deal only after checking with the incoming Weld administration officials, who agreed at least three times with Secretaries Tierney and Taylor and Kerasiotes and then there was a consent decree with the Cellucci administration. This was a legally valid contract. I can’t believe someone is promoting bait and switch on something that was agreed to. This is a deal between the Commonwealth and the entire environmental process over three successive administrations. The Commonwealth got the Big Dig, which is largely built. Other aspects of the deal disappeared largely during the 90s. MBTA fares were to not increase by more than inflation. No one is talking about it. We have not talked about smart growth restrictions on the South Boston waterfront. What occurred during the decade reinforces the correctness of the position taken by the environmental community – the issue at the heart of the Central Artery was we had a bottleneck in the heart of our economy. There was a conflict between dealing with the traffic and economic bottleneck and the quality of life issues with the ugly hunk of steel, or were we going to be paralyzed into not doing it out of fear and we would forget that if we only expand highways and fail to address public transportation, then you will have gridlock and be back where you started? Only it will be a little bit prettier. The second flaw pointed to was lengthy processes with lots of commitments and no enforceability. There is enormous process at the front end. The reason for focusing on the Clean Air Act was the act and vent shaft regulations were measurable and related to the nexus of the project of improving air quality by reducing congestion and allowing more vehicles to move faster through the city. That is not the analysis the computer programs measure when evaluating air quality. The tools today don’t deal with smart growth and don’t measure the right thing. The trap was to go forward and do both or sit here fearful that transit won’t happen. Having an enforceable way to go forward was essential. The federal highway system dragged its feet on the Big Dig since 1975. The Commonwealth owes delivery on the other part of the deal. I think that is pretty fundamental. No one will trust an agreement if this agreement is put into the bait-and-switch category. Heaven help anybody who tries to do anything complex in this state again, whether it’s a wind farm or something else.
ROBERT KEOUGH, COMMONWEALTH MAGAZINE (MODERATOR): Phil, what is your sense of these particular projects? Are all parts of the agreement sacrosanct or is it time to rethink some of them?
PHILIP WARBURG, CONSERVATION LAW FOUNDATION PRESIDENT: The Commonwealth has collapsed a debate that should be about $1.8 billion in outstanding commitments to one of which three projects should be taken off the table to get down to $700 million. We heard the announcement on the Green Line to West Medford and knocking out the connector and knocking out the Arborway. It has been committed to before; since 1984 there has been a promise. One commitment was to expand Blue Line platforms to accommodate six-car trains. That was originally due in 2000 and is only half done. There was a commitment to buy 18 more cars for the Orange Line. That was delayed until 2015. The Green Line, we enthusiastically support. It is a very important corridor for New England’s most densely settled community. The feasibility of extending to West Medford is a question. We are very concerned about that. I want to mention the cost factors. The capital cost per new rider on the Green Line would be about $45,000, $27,000 on the connector and $5,000 on the Arborway. I am not sure how serious to take the Prius argument made by Mr. Luberoff. The per-rider investment is a good investment. Infrastructure will be in place many decades after those Priuses are in a junkyard. Transit is an investment in our future, not a patchwork solution to a very narrow problem. I want to refer to the macro picture. We have almost 800,000 MBTA riders per day. We would be hopelessly gridlocked without it. The three pieces under debate would add tens of thousands of riders. The CLF made numerous requests to get air quality data and underlying analyses. We are concerned that it is short-term and does not look at long-term air quality gains. We sent letters and are waiting for a response. We see press conference with new numbers on poster boards that we have not seen and are being used by the Commonwealth to take key pieces of infrastructure off the table.
ROBERT KEOUGH, COMMONWEALTH MAGAZINE (MODERATOR): What’s wrong with using narrow tools of environmental laws to drive transportation decisions?
DAVID LUBEROFF, RAPPAPORT INSTITUTE FOR GREATER BOSTON: There’s nothing wrong. I consider myself to be pro-environmental and pro-urban and concerned deeply about the economic and environmental future of this region. I could not agree more with the goals here and have particular respect for Fred Salvucci for stopping urban highways that had been planned for 20 years. What did I do? This horrible, terrible thing? I said, what did people say about the projects in the CLF agreement and what does the data say? What John DeVillars said was not build the projects for all these good reasons, he said you have to do the project because they are critical to achieving clean air gains. The data could not be clearer that that is just not true. There may be a problem with the modeling. We have been through several increasingly good models. The best indication of how little impact these projects have is the MBTA measures impacts in kilograms removed per day. If you take state air quality reports from DEP, they are measured in tons per day. We have gotten so much more pollution reduction out of cleaner cars, making sure they are inspected and those annoying computer-monitoring systems, than we will ever get from the entire combination of projects. The major assertion for these projects turns out not to be true. So the environmental process failed. The process is supposed to reveal key information. That is the theory. In this case, somehow a bunch of assertions were made about what the data said that were not true. Now we are told there are other really good reasons to do these projects. I have not run the numbers, but I can guarantee the per-new rider costs of these new projects are awesomely bad. Dozens of other projects would get you more riders. What about people getting to work faster? The per-hour benefits of these projects are worse than many other projects. So the ridership gains aren’t there. It’s not clear the economic development gains are there and in some cases it’s not clear what problems are being solved. Average travel time to work for Somerville is less than other communities well served by rail projects. So what is the problem we are trying to solve? If the stated reason wasn’t true, we ought to pause. If we don’t like the modeling, put the process on freeze until we get the modeling right. Fred says a deal was made. He is absolutely right. The only way we can get out of what the data tells us were not great choices is for the advocates of those choices to say we acted on the best information at the time, and in retrospect we might be wrong. This is Nixon going to China. When I first started writing about the agreement, I said that’s a great agreement. Then as I wrote, I just started scratching my head. This has been a misuse of the environmental process.
ROBERT KEOUGH, COMMONWEALTH MAGAZINE (MODERATOR): Steve, you and your boss, Doug Foy, were both in the leadership of CLF and are now at the office of Commonwealth Development, deciding what to do about the commitments you got out of the state. What was the thinking in your office about the decision to swap out projects?
STEPHEN BURRINGTON, COMMONWEALTH DEVELOPMENT UNDERSECRETARY: The current reevaluation comes after two years of an overall evaluation of the cost and benefits of transportation projects. It has felt like we have been having the conversation with people who opened the book at Chapter 6. We began two years ago with a reasonable evaluation. We decided to dig in further about evaluation projects and factoring smart growth into the equation. The third step, a less public one, was an internal audit of MBTA state of good repair. We have gone through a process with every metropolitan planning organization to identify criteria to analyze projects in a transparent way. And we have the 20-year transportation plan that sets out our analysis in quite a bit of detail. The air quality discussion is a compliance discussion. We said what are the projects that give us the best bang for the buck from an overall transportation and development point of view that also meet the environmental standards. I don’t think there are a dozen projects out there that are good opportunities being passed up for less worthy ones. The numbers count for a lot. Communities work with us on land use and development in Worcester and in Somerville and in Dorchester. Having municipal and local people prepared to make the most of the investment and play out the land use scenario is incredibly important to us too. Oscar Wilde described a cynic as someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. The decision-making we have been going through does represent a good overall assessment. Something similar went on in the late 80s and early 90s. The stuff in the artery impact statement grew out of transportation planning in the 80s.
ROBERT KEOUGH, COMMONWEALTH MAGAZINE (MODERATOR): As a transit advocate in Somerville, you had to be pleased by the announcement last week Ellin. Don’t you think that what your city is going to get out of the agreement is transportation and economic development, rather than air quality benefits? Given high use already, why do you need more transit?
ELLIN REISNER, SOMERVILLE TRANSPORTATION EQUITY PARTNERSHIP: We do have high ridership, which is great. People are walking to Davis Square, which has 5,000 more riders than expected. We would expect the same at the Green Line. We are an environmental justice community. People take the train because they can’t afford a car or because people believe it’s better to use public transportation. Distance-wise we have a short commute to downtown Boston, but in terms of time it is not a short commute. People have to transfer to buses, which are not particularly reliable. The buses get stuck in really bad traffic and are very delayed. In East Somerville, it takes 15 minutes to go across to David Square. It is only 4.2 miles. We have eight rail lines going through Somerville and yet we have really lousy service. They carry 45,000 people on commuter trains to northern cities and don’t even stop in Somerville. Our corridor is incredibly dense. We have about 19,000 people per square mile. We have very little green space and have children playing outside in Foss Park and the Mystic Housing Development within 500 feet of highways like I-93 and routes 28 and 38. In California, they have been advised not to build housing, schools, or recreational areas near highways, because of the fine particulates in the air. We have pent-up demand for public transportation, and people will switch off buses and get on the Green Line. Somerville has 74,000 people. If we attract 10,000 to 13,000 new riders, that would be tremendous. Economic benefits would be very advantageous, but the air quality issue is huge.
ROBERT KEOUGH, COMMONWEALTH MAGAZINE (MODERATOR): Fred, what’s your take on swapping out some projects?
FRED SALVUCCI, MIT LECTURER AND FORMER STATE TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: The connector has many arguments. It was not so kids from Harvard an MIT could get home faster. It was for people from East Boston, Revere and Chelsea. Mass General is the largest employer in the Commonwealth after the Commonwealth itself. Our economy is related to the nexus there, and to Longwood and MIT. You hear more Spanish than Italian in East Boston. People want to participate in the American Dream. The Blue Line is what connects them. It is the only line that is close to having large amounts of excess capacity. The models don’t understand capacity and land use. If you have not been on the Green Line, there is no room to get on physically. The Blue Line expansion capacity is a major asset for this region and connecting to the Red at Charles Street is a building block to the near North Shore and the extension to Lynn. Housing and affordable housing is a major component of smart growth. The near North Shore is a major resource that is not well integrated into the system. We have a major economy, if it doesn’t go to Texas. I have to go back to the 90s. What happened is the capacity of the MBTA to run service was compromised by statute in that they are constrained on subsidies. They increased fares because the rules were changed inconsistent with the agreement that was made. It’s the Commonwealth that broke the deal, not the MBTA. The price on the Dig went up because a lot of highway stuff was added without analysis while the state was not meeting a formal agreement. The deal anticipated Somerville or Chelsea would not compete on air quality with a place like Worcester based on the fact that less affluent people don’t have cars so screw ’em. We specified in the deal that air quality was only in the event that if one project were unbuildable, it would be replaced by a project of similar air quality value in that corridor. The Blue to Red made sense in 1990 and makes even more sense in 2005.
ROBERT KEOUGH, COMMONWEALTH MAGAZINE (MODERATOR): Phil, doesn’t rail facilitate growth and sprawl deeper into the suburbs?
PHILIP WARBURG, CONSERVATION LAW FOUNDATION PRESIDENT: There are two different visions of environmental health and economic sustainability. We need to invest in metropolitan areas as the number one priority. The Romney climate protection plan calls for a 75 to 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gases. We have seen nothing to even begin moving toward that goal. Our best investment is in strengthening cities and getting people out of cars. The Commonwealth has to distinguish between what it is doing for urban transit and what it is doing for a statewide plan. There is discussion about doubling rail service to Worcester. It should not be in the same paragraph as meeting transit commitments. The Fairmount line adding stops, which is a wonderful project for transit equity, it, too, is a diesel train. You hear a lot of talk from the governor about our fiscal straits and how money is tight. We are running close to a billion-dollar surplus this year and we are fourth in per capita income. We should be showing leadership and not lagging behind. Look at what transit does to economic development. The results are dramatic. We want to encourage people to live in vital and revitalized areas and use public transit. That vibrancy is very important. We want to look at what we want to see in Massachusetts 10 or 100 years from now.
ROBERT KEOUGH, COMMONWEALTH MAGAZINE (MODERATOR): The three projects are small potatoes compared to the wish list: Fall River, New Bedford, the Urban Ring. And we changed the way we finance the T in the 90s – the subsidy is set and they don’t get anything more. Yet on every line they run, the T loses money. How can we afford to expand the system when it is moving closer and closer to bankruptcy?
STEPHEN BURRINGTON, COMMONWEALTH DEVELOPMENT UNDERSECRETARY: I would agree with Phil that we need to think of overall cost effectiveness of investments. Costs vary and don’t always show up in budgets. Investing in dense areas is important. That is not just Boston. It’s Haverhill and Lowell and Worcester and Brockton. Some of the good news comes from those second tier cities. Whether the T can pay for the infrastructure, its capital and operating costs. Yes, we can pay for a lot of the projects we have identified as priorities while we double our work to rehabilitate bridges and complete regional projects. We did a good job of burying our analysis on pages 277 and 278 of our transportation plan. We cannot do everything that is on every wish list. But we can significantly expand the transit system while we meet other needs. I urge people to look at our analysis of how we can pay for this stuff and tell us what they think of it. We don’t have as complete an answer to operating costs. We have to do things with fares and how we structure them and fare levels. The recent creation of district improvement financing is essentially what other states call tax increment financing. It’s cause for hope that we can do innovative things. Worcester needed $80 million in infrastructure improvements. It’s the next Providence. The city came to the state and said we are going to use the new financing vehicle and come up with $55 million, can the state help with the remaining $25 million? That was a fairly easy yes from the governor. I am confident we can rise to the challenge.
ROBERT KEOUGH, COMMONWEALTH MAGAZINE (MODERATOR): David, put yourself in Steve’s shoes. How would you go about setting transportation priorities?
DAVID LUBEROFF, RAPPAPORT INSTITUTE FOR GREATER BOSTON: I would echo Fred. An extraordinary first step has been made to think beyond the silos. I am somewhat puzzled by what are the objective standards. We agree on the rhetorical standards. What is the line where we say at that per-rider cost, it’s not worth doing. The Arborway project attracts 100 riders at their estimate of $70 million. I may be told the official documents are wrong, believe your intuition. We should be wary of that. I would articulate goals, reasonable standards, the value of adding riders and time savings. I would set up the Office of Contrarian Analysis. I am not an analyst. I took one number and divided it by another one. I cannot do complicated high school math at this point. The point there is to say the clean air issue is telling. The T spends lots of time on it and never asks how this compares to 10 other strategies for getting clean air. The Prius example was not a serious proposal, but made to show other benefits. The history of transit projects is replete with projects whose ridership numbers went up just before they were approved. You want somebody to question the conventional wisdom. Court jesters do it in a humorous way so they get to live. I think you can get the clean air benefits in another way. We have invested heavily in transit since the 70s. Downtown Boston is thriving. The job growth is outside 495. People in those satellite cities are commuting to new suburban job centers. We need to look at what the problem is that we are trying to solve. Transit is a means to an end. It’s not a goal. We know when New York City put free transfers between buses and subways, transit ridership rose dramatically. It costs some money but it was simple. We know in Seattle when the University of Washington bundled into everybody’s ID cards a free transit pass, use rose dramatically. Seattle then went to major employers. They had to beef up their transit agency. We know there are strategies to increase ridership. Data shows that despite massive investments in transit, it is holding its own but there is not a lot of evidence that says continuing to do what we have been doing is going to magically reverse some very broad long-term trends.
ROBERT KEOUGH, COMMONWEALTH MAGAZINE (MODERATOR): Ellin, you ended up in the online forum saying it was time to reconsider transit, not to abandon it but to think about it “more creatively, and much more seriously.” What would it mean to do that?
ELLIN REISNER, SOMERVILLE TRANSPORTATION EQUITY PARTNERSHIP: We need to think about the fact that sprawl is a real problem and has caused economic issues to come up in communities with large population increases. Commutes have gotten longer and longer. A lot of growth has happened in the suburbs, but the longer commutes take the longer cars dwell, even if they are burning fuel more efficiently. We have to be very creative financially. It’s a no-no in Massachusetts, but hey, let’s think about tolls on the roads. Why don’t people north and south of the city pay? Maybe we need to look at the gas tax. Public transportation is good for the economy and for public health. Portland, Oregon is a very livable city. We have a lot of smart people working in Massachusetts. We have the capability of working out of the box and we need to do that. People in the communities know what works for them and need to participate in the discussion. We need to engage communities much more. The days of everyone having one-acre backyards may be coming to an end and we need to be thinking about using land more efficiently.
AUDIENCE QUESTION: I am from Hingham. The South Shore does not have dense or low-income communities and the costs of the project are high and so why is Greenbush still being built for $500 million? Greenbush is the bad old days of transit. The corridor has been a bicycle trail. Fifty percent from Hingham and Cohasset already take transit. What’s going on here? It doesn’t meet any of the objective criteria?
STEPHEN BURRINGTON, COMMONWEALTH DEVELOPMENT UNDERSECRETARY: There was a lot of money under the bridge when we arrived on the scene. We did reevaluate it with the realization that there were tens and tens of millions of dollars that would not be recovered. That is a constrained corridor and downtown Boston needs not to have that corridor lock up. No one ever found a better way to move people through that corridor. It has led to a policy resolution on our part of never again. Expansion projects we undertake have to be done hand in glove with land use planning. We could open stations on the corridor in the order in which communities rise to the occasion. We could wait until a couple of the other communities decide they want to play ball. I am prepared to be thrown under the bus for that. It’s just me speaking.
PHILIP WARBURG, CONSERVATION LAW FOUNDATION PRESIDENT: There is a significant tilt toward suburban rail lines. We do feel it is a time to reinvest in truly urban pieces. One more thing, 14,000 new riders on the Arborway, a lot of riders will be switching from buses.
DAVID LUBEROFF, RAPPAPORT INSTITUTE FOR GREATER BOSTON: Yes, but 13,800 of those riders are on a bus already. Those are not 14,000 new riders.
REP. JAMES MARZILLI: I represent West Medford and have been seeking expansion of the Green Line. It seemed the plans were leaked and then a press conference was called. It caused conflict in the community. Elected officials and the community had not been informed. I might think that kind of leaking of a story was done to delay implementation and expansion plans and that the Commonwealth does not have the resources now. This kind of thing helps sabotage expansion of the Green Line. The most expensive option was chosen on the Green Line. How does the administration think it will finance this plan without having consulted or had a public comment period with West Medford?
STEPHEN BURRINGTON, COMMONWEALTH DEVELOPMENT UNDERSECRETARY: Wait ‘til you find out about the contract we have with David Luberoff. Public participation in transportation planning really is a challenge. It’s hard to get people involved in a regional discussion. Not everybody has participated and for good reason. We are busy. There are various options for siting a station in West Medford or along the line out there and we are committed to working with the mayor, who has lobbied us on this in the past.
PHILIP WARBURG, CONSERVATION LAW FOUNDATION PRESIDENT: Whether there is sabotage or not, we want to see the basic commitments met and gold plating may undermine other commitments.
AUDIENCE QUESTION: Context that needs to be added is the T has expanded more than any other system since 1988. One thing that has been ignored is the urban areas. It seems we have a wheel and spoke downtown system that does not fit the times. We should be talking about the Urban Ring. Fred, why is it nice to tell the truth but less important to tell the truth when the deal was based on clean air and everybody knew they were not going to pay for clean air. The T is in a horrible state of good repair, one third of its budget is debt.
FRED SALVUCCI, MIT LECTURER AND FORMER STATE TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: Honoring the CLF deal is essential to credibility. The total cost is $1.8 billion, a pittance in comparison to the tunnel and ramp add-ons that occurred with no analysis. I do agree the Urban Ring is one of the most exciting projects. The old projects were commitments that deserve to be honored. The truth on the air quality benefits was the central argument of the environmental community – CLF came into this fairly late – was the air quality benefits of the Big Dig rest on the assumption that there is far less congestion and less vehicle hours because cars are not stuck at 5 miles per hour and are moving at 30 to 40. If the Big Dig re-gridlocks, those air quality improvements will not occur. We are not going to have credibility talking about the future when we don’t honor the commitments made in the past.
ROBERT KEOUGH, COMMONWEALTH MAGAZINE (MODERATOR): The region has changed since 1990. The growth has been outside of downtown. Would it not make sense to expedite the Urban Ring?
FRED SALVUCCI, MIT LECTURER AND FORMER STATE TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: It is extremely important. It argues we should do more. Milestones were added for the Urban Ring in the ‘90s which have not been met. It is in a sense part of this discussion. A revised consent decree ought to come out of this dialogue with a new list of enforceable timetables. This is a teen spending his allowance on highway ramps and saying because I blew it, we are not going to honor the $1.8 billion. We should say as penance, you will have a new list of things you ought to do too. Massachusetts’s congestion has gotten worse but Massachusetts has gotten worse to a lesser degree. The sprawl pattern is unsustainable. The consistent way to make this work is smart growth and honoring the deal and then having the discussion on moving on the Urban Ring and the Silver Line.
STEPHEN BURRINGTON, COMMONWEALTH DEVELOPMENT UNDERSECRETARY: We are in the midst of reinvigorating a planning process for that. It is discussed in a MEPA certificate. There will be a new round this summer and people should be thinking about getting involved. We are launching a new chapter in the planning for that.
AUDIENCE QUESTION: Lynn has one commuter rail stop and 15,000 more people than Somerville. It is seven miles from Boston. How is it not in this deal? How can we make sure it gets built as soon as possible?
PHILIP WARBURG, CONSERVATION LAW FOUNDATION PRESIDENT: It’s a great point. John DeVillars talked about zero plus. We have been saying let’s look at what we can knock out. The Blue Line to Lynn would be a great investment, no question about it. You are talking about a jobs corridor coming into downtown Boston. We need to get people connected and that would be a cost effective way to do so. 21,000 new riders are expected.
STEPHEN BURRINGTON, COMMONWEALTH DEVELOPMENT UNDERSECRETARY: The idea that the administration is playing a zero sum game could not be further from the truth. This governor said the Commonwealth will pay for transit expansion. The extension to Lynn is in the transportation plan and the financial plan in the plan commits what is a roughly $200 million a year in Commonwealth funds for the first time since the mid 90s to the expansion of the MBTA. This is the first time there has been a plan on the table that says yes we can do these kinds of projects.
AUDIENCE QUESTION: I come with a specific bias. I live in Somerville and suffer with the poor transportation, congestion and bad air. We are fighting over how to divide a small pie. Each one of these projects is worthy of being built if we want to live up to the commitment to get people out of cars. What are we going to do to redirect billions of dollars to transit, not highways.
STEPHEN BURRINGTON, COMMONWEALTH DEVELOPMENT UNDERSECRETARY: Our transportation plan covers 20 years and $31 billion. It looks at keeping up the current system first and foremost. Of the money available for expansion, 85 percent is committed to transit. People may disagree that that is the right way to go. We are having public meetings over the next month. Investing in transit will sustain density and growth in our historic communities and take advantage of market trends.
FRED SALVUCCI, MIT LECTURER AND FORMER STATE TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: You can’t build something if it hasn’t been planned and designed. Not even the studies called for in the CLF agreement were carried out when billions were going for highways. I admire what Steve is doing but if you don’t get an enforceable agreement and the planning and the studies, you have to realize the enemy of all of us is we have a national pot of money about to be reauthorized and if we fuss around, the rest of the country is going to build its projects while we argue. You don’t get there by just talking about policy priorities. The reference to New York City, absolutely true. I agree with David.
PHILIP WARBURG, CONSERVATION LAW FOUNDATION PRESIDENT: We have legally enshrined commitments that have not been met.
STEPHEN BURRINGTON, COMMONWEALTH DEVELOPMENT UNDERSECRETARY: The administration agrees that the planning and design of projects starting now is important.
DAVID LUBEROFF, RAPPAPORT INSTITUTE: We added more transit capacity than any other city in the 90s. And Steve says 85 percent of discretionary dollars on the table are going to transit, so if you want more money you can say let’s stop maintaining roads and bridges, which would probably reduce traffic in the long run, or you can pull the money from someplace else in the budget or raise taxes. Let’s be clear we are talking about allocating resources and resources are not infinite. What do we know about what are the factors that make regions thrive? Investment in transit does not have a lot to do with whether a region thrives. It’s probably marginal. It’s about education and skilled workers and institutions. If we are concerned about quality of life in Somerville, transit is on the agenda. I dare you to find me a place that has high transit ridership and low congestion. You can have transit, but you are going to get density and congestion with it. There are lots of projects out there. We have to decide which ones we are going to do first. Two projects have not been mentioned, an Orange Line stop in Assembly Square and commuter rail stop in Union Square. We’re talking less than $100 million.
ELLIN REISNER, SOMERVILLE TRANSPORTATION EQUITY PARTNERSHIP: Union Square is so close to North Station. It’s a bad investment. We need transit that is going to take people with a much shorter headway. You can have density that is good, and not necessarily have congestion. We have very little green space. Every car we can get off the street, there is bumper-to-bumper traffic on my block because people are cutting through to get on 93. We can’t change the geography but we can make it better.
