|
Arborway Green Line Restoration
Articles
As Post-Dig
Transit Projects Stall, Lawsuit Looms
By Anthony Flint
From The Boston Globe, 11/8/2004
Unfinished business
In 1990, state officials agreed to improve the region's transit system
to reduce air pollution upon the completion of the Big Dig, a $14.6
billion highway project. The state is about to miss a second set of
deadlines:
Restoration of
the Arborway trolley line in Jamaica Plain, $72
million. Deadline: 2000. State argued unsuccessfully last
year that the
project was not feasible because of narrow width of Centre Street; no
recent action.
Urban Ring,
circumferential transit route around Boston, $500
million to $2.3 billion. Deadline for draft environmental
impact
report: Nov. 30. State says the report will take a few more months.
Blue Line
platform- lengthening, $228 million. Deadline: Dec. 31.
Work at four Blue Line stations is undone.
Orange Line
signal modernization and purchase of 18 additional
cars, $367 million. Deadline: Dec. 31. Complete
signalization overhaul
is incomplete; no cars have been purchased.
Silver Line
Phase II, including service to Logan, $601 million.
Deadline: Dec. 31.
If the tunnel for buses linking South
Station and
World Trade Center opens as scheduled, it will not include service to
the airport because electric/gas buses will not be available until
mid-2005.
Silver Line
Phase III, $780 million. Deadline for federal
funding: 2005.
Federal Transit Administration has
project on "not
recommended" list.
Green Line
extension to West Medford, $375 million. Deadline:
2011.
State has proposed enhanced bus service
instead.
Red-Blue line
connector, $193 million. Deadline: 2011. State has
suggested dropping the project.
Sources: Conservation Law Foundation, Executive Office of
Transportation, Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority
|
The
state will
not make court-ordered deadlines on a half-dozen transit projects
promised as a condition for building the Big Dig, inviting a lawsuit
that could force the projects to be built on a strict schedule.
Three other Big Dig-linked projects the state is required to build
extending the Green Line through Somerville, building a connection
between the Red and Blue lines in Boston, and establishing rail service
between Boston and T. F. Green Airport in Rhode Island have not been
funded or actively pursued, the Conservation Law Foundation says.
"The state found the money to spend $15 billion for the Big Dig. There
should have been a parallel effort to find money for the transit piece
of the puzzle," said Philip Warburg, president of the foundation. "The
state has to be held accountable."
State officials acknowledged that several projects will be late, in
some cases for reasons beyond their control, such as a delay in the
delivery of subway cars. But they say some need to be revisited to
determine whether they are really worth doing.
"We have presented achievable schedules... for the short-term
projects and have established an open and public process to examine the
long-term projects," said state Transportation Secretary Daniel
Grabauskas. "This will be a comprehensive and inclusive process every
step of the way."
The commitments were made in 1990 in a deal that cleared the way for
the $14.6 billion Big Dig. The rationale was that improving the transit
system would give motorists an alternative to the new underground
highway system, thus reducing air pollution. The state already missed
one round of deadlines on the transit projects in the late 1990s and
was ordered by a judge in to meet a new set of target dates.
One deadline to restore trolley service on the Arborway line in Jamaica
Plain by the end of 2000 has already come and gone. The state will miss
the next deadline, to complete a draft environmental impact report on
the Urban Ring circumferential transit line around Boston, by Nov. 30,
as well as Dec. 31 deadlines to provide Silver Line bus service to
Logan Airport, extend all Blue Line station platforms for six-car
trains, and modernize signals and buy 18 new cars for the Orange Line.
The state also appears unlikely to secure federal funding for the
proposed underground Silver Line bus tunnel linking Roxbury and South
Station, which it is required to have in place by next year.
Attorneys for the Conservation Law Foundation plan to sue Governor Mitt
Romney and multiple state agencies, including the Massachusetts Bay
Transportation Authority, in federal court on Jan. 3 after the November
and December deadlines have formally been missed alleging violations of
the Clean Air Act.
If successful, the suit could lead to a judge ordering the state to
build all the projects on a strict schedule.
Warburg said the state has dragged its feet on the short-term projects,
such as modernizing the Blue and Orange lines, and refused to lay out a
plan for funding the longer-range projects, such as extending the Green
Line through Somerville to West Medford.
There has been "no transparency" by the T or the Executive Office of
Transportation on the status of projects or reasons for delays, he said.
Although the total costs of the transit projects exceeds $5.4 billion,
Warburg said that outlay would still be a fraction of the cost of the
Big Dig.
Equally important, said Carrie Schneider, an attorney for the
foundation, was that the state entered into a legally binding agreement
to undertake the projects.
"The Big Dig would not have gone forward without these requirements,"
she said. "This wasn't just a nice idea afterwards."
Douglas Foy, Romney's secretary for Commonwealth Development, declined
to answer questions about the state's progress on the transit projects.
Foy is former president of the Conservation Law Foundation, and helped
put together the 1990 pact forcing the state to commit to the projects.
Jon Carlisle, spokesman for the Executive Office of Transportation,
said there was a hitch in the delivery of Blue Line cars that pushed
that modernization project back by at least a year. In addition, he
said, the T was going to retrofit old Blue Line cars to satisfy the
requirement for 18 new Orange Line cars, but after spending $1 million
concluded that it would be too costly.
As for Silver Line service to the airport, Carlisle said that hinges on
the delivery by mid-2005 of so-called "dual mode" buses, which would
convert from electric power to compressed natural gas in their trips to
Logan.
The state continues to lobby for federal funds for the Silver Line
downtown tunnel linking Roxbury and South Station, Carlisle said, and
the draft environmental impact report on the Urban Ring will be a few
months late as final revisions are done.
The Arborway trolley restoration, the Green Line extension, and the
Red-Blue connector should be reexamined, Grabauskas said in a Sept. 2
letter to Robert Golledge, the commissioner of the Department of
Environmental Protection, which is responsible for enforcing the
transit commitments. The state would like to explore whether other
transit projects provide equal or better clean air benefits, Grabauskas
wrote.
Anthony Flint can be reached at flint@globe.com
©
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
From www.boston.com/globe.
|
