(The Boston Globe posted the following story by Anthony Flint on its website on April 14.)
BOSTON — The Romney administration is preparing to abandon proposed extensions of commuter rail to the South Shore, Fall River, and New Bedford in favor of transit projects in Boston and nearby urban areas, according to planners involved in a sweeping overhaul of transportation policy.
The shift comes after a decade of significant expansion and massive spending on the commuter rail system — more than $900 million for improvements, new stations, and new lines, including service to Worcester and Newburyport.
The revival of the Greenbush line to the South Shore and the extension of commuter rail to New Bedford and Fall River would together cost $1 billion more.
Rather than pursue those two projects, the Romney team is preparing to push urban transit projects, such as the completion of the Silver Line from Roxbury to Logan Airport via South Station, the extension of the Blue Line to Lynn, the Green Line extension to Medford, and the Urban Ring, a rail-and-bus service circumventing Boston.
Administration officials say that in an ideal world they would build both urban and suburban projects, but limited funds force them to make a choice.
Their plan to improve the transportation system in neighborhoods close to and in Boston reflects Governor Mitt Romney’s antisprawl agenda — making urban areas more desirable and functional places for people to live and work, and for developers to build in.
The Romney team is also concerned that commuter rail encourages low-density development — such as new subdivisions on big lots — in suburban and rural areas.
The retreat from commuter rail is sure to ignite protest among civic leaders in Fall River and New Bedford, who have been counting on getting a rail connection to Boston, and some South Shore suburbanites, who have been clamoring for an alternative to congested Route 3 for years.
But both the Greenbush and New Bedford-Fall River projects have been intensely complicated. Some residents in Hingham and Cohasset, for example, have strongly resisted the revival of the Greenbush line; various mitigation measures to address their concerns, such as a tunnel under Hingham Square, have pushed the price to $470 million — roughly $100,000 per new rider.
In February the administration put the Greenbush project on hold for six months, to examine its spiraling costs, including higher-than-expected land acquisition costs, and to determine its ultimate price tag.
An official announcement of Romney’s urban-transit strategy will probably not be made until the review is done.
Romney administration officials say they are prepared for a backlash as they try to shift the emphasis from suburban to urban projects. The Greenbush line, for example, was a promise made in return for moving ahead with the Big Dig, and also a clean-air commitment.
The plan may also be opposed by members of the Legislature, who approve bond bills for major state transportation projects. However, the governor has broad discretion over which transportation projects to build.
Romney’s policy is being developed under his newly created Office of Commonwealth Development, which has generated detailed criteria that will be applied to all proposed transportation projects.
The criteria include the number of projected riders, cars taken off the road, congestion eased, minority and low-income neighborhoods served — but perhaps most important, the development implications of any given project.
Said Stephen Burrington, deputy chief of the Office of Commonwealth Development, which is coordinating the new process for prioritizing projects. ”If it doesn’t have a positive land use impact, it’s much less likely to be built,” he said.
As an example, he said, the $2.8 billion Urban Ring, which would help people get around six communities including Boston and link the region’s radiating subway and rail lines, would also stimulate development along its route, on currently vacant parcels in Roxbury, Somerville, Everett, and Chelsea.
The Greenbush and New Bedford-Fall River lines would take cars off the road, he said, but would likely trigger spread-out development in communities along the route. That’s a particular concern on the proposed New Bedford and Fall River line, which would include stops in suburban communities and pass through sensitive ecological areas.
Administration officials say they have no intention of abandoning the existing commuter rail network. Maintenance and system enhancements, ranging from better platforms to better signalization, will be the first priority for both commuter rail and rapid transit, they say.
The commuter rail system will also be in line for capital improvements, officials say, just not as expansive as in the 1990s. New stations are set to be added along the Fairmount line in Boston and along the Fitchburg Line at Union Square in Somerville, for example.
George Thrush, chairman of the architecture department at Northeastern University, called the administration’s approach a radical change for Massachusetts. He noted that it is difficult to change suburban residents’ reliance on their cars, especially because many of them commute from suburb-to-suburb nowadays rather than suburb-to-Boston. But people in dense urban areas can be better connected, he said.
Environmental groups, however, want alternatives to cars available in both town and country.
”It doesn’t need to be either/or,” said Bennet Heart, senior attorney at the Conservation Law Foundation. ”They should do everything they can to make the funding pie bigger for transit and rail. When you compare projects, the urban projects do tend to come out ahead, but commuter rail serves an important segment of the population.”
Dennis DiZoglio, assistant general manager for planning and real estate for the MBTA, noted that the state’s focus has alternated, between mass transit and commuter rail, over the past 30 years. While former governor Michael S. Dukakis was devoted to improving the subway system, William F. Weld and his successors emphasized suburban rail and highway projects.
After a period of investment in commuter rail, it would be natural for renewed attention to rapid transit, DiZoglio suggested.