(The following article by Anthony Flint was posted on the Boston Globe’s website on July 15.)
BOSTON — Despite an $8 billion price tag and the dizzying prospect of digging under downtown Boston all over again, advocates for the North-South Rail Link yesterday renewed their longstanding campaign for a seamless rail connection between South Station and North Station, arguing that it would instantly enhance the existing commuter rail and subway system, take 55,000 cars off the road each day, and smooth the commute for 1 million people.
But the Romney administration has declared that the North-South Rail Link is basically dead, and instead wants to pursue projects such as the Urban Ring circumferential transit line and a Roxbury-South Station link for the Silver Line.
”It’s an interesting idea, but there are 8 billion reasons not to go forward,” said Jon Carlisle, spokesman for the state Executive Office of Transportation and Construction. ”Unless realistic funding sources can be identified, this is a project we don’t see going anywhere for the time being. And as we know, multibillion tunnels under downtown Boston don’t really get the juices flowing in Washington.”
Advocates of the rail link are well known for being undeterred, however.
At a news conference yesterday led by the Sierra Club and former governor Michael Dukakis, they unveiled advertisements that have been placed on northbound trains that ask, ”Why doesn’t this train go to South Station?” The 1-mile tunnel, which would be dug beneath and beside the new Big Dig highway tunnel, could be built for much less using new technology, Dukakis said, while benefiting the region and the entire eastern seaboard, as trains zoom from New York to Maine.
The zeal of advocates — former state representative John Businger touted the project with the same energy he had a decade ago — stood in stark contrast to present-day realities, however.
So, the rail link backers were asked, is this a case of refusing to let go in a fight that has already been lost?
”Not at all,” said Businger, talking to reporters in rapid-fire with a fresh stack of rail link bumper stickers in his hand. ”Look at the Urban Ring. They don’t even have a mode yet [bus or light rail]. They don’t have the right-of-way. We have one already. It’s all set to go. It doesn’t screw anybody up. And this is the true regional project — it enhances all other systems.”
People who live in Quincy would be able to zip right through downtown Boston and get to their jobs at a technology company in Waltham off Route 128, and the trip from the North Shore to Northeastern University would be a similar one-seat ride, said Businger, who founded the Legislature’s North-South Rail Link caucus.
The trick, Businger said, is to get Romney administration transportation planners to see that the rail link solves a lot of problems and makes the transit network work better. Another key, he said, is to debunk some myths, starting with the cost.
The state Program for Mass Transportation report lists the cost of the rail link as $8.7 billion, for a four-track tunnel that would begin south of South Station, run hundreds of feet below the city with a new underground Central Station at the midpoint, and emerge across from the Museum of Science in Cambridge.
But the estimate factors in inflation and includes a 30 percent increase in administrative costs, plus a 50 percent contingency fund, all required by federal guidelines.
The same state document lists the final phase of the Urban Ring — a fixed-rail system going through six communities surrounding and including Boston — as having a price tag of $2.8 billion. But that is without the contingency fund or any of the other cost estimate methods that have applied to the rail link.
”It’s a myth the Urban Ring costs less,” Businger said. It also serves fewer people because it runs in a relatively tight circle in metropolitan Boston, he said.
Still, the Romney administration strategy seems increasingly set.
The Urban Ring and the third phase of the Silver Line, which would connect Washington Street buses underground to South Station, ”move a lot of people in the urban core, and from a transportation policy standpoint are very intriguing. You have to look at the number of people the projects would serve, and the constituencies they would serve,” Carlisle said.
The administration is also under pressure from South Shore business interests to reactivate the Greenbush line, at an estimated cost of $470 million, and to extend commuter rail to Fall River and New Bedford, which could cost $600 million. No new federal funding for such projects is expected this year, and state funds are similarly limited in the current fiscal crisis.
Dukakis said he has ”nothing against” improving bus service in a circumferential corridor around Boston, and that commuter rail should be expanded to Fall River and New Bedford, and to the South Shore. But, he said, not having the North-South Rail Link was like having the Orange, Red, Blue, and Green lines all come into downtown Boston and stopping, without connecting.
Asked where the money should come from, Dukakis said the Massachusetts congressional delegation, with help from lawmakers in adjoining New England states who also support the link, would have to find sources of funding.
”Twenty years from now, when there’s complete gridlock, there’s going to be a lot of finger-pointing and people asking why we didn’t do this,” said Jeremy Marin, conservation officer for the Sierra Club, explaining why he organized yesterday’s event. ”We want an engineering study so we can at least preserve the option.”