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Remember the Silver Line? The world's fanciest and most often maligned bus routes will finally be joined by the world's most expensive tunnel if the MBTA has its way. The "Little Dig" (or, more formally, "Silver Line Phase III") will cost more than $1.2 billion, take more than five years to complete, and quite possibly cause the entire Bay Village neighborhood to slide below the Earth's crust. The completely broke MBTA has no plan to pay for the project, aside from federal matching funds, which would leave the T on the hook for more than $500 million, plus any budget overruns. Every blogger in Boston thinks that it's a bad idea. How about you?
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"world's fanciest and most often maligned bus routes" How do you figure? BRT systems are hardly unique to Boston. Or you mean that Bostonians bitch about everything even while secretly knowing they'd hate it more if they didn't exist?
I mean that hyperbole is currency in Boston and on the internet.
Nobody wanted the Silver Line. It's a poor way to offset the environmental impact of the Big Dig (nobody's sure about the environmental costs of BRT but they aren't especially low compared to light rail) and an even worse replacement for the Washington St. Elevated.
I'm not sure if other BRTs get the same shitty rap in their cities, but who cares? To call the Washington St. Silver Line a BRT is like dressing up a turd and calling it a chocolate bar. It gets stuck in traffic, piles up in threes, and is never on time. There is no practical difference between the Silver Line and a regular bus route except for the fancy bus stops.
Public construction = jobs.
Surely you want $1.2 billion in Massachusetts families' pockets?
well, if that $1.2 billion comes OUT of massachusetts taxpayers' pockets, nobody's really getting ahead here.
It would be nice if they had connected the "Silver Lines" in the first place, but I can wait... a long time... without a major increase in the T fare, please...
Also: Anyone who thinks digging another tunnel in Boston would meet budget and time projections is dreaming.
The silver line is very handy for getting from the airport to the redline. The blue line connector might have been a more cost effective way of making that happen, but I'll take a 15 minute one seat ride to SStation over a long walk with luggage to the blue line and two train changes.