The Boston Globe has just published this guide for Newton’s Nov. 5 City Council elections. and a separate story on the legal advice the city gave councilors and candidates about responding to questions about Northland and Riverside.
Nineteen of the 33 respondents declined to give their opinions or offered no position on the proposed developments. Ten others offered partial answers, which included opinions on specific aspects of the projects.
Four candidates — all challengers — directly said whether they supported or opposed the projects.
and later…
McKenna, of the Pioneer Institute, said Ocasio Giuliani’s reasoning is sound, and city councilors must respect the special permit process and not appear biased during deliberations. But it’s not necessary that Newton’s top elected board — the City Council — take on this role.
“It would make a great deal of sense to have that function in a non-elective board,” he said. “If it were a separate board, it would not be an issue of candidates not answering questions.”
I’m just starting to go through this but it’s great too see the candidates in non-contested races were included.
Julia Malakie has hit on a challenging transit related problem that’s been a sleeper in this campaign so far, at least at it pertains to the Green Line.
There’s been as assumption –stated often on this blog-that building Northland and Riverside to the sizes proposed by the developers will encourage the MBTA to accelerate and expedite planned increases in the number of passengers the system will be able to carry. But as Julia correctly points out, the T’s own long range planning document stresses rather emphatically that there is likely to be no increase or very little increase in the number of passengers the trolley system will be able to carry before 2040.
I’m assuming that construction at both Northland and riverside will be fully completed at least 15 years or more before that date. The unanswered question is how an already heavily overburdened rush hour system will accommodate an influx of God only knows, how many new commuters during this same time period.?? This unanswered question is also the source of my own concern and I suspect, the concern of many others. It’s almost certain to be a nightmare scenario for any Newton resident that piles onto the Green line each working day, where getting a seat inbound after Eliot Station is already a stressful crap game that may be repeated more than 200 times a year.
Bob, that’s not what the T documents say (whether or not one believes their projections is another story). They believe they can double capacity by 2040, which is very different from “no increase or very little increase in the number of passengers the trolley system will be able to carry before 2040” as you put it. At a recent community meeting in Newton, they went over their projections with the planned acquisition of longer articulated Canadian “supercars” starting in 2024 (5 years from now) that will immediately be adding rider capacity every year. Additionally, as they get some of the new type 9s in service before then, it should hopefully free up some more type 7s to run three-car trains on the D Line. (Those are currently too tied up covering the E Line to avoid type 8 derailments, as I understand it.) Part of the recent track & signal improvements (along with upcoming platform improvements) were specifically intended to add capacity to the D Line both via shorter signal blocks (which allows more frequent service) and by allowing longer trains to load and unload more easily, whether 3-car or supercar trains. The 2040 projections are for a scenario where rider capacity is doubled by running double-supercars, which would require even further line improvements between now and then. But the single supercars (already in operation in Toronto) hold significantly more riders than a current D Line train and would be able to board people at all doors with fare collection. Even that change would be sufficient to at least cover these projects on the table now, although we’d need the bigger changes to address the overall shortage of regional transit capacity.
Again, as noted at the top of my comment, it’s reasonable to have doubts about some of the projections, even short-term, but it’s not true that their plans say they don’t plan to or have the ability to add rider capacity in the next several years.
@Bill. I’m an oftentimes frustrated T commuter that really wants you to be right about this and I’ll acknowledge that I haven’t reviewed the T documents you reference for at least a year; but I did attend two T briefing sessions on the T’s Green D line project about that time where plans for upgrading the rail beds and introducing the new cars you reference were discussed in detail.
My skepticism is sparked, in part, by the fact I’ve been riding the D Line since 1959 and it’s essentially the same system now as it was then despite many promises of great changes in the offing. As an area councilor, I also was a front line observer to the agonizingly long list of obstacles over a more than 5 year period that held up what should have been a relatively modest handicapped access platform at the Newton Highlands T Station.
At one of those meetings on the D Line, I asked the T representatives if funding for the entire project was “in the pipeline” (I think I used the term “shovel ready”) or if this was one of several T projects throughout the system that would still be competing for funds. I remember he told me quite clearly that rail bed and signal improvements were in the pipeline, but the new cars and other improvements were not. Maybe that’s no longer the case.
I didn’t realize we had a city solicitor (Ocasio Giuliani) who encompasses the political spectrum!