I AM SKEPTICAL of government spending on sports stadiums and arenas. A decade ago, I co-founded and led No Boston Olympics, the grassroots group that stood up against the powerful forces pushing a 2024 Boston Olympics bid, which would have required billions of dollars of public expenditure for a three-week sporting event.

There are faint echoes of that memorable debate in the plan for the City of Boston and the Boston Public Schools to join forces with a private entity, Boston Unity Soccer Partners, to revitalize White Stadium in Franklin Park. Indeed, my friend Andrew Zimbalist, professor emeritus at Smith College and expert on sports economics, with whom I co-authored a book on the folly of the Boston Olympics bid, recently shared his view in CommonWealth Beacon that the White Stadium proposal was a bad deal for Boston. But having studied the details of the White Stadium proposal, I come to a conclusion you might not expect: this plan makes sense for Boston. Here’s why:

The Process Has Been Open and Transparent

The Boston 2024 Olympic bid was hatched behind closed doors, and the boosters refused to share bid documents with the public. In contrast, Franklin Park and White Stadium have been the subject of a significant public planning exercise and open procurement.

In 2019, the city undertook, in conjunction with the non-profit Franklin Park Coalition and in close collaboration with the local community, the Franklin Park Action Plan. The strategic vision that resulted from this award-winning planning effort provided a roadmap for investment in Franklin Park to restore Frederick Law Olmsted’s landscape vision, support uses desired by park users, and keep the park accessible and welcoming to its neighbors. In the wake of that plan, in April 2023, the City of Boston released a request for proposals for a public-private partnership to reimagine and reinvest in White Stadium. That process was open to any and all bidders, and was reported on by local media, with the Dorchester Reporter stating plainly, “The RFP calls for a private sector partner to help remake the facility into a high-quality venue.”

The Boston Unity Soccer Partners proposal that resulted from that process has been reviewed by the Boston Landmarks Commission, the Boston Parks and Recreation Commission, and the Boston Planning and Development Agency. It has been the subject of more than 50 public meetings, and has earned the qualified support of the Franklin Park Coalition, the most essential grassroots organization advocating for the park. Other well-meaning citizens and park advocates have opposed the plans, and I respect them and their position. Their lawsuits and press conferences have brought more scrutiny and attention to the proposal, but have failed to make a compelling case that the plan should be thrown out, forcing the city back to the drawing board.

Repairing and Restoring White Stadium Has Eluded Multiple Prior Mayors

The existing inadequacies and future potential of White Stadium first came to my attention during the Boston 2024 debate in 2014 and 2015 (Olympic boosters proposed that Franklin Park be home to equestrian events), but the stadium’s challenges long predate that time period. The facility is in rough shape. Describing a visit to the stadium he made way back in 2013, Boston Globe columnist Adrian Walker called the stadium, “a beautiful dump. Its locker rooms had been unusable for ages. A fire 15 years earlier had seriously damaged the grandstand. The field was behind a padlock, guaranteeing almost no public access to the place.” (After previously expressing reservations, Walker also voiced support for the city’s renovation plan in a recent column.)

Past mayors and city leaders have tried to update the stadium, without success. It appears the last major investment in the stadium was in the 1980s, when the Flynn administration spent $4.2 million to expand the track to six lanes, install aluminum seating, and build new locker rooms and showers.

Despite the improvements, the stadium deteriorated further because of years of neglect and a fire that hollowed out the east grandstand in the late ’90s. And Mayor Flynn’s improvements predated the Americans with Disabilities Act, so the stadium is out of compliance with the ADA – it doesn’t even have basic ramps, not to mention elevators or lifts. The field and adjacent practice area are often unusable in the fall sports season as a result of flooding caused by precipitation and poor drainage.

In June, 2009, Mayor Tom Menino, himself a wise skeptic of public funding for stadiums, said he had been working for several months on a plan for Northeastern University to make multimillion-dollar improvements to White Stadium and to have Northeastern’s football team play its home games there. (That plan collapsed when the university’s board of trustees voted in November of that year to end the football program.)

In the summer of 2013, John Fish, the owner of Suffolk Construction and supporter of Boston high school sports, shared plans to raise $45 million to return White Stadium to its former glory, unveiling a proposal at a meeting of the Franklin Park Coalition. But that plan never happened, either.

Early in his tenure, Mayor Marty Walsh first rejected White Stadium as a priority, saying, “Unfortunately, we don’t have room under the bonding cap right now. It’s something we would love to see happen, but it’s just a large expense with so many other capital needs in the city.” He then pivoted to tying the future of White Stadium to his favored project, the Boston 2024 Olympic bid  — a flame that was extinguished by summer 2015.

That sad litany ends with the actions of Mayor Michelle Wu, who is seeing through an ambitious plan that will finally bring the stadium into the 21^st century. It is notable that, since the 1980s, each plan for the stadium relied on a private partner. The plan put forward by Mayor Wu and Boston Unity Partners will accomplish what prior administrations have tried – and failed – to do.

White Stadium is a Public Asset and Will Remain a Public Asset

Residents should ask tough questions whenever a private entity seeks to use public land. But long-term leases of public space are common, and can often provide significant benefits to a community, filling a gap that public resources alone cannot fill. Examples in Greater Boston are practically endless.

Emerson College recently won the rights to use space on Boston Common to create a beer garden and outdoor performance space, transforming a forlorn corner of America’s oldest public park into a vibrant, welcoming venue for music and socializing. Paddle Boston, a for-profit business, has a long-term lease on public land along the Charles River, where it rents out kayaks, canoes, and paddleboards to those seeking to take advantage of a day on the water. In both cases, the land remains public, but the private entity offers a service and investment that enhances the public space for a public benefit.

The plan for White Stadium will be no different. The public will still own the land and the stadium, and will have greatly expanded use of the venue, though the team will have the right to host up to 20 soccer games per year (plus a practice for each game). The city estimates that BPS and the public will have about 90 percent of the hours, with 10 percent for the team. The rebuilt White Stadium will have a new competition-level 8-lane track for hosting high school meets, strength and conditioning and study spaces for student athletes, and community space and public restrooms for park users, none of which exist today.

The Transportation Plan Works

The plan for getting people to and from the stadium limits on-site parking in favor of a multi-modal mix of options that mean most fans will walk at least the last portion of their journey – just as most visitors do at Fenway Park and the TD Garden. (Shuttles will bring people with disabilities to the front door.)

The proponents expect 4 out of 10 attendees will arrive by public transportation, and when accounting for walking and biking, fewer than half of all attendees will travel to the stadium by car. Those that do will be directed to satellite parking lots. For a stadium located in an urban park this is a reasonable plan — and one that can be improved over time as the city and team learn more about how fans are arriving and any impact game days are having on the neighborhoods that surround Franklin Park.

Boston Taxpayers Face Limited and Manageable Risk

The 2024 Olympic bid presented Boston taxpayers with billions of dollars of financial risk. By contrast, the White Stadium proposal, even in a worst case scenario, is an order of magnitude less. The City of Boston intends to spend $50 million on its portion of the project: the east grandstand, which will include Boston Public Schools athletics facilities; a new grass field; and the track. This is a significant cost, but a reasonable one when compared with White Stadium plans presented in the past, or with any reasonable alternative to the Boston Unity Soccer Partners proposal.

The city will need to carefully manage costs of this project, as it does with any project of this size and scope. Stadiums can be prone to cost overruns (a fact we shared widely in opposing Boston 2024). But even opponents of the current White Stadium plan argue the stadium should be restored, so stadium construction is a risk that the city faces regardless of whether it partners with Boston Unity Soccer Partners. The city should ensure that the lease agreement properly assigns capital and operating costs to the professional team, as outlined in the RFP, and move quickly to establish the White Stadium Neighborhood Advisory Council that was created in the process governing large development projects recently approved by the Boston Planning and Development Agency.

Franklin Park Belongs to Everyone

In 2015, then-City Councilor Wu was the first elected official in the city of Boston to ask tough questions about the Boston 2024 Olympic bid, in the form of a GBH op-ed, calling for “informed independence and true debate.” We eventually got that with the Boston 2024 bid, and that ill-conceived proposal fell apart under public scrutiny.

By contrast, the now-mayor’s plan for White Stadium has held up under intense review by neighbors, the media, the mayor’s political opponents, and even a judge of the Superior Court. This proposal makes the most out of a challenging situation — a 10,000-seat, out-of-date and inaccessible stadium in the heart of Franklin Park that today only fills those seats a few times a year, if ever. With more than $50 million in private investment, it transforms that decaying stadium into a first-tier public facility, but also one that will host crowds that the stadium has rarely seen since the 1970s, drawing people to Franklin Park from around the city and the region.

Rather than a privatization of a public asset, the plan is an opportunity to welcome both longtime residents and new generations to the heart of the park, and to polish the crown jewel in Olmsted’s Emerald Necklace. It’s a good deal for Boston.

Chris Dempsey was a co-founder of No Boston Olympics. He is a founding partner at the urban planning and transportation policy firm Speck Dempsey, which consults for the City of Boston but not on the Franklin Park project.

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WITH HIGH-PROFILE MISHAPS and equipment failures in recent months, the MBTA is under unprecedented scrutiny for its recent safety record. The Federal Transit Administration’s Safety Management Inspection (SMI) report released in August is just the latest independent assessment to determine that the MBTA is falling short on basic safety measures, putting riders at risk and further eroding the public’s faith in the system. With a new gubernatorial administration and legislative session just weeks away, state leaders and other MBTA stakeholders are presented with a moment to reassess safety oversight at the agency. There appears to be political will and momentum to adopt substantial reforms so that riders feel safe riding an MBTA subway car, rail car, bus, trolley, or ferry. But what specific reforms will accomplish that?

In recent months, particular attention has been paid to the role of the Department of Public Utilities (DPU) as the Commonwealth’s State Safety Oversight (SSO) entity. The SSO is a federally-mandated program that oversees safety at rail transit systems that are not otherwise overseen by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA). In Massachusetts, the SSO oversees heavy-rail rapid transit (i.e. Red, Orange, and Blue Line) and light-rail (i.e. Green Line and Mattapan High Speed Line) safety at the MBTA. (Because it shares track with freight railways, the MBTA’s commuter rail safety is overseen by the FRA.)

The FTA has criticized the DPU for failing to adequately oversee MBTA safety, writing in its safety management inspection report that “DPU has not used its authority to ensure the identification and resolution of safety issues at MBTA,” and has been “slow to complete corrective actions to address safety concerns.”

The FTA is not the only entity to question the DPU’s ability to effectively oversee safety. Former US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood — a co-author of the 2019 Safety Review Panel report on deficiencies in the MBTA’s safety systems — urged the Legislature in recent testimony to remove SSO authority from the DPU and to instead create an independent safety management agency dedicated to rail safety.

The MBTA Advisory Board has published a paper authored by Chris Dempsey that examines the history of the SSO program in Massachusetts and compares SSO models in other states and regions that are home to large public transportation rail systems. Possible future oversight structures include: moving SSO authority to a different, existing entity, such as the state auditor, inspector general, or MBTA Advisory Board; or creating a new, independent entity consistent with LaHood’s recommendation overseen by a board with independence from the sitting gubernatorial administration. Each of these approaches has advantages and drawbacks, but it is clear that the status quo is not working and change is needed.

It may be time for state leaders to consider creating an independent entity to oversee the safety of public transportation, as exists in New York state and at the Washington, D.C., metro system. Such an entity could have a narrow focus, such as focusing exclusively on rail safety as in Washington. Or it could have a broader mandate to oversee safety at all public transportation in the state, as in New York.

Gov.-elect Maura Healey’s proposal for a statewide transportation safety chief could be a good starting point for the creation of such an entity, which would need to be accompanied by the strong support of legislative leaders to provide it with sufficient independence and funding. The creation of a new authority would be a significant undertaking — it took 18 months between when the Washington Safety Metrorail Commission was created by lawmakers and when it actually took responsibility for safety oversight at the Metro system – but it would also demonstrate the seriousness with which state leaders are tackling the problem.

In the meantime, it has been encouraging to see the DPU add additional staff with transportation expertise and elevate transit safety on a crowded agenda that includes oversight of gas and electric utilities, towing companies, moving companies, and more.

Essential to the economic and social health and vibrancy of Massachusetts, the MBTA is facing the most challenging moment in its 125-year history of service and its 60-year history as a state-controlled independent authority. Transit safety is first among many areas of concern in need of reform, investment, and improvement across the Commonwealth’s public transportation network. The incoming Healey-Driscoll Administration, the Legislature, the MBTA board of directors, and other partners – including the MBTA Advisory Board — must face these challenges head-on to get the MBTA back on track.

Brian Kane is executive director of the MBTA Advisory Board and Chris Dempsey is the author of the MBTA Advisory Board paper on state safety oversight of the MBTA. Dempsey is the former director of Transportation for Massachusetts and  a candidate for state Auditor in 2022.

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THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE the year for the Massachusetts Legislature to deliver a major overhaul of the state’s transportation system. The stars had begun to align in early March when the House passed a pair of bills that raised revenue and authorized key transportation projects across the Commonwealth. Then came coronavirus, economic calamity, and an important, national conversation about race and police brutality.

These far-reaching challenges understandably knocked transportation down Beacon Hill’s priority list and dulled some lawmakers’ sense of urgency. Last week, the state Senate passed a bill heavy on project authorizations, but light on policy change and devoid of new revenue. This less ambitious approach only means perpetuating an inequitable status quo that leaves black residents with longer bus commutes than their white counterparts, and black, Asian, and Hispanic residents disproportionately breathing vehicle tailpipe exhaust.

Still, the conference committee that will now sort out differences between the House and Senate bills has an opportunity to advance some worthy proposals. It must begin to answer pressing questions such as: How can our transportation system buttress economic recovery? How do we reduce the public health impacts of a transportation system that is our state’s largest source of air pollution? How do we address deep racial and economic inequity that is now more prominent and pressing than ever?

What follows is an (opinionated) insider’s guide to the committee’s work, including recommendations for what should emerge from the legislative process.

• Commit to raise resources: The need for more statewide funding remains the most significant (though not the sole) barrier to improving the Commonwealth’s transportation system in every corner of the state. House conferees should push their Senate colleagues hard to agree to new revenue before the end of the session on July 31.
• Harmonize funding and incentives: Our state government perversely provides subsidies for driving that dwarf those provided for public transportation. Since 1991 the state gas tax has increased by just 14 percent, while bus fares have jumped 140 percent in Springfield and a staggering 300 percent at the MBTA. The message that sends to commuters: drive more, take transit less. And the result? Drivers sit mired in the nation’s worst traffic congestion, carbon emissions and harmful pollutants increase, and transit service beyond the Route 128 corridor remains meager or non-existent. Fixing this requires raising the price of driving (with progressive mitigation for low-income households) and investing more in public transportation. The Legislature must not shy away from user fees when it comes time to raise revenue for transportation. Both chambers approved a Commission on Roadway and Congestion Pricing, which will help lay the groundwork for long-overdue analysis and action.
• Lower economic barriers to accessing public transit: A monthly commuter-rail pass can cost $388 per month. A means-tested fare program like ones in Seattle and New York would give lower-wage workers a more affordable option. Both the House and Senate wisely support language to further this concept for the MBTA.
• Empower local voters: A proposal to create regional ballot initiatives is a bright spot in the Senate’s bill. Regional ballot initiatives allow voters at the municipal and regional level to raise new revenue for local and regional transportation projects such as sidewalk improvements, transit stations, bike-share systems, and multi-use rail trails. Forty-one other states give voters this power. Massachusetts should, too.
• Update regulations and fees on Transportation Network Companies such as Uber and Lyft: The Senate’s bill would create pioneering requirements for these companies to share anonymized data with transportation planners. The House proposed updating fees on these companies to reflect the impact that the 90 million trips per year they provide have on our congested roads, a change with which Gov. Charlie Baker agrees. The conference committee should take the best of both bills and make the state’s regulations on Uber and Lyft among the most effective in the country.

By approving these measures, the conference committee can make the most of an unsatisfying legislative session. But no matter what is accomplished in conference, House and Senate leaders must commit to further action in the future. That larger transportation overhaul still awaits.

Chris Dempsey is the director of Transportation for Massachusetts.

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IF YOU WANT TO UNDERSTAND the intersection of public health, transportation, and the environment, come visit Chelsea.   

Though just 2.5 square miles and one of the densest municipalities in the state, the community is cut in two by Route 1 and the Tobin Bridge. It hosts one of the largest fruit and vegetable distribution centers in the country — bringing hundreds of diesel-fueled trucks onto its streets day after day. Oil tanks dotting the shores of the brackish Chelsea Creek store all of the jet fuel used by Logan Airport and a staggering three-quarters of the region’s home heating fuel supply.  

As a result, Chelsea is home to some of the worst air quality in the state. The people of Chelsea suffer from the highest rates of asthma hospitalizations of any community in Massachusetts. The airborne particulate matter spewed by vehicle tailpipes leads to higher rates of heart disease for elderly residents, greater risk of complications for pregnant mothers, and lower test scores for students. Chelsea’s environmental and public health burdens demonstrate the many ways that the Commonwealth’s transportation policies are failing working-class communities of color.  

Those inequities also extend to opportunities to access jobs. Despite its density and proximity to employment centers, Chelsea is poorly served by quality public transit. Chelsea’s lifeline to Downtown Boston is the #111 bus, which serves more than 12,000 trips per day. But as traffic backs up on the Tobin Bridge, that bus can regularly take 45 minutes or more to go 2.7 miles from central Chelsea to its terminus at Haymarket — an average speed of less than 4 miles per hour. It would be faster to walk or bike over the Tobin, but MassDOT long ago made both of those activities illegal. Instead, Chelsea residents trying to get to work or appointments cram like sardines onto buses. The MBTA’s new “Silver Line III” service has added a new transit option, but this bus still gets stuck in vehicular traffic in the Ted Williams Tunnel; and it halts completely each time the Chelsea Street Drawbridge is raised to accommodate those fuel deliveries on Chelsea Creek. The commuter rail line through Chelsea serves just one stop (Wellesley, a community with just three-quarters of the population of Chelsea, has three stops). 

These transportation inequities and negative public health outcomes impact similar communities all over the Commonwealth. Springfield was named the asthma capital of the United States by the Asthma and Allergy Foundation, and yet its regional transit authority that provides critical bus service in Springfield was forced to cut routes and hours due to lack of funding. Because state aid for local roads includes a weighting for lane-miles, dense, urban, Lawrence receives half as much funding per-capita ($17) as sprawling, wealthy communities such as Concord ($38) or Lincoln ($40). As our climate warms, many urban communities will suffer increased flooding from non-porous road infrastructure and the “heat-island” effect of all that concrete and asphalt, further exacerbating air quality and public health outcomes. 

Our organizations, T4MA and GreenRoots, take different but complementary approaches to addressing these fundamental problems. We recognize that in order to improve equity for communities like Chelsea, our advocacy needs to be fierce, flexible, and focused on the right policies and policymakers. GreenRoots works on the front lines of Chelsea’s transportation challenges.

This grassroots approach seeks to improve transit justice, environmental justice, and public health by fighting for improved transit service on the #111, #116/117 and other key bus routes, advocating for safer street infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists, and working with local stakeholders to convert delivery trucks to cleaner vehicles. T4MA works at the state level to advocate for reduced congestion on the Tobin Bridge and other regional roads through smarter tolling, more robust state investment in transit from progressive revenue sources, and reducing greenhouse-gas emissions through environmental reforms like the Transportation & Climate Initiative. 

Any of these policies hold promise — and all of them must make progress in the year ahead. However, they need to be developed and shaped by a broad base of stakeholders, primarily including the communities most impacted by transit and environmental injustices. As we transition from a fossil fuel economy to a regenerative and renewable one, we have to work together to ensure those most-impacted by the climate crisis are at the forefront of the green economy.

If we get it right, the result will be well-paying jobs for working class communities, electrification of bus fleets in environmental justice communities, and meaningful investments in public transit infrastructure like the MBTA and regional transit authorities. The future of Chelsea and communities like it will be more equitable, healthier, and more resilient if, and only if, the policies we develop today are based on principles of equity and environmental justice.  

María Belén Power is the associate executive director of GreenRoots, based in Chelsea. Chris Dempsey is the director of the Transportation for Massachusetts coalition.  

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EACH WEEKDAY in Greater Boston, more than 400,000 workers, students, shoppers, seniors, and visitors board an MBTA bus. Buses serve three times as many riders as the commuter rail. But despite their importance, buses remain an underappreciated and often neglected component of our region’s transportation system. The T’s own performance dashboard sets a meager on-time performance expectation for bus service of just 75 percent. And even that bar has been met on only nine days so far in 2019. On not a single day so far in 2019 have buses achieved even an 80 percent on-time standard.

If the commuter rail were performing that poorly, it would be the leading news story each and every day, and our elected officials would be calling it a crisis. The historical race and class context for this reality cannot be ignored. Urban bus riders deserve the same urgency and attention as suburban commuter rail riders. While rail is an important part of our transportation system, it is the bus that has been, and will be, our region’s public transit workhorse.

Fortunately, fixing the bus system is one of the cheapest and most efficient ways we can improve the MBTA. It doesn’t require billions of dollars and decades-long construction. In fact, some bus system changes, like modernizing routes, will actually produce cost savings to the MBTA that can be plowed back into improved service.

The MBTA took a major first step last month, when the Baker administration and the Massachusetts Department of Transportation proposed a slate of changes to 63 bus routes that will make bus service faster, more efficient, and more responsive to rider needs. We strongly support this process, and call on riders, communities, and elected officials to embrace experimentation and changes to routes that haven’t been updated in decades, if ever. This effort will hopefully lay the groundwork for a more robust overhaul of the system, including adding new routes system-wide and expanding the MBTA’s fleet of buses.

But improving routes and adding news buses to the fleet will only get us so far. To truly revolutionize our bus system we need to look at how we allocate precious road space. This work has started, with bus-lane pilots in communities such as Everett, Cambridge, and Roslindale. But the process needs to be accelerated, particularly in neighborhoods that depend on bus service as their main transit option.

The four bus lines that serve the Dimock Community Health Center carry more than 16,000 riders per weekday. Three quarters of those riders are people of color, and the majority of riders live in a household that does not own a vehicle. For the most part, cities and towns can control how well buses run — or don’t — on their streets, by creating bus lanes and other transit priority amenities. These simple fixes have already proven effective in the region. In Boston, a bus lane pilot on Washington Street in Roslindale produced a travel time reduction that averaged 25 percent for nearly 20,000 daily bus riders. All that with just some orange cones and red paint.

MassDOT could build on this success by improving bus service on roads it controls. This will require a combination of creating bus lanes on more state-owned highways, and using smarter tolling to get key bus corridors like the Tobin Bridge, the Ted Williams Tunnel, and the Massachusetts Turnpike moving faster (both for bus riders and drivers). In Seattle, these two tools have helped increased ridership to the point that almost one in five workers commutes by bus. Seattle’s downtown has gained about 60,000 jobs since 2010, but there are approximately 4,500 fewer single-occupancy vehicle commuters.

Gov. Charlie Baker’s Commission on the Future of Transportation made prioritizing public transit its first recommendation for creating a robust, reliable, clean, and efficient transportation system. Let’s elevate the bus – low cost, efficient, flexible – as the once, current, and future workhorse of that system.

Dr. Myechia Minter-Jordan is the president and CEO of the Dimock Center and Chris Dempsey is the director of Transportation for Massachusetts

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AS WE CELEBRATE EARTH DAY and the worldwide movement to protect our environment, it’s heartening that sustainability and an appreciation for clean air, water, and land have become mainstream values. We have come a long way from the first Earth Day in 1970, when, too often, environmental consequences were an afterthought. And while many hurdles remain, we should be poised to take bold, positive action as our generation’s legacy.

So far, Massachusetts has been among the states leading the way in protecting the environment. For example, while President Trump has shirked responsibility and declared his intention to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accords, Gov. Charlie Baker stepped up to join a group of governors and reiterated the Legislature’s commitment to honor the Paris Accords, and to meet the Global Warming Solutions Act targets of a 25 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 2020, and 8 percent reduction by 2050.

The Commonwealth is a leader in clean energy policy, having made strong commitments to solar and the prospects for wind power. We now get more than 9 percent of our electricity from renewable sources, a number that grows each year. The last coal-fired plant in the state is history, and oil has decreased to 13 percent of electricity production. We just need to turn our policy into practice.

Progress does not happen by accident or chance. Part of our success can be attributed to science-driven policy choices that a succession of Massachusetts leaders have made over the years, including the Global Warming Solutions Act, a legislative initiative.

Massachusetts’ decision about a decade ago to join the multi-state Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) has been a huge success. An Analysis Group report, led by Sue Tierney and a team of independent economists, confirms this. Since 2009, CO₂ emissions have been cut 51 percent, prices have come down over 6 percent for consumers, we’ve generated more than $400 million, and the economy has grown by 30 percent.

RGGI is a cap-and-invest system. It requires power plants in Massachusetts and other participant states to buy credits to offset the pollution they create. The proceeds from the sale of those credits are used to support energy efficiency and innovative energy technologies, from popular programs like Mass Save to clean tech startups funded through the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center.

In energy production, RGGI is working. But while we have made a lot of progress on electricity, there is one sector of our economy where we are stuck in place: transportation. Our vehicles now pollute more than our powerplants. If Massachusetts once again leads the way, we can help create a RGGI for transportation that would help us solve two enormous challenges at once.

The first challenge is the emissions that contribute to climate change and create costly and unhealthy local air pollution. Consider the health of children living near highways: they have a higher probability of asthma and other respiratory diseases than the population as a whole because of airborne pollutants.

The second challenge is the poor condition of our transportation network. We rank 45th out of 50 states in infrastructure, and the average driver in Greater Boston wastes $2,000 per year in congestion. Bipartisan reports indicate we are not investing enough just to maintain what’s broken – not to mention to improve our transportation system to meet a growing economy.

Massachusetts is home to the most talented workforce in the entire country, yet we make that workforce sit in traffic, wait for a delayed train, or stay at home entirely because of cuts to regional bus services in places like Springfield and Worcester.

A RGGI for transportation would look a lot like the existing, successful RGGI program, with emissions caps set at a regional level. Revenue from the program could support transformative investments that make our communities stronger and healthier, with smart, clean transportation networks as the backbone.

From active transportation – people-powered modes like walking and biking – to electrified public transit, to a future of shared, electric autonomous vehicle fleets to solve community transportation challenges, there is a lot we can do to better serve our diverse state while helping to solve an urgent climate problem

Given the success of RGGI, we know RGGI for transportation can help Massachusetts build a legacy of protecting our planet while also fixing our infrastructure.

Now that is an Earth Day Resolution worth making.

Jody Rose is president of the New England Venture Capital Association, Tim Brennan is the executive director of the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission, and Chris Dempsey is director of Transportation for Massachusetts.

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Two years ago Boston was in the midst of an epic showdown over whether to proceed with a bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. In January 2015, Boston was designated the US entry in the international sweepstakes, and the odds of the city landing the global spectacle seemed favorable, given that no US city had hosted the Summer Games since 1996. But just 200 days later, the proposal came crashing to earth and the bid was withdrawn. The end was due in no small part to the savvy work of a small band of 30-something-year-old Bostonians who came together under the banner of a group whose name telegraphed its mission: No Boston Olympics. One of the group’s founders, transportation expert Chris Dempsey, has co-authored an account of the Olympic flame-out with Smith College economist Andrew Zimbalist, one of the foremost authorities on the economics of the Olympics. What follows is an excerpt from their new book, No Boston Olympics: How and Why Smart Cities Are Passing on the Torch. Dempsey and Zimbalist will speak at a book launch event this Friday, April 28, at 7 p.m., at the Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge.

SETTING THE SCENE

Eric Reddy and Corey Dinopoulos, both Massachusetts natives and young professionals living in the Boston area, were the Leibniz and Newton of Boston 2024’s Olympic dream. In the fall of 2012, each learned that the United States Olympic Committee would be seeking applicant cities to bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics and thought that the Athens of America, as locals sometimes call Boston, would make an ideal host. Reddy had many years of experience in sports marketing, and Dinopoulos was a visual design professional and Olympic aficionado. Many years earlier, Dinopoulos had undertaken a college project that contemplated how the mega-event might fit with Boston’s global brand as a historic city that was now a hub of education and innovation. Introduced to each other because of their mutual interest in a potential Boston bid, Reddy and Dinopoulos met for the first time at the Omni Parker House, the celebrated hotel two blocks down Beacon Street from the State House.

A FALSE START FOR BOSTON 2024

Reddy and Dinopoulos were unknown in Massachusetts politics, but they found some initial support for their notion from Eileen Donoghue, a state senator from the historic mill city of Lowell, twenty-five miles northwest of Boston. Donoghue cochaired the legislature’s Committee on Tourism, Arts, and Cultural Development and believed the Olympics could be a boon to those interests. But Boston mayor Tom Menino—a towering figure in the city—gave the duo a cool reception. Menino, who by 2013 had held sway over the city of Boston for twenty years, was no stranger to Olympic bids. In 1992, the year before city council president Menino would assume the mayor’s office upon the resignation of mayor Ray Flynn, a group of Boston business leaders led by sports agent Stephen Freyer had pitched an Olympic bid to city hall. Mayor Flynn, a former All-American basketball player at Providence College, was supportive of the effort. He had once posed holding the Olympic torch in front of the famous Paul Revere statue in Boston’s North End. But in 1993, Flynn was appointed by President Clinton to be ambassador to the Vatican and he soon gave way to Menino. At first, the new mayor supported the bid, telling the Boston Globe, “I will work with the Olympics Committee. I will promote it. This is good for Boston, good for its people.” After further examination, Menino turned away from the Olympic bid, concluding that his priorities should be the day-to-day needs of the city’s residents, rather than the demands of a three-week sporting event. He ultimately supported the construction of a new convention center in the city, but not the accompanying baseball and football stadiums that many saw as precursors to playing Olympic host. “Stadiums do not revive cities,” he said in a later State of the City speech. “People do.”

Twenty years after that initial Olympic pitch, Mayor Menino seemed as convinced as ever that Boston would be better off passing on a bid. On February 19, 2013, when the USOC sent his office—and that of thirty-four other mayors around the country—a letter soliciting bids for the 2024 Summer Games, Menino dismissed it. Perhaps a diligent staffer in Menino’s office read the insightful piece by longtime Olympic observer and writer Alan Abrahamson (somewhat perplexingly reposted on the USOC’s website) explaining the subtext of the USOC’s letter: “If you, Mr. or Ms. Mayor, would like to play in the Olympic space, be crystal clear going in you will do so as the junior partner.” That is, in any American bidding process, the USOC calls the shots and the host city is just along for the ride. More likely, Abrahamson’s piece went unnoticed, because for Menino and his seasoned staff, the letter needed no translation. The mayor was famous for adopting a direct, hands-on approach to proposals that might alter his beloved city. In one instance that became lore in Boston’s real estate community, the mayor had personally chosen the architectural design of the crown of a new building that was to grace the city’s skyline from a set of options presented by an obsequious developer eager for a green light from city hall. To Menino, playing “junior partner” held little appeal if outsiders from the USOC were going to take a lead role in organizing a three-week sporting event that would bring generational, monumental, and disruptive changes to Boston.

On March 5, 2013, Menino panned a Boston Olympic bid as “far-fetched” in a radio interview with public radio station WBUR, saying, “I need every penny I have to make sure we continue the services to the people of Boston.” A Boston Herald article published the next day, titled “Hub Olympics Idea Torched,” quoted Menino’s close friend and ally, John Fish, the chairman and CEO of Suffolk Construction. “We’re coming out of the greatest economic recession and I don’t think our resources should be diluted by going after something so far out,” said Fish, the city’s most successful builder. “If someone wanted to pour $1 billion into our health care or education system or the life sciences industry, I’d be all for that discussion.” Fish had supported Stephen Freyer’s bid in the early 1990s but now told Herald reporters Dave Wedge and Erin Smith: “Our perspective has changed.” Led by the earnest but insignificant duo of Reddy and Dinopoulos and lacking the support of the incumbent mayor and power players like Fish, a Boston 2024 bid was, for all intents and purposes, stillborn.

BOSTON 2024 GETS OFF THE STARTING BLOCKS

Just three weeks after the Herald report had seemingly ended the city’s Olympic prospects, the political landscape in Boston experienced a tectonic shift: Mayor Menino announced that he would not be seeking reelection. The pronouncement created a once-in-a-generation political vacuum and touched off a feverish race to replace the only mayor that many Bostonians had ever known. More than a dozen candidates, including the eventual finalists—a state representative and union organizer from Dorchester named Marty Walsh, and city councilor John Connolly—would vie to be Boston’s first new mayor since 1993.

The political vacuum also created new life for the idea of a Boston Olympics. Its new champion was someone who just a few weeks prior to Menino’s decision had panned the bid to the Herald. John Fish’s perspective had changed again. Fish grabbed the reins from Reddy and Dinopoulos and began to meet quietly with other civic leaders about the idea of bringing the Olympics to Boston in 2024. He persuaded a still-reluctant but now lame-duck Menino to allow him to respond to the USOC’s forlorn February solicitation letter. He invited USOC officials to town in October 2013 for a private meeting at the Mandarin Oriental, perhaps Boston’s most luxurious building, where Fish owned a $7 million condominium. Among those in attendance were Dinopoulos and Mayor Menino, who by then had just a few months remaining in office and was no doubt curious about the bid’s prospects. In that meeting, USOC officials told Fish that a host city’s priority should be to determine its long-term plans for development, and to submit a bid only if hosting the Olympics fit into those plans. (This spin—“we really care about the city’s development”—is the standard rhetoric. Note that the USOC eventually turned to Los Angeles, whose bid has little to do with city building.) The idea captivated Fish, a prolific builder who recognized a unique opportunity to remake parts of the city over the following decade. As he put it to Boston magazine, “I start with the question: What is the city of Boston going to look like in 30 to 40 years? It involves thinking big—not just thinking about where we’ve been and where we’re going, but thinking a little abnormally. We may never realize the Olympics in 2024, but the opportunity to bring the community together to talk about the future is a powerful thing.”

Fish was perhaps the only person in Massachusetts positioned to attempt something as ambitious as an Olympic bid. He had been named the most powerful Bostonian by Boston magazine in 2012—even ahead of the governor and the mayor—and with his deep connections in the city’s political, business, and philanthropic spheres, had an unmatched reputation as the person to go to when one wanted to get things done in Boston. Among other civic and institutional roles, Fish was the incoming chairman of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce; the deputy chairman (and future chairman) of the Federal Reserve’s Boston branch; the founder of the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership, which advocated for business interests at the State House; and the incoming chairman of the board of trustees at Boston College, one of the city’s most influential universities. Fish had created an unrivaled platform for influencing the direction of the region in the coming decades. His competitive intensity was the stuff of legend in Massachusetts business circles. Fish was known for arriving at work at 4:30 a.m. He had ruthlessly outcompeted rival construction firms, including one owned by his own brother, to become the dominant builder in New England. Bringing the Olympics to Boston would be a crowning achievement, cementing Fish’s position as his generation’s ultimate Boston power broker.

Fish also must have understood that leading a successful Olympic bid would bring him benefits far beyond Massachusetts’s borders. A successful bid offered unprecedented international exposure for its leaders. Peter Ueberroth, the president and CEO of Los Angeles’s 1984 bid, had used the Games to catapult himself from a successful but nationally unknown regional businessperson to become Time magazine’s Man of the Year in 1984, and later commissioner of Major League Baseball. Billy Payne, who spearheaded Atlanta’s 1996 bid, would later become chairman of Augusta National Golf Club, home of the Masters tournament. The bidding process alone would provide Fish the chance to use his private jet to travel the world to rub shoulders with royalty, former Olympic athletes, and the ultrawealthy who made up the International Olympic Committee. It was the opportunity of a lifetime for a businessperson and philanthropist who had spent two decades gradually amassing power in Massachusetts’s capital city. John Fish was hooked.

Fish began to put his immense political capital to work building the foundation of an Olympic bid. He and his allies helped orchestrate the passage of a legislative resolution, first filed in January 2013 by Senator Donoghue, establishing a commission to investigate the “feasibility of hosting the summer Olympics [in Massachusetts] in 2024.” Governor Deval Patrick signed the resolution on October 31, 2013—a Halloween treat for Olympic boosters. Despite its significance, the resolution received only minimal coverage from the media, as the news cycle focused on the Red Sox World Series win on October 30 and the final dramatic days of Boston’s mayoral election. The stated purpose of the commission, for which no funding was appropriated, was to review “all aspects of a prospective summer Olympics in the Commonwealth” with a focus on requirements and impacts in the areas of (1) infrastructure, (2) transportation, (3) tourism, (4) lodging, (5) location for events (venues), (6) costs, and (7) benefits.

Massachusetts’s wealth of universities and think tanks meant that State House leaders could choose from a long list of professors and academics with the experience and expertise to weigh the costs and benefits of a potential bid, as was called for in the resolution. In fact, Massachusetts was home to noted economists whose research focused specifically on the impacts of sporting mega-events. One of these economists, Professor Victor Matheson of the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, proactively reached out to the commission and volunteered to serve. Another, Andrew Zimbalist at Smith College in Northampton, was contacted by his state senator, Stan Rosenberg (a powerful figure who was in line to become the next senate president). After receiving Zimbalist’s blessing, Rosenberg submitted the professor’s name to Governor Patrick for consideration. Either Matheson or Zimbalist would have been a logical choice for inclusion if the governor were looking for a balanced and serious assessment. Zimbalist had written a bookshelf ’s worth of books and studies on the economics of sports and had examined the International Olympic Committee’s business model closely. Matheson had authored a score of peer-reviewed academic articles on sporting mega-events and had conducted econometric studies assessing the true economic impact of hosting an Olympic event. Another logical choice would have been Judith Grant Long, an urban planning professor at Harvard University, who was a leading scholar on sports facilities and economic development and was working on a manuscript on the Olympics and urban design. Zimbalist recommended her to Senator Rosenberg. Despite their expertise and eagerness to serve on the commission, not one of the three scholars was asked to serve.

Instead, the appointees to the commission were a cast of characters whose qualifications had more to do with their political connections and ties to the tourism and construction industries than their economic knowhow. Among them were State House political staffers and the CEO of Boston’s Duck Boats, made famous for parading the city’s professional athletes down Boylston Street after championship victories (the Red Sox championship parade that year was Saturday, November 2). Appointees also included the sports agent Stephen Freyer (the bid leader who had won Mayor Flynn’s support in 1992), Dan O’Connell (a former secretary of economic development for Governor Patrick who later had been hired by John Fish to run the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership), state senator Donoghue (who had supported the 2024 bid from its early days), and John Fish himself, who became the commission’s chairman. Thus, while the commission’s stated goal was to study the feasibility of a bid, it also served another purpose: demonstrating to the USOC that Fish and his allies could successfully pull the levers of power in state and local government—a necessary precondition to advancing an Olympic bid.

Boston voters went to the polls on November 5, 2013, and handed Marty Walsh a slim electoral victory. By then, Fish and his allies in the political and business communities were artfully executing the early stages of the traditional Olympic booster playbook: leaking to the media venue possibilities that conjured images of world-class athletes competing in locations familiar and famed (such as Fenway Park and Harvard Stadium), promising that with careful planning Boston’s Games would avoid the issues of cost overruns and white elephants that had plagued prior host cities, and pitching the bid as a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity to think big about the city’s future and to upgrade its infrastructure. Among those Fish had recruited to the effort were Mitt Romney, former Massachusetts governor and organizer of Salt Lake City’s 2002 Winter Games, who spoke hopefully about the idea on a visit to NBC’s Meet the Press; Ed Davis, the former Boston police commissioner, who had gained acclaim for his response to the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings; and Robert Kraft, the dapper owner of the New England Patriots. In a front-page Boston Globe story, perfectly timed to appear in the slow news cycle that followed the captivating and exhausting city election, Romney, Davis, and Kraft all praised the idea of a bid, while Fish outlined his approach to the civic effort that might ultimately bring the Games to Boston: “It has to be done thoughtfully. It has to be based on analytics. It has to be slow and deliberate. It has to be done with consensus. And we need to sit at the table and have this discussion constructively—or we’ll never know.”

ROOTS OF THE OPPOSITION

Marty Walsh’s victory over John Connolly by fewer than five thousand votes was a disappointing loss for thirty-something Massachusetts natives Liam Kerr and Chris Dempsey. Kerr, who lived in a small first-floor condominium on the “Back of the Hill” in the shadow of the State House, had run an education-focused political action committee that had spent more than $1.3 million in support of Connolly’s election. Dempsey, a management consultant at Bain & Co., had been a member of Connolly’s finance committee, organizing “Young Professionals” fundraisers and canvassing efforts for a candidate he had supported since they were first introduced in 2008.

They were in Kerr’s living room commiserating over the loss just days after the election when the two first discussed the prospect of a Boston Olympic bid. Although they both recently had earned MBAs, Kerr and Dempsey had public policy backgrounds and a lifelong interest in Massachusetts’s civic affairs. They were eager to stay involved, notwithstanding the loss of their favored mayoral candidate. Articles like the one in the Globe that quoted powerful boosters Fish, Romney, Davis, and Kraft alarmed the duo. A Boston 2024 bid seemed to be barreling ahead without opposition and without sober reflection, despite some glaring drawbacks and a troubling history of poor outcomes in prior host cities. While the boosters were talking about a “frugal” bid, early inklings of their plans were anything but frugal. As Boston Globe Olympics reporter John Powers pointed out in November 2013: “Except for TD Garden, the city would have to build all of the big-ticket venues from scratch: the main stadium (Gillette [Stadium] lacks the required track), an aquatics complex with a 10-meter diving platform, a velodrome, and an Olympic village (no, college dorms don’t qualify).” The boosters were also highlighting the idea that the bid could be an exercise in planning for Boston’s future. Kerr and Dempsey both aspired to careers that might help shape the region’s future, but they didn’t see the wisdom in letting those civic plans be driven by the needs of a three-week event. That unfortunate result seemed inevitable if the IOC awarded Boston the Games at the conclusion of the bid process in 2017.

Dempsey grew up in Brookline Village, the son of two public school educators who had met in the late 1970s while teaching at the Martin Luther King, Jr. School, in Boston’s gritty Grove Hall neighborhood. His father, a social studies teacher, had often shared the story of Boston’s Stop the Highways movement in the 1960s and 1970s. In that proud and prescient moment in Boston’s history, neighborhood groups had joined together to oppose a proposal for an “Inner Belt” circumferential highway and arterial “Southwest Corridor” highway that would have cut through neighborhoods in Roxbury, Fenway, Cambridge, and Somerville, among others. The construction of these highways had been supported by major business leaders, contractors, and labor unions, and had the strong backing of the Republican governor, Frank Sargent, a former Department of Public Works commissioner. But years of committed activism and opposition by neighborhood and grassroots groups had turned the tide—culminating in an address by Governor Sargent on live television in February 1970 in which he said, “Nearly everyone was sure that highways were the only answer to transportation problems for years to come. But we were wrong.” To Dempsey, the Stop the Highways movement provided hope that a “No” campaign could succeed against powerful interests—at least that had been true in 1970. More important, it was also evidence that saying “No” could have an immensely positive legacy for the region he loved. By 2013, more than forty years after its victory, the Stop the Highways movement was still seen as a dramatic step forward for smarter, better, more sustainable planning and growth. The highway naysayers hadn’t stopped the city’s progress—they’d defended their city from a damaging plan, and turned it toward a brighter, more prosperous future.

Like Dempsey, Kerr had grown up in the suburbs of Boston in a middle-class family. Kerr was a political junkie with an entrepreneurial mind. While he appreciated and understood the role that personal relationships played in politics, he despaired over the fact that these relationships were often the primary driver of policy outcomes in Massachusetts. Kerr and Dempsey had read the independent economic analysis that consistently found that “winning” an Olympic bid was typically a losing proposition for the host community. But Massachusetts’s political leaders seemed to be letting a few powerful and well-connected individuals lead the state down this potentially harmful path.

Kerr contacted his friend and associate Conor Yunits, another Massachusetts native in his early thirties. Yunits had helped advise Kerr’s political committee from his post at the public affairs consulting firm Liberty Square Group, where Yunits was a vice president. Like Kerr, Yunits was a political junkie—he had run unsuccessfully for state representative in his native Brockton, where his father had once served as mayor. Yunits had been following the potential bid’s developments closely and shared Kerr and Dempsey’s concerns with the strong momentum behind it.

Many Bostonians dismissed Boston 2024 as a lark. The conventional wisdom was that the USOC and IOC would never pick Boston over larger, wealthier, higher-profile cities like Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Paris, or Rome. At a Chamber of Commerce event in June 2014, US Senator Ed Markey joked that a Boston Olympics should include condo flipping and synchronized double parking as official sports. Even with powerful boosters behind it, the bid seemed like a long shot and made for a reliable punch line.

But Dempsey, Kerr, and Yunits knew that Boston had some natural advantages. Chief among them was Boston’s position on the East Coast, the most valuable time zone in the world for live television events. And Boston’s rivers, harbor, parks, monuments, historic neighborhoods, and stately downtown provided an appealing backdrop for television. Boston was also home to two brands whose value even Olympic sponsors such as Coca-Cola and Toyota would envy: Harvard and MIT. The IOC would salivate at the chance to associate itself with these prestigious universities. Finally, Boston’s political and business communities were just large enough to rally the resources needed to support an Olympic bid, and just cozy enough that they might be able to squelch any substantive dissent. The USOC and IOC wanted cities to present a united front. These factors made Boston 2024 a credible bid to advance at the USOC level over bids from places like Los Angeles (been there, done that), Washington, D.C. (too political), or Dallas (too Texas).

Olympic prognosticators had reason to believe that whichever bid emerged from the USOC’s process would be the favorite to win when the IOC voted in 2017. The IOC’s single-largest source of revenue was its contract with NBC television for the rights to air the Games in the United States. Yet the Olympic Committee’s premier event, the Summer Olympics, hadn’t been hosted in the United States since Atlanta in 1996. Surely NBC was eager to have the Games back on US soil and had communicated that desire to the IOC in its negotiations to extend its ownership of those television rights. That deal, completed in May 2014, will pay the IOC $7.75 billion between 2021 and 2032. Further strengthening a US bid’s chances was a May 2012 settlement of a long-standing disagreement between the USOC and IOC about how Olympic media and sponsorship funds would be distributed. Now the USOC and IOC were on better terms. With all of these points taken as a whole, Boston 2024 seemed anything but a lark—even as early as the fall of 2013, proponents could reasonably argue that Boston was the frontrunner—ahead of any city in the world—to host the 2024 Summer Games.

Some saw the 2024 Games as an opportunity to showcase Boston to the world, but Dempsey, Kerr, and Yunits saw the bid as a threat to their city’s bright future. The trio zeroed in on the fundamental problem with the International Olympic Committee’s bidding process: the IOC’s Olympic “auction” was designed to produce bids that led to great outcomes for the IOC, but couldn’t guarantee the same for the bid cities. Winning cities almost always overbid for the right to host the Games, even while Olympic boosters tried to reassure skeptical residents that they were getting a good deal on a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity. The three friends concluded that the exact same dynamics were at play in Boston.

Just as troubling to Dempsey, Kerr, and Yunits was the fact that the civic institutions and watchdog organizations that normally might raise concerns about a costly megaproject seemed to be staying silent. Sam Tyler, president of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, a watchdog organization, had told the Boston Herald that an Olympics was “a cost we cannot afford” when Menino and Fish had first opposed the concept in March of 2013. Now that powerful figures in Boston’s business community were lining up behind the bid, Tyler and others in similar positions were mum. Some of Boston 2024’s boosters sat on the boards of directors of these organizations and provided them with substantial funding. (For example, Fish’s Suffolk Construction had a seat on the board of Tyler’s organization.) Even Olympic skeptics in the business community were too polite, or too intimidated, to publicly question the wisdom of a bid. Few elected officials seemed eager to take on some of the most powerful men in the state. Opposition to Boston 2024 would have to come from the grass roots. There in Kerr’s living room, Dempsey, Kerr, and Yunits decided to organize an effort to oppose the bid. They settled on a straightforward name for their effort: No Boston Olympics.

Excerpted from No Boston Olympics: How and Why Smart Cities Are Passing on the Torch, by Chris Dempsey and Andrew Zimbalist, University Press of New England, 2017.

The post The inside story of No Boston Olympics appeared first on CommonWealth Beacon.

Quality education and health care, along with many other measures where Massachusetts is a leader, are key to the state’s long term prosperity and well-being. But just as important is another category studied by U.S. News where Massachusetts is playing catch-up: transportation.

It may come as no surprise that Massachusetts ranks 45th in the quality of our transportation network. That reflects the condition of our roads (#47) and bridges (#28), and the time we spend commuting (#47). Massachusetts performed comparatively well in per-capita ridership on public transportation (#8), but those of us who ride the T regularly or have tried to catch a bus after 7 p.m. in the Berkshires know that we can and should do much better.

These rankings reflect what people in Massachusetts experience every day: delay and decay. As well as we are performing in some areas, our economy, and our quality of life, is being held back by a transportation system that is just not ready for the 21st Century.

Congestion and delays cost people time and money. The average motorist in the Boston area spends 53 hours annually caught in congestion and detours, according to TRIP, a national research group. Statewide, delays cost us $8.3 billion per year, or $1,913 for the average driver in the Boston area, and $1,733 in Worcester.

And because transportation is interconnected, delays or disruptions in one mode ripple into others. The public understands this. A recent WBUR survey found that the single solution that motorists would prefer to reduce traffic is a better performing MBTA.

Drivers experience decay in the condition of our state and local road network. At the current rate of spending, the percentage of state owned, non-interstate road miles that will be in fair or poor condition is expected to increase from 36 percent to 80 percent by 2025, according to MassDOT.

A few years ago, there were 613 structurally deficient bridges in Massachusetts. The state embarked on the Accelerated Bridge Program, and we made a real dent – down to 432. But that program has ended, and partly because our bridges are among the oldest in the country, the number is on the rise again.

Cities and towns don’t have sufficient funds to maintain their roads and bridges. The Massachusetts Municipal Association reports that the funding needed is more than triple the dollars actually budgeted.

And while U.S. News methodology did not measure the actual condition of our public transportation infrastructure, there is a backlog of over $7 billion in MBTA repairs. Broken transit just makes roadway congestion worse.

For many Massachusetts residents, our underperforming transit network is a barrier, when it should be a lifeline. Urban neighborhoods and rural communities alike are underserved, and inequality is persistent for those who are transit dependent. The Metropolitan Area Planning Council’s recent Regional Indicators report documents that the average black bus rider in Greater Boston spends 64 more hours per year commuting to work than the average white bus rider. We must do better. Here are three things we can do to boost our rankings in the years ahead:

Build Staff Capacity at MassDOT and the MBTA

Gov. Charlie Baker and Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack have accurately stated that the MBTA cannot effectively spend all the capital funding it has today. Similar problems exist with MassDOT’s Highway and Road program. It is imperative that the state properly staffs and manages the transportation agencies charged with oversight and delivery of capital projects.

We can’t fix our infrastructure cost-effectively if we don’t have the staff to manage those projects. Early retirement incentive programs may help balance today’s budget, but can also work against our long-term interests. We can’t incentivize some of our most talented employees to leave when we have a significant project backlog. Let’s attract the best possible talent, as the MBTA did recently with the hiring of the Green Line Project Manager.

Find Additional Resources for Transportation

Ten years ago, a bipartisan commission identified the gap at a billion dollars a year just to maintain the current system. The cost of materials to build highways, bridges and rail systems has risen much faster than our capacity to pay for them. For every day we wait, this backlog gets more expensive. While the Legislature in 2013 made a start in addressing the funding gap, there’s a long way to go. We need to summon the will to invest responsibly.

Build a legacy

The transportation rankings in U.S. News reflect decades of neglect and misprioritization of resources. We didn’t get here overnight. So we need to think long-term about the needs and goals of our transportation system if we’re going to climb out of the hole and stay there. The decisions we make today will impact generations to come – let’s think long-term about priorities and needed resources so that we don’t leave future generations playing catch-up.

As champions of Massachusetts, we celebrate the innovation, the energy, and the talent that make this the single best state in which to live. That’s why, even though ranking #45 is a blemish we might normally want to sweep under the rug, we’ll be better off if we address it head on.

With commitment, resources, and an eye toward long-term growth, building and maintaining a transportation network worthy of Massachusetts’ future is entirely within our grasp. In ten years, we can and should run the table and be #1 in more U.S. News categories than we can count – starting with transportation. The Commonwealth will be better for it. Let’s get going.

Chris Dempsey is the director of Transportation for Massachusetts, a statewide coalition working for a modern, reliable and efficient transportation network. Jesse Mermell is the president of the Alliance for Business Leadership, a non-partisan coalition of business leaders supporting social responsibility and sustainable economic growth.

The post We may be No. 1, but not in transportation appeared first on CommonWealth Beacon.

And why shouldn’t it be? We are blessed with an appealing and dynamic world-class city that rightfully occupies a proud place on the global stage. As home to some of the world’s most revered research universities, inventive companies with international reach, avid sports fans, and a rich and vibrant history, it is no surprise that Boston would garner the attention of Olympic pooh-bahs as they seek a host to foot the bill for their party — a three-week extravaganza of pageantry and athletic competition that comes with a head-splitting $10-$20 billion hangover. To avoid that bill, equivalent to the cost of the Big Dig, our civic leaders must reject the siren song of the Olympics and recognize that the Games are not a prize to be won, but rather a costly distraction from real priorities.
Read John Fish’s Argument, “Let’s think big”
Boston’s Olympic boosters are asking the Common-wealth to submit a bid in the world’s most expensive auction. As they strut their stuff for the judges over the next two years, they will contort themselves to meet the IOC’s lavish requirements for Olympic hosts: from gleaming stadiums designed by award-winning architects, to guarantees that host communities reserve highway lanes for the exclusive use of Olympic dignitaries, to promises to pick up the tab for hotel rooms for hundreds of Olympic VIPs. For the boosters, this will all seem reasonable and rational — after all, they won’t be the ones on the hook for the inevitable cost overruns associated with these promises. Instead, that risk will be borne by the taxpayers of the host government, whose representative (likely the governor, in our case) signs a legally binding blank check to guarantee to the IOC that the Games will proceed as planned, no matter the cost.

And if the boosters’ approach to date is any indication, or if the history of bids in other cities serves as a guide, we will be signing that check without a genuine public process, without a complete and independent estimate of costs, and with only vague, unsubstantiated promises about the potential benefits and “legacy” of hosting the Summer Games. The unwillingness of Boston’s Olympic proponents to incorporate contrasting opinions has been troubling. The recent “Exploratory Committee,” intended to be impartial but ultimately led by and stacked with boosters, curiously failed to include leading, local economists who reached out and offered to serve as committee members. No economists were invited to serve on the committee, nor were any asked to testify. And although the committee’s enabling legislation required it to investigate costs, any cost analysis was left out of its final report. Thus, after more than a year of planning and activity, Boston’s Olympic boosters offer lots of commentary on the benefits of hosting the Games, but still say nothing of the expected costs.

Fortunately, we can look to the experience of other cities as a guide. Since 2000, the average Summer Games has cost hosts $19.2 billion, roughly seven times the annual budget of the city of Boston, or enough to pay off all of the outstanding debt of the MBTA and the Regional Transit Authorities, and still have enough left over to house every homeless family in the Commonwealth. When economists tally the final cost of each Summer Games, they find that, on average, they come in at three times the estimated costs of the initial bid submitted to the IOC. The incentive structures inherent to the Olympic bid process lead boosters to consistently overpromise and then under deliver — especially on their assurances of benefits to host communities. And the examples that boosters often cite as successful prove to be poor models for a Boston bid when examined closely:

los angeles: In the first bid following the 1976 Summer Games, which were financially ruinous for host city Montreal, the City of Angels was the sole international bidder. Free from the auction dynamics that characterize a typical Olympic process, Los Angeles was able to dictate its terms to a powerless and desperate IOC. This won’t be the case for the 2024 Games.

barcelona: When it won the 1992 Games, this gem on the Mediterranean was still shaking off its economic cobwebs after 35 years of fascist rule under Generalissimo Franco. The Olympics perhaps highlighted its reopening and regeneration as a city for tourism and pleasure, securing its place as one of the top tourist destinations in Europe. But there is little evidence that the Olympics provided Barcelona with a long-term economic boost — given its innate charm, the tourists likely would have come anyway, and studies have found that Madrid enjoyed a similar economic revival without hosting the Olympics. Boston’s hotels already exceed 90 percent capacity in the busy summer tourist season. We are not an undiscovered gem.

atlanta: Atlanta is tearing down its Olympic stadium less than 20 years after it was constructed, and has been severely criticized for its neglected promises to the African-American community, particularly on unfulfilled guarantees to create workforce housing in conjunction with the Games. It also offers perhaps the greatest evidence that hosting the Olympic Games does little for a city’s global reputation: 20 years later, does anyone consider Atlanta a global city?

london: In February, Boston’s Olympic boosters trotted out the British Consul General to Boston, Susie Kitchens, to talk about the London Games at a State House hearing. She initially claimed the Games came in on budget, but eventually admitted that the Games actually cost three times the original projections, and that, in a stroke of Orwellian brilliance, the budget had to be “revised” to ensure that the Games could be claimed to be a financial success. Some of the overrun was incurred when the public had to bail out a private developer who had promised to build the Olympic Village without public subsidy — an assurance echoed by Boston’s boosters. London and Boston residents also heard the same tune about a new soccer stadium, but the costs of retrofitting the Olympic Stadium to make a new home for the West Ham United soccer club in London cost as much as building a new stadium from the ground up — the vast majority of it at public expense. The reality of the London Games is that they dramatically under-delivered on promises to revive East London, while far exceeding projected costs.

And for each Games that boosters cite as a success, there are a two or three well-known calamities, including Montreal, which took 30 years to pay off its debt; Sochi, which cost more than $50 billion; and Athens, whose legacy is a wasteland of deserted Olympic facilities, and $11 billion of obligations that contributed to a debt crisis that left Greece (whose GDP is roughly equivalent to that of Massachusetts) teetering on the edge of default.

In cities around the world, when Olympic boosters are forced to put the bid to a public referendum, voters almost always shoot down the Games. Votes in Munich, Krakow, Stockholm, and Switzerland have all rejected Olympic proposals within the last two years. Massachusetts voters appear to share the sentiments of their European counterparts. According to a poll commissioned by the Boston Globe, when presented with both pro and con perspectives on hosting the Games, Massachusetts residents overwhelmingly voiced opposition, with 63 percent against and just 29 percent in favor.

What Massachusetts voters understand is that you don’t just account for a Boston Olympics by tallying the billions of required expenditures on unnecessary Olympic venues — you must also calculate the cost of having our civic agenda hijacked. Hosting the Olympics would prove to be an enormous distraction from more important priorities that our community values, whether it is creating a more welcoming business environment, improving our education system, tackling the Commonwealth’s housing shortage, or easing tortured commutes. Our Commonwealth didn’t become great — and won’t stay great — by focusing on hosting an extravagant three-week party for the international elite. Let’s say no to a costly, wasteful, unpopular Boston Olympics, and instead return our civic attention and conversations to far more important, far more challenging, and ultimately far more rewarding concerns.

Chris Dempsey, Liam Kerr, Kelley Gossett Phillips, and Conor Yunits are the cochairs of No Boston Olympics. Dempsey is a management consultant, Kerr is Massachusetts state director of Democrats for Education Reform, Gossett Phillips is an attorney, and Yunits is senior vice president at Liberty Square Group.

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