Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Another Big Dig into Our Wallets

In the midst of a foreclosure crisis, and two weeks before the election, Deval Patrick says he's accepted 32 million to kick off grandiose plans to revamp South Station to 'relieve congestion'.

Nobody has done the assessment of how much this project is going to cost and where they think they're going to get the rest of the money to pay for it but they're going to improve the tracks for the people at the State House to get faster and more frequent service to Washington DC, add 11 new platforms,  restore the service to Fall River and New Bedford.  These plans require moving the central mail facility of the US Post Office for Massachusetts.

This project is going to cost tens of billions.

It's true that there is train congestion and we sometimes get hung up for three or four minutes waiting for a track - or waiting for a train to pass.

Is this small burden worth spending the money they don't have and we don't have?

3 comments:

Rob said...

How ironic. South Station was originally 27 Tracks. It originally extended all the way to the original baggage wing along the Fort Point Channel. In 1938, the South Boston Postal Annex was built removing four tracks. In the early 1970’s, the wing along Summer Street was demolished to accomodate the new Stone and Webster office building and an expanded U.S. Mail sort facility. Only 13 tracks were retained. Short sighted...
South Station opened on January 1, 1899 at a cost of $3.6 million. The architects were Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge of Boston. It became the busiest station in the country by 1910. A station on the Atlantic Avenue Elevated served the station from 1901 to 1938; what is now the Red Line subway was extended from Park Street to South Station in 1913. The train shed, one of the largest in the world, was eliminated in a 1930 renovation due to corrosion from the nearby ocean's salt air. While the station handled 125,000 passengers each day during World War II, after the war passenger rail declined in the U.S. In 1959, the Old Colony Railroad, which served the South Shore and Cape Cod, stopped passenger service. The New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad went bankrupt in 1961. South Station was sold to the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) in 1965. Portions of the station were demolished and the land was used to build the Boston South Postal Annex and the Stone and Webster building.

Tim M said...

You know, it's real easy to see what The Bishops are trying to say...apply "new theology" to old problems and don't worry about your conscience. I guess they really aren't Catholic anymore are they? We have the same problem here in my diocese. They didn't even have a Mass for the slaughtered unborn this year. I guess it just isn't "politically correct" to stand up for your Faith anymore. Boy, are they in for a very rude awakening. Real Catholics and real Christians are going to make them rue the day they started to deviate from True Christianity.

TTC said...

Wow. Hurts all the more knowing that!