Green Line to come to Somerville!

[ceo]

Today the state announced that the Somerville Green Line extension is a go.

Comments

[eclecticavatar.livejournal.com]

Awesome, but isn't it going to cost taxpayers $100 million?

[st-darwin.livejournal.com]

It'll probably cost $400 million or so (http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2005/05/12/state_seen_readying_plans_for_green_line_extension/), but that's less than half of the $1 billion that fixing mistakes cost on the Big Dig - so far.

Massachusetts promised to carry out some public transit initiatives in exchange for the Big Dig. They're now trying to reneg on extending the Green Line, among other projects.

The state kicks in almost $850 million a year for MBTA subsidies (http://www.mbta.com/insidethet/budget.asp) - how much does it kick in for roads? Medford and particularly Somerville lose a lot of their taxable land to highways used mostly by people who don't live or work in those towns. If Boston had spent $10 billion improving public transit in the past 15 years, I'd be riding a bullet train to work.