The Green Line Extension: Completed with Complications
Introduction:
The Green Line Extension is a light rail transit service extension in Cambridge, Somerville and Medford, Massachusetts; the project included the construction of six new stations and 4.7 miles of new track as well as the reconstruction of the Lechmere Station (Green Line Extension Cambridge 2021, p. 1; Murphy 2022). This new service provides fast, single seat transportation to downtown Boston for 75,300 Somerville and Medford residents who live within half of a mile of the new stations, 26% of whom do not have access to an automobile (Green Line Extension Cambridge 2021, p. 1); the project also aims to increase the amount of MBTA daily passengers by over 50,000 people and reduce total vehicle miles traveled in the region (Green Line Extension Project EEA 2020, p. 5; Kool Halfway into November 2022). The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) and Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) are the two lead organizations for this project (Green Line Extension Cambridge 2021, p. 1; Green Line Extension Project EEA 2020, p. 1); these public agencies have partnered with different private contractors during different phases of the project’s history (Goldwyn et al. 2020, pp. 14-21). The project has been envisioned since the 1920’s, the idea of it was kept alive throughout the 20th century, and the process for the current project began in 1991 (Goldwyn et al. 2020, p. 10). An impetus for the revival of the project in the 1990’s was the creation of the Big Dig and the idea that extending the Green Line could reduce traffic along this tunnel (Wilson 2021, p. 9). The project’s expected completion date repeatedly passed without construction beginning and was delayed, first in 2011 and then in 2014 and 2015; the project also faced several delays after construction started in 2018 due to supply chain shortages and, to a lesser extent, positive COVID cases among workers. For a time, the project was expected to be completed in 2019 and then 2021 (Goldwyn et al. 2020, p. 26; Kool Halfway into November 2022; Murphy 2022; Wilson 2021, p. 11). The Union Square line finally opened in March of 2022 (Murphy 2022), and the Medford line opened on December 12th, 2022 (Kool ‘It’s finally here’ 2022; Lisinski 2022; Siegel et al. 2022).
The Green Line Extension will positively impact transportation equity and climate change mitigation, but the project’s implementation has been messy due to the inefficiency and expense of the design process and concerns regarding the project raising nearby property values and displacing low-income community members. These problems bring up a broadly applicable question: How do sorely-needed public transportation expansion projects intersect with the politics of amenities vs. economic efficiency as well as the politics of housing equity?
Politics:
The Green Line Extension project was continually shelved during successive Massachusetts governor’s administrations throughout the 1990’s and early 2000’s; it eventually was built after having been supported by the Romney and Patrick administrations, but only after a major project redesign which occurred from 2015-2017. Before the project redesign, the MBTA and MassDOT partnered with multiple firms under a Construction Manager / General Contractor (CM / GC) contract structure, under which a Program Manager / Construction Manager (PM / CM) called HDR / Gilbane and eventually consultants at AECOM and HNTB designed the project in collaboration with the project construction leads (the CM / GC), J.F. White, Kiewit, and Skanska. However, after the project redesign, the agencies partnered with Fluor and GLX constructors; these firms headed the construction effort under a Design-Build contract structure, under which Fluor and GLX constructors were directly hired by the MBTA and MassDOT to design and build the project (Goldwyn et al. 2020, pp. 11-21; Wilson 2021, p. 10). Goldwyn et al. do not think that the problems of excessive costs and delays of the pre-redesign Green Line Extension project are an indictment against the CM / GC contract structure in general (2020, pp. 53), but rather criticize the MBTA in this specific case for lack of oversight of the CM / GC and for not including the CM / GC in the design process as well as the state government for leading to MBTA understaffing (2020, pp. 30-32). The financial problems of excessive cost projections that this lack of oversight led to are discussed later in this essay.
Until the past few years, the MBTA has faced staffing shortages that stem from cuts to public transportation planning and the state workforce in general made under the administration of former governor William Weld and his budget director Charlie Baker (Goldwyn et al. 2020, pp. 22-23). Even decades after Weld’s time in office, the MBTA was so understaffed that only five or six people were leading the Green Line Extension project; however, in 2017 after the project was reorganized, the MBTA was finally able to hire a team with over 100 people to oversee the project’s capital construction (Goldwyn et al. 2020, pp. 26-27). There has also been antagonism between the MBTA and MassDOT during the design and planning process of the project, with MBTA staff being upset with MassDot staff who they thought were working on the project without knowledge of public transit-specific design and planning (Goldwyn et al. 2020, p. 22). The quarrels between the two agencies may stem from the MBTA being placed under the authority of MassDOT in 2009 by the Patrick administration (The History of the T n.d.).
Public support for amenity-filled stations and an extensive Community Path for pedestrian and bicyclist use contributed to the project being more costly and having a longer timetable than expected. The lead government agencies for this project provided public outreach on the project through a PIP, or Public Involvement Plan (Green Line Extension Project EEA 2020, p. 23); many community members responded to this outreach with input on how the project should proceed, including through comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Report, or DEIR (Green Line Extension Project EEA 2020, pp. 30-31) and through a public hearing hosted by the MBTA and MassDOT in 2011 (Goldwyn et al. 2020, p. 48). Under the CM / GC contract, the stations were designed to include elevators, escalators, staff rooms, and larger square footage and were much more elaborate than the open-air stations originally imagined (Goldwyn et al. 2020, pp. 42-43; Green Line Extension Project EEA 2020, pp. 16, 19). Goldwyn et al. write, regarding the stations: “whenever a request was made to add an element, rather than managing the budget and sticking to the core goal of GLX, providing rapid transit service connecting Medford with Cambridge, the MBTA simply said yes” (2020, p. 43). Under the post-reorganization Design-Build contract, the stations were designed and built as open-air and with uniform materials to reduce costs (Goldwyn et al. 2020, p. 47). The Community Path was championed by a local group called the Friends of the Community Path; supporters of the Path, including 13 people at the 2011 public hearing, thought that it would help improve access to stations that lacked automobile parking, while critics of the Path thought it was not technically necessary to the project and would increase costs. The Path, unlike the more elaborate stations, had enough community support and was inexpensive enough that it was ultimately included at its full three-kilometer length along the Medford branch of the extension, although some proposed features within it were cut (Goldwyn et al. 2020, pp. 47-51).
The Green Line Extension has received substantial public support from residents of Somerville, Medford, and Cambridge (Kool ‘It’s finally here’ 2022; Siegel et al 2022); However, there has been grassroots activism in these communities from individuals and organizations raising concerns about rising property values around the extension displacing long-term low-income residents of these cities. A particularly insightful and concerning example of displacement issues caused by rising rents near the project is of the evictions from 182-184 Tremont Street in Somerville. Residents of this building, including Haitan and El Salvadoran immigrants as well as seniors facing health issues, protested against their evictions with the Community Action Agency of Somerville (CAAS); the building is scheduled to be demolished with the site redeveloped for profit. Before the evictions, the rent was $1,261 per month, and it was raised to $1,800 per month the month before eviction notice was sent out (Alanez 2022). At the opening festivities of the Medford branch opening on December 12th, CAAS organizers handed out fliers in support of rent control and affordable housing (Kool ‘It’s finally here’ 2022; Siegel et al 2022). Some of the political leadership in Somerville has listened to these protests, and Somerville’s Ward Two city councilor, JT Scott, attended the protest at Tremont Street. The mayor of Somerville, Katjana Ballantyne, has supported legal aid to renters, city housing vouchers, and rent assistance programs; she also has pledged to take action in encouraging building dense development around new Green Line stations and in making more ambitious affordable housing standards in the city (Alanez 2022; Murphy 2022; Siegel et al. 2022).
Money:
The Green Line Extension project has a 2.3 billion dollar budget and was funded by federal and state sources. These sources included almost one billion dollars in federal Section 5309 New Starts funding which was authorized to be used on the project by the 2015 Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act, almost one billion dollars in Massachusetts state general obligation bonds, and over 300 million dollars in operating funds from the Massachusetts state government (Green Line Extension Cambridge 2021, p. 2; Murphy 2022). Before the project redesign was finalized in November 2017 (Green Line Extension Cambridge 2021, p. 2; Wilson 2021, p. 10), $700 million of sunk costs had been spent (Goldwyn et al. 2020, p. 21); massive errors had been made by the MBTA and its private partners in budgeting the project. Especially during the third and fourth contracts of the pre-redesigned project, the CM \ GC wildly inflated the costs of the project at both the design and construction stages from original estimates; the relationship between the CM \ GC and the PM \ CM, which was inflating cost over prior estimates to a lesser degree, became so strained that the two sides could not meet in the same room. The Independent Cost Estimator (ICE) had cost estimates between these two firms. These overestimations led to greater sums being awarded for project design and construction than anticipated; these sums grew so large that eventually future contracts under this arrangement were canceled and the project was reorganized with the goal of reducing costs. Reasons for the overestimations in costs included lack of transparency to the MBTA and MassDOT from the CM / GC about where money was going as well as the CM / GC’s cost estimates not being based on the specific conditions of the project. The project reorganization under a Design-Build contract structure reduced the beforehand-spiraling costs of the project and helped it eventually be completed (Green Line Extension Cambridge 2021, p. 2; Goldwyn et al. 2020, pp. 18-21, 30-42).
Law:
The Final Environmental Impact Report (FEIR) Executive Summary for the Green Line Extension describes how the project was found to comply with several federal and Massachusetts regulations, and the project getting approval in this report was crucial in it moving forward and eventually being successfully completed (Green Line Extension Cambridge 2021, p. 2). Environmental regulations the project complied with include the federal Clean Air Act, EPA regulations on emissions from public transit projects in Massachusetts, and MassDEP air quality regulations (Green Line Extension Project EEA 2020, pp. 11-12). New crosswalks created as part of project-related roadway redesigns were found to follow federal and state highway and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) regulations (Green Line Extension Project EEA 2020, pp. 19-20). The MBTA and MassDOT also followed property laws in acquiring properties to complete the project, although much of the project area was along an MBTA commuter rail line and was therefore already MBTA property (Wilson 2021, p. 10).
Conclusion:
The Green Line Extension is the first major expansion of MBTA light rail in decades (Lisinski 2022), and the completion of the Medford branch led to celebrations. Attendees of opening day festivities at the Medford branch included Tufts University students, public transit enthusiasts, and long-time commuters as well as Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker, who had a hand in understaffing the MBTA workforce and therefore delaying the project, and Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren (Kool ‘It’s finally here’ 2022; Siegel et al. 2022). Goldwyn et al. share the enthusiasm about expanding public transportation but describe important mistakes in mismanagement and overestimation of costs that delayed this important project for too long (2020, pp. 52-57); these mistakes will need to be avoided if projects like the Green Line Extension are to be replicated across the USA and vital goals in climate change mitigation and improving transportation equity and accessibility will be reached. Organizers from the Community Action Agency of Somerville and their allies also highlight the importance of ensuring that transportation projects like the Green Line Extension which aim to increase equity do not inequitably force renters out of their homes. As Meredith Porter, an activist with CAAS, stated on the day the Medford branch opened: “It’s perverse, what’s happened. We now have better transit to underserved communities, but people are being pushed out of those communities, the very people transit was brought here to serve” (Siegel et al. 2022). For more equitable outcomes to occur in communities near new transit lines, researchers like Goldwyn et al. and community organizers like CAAS need to be listened to just like regulations that allowed the Green Line Extension to proceed past the FEIR process have been, and the roles of politics, money, and law in these projects should be continually and critically examined.
References
About the Green Line Extension Project. (2022). Mass.gov.
Alanez. T. (2022, September 25). Somerville tenants rally over soaring rents, gentrification of
Green Line Extension corridor. The Boston Globe.
Goldwyn, G., Levy, A., & Ensari, E. (2020, December 9). The Boston Case: The Story of the
Green Line Extension. NYU Marron Institute of Urban Management.
Green Line Extension. (2022, July 1). City of Somerville.
Green Line Extension Cambridge to Medford, Massachusetts. (2021, November).
Green Line Extension (GLX). (n.d.). Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.
Green Line Extension Project EEA #13886 Executive Summary. (2010, June). Somerville Step.
The History of the T. (n.d.). Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.
Kool, D. (2022, November 14). Halfway into November, still no firm opening date for Green
Line’s Medford extension. The Boston Globe.
Kool, D. (2022, December 12). ‘It’s finally here’: Green Line Extension’s Medford branch opens
to a crush of excited riders. The Boston Globe.
Lisinski, C. (2022, November 17). Final stretch of Green Line Extension will open Dec. 12.
Murphy, D. C. (2022, March 21). The MBTA's Green Line finally goes all the way to Somerville.
Siegel, J., Seay, B., & Lotan G. T. (2022, December 12). 'It’s just a huge accomplishment':
Green Line Extension opens with fanfare, festivities, some protests. GBH News.
Wilson, B. (2021, August). Just As They Pictured It: Green Line Extension in suburbs of Boston
is as real as it gets. Railway Track and Structures, 117(8), 9-11. https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?
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