Too much, not enough
Occasionally we wonder why the MBTA’s finances are such a disaster, and then we hear from lawmakers for whom no service expansion, no added cost, is ever too much.
The Baker administration announced this week that it is moving ahead with plans to extend commuter rail service to New Bedford and Fall River, an expansion of service we’ve long said is ill-advised given the MBTA’s fiscal challenges.
Baker has been on board with South Coast rail since the campaign, however. And so to get the trains running sooner and at a lower cost, the Department of Transportation this week said it is adopting a phased approach using a route along the existing Middleboro line, with diesel trains, rather than immediately pursuing a costlier, electric-powered route through Stoughton.
One would assume South Coast pols would be happy with this development, given that they’ve lobbied for the service for decades. In fact many of them are pleased. Rep. William Straus (D-Mattapoisett), for one, said the route change will bring rail service to the region “faster and cheaper and with fewer permit hassles.”
(Of course “cheaper” is in the eye of the beholder — the first phase may be in the neighborhood of $1 billion, not including future operating costs.)
But others are doing what they do best — which is griping, in this case about the choice of a route considered by some to be less-desirable, partly because it will make for a longer trip to Boston. Sen. Marc Pacheco (DTaunton) frets that choosing the Middleboro route might actually threaten long-term plans for the quicker Stoughton route.
“Once you have another way to get to Fall River, New Bedford, they’re not coming back,” he told the State House News Service. “Certainly this administration’s not coming back.”
Pacheco even says he is pursuing “legal options” with private interest groups, content apparently to let the perfect be the enemy of the (still very expensive and unwise) good. Pacheco’s interests are parochial; he thinks the chosen route shortchanges Taunton. But nearby service is still service — and we’re not sure how throwing up dilatory roadblocks gets his constituents to work any faster.