Greenbush Rail Line

News of the day in Massachusetts. . . the new rail line they forced on the south shore, the Greenbush Line is not being used much. At a cost of $513 million to connect towns that voted against it to Boston it has lots of space left over every day. According to the Boston Globe about one third of the riders were using the commuter boat and switched to the train. It averages only 1400 people daily so it is failing to remove all those cars from the road like they promised it would. As usual, the MBTA/Government answer is to give it time to catch on. . . translation, keep paying us to run it and we will be happy. The best part is noting that the train is also stealing riders from the Kinston line too. So we are not fixing the traffic problem, just rearranging the folks already using public transport.

Once again the state has successfully ignored the voters and forced something on us and it is not paying off the way they said it would.

To top it off, our great Governor is looking to add more rail lines as a priority for him. It will fix our congestion problems on the roads. . . . sure it will. I wonder how much under the table payments went into this mess. Add to it that businesses are moving out of Boston to the 128 belt and further away and you will find that most folks can not use the rail to get to work. Or, if they can it takes so much extra time that is it not worth giving up the car. I work out on 128, it would at least double or more my hour plus commute to try to take rail. I would have to go into Boston, then back out again to my job.

It all boils down to typical Mass politics, spend money on our pet projects, take care of the folks that paid for our campaigns, and ignore the will of the voters. If we need more money we can just raise taxes again right?

We need new people that will take charge of our state and start to run it like a business. Folks who would recognize the fact that all that tax money is not free, it comes from the hard working families in this state and the more of it you waste the more it hurts. It is going to be a long wait for the next election for Governor. I hope the state can hold out that long. Personally I expect that we will be hemorrhaging jobs and people leaving to other states by then. . .