HIGHLIGHTS:
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Over the last decade-and-a-half, Massachusetts, particularly eastern Massachusetts, has begun to truly embrace the tenets of transit oriented development (TOD).
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A public transportation crisis is a small business crisis, an economic development crisis, a housing crisis and an education crisis as well, to name just a few.
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Putting “mitigation payments for MBTA improvements” on a more or less equal footing with mitigation payments for roadway improvements is an idea that, while attractive in theory, is likely to prove maddeningly complex in its implementation.
Talk about a crisis of confidence.
Over the last decade-and-a-half, Massachusetts, particularly eastern Massachusetts, has begun to truly embrace the tenets of transit oriented development (TOD). After some fits and starts, our state, once viewed as somewhat of a slacker in this regard, seemed to finally be getting the hang of things. Just take a look at the construction associated with Assembly Square, the planning for the extension of the Green Line, or the transformative impact that commuter rail is having in Brockton, Lowell or Haverhill. Transit oriented development has become the thing to do and everyone has been doing it.
Then along came the winter of our discontent and its insistence upon making our public transportation system show us all of its vulnerabilities. As a result, the question has arisen in some quarters: Have we been orienting our development future around a fundamentally unreliable system?
Perhaps we should have known better.
Beginning at least as far back as the Public Control Act of 1918, our transit system has been in a state of almost constant crisis. Somehow, all but the worst flare-ups managed to remain hidden in plain sight. Neither the creation of the Metropolitan Transit Authority in 1947, its replacement with the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA or commonly referred to as The T) in 1964, the reforms following the one-day shutdown in 1980, the enactment of forward funding in 2000, nor the recent reform attempts in the last decade have managed, for one reason or another, to produce an operationally sound, fiscally solvent system.
So why should we expect anything to be different this time around?
Well, for one thing, the recent crisis was epic. That fact, combined with the recent progress made on TOD, makes the stakes far higher this time around. Gertrude Stein famously once wrote “A rose is a rose is a rose.” As far as our transportation system is concerned, just the opposite is true. A public transportation crisis is a small business crisis, is an economic development crisis, is a housing crisis and an education crisis as well, to name just a few.
The harsh reality is that we must succeed this time around simply because we have run out of options.
From a housing affordability perspective, the fact that our roadways already creak from overutilization during peak commuting hours provides an everyday reminder that the “drive to qualify” theory of housing solutions offers us no real answers. Even the transit horrors of the snowiest winter in recorded history will not reverse that trend.
Look no further than our (relatively) new Republican governor, Charlie Baker. Republican governors used to be groomed in the Department of Public Works, the state’s roadway building agency (See, Volpe, John A. and Sargent, Francis W.). Today, perhaps for the same reason it took President Richard Nixon to go to China, it took a Republican governor to appoint a secretary of transportation from the Conservation Law Foundation.
So the smart money says that not only are we locked into a transit oriented development bet for much of our future housing development, we are likely to double-down on that wager as we sift through the possible solutions for standing up the MBTA.
As a result, the development community has a far greater stake than ever before in public transportation. So, where are the opportunities and what are the potential dangers to our own (undoubtedly enlightened) self-interest as we participate in the effort to reconstitute The T?
Well, one can start by scrolling down to page 12 of your handy April 8, 2015, copy of “Back on Track: An Action Plan to Transform the MBTA.”
There you will find a call for the MBTA to “explore all avenues of new own source and value capture revenue.” Translated into English, this means it is time to get off your assets and to start using them. This encompasses selling or leasing MBTA and state-owned surplus land, including air rights for TOD purposes. Having had one personal near-death experience with leasing air rights, your correspondent can nevertheless attest that in the right location (high density, strong market, accessible adjacent land) the benefits are well worth the risks, costs and potential delay involved. For the wiser, perhaps more pragmatic among you, opportunities for development on surplus land are still numerous, and in the view of this column, within the body of every sizeable “park and ride” lot beats the heart of a “live and ride” community that is just waiting to break ground.
On the cautionary side of the equation is the call for putting “mitigation payments for MBTA improvements” on a more or less equal footing with mitigation payments for roadway improvements. Such payments are, as noted in the report, a routine and common practice in Massachusetts.
This is an idea that while attractive in theory, is likely to prove maddeningly complex in its implementation. First, the recommendation itself speaks interchangeably of supporting “MBTA service,” “MBTA operations” and “MBTA improvements.” Those can all be very different things, so just what does that language mean? Presumably, it means something beyond jitney service to the train station, providing zipcar spots on site or MBTA pass assistance. Presumably it also means different things depending upon the size and scope of the development proposal. Quickly developing some context here will be vital if the aim is to prevent this vision of a new future from succumbing to a lack of detail.
The second facet of this idea that will need immediate emphasis is how to keep this initiative from merely being another element in an already overburdened cost equation. This will prove to be a particularly difficult challenge if the notion of transit mitigation does not tie itself back into the local permit granting process in some fashion.
Well, no one said this would be easy, but remember two things: there is no feasible alternative and the next winter is just seven short months away.
This article was originally published in REBA News (May/June 2015), the newspaper of the Real Estate Bar Association for Massachusetts and is republished here with permission.
