>It sounded like we are at the point where we either come up with new solutions or we may begin to become economically stagnant

Certainly but I don't think the right solution is to spend billions on a new high-speed rail.

First thing, we can't even agree on spending money to fix & maintain the MBTA. How are we supposed to build a new high-speed rail and fix the MBTA and maintain both of them when we can't even handle what's on our plate right now?

Second thing, we still have a ton of opportunity to add more housing and better public transportation closer to Boston in a smart, impactful way. We're nowhere near the point where we need to start tapping into the Springfield / Hartford area workforce.

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, Authorities were the place where politicians stuffed their friends, donors and campaign workers and these were good jobs at good wages with pensions. And MA has to pay those pensions now. So the Authorities have one hand tied behind its back. My recollection is that MBTA ridership has been declining with more WFH. I looked at the vacancy rates for Boston office properties and I think that it's around 25%. So there certainly doesn't seem to be a need for high-speed rail. What would make sense is to turn that office space into residential units. Probably unpopular with the owners as office space is typically more valuable.

>The high speed train they discussed seems like a no brainer to me. In my head i’m envisioning this rail extending into areas of MA that have not reached capacity (Western) & giving those areas access to higher paying jobs in or near the city: •less traffic/less people traveling on the roads. More people traveling by rail. •people can live further away and still work in a city. •more affordable housing

People in WMA hate this idea because it means getting priced out of neighborhoods they've been in for generations. They'd much prefer Boston unfuck it's own capacity. Build multifamily housing. Make rail accessible without cars. Make the T functional, or at least not insolvent. Make it connect to places other than main Boston to reduce the need for cars. Hell, develop other cities that aren't Boston instead of turning a coastal city into a hub to build residential spokes off of. There's options that don't involve crushing people.

Also, WMA never gets higher paying jobs from state policy. The state simply sucks them dry and destroys their industry and then whinges about paying for their mistakes.

I was listening to a podcast a few weeks ago about housing in America and they specifically mentioned that Boston has been behind on building housing since the 1970s. High speed rail won't fix that. They need to get more multifamily housing and make living in the city more feasible and affordable. I also don't see a highspeed rail working especially well until the T is in better condition.

I'd be pretty happy if western Mass could get regular rail service to Boston.

MA hates any kind of change or basically, doing anything new.

We will see NY get highspeed rail long before MA. MA, is too moribund.

High speed rail... from where to where?

And overcrowding? Where? 40% of the city of Boston is still zoned single-family (with the rest of the state already heavily subsidizing Boston's public transit).

What we need is to require super-dense zoning (at least 5 story) anywhere near subway lines, multifamily zoning anywhere inside 128, and denser housing inside 495 and anywhere around commuter rail [edit; this last one - near commuter rail - is being partly implemented under a new law... but Boston got itself exempted]. With enough density we can have enough transit use to upgrade existing public transit and reduce the cars on the road. Spending billions on new transit in sparsely populated areas is just burning money - even worse, because you are wasting money that could have been put to better use.

Even with single-family housing, there are many 10s of thousands of existing lots inside 495 that could be subdivided if the state had more support for adding/expanding town water and sewer.

We don't need the forests and farms west of Worcester to be paved over with even more 1.5 acre subdivisions, and all the associated traffic and other sprawl - basically, we shouldn't aim to be another Houston/Dallas/Phoenix with metro areas literally as big or bigger than the whole state of NJ, and almost as big as all of MA (in area, but with much smaller populations). We can do better.

Rather than high-speed rail to nowhere, I would much rather pay even more for (as an example) a rail line from the Quincy Adams MBTA stop, up 128 to the Woburn intermodal transit station (basically I93 to I93), and have stations where it crosses MBTA lines, and also a bunch of big parking garages at major junctions (like 24, 9, 2, 3, etc). That would be an enormous economic engine for the state, without further intensifying the terribly Boston-centric hub-and-spoke MBTA system.

And then save the high speed rail money for upgrading Amtrak.

Note, WGBH is simply terrible on subjects like this, they assume all economic growth should only be in the city of Boston, and most of the rest of the state merely exists to be bedroom communities for Boston.

Before spending money on a high speed train, we could look at denser housing options within 1 mi of commuter rail stations. You may be surprised by the lack of density not far outside the city. Just check out the google arial view around the stations

More rail, and more importantly, BETTER rail, would surely help.

Getting rid of this concept that everything has to be built in/around Boston would also help.