Mail call

The central U.S. Postal Service office in downtown Taunton, Mass. Built in 1930 with funding from the Works Progress Administration, it’s a lovely example of Classical Revival architecture, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987.

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

Trump and some other bogus “conservatives’’ seem to want to kill the U.S. Postal Service. As I noted here a couple of weeks ago, in the case of our leader it’s because he’s hates Jeff Bezos, the Amazon mogul/monopolist whose Washington Post insists on reporting  on him in more rigorous ways than Pravda covered Stalin. Amazon is a big Postal Service customer. Trump has suggested forcing the Postal Service to boost its  delivery prices so much so that they might exceed  those of UPS and FedEx. But then, the GOP, especially since the rise of the anti-government Tea Party (anti-government except for Medicare and Social Security, which disproportionately benefit its members), has long been gunning for the service, which goes back to the writing of the U.S. Constitution.

The share of the nation’s workers represented by federal employees has fallen to record lows in the past decade, which is one reason that service has declined at some agencies – e.g., even before the pandemic you often had to wait more than an hour to ask a question of an IRS agent on the phone. Now, during the COVID-19 crisis, the agency takes no calls.  Of course,  Tea Party types hate the IRS, but how do they propose to fund the government? And remember, it’s Congress, not the IRS, that makes the tax laws. Then there’s the sorely understaffed Social Security Administration.

The argument is that the Postal Service should  always be profitable, a demand not made of Trump Organization operations…. But the agency, like, say, the Defense Department,  the Food and Drug Administration and the Interstate Highway System, is a necessary public service that also helps tie together the country. It’s a mostly reliable entity that’s essential for the private sector – both individuals and businesses.

Look at the 2006 law pushed through by the GOP that requires the Postal Service to prefund its employee retirement health-care cost for 75 years into the future!  Imagine a private company having to deal with that. And do we really want to have the mail controlled by private companies (which might be  big campaign contributors)?

There are some services that only government can provide on a broad and coordinated enough fashion to adequately serve the public outside the vagaries of the market.

Pressing on with South Coast Rail

  By JOYCE ROWLEY, for ecoRI News

NEW BEDFORD

“We're forging ahead,” Jean Fox, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority's project manager, told the South Coast Rail Task Force at its Feb. 25 meeting, when questioned whether the change in administration would affect the South Coast Rail. “We’ve got our marching orders and we’ve not been told otherwise.”

The 20-year-old South Coast Rail (SCR), now in its preliminary design stage, has chugged along despite a protracted planning and environmental review. Last summer, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (#mbta) awarded a $12 million preliminary design contract to the engineering firm Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, with an option for a $210 million 10-year final design and construction contract.

“It’s pretty exciting. The goal was to get approximately 15 percent design completed by June 30, 2015,” Fox said. “We’re on target for #most tasks.”

In January 2014, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a final environmental impact statement for an electric train line that will extend the existing MBTA Stoughton commuter rail line. Passing through the 2,000-acre Hockomock Swamp on an abandoned rail bed to #taunton, the new branch will split in Berkley. The main line will connect to New Bedford on existing freight tracks, and a branch will continue to Fall River.

But record snowfall beginning with the first storm on Jan. 26-27 left the T demobilized throughout Greater Boston, leaving some at the meeting questioning the viability of the project.

“Is the state thinking of spending $3 billion on a new line when the T hasn’t worked well for a month?” asked Kyla Bennett, director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

Fox said that $2.3 billion was allocated in the state transportation bond last year to build the SCR. Fox said they would be meeting with Gov. Charlie Baker’s administration about the project soon.

“Our goal is to sit down with them and see where we fit in," Fox said. “It’s a transportation priority and has been for several years. We can show a cost-benefit analysis of the transportation, environmental and economic development potential for the project.”

Blame for the T’s winter problems has been laid at the 9 feet of snow that incapacitated commuter lines to Worcester, Springfield, Lakeville and Stoughton; at the use of T parking lots by residents who had to stay off the streets during parking bans which then left T commuters with no place to park; on outdated equipment on some lines that couldn’t make it through deep snow.

Now, over a month later, all commuter rail lines are still on revised schedules. It remains to be seen whether promises to get the entire system in order by March 30 can be met.

In a interview with ecoRI News later, Bennett questioned the allocated amount of funding, as well as the wisdom of spending billions of dollars on a rail line that may not be used.

“I think the $2.3 billion is a vast underestimate,” she said. “Public records requests to get the most recent cost estimate were denied.”

Her group won on appeal to the state, but then only received the estimate with minor modifications. The estimate hasn’t changed much since the 2011 draft, Bennett said.

“I don’t know how much it will cost to fix the T, let alone what it will cost to do both,” she said. “The reason this matters is because if it is more, then that’s even more that we won’t put into fixing existing infrastructure.”

Transportation justice SCR Task Force Chairwoman Susan Teal disagrees. The Rochester resident said both maintenance of the existing lines and development of the new branch are needed.

“There's plenty of money for both,” Teal said at the recent meeting.

All other major cities in Massachusetts tie into Boston via rail, except Taunton, New Bedford and Fall River. All three are “Gateway Cities” and all three have consistently pushed for the connection.

Most proponents of the rail expect it will make a connection to Boston and jobs, but will also help draw businesses to the region. In fact, regional planning agencies the Southeast Regional Planning and Economic Development District, Metropolitan Area Planning Council and the Old Colony Regional Planning Council show anticipated growth in surrounding communities.

“Just look north to Lowell to see what rail does for a community,” Fox said. “It brings in higher-paying high-skilled jobs and builds new housing stock.”

Nearly $2 million in technical assistance grants to 31 communities over the past seven years has promoted the SCR’s “Smart Growth” planning efforts to mitigate potential impacts in advance. In fiscal 2015, the MBTA spent $353,830 on technical assistance to communities under SCR’s program.

Smart growth is a buzz-phrase for planning to minimize sprawl and reduce vehicle trips, and resulting greenhouse-gas emissions. It includes building transit-oriented development that reduces the need for additional highway infrastructure.

“Smart growth has been impactful and productive,” Fox said.

Bennett questioned the anticipated greenhouse gas-reduction benefits that the SCR may create. Instead, she said the money would be better spent creating jobs in the three targeted cities so people could work where they live.

“People are going to pay $500 to $600 per month to travel four hours on a train for what jobs in Boston?” Bennett said later. “Taking cars off the highway even if there is ridership won’t necessarily make a difference. Cars backfill in the highway when people realize there’s more room.”

Next month, the MBTA will begin construction of independent utilities, including grade crossings and a rail bridge at Wamsutta Street that will serve active freight. These components of the project need to be built even if the SCR isn't completed, according to Fox.

Rebuilding mills as communities

   

Fall River, "The Spindle City. In the foreground is the Algonquin Mill, for which there are big plans and high hopes.

Photo by TOM PATERSON

The Mills Alliance, which wants to protect and reuse Massachusetts's old mills -- many built in the 19th Century -- for economic, environmental, sociological and, of course, aesthetic reasons is a terrific resource for developers, owners, public officials and local residents in general who see the big long-term advantages of saving these old stone and brick structures, which could last for many hundreds of years more if they are taken care of. Major centers for this beautiful and utilitarian architecture include Lowell, Fall River, New Bedford, Brockton (the former shoe-making center) and Taunton.

While the alliance is now focusing on Southeastern New England, members see it eventually expanding its activities to include mills in all of southern New England and perhaps beyond in the Northeast.  (Upstate New York and parts of Pennsylvania have some beauties.)

Many of them are highly adaptable for residential space and commercial activities, including assembly.  Yes, some can be turned into real factories again! These buildings are so large that people can work on one floor, live on another and shop in stores on a third (presumably usually the ground floor).  These are some of the ways in which saving them reduces sprawl.

The roofs of some of these mills are big enough to support commercially viable vegetable farms. (See the Brooklyn Grange as an example.)

And now Mills Alliance people are making a push to teach people that the carbon footprint of tearing them down is heavy.

The alliance says: "We believe that in an era of increasing population, decreasing economic stability, increased competition for natural resources, generally rising prices and abundant pressures on all of us to live smartly, economically and in harmony with our environment, mills offer great hope and possibility by their central locations and adaptive reuse.''

It goes on:

"Pull our mills into the 21st Century by the embrace of new technology, the promotion of tax incentives for recapitalization, and encouragement of mixed-use, live/work communities that will provide housing and employment and an agreeable, sustainable quality of life in our beleaguered industrial centers.''

Quite right.