Thursday, January 17, 2008
Save the World with a High-Fiber Diet
I've been thinking lately about the Green Line Extension, which would no doubt improve the quality of life for those in Inman, Union Square, and the rest of Indian country between the Red and Orange lines. Given that the current price tag is well into the hundreds of millions--and that's before they've even written the final plan--it's laughable to think the project could be completed for less than a billion. Oh, and then there's the fact that this will add a sizable ongoing operating cost to an MBTA that is still nowhere near making ends meet.
Mass transit, especially rail, has been the "Parkay" of the environmental movement for decades now. Gas taxes make driving too costly for working families? Take the train. Highways congested all day long? Build more subways. But this project is the wrong idea at the wrong time. Our highways (and transit lines) are built to handle the roughly 6-8 hours of the week when half of the metropolitan population is trying to drive to roughly the same place at the same time. But is that the only way?
Every car gets the same gas mileage when it's parked. One way to accomplish that is to get people to ride the train from their house to the office downtown. Another way is to reduce the need for Joe Officeworker to go to the office in the first place. 10+ years ago, work-at-home was a rare privilege afforded to the elite few, and even then it was largely a pseudo-paid-time off. While still a privilege, it's no longer reserved for the expense-account crowd, and it's certainly not seen as a vacation. There is one solitary reason for this: broadband Internet access.
At best, the Green Line extension will serve a couple hundred thousand people. For those currently dragging ass on the bus, it will improve their quality of life. How many cars will it remove from the Central Artery at rush hour? Hundreds? A few thousand? It certainly won't do squat for the hundreds of thousands of commuters who live more than walking distance north of the line's terminus.
Meanwhile, though I live in a densely-populated area not more than five miles from where the Internet was very literally invented, the best connection I can get is a cable modem from Comcast. Don't even ask me about my office building downtown--it's far worse.
How many homes could be wired for a billion dollars? How many tax credits and incentives to support telecommuting could the cost of operating what will no doubt be another money-losing line support? How many day- and elder-care problems could be alleviated with people working from home even part of the time? Against this, and all the possibility offered by bringing truly high-speed fiber-optic connections to every home, one or two miles of subway sound like a glorious future in which a network of pneumatic tubes would carry the mail below the streets at up to 35 miles per hour. 16 miles of such tubes were laid in Boston, in fact. ¶ 9:17 AM
I've been thinking lately about the Green Line Extension, which would no doubt improve the quality of life for those in Inman, Union Square, and the rest of Indian country between the Red and Orange lines. Given that the current price tag is well into the hundreds of millions--and that's before they've even written the final plan--it's laughable to think the project could be completed for less than a billion. Oh, and then there's the fact that this will add a sizable ongoing operating cost to an MBTA that is still nowhere near making ends meet.
Mass transit, especially rail, has been the "Parkay" of the environmental movement for decades now. Gas taxes make driving too costly for working families? Take the train. Highways congested all day long? Build more subways. But this project is the wrong idea at the wrong time. Our highways (and transit lines) are built to handle the roughly 6-8 hours of the week when half of the metropolitan population is trying to drive to roughly the same place at the same time. But is that the only way?
Every car gets the same gas mileage when it's parked. One way to accomplish that is to get people to ride the train from their house to the office downtown. Another way is to reduce the need for Joe Officeworker to go to the office in the first place. 10+ years ago, work-at-home was a rare privilege afforded to the elite few, and even then it was largely a pseudo-paid-time off. While still a privilege, it's no longer reserved for the expense-account crowd, and it's certainly not seen as a vacation. There is one solitary reason for this: broadband Internet access.
At best, the Green Line extension will serve a couple hundred thousand people. For those currently dragging ass on the bus, it will improve their quality of life. How many cars will it remove from the Central Artery at rush hour? Hundreds? A few thousand? It certainly won't do squat for the hundreds of thousands of commuters who live more than walking distance north of the line's terminus.
Meanwhile, though I live in a densely-populated area not more than five miles from where the Internet was very literally invented, the best connection I can get is a cable modem from Comcast. Don't even ask me about my office building downtown--it's far worse.
How many homes could be wired for a billion dollars? How many tax credits and incentives to support telecommuting could the cost of operating what will no doubt be another money-losing line support? How many day- and elder-care problems could be alleviated with people working from home even part of the time? Against this, and all the possibility offered by bringing truly high-speed fiber-optic connections to every home, one or two miles of subway sound like a glorious future in which a network of pneumatic tubes would carry the mail below the streets at up to 35 miles per hour. 16 miles of such tubes were laid in Boston, in fact. ¶ 9:17 AM
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The reason you can't get a fiber optic is because there are far too many small businesses in the region who would buy that service for $50/mo instead of a nice corporate T1 for $600/mo.
# posted by 
: January 17, 2008 12:10 PM
: January 17, 2008 12:10 PM
Well, that's easily solved with commercial/residential pricing. Actually Verizon is running FTTH in some parts of Mass., just not in Boston yet. The permitting and rights of way and such are apparently quite a bit more complicated. Kind of gives the lie to the whole notion that US population density wouldn't support Japanese/Korean-style networks when unsubsidized telco's choose to wire the 'burbs before they wire the city.
In any case my wider point was that we're still taking a completely old-school approach to the problem. I'd rather the government not spend (or more importantly, not tax) the billion dollars in the first place, but if that's a foregone conclusion, at least we should try and get a good return.
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In any case my wider point was that we're still taking a completely old-school approach to the problem. I'd rather the government not spend (or more importantly, not tax) the billion dollars in the first place, but if that's a foregone conclusion, at least we should try and get a good return.
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