Moulton renews push for North-South Rail Link, stresses economic benefit - Boston Business Journal (2024)

It’s an idea that’s as old as the genesis of the Big Dig — with a political history that's nearly as fraught.

But somehow, the proposal to unify the MBTA system with a tunnel between North and South stations has never quite gone away, despite several politicians' efforts to kill it.

Now, Congressman Seth Moulton — a longtime champion of the idea — is once again aiming to jumpstart discussion of the plan with an updated cost-benefit analysis he commissioned from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. The report suggests the estimated benefits of the North-South Rail link would outweigh the costs over 20 years by some $23 billion.

The idea behind the North-South Rail Link has always been to make the region’s commuter-rail system more efficient and convenient by enabling trains to run under the city and out the other side instead of stopping at North or South stations.

Such a tunnel would enable a much easier commute between north and south of the city, as well as between either north or south of the city and Central and Western Massachusetts. Building newer electrified tracks would also enable more frequent service than the current commuter-rail schedules allow, attracting more riders.

The new analysis, which was recently published by Moulton’s office, compares the North-South Rail Link’s costs and benefits to that of the MBTA’s current plans to expand South Station to add more tracks and use a 24-acre site known as Widett Circle. The MBTA completed purchase of Widett Circle in spring 2023 with plans to store commuter-rail trains there during nonpeak hours, but construction there has not yet started.

Moulton considers that plan a squandered opportunity, since he says it only addresses the problem at one station temporarily and fails to fix the root cause of congestion at North and South stations. It also would use land that’s likely needed for the rail link, so Moulton hopes to gain support for the rail link before construction begins on the expansion project.

“Enlarging (the) stub-end terminals will only provide short-term capacity relief, with no improvement in service or efficiency,” the research report states. “Applying these funds to rail unification, as cities around the world are doing, will provide far greater value.”

Another benefit of the rail link over the expansion of South Station, Moulton has argued, is that those 24 acres on valuable land in the middle of the city would be available for development if it wasn't needed for a railyard, which would increase the city and state's tax base.

North-South rail link more feasible now

In a recent interview, two staffers from Moulton’s office with transportation policy backgrounds explained why the rail link may be politically more feasible now than it has been in past years. For one, the MBTA in 2019 approved a long-range plan calling for electrification of the commuter-rail system and more frequent service, and work has already begun on some lines to convert them.

Electrification has long been thought to be a key part of enabling more frequent train service and fulfilling the rail link's promise.

A second big change since the last time the North-South Rail Link was discussed is in the state’s corner office. According to Moulton’s office, Gov. Maura Healey is much more open to the idea than was her predecessor, Charlie Baker.

In fact, the new research takes issue with a cost analysis of the plan completed in 2018 under Baker’s administration which was thought by many to be an effort to scare people off the idea.

That analysis, conducted by Arup USA Inc. and commissioned in July 2017 after pressure from proponents of the rail link, put the construction cost at between $12.3 billion and $24 billion. It did not take into account the project’s benefits.

The new analysis by Harvard contends that the 2018 study’s costs were likely inflated, arguing that the $3 billion-per-mile cost estimate of the most expensive option is quadruple the average cost of similar tunnel projects across the U.S. and Europe, which use modern tunnel-boring machines that don’t disrupt the city as the Central Artery Project did throughout the 1990s. Keeping the city’s traffic flowing through the Big Dig’s construction was one of the main reasons for the cost overruns on that project.

Michael Whelan, a staffer with Moulton’s office who was part of the team that conducted the new study, explained in an interview why it estimates such a large increase in ridership of the MBTA compared to the South Station Expansion.

Whelan said more frequent service, rather than trains that follow a schedule, would attract many more riders. Also, the ability to easily travel from, say, Brockton to Lowell, or from Worcester to anywhere around Boston, would allow commuting by train to millions of residents who currently don’t have that option.

Whelan also explained the estimated increase in housing, saying the increased value of real estate due to having vastly more commuting options would allow for many projects that are currently unfeasible to pencil out.