| Don’t let the new skyscrapers and booming economy fool you – Boston is not a world-class city, and if the region’s residents and elected officials don’t get their acts together, it never will be.
Without belaboring the point, housing costs are out of control. The median price of a condo in Suffolk County was $615,000 as of April, up 16 percent over 2017 and up 76 percent over 2008, according to analysis from The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman. A single-family home in Suffolk County was $520,000 as of April, up 13 percent over last year and 64 over a decade ago.
So people are forced to move farther outside the city and then mostly commute in, and whether by train or car, commutes have become hellish. Consistently underfunded, the state’s infrastructure is now carrying more people on its roads and trains, further wearing them down.
But sure, let’s spend billions of dollars to connect North and South stations. That’s definitely the best use of (nonexistent) infrastructure funds.
Travel times have doubled in the past few years alone; rush hour now begins at 3 p.m. and ends at 7:30 or 8. Commuters report that by train or by car, it’s a two-hour trip from Plymouth to the city – ok, one and half hours on a good day. From points west, the same amount of time from Southborough. Closer in, it takes an hour to get from Chelsea to the Seaport. That’s six miles.
And that’s just rush hour – it doesn’t matter where you’re going or when, you are guaranteed to hit traffic somewhere. And biking will get you killed or crippled, so that’s not a super great option either.
Boston is also, by most city standards, tiny. At just 48 square miles (not including water, where we may all end up living when the land is underneath it), there’s just nowhere to put all the people who live, work and drive through town.
As Scott Van Voorhis noted in his column last week, large problems are not solved by small solutions. Unfortunately there are no good solutions to the area’s issues, whether large or small, which is why we’re still talking and not solving.
Perhaps most important is to recognize and accept that Boston does not stand alone. As the state capital and an important East Coast job hub, it is the hub of our universe – but it does not exist in a vacuum. Massachusetts municipalities want to retain their identities, but Greater Boston rises and falls as a collective.
It’s time – past time – for the suburbs to their parts in building new housing. And it’s past time for our state’s beleaguered public transit system to be capable of moving those people into and out of the city without taking two hours (when it works at all).
We all know there are problems, and acknowledging that is the first step. Now we need to recognize that without a true commitment to partnership and to making drastic changes, it will be the only step taken in an endless discussion without action.
