A remarkable turnaround for Green Line extension
CONFIDENCE APPEARS to be mounting at the MBTA that the nearly $2.3 billion Green Line extension project will come in under budget, allowing Somerville and Cambridge to recover the combined $75 million they donated to the initiative in 2016 and still leave money left over for other needs.
Joe Aiello, the chair of the MBTA’s Fiscal and Management Control Board, said on Monday at the panel’s meeting that the Green Line extension is significantly under budget right now. He urged T staff members to seek federal guidance on whether some of the left-over money could be used to help finance initial work on a proposed subway connection between the Red and Blue subway lines.
The idea that extending the Green Line from Lechmere into Somerville and Medford could come in under budget is somewhat remarkable given its tangled and tortured history. In its early stages, the price tag of the project ballooned from $2 billion to $3 billion and forced state transportation officials to redesign and revamp the project to eliminate roughly $1 billion in costs.
A T spokesman declined to comment directly on the Green Line extension’s current financial situation, but agency reports suggest the project is trending in a favorable direction with service set to begin later this year. “Overall trends for the program remain within overall program budget,” the T said in a recent report.
Read more: https://commonwealthmagazine.org/transportation/a-remarkable-turnaround-for-green-line-extension/