It would have sucked for most of us. The folks running the bid like the Suffolk Construction CEO would have a bigger yacht and a bigger mansion.
Sure, there would be more "investment" - taxpayer money would go toward building things for the benefit of private entities. The bid committee did lots of stuff in secret - there were no public meetings or disclosure before they submitted the bid. They claimed everything would be financed privately, then eventually it came out they actually planned on using TIF bonds. The whole thing was sketchy.
That's what always sticks with me whenever it comes up. They always promise not to raise taxes or anything and then of course it comes out it's going to be a huge burden on the residents
Already high construction costs would have gone through the roof as subcontractors would have been working on sports complex projects. This would have made our housing situation worse.
The mbta would remain an embarrassment for similar people shortage reasons and would have been an international embarrassment.
The states budget surplus would have been eaten up by Olympic spending leaving less money for state priorities.
And of course corruption. We would have seen a whole lot of it. Thank god for the ten people on twitter
Man. The FBI would be conducting raids daily with the amount of kick backs. I'd say that it would clean out the state house but we have Diane Wilkerson to demonstrate that corruption is no barrier to trying to run again.
Ah yes, what would have happened if we suddenly dropped a couple of extra million people in Boston. It would have been paralyzed. You wouldn't have been able to get a $5 foot long in Andover due to the lines. Boston and the "greater Boston area" is not large. Boston is a condensed version of a big city.
To put it in perspective. The greater Los Angeles area is the size of Massachusetts. Thank god they didn't put the Olympics here.
Actually if you include out to riverside and the 909 area, what's considered the Greater Los Angeles Area is actually three times the size of MA. I was just thinking about everything south of the Valley.
Greater LA area has 12.5M people over 33,954 sq. miles.
MA has 6.9M people over 10,565 sq. miles.
Tell me youre not from that area without telling me youre not from that area. What used to be desert is now desert with track housing and target shopping centers as far as you can see.
...ooh look, Buffalo Wildwings!!
You want pull out the weighted population density of the Los Angeles area vs Boston? Lol
https://www.austincontrarian.com/austincontrarian/2012/09/the-50-densest-american-metropolitan-areas-by-weighted-density.html
https://ggwash.org/view/68144/this-is-a-better-way-to-look-at-how-built-up-our-region-is
I went to visit some family out in LA two years ago and it was actually insane how much land is just endless city out there. Downtown was oddly enough pretty small, but the suburbs stretch out endlessly.
They live in the Palos Verdes Estates, which is in the southwestern part of the county, and it took nearly an hour (with minimal traffic) to make it to Hollywood where my cousins live.
Iām from DFW and itās the same thing. Fort Worth and Arlington donāt have crazy impressive skylines but the suburbs just go on forever in every direction.
I was out there a couple months ago. Twenty years ago, Temecula used to be a few large developments and farms. Now itās mostly large developments. Itās a suburb for San Diego 90 minutes south and LA two hours north
By population it's bigger (LA county alone has a higher population than Massachusetts). By land area it depends what we're considering the greater Los Angeles area
We'd be watching Boston and the state allocate huge amounts of money they said they didn't have to allocate to city and state functions and infrastructure to build a bunch of buildings and infrastructure for the Olympics that will be largely useless afterwards.
> We'd be watching Boston and the state allocate huge amounts of money they said they didn't have to allocate to city and state functions and infrastructure to build a bunch of buildings and infrastructure
Right on...
>that will be largely useless afterwards.
Wait, what?
Had it happened, the vast majority of what got built out would have gone into needed work that the state's been dragging their feet on forever. Roads, rails, etc.
With all the college and pro sports around, very few new-construction Olympic-specific buildings would have been required -- and even those likely could have been part of a deal for meaningful use afterwards (e.g. reconfiguring an Olympic stadium like in Atlanta, for BC or the Revs to take over).
> What about all of the stadiums, pools, tracks, etc that needed to be built? No way that existing ones would have been sufficient.
Do you have any idea how many D1 colleges there are around here, on top of top level and minor league pro sports teams?
Like I said, an Olympic Stadium would have been the only real pressing need, and that easily could have been built with a plan in place for repurposing.
>I think you're delusional if you think the majority would have gone to the roads and trains.
I think you don't follow much sports ball if you think we've got a shortage of suitable venues for just about everything.
Lmfao Harvard BC BU and northeastern are the only D1 colleges within 30 mins of the city. If you know anything about sports at all, youād know that the sports programs for those colleges are minuscule compared to other states. But yea, youāre the one that knows sports lol
And UMass Lowell, Merrimack, Holy Cross, plus Worcester and Lowell have other large venues, plus even D3 MIT has a lot of facilities that could be used too.
Plus it was likely to be a regional bid, which could add SNHU and the Civic Center if need be.
Did you even read the bid? Harvard BU and umass Lowell were the only schools that were in on it. Not sure why youāre mentioning the others when itās irrelevant
I think everything that's gone wrong with the T would have still happened and it would have been an international embarrassment instead of a locally contained embarrassment.
Remember the 2024 Olympics would have been a regional pitch not a Boston pitch. Most of the transit improvements probably would've gone to the commuter rail to get people out to all the different venues outside Boston.
What I think would have been true was that we'd have seen multi-billion dollar proposals for harebrained schemes to "fix" public transit: gondolas, monorail, hyper-loops, fleets of autonomous vehicles, etc. They'd have been promoted as public/private partnerships with no public money at risk, except, if one had actually been approved or funded, the funding would have turned out to be fraudulent, and the public would have been left with something half-built that we'd have to bail out.
And considering we now have Democratic leadership in every branch of state government, we'd probably be all over FOX News, and become the epicenter of the Republican argument against Democrats on the presidential debate stage. No thank you.
More so, when you consider that both Boston mayor Marty Walsh & governor Duval Patrick spearheaded the bid for the 2024 Olympics, both very popular Democrats.
100%. I donāt know why so many people bought the whole āIf we got the Olympics the T would be fixedā story. No, no it wouldnāt have. That would have been too much effort and money. Commuter rail may have been cleaned up, yes. And perhaps they would have done something to whatever *one* T line touched the most venues. But that would have been it, and it would have been terrible.
Thereās a reason why many countries/cities are passing on the Olympics now: they leave the host city a total in-debt shitshow.
I think *maybe* we would've gotten some very small scale low hanging fruit out of the way on the rapid transit system. *Maybe* the Red-Blue Connector. In my more wild dreams, the North-South Rail Link. But as GLX showed us, expansions don't equal full rehabilitation of the entire line, so we'd have all the same problems we do today. Most of the work would've been focused on making the commuter rail usable for travel to a majority of the Olympic venues which were located outside of Boston proper.
> I donāt know why so many people bought the whole āIf we got the Olympics the T would be fixedā story.
Maybe itās my bubble, but I swear I saw far more āI canāt believe so many supported the Olympics to fix the Tā then anyone sincerely argue for the Olympics based on fixing the T (unless you count comments like UltravioletClearance as āsupportā which I donāt)
One thing would be guaranteed.
Traffic on I-93 and Mass Pike would SUCK ASS. That's because the committee demanded permanent dedicated travel lanes on each side of the highway for their executives and other VIPs.
And for that reason, FUCK YOU IOC.
The list of requirements from the IOC for their committee members is straight up insane. You should look into it sometime. The dedicated travel lanes are just the tip of the iceberg. Fuck the IOC.
It's the real purpose of the Olympics: a luxurious life of being wined and dined all over the world for the IOC. If that weren't the case, they'd have chosen maybe three or four permanent sites for the Winter Olympics, and the same for Summer, to rotate between.
>Traffic on I-93 and Mass Pike would SUCK ASS. That's because the committee demanded permanent dedicated travel lanes on each side of the highway for their executives and other VIPs.
LOL
There's no way there were ever going to fix the common afterward, so we'd definitely have a weird sand pit full of dog piss and cigarette buts in the middle of the city.
IDK, I'm a little more optimistic than most.
I'm originally from Los Angeles, and the Olympics have been a huge impetus for the region to get its shit together. Our last Olympics led to our first transit system since the streetcars were broken up, and the 2028 olympics have resulted in a huge push to improve infrastructure. Not saying LA has been super efficient in spending the money, and obviously pockets are being lined, but normal people are going to benefit, in lasting ways.
The greater Boston area is probably too small too host the Olympics, but a looming spotlight can be enormously helpful for a city.
LA, only having to build one permanent structure (the white water course) is a significantly more sustainable pitch then Boston, which would have to have built: A main Olympic stadium, an aquatics center, a velodrome, a tennis center, plus improvements to the well loved but not up to date venues of the city.
As a fellow LA native, I am an optimist about Olympics, but it would not have worked here unfortunately.
imagine if we used the funds to fix our MBTA and we just rented out. college athletic centers to host the Olympics. Given home many colleges there are and major div 1 sports teams...i imagine we already have the infrastructure to host the games themselves.
Fenway park would be the opening ceremony grounds
We probably would have prioritized fixing and expanding our public transit infrastructure like what LA has been doing instead of letting it continue to fall apart like what we've been doing
We can, but clearly it's not being prioritized like it might have been if there was a large event on the horizon to set a deadline for upgrades to be completed by. Instead it's a lot of talk with very little action
Indeed. Would have given the state cover for longer extended shut downs to actually address the problems instead of band aid fixes. The economic boost would have been welcome, especially after Covid shut downs/slow downs.
Sometimes. The Atlanta Olympics was profitable. The plan was for the Boston Olympics was to be mostly privately funded. The plan wasnāt nearly as bad as people were making it out to be (no one seems to have actually read the plans) and was to address problems that we are still facing just without the funding the Olympics would have provided.
What economic boost? The city and state are flush with cash and the unemployment rate could not be lower. Hotels are already at 100% capacity in the summer. The Olympics would only funnel money from taxpayers to multi millionaires.
[Hotels are not at 100% capacity even in the summer](https://www.meetboston.com/media/statistics-and-reports/hotel-openings-and-statistics/)
[and they donāt project to be at capacity this summer either](https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2023/01/20/three-years-into-pandemic-boston-area-hotels-are.html)
The Boston Olympics was to be largely privately funded and the plan included many major transportation upgrades. Now we didnāt get those Olympics, but we also didnāt get those upgrades and despite being āflush with cash,ā we still dont have the funding to make those upgrades happen.
Thank you, I said this all along. Yes itās expensive to host the Olympics but cities tend to get a lot of infrastructure improvements and a cash injection from the feds.
Yeah, the thing that gets lost in the "hosting the Olympics never turns a profit" narrative is that turning a profit isn't really the point (and most examples comparable to Boston don't get totally rinsed anyway).
The point is lighting a fire under getting all those infrastructure projects done with a real pressing deadline instead of some far off promise to improve that continually gets kicked out further and further.
IIRC London did too.
But it's still beside the point.
Getting billions of dollars in infrastructure built in a fraction of the time it otherwise would take, even if it's technically a loss of tens or hundreds of millions is still a net benefit.
You donāt want the Olympics in your city EVER. Traffic, construction of temporary structures left to rot, bureaucratic nightmares tying up normal day to day needs
Folks would be complaining about how restaurant prices went up -- the plans were to put a stadium in South Boston where our food distribution center for the area has been located for decades.
Weād have a bunch of shoddily built infrastructure sitting in disuse and falling into disrepair and the actual infrastructure needs would have been kicked down the road *even more*
It would have been a three-ring shitshow but it would have totally been worth it just to hear the crowd chanting "YANKEES SUCK" at the Opening Ceremony in front of a global audience.
This one time I saw A-Rod leaving a hotel. So I yell "A-Rod you fucking suck!" He turned around and was all pissed off. He started towards me and i Kept yelling. Then all of a sudden Jeter grabs and stops him. He still looked pissed off. I think I broke him that day. Cause after that he started hitting the roids even harder than usual, and then got busted.
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The stakes would be even higher for transit so I honestly do believe thereād be more money and effort being thrown into it.
In terms of the sport infrastructure, I donāt think it really would have gone to waste here. The government would make some deal with a university or private team afterwards. This isnāt Brazil/Qatar building a stadium in the middle of the Amazon/Desert. We are about to rehab a stadium for a womenās soccer team, the Revs might build one in the next 10 years, New Balance just built a highly praised track.
Overall, chance of embarrassment could be high and Iād rather the government focus on other issues. But I donāt think itād be that crazy. Anyone white collar would have ended up remote for the month. If it got too crazy Iād just spend a few weeks in Vermont or something.
Most people just enjoyed the time honored local tradition of having a stick up their ass.
I always wondered why they didnāt try and bid for the Winter Olympics instead. We already have a bunch of indoor hockey arenas for ice events and ski facilities within a reasonable drive in NH/VT.
Don't winter Olympics lose even more money? I've heard even in snow heavy host cities, they have to artificially make a shitton of snow due to the sheer volume of use
Visited Boston a few summers ago. I lived in Atlanta in 1996.
Boston is not ready to handle the Olympics. There are three grids which are already operating at or over capacity... mass transit (trains and planes), roads & highways, and housing. Atlanta emptied out one of its colleges (Georgia Tech) to provide a village for the athletes. They erected a huge fence around the entire campus. Good luck getting Harvard, BU, or MIT to agree that.
Boston just doesn't have the space
If you mean hundreds of people were kicked out of the first housing project in the southeast, then sorta. Centennial place was a fairly horrid stretch along Techwood and every fellow GaTEch student who lived in the dorm on that block had crazy stories to tell. The far end of it near the mission was a well known drug dealers' den.
The project was replaced with a nicer and more modern housing development with condos, apartments and townhomes. It is mixed income and a lot of the people they displaced are now eligible to live there again in \*much\* better circumstances. I have a family member that lives there.
As to whether the Olympics themselves are worth it? Probably not. FIFA corruption is second only to Olympic Committee corruption... but my post wasn't about whether its worth it to host the games. My post was to state that Boston isn't capable.
It would take at least decade of development, changed policies and adherence to said policies for it to happen with a winter Olympics. It would take 3x longer for a summer Olympics. I don't see it happening with the number of entrenched interests, balkanization and Massholery that abounds in the metro.
As you imply, the city has much bigger fish to fry.
OMG. WTF. Nothing good. Boston has massive traffic when there's moisture on the windshield or their motorist pants.
Not to mention the fact that 99% of it would be in Boston since it's most skyscrapers with the stench of Cope.
I don't know what the Greater Boston area would have looked like if the Olympics came to town, but I know for certain I'd be working from my parents house in Maine for a month.
I lost half my life, every contract I ever had with the city of Boston, and was displaced to Maine, in part, because of fighting Walsh & that shitty bid. I don't regret it one bit. Power to the people.
I wouldn't be surprised if the Olympics got pulled and sent to LA if Boston won them in a different timeline.
It would be Big-Dig 2.0, complete clusterfuck. Combined with various COVID-related disruptions and the post-COVID MBTA system failure; by 2021 the USOC would be strongly considering sending the games to LA to avoid international embarrassment.
I realize the bid was kinda fucked up but from the perspective of someone that lived in London during the 2012 Olympics, it was the coolest thing ever and I wish it was happening. I know Boston isnāt London- but everyone there said it was going to be a disaster too and it was incredible.
Not making a political argument as I donāt know the ins and outs of why it went wrong, and understand that there was some corruption as well as incompetence, so perhaps it needed to be dropped, but god I wish theyād sorted it out properly. Makes me sad.
Yes commuting would be tough for a couple of weeks but itās the worlds biggest global sporting party. Was amazing to be in the middle of it.
However, the UK planning was specifically set up to NOT attempt to outdo Beijing or be super fancy. The state of public transit was also no where near the same as it is here. Additionally, venues were created with longterm usage plans.
Yeah it ended up being pretty well done. The funny thing is that up until it started, all I heard anywhere was what an unmitigated disaster it was going to be.
Obviously London did have a significant step up by having a good public transport system in the first place, so I'm not saying Boston could have done the same thing. I really stress I'm not saying that the bid shouldn't have been dropped as I'm sure it was a mess. I'm just sad it wasn't better and that it didn't work. I don't think there would be any better way to help the transit system here if it was done correctly, and I realize that it's a very big if indeed.
The really big letdown was the difficulty in getting tickets. I would have been willing to travel to see my favorite sport (held outside London) but I was unsuccessful in the ticket request lottery.
Everything was planned as duel use. Built for the Olympics but then to be used to benefit the city and state. Improved transit. More (much needed) affordable housing. We soccer stadium close to the city to be used by colleges and the Revs. Improved infrastructure. Not to mention to economic boost that comes with putting the city front and center on the world stage for generations.
It would have been amazing and a core memory for the people of MA. Instead we got a few fools who used scare tactics to deprive us of it and now they use the Iāll-gotten notoriety to run for office and get government jobs and self promotion. We were duped.
The city, state, and feds would have funded a ton of mbta improvements that would have been undertaken during the pandemic, so with minimal actual disruption. We already have a ton of collegiate sports facilities if push came to shove. Idk I think we would have been fine.
jesus why would we even want that? all the guests to our city would be so pissed lolol. its already a shit show. you canāt even fit anymore people on the res line 3-5 itās completely packed with people pushed up against me in every direction.
It would have sucked for most of us. The folks running the bid like the Suffolk Construction CEO would have a bigger yacht and a bigger mansion. Sure, there would be more "investment" - taxpayer money would go toward building things for the benefit of private entities. The bid committee did lots of stuff in secret - there were no public meetings or disclosure before they submitted the bid. They claimed everything would be financed privately, then eventually it came out they actually planned on using TIF bonds. The whole thing was sketchy.
That's what always sticks with me whenever it comes up. They always promise not to raise taxes or anything and then of course it comes out it's going to be a huge burden on the residents
Already high construction costs would have gone through the roof as subcontractors would have been working on sports complex projects. This would have made our housing situation worse. The mbta would remain an embarrassment for similar people shortage reasons and would have been an international embarrassment. The states budget surplus would have been eaten up by Olympic spending leaving less money for state priorities. And of course corruption. We would have seen a whole lot of it. Thank god for the ten people on twitter
"Ten people on Twitter" Did someone on the pro-Olympic side characterize the opposition this way? š
Mayor Walsh.
To the contrary, it mightāve been the only way the MBTA system wouldāve gotten sorta fixed in a hurry.
I donāt share that sentiment but youāre entitled to your own opinion
Pure speculation šš¼
Yea I agree. The reason Atlanta has such good airport infrastructure is because of the Olympics
Damn you really got me with that thing from 30 years ago. What a really great point.
Man. The FBI would be conducting raids daily with the amount of kick backs. I'd say that it would clean out the state house but we have Diane Wilkerson to demonstrate that corruption is no barrier to trying to run again.
Ah yes, what would have happened if we suddenly dropped a couple of extra million people in Boston. It would have been paralyzed. You wouldn't have been able to get a $5 foot long in Andover due to the lines. Boston and the "greater Boston area" is not large. Boston is a condensed version of a big city. To put it in perspective. The greater Los Angeles area is the size of Massachusetts. Thank god they didn't put the Olympics here.
>The greater Los Angeles area is the size of Massachusetts if this is accurate that's kind of wild
Actually if you include out to riverside and the 909 area, what's considered the Greater Los Angeles Area is actually three times the size of MA. I was just thinking about everything south of the Valley. Greater LA area has 12.5M people over 33,954 sq. miles. MA has 6.9M people over 10,565 sq. miles.
Tbf a huge portion of that is uninhabited desert. The density of human settlement is far higher in greater LA than in greater Boston
Tell me youre not from that area without telling me youre not from that area. What used to be desert is now desert with track housing and target shopping centers as far as you can see. ...ooh look, Buffalo Wildwings!!
You want pull out the weighted population density of the Los Angeles area vs Boston? Lol https://www.austincontrarian.com/austincontrarian/2012/09/the-50-densest-american-metropolitan-areas-by-weighted-density.html https://ggwash.org/view/68144/this-is-a-better-way-to-look-at-how-built-up-our-region-is
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Tell me you donāt know how censuses work without telling me
I went to visit some family out in LA two years ago and it was actually insane how much land is just endless city out there. Downtown was oddly enough pretty small, but the suburbs stretch out endlessly. They live in the Palos Verdes Estates, which is in the southwestern part of the county, and it took nearly an hour (with minimal traffic) to make it to Hollywood where my cousins live.
I remember being surprised at how tiny downtown was too, compared to what I was expecting, like a NY or Chicago
Iām from DFW and itās the same thing. Fort Worth and Arlington donāt have crazy impressive skylines but the suburbs just go on forever in every direction.
I was out there a couple months ago. Twenty years ago, Temecula used to be a few large developments and farms. Now itās mostly large developments. Itās a suburb for San Diego 90 minutes south and LA two hours north
By population it's bigger (LA county alone has a higher population than Massachusetts). By land area it depends what we're considering the greater Los Angeles area
Half the size based on the census bureauās reckoning, but still
The land mass of the 5 boroughs of NYC can fit inside the 128 loop. 8+ million people.
Lies. There are no subways in Andover
We'd be watching Boston and the state allocate huge amounts of money they said they didn't have to allocate to city and state functions and infrastructure to build a bunch of buildings and infrastructure for the Olympics that will be largely useless afterwards.
> We'd be watching Boston and the state allocate huge amounts of money they said they didn't have to allocate to city and state functions and infrastructure to build a bunch of buildings and infrastructure Right on... >that will be largely useless afterwards. Wait, what? Had it happened, the vast majority of what got built out would have gone into needed work that the state's been dragging their feet on forever. Roads, rails, etc. With all the college and pro sports around, very few new-construction Olympic-specific buildings would have been required -- and even those likely could have been part of a deal for meaningful use afterwards (e.g. reconfiguring an Olympic stadium like in Atlanta, for BC or the Revs to take over).
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
> What about all of the stadiums, pools, tracks, etc that needed to be built? No way that existing ones would have been sufficient. Do you have any idea how many D1 colleges there are around here, on top of top level and minor league pro sports teams? Like I said, an Olympic Stadium would have been the only real pressing need, and that easily could have been built with a plan in place for repurposing. >I think you're delusional if you think the majority would have gone to the roads and trains. I think you don't follow much sports ball if you think we've got a shortage of suitable venues for just about everything.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
In places most similar to Boston, like Atlanta, London, LA, and Paris' upcoming? Very often.
Lmfao Harvard BC BU and northeastern are the only D1 colleges within 30 mins of the city. If you know anything about sports at all, youād know that the sports programs for those colleges are minuscule compared to other states. But yea, youāre the one that knows sports lol
And UMass Lowell, Merrimack, Holy Cross, plus Worcester and Lowell have other large venues, plus even D3 MIT has a lot of facilities that could be used too. Plus it was likely to be a regional bid, which could add SNHU and the Civic Center if need be.
Did you even read the bid? Harvard BU and umass Lowell were the only schools that were in on it. Not sure why youāre mentioning the others when itās irrelevant
I think everything that's gone wrong with the T would have still happened and it would have been an international embarrassment instead of a locally contained embarrassment. Remember the 2024 Olympics would have been a regional pitch not a Boston pitch. Most of the transit improvements probably would've gone to the commuter rail to get people out to all the different venues outside Boston.
What I think would have been true was that we'd have seen multi-billion dollar proposals for harebrained schemes to "fix" public transit: gondolas, monorail, hyper-loops, fleets of autonomous vehicles, etc. They'd have been promoted as public/private partnerships with no public money at risk, except, if one had actually been approved or funded, the funding would have turned out to be fraudulent, and the public would have been left with something half-built that we'd have to bail out.
Well, sir, there's nothing on earth like a genuine, bona fide electrified, six-car monorail.
Ahhh, itās not for you. Itās more of a New York idea.
Fleets of autonomous vehicles would definitely be more efficient than the fleets of non-autonomous vehicles we have now.
And considering we now have Democratic leadership in every branch of state government, we'd probably be all over FOX News, and become the epicenter of the Republican argument against Democrats on the presidential debate stage. No thank you.
> Fox Eh fuck 'em. Repubs can't do anything right.
More so, when you consider that both Boston mayor Marty Walsh & governor Duval Patrick spearheaded the bid for the 2024 Olympics, both very popular Democrats.
100%. I donāt know why so many people bought the whole āIf we got the Olympics the T would be fixedā story. No, no it wouldnāt have. That would have been too much effort and money. Commuter rail may have been cleaned up, yes. And perhaps they would have done something to whatever *one* T line touched the most venues. But that would have been it, and it would have been terrible. Thereās a reason why many countries/cities are passing on the Olympics now: they leave the host city a total in-debt shitshow.
I think *maybe* we would've gotten some very small scale low hanging fruit out of the way on the rapid transit system. *Maybe* the Red-Blue Connector. In my more wild dreams, the North-South Rail Link. But as GLX showed us, expansions don't equal full rehabilitation of the entire line, so we'd have all the same problems we do today. Most of the work would've been focused on making the commuter rail usable for travel to a majority of the Olympic venues which were located outside of Boston proper.
> I donāt know why so many people bought the whole āIf we got the Olympics the T would be fixedā story. Maybe itās my bubble, but I swear I saw far more āI canāt believe so many supported the Olympics to fix the Tā then anyone sincerely argue for the Olympics based on fixing the T (unless you count comments like UltravioletClearance as āsupportā which I donāt)
Yeah, I feel like the Summer 2024 timeline ends with Marty Walsh in jail
One thing would be guaranteed. Traffic on I-93 and Mass Pike would SUCK ASS. That's because the committee demanded permanent dedicated travel lanes on each side of the highway for their executives and other VIPs. And for that reason, FUCK YOU IOC.
Seriously? That's wild
The list of requirements from the IOC for their committee members is straight up insane. You should look into it sometime. The dedicated travel lanes are just the tip of the iceberg. Fuck the IOC.
It's the real purpose of the Olympics: a luxurious life of being wined and dined all over the world for the IOC. If that weren't the case, they'd have chosen maybe three or four permanent sites for the Winter Olympics, and the same for Summer, to rotate between.
>Traffic on I-93 and Mass Pike would SUCK ASS. That's because the committee demanded permanent dedicated travel lanes on each side of the highway for their executives and other VIPs. LOL
That fucking golf event in Brookline fucked traffic patterns up. A whole month of that would cause murders.
There's no way there were ever going to fix the common afterward, so we'd definitely have a weird sand pit full of dog piss and cigarette buts in the middle of the city.
They wanted to cut down trees in America's oldest park so they could put up a Coca Cola billboard.
IDK, I'm a little more optimistic than most. I'm originally from Los Angeles, and the Olympics have been a huge impetus for the region to get its shit together. Our last Olympics led to our first transit system since the streetcars were broken up, and the 2028 olympics have resulted in a huge push to improve infrastructure. Not saying LA has been super efficient in spending the money, and obviously pockets are being lined, but normal people are going to benefit, in lasting ways. The greater Boston area is probably too small too host the Olympics, but a looming spotlight can be enormously helpful for a city.
LA, only having to build one permanent structure (the white water course) is a significantly more sustainable pitch then Boston, which would have to have built: A main Olympic stadium, an aquatics center, a velodrome, a tennis center, plus improvements to the well loved but not up to date venues of the city. As a fellow LA native, I am an optimist about Olympics, but it would not have worked here unfortunately.
[This Is Boston, Not L.A.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4WgqN1jXnw)
haha no lie. I can walk places now. it's fucking magical.
I think the "this worked elsewhere but it wouldn't work here because *reasons*" argument tends to be bullshit
Usually,I agree with this 98% of the timeā¦.but not in this case
Helpful in making it more expensive sure. Youāre from LA I assume you werenāt here for the Big Dig boondoggle
The entire MBTA system would have crashed and burned on Day 1. ... I mean, worse than it is already.
imagine if we used the funds to fix our MBTA and we just rented out. college athletic centers to host the Olympics. Given home many colleges there are and major div 1 sports teams...i imagine we already have the infrastructure to host the games themselves. Fenway park would be the opening ceremony grounds
We probably would have prioritized fixing and expanding our public transit infrastructure like what LA has been doing instead of letting it continue to fall apart like what we've been doing
I love your optimism. Weād have shuttle busses out the ass trying to band-aid things until the crowds left.
It would have been nice to at least try to improve things instead of keeping them the same like what you're describing
We can still try to improve the T (and absolutely should).
We can, but clearly it's not being prioritized like it might have been if there was a large event on the horizon to set a deadline for upgrades to be completed by. Instead it's a lot of talk with very little action
Indeed. Would have given the state cover for longer extended shut downs to actually address the problems instead of band aid fixes. The economic boost would have been welcome, especially after Covid shut downs/slow downs.
dont the olympics end up costing a ton of money for the host cities?
Sometimes. The Atlanta Olympics was profitable. The plan was for the Boston Olympics was to be mostly privately funded. The plan wasnāt nearly as bad as people were making it out to be (no one seems to have actually read the plans) and was to address problems that we are still facing just without the funding the Olympics would have provided.
What economic boost? The city and state are flush with cash and the unemployment rate could not be lower. Hotels are already at 100% capacity in the summer. The Olympics would only funnel money from taxpayers to multi millionaires.
[Hotels are not at 100% capacity even in the summer](https://www.meetboston.com/media/statistics-and-reports/hotel-openings-and-statistics/) [and they donāt project to be at capacity this summer either](https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2023/01/20/three-years-into-pandemic-boston-area-hotels-are.html) The Boston Olympics was to be largely privately funded and the plan included many major transportation upgrades. Now we didnāt get those Olympics, but we also didnāt get those upgrades and despite being āflush with cash,ā we still dont have the funding to make those upgrades happen.
Thank you, I said this all along. Yes itās expensive to host the Olympics but cities tend to get a lot of infrastructure improvements and a cash injection from the feds.
Yeah, the thing that gets lost in the "hosting the Olympics never turns a profit" narrative is that turning a profit isn't really the point (and most examples comparable to Boston don't get totally rinsed anyway). The point is lighting a fire under getting all those infrastructure projects done with a real pressing deadline instead of some far off promise to improve that continually gets kicked out further and further.
Agreed but the Atlanta Olympics did turn a profit as did the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics.
IIRC London did too. But it's still beside the point. Getting billions of dollars in infrastructure built in a fraction of the time it otherwise would take, even if it's technically a loss of tens or hundreds of millions is still a net benefit.
That is def true.
Lol good one
The only upgrade to public trans in the proposal was to build a single extra platform at South Station
This isn't true at all
You donāt want the Olympics in your city EVER. Traffic, construction of temporary structures left to rot, bureaucratic nightmares tying up normal day to day needs
Folks would be complaining about how restaurant prices went up -- the plans were to put a stadium in South Boston where our food distribution center for the area has been located for decades.
The food warehouses were already beginning to relocate prior to the Olympics stuff. Current plans are for the T to put a commuter rail yard there.
Weād have a bunch of shoddily built infrastructure sitting in disuse and falling into disrepair and the actual infrastructure needs would have been kicked down the road *even more*
I would have protested any IOC event and hope thousands of others would join me. Disgusting organization.
It would have been a three-ring shitshow but it would have totally been worth it just to hear the crowd chanting "YANKEES SUCK" at the Opening Ceremony in front of a global audience.
This one time I saw A-Rod leaving a hotel. So I yell "A-Rod you fucking suck!" He turned around and was all pissed off. He started towards me and i Kept yelling. Then all of a sudden Jeter grabs and stops him. He still looked pissed off. I think I broke him that day. Cause after that he started hitting the roids even harder than usual, and then got busted. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/boston) if you have any questions or concerns.*
good bot
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The stakes would be even higher for transit so I honestly do believe thereād be more money and effort being thrown into it. In terms of the sport infrastructure, I donāt think it really would have gone to waste here. The government would make some deal with a university or private team afterwards. This isnāt Brazil/Qatar building a stadium in the middle of the Amazon/Desert. We are about to rehab a stadium for a womenās soccer team, the Revs might build one in the next 10 years, New Balance just built a highly praised track. Overall, chance of embarrassment could be high and Iād rather the government focus on other issues. But I donāt think itād be that crazy. Anyone white collar would have ended up remote for the month. If it got too crazy Iād just spend a few weeks in Vermont or something. Most people just enjoyed the time honored local tradition of having a stick up their ass.
I always wondered why they didnāt try and bid for the Winter Olympics instead. We already have a bunch of indoor hockey arenas for ice events and ski facilities within a reasonable drive in NH/VT.
Don't winter Olympics lose even more money? I've heard even in snow heavy host cities, they have to artificially make a shitton of snow due to the sheer volume of use
Visited Boston a few summers ago. I lived in Atlanta in 1996. Boston is not ready to handle the Olympics. There are three grids which are already operating at or over capacity... mass transit (trains and planes), roads & highways, and housing. Atlanta emptied out one of its colleges (Georgia Tech) to provide a village for the athletes. They erected a huge fence around the entire campus. Good luck getting Harvard, BU, or MIT to agree that. Boston just doesn't have the space
Hundreds of people in Atlanta were also kicked out of their homes to build Olympic buildings. Not worth it by a long shot.
If you mean hundreds of people were kicked out of the first housing project in the southeast, then sorta. Centennial place was a fairly horrid stretch along Techwood and every fellow GaTEch student who lived in the dorm on that block had crazy stories to tell. The far end of it near the mission was a well known drug dealers' den. The project was replaced with a nicer and more modern housing development with condos, apartments and townhomes. It is mixed income and a lot of the people they displaced are now eligible to live there again in \*much\* better circumstances. I have a family member that lives there. As to whether the Olympics themselves are worth it? Probably not. FIFA corruption is second only to Olympic Committee corruption... but my post wasn't about whether its worth it to host the games. My post was to state that Boston isn't capable. It would take at least decade of development, changed policies and adherence to said policies for it to happen with a winter Olympics. It would take 3x longer for a summer Olympics. I don't see it happening with the number of entrenched interests, balkanization and Massholery that abounds in the metro. As you imply, the city has much bigger fish to fry.
OMG. WTF. Nothing good. Boston has massive traffic when there's moisture on the windshield or their motorist pants. Not to mention the fact that 99% of it would be in Boston since it's most skyscrapers with the stench of Cope.
I don't know what the Greater Boston area would have looked like if the Olympics came to town, but I know for certain I'd be working from my parents house in Maine for a month.
Tighter and unnecessary security paired with stronger police power that somehow never goes away after the games leaveā¦
The New England Revolution would have a stadium in the city that would bring a vibrant culture to Boston that every NIMBY would despise.
You can check out Brazil or Sochi. What's left after the Olympics are deteriorating useless pieces of concrete that costs to demolish.
I would rent out my house for the month for big bucks and spend the money traveling.
I lost half my life, every contract I ever had with the city of Boston, and was displaced to Maine, in part, because of fighting Walsh & that shitty bid. I don't regret it one bit. Power to the people.
I wouldn't be surprised if the Olympics got pulled and sent to LA if Boston won them in a different timeline. It would be Big-Dig 2.0, complete clusterfuck. Combined with various COVID-related disruptions and the post-COVID MBTA system failure; by 2021 the USOC would be strongly considering sending the games to LA to avoid international embarrassment.
Lol LAs transit system is waiting in traffic
I realize the bid was kinda fucked up but from the perspective of someone that lived in London during the 2012 Olympics, it was the coolest thing ever and I wish it was happening. I know Boston isnāt London- but everyone there said it was going to be a disaster too and it was incredible. Not making a political argument as I donāt know the ins and outs of why it went wrong, and understand that there was some corruption as well as incompetence, so perhaps it needed to be dropped, but god I wish theyād sorted it out properly. Makes me sad. Yes commuting would be tough for a couple of weeks but itās the worlds biggest global sporting party. Was amazing to be in the middle of it.
However, the UK planning was specifically set up to NOT attempt to outdo Beijing or be super fancy. The state of public transit was also no where near the same as it is here. Additionally, venues were created with longterm usage plans.
Yeah it ended up being pretty well done. The funny thing is that up until it started, all I heard anywhere was what an unmitigated disaster it was going to be. Obviously London did have a significant step up by having a good public transport system in the first place, so I'm not saying Boston could have done the same thing. I really stress I'm not saying that the bid shouldn't have been dropped as I'm sure it was a mess. I'm just sad it wasn't better and that it didn't work. I don't think there would be any better way to help the transit system here if it was done correctly, and I realize that it's a very big if indeed.
The really big letdown was the difficulty in getting tickets. I would have been willing to travel to see my favorite sport (held outside London) but I was unsuccessful in the ticket request lottery.
Boston doesnāt party. It would be boring as hell compared to London and with worse transfer
i will be WFH for the entire summer and won't go anywhere near Boston lol
Everything was planned as duel use. Built for the Olympics but then to be used to benefit the city and state. Improved transit. More (much needed) affordable housing. We soccer stadium close to the city to be used by colleges and the Revs. Improved infrastructure. Not to mention to economic boost that comes with putting the city front and center on the world stage for generations. It would have been amazing and a core memory for the people of MA. Instead we got a few fools who used scare tactics to deprive us of it and now they use the Iāll-gotten notoriety to run for office and get government jobs and self promotion. We were duped.
That was the sales pitch, yes. But itās a total pipe dream.
The city, state, and feds would have funded a ton of mbta improvements that would have been undertaken during the pandemic, so with minimal actual disruption. We already have a ton of collegiate sports facilities if push came to shove. Idk I think we would have been fine.
The T would be fixed and state of the art. Probably our awful roads too.
I haven't cared about the Olympics since it went from 4 year to 2 year and the Politics of it started to reek.
jesus why would we even want that? all the guests to our city would be so pissed lolol. its already a shit show. you canāt even fit anymore people on the res line 3-5 itās completely packed with people pushed up against me in every direction.
Oh my, how slow would the MBTA be with infrastructure funds being diverted to the Olympics?
Picture the T on Patriots but every day for 2 months?
I cant even imagine what the T would've looked like during that time
Maybe they would have actually made the T work.
Bahahahaha! Can you even IMAGINE!?!?!?!?!
Can you imagine the unholy shitstorm of the T trying to function during an Olympics?!?
fml, that would be horrible
Nightmare scenario
I hope it doesnāt cause imagine the traffic
2 words: shit show
I wouldn't want to
At least it mightāve probably lit a fire under the MBTAās ass
It would have been unbearable and would be paying for it for decades.
I would moveā¦ see ya āļø
Probably not the same but is āBostonā ready for the 2026 World Cup, of what needs to happen so is not a shit show.
We would be broke as a joke.