SouthCoast Rail: A 20th Century Solution for the 21st Century?

This week, Commonwealth Magazine ran a story with the headline: “South Coast Rail Optimism Grows.”  The article details the recent approval of $28 million to complete the design for the $1 billion first phase of the SouthCoast Rail project that will bring commuter rail from South Station to New Bedford and Fall River via Middleborough.  Phase 2 is projected to cost about $3.2 billion, which the state is expected to pay.

I need to preface the rest of this post by saying I firmly believe that the state should be making a large commitment to link Boston to the SouthCoast*.  I think my SouthCoast credentials would be revoked if I didn’t say something like that.  And I am firmly committed to increased support for public transportation solutions, both for environmental and economic equity reasons.

But I can’t help but think that building a train line is a 20^th Century solution for the 21^st Century, a feeling prompted by teaching extensively about driverless cars and robots this spring.  While there is some debate about whether driverless cars will make traffic better or worse, they will certainly make driving easier.  At some point in the not too distant future, people riding in cars won’t have to pay all that much attention to what’s happening on the road.  Once this happens, people will be able to do other things like work, read, and catch up with friends and family; in other words, they’ll be able to do many of the things that make taking public transportation attractive.  If that’s the case, it’s not clear whether many of those projected SouthCoast Rail riders will ditch the hassle of the car for the convenience of train, particularly if they can catch their driverless car right from their front door and get dropped off wherever they want to go, rather than at the station.

If, as some experts predict, driverless cars ease traffic congestion, I can envision driverless cars breezing past the expected 90 minute ride from the SouthCoast to South Station.  Our transportation system is about to undergo a DRAMATIC transformation over the next few decades (and maybe even sooner than that), and we are almost completely unprepared politically for this shift.

Given the Bay State’s reputation as a policy innovator and the location of many innovative companies and institutions of higher education, I’d love to see some out of the box thinking about this issue.  How about we hold a hack-a-thon?  Tell attendees they have approximately $4 billion dollars to come up with a transportation solution linking the SouthCoast to Boston.  Maybe Elon Musk or someone like him will come up with a solution like the underground tunnel utilizing hyperloop technology he has proposed to link downtown Chicago with O’Hare airport.  Maybe we can build some express lanes dedicated to self-driving cars that will be a fast and efficient link from the SouthCoast to Boston.

The other benefit of thinking outside the box on this is the fact that building a 21^st Century transportation solution will make us an innovator again.  And maybe this will attract attention and interest to a region of the state that could really use it.

I am not a traffic engineer or planner, so to be honest, I don’t really know what these solutions look like.  And I am completely open to the fact that I may be wrong here; maybe the train is the best solution.  But I am a political scientist who studies and teaches public policy, and I can’t help but wonder if our political system is behind the times here.  I know there are a lot of great minds thinking about traffic problems and solutions like these in Massachusetts, so I’d love to hear their thoughts on this issue.  If you had $4 billion to connect the SouthCoast to Boston, how would you do it?

* Note to those not from the region, while there is some debate about whether the C in SouthCoast is capitalized or not, pretty much everyone down here agrees it’s one word)