by Jeff Rapsis
All politics is local — and our region’s inability to bring passenger rail back to Manchester, Nashua and the rest of the Merrimack Valley is a good example of that.
However, this old saying might offer the key to finally making progress, even as state lawmakers in Concord are maneuvering to ban using state money on the long-stalled project.
How? I think the issue is that in New Hampshire, as in most places in America, public transit projects such as this naturally fall to a state’s transportation department to plan and oversee.
But in the Granite State, a majority of residents feel they’ll see no real benefits from Manchester and Nashua joining Boston’s commuter rail network. Hence the opposition and inaction, even though civic officials in Manchester and Nashua, the state’s two largest cities, have pushed it for decades.
What to do? I think it’s time for leaders in the Merrimack Valley to recognize that the state DOT is simply the wrong crib for this baby. A majority of the state (and hence the Legislature, which funds the state DOT) will simply never be convinced to make the investment.
So instead, a group of civic leaders from Concord south to Nashua should band together and craft a plan to fund it on their own.
This would require the creation of an entity similar to a tax increment financing district, but on a larger scale. It might function like a regional planning agency, but with the power to propose and implement taxes or other funding mechanisms (subject to voter approval) to raise revenue for restarting and operating passenger rail.
It wouldn’t be easy. But the Merrimack Valley is the most heavily populated area of New Hampshire, home to 561,000 of the state’s 1.3 million residents. It boasts the state’s largest concentration of business activity.
Surely this area on its own could generate the estimated $300 million all-in investment needed to extend passenger rail north from Lowell, Mass., and the annual subsidy of about $13 million.
In return, we’d reap the benefits of improved access to Boston, the region’s economic hub.
And here’s an idea to start you thinking: Why not impose a $5 fee on anyone boarding a Boston Express Bus to Logan Airport, with the revenue earmarked for passenger rail?
Jeff Rapsis, a Bedford resident, is Associate Publisher and a co-founder of the Hippo.