commentary and ideas concerning the mass infrastructure shortfall

When the State of Massachusetts came out and admitted that there would be a 20 billion dollar shortfall with in the next 20 years in the transportation infrastructure, I had no problem believing that of the MBTA given their financial situation of late, I knew that the highway system was in bad shape but I didn't expect it to be as bad off when it came to the money to maintain them.

The state has to stop debating how to pay for the shortfall just to maintain the states main transportation infrastructure and start looking at what is needed to meet the needs of maintaining, upgrading and expanding where and when needed so that way each thing can be addressed properly.

here are some suggestions as to help pay for the needed upkeep and expansion:

• mandate that each company looking to build near a highway or rail bed to pay or pay a percentage of the cost of the needed cost of making the highway accessible to the company. the cost should include the stretch of highway with in a certain radius in both directions of the highway.
• try to get companies to work together to build office/industrial parks to help them offset the price of the overall cost of upgrading the needed infrastructure for local streets and the highway that would feed those streets.
• see if companies would be willing to build over the highways to reduce the cost for both the company and the state when dealing with infrastructure and environmental concerns since the base infrastructure would already be there and to some degree the environmental impact is already know, while repairing/upgrading the highway so far in both directions possibly with off ramps dedicated to the company that would also be maintained by the company or office/industrial park occupants.
• for companies already abutting the highways and rail beds see if any of them are looking to expand and locations as to where they want to expand and for what reasons. if space is a problem due to the rail bed or the highway approach them to see if they would be willing to expand at their current location if they would be willing to build over and possibly on both sides to help repair or upgrade that stretch of highway to a certain point in each direction.
• where there are rail yards see if there are companies willing to deal with the trains ant their problems, and build over the rail yard with very good safety protocols.
• where there are train stations redevelop the stations so that way they are not stand alone station but rather part of an overall part of the building project so the rail system can lease out the property not designated as part of the station itself.
• when looking to expand the mass transit system, look to see which communities want the expansion to their communities. after the desire is established bring the communities on board to have them pick up part of the tab. also, do this with companies that would benefit from a building being built of required space for the companies, on top of the new stations.