Seth Moulton has a mission: One day, people in Massachusetts will be able to travel by train, unimpeded, from Worcester to the North Shore. Or, if they are of a mind, from Needham to TD Garden in Boston.
Because, right now, as improbable as it sounds, they cannot get there — or much of anywhere, for that matter — from here via the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) train system, known locally as "the T."
And all it will take is finally building a 3-mi. railroad tunnel through the middle of Boston that has been talked about since 1912.
Asked if a lack of imagination, funding or urgency has gotten the state to where it is today, Moulton, the Democratic U.S. representative from Massachusetts's 6th District, told MassLive it has "been a combination of all three. But I really want to emphasize the failure of imagination."
"We keep trying to patch up the T when what we need is a transformation," the Salem lawmaker told MassLive by phone from his Capitol Hill office. "Of any road or bridge project, this would bring the biggest transformation. We could connect every rail line in eastern Massachusetts to every rail line in the west."
Recently, MassLive reported June 20, Moulton tried to jump-start the conversation, releasing a three-page summary of a new study, a joint effort with Harvard University's Kennedy School, making the case for the rail link.
In it, he argued that completing the link would allow rail traffic to flow right through Boston, generate $31 billion in revenue for the state, quadruple the ridership on the MBTA's Commuter Rail Line, and open access to roughly a half-million jobs.
He added it might even help the state do something about its crushing crisis of housing affordability and availability.
"It makes regional rail not just possible but successful," Moulton wrote in the document's summary. "It does more to boost housing than any housing bill. And it has huge benefits for climate and racial justice in historically forgotten communities. Until we build the Rail Link, we won't just be stuck in traffic, we'll be stuck in the past. The question is no longer ‘Can we afford to build the link?' but ‘Can we afford not to?'"
The study contrasts building the rail link to another often-discussed project: Expanding Boston's MBTA South Station. For Moulton, that is a non-starter because a South Station expansion would be "obsolete in 25 years, and do almost nothing to relieve road congestion," he wrote in the summary.
For those people who have ever spent any time sitting in traffic while trying to get out of Boston around quitting time, they know exactly what he is talking about.
"The key point here is that this has been a vision of many people in New England," he told MassLive. "Now it's a choice because we have to address the capacity problem at South Station. We can do that by expanding South Station or building the rail line."
Building the rail link would cost between $2 billion and $8 billion, and take around five years to complete, according to Boston Uncovered.
But getting the project from drawing board to shovel-ready will likely not be easy.
Moulton brushed aside a suggestion that such an undertaking could be completed by the cash-strapped and perennially challenged MBTA, which could face a "fiscal cliff" as soon as the 2025 budget year.
If the work is going to get done, it will happen because of partnerships teaming the government with privately run planning and construction firms, he said.
"When you look all around the globe the most successful projects have been done by public-private partnerships. You bring in the most experienced contractors in the private sector and give them the proper public oversight.
"I would never suggest giving this to the [MBTA]; they don't have the capacity" Moulton added, while stressing his respect for Phillip Eng, the agency's general manager and CEO.
Moulton Looks to Win Hearts, Minds For Project
James E. Rooney, the president and CEO of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, credited Moulton for his leadership on what he described as a key challenge for both the city and the state at large.
"For projects like this to get to the finish line, they need a prominent champion who sees the value, and who can effectively articulate that value in the public space," Rooney said. "And [Moulton] has stepped up to that challenge."
Among the many Bostonians for whom the cost and inconvenience of the Big Dig is still within living memory, there could be some reluctance to embrace another mammoth infrastructure project.
But in the three decades since the Big Dig, a massively expensive freeway and tunnel project linking downtown Boston to Logan International Airport, the tunneling technology has changed, and that means more benefits and less mess.
"In a number of spaces, where things are proposed, we have suffered for a good 25 years from Big Dig hangover and apprehension [over] big projects," Rooney said. "I hope we are turning the corner, and embrace the need for big projects, including this one.
"We're in an era in which the continued vibrancy and economic growth of the Boston/Cambridge ecosystem depends on the growth of regional economies across the state," he continued, adding later, "We have to find again our capacity to embrace the bold like we did when we did the Big Dig. Our future depends on it."
According to Moulton — no stranger to waging and winning campaigns — that means winning the hearts and minds of voters, and, to him, this one is an open-and-shut case.
"It's getting more people to see the shocking results of this study, that not only point out the enormous benefits to housing and climate and racial and environmental justice, to getting around the commonwealth faster than you can today," he said.
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