> My office in Cambridge, Massachusetts is directly in a 12 story tower with ground floor retail directly on top of a transit station
That station (the Google Office MIT/Kendall one I'm assuming) was part of the larger redevelopment that happened in Kendall Square over the last 40 years which displaced a significant portion of Cambridge residents due to eh flawed 1949 Urban Redevelopment Act (the same one James Baldwin historically opposed).
Just go one stop inbound (MGH) or outbound (Central) and that level of synergy goes away.
A lot of this is because the T is just straight up old. Most of the stations are at least a century old if not older and it would take an inordinate amount of money to rebuild stations in a more modern manner.
> I suspect the problem might be mismatched incentives
The Asian as well as the more recent North American metro systems like BART or DC Metro are much newer (built or rebuilt in the last 50-70 years) and were thus able to include that public-private mixture.
That station (the Google Office MIT/Kendall one I'm assuming) was part of the larger redevelopment that happened in Kendall Square over the last 40 years which displaced a significant portion of Cambridge residents due to eh flawed 1949 Urban Redevelopment Act (the same one James Baldwin historically opposed).
Just go one stop inbound (MGH) or outbound (Central) and that level of synergy goes away.
A lot of this is because the T is just straight up old. Most of the stations are at least a century old if not older and it would take an inordinate amount of money to rebuild stations in a more modern manner.
> I suspect the problem might be mismatched incentives
The Asian as well as the more recent North American metro systems like BART or DC Metro are much newer (built or rebuilt in the last 50-70 years) and were thus able to include that public-private mixture.