I’d make a few points:

1) My priority around public transportation is maintenance — making the assets we already have work properly. Absent a miraculous source of additional funds, every massive new project is competing in a zero sum game with maintenance dollars. After that, I agree with our correspondent that there are a places with high value additions to our public transportation exist.

2) But my read of the Globe article suggests that moving to the suburbs, which is an implicit choice to use a car, is growing within the biotech industry. The study (and certainly the presentation that launched it) suggested something far different — that transit was the key to continued growth in the biotech industry.

3) Pioneer certainly views improvement in transportation infrastructure as an important investment that government (perhaps with private partners at times?) can make. But we question the cost-effectiveness of many public transit commitments. Take the current performance of the Greenbush line for example.

And I say that as a Zone 1 pass carrying rider of the MBTA.

Thanks again for your interest and input.

What the Globe piece actually says, if you move past the misleading headline, is that the biotech industry is doing so well that it’s starting to tap out all available space in Cambridge, despite a huge amount of recent construction. Rents are up, vacancies are down, and available lots scarce. That all suggests that demand for biotech space in Cambridge has, in fact, never been stronger. In fact, Cambridge continues to add biotech jobs at a healthy clip – it’s just that the industry is now expanding at a rate that outpaces the availability of space in Cambridge itself, or the ability of developers to add more.

Surely the Pioneer Institute, of all places, is capable of seeing the power of free market forces in action?

So what’s happening is that the industry is separating itself out. The biggest industry players, which are well-capitalized, are more than willing to pay the necessary premium for Cambridge space for their R&D facilities. Pfizer, Amgen, Novartis, Schering-Plough, Genzyme, Sanofi-Aventis, AkzoNobel – they’re all pouring resources into their Cambridge facilities, but those are specialized facilities for research. Early-stage start-ups, which are research driven and will succeed or fail based on their ability to attract talent and funding, both of which require networking and proximity to existing firms and research centers, likewise continue to abound in Cambridge. But more mature firms, manufacturing facilities, back-office operations – in short, every segment of the industry that doesn’t directly involve research – these are all seeking cheaper space. So far, that hasn’t dented the demand in Cambridge; it’s simply fueled the economies of surrounding communities.

That brings us to the CURP and A Better City study released last year. Like most such reporters, it rather overstates its case. It tries to tie virtually every major transportation infrastructure project that’s been proposed in the city to the current hot economic sector – biotech – in the apparent hope that the current vogue for biotech will rub off on the less-glamorous infrastructure needs facing the region.

Even so, they’re quite right to note that Boston’s infrastructure is abysmal, and in need of improvement. Moreover, the Globe story only underscores the need outlined in the study. So far, the biotech industry has thrived in part because of its density – Boston’s critical advantage is that so many commercial, educational, and medical institutions are clustered so closely. As demand for space continues to soar, the biotech industry will necessarily spread over a wider area. To the extent that we can offer easy connections between the areas where manufacturing facilities cluster and the research clusters of Cambridge, the industry will likely continue to thrive. If it becomes impossible for firms to find affordable space with easy connections to the institutions where their researchers work, then that poses some obstacles.

Scanning down the list of projects, only a few leap out. Studying and enhancing the bus routes and connections between the hopsitals and Kendall Square certainly seems like a simple and cost-effective measure that could be taken. The Urban Ring may be little more than a pipe dream for decades to come, but it does seem imperative to fast-track an intermodal link, whether it’s the “River Station” or “West Station” – with manufacturing facilities moving out to suburbia, we could use a way to tie more of the commuter rail system more directly to the Red Line, in paricular.

I know that government spending sticks in your collective craw. But public transit is the quintessential service that government can provide to facilitate the growth of private industry. It is, in all likelihood, both more cost-effective and more neutral than the billion-dollar plan currently being pushed through the legislature. Improving our local transportation infrastructure doesn’t put government in the position of picking winners or losers, or meddling with market forces. It just improves the conditions for local entrepreneurs to continue to do what they do best – develop products and services that can find global markets, and build jobs and prosperity. With space drying up in Cambridge, we’re going to need to do something to maintain the comparative advantage that tight clustering has hitherto conferred. Do you have alternative suggestions?