I suspect it is more the *landlords* who will be benefiting without the pain. The people who are actually living there still have many of their usual routes blocked by the construction.

Ah yeah, I have wondered about that now and then.

Here's an interesting piece related to all this: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/mar/19/how-public-transport-actually-turns-a-profit-in-hong-kong

« “Once we build the railway, the value of land rises and we capture the increase in value,” says Jacob Kam, managing director and soon-to-be chief executive, of Hong Kong’s Mass Transit Railway (MTR) Corporation.

This “rail plus property” model allows Hong Kong’s public transport company to be self-financing – unlike most of its counterparts around the world, many of which are loss-making and need to be subsidised by government. »

I don't know enough about this topic to have any idea how applicable it is to Massachusetts, but it did turn on a light bulb for me: The MBTA is creating real estate value using public funds (right?), and wealthy, private speculators are taking it for their own profit.