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In January 2015, Rich Davey was named the Chief Executive Officer of the Boston 2024 Partnership, the organization seeking to bring the Olympics and Paralympic Summer Games to Boston.  In early January, the United States Olympic Committee selected Boston as the United States’ official Bid City. 

Prior to working at Boston 2024, Rich served for over a decade in chief executive and senior management roles in several transportation organizations in Massachusetts. Immediately prior to joining Boston 2024, Rich served for three years as Secretary and Chief Executive Officer of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation. He has been selected for numerous leadership awards including the Construction Management Association of America Person of the Year Award for his leadership and advancement of innovation throughout the state, the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce Ten Outstanding Young Leaders and the Boston Business Journal “Top 40 Under 40” award winner. 

Hosting the 2024 Olympics Will Help Rebuild Boston
I think the Olympics are an opportunity…I see the Olympics as one of those big opportunities to move the public and to move government and to move the private sector in a really compelling way.

Planning for the Long Term
The Olympics are all about, in Boston, thinking about and planning for our future—not the future being tomorrow’s rush hour, but 9 1/2 years from now, and 10 years from now, and 20 years from now. That’s what infrastructure is about: it’s about investing for the long term, taking the long view.

Even Boston’s World-Class Infrastructure Needs Maintenance & Upgrades
…President Eisenhower built the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s; the MBTA was the first subway system in America, built in 1897. But not a lot of investment has occurred in the Interstate Highway System or our transportation, our transit networks that were built 100-plus years ago.

Getting Ready for 2024
Can we be prepared for the games in 9 1/2 years? The answer is of course we can. 9 1/2 years is a lot of time to make the investments that we need to make. And the good news is the team is already on its way, buying new subway cars, upgrading power and rail.

Boston and the Olympics Just Make Sense
I think Boston’s bid is completely aligned with where the International Olympic Committee has their vision. They want sustainable games, they want walkable games, they want games that have a great legacy value for the city and the state and the country that they’re held in.

Hosting the Olympics is an International Competition in Itself
…the USOC will officially submit our name to the International Olympic Committee this fall, and then we will know who our competitors are…this is really going to be a great international competition, great cities who are competing, and frankly I think we’ll make our bid better.

Download full transcript (PDF): Richard Davey on The Infra Blog

Tags: 2024 Olympics, Boston, Boston 2024, MA, Massachusetts, Olympics, Richard Davey

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 7th, 2015 at 11:05 am and is filed under Aging Infrastructure, Global, Guests on The Infra Blog, Local, The Infra Blog, Urban Planning . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.