By Jim O'Sullivan

The rough draft, released Tuesday, of a report by a local think tank dissected the proposed "Urban Ring," the MBTA expansion that transportation officials predict will transform the way people get around Boston. Citing serious funding and planning concerns, the report, published by the Kennedy School of Government's Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, also touted the future project as a new means for nurturing development and putting a face on Greater Boston.

The Urban Ring, backed by Boston and surrounding municipalities Chelsea, Somerville, Cambridge, Brookline, and Everett, would, supporters say, create a "circumferential" network of public transportation and ease access to downtown and travel around the outskirts. The report cited Dorchester and Roxbury as neighborhoods whose denizens stood to benefit, gaining easier passage to high-employment areas like Longwood Medical or Kendall Square.

Charles C. Euchner, executive director of the Harvard-tied institute, and Anthony Flint, Boston Globe development writer, authored the report, which recognizes concerns in Uphams Corner that that area has not been granted "transit justice." Scheduled to benefit from the Fairmount Line &emdash; designed to better rail service to Dorchester, Mattapan, and Roxbury &emdash; the neighborhood's residents have protested that the current system does not adequately cater to densely-populated, frequently minority-dominated, neighborhoods.

Euchner and Flint suggest that the Urban Ring is "a good thing for minority neighborhoods because it will improve transit service and access to jobs and health care, and spark development of industrial sites or otherwise underutilized inner-city property.

But the report also claims that, "[a]t best, there is little positive evidence for a transit-development link," a central selling point for the undertaking.

Ring advocates claim that the Urban Ring, tentatively scheduled for completion and implementation around 2015, would promote "smart growth" &emdash; the development of empty and underused parcels.

While some in Uphams Corner and other areas eye Ring development for its economic payoffs, skeptics fear that it "would actually be too effective at spurring economic development for the food of current residents in lower-income neighborhoods," a gentrification process that might price out current residents.

Another obstacle to the Ring's development is found at the bottom line, where Big Dig hangover raises nearly-crippling cost concerns. With a price tag expected between $2 billion and $3 billion, planners face a state already in fiscal crisis and a federal government wary of sending more dollars to the Northeast, where highway reconstruction fetched billions and ran over its predicted cost and time schedule.

MBTA spokeswoman Lydia Rivera said, because the Rappaport paper was a rough draft, that the T had no comment.

No derail on Dot jobs

Rivera said that the Romney Admini-stration's announced plans to back-burner commuter rail lines like those designed for the South Shore and Fall River-New Bedford will have no impact on local projects. The Fairmount Line and rehab to Dorchester Red Line Stations Savin Hill, Fields Corner, Shawmut, and Ashmont all remain "high up" on the priority list of Michael Mulhern, general manager of the T, according to Rivera.