Recent content by Blackbird

I wonder the extent to which the housing crisis has exacerbated traffic. My theory: people need to drive farther to work, school, errands, etc. because they can’t afford to live close to those things anymore. As a result, even if there aren’t actually many more cars on the road as before, you...

Ah, yes. The hearing that’s at 2pm on a weekday 🙄

Thank God. I do commute via the stretch DZ’s talking about and will attest that the 3rd-from-the-right lane is bad to the point I’m surprised my 2006 Toyota doesn’t fall apart as I drive over it. If the work was supposed to start in summer ‘23, do you know what might be holding it up?

Attempts to do anything to make these towns less prestigious/exclusive is going to be met with fierce opposition. The point stands that if the state specifically wanted to integrate schools, there are more direct ways of doing so that don’t involve building any new housing. And really, whether...

If that were indeed the motivation, the state could force districts to participate in METCO. Desegregation and solving the housing crisis might be a little related but they are mostly independent of each other.

I appreciate the sentiment, but I still disagree. Trying to tackle a complex problem with a complex solution just causes compounding complexity. Maybe accessibility to the 128 station should be improved. Maybe SFH isn’t the best use of land near that Littleton stop. Shawn gave a great example...

I was moreso envisioning “the following zoning laws are illegal within x miles of a train station” rather than “here is the zoning you will use”.

+1. Get rid of local zoning! It was a mistake for the state to leave the specifics of enforcing this law up to the individual towns. Sudbury in 2024 was never going to agree to building more houses for the undesirables to start moving in that could also cause the value of their rotting...

This one just popped up on FB for me!

How dare you overreach my overreach!

From the top of the station landing garage:

+1. We should outlaw zoning all together. The West End was torn down by the public sector, not the private one. The city of Boston and state of MA did it to themselves. If anything, less local control might have saved the neighborhood.

Was Lord and Taylor any different?

If rich people were leaving the state, I’d expect more homes to be on the market in the region’s nicer suburbs?

Blame these, at least, on Beacon Hill, not City Hall. And Wu seems to be doing more to encourage housing development/affordability in the city than any mayor I’ve seen in my lifetime.