Recent content by massmotorist

A lot of this thread is sprinkled with some incorrect assumptions that are resulting in false conclusions. First off, the idea that signalizing Storrow and turning it into a local roadway will not result in a huge decrease in throughput and massive increase in travel time and congestion is...

F-Line and AmericanFolkLegend said everything I would have said, so I have nothing to add other than... they're completely right. The lane narrowing idea is terrible, government building standards are generally higher than private ones, Bechtel got the cost estimates right and then the Weld...

But the question is - what value do infrastructure-based PPPs actually add? And the question isn't just whether there's any competitive market, it's about how competitive the market is. In my view the reason for these types of PPPs is that politicians are afraid to raise taxes, tolls, fees, or...

F-Line makes lots of good points, but it's also worth mentioning that the idea here isn't to funnel more traffic onto I-93. People here often take an overly city-centric view of things. Boston has lots of jobs, but most Boston-area jobs are in the suburbs. The office parks in Quincy and...

Re: North-South Rail Link I don't think this is true. The almost century-old technology of the parking garage solves much of the geometry problem. And I would bet that with no direct (municipally-owned) or regulatory (parking minimums), subsidies, you'd still get sufficient parking, albeit at...

The problem I find with these lanes is if they're physically separated you need to create separate breakdown lanes for them, which is a much less efficient use of resources than just adding a lane to the existing roadway. You also run into the problem of it actually not being any faster when you...

Re: North-South Rail Link I agree. The simplest, most cost-effective way to do it is market pricing of on-street parking (and, indeed, all parking - sell municipal lots) a la SFPark. You achieve the benefits of congestion pricing without the overhead and government intrusion of congestion...

Re: North-South Rail Link Let the market decide. Remove the regulatory restrictions on parking minimums, as well as parking maximums. If people want parking they pay for it, if they don't they don't. If developers want to provide parking for their residents/workers, they can, if they don't...

Re: North-South Rail Link I think the Big Dig is a big part of the reason Boston is doing so well right now while Route 128 is just doing okay. Lots of people take transit, but if you make a place practically inaccessible to cars in the way Boston was pre-Big Dig, you're going to exclude a...

Re: North-South Rail Link Not to mention the fact that you'd be eliminating a vital transportation link that carries 250,000+ people a day. "Highway interests" = majority of region's population.

True, but here there's probably already sufficient state-owned land to build a complete, modern interchange with little to no eminent domain taking. At the Pike/Expressway exchange you would've had to take and demolish chunks of the city. That said I'm sure they could find a reasonable balance...

This I could go for, as a next-best option to toll removal, for A/B and Weston tolls (and certainly for harbor tunnel/bridge tolls, which no one is proposing removing). Wouldn't work for the Western Pike, but those are scheduled for decommissioning in 2017 anyway. Side note - existing toll and...

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos You used to be able to buy them online. Minimum $10 I believe, and they'd mail them to you. I don't understand why they did away with that option. Makes things too easy for their customers, I guess.

Dan Winslow proposed converting the "zipper lane" south of Boston to an HOT lane.

Re: Boston to Cape rail Now you just might have sold me on this. I've long wondered why the state doesn't open cash bars anywhere residents are forced to interact with it. Serving drinks at the RMV would probably fix the deficit in and of itself.