Recent content by omaja

Quite the Baker-aggrandizing piece of literature. One might think the commuter rail is the engine driving the majority of commerce in the region and that Baker has thought up a revolutionary way to fix it. The improvements and innovation the piece talks about come at a price. That price is still...

The modeling has already been done. Safety studies have already been done. This isn't something that MA would be reinventing; we're talking about the most common interchange setup on the busiest freeway in North America: Highway 401 through Toronto area - not to mention countless other uses...

I've read SPUIs are just as safe as a traditional diamond interchange but are built to handle significantly more volume. Perhaps this is what you've read? Higher volumes would yield more accidents in total, but the accident rate for each would be the same. This is absolutely correct. SPUIs...

Banco Santander's global head office is located in the suburbs of Madrid, not in the city of Santander. There initially would have been decent traffic, but the bank has not been doing too well for a number of years and as a result its contribution to BOS-MAD traffic is nowhere near what you...

No, they two serve different purposes. In essence, a SPUI is a better all-around interchange whereas the DD is better for instances where traffic is more unidirectional at any given time (say morning versus evening rush). SPUIs centralize all movements in one very high-capacity intersection with...

Completely agreed. That is one of the major complaints I have with Boston is that it seems that parking always comes before mobility for both personal autos and buses. Where are the rush-hour parking restrictions, turning lanes and general lane enforcement rules that are so prevalent basically...

"The new Upper Busway Canopy for the expanded upper Busway at Forest Hills Station on the Orange Line will facilitate year round Bus Operations." Given that the original canopy did a mediocre job shielding people from the elements, I'm not sure how "year round" operations will be any better...

So what do we need to do to raise the fine for blocking the FH upper busway exit to $500 and get someone out there to actually enforce it? The white box and small "DO NOT BLOCK INTERSECTION" "FINE $150" signs just aren't cutting it with the increased volume. It took a good 15 minutes for the...

It is disappointing that JetBlue still isn't serving the Midwest (Minneapolis, St. Louis, Cleveland, Kansas City, Omaha, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, etc.) and instead thinks it is better to add some very seasonal routes ex-BOS. I suppose it is lower cost because they already operate...

Re: Dr. Beverly Scott resigns What does Chicago do differently from Boston (excluding the newer rolling stock it has) to mitigate winter weather? I would not include Montreal and Toronto in the same category because the majority of each city's system is underground. Minneapolis and St. Louis...

Re: MBTA & Regular Driving May Be Shut Down During Coming Snowstorm! Jeff, you're conflating capital improvements with operations which are very different in terms of funding and execution. I completely agree that there are ineffiencies across the system, but when we're talking about a very...

Re: MBTA & Regular Driving May Be Shut Down During Coming Snowstorm! As much as I love to rag on the MBTA for its faults and operational failures, I really don't think wasting time looking at "best practices" elsewhere will help anything at all. I think it is fairly obvious that the major...

Re: Dr. Beverly Scott resigns An inordinate amount of emphasis is placed on finding someone who deals with transit in a similar climate. We don't need someone who has dealt with 70"+ of snow in one winter. We need a leader that has experience managing crises, empowering the organization, and...

Re: MBTA & Regular Driving May Be Shut Down During Coming Snowstorm! ^ To add, those increases are only supposed to keep up with inflation, not fix a full-blown fiscal, operational and maintenance crisis.

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos Remember the time we hired this guy's predecessor to run the MBTA? The Remarkable Turnaround of Atlanta Public Transit