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    The Official MBTA System Map

    Do you have some thinking on which parks and water you're including and why? This sounded like a good idea, but I'm getting warry. Some parts look alright, but I'm starting to think the parks especially are distracting detail.
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    Downtown Crossing/Financial District | Discussion

    Thanks for that. That presentation from 2021 seems to address everything I was just complaining about, so I'm glad to see someone in city government was working on it. But three years later it's really disheartening to see this in their proposed timeline:
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    Downtown Crossing/Financial District | Discussion

    I've been in DTX with folks who didn't even notice that that stretch of Washington is supposed to be for pedestrians. Once I was there with friends from out of town and they asked why I was walking in the middle of the road. Once, soon after walking together through DTX, a family member asked if...
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    Reasonable Transit Pitches

    I still disagree a bit. Investors are also allowed to put their money into bad ideas, and again, maybe they prove us wrong. It's only a grift or a con if these guys are lying to investors, but really, they seem to be pretty forthright even on the limitations of the project. They show the speed...
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    Reasonable Transit Pitches

    I agree this isn't a good idea. But just giving them the benefit of the doubt.... are you sure this is a grift? That seems harsh. I don't see any nefarious history about these guys. It seems like they're actually building a prototype boat. They're clear on their website how slow this will be (67...
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    Portland Passenger Rail

    Am I reading you right that the Bayside Trail is a landbanked rail ROW? Like, they could restore a whole line from the current main line up to Tukey's Bridge? I know you're trying to solve a bunch of other problems with your proposal there, but it would be really great to be able to move the...
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    MassDOT Rail: Springfield Hub (East-West, NNERI, Berkshires, CT-Valley-VT-Quebec)

    I think part of the difference is these are different kinds of trains services with different goals. New Bedford is commuter/regional rail, while Greenfield would be intercity rail (basically, Amtrak). The point of commuter/regional rail is get people around the metro area day-to-day. That...
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    Portland Passenger Rail

    When I think of a no-expense-spared tunnel through Portland, I put the station in median of Franklin Street, right at Congress. Connections to city busses right outside. Move the intercity bus station to be on top of the train station, and they'd have easy access to 295. Trains could run in a...
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    MassDOT Rail: Springfield Hub (East-West, NNERI, Berkshires, CT-Valley-VT-Quebec)

    Starting with bus service could make sense because it's so much cheaper. But just a couple of points in favor of just starting with rail: Even in the cheapest rail option in that study, the time from Greenfield to Boston would be competitive with driving (2:35 by rail versus an average 2:10 for...
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    Portland Passenger Rail

    That says they want to keep open the option to run east-west services through the new station, too, I guess along the line to Westbrook. But, really? That sounds pretty far fetched. The only new service I've ever heard proposed is to Lewiston/Auburn, but that's north. (Tangentially, did...
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    South Station Tower | South Station Air Rights | Downtown

    Yeah, what we're getting is clearly vastly superior. But this tower plus the next couple of planned phases will add 895 parking spaces. That's obviously less than 1700, but still a kind of absurd thing to build on top of our biggest transit hub.
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    Winthrop Center | 115 Winthrop Square | Financial District

    Just for reference, the decorative cladding went up March last year, and people on this forum noticed it was taken down on April 4, 2023. So they've already been trying to fix this for well over a year. That's surprising it would take so long. As someone who knows nothing about this kind of...
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    General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

    Here's a service disruption I'm ok with! Ferry service might have minor delays today because of a young humpback whale in Boston Harbor. https://x.com/MBTA/status/1823735432162443412
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    General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

    Yes you can. The slow zones have been a huge pain in the ass. This whole year of shutdowns has also been a huge pain in the ass. I'm glad the shutdowns seem to be working, but still furious the T got so bad that a whole year of shutdowns became necessary. If the T were reasonably funded and...
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    Somerville Infill and Small Developments

    I don't know anything more about these groups than what I'm reading in the documents, so I can't help there. But I kinda want to stress just how nakedly bad-faith these arguments are. The complaining neighbors are claiming the church will get "great financial gain" by working with a local...
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    Somerville Infill and Small Developments

    Wow. The details in their argument there make it all even worse. The neighbors say this kind of variance is only allowed if it's for a "religiously significant goal." And then these sad people just assume that helping the poor somehow can't be religiously significant for a Christian church...
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    Potential Exelon Mystic Station Redevelopment | Everett

    Healey has called on the legislature to come back and hash out the economic development bill that got dropped. This is the bill the senate stuck the stadium provisions in, so this is still kind of, sort of, maybe in play. Healey is using the bully pulpit to try to push this bill through, but...
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    Biking in Boston

    The article includes a literal "windshield view" photo
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    If You Were God/Goddess | Transit & Infrastructure Sandbox

    I'm also curious about this. I kind of doubt this has been specifically studied, though, just because it's about a lot of squishier things like aesthetics and public opinion, and that'd be hard to measure. Along those lines, though, does anyone have some examples of modern, aesthetically...
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    If You Were God/Goddess | Transit & Infrastructure Sandbox

    Oh I see, my bad. I was reading what you said exactly backwards. Nevermind

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