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It's certainly some compelling foreshadowing. I'm sure we'd see the crack smoking crew come out in full force to support such a candidate in an amalgamated Boston. ;)

Exactly. Think about it this way: the area inside/around Route 128 is roughly 275 square miles and includes a population of at least two million. There are no less than thirty distinct municipalities in that area. Just think of the amount of duplicated efforts multiplied across all of those...

It would have to be sold on a platform of regional growth and efficiencies. In a phrase: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The region can't be at its best when every town is spending a whole lot of time, energy and money by duplicating the exact same efforts as every other small...

Yeah, I'm also not sure what a county realignment would accomplish? Unless we're talking about wholesale city-county government consolidations? Now Boston annexing all of the cities within/around 128... that would be a game changer. Give the former cities something like the status municipal...

If there's really no way to bore tunnels for a Mass Ave subway and the only options are to build an elevated structure or not build anything, don't you think the majority of people would say to go with the elevated?

Agreed. An easy delineating line is really 128 which is ~10 miles from Downtown: Any trips via commuter rail or subway which originate and terminate in this zone would be at the normal subway fare.

I don't see Berlin happening for awhile. Yes, Air Berlin has a hub there and can leverage the large AAdvantage following out of BOS, but there's still the British juggernaut at LHR which has a plethora of BOS service and can serve everything BER would be useful for and much, much more. Hub...

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos I haven't really noticed anything abnormally loud about the Orange Line at State... but perhaps it just seems that much quieter compared to the Green Line at Government Center which I used to contend with. ;) I maintain that the biggest issue on the...

^ It should all just be distance-based. Make the cut-off for Zone 1 (eliminate Zone 1A) be 10 miles from North or South Station and you'd encompass virtually all of the inner urbanized Boston area.

All of the above is why Uber is doing so spectacularly well. The cab system simply can't come to terms with how broken it is and fix what needs to be fixed in order to compete.

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos So asinine. Install card readers near the rear door and be done with it like several other transit agencies around the world.

Would really like to know where the author gets her statistics. According to the American Public Transportation Association, MBTA Commuter Rail was down 5.6% YOY as of Q2. Baltimore (MTA) was up 5.2%, Washington (VRE) down 3%, and San Francisco (Caltrain) up 8.7%. That's a far cry from the...

Both of those plans just plain suck. The second obviously less than the first, but it still seems incredibly sloppy. Wasn't the whole point of CSX vacating because they no longer needed the yard? Not sure I understand why the City of Boston now feels like it needs one in the same location?

Sorry, missed this post from awhile back. Two comments: 1. I know everyone loves to proclaim the virtues of the DXB hub, but I'm not sure how it managed to become one of the top hubs for BOS-SE Asia when the route doesn't start for another five months or so. :) 2. Even with the nonstop...

Emirates (and Turkish, for that matter) are primarily focused on taking BOS-India and BOS-Southeast Asia traffic that flows via Europe. Dubai is not at all convenient for really any significant BOS-Africa route. Turkish will also be able to conveniently serve BOS-Middle East. There's plenty...

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos Wasn't the other major component (aside from not having the electronic message boards at every stop) not having the tracking devices on the trolleys themselves? Seems a bit odd that they would have been able to overcome these obstacles and haven't had...

Well, one of the nice things about that stretch is that it's currently fairly industrial, including this lot that could help support an expanded yard. Think the MBTA could make a bit of a land grab there right now without too much push back.

I'm sure there are complications, but my thought would be that elevated structure could level off at the apex of the hill and run street-level for a time, whereas to do something similar with a subway you'd be looking at a deep subterranean station.

Assuming the goal would be to convert the buried segments to heavy rail, the main issue is exactly what you mention - the hills. You'd have some very deep stations at places like Washington Street where the grade from Warren would be far too steep of a climb for traditional subway cars...

We certainly have a ways to go in terms of density before we approach the size of Chicago or New York - which is perhaps what you are getting at - but my point is that the governmental boundaries are inconsequential since it isn't just the 645K people living within the city limits of Boston that...