Search results

I feel like the Globe runs one of these "Boston should really be a Winter City" articles once a year. I mean, I agree. I'm not sure how we get there. One totally impractical winter tradition I'd love to bring back, is they used to flood and freeze Franklin Field (now Harambe Park) every winter...

This is also something I've just been thinking about lately. There used to be sooo many rapid transit stations around Boston that were designed so you could transfer from a trolley/bus to the train, all indoors. Or at least, under a roof. Many of the stations even had ramps to take the...

What do you mean by this one? like, a whole new bridge parallel to the Mass Ave bridge? Was there ever a proposal for that?

I like this idea. I wish there were more indoor connections like that. And it still catches me by surprise sometimes when you say you remember these places. Here are couple more pics of the old "Massachusetts Station." Pictures definitely from before your time...

I agree with a lot of the criticisms here. There was huge room for improvement to make this a better urban space. But FWIW, my own anecdotal observations are that the area is busier with pedestrians than those recent pictures depict. It seemed like a ghost town when it opened, but keeps getting...

Here are some criticisms. None of this is to say I don't like the whole project. The building is fine and bus terminal expansion is pretty nice. But there are parts of the pedestrian experience that seem really half-assed here. Walking in from Summer Street, this is the wayfinding you see to...

I don't really have the answer for you, but are you sure the premise of your question is correct? My guess is that Europe didn't build a lot of high level platforms in the late 19th-early 20th century, just like the US. That probably wasn't the de facto thing to do in major stations until a bit...

That all makes sense. But it doesn't explain why these kind of places hardly existed 10-15 years ago, and now there are a bunch. What changed? Oh boy, you missed the news! Boston now has one Michelin Star! https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2025/11/18/michelin-boston-restaurants-2025/

Does anyone have a good explanation for why these kinds of food halls are suddenly so popular? I feel like these were kind of rare even 10 years ago, and now there are a bunch in every city I visit. What about the economics of running a restaurant has pushed businesses in this direction? Or is...

I see, you're absolutely right. There's way more encroachment than I was thinking. Going along Route 6 looks tough in places. There are also some power line ROWs to look at, but I don't have any good suggestion for how to string them all together. This whole network you've drawn out is easily a...

@TheRatmeister , you designed this vast network, but didn't extend the Cape Cod rail all the way to Provincetown? C'mon. It's got a small year-round population, but in the summer it grows to ~50,000. That's bigger than Everett. Truro, along the way, has a similar summer swell from 2,400 to...

Not directly about MBTA Communities Act, but this blog post is related to a bunch of stuff people are talking about here: https://www.maxdubler.com/blog/2025/11/10/on-the-tension-between-yimbyism-and-strong-towns This guy has been working on making ADUs legal in California. The post is about a...

I'm so glad you finished this! Or, at least round one. It'll be fun to look through, but some initial thoughts and questions: For reviving abandoned routes, how much were you paying attention to what's been built over them already? Reviving rail-trails, fine. But a bunch of this requires...

That's exactly what I was looking for, thanks! So the blank wall I took pictures of would be the yellow building, which is phase 2 of 3. So... decades, but within my lifetime? Who knows. There's a lot of good things to say about this project. But that's a pretty crummy pedestrian experience to...

Sorry for the bad pictures, but what is supposed to eventually go in here? And on what timeline? It's kind of crazy that after all that construction, the ground floor along Atlantic includes a couple hundred feet of blank wall. Or, blank except for a couple of new curb cuts.

I hear you, but I don't think that's quite the right way to look at it, for a couple of reasons. First, this is so much better than the alternative, which is to keep allowing (or encouraging) low-density suburban sprawl. In that case, those households might need two or even three cars for...

I don't know. Has this been a waste of political capital? It seems like this was a non-issue when it was actually passed, so no political capital wasted there. Most of the fighting has been with a faceless state board that determines compliance, so politicians generally don't have to stick their...

Agreed. Even without delays, I've spent many hours there waiting to transfer between buses, or from a train to a bus, or whatever. It looks like there's some seating at each gate, but not much. Maybe that's enough in the usual case, but certainly not when a whole bus is delayed. I hardly ever...

Kind of hard to say. A weird mix. The vote to delay bike lane projects was passed by Toner, Pickets, Wilson, Simmons, and Nolan. Toner resigned from city council this year, charged in the brothel case. Pickets died in office last year. Wilson was just voted out. Simmons keeps her seat. And...

Elections were yesterday, and five of the nine elected to Cambridge City Council are committed to finishing the bike network on time. Burhan Azeem, Marc Mcgovern, Sumbul Siddiqui, Ayah Al-Zubi, and Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler. Two more, Patty Nolan and Cathie Zusy, were given a lesser endorsement...