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I see. Yes, that's fair, this is mostly focused on transportation planning. But it does touch on land use a bit. This says one of the possible policies DOT should be considering for reducing VMT for new projects is "land use, including but not limited to residential and other density increases...

This bill isn't really to do studies. It's to force DOT and MPOs to actually implement policies based on what we already know. This is using those past studies to actually do something. This looks broadly good (but maybe other people know state gov better could chime in). This is the meat of the...

I'm not sure I agree. Just as a general principle, I think bike lanes should go where people need to go, and a bunch of places people need to go are on Eastern Ave. We generally don't tell drivers they can't use a street because there's a nearby, parallel street. Specifically for this stretch, I...

Agree. I have no problem with the MBTA charging a lot extra for this special service. But I do hope they've picked a price that still leads to basically sold out trains. It is still early, though. Especially for people coming from out of town, they might not have thought though transportation...

That's such an interesting hobby and I'd love to hear more! Are you imagining some topology that makes the streets stray off of a perfect grid? What's the population of that city? Do you play with different different design philosophies for layouts of streets, parks, important buildings?

I, too, think it's really bad that our federal government is mostly a gerontocracy at this point. I also think it's a kind of a bad prejudice to not want someone in office just because they're old. There are specific problems that could make older people bad representatives, and it's probably...

Such a cool picture! I've never seen that before. Here's a much older (1912?) pic of the rail yard in action. Crazy to think of Boylston Street like this.

There are a lot of little things I'd criticize about the new design. Food vendors would help for sure. I can think of some other changes I'd make. But FWIW, every time I go by, it's been busy and pretty well used. The new space seems especially good for the farmers market and whatever other...

The new connection to the bus terminal still isn't open, as of a couple of days ago when I went by. It didn't even look like they were set up to be working on anything. Work on the pedestrian experience in and around our biggest transit hub continues to look pretty half-assed. SST should not...

But they did install an elevator on the Lyric side that takes you down to the platforms. It's just not open. That's not enough for an "accessible path of travel to the platforms?" This is one station I've had to use a bunch lately and actually really needed an elevator. It's frustrating seeing...

They're planning a bike/pedestrian bridge over the commuter rail tracks, so people can more easily get to Alewife Station. There's a thread for this project, and you can see some renders of the bridge there...

Ok, jumping back to this article kind of late, but it covers so much of the bad logic regularly thrown into the millionaires tax debate. Keep these in mind the next time a bad article on this inevitably comes out. Just for this article, it is ostensibly about broader conversations of the...

Thanks! I took your advice. If I thought they'd publish it, I'd have spent another ten minutes on it, but it gets the point across. It seems lots of people took issue with that article: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/03/28/opinion/letters-wealthy-bemoan-mass-millionaires-tax/ I still kind of...

Apparently MBTA plans to charge $75 for train tickets for World Cup games. (I think that's round trip, but the article is actually phrased a little weird.) https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7150121/2026/03/26/boston-gillette-stadium-train-tickets-world-cup/

If Boston annexs Newton then Boston College will finally be in Boston. Seems only fair. But seriously, why draw the line at those two? Expanding Boston make a lot of sense but I have no idea where I'd draw lines.

No one has touched this thread in almost a year?! Fixing that: There's been a bunch of discussion here lately about Compass Rail and East-West Rail. It's all fixing up existing infrastructure, which is obviously the right thing to do. But I have been thinking about what it would look like if...

For complicated, interconnected transportation planning, it's kind of hard to say definitively what was "intended." But for a lot of the people involved, yeah, I don't doubt that the current state is basically what was intended. Real rapid transit moved to richer and whiter neighborhoods and...

It appears this was actually enacted 2023. Did something new happen with this? It's incentives for towns to voluntarily change their zoning to allow smaller homes. Has any town actually taken up the offer?

To maybe put your mind at ease, the question of "Do the rich move in response to higher taxes?" has be studied a lot. And the answer is always the same: Yes, a very tiny number of millionaires will move. Think a fraction of a percent. Overwhelmingly rich people don't move in response to taxes...

I'm thinking over how well this really works. I'm starting to come around, but I'm working on questions. Regardless, the map just looks really nice! How are you making this? And I think it would be a little clearer if you label which stations would have transfers to Commuter Rail. Some I think...