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I've noticed the Hoosac Tunnel also has a long-term susceptibility to carrying train traffic. Been doing it since 1875. Seriously, your cautionary tale against tunneling though the Berkshires is that.... it's already been done, by engineers in the mid-1800's, with primitive technology, it...

An hour and ten minutes from Albany to Pittsfield... I posted something in the God Mode Transit Planning thread a little while ago, about where to build new High Speed mainlines for East-West or Compass Rail. It was this Albany-Pittsfield segment that had me thinking about it in the first...

Just to be clear, those aren't whole lines being shut down for months. The Northern Line will just be closing early (10pm) four nights a week for those months. Similar for the Piccadilly, as far as I can tell. There are a few all-day closures sprinkled in there. Barons Court will be closed for a...

There are lots of events in Copley that use that hardscape. Most frequent is the twice-per-week farmers market. They used to set up on the grass, which killed the grass. There are other events popping up in Copley that use the hardscape. It seems to be very well used. It's not just for the Marathon.

The Piers Park Sailing Center had their opening day over the weekend.

I'm not sure I agree with you which is worse. Closing a line or branch all day for a week is more disruptive. It affects far more people. That's far more people who get persuaded that they can't rely on the T and their household needs a car, or a second car, or they'll change jobs, or they'll...

Are long rapid transit shutdowns more common now than they were prior to 2024? Does anyone have the data on this? 2024 was the year of the shutdowns, when the T was closing big sections of track for days or weeks for repairs. At the time, it was a pretty big deal to be shutting down a section...

Boston recently released a Climate Action Plan. The few articles I've seen about it mostly just mention they plan to study possibly implementing congestion pricing (good!), but that's also just a sliver what's in the 200+ page document. Has anyone else done a deeper dive? Thoughts...

I guess I don't know all the facets of John Henry's wealth. What does he have to do with nuclear power?

You know what? I take this back. I was too quick to be snarky. In my experience, Providence Station is pretty nice, and it seems well scaled to meet day-to-day needs. It even has decent bathrooms. (Maybe people who use it more than I do know better.) We shouldn't be overbuilding stations to...

Curious about this. I know there's a push in some places to get away from 12 ft travel lanes. They're fine for highways, but on city streets they just encourage speeding. Any idea what the regulations would be for Eastern Ave? And besides regulations, is there some reason this street...

It's a real shame this does not also describe the city's main train station.

No, sorry. It was on display just a short time, over a year ago now. I think some people on this forum have mentioned that mockups like this sometimes end up in rail/trolley museums, but the real trains will probably be in service before that happens.

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.