Behind the scenes at Mass DOT

[massmotorist]

Yes, the Bowker Overpass is one of the examples I was thinking about, and also the McCarthy Overpass in Somerville.

Context-sensitive balance is something road planners have historically lacked. The 50s era attitude towards urban highways and overpasses is that they were a way of conducting large scale social engineering, and damn the consequences to the communities in the way.

The road/urban planners can always find an excuse for highway expansion if they continue with those assumptions and that attitude. I have watched people stand up and proclaim -- with a completely straight and serious face -- that we must continually expand the roadway system and increase capacity for the future, or else. There was absolutely zero thought given to the negative effects on the city. It's hard to have "balance" when one side is missing entirely.

From the 50's through the 70's road planners lacked context-sensitive balancing. No argument there.

But that attitude is largely gone. Ten years ago the Sullivan Overpass was torn down and never replaced. The Casey Overpass is going to be replaced with an at-grade roadway. By all means it looks as if the McCarthy Overpass will ultimately be town down and replaced with an at-grade roadway.

I don't know these areas well enough to say if the right calls are being made. My gut assumption is that back in the Golden Era of Highways they built some overpasses that they shouldn't have and now they're making it right where it's feasible. But at the same time traffic needs to go somewhere and areas have developed based upon current infrastructure. If you don't have major, grade-separated arterials, you're going to either divert traffic onto neighborhood streets, causing gridlock and choking off growth, or you're going to have to build wide, high-speed grade-level boulevards that handle heavy traffic more poorly and are just as bad for pedestrians.

Traffic engineers inherently need to look at levels of service and those types of metrics. They have neighborhood meetings to get a better sense of intangibles like how to accommodate pedestrians. But remember, as a state agency they represent the interests of not just local residents but the motoring public and the state's residents as a whole. No one wants a highway in their backyard. Given all that, it seems to me they do a pretty decent job of balancing the issues.

But what about the Brookline case?

I don't know enough about it, but it sounds like an interagency issue to me. I can tell you opposing signal prioritization for trolleys is not even on the radar of the state's most prominent motorist advocacy group.

 

[Matthew]

But at the same time traffic needs to go somewhere

Stop right there, that's the falsehood.

Traffic is not an immutable fact of the world. There is no law of conservation of traffic. It can increase or decrease, and a lot of that has to do with how much road supply you build.

The problem is that traffic "engineers" keep repeating this falsehood over and over again, and justify road widening with it. Naturally that leads to additional traffic, as the supply has increased. Like junkies, they keep on promising "just one more" and that'll be enough. But it never works out in the end.

Some folks at MassDOT understand. But plenty do not. That's how you get project managers showing up at Bowker or McCarthy overpass meetings and insisting that it's extremely difficult to tear them down. Or how you have some MassDOT officials running around throwing conflicting "traffic projections" for the Casey overpass around, getting that community all riled up.

I know they've done some good things. But there's plenty of room for improvement.

 

[vanshnookenraggen]

fap fap fap

 

[massmotorist]

Stop right there, that's the falsehood.

Traffic is not an immutable fact of the world. There is no law of conservation of traffic. It can increase or decrease, and a lot of that has to do with how much road supply you build.

The problem is that traffic "engineers" keep repeating this falsehood over and over again, and justify road widening with it. Naturally that leads to additional traffic, as the supply has increased. Like junkies, they keep on promising "just one more" and that'll be enough. But it never works out in the end.

Some folks at MassDOT understand. But plenty do not. That's how you get project managers showing up at Bowker or McCarthy overpass meetings and insisting that it's extremely difficult to tear them down. Or how you have some MassDOT officials running around throwing conflicting "traffic projections" for the Casey overpass around, getting that community all riled up.

I know they've done some good things. But there's plenty of room for improvement.

If "traffic" means traffic volume, you're right. Volume does tend to increase if you add a lane to a road, ceteris paribus. It's an unpriced commodity. So congestion is the de facto pricing mechanism. The more congested a road is, the more people will hold off on taking a trip. That can be fine. For a while.

But roads are useful things. They carry buses. They carry delivery trucks and commercial vehicles. They carry police and emergency vehicles. They carry the cars that take you places transit can't take you efficiently, the cars that transport goods too heavy to carry while walking.

For a while, congestion deters the most frivolous of trips. Or pushes marginal trips onto transit. But eventually you start to restrict necessary trips that can't be made by transit. And that can strangle off economic growth.

Witness the growth Boston has experienced since the elimination of the Central Artery's gridlock. In the short run the excess capacity in the O'Neil Tunnel induced some marginal demand. But it also freed up capacity for necessary trips. In the long run, the expansion helped give Boston the breathing room it needed to grow.

Roads and transit are necessary complements in major cities. The Waterfront needed the Pike extension. Transit alone could never have made it what it is today or will ultimately be. At the same time we'd probably agree it would be much better if the Silver Line were rail.

Even some of the highways that never should have been built may have to remain simply because the real estate has already been developed based upon their existence. If you have roads that are highly congested, and you further reduce throughput capacity, the resulting gridlock can cause stagnation. It can deter beneficial, necessary economic activity that could not be conducted without motor vehicles. Good transit can help, but it isn't a panacea.

 

[Matthew]

If "traffic" means traffic volume, you're right. Volume does tend to increase if you add a lane to a road, ceteris paribus. It's an unpriced commodity. So congestion is the de facto pricing mechanism. The more congested a road is, the more people will hold off on taking a trip. That can be fine. For a while.

But roads are useful things. They carry buses. They carry delivery trucks and commercial vehicles. They carry police and emergency vehicles. They carry the cars that take you places transit can't take you efficiently, the cars that transport goods too heavy to carry while walking.

Indeed, so the conclusion I'd draw from that is to price the commodity.

For a while, congestion deters the most frivolous of trips. Or pushes marginal trips onto transit. But eventually you start to restrict necessary trips that can't be made by transit. And that can strangle off economic growth.

Witness the growth Boston has experienced since the elimination of the Central Artery's gridlock. In the short run the excess capacity in the O'Neil Tunnel induced some marginal demand. But it also freed up capacity for necessary trips. In the long run, the expansion helped give Boston the breathing room it needed to grow.

Do you have better data on this? It's hard to find much in the way of studies which really attempt to separate the effect of the CA/T from the rest of the economy. So far, I have one which claims $168 million annually.

Even some of the highways that never should have been built may have to remain simply because the real estate has already been developed based upon their existence. If you have roads that are highly congested, and you further reduce throughput capacity, the resulting gridlock can cause stagnation. It can deter beneficial, necessary economic activity that could not be conducted without motor vehicles. Good transit can help, but it isn't a panacea.

It's been pretty well established that increasing road supply doesn't cure congestion. Wouldn't you say that congestion is more of a sign that the economy is functioning well, that people have a desire to get out and go about? Or is this another version of the old "Nobody goes there, it's too crowded" joke? Congestion seems to be correlated with population size; interestingly, New York is one city that is well below trend on this.

 

[ant8904]

Indeed, so the conclusion I'd draw from that is to price the commodity.

Is pricing the commodity everything you ever advocate? We have plenty of mass transit and other modes of transportation as well as the way we set our cities up before we should consider that idea and its advocacy. We talked plenty before about its cons before. This time I'll just bring up that while it is correct that we shouldn't just keep adding lanes to everything, not every congestion - at least in the Boston Area - is just superfluous trips so we should price it away.

You keep writing as well all congestion is the same. As if we turn all the streets to 1 lane roads and price it to congestion, then everything would work. A lot of traffic I suspect in the Boston area are trips of necessity (like rush hour traffic are people going to work and make up much of our congestion). Not to mention much of the unnecessary trips are only necessary because much of our alternatives suck (though fortunately not as bad as the much of the rest of the country as at least we have alternatives).

 

[Matthew]

No, it's not everything I ever advocate

I'm just in agreement with massmotorist that "congestion is the de facto pricing mechanism."

 

[massmotorist]

Indeed, so the conclusion I'd draw from that is to price the commodity.

The economics of it are unimpeachable; I strongly oppose it nonetheless on civil liberties grounds. The only way to do it efficiently would give the government a complete history of where we are and where we've been at any given time.

I also have doubts about its practicality; I doubt that we could establish a government agency that would properly price congestion to maximize societal benefit with correct market prices. There would be pressure from motorists to cap congestion charges, pressure from environmentalists to use it to tamp down driving, pressure from legislators and governors to use it to maximize revenue. Even if we established it, I doubt we could maintain it. Most times of day the proper way to run it would be to have it be free because at those times traffic is free flowing, during peak periods it would be very high, I doubt it would be allowed to function properly.

Do you have better data on this? It's hard to find much in the way of studies which really attempt to separate the effect of the CA/T from the rest of the economy. So far, I have one which claims $168 million annually.

Nope, it's kind of tough to get reliable data on this stuff.

It's been pretty well established that increasing road supply doesn't cure congestion. Wouldn't you say that congestion is more of a sign that the economy is functioning well, that people have a desire to get out and go about? Or is this another version of the old "Nobody goes there, it's too crowded" joke? Congestion seems to be correlated with population size; interestingly, New York is one city that is well below trend on this.

When there is a lot of excess capacity, demand at the margin is very elastic. When there is very little, it is inelastic. These marginal trips are sensitive to congestion as well as price. There are different degrees (how bad) and extents (how many hours of the day) of congestion. The Central Artery was dysfunctionally congested for something like 10 hours a day, because the marginal trips were gone. All that was left was the needed trips. The Big Dig might have induced some demand, but it didn't induce enough to replicate the way it used to be.

I drive on Route 128 daily in the three lane segment. My side of the road is always pretty full during rush hour. You can't go 80 mph, but it moves, at 45+ mph. That's the type of traffic that road expansion will never eliminate, and it's why in the long run traffic engineers can't hope for any better than a "C" level of service on urban highways.

But my commute is the reverse of most peoples' - if you look at the opposite side of the highway during my commutes, it's literally stop and go gridlock for like two hours. That's the type of congestion you can eliminate with road expansion.

The dynamics of traffic flow and congestion are very complicated. Part of it is the economy, but it's also gas prices, draconian licensing laws deterring teens from getting licenses, increased transit use, etc.

 

[Matthew]

The economics of it are unimpeachable; I strongly oppose it nonetheless on civil liberties grounds. The only way to do it efficiently would give the government a complete history of where we are and where we've been at any given time.

I totally agree that VMT tracking for personal vehicles is not a good idea (it might be good for commercial vehicles though). But I wasn't thinking about that -- I was thinking more about variable-rate tolls. They may go down (yes, even to zero) when the roadway is underutilized, and may go up when it is overutilized. I don't think the prices will get so extreme as you fear, since it is a self-regulating mechanism. But it seems like a good problem to have, since it is a source of revenue to do improvements with (e.g. promote buses, transit and bypass routes), or it can be adjusted downwards to allow further congestion to build.

Nope, it's kind of tough to get reliable data on this stuff.

Well, this is why I'm leery of ascribing Boston's growth to the Big Dig. There's way too many factors. And if $168 million/year is true... then the value proposition was terrible in the end.

When there is a lot of excess capacity, demand at the margin is very elastic. When there is very little, it is inelastic.

Yes and no. Let me make an analogy. The old "drive til you qualify" motto for homebuying relied on availability of cheap or free highways and gasoline. The buyer had a choice prior to the point of sale about just how much driving they would have to do. And that choice was very elastic, dependent upon all kinds of prices. But once it was made, their trip needs "hardened" so to speak. The homeowner's trip to work now becomes one of those inelastic "needed" trips. So there's a difference between long term and short term when looking at trips. And land usage is closely tied up with transportation. Highway expansion is going to have a long term effect by giving a whole set of homeowners and developers motivation to sprawl further and further away. The trouble is, eventually it catches up with them, and their highway is clogged up with "needed" trips.

But my commute is the reverse of most peoples' - if you look at the opposite side of the highway during my commutes, it's literally stop and go gridlock for like two hours. That's the type of congestion you can eliminate with road expansion.

Can it? Or does it just shift the bottlenecks? If the highway is carrying mostly many-to-many source/destination trips, then perhaps it might work to expand. I'm just speculating. But it's pretty clear that if most of the people are travelling to one particular destination (say, downtown Boston), there's always going to be another bottleneck. And at the end of the road is the parking lot bottleneck. So even if you find a way to clear up all the other bottlenecks, then you have a bunch of motorists breathing down your neck about parking. And given enough political pressure, the bulldozers will come out.


P.S. isn't 40-45 mph found to be in studies as the "ideal" range for highest capacity flow on a highway?

 

[massmotorist]

I totally agree that VMT tracking for personal vehicles is not a good idea (it might be good for commercial vehicles though). But I wasn't thinking about that -- I was thinking more about variable-rate tolls. They may go down (yes, even to zero) when the roadway is underutilized, and may go up when it is overutilized. I don't think the prices will get so extreme as you fear, since it is a self-regulating mechanism. But it seems like a good problem to have, since it is a source of revenue to do improvements with (e.g. promote buses, transit and bypass routes), or it can be adjusted downwards to allow further congestion to build.

Inevitably though, politicians will get addicted to the revenue and make decisions based upon maximizing it. That means skipping highway expansion to preserve revenue streams, or other policy distortions.

Yes and no. Let me make an analogy. The old "drive til you qualify" motto for homebuying relied on availability of cheap or free highways and gasoline. The buyer had a choice prior to the point of sale about just how much driving they would have to do. And that choice was very elastic, dependent upon all kinds of prices. But once it was made, their trip needs "hardened" so to speak. The homeowner's trip to work now becomes one of those inelastic "needed" trips. So there's a difference between long term and short term when looking at trips. And land usage is closely tied up with transportation. Highway expansion is going to have a long term effect by giving a whole set of homeowners and developers motivation to sprawl further and further away. The trouble is, eventually it catches up with them, and their highway is clogged up with "needed" trips.

Can it? Or does it just shift the bottlenecks? If the highway is carrying mostly many-to-many source/destination trips, then perhaps it might work to expand. I'm just speculating. But it's pretty clear that if most of the people are travelling to one particular destination (say, downtown Boston), there's always going to be another bottleneck. And at the end of the road is the parking lot bottleneck. So even if you find a way to clear up all the other bottlenecks, then you have a bunch of motorists breathing down your neck about parking. And given enough political pressure, the bulldozers will come out.

I agree with you on the facts. But I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to have growth and need to build infrastructure to accommodate it. I don't think it's always sprawl. Lots of development in MA is "smart growth" in town centers; it still often requires expanded highways even if you can take the train to work. There will always be growth in the suburbs, I don't think that's a bad thing. Opposing all highway expansion is like opposing all transit expansion.

P.S. isn't 40-45 mph found to be in studies as the "ideal" range for highest capacity flow on a highway?

It maximizes throughput, but maximizing throughput isn't the only consideration. Speed matters.

 

[Matthew]

I want to see more growth in the city, absolutely. That's why I'm against growth-restricting measures like minimum parking requirements and maximum density ceilings. I don't think that highway expansion is a good way to accommodate growth, because it ultimately leads down the path to 'parking-lot-ification' of the city. Then people and families flee the city as it becomes more hospitable to cars than humans. This trend ultimately crushes cities, and with it, economic growth.

Land use and transportation are intertwined, but MassDOT's focus is on transportation only (and mostly roads, really). I imagine it's easy for them to lose sight of the larger picture in trying to fix the crumbling infrastructure. I can't imagine any other charitable explanation for why they insist on pushing some of these unnecessary urban freeways against the explicit wishes of the people who have to live with the consequences of them.

 

[Mark02474]

I want to see more growth in the city, absolutely. That's why I'm against growth-restricting measures like minimum parking requirements and maximum density ceilings. I don't think that highway expansion is a good way to accommodate growth, because it ultimately leads down the path to 'parking-lot-ification' of the city. Then people and families flee the city as it becomes more hospitable to cars than humans. This trend ultimately crushes cities, and with it, economic growth.

Land use and transportation are intertwined, but MassDOT's focus is on transportation only (and mostly roads, really). I imagine it's easy for them to lose sight of the larger picture in trying to fix the crumbling infrastructure. I can't imagine any other charitable explanation for why they insist on pushing some of these unnecessary urban freeways against the explicit wishes of the people who have to live with the consequences of them.

Parking structures don't drive families out of cities, the high cost of city housing, lack of back yards, perceived higher crime, and need to transport kids all around all do. Its simply faster and easier to take kids from school to piano lessons, and then to karate in a SUV in the burbs than on various bus and subway routes.

Land and transportation are intimately connected. A transportation shortage drives higher density, higher demand near workplaces, and thus, high housing prices. Developers and landlords profit. People and businesses paying rent lose. Businesses flee to suburbs like Burlington, Westford, Hopkington, Framingham, and Waltham where space is cheaper than Cambridge and Boston. Hub and spoke public transit then no longer works. When costs are still too high for businesses, they move to states like Texas or outsource jobs to China, India, eastern Europe, and southeast Asia.

Next thing you know, Smart Growth becomes no growth. Anticipated sales tax increases to fund the MBTA don't exist. Mass loses Representatives, Texas gains them.

 

[Lurker]

It is quite easy to take your children to activities in the city. One simply walks out the front door and a few blocks down the street.

For someone that doesn't live or seem to understand how cities operate you thoroughly enjoy dictating how urbanites should live.

 

[statler]

While I complete agree with you, I think his point was more to the fact that there are vastly more people of his mindset than yours and thus cities will start to empty out and become dried out husks.

You see, Mark02474 is actually talking to us from 1952.

 

[metasyntactic]

It is quite easy to take your children to activities in the city. One simply walks out the front door and a few blocks down the street.

As an example, suppose you live in Coolidge Corner. The Devotion elementary/middle school is three blocks north of Beacon & Harvard. There is a karate dojo a block from the school and there is at least one piano teacher within eight blocks. Judging from Craigslist, I'm pretty sure you can easily find a piano teacher who will come to your home to teach.

Also, Boston population growth.

 

[massmotorist]

Parking structures don't drive families out of cities, the high cost of city housing, lack of back yards, perceived higher crime, and need to transport kids all around all do. Its simply faster and easier to take kids from school to piano lessons, and then to karate in a SUV in the burbs than on various bus and subway routes.

Land and transportation are intimately connected. A transportation shortage drives higher density, higher demand near workplaces, and thus, high housing prices. Developers and landlords profit. People and businesses paying rent lose. Businesses flee to suburbs like Burlington, Westford, Hopkington, Framingham, and Waltham where space is cheaper than Cambridge and Boston. Hub and spoke public transit then no longer works. When costs are still too high for businesses, they move to states like Texas or outsource jobs to China, India, eastern Europe, and southeast Asia.

Next thing you know, Smart Growth becomes no growth. Anticipated sales tax increases to fund the MBTA don't exist. Mass loses Representatives, Texas gains them.

Here I would respectfully disagree. There's nothing about urbanity or increased density that is anti-growth. What's anti-growth is restrictive zoning that limits density and things like "wetlands" and "historical preservation" laws that limit development. And I say this even as I advocate for more accommodation for cars than many on this forum do. Lots of businesses prefer to pay a premium to be in the city, lots prefer lower cost suburban space. There's room for both.

As far as families, I spent my middle school years in a dense Boston suburb that doesn't have school buses beyond 5th grade. I loved having the independence of being able to get around on T buses on my own schedule, and not having to rely on my parents. I also liked having a yard, driveway, and highawy access 5 minutes away. There's a middle ground.

 

[Mark02474]

Actually, destroying wetlands is no challenge for Cambridge. The $4M Obama stimulus project that creates one job named the Greenway Path Restoration Project was able to take out lots of trees and vegetation, and let people disturb the habitat of may animals because back in the 1930s Alewife brook area was treeless farmland. "Restoring" the damaged former condition seemed to get around EPA meddling. That and being a bicycle facility made it all good.

Cambridge does a great deal of damage with their zoning policies. They are reducing roadway and force businesses to also make parking shortages, subsidize MBTA passes, and/or pay people to bicycle/walk to work. Businesses don't have to deal with any of that in the burbs. The net result is that college graduates are more likely to move away after graduation than in decades past. Anti-car, anti-growth policies make living here more expensive than places with lots of roads.

Zoning in Arlington allows commercial property conversion to residential by right. Developers love the quick buck of condos over many decades of leasing space to businesses before making a profit. Transportation/parking shortages drive up demand for housing, so commercial properties go residential and prices go up on remaining commercial space. This is what drives businesses to the suburbs. That, and being closer to workers. People with more than 8-10 years experience migrate to the burbs to have houses and families.

Metasyntactic, thanks for the link. A good read. What stood out was how cities in the US with lots of highway are the fastest growing.

People commented on congestion and car trip reduction. Nearly every motor vehicle trip involves earning money or spending money. Traffic=economic activity. The drop in traffic leading up to the great recession was the 10' high writing on the wall. Meanwhile, people riding bicycles seldom are delivering product/services or making significant purchases - it seems as bad as defense spending for side benefits per dollar spent.

So, what do I think might turn the state around? Instead of removing travel lanes and infrastructure in the city, spend the money to maintain existing roads/bridges and widen congested roads where possible. Land acquisition is prohibitively expensive (except for the Green Line Extension), so that limits options. So too has the MDC/DCR when it got many of the roads it had owned declared national historic places, even though many were just WPA depression stimulus projects filling wetlands and building roads over them.

People and business saving time getting around makes products and services cheaper, and that's what we need a lot more of. Instead, MassDOT now endorses building intersections that are more clogged than in years past. Level Of Service D is just ducky now. How long it takes to get from A to B is no longer of consequence to them despite the economic harm.

 

[Ron Newman]

What? The entire extent of the Alewife Greenway project in Cambridge was to widen a bike sidepath alongside Route 16 for a quarter mile from Mass. Ave. north to the Somerville line. The vast majority of this state (not city) project is in Arlington and Somerville.

 

[ant8904]

Actually, destroying wetlands is no challenge for Cambridge. The $4M Obama stimulus project that creates one job named the Greenway Path Restoration Project was able to take out lots of trees and vegetation, and let people disturb the habitat of may animals because back in the 1930s Alewife brook area was treeless farmland. "Restoring" the damaged former condition seemed to get around EPA meddling. That and being a bicycle facility made it all good.

Cambridge does a great deal of damage with their zoning policies. They are reducing roadway and force businesses to also make parking shortages, subsidize MBTA passes, and/or pay people to bicycle/walk to work. Businesses don't have to deal with any of that in the burbs. The net result is that college graduates are more likely to move away after graduation than in decades past. Anti-car, anti-growth policies make living here more expensive than places with lots of roads.

Zoning in Arlington allows commercial property conversion to residential by right. Developers love the quick buck of condos over many decades of leasing space to businesses before making a profit. Transportation/parking shortages drive up demand for housing, so commercial properties go residential and prices go up on remaining commercial space. This is what drives businesses to the suburbs. That, and being closer to workers. People with more than 8-10 years experience migrate to the burbs to have houses and families.

Metasyntactic, thanks for the link. A good read. What stood out was how cities in the US with lots of highway are the fastest growing.

People commented on congestion and car trip reduction. Nearly every motor vehicle trip involves earning money or spending money. Traffic=economic activity. The drop in traffic leading up to the great recession was the 10' high writing on the wall. Meanwhile, people riding bicycles seldom are delivering product/services or making significant purchases - it seems as bad as defense spending for side benefits per dollar spent.

So, what do I think might turn the state around? Instead of removing travel lanes and infrastructure in the city, spend the money to maintain existing roads/bridges and widen congested roads where possible. Land acquisition is prohibitively expensive (except for the Green Line Extension), so that limits options. So too has the MDC/DCR when it got many of the roads it had owned declared national historic places, even though many were just WPA depression stimulus projects filling wetlands and building roads over them.

People and business saving time getting around makes products and services cheaper, and that's what we need a lot more of. Instead, MassDOT now endorses building intersections that are more clogged than in years past. Level Of Service D is just ducky now. How long it takes to get from A to B is no longer of consequence to them despite the economic harm.

A few points I have to make in response to your arguments:

1. Ron Newman seem to have poke a hole on your argument of Cambridge's power to destroy wetlands. Like it or not, environment regulations and reviews have dramatically increase time and costs to all construction projects. MassMotorist is right that liberal use of environmental legislation has played a major role in stopping development. If not by the regulation itself, then by NIMBYs using the laws to hold up projects. Other things have also make things more costly, but the environmental reviews are a major role.


2. Your argument about Cambridge doing great economic harm to its companies is misattributed. The reason why companies move out if because Cambridge is simply too small to fit companies once it grows larger than a certain point. They move out not because of Cambridge policies on parking, they move out because there's no space regardless of how friendly Cambridge can be on parking. College graduates follow because that's their jobs, but that's not indication college graduates want to be in the suburbs. Take it from a college graduate.

3. Also to you point about paying people to walk/bike. Remember that maintaining a parking spot is also very expensive. And Cambridge maybe a city that have people that actually want to bike rather than drive. Paying the employee is no different as offering a company car or a t-pass. It's win-win. One less car in traffic. Worker trip is still making "economic activity." The company itself have one less parking spot to maintain.

4. Unlike to your mind, bikes do play a major economic role. Go hang out in Cambridge/Boston in rush out and see how much more bikes ride that that time versus outside. Does all those bikes have negligible "economic activity"? They they came to work by car, are they really now doing more economic activity?

5. Also to your point about saving time. Go try and pretend you live and work in Cambridge/Boston. Try to get to work by Car and then by bike. You'll see that when it comes to short trips, bikes beats cars (and that including stopping at red lights - faster acceleration and top speed in rush hour traffic ensures this). This is only holds for specific situations, but commute to work in rush hour is a common situation.

All of this goes to the main point that roads needs to be multimodal. You just argued that the only investment is for wider roads. Unlike you (and Matthew, ironically for opposite reasons from you), I have faith the abilities of engineers and in this case of traffic engineers to calculate the right balance. When the recent change of removing a lane (like at Boylston I believe), I do believe they are correct in the assessment that the street does not need that lane - thus better suited to reuse that for bikes.

We add lanes when there's a need. You seem to equate that just adding lanes in and of itself. But there more than one way to serve congestion and demand.

 

[underground]

So, what do I think might turn the state around?

Sorry, but you're talking about one of the state's with the strongest economies in the country. We're doing fine, and moving away from outdated 1950's planning is one of the prime reasons.

Metasyntactic, thanks for the link. A good read. What stood out was how cities in the US with lots of highway are the fastest growing.

No economist in the world is linking sunbelt population growth to highways. Furthermore, most of those places economies are now in the shitter or getting propped up by the oil industry and/or federal government. Massachusetts is infinity better off and the economic and demographic trends of the last few years prove it.