Cheap and easy Boston improvement ideas

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TheBostonian

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1. Remove the walls around the ground floor windows of the Boston Public Library extension.

Next?
 
Trash

* Put the new Green Monster trash receptacles in other downtown neighborhoods including the South End and Beacon Hill (oh, the horror!).

* Require that trash be put into huge trash bins, one per building, instead of left out in plastic bags overnight.
 
Remove all the metal detectors and other security garbage from the lobby of Boston City Hall. Invite the public into City Hall with exuberant and creative programming, both visual arts and live performances, both during the day and in the evening. Perhaps people can come to love the building after all if it is used better.

Also, remove the silly metal barricades and fences that keep the public out of the City Hall courtyard. Encourage people to wander around and explore this area.

Close one of the two sides of the divided Congress Street next to City Hall. Divert all car traffic into the side that remains open. Remove the iron fence in the middle of this street, to encourage people to freely cross it anywhere they want.
 
1) Start enforcing anti-vagrancy and anti-panhandling laws, especially around Downtown Crossing and Harvard Square. I've been aggressively panhandled at these locations, and fortunately I'm a big guy. I can imagine women and families getting turned off by these people and deciding to never come back.

I was in the Miracle Mile area of Chicago last summer, and there was not a bum or panhandler to be seen anywhere at all. Obviously Chicago enforces its laws.

2) Clean up the T and the streets. Boston is still a relatively dirty city. Again, Chicago is clean as a whistle by comparison.

3) Fix the infrastructure: bridges, roads, etc. The Boston area has the most crumbling, rusting and lousy looking bridges and roads, all the way out to, and including Route 128. The concrete needs repair, and the steel girders need paint. They are an embarrassment, and bring down the image of the city.
 
Charlie_mta said:
2) Clean up the T and the streets. Boston is still a relatively dirty city. Again, Chicago is clean as a whistle by comparison.

3) Fix the infrastructure: bridges, roads, etc. The Boston area has the most crumbling, rusting and lousy looking bridges and roads, all the way out to, and including Route 128. The concrete needs repair, and the steel girders need paint. They are an embarrassment, and bring down the image of the city.
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I believe the title of the thread is "Cheap and easy" which these are not, though we shouldn't be looking for cheap and easy in the first place. We should be doing what you suggest.
 
Yeah ...

Yeah, even the whores aren't cheap and easy in this town.
 
Keeping the subway train interiors clean is relatively cheap. When I was a teenager in the 60's there weren't loose dirty newspapers flying around on the floors like there are now, as just one example of the general mess. There's no need for that. Keeping the streets and sidewalks clean is also relatively cheap. Why can other cities (Chicago, etc.) do it and not Boston? Why was Boston in the 1950's so clean and carefully maintained, but not now?

And about the crumbling infrastructure; the patching of spalling concrete bridge abutments and guardwalls, and wire-brushing and painting steel girders on highway overpasses, costs some money but it is a tiny fraction of what it costs to replace them. Again, why can other cities or states keep their infrastructure looking good but not Boston and Massachusetts?

Massachusetts seems to like building massive showpieces like the Big Dig, but doesn't expend much effort on normal everyday maintenance.
 
When I was a teenager in the 60's there weren't loose dirty newspapers flying around on the floors like there are now
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Probably because there weren't any free newspapers back then. Now we've got the Phoenix, Weekly Dig, Metro, and BostonNOW.
 
There is a lot more kickback money, political fame, and patronage to be made from brand new or complete refurbish/replacement projects than maintenance in a politically corrupt state like this. The machine in this state will never go away due to the political culture, but I'd wish they'd adopt a Chicago system of graft, where the public knows the money is still being misspent, but everything is running and looking so nicely everyone is willing to accept it because it 'works'. Crooks who are 'your crooks' are different than our current batch of plan old crooks.

Fixing the sidewalks and cleaning up the street-scape literally and aesthetically would go a long way for the city.
 
Ron Newman, what you said before about removing the metal detectors and other security measures in City Hall was not a feasible idea to me. I mean nowadays security is a must and the government takes sometimes really extreme measures to keep security beefed up. Removing metals detectors and such from a government owned building is almost impossible. As much as people would like to see it happen, it isn't going to. Just because these security measures are in place, I don't think that people should be scared away or turned away. These measures are their to keep people safe and I can appreciate that, but I won't let it stop me from visiting places like city hall. Okay off topic, sorry about that, but it is true.
Besides that, the city should be stepping up to make the city more pleasant and cleaner. With the trees they will be planting soon, this probably will help, but trash ruins cities. Trash is so dirty and when it accumulates in a city like Boston it really makes an unpleasant environment. Living in a suburb, it is prominently clean, but in an urban area I understand how it is a lot easier to get dirty with the large amounts of people. But if that urban area encourages people to be clean and to throw away trash, a lot of good would come out of it. Obviously, even with the cities encouragement many people, will still resort to these dirty ways so the city must take action and enforce these laws set in place. Littering can be stopped as we see in clean cites like Chicago as you mentioned. Let's improve Boston!!
 
Wow weird... To further prove my point, their was a story tonight on Fox News about terrorists targeting federal buildings and the measures Boston is taking to protect them. Haha just a weird coincidence since I was talking about that. But that just goes to show how cautious the government is being now.
 
Nopee

I disagree. Hard to think two "security guards" and a machine are all that keep Boston's City Hall from being blown up.

It's stupid and unnecessary, in my opinion.

To the point about the front entrance to City Hall, it's despicable. It's so so so so so bad. Pathetic. Most unappealing and unwelcoming entrance to any building in America ... bar none?
 
1. Remove the barriers that run down Congress St. @ Government Center.

2. Ban chain link fences.

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*Run the subway until 2:30 am on Friday and Saturday nights.

*Light up the Longfellow Bridge at night.
 
I'd like to see Boston and Cambridge collaborate more, both in the business sense and the sharing of resources. The two cities are practically married, but I get the sense that it is an arranged marriage, and an unhappy one.
 
"Light up the Longfellow Bridge at night"

Already part of the massive reconstruction and restoration project for the bridge. Complete structural overhaul, refurbishment,replacement, and addition of missing decorative metalwork, and new lighting.
 
First install more barrels. The big belly green ones that I believe compress the trash should be installed in abundance.

Now that people have no excuse for littering, start fining people for littering. (especially in Chinatown/Theater District and Downtown) After two/three tickets, you would have to do community clean-up service for a weekend.

Running the trains later (while it's a great idea) may be costly. The city needs to find a way to improve cab service. You can't tell people not to drink and drive in a city where cabs are few and far between, and simultaneously let bars and clubs stay open after the trains have stopped running. Perhaps cabs that are based in adjacent cities should be allowed to pick-up a fare in Boston. I over-heard a cop telling his partner about this other cop who pulled over a Somerville cab driver for picking up a guy near Sullivan Station. It was lat night/early morning and they were literally steps from the Somerville line, but the cop pulled the cab over and made the passenger get out of the cab. This seems absurd. Out-of-town cabbies from Somerville, Revere, and comparable places have to drop people off at the airport and then leave the city limits before they can get another fare? Can anybody shed some light on the Taxi business in Boston?[/code]
 
I agree 100% about the littering, and the need for agressive fines, and forced community service. I'd like to see some of the homeless out there picking up trash. I was just telling the wife the other day that this would be my first policy if I was mayor. The fines would help pay for more regular trash pick-up.

I also agree with enforcing the panhandling ordinace (if there even is one). Specifically, places that I get upset about being asked for change is at ATMs, subway platforms, and within the doorways of retail shops.

I'd also limit solicitations to no more than 2-days a week per individual organizations. The Save The Children people at Washington and Summer are relentless.

I'd add some more obscure active recreation facilities to the parks, such as boccee ball courts, croquet courts, horseshoe rinks, etc....probably some permenant chess tables as well.

I'd replace the benches along the Comm Ave Mall and in the Common with benches with metal diveders in the middle (link the new ones in front of Macy's on Summer) to prevent sleeping.
 
atlrvr your ideas are perfect and please be mayor because this needs to be done. But also about the homeless picking up trash, it seems pointless because a lot of the trash out there is from the homeless. As bad as I hate seeing people left outside to sleep, they leave a lot of crap around the city which piles up for some real dirtiness.
As for panhandlers, they need to be taken care of. I have never been to any city that has had more panhandlers than Boston. Just last week on Monday night after the Red Sox game when I was leaving down Yawkey Way, some bum came up to me came right to face mumbling who knows what. Finally he extended his cup out to me and said the words, "Change for drinks! (in a harsh voice) Change! I'm Irish!" I found this odd since he was African American lol but after that I dodged him, he proceeded and got up in my 10 year old brothers face. So yes this is definitely a problem, especially if this is allowed to happen in a popular destination like Yawkey Way where their is a large amount of police in the area after a game!
 
I have never been to any city that has had more panhandlers than Boston.
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Really? I mean, you can't deny they're there, but for me they've always been in the background. Never thought them as such a huge problem, maybe because I've just come to accept them as part of city life. And compared to other cities, does Boston really do that badly? Of the places I've been to, they're definitely more prominent in NYC, they're all over the place in San Francisco, Paris, London, Rome, Barcelona are all crawling with panhandlers, and in Chennai and Bombay their numbers are overwhelming (but that's an extreme case). Frankly, I think the city has bigger problems to deal with than getting a few bums off the street. However, giving them jobs in street cleaning or park maintenance is a great idea. Does Boston really not have a program for this already?
 
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