Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail (South Coast Rail)

thepixelnation said:
It would be more apt to conflate the word "plantation" with colonialism than slavery. English first started using plantations with the colonization of Ireland and worked as a means to de-gaelicize the Irish living there. Plantations were a major tool of English colonialism by allowing a community of English men & women to live and reproduce, rather than the French model of trading posts or the Spanish model of Spanish men marrying Native women.

Sorry for this whole diversion! Should have said titled nobility. I'm just happy there wasn't an Earl of Dorchester like there was a Baron of Baltimore. and I forgot the house of burgesses was an elected office.

Maybe we should have a MBTA Baron though...
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I think the degree of unaccountability that the MBTA seems to have is pretty close to that of a monarchical system. Baron might be better than GM at this point
 
DBM said:
Anyway, obviously some of the tourism experience there is tacky, obnoxious, etc.--but that's overwhelmingly clustered along the Thames St. corridor. The Bellevue Ave. mansions, the vineyards, Fort Adams, Audrain Auto Museum, all the non-Thames St. restaurants, etc.--all quite lovely still from my experience... it's really misleading to portray Newport's overall tourism scene as monolithically overwhelming/awful/depressing...
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The point is there was actually a time not that long ago when Thames Street wasn’t the soul-sucking tourist trap it is now. There were a lot of great little galleries and a stretch of fun bars and restaurants geared toward locals, sailors and people who worked around there. The entirety of the tacky tourist zone was more or less confined to the America’s Cup Ave area. What are Broadway and Bellevue going to look like in 20 years if this trend continues? Fortunately locals seem to have had enough and there would be massive pushback to anything that promises to bring in even more crowds and detract further from their experience. And let’s face it, RI is never going to foot the bill for a rail bridge over the Sakonnet.
 
kmp1284 said:
The point is there was actually a time not that long ago when Thames Street wasn’t the soul-sucking tourist trap it is now. There were a lot of great little galleries and a stretch of fun bars and restaurants geared toward locals, sailors and people who worked around there. The entirety of the tacky tourist zone was more or less confined to the America’s Cup Ave area. What are Broadway and Bellevue going to look like in 20 years if this trend continues? Fortunately locals seem to have had enough and there would be massive pushback to anything that promises to bring in even more crowds and detract further from their experience. And let’s face it, RI is never going to foot the bill for a rail bridge over the Sakonnet.
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I’m on the island at least one weekend a month as I have family there. If you are serious about that being the problem to solve, then why aren’t you advocating for the closure of the Pell Bridge? That carries many, many, many times magnitude more people into Newport than any rail connection would.

You’ll have my ear if you want to restrict people traveling by automobile and rail (not that I’d agree with you), but if you only advocate for restricting those traveling by mass transit, then it’s you whose agenda needs to be questioned.

I’m very open to hearing your proposal to curb automobile access!
 
For starters triple the tolls on the Pell and add them on Mount Hope and 24. Not sure if it’s legal to do so but charge out of state registrations a higher rate while exempting Aquidneck residents. Newport itself should add meters everywhere possible. I parked on Kay Street in 2018 or 19 for the boat show and couldn’t believe there weren’t meters. Just because Newport has become a tourist town it doesn’t mean that it needs to be everything to everyone.
 
kmp1284 said:
For starters triple the tolls on the Pell and add them on Mount Hope and 24. Not sure if it’s legal to do so but charge out of state registrations a higher rate while exempting Aquidneck residents. Newport itself should add meters everywhere possible. I parked on Kay Street in 2018 or 19 for the boat show and couldn’t believe there weren’t meters. Just because Newport has become a tourist town it doesn’t mean that it needs to be everything to everyone.
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All great policy suggestions, and as far as I'm aware it is legal to charge a different for out-of-state registrations as long as you're not ONLY charging out-of-state registrations. Importantly this also helps generate some revenue, since all that auto infrastructure comes with a heavy bill that the users aren't really paying.

Unfortunately Newport's Transportation Master Plan does not call for expanding metering or raising rates and in fact says "The City provides a sufficient supply of affordable public vehicle parking. The demand for affordable and easily accessible parking is growing though, particularly downtown." which I really hope doesn't mean "we should be providing more."

There are some things to like in there though. Cutting America's Cup to one lane in each direction, narrowing streets, pedestrianizing streets in-season. There's your downtown elbow room.


Sidebar, but perhaps a mod could move the Newport related discussion to a more Newport centric thread? As much as I think this is worth continuing to talk about we're really losing any connection to South Coast Rail.
 
Speaking of tolls in RI, anyone have an update on whatever happened to their truck tolls? I know they got turned off a couple of years ago as part of some lawsuit from trucking interests, but the physical plant is still there and the last update was literally a year ago in September 2023 when the appeals court heard the case, but I don't think I've heard any news of a ruling. Surely even the US judicial system can't be that dysfunctional.
 
And on the issues of character and congestion in Newport, these buckets don’t help either. Cruise ships have been coming here as long as I can remember but they’ve grown significantly in size in recent years.


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All the work that is left is punch-list stuff, and waiting for equipment such as switch heaters to arrive and be installed.
 
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