Infrastructure to Nowhere (The Vestigial Infrastructure Thread)

[Brattle Loop]

And that's just the House (the most powerful branch here). The Senate historically follows the House tide. The Governor is the weather vane of public mood at best, and the scapegoat when things go wrong.... because people don't understand how things actually work.
Want infrastructure to get fixed? Tell your rep to raise your taxes. Maybe they'll grow a pair.

I'd add "tell your rep to fix the House's warped power structure", it's not as though there's any legal reason the House Speaker is so absurdly powerful.

 

[Teban54]

I have on numerous occasions provided data and analysis on the matter. That doesn't seem to matter to the true believers who "know" that NS will be permanently necessary. The T has spent or proposed to spend upwards of $6B on outdated diesel related infrastructure. When will this madness end? How long will we ignore the examples of the many other systems where they have embraced the 21st century?
And if SSU is designed properly, the two tunnels could be used interchangeably.

I know this is comparing apples to oranges, but the fact that a single Type 9 breaking down was able to fuck up the entire Green Line for 90 minutes on Boston Marathon day, not to mention leaving passengers stranded in trains the whole time, shows how much value redundancy has.

Kind of ironic how this conversation happened just before the incident took place, tbh.

To be fair, very few subway systems worldwide have more than 2 tracks solely for such scenarios, but the benefits of a 4-track NSRL is still well justified otherwise. When we have the option to add redundancy - by building 4 tracks, and/or keeping North Station to some capacity - I don't see how we should forgo these considerations just because "if everything runs perfectly, you don't need them".

 

[BeyondRevenue]

I'd add "tell your rep to fix the House's warped power structure", it's not as though there's any legal reason the House Speaker is so absurdly powerful.

Fear of reprisal.
If the speaker is challenged, upon losing the challenger is punished, relegated with bad committee assignments, has legislation shelved and is generally ostracized. More important, that means the challenger's district will get much less state aid if any at all.
They didn't teach that in Schoolhouse Rock, but that's how it goes. Oh yeah!

 

[Brattle Loop]

Fear of reprisal.
If the speaker is challenged, upon losing the challenger is punished, relegated with bad committee assignments, has legislation shelved and is generally ostracized. More important, that means the challenger's district will get much less state aid if any at all.
They didn't teach that in Schoolhouse Rock, but that's how it goes. Oh yeah!

But, again, that's not baked into the state constitution. There's like eighty million Democrats in the state house, if they (well, a majority of them, at any rate) decided that they didn't like living under the Speaker's petty dictatorship, they can change the rules. You're not wrong about the individual disincentives, but the total lack of collective action is emblematic of atrociously-atrophied standards of good governance. (Hardly a phenomenon unique to Massachusetts, though.)

 

[KCasiglio]

Wasn't sure where else to put this...but, wtf is with this pedestrian crossing for someone's driveway? Rt. 37 in Braintree, near the south shore plaza.

 

[dshoost88]

Wasn't sure where else to put this...but, wtf is with this pedestrian crossing for someone's driveway? Rt. 37 in Braintree, near the south shore plaza.

View attachment 57944

You piqued my curiosity, so I mapped the location and notice a few things:
1. This driveway serves 3 properties, not 1 (317, 321, and 333 Granite St./Rt. 37)
2. People exiting the driveway by car have a dedicated signal opposite South Shore Plaza Road. This probably serves the dual purpose of not only facilitating a safe left turn onto Rt. 37 northbound for cars exiting the driveway, but also spares them from turning movement conflicts exiting South Shore Plaza Road.
3. Free movement of pedestrians southbound on the sidewalk while vehicles exit the driveway during a green signal presents a safety hazard. The signalized crosswalk resolves this.

It might look silly, but it is in fact aligned with MA's complete streets design guidelines as spelled out in the MassDOT Project Development & Design Guide.

 

[Arenacale]

You piqued my curiosity, so I mapped the location and notice a few things:
1. This driveway serves 3 properties, not (317, 321, and 333 Granite St./Rt. 37)
2. People exiting the driveway by car have a dedicated signal opposite South Shore Plaza Road. This probably serves the dual purpose of not only facilitating a safe left turn onto Rt. 37 northbound for cars exiting the driveway, but also spares them from turning movement conflicts exiting South Shore Plaza Road.
3. Free movement of pedestrians southbound on the sidewalk while vehicles exit the driveway during a green signal presents a safety hazard. The signalized crosswalk resolves this.

It might look silly, but it is in fact aligned with MA's complete streets design guidelines as spelled out in the MassDOT Project Development & Design Guide.

I wonder if that driveway predates the access road to the Plaza or vice versa. It's weird to have a driveway drop into an intersection like that.

 

[KCasiglio]

317 and 321 also have their own curb cuts, the three are connected. It is an odd setup that I would presume pre-dates the SSP.

3. Free movement of pedestrians southbound on the sidewalk while vehicles exit the driveway during a green signal presents a safety hazard. The signalized crosswalk resolves this.

Maybe on paper. I would be shocked if it's been pressed once as anything other than a joke. I believe the light only activates for the vehicle if a pressure plate is triggered (I can confirm this later in the week), meaning the car has to come to a stop at the end of the of the driveway to get the green, at which point it's interacting with the pedestrian the same as any other car at the end of a driveway would. It may be by the book, but it seems like a case of the book resulting in over-engineering to solve a problem that doesn't exist. Not to mention that there's exceedingly few pedestrians on the segment and maybe up to 6 cars using the driveway on a given day? The MPO's recent corridor study found 7 pedestrians crossing that crosswalk (one of whom was me) and 0 cars interacting with the driveway. It's also one of the safest intersections on the corridor, there were only 2 crashes at the intersection in the five year period leading up to the ped signal installation in 2021.

Edit: The green does not require a pressure plate! Just a hairbrained piece of engineering all around. Seal off that one of three entrances to the driveway and be done with it.

 

[sneijder]

A similar one at the intersection of broadway and ames in Kendall Square, Cambridge. Who the hell is waiting for walk signal just to cross this 8-foot-wide off-street bikeway? Traffic signals are for cars, and when you don't have cars, you don't need traffic lights.

 

[bigpicture7]

A similar one at the intersection of broadway and ames in Kendall Square, Cambridge. Who the hell is waiting for walk signal just to cross this 8-foot-wide off-street bikeway? Traffic signals are for cars, and when you don't have cars, you don't need traffic lights.

^I actually really like that one (not because I ever have or ever will stop there as a pedestrian) but because it reminds me to do a double-take for bikes and either sprint or hang back a step, and a not-insignificant % of time there is a would-be collision ever so gracefully avoided without either of us having to acknowledge each other

 

[BOS2BON]

Looks like Newburyport is going to get a bikeshare system next year.

Newburyport’s Bike Share Initiative

Newburyport’s Master Plan recommends implementing a local bike share program to reduce car dependency for tourism and commuting. The City of Newburyport and Newburyport Livable Streets are proposin…

newburyportlivablestreets.org

Bike Share

Bike Share Newburyport Livable Streets is working with the Newburyport Mayor’s Office and Department of Public Services on a bike share pilot program for the city. A bike share system is a pu…

newburyportlivablestreets.org

A significant source of funding has already been identified. The Merrimack Valley Metropolitan Transportation Organization has voted to reserve $180,000 in federal funds to support the capital costs of a three-year pilot program (2025 through 2027). This represents about two-thirds of the estimated total cost of the three-year pilot. Pending state and federal approval of the project scope and budget, these funds will become available to the City in early 2025.