Illustrations by Travis Foster VOTING AS IF YOUR LIFE DEPENDED ON IT According to a recent article in Scientific American, whether or not you vote may be “hardwired” in your genetic makeup. A study by political scientist James Fowler, of the University of California at San Diego, found that identical twins are more alike in their […]
Transportation
Posted inThe Download, Transportation
Ringing in the New Year on the T
“Peace and quiet. It has a nice ring to it” proclaim the newest ads in the MBTA’s “Courtesy counts” remedial public civility campaign. Surely they jest. With the advent of underground wireless services, quiet (such as it is on mass transit) is definitely a thing of the past. In late December, the MBTA unveiled wireless […]
Posted inThe Download, Transportation
Does Menino see dollar signs in surveillance cameras?
Boston Mayor Tom Menino has said he wants to install cameras at key intersections to nab the city’s notoriously heavy-footed drivers who think a yellow light is their cue to speed up. "A thousand Americans were killed in 2003 because people chose to run a red light," Menino’s transportation commissioner, Tom Tinlin, told the Boston […]
Posted inState House News Service, Transportation
Transportation pros make tough calls, get cold shoulder
INTRO TEXT columbus day fell during a particularly volatile moment in the 2006 gubernatorial campaign. Three weeks past his runaway primary win, there were still doubts about Deval Patrick’s electability-specifically, whether he’d be seen as too soft on crime and too vague on how he would pay for his promised new programs. Meanwhile, Republican nominee […]
Posted inEducation, The Download, Transportation
Why Johnny Can’t Walk to School
"Less than 15 percent of all schoolchildren walk or ride bicycles to school," notes Charles Euchner (a frequent contributor to CommonWealth) in a fascinating Hartford Courant column. The main reason is the trend toward fewer but larger ("super-sized") schools, many of them sited far from residential areas. (Kids make too much noise, so why not […]
Posted inThe Download, Transportation
Transit stats: MBTA ridership is southbound
Public transit fans (not to be confused with foamers) should head over to the American Public Transportation Association to get ridership stats for the first six months of 2007. The bottom line is that more people are going public — 78 million more trips compared the first six months of last year — but Boston’s […]
Posted inState House News Service, Transportation
Still working on the railroad: funding fuzzy for South Coast rail
INTRO TEXT “it’s easy to say, ‘Give me this, give me that,’” said Rep. Joseph Wagner, the Chicopee Democrat who co-chairs the Joint Committee on Transportation, during testimony on a commuter rail proposal this spring. “It’s not so easy to finance it.” That sums up the South Coast rail conundrum. But Gov. Deval Patrick says […]
Posted inEnvironment, Opinion, Transportation
Meeting transportation needs may require more tolls and a higher gas tax
gov. patrick faces a transportation challenge that could make the Big Dig look like a piece of cake. Massachusetts could have a shortfall in highway and transit funding of $13 billion to $17 billion over the next 20 years—potentially exceeding the $15 billion price tag of the Central Artery/Tunnel Project. Closing the gap will require […]
Posted inPolitics, Transportation
Second-Guesswork
> technically, there was a Big Dig before Fred Salvucci. The idea of putting the elevated Central Artery underground first surfaced, as it were, in the Boston Transportation Planning Review—Gov. Frank Sargent’s process of rethinking transportation priorities after pulling the plug on the Inner Belt and other new highways, led by Alan Altshuler—in 1972. But […]
Posted inPolitics, Transportation
Learning from the Big Dig
Photograph by David L. Ryan,The Boston Globe more than three months after a ceiling panel collapse took a life and further besmirched the new roadways’ already tarnished image, traffic should be returning to normal through the Central Artery/Tunnel project, better known as the Big Dig. Far less likely to return to normal any time soon, […]