SIX NEW MBTA Orange Line cars will enter service Wednesday, the first new cars in what will eventually be a complete replacement of the fleet that entered service around 1980. Constructed by CRRC, a Chinese government-owned railcar manufacturer with an assembly plant in Springfield, the six new Orange Line cars have undergone about 3,800 miles […]
Andy Metzger
Andy Metzger is currently studying law at Temple University in Philadelphia. Previously, he joined CommonWealth Magazine as a reporter in January 2019. He has covered news in Massachusetts since 2007. For more than six years starting in May 2012 he wrote about state politics and government for the State House News Service. At the News Service, he followed three criminal trials from opening statements to verdicts, tracked bills through the flumes and eddies of the Legislature, and sounded out the governor’s point of view on a host of issues – from the proposed Olympics bid to federal politics.
Before that, Metzger worked at the Chelmsford Independent, The Arlington Advocate, the Somerville Journal and the Cambridge Chronicle, weekly community newspapers that cover an array of local topics. Metzger graduated from UMass Boston in 2006. In addition to his written journalism, Metzger produced a work of illustrated journalism about Gov. Charlie Baker’s record regarding the MBTA. He lives in Somerville and commutes mainly by bicycle.
Posted inTransportation
Congestion: Worst, bad, Uber and Lyft
THE BAKER ADMINISTRATION’S congestion study put some hard data behind the public’s sense – correct, as it turned out – that Greater Boston’s already bad traffic got worse in the past five years. In addition to making more general findings, the report also identified the top five severest occurrences of congestion, and the most consistently […]
Posted inTransportation
For complex traffic problem, Baker offers smorgasbord
LACKING A “SILVER BULLET” to deal with traffic congestion, Gov. Charlie Baker presented a scattershot plan Thursday to tinker with intersections, quickly clear road wrecks, and consider building special new lanes or raising ride-hailing fees to help commuters robbed of their time and patience on the way to work. Data compiled by the Baker administration […]
Posted inPolitics
Boston Calling verdict could have legs
TWELVE JURORS took six hours to convict two Boston City Hall aides, closing another chapter in federal prosecutors’ long-running effort to police Massachusetts government and politics. Ken Brissette and Timothy Sullivan, who resigned soon after the trial ended Wednesday, pressured organizers of the Boston Calling music festival to hire union labor in 2014, which the […]
Posted inTransportation
As T plugs into e-buses, new questions about garages
THE MBTA HAS outgrown its decades-old bus maintenance garages, and T officials are considering adding around 500 buses to the fleet of roughly 1,000, which some think sets up an opportunity to make a dramatic switch towards using electric motors to haul passengers around. The MBTA has taken some important steps in that direction, but […]
Posted inPolitics
No shoo-in in Taunton
A correction has been added to this story IT MAY HAVE looked like a bipartisan cakewalk at first, but by Tuesday afternoon the race for mayor of Taunton became a full-on food fight with four candidates running for the newly opened seat. With a little more than a day before nominating signatures were due, Gov. […]
Posted inTransportation
Why didn’t Deveney sound the alarm?
IN MID-MAY, Erin Deveney was at a regional conference of registrars when she bumped into Elizabeth Bielecki, her counterpart in New Hampshire. The two registrars started talking about information-sharing, and Deveney urged Bielecki to resume sending notifications to her office about Massachusetts drivers who commit violations in New Hampshire electronically rather than by mail. “I […]
Posted inUncategorized
Cutting against the grain
ORDINARILY, THE FEDERAL RESERVE doesn’t cut interest rates when the economy is going gangbusters, but that’s what happened yesterday. The cut, which brings the rate to between 2 and 2.25 percent, was the first since 2008 when the central bank repeatedly dropped it from 3.5 percent to near zero in an attempt to boost lending in […]
Posted inPolitics
Senator calls for Registry official to go
AS POLICYMAKERS INVESTIGATE how things could have gone so wrong at the Registry of Motor Vehicles, Gov. Charlie Baker on Wednesday suggested the problems long preceded his administration while a state senator called for the resignation of at least one official who allowed notices to pile up without dealing with them. On Tuesday Sen. Eric […]
Posted inUncategorized
Numerous warnings about ignored RMV notices
THERE WAS HARDLY ever a time when the Registry of Motor Vehicles properly handled paper notices about out-of-state driving infractions, according to the former registrar Erin Deveney’s testimony before lawmakers on Tuesday. Over seven hours, Deveney and current Baker administration officials described for the Transportation Committee a shifting and confused stance toward mailed-in notices about […]