A HIGHLY FUNCTIONING urban transit system is characterized by its speed, convenience, and reliability. The Netherlands, a role model for efficient and sustainable mobility, has examples of this in abundance. Go to places like Amsterdam or The Hague and you will have at your disposal multiple modal choices – trams, buses, and light rail – […]
James Aloisi
Posted inThe Back Story
Walsh’s transportation to-do list
In the aftermath of a massive general election victory by Boston Mayor Marty Walsh – and recognizing the political capital that goes along with that – it seems a good time to assess the opportunities for meaningful progress on a number of initiatives that have the potential to set Boston and the region on an irrevocable path toward a […]
Posted inOpinion
Dear Gov. Raimondo: Express trains wrong ask
DEAR GOVERNOR GINA RAIMONDO: We read with interest your call for express rail service from Providence to Boston. You are spot-on in thinking that improved rail connections regionally will be beneficial to the people, the economies, and the environments of our respective states. But rather than single express trains serving a few commuters, we respectfully […]
Posted inOpinion
Changing of the guard in East Boston
IT SEEMS LIKE YESTERDAY to me, but it was a long time ago – 1983 – when I ran Bob Travaglini’s campaign for District 1 City Council. It was the first year of district council races in Boston, and our strategy was to treat the election as if it were a State Senate race – […]
Posted inOpinion
Boston’s embrace of political predictability
THE EAST BOSTON NEIGHBORHOOD I grew up in was abuzz that late summer evening in 1967. The Community Club was our neighborhood “men’s club,” a place for mid-century male camaraderie and (so I later came to suspect) serious gambling, a place forbidden to me except on July 4 when the club members put folding tables […]
Posted inEconomy
Attract Amazon + fix the T
WE BOTH HAD THE SAME THOUGHT as soon as we heard about Boston vying for Amazon’s new headquarters facility: Locate it at Suffolk Downs and leverage the opportunity to take a giant leap forward in improving local and regional mobility. Suffolk Downs on paper is an ideal site for a large campus complex: over 100 […]
Posted inEconomy
A Boston tower and the law of unintended consequences
I WAS REALLY BAD IN MATH and physics in college. My brain was wired to appreciate things like alliteration and metaphor, not equations or abstract laws of nature. But I remember one law that was referred to on occasion – how every action has an equal and opposite reaction. That’s what I’m discussing today – […]
Posted inOpinion
Trump misunderstands history’s arc
“A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE is a dangerous thing.” It’s an old saying that perhaps resonated more clearly than ever before when one heard the person holding the office of president of the United States equating the secessionist leader Robert E. Lee with the nation’s first and third presidents. Painting with a broad brush dipped in a […]
Posted inPolitics
Rep. Straus’s idea is a really bad one
AUGUST. That lazy, hazy month without an official vacation day because, well, everyone is either on vacation or slowing down because everyone else is on vacation. Like that bewitching period between Thanksgiving and New Year, when everyone is preoccupied with keeping or avoiding the holidays, August is a sort of Bermuda Triangle of a month, […]
Posted inOpinion, Politics
My flag won’t be flying this July 4th
THERE’S NO FLAG flying above the front porch of our place in Maine this year. That flag was a personal expression of belief in the fundamental integrity and stolidity of this great 241-year-old experiment in self-governance. It was an expression of hope in the fundamental goodness and right-headedness of our people, who may have different ideological perspectives but […]