RECENT REPORTS coming out of the MBTA illuminate deeply flawed thinking about Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s free bus plan and raise serious concerns about the transit agency’s ability to leverage federal capital funding potentially available to the T via the new federal transportation bill. While there’s a lot to unpack here, it really isn’t as […]
James Aloisi
Posted inOpinion
Free or cheap parking is the great enabler
WHAT WOULD YOU DO with your car if there was no place to park it? Everyone who owns a car must have a place to put it while it’s not in use (which is most of the time). Sometimes you’re wealthy or lucky enough to have housing where a parking space is available to you. […]
Posted inOpinion
The all-EV approach won’t work
THERE’S A LOT of federal and municipal leadership in Massachusetts working hard to address the existential problem of global warming and the local public health crisis being caused by long-term exposure to particulate matter. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has taken swift action to move the Green New Deal from rhetoric to reality by signing a […]
Posted inOpinion
Thanksgiving is what we make of it
THANKSGIVING WAS ALWAYS a mixed bag for me. The holiday of my youth was decidedly about large family gatherings accompanied by large amounts of food. The kitchen table (we had no dining room) groaned under the weight of the abundance and a folding card table served as the “kids table.” It was a very gender […]
Posted inOpinion
With this election, Boston faces another defining moment
ALL ELECTIONS MATTER, but some elections matter more than others. On certain occasions, the outcome of the Boston mayoral election has had an outsized influence on the trajectory of the city. In 1910, John (“Honey Fitz”) Fitzgerald defeated James Jackson Storrow in a close contest, and it really mattered because Fitzgerald’s victory meant the era […]
Posted inOpinion
9/11 was a ‘pattern break’ for US society
WHAT I REMEMBER most about September 11, 2001, was feeling lucky that I could walk home. I was at a meeting at the Meridien Hotel in Post Office Square, and when news of the attacks in New York City broke, the entire building was evacuated. Observing the sea of people who had gathered in the […]
Posted inOpinion
Rural transportation article fell short
A recent article in Commonwealth that undertook to advance the worthy goal of transportation investment equity for rural counties and communities in Massachusetts fell so far short of making its case persuasively that it requires a response. I’d like to focus this response on three specific points. First, the authors would find widespread agreement among […]
Posted inOpinion
RFK – and what could have been
THE MEMORIES flood back, of the exuberance of youth and the thrill of believing, if just for a moment, that you were making a difference. Caught up in the windstorm of 1968, captured by the excitement of events playing out far beyond the confines of my safe and secure East Boston neighborhood, drawn to the […]
Posted inOpinion
Fed support for transit operations needed
AS CONGRESS SLOWLY advances what will become a complete package of transportation funding and policy decisions that define the federal role for at least the next decade, it may be a good time to renew the call for transformative change in federal participation in transit operating costs. Without a change in federal policy, all of […]
Posted inOpinion
REAP is good role model for federal action
AS THE SENATE’S $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure plan advances, one approach to paying for the bill could be stepped up enforcement of federal tax collections. Just this Sunday during a CNN interview, Ohio Senator Rob Portman, a Republican member of the bipartisan group, announced (apparently unilaterally) that the stepped-up IRS enforcement approach was suddenly off […]