The problem, far too often, is not with the ride, but with managing to get on the train and in your seat in the first place.
Peter O'Connor
Posted inOpinion
Abolishing BPDA should not be first priority
I SUPPORT Boston mayoral candidate Michelle Wu’s good government impulse to “fix Boston’s broken development system,” but worry that her plan to abolish the Boston Planning and Development Agency may very well be neither necessary nor helpful in accomplishing that goal. And as a legal matter, or even an administrative task, the “abolishing” part may […]
Posted inEconomy
Depoliticizing the development process in Boston
CALLS TO ABOLISH the Boston Planning and Development Agency (BPDA) go back almost to its creation. City Councilor Michelle Wu is the latest to take up the quest to rid the city of one of its most hated bureaucracies (which many know by its former name, the Boston Redevelopment Authority, or BRA). Last year, she […]
Posted inOpinion
Is it the end or the beginning for cities?
WITH TIME ON OUR HANDS, we’re all contemplating how our lives will be different in the future, once the COVID-19 pandemic subsides. At this point, almost every news source has run a piece declaring that the virus will somehow spell “the end of the city.” Most of these essays are hyperbolic, but it is nevertheless […]
Posted inOpinion
Boston’s congestion prompted me to move
I MOVED TO BOSTON from New London, Connecticut, in my early thirties, in 1994. The reasons were both professional and personal. As a still young-ish lawyer interested in real estate and urban development, Connecticut cities such as New London, Hartford, and Bridgeport certainly provided interesting (if daunting) professional challenges, but far less in the way […]
Posted inTransportation
Getting cars, bikers, and pedestrians to coexist
BOSTON IS GROWING, and fast. Highways and arterial roadways are commonly clogged not just during “rush hour,” but at all times of day, including weekends. It used to be the practice at the Boston Redevelopment Authority to advise young planners that “traffic problems solve themselves,” because people will find another route when traffic on one […]
Posted inOpinion, Politics
Shadow vs $: It’s the wrong debate
THE WINTHROP SQUARE DEVELOPMENT proposed by Millennium Partners is not about the shadows on the Public Garden. It’s about the fact that every major development proposal in Boston seems to be a new discussion, as if we’ve never seen such a thing before. And each new development appears to be negotiated in complete isolation, apart […]
Posted inHealth Care, Opinion
Repealing Obamacare won’t fix health care
“ALL BUREAUCRACIES, PUBLIC OR PRIVATE, are the same” is a motto I have lived by for years, and it applies to the health care and health insurance bureaucracies. I purchase a full price individual health insurance policy on the Massachusetts Health Connector, and previously purchased an individual policy before the implementation of Obamacare. It is […]
Posted inOpinion, Transportation
GLX: It’s not just about transportation
I GUESS EVERY ORGANIZATION needs a mission statement. So in 2010, the senior staff of the newly created MassDOT was taking a crack at it, one day, around the secretary’s conference table. One long-serving transportation bureaucrat suggested that the mission should be: To run the best transportation system in the country. Others at the table […]
Posted inTransportation
Improving the ‘Amtrak experience’
LIKE MANY PEOPLE who live between Boston and Washington, I ride Amtrak. So when I got a call a few weeks ago asking if I would participate in a focus group for riders, I quickly agreed. The eight people in our group were a pretty standard slice of what you see on the train – […]