“Mariners are urged to maintain a sharp lookout and use caution around right whales.” All you weather geeks out there will recognize that warning from the “voice” (OK, usually computer-generated) of the National Weather Service updating the latest right whale sightings (available via special weather radios and here). Getting mariners to slow down is one […]
Environment
Posted inEconomy, Environment, Politics, The Download
Greenway gets $2 million bailout to prevent “blight”
Seeking to prevent blight in downtown Boston, an economic development agency is plugging a $2 million hole in the budget of a private group about to take over management of the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway from the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority. Photo of Greenwayfountain by Frank Curran. The Massachusetts Development Finance Agency, a quasi-public agency that normally provides loans for […]
Posted inEnvironment, The Download, Transportation
State funding for Greenway Conservancy shrinking
The private group preparing to take over management of the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway is going to have a lot less state money to do its job. Legislation passed earlier this year called for as much as $7.5 million in state funding for the Greenway Conservancy — $2 million this fiscal year and up to $5.5 million […]
Posted inEnvironment, The Download, Transportation
Patrick’s chance to lead on the gas tax
Hub Blog thinks that Gov. Deval Patrick should stop "pouting" and instead position himself to take credit for the "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity" to eliminate highway tolls, abolish the Turnpike Authority, and raise the gas tax to help fund infrastructure improvements. (Hub Blog also compares Patrick's situation to that of Ulysses S. Grant at the Third Battle of Chattanooga, but […]
Posted inEnvironment, State House News Service, The Download, Transportation
Raising the gas tax is the tip of the iceberg
Rep. David Linsky’s (D-Natick) proposal to raise the gas tax by 6 cents looked like a profile in courage right up until Yvonne Abraham demolished it in a spirited column in today’s Boston Globe. Abraham makes excellent points — including many of the same ones made last year by members of the Transportation Finance Commission […]
Posted inEnvironment, The Download, Transportation
Transportation topics from the gas tax to the state of the MBTA
Thanks to the furor over proposed increases to highway tolls, transportation issues are again front and center in Massachusetts. For context, visit our archived transportation stories from CommonWealth magazine. Of particular note is staff writer Gabrielle Gurley’s recent feature story on the "growing chorus of support for an increase in the gas tax." And last […]
Posted inEnvironment, State House News Service, The Download
How bad will the fuel crisis get?
It could be a "frozen Katrina." The upcoming winter has all the hallmarks of a major crisis, according to social service providers who attended a Boston Foundation forum Monday on helping Boston residents survive the coming season of housing woes and higher fuel and food costs. Although it’s too early to tell what the weather […]
Posted inEnvironment, The Download
Little Windmill on the Prairie
A new report by the US Department of Energy and the Berkeley Lab puffs up wind power in the US, noting that "35 percent of all new electricity-generating capacity added in the U.S. in 2007" came from wind projects. That still means that we get only 1.1 percent of our power from wind, as you’ll […]
Posted inEnvironment, Health Care, The Download
Night Shift (spoilers for those about to have extended hospital stays)
You have good reason to be afraid of hospitals in the middle of the night, suggests an article in the latest New England Journal of Medicine. Dr. David Shulkin, CEO of Beth Israel Medical Center in New York, writes that reduced staffing in the wee hours may mean a "stark discrepancy in quality between daytime […]
Posted inEconomy, Environment, The Download
Housing slump brings together Detroit and Las Vegas
USA Today has charts on the slump in housing sales and prices. We think we have it bad in Massachusetts, but the number of home sales fell by a relatively modest 10.3 percent here from the last quarter of 2006 to the last quarter of 2007. At least 32 states had sharper drops, with Nevada […]