THE ART OF TRANSPORTATION (AND URBAN) PLANNING: Going Beyond the Technical Specs
It is through our built environment that we shape ourselves and the world. Living, working, and moving around in dysfunctional, cramped, unsafe, polluted, or just ugly places not only affects our mood...
View ArticleMcGRATH HIGHWAY REPAIRS: The Occasional Superiority of Short-Term Solutions
Both Advocates and Public Agency leaders can find a number of lessons in the multi-level effort to deal with the McGrath Highway corridor in Somerville – which has resulted not only in a commitment...
View ArticleSLOWING TRAFFIC TO A TARGET SPEED: How To Make Our Streets Safer
We’ve all seen the graph: a person hit by a car going 40 miles per hour (mph) has an 85% chance of being killed. Reducing the speed to 30 mph cuts the odds of death in half; reducing speed to 20 mph...
View ArticleMASS PIKE EXITS: Master Key for Unlocking Boston Roads from Esplanade to Allston
In real life there are no magic wands whose waving causes all problems to disappear, no magic pill that makes everything better. But sometimes there are Master Keys that open a series of blockages...
View ArticleCHARLES RIVER BRIDGES FALL OFF THE SCHEDULE: State Needs To Find Funds...
While work on the Longfellow and Anderson bridges is moving forward, plans for repairing and upgrading the in-between River Street and Western Avenue bridges and the messed-up intersections leading to...
View ArticleFROM BETTER TO WORSE ON COMMONWEALTH AVE: City Leaders Need To Step Up For...
For a while it was feeling like stodgy Boston was jumping back into the elite group of city’s whose actions around transportation (and its joined-at-the-hip land-use twin) set the pace for the rest of...
View ArticleROADS ARE NOT THE DESTINATION: Celebration and Concern on the MassPike...
As our nation has painfully learned over the past fifty years from the destructive practices of the Interstate’s old scorched-earth invasion, focusing a transportation planning process on the need to...
View ArticleWALSH ADMINISTRATION NEEDS A TRANSPORTATION MAP: Which Way On Comm. Ave. Design?
Mayor Marty Walsh visibly cares about helping underserved communities. And he is aggressively promoting the continuing building boom and accompanying (construction) jobs, as expressed in his statement...
View ArticleCOMMONWEALTH AVENUE: Grand Boulevard, Dangerous Street
Stretching from the Public Garden out to Weston, Commonwealth Avenue meanders past sculptured medians, historic parks, heartbreaking hills, ponds and rivers, and an enormous number of residences and...
View ArticlePARKWAYS MOVING FORWARD: DCR is Not The Highway Department
It’s a pleasure to be able to praise a government agency: civil servants who try to live up to their public service mission are over-worked and underpaid relative to private sector peers – and always...
View ArticleJUMP STARTING COMPLETE STREETS: Focusing on Kids (and others) When Progress...
Every street should be safe for walking and bicycling. This is an essential component of the Complete Streets design philosophy that has emerged in recent years as the “new normal” for roads –...
View ArticleQUESTIONING COMPLETE STREETS: An Open Letter to the Cambridge City Council
Having a vision of the kind of city you want is an essential foundation for purposeful and effective governance. Some cities do a coherent overall process, such as Somerville’s SomerVision or Boston’s...
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