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Never mind the threat of taking down a bridge, there's a health risk from all the giant ships coming into the harbor
By adamg on Mon, 04/01/2024 - 2:07pm
GBH takes a look at the health woes of giant ships belching diesel smoke from the cheapest possible grade of fuel that now routinely ply Boston Harbor.
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Comments
Old cars and school buses are
Old cars and school buses are OK?
Good point, Adam always gets
Good point, Adam always gets defensive if anyone challenges the BPS reliance on school buses.
Wow
Ignorance supporting ignorance.
How much of a tax increase would you pay and how many eminent domain challenges would you accept to build mythic dreamworld "neighborhood schools" that meet current educational needs criteria, including the needs of children with disabilities?
Alternately, how many road closure plans and armored, plowed bike lanes would you accept to get kids to school safely without buses?
Paris
I like what Paris is doing with school streets a lot.
Aw poor little butt-hurt rightwinger
My main point has always been, whenever somebody complains about all the busing in Boston, is that even if we returned to the old little neighborhood schools, we'd still have a ton of busing because a) You can't do certain programs in all neighborhood schools well (like certain special-ed programs) so you'd still need citywide busing and b) Boston is required to provide transportation for charter-school students, and charter schools are required to accept students from anywhere in the city, as well as for private-school students, many of whom, I assume, go to schools that are also open citywide.
I mean, if I really wanted to support busing in the Boston sense (i.e., for desegregation purposes), I might start to argue in favor of dramatically expanding Metco, but nah, I've never made that argument. For better or worse, that door is closed; I might as well waste my time arguing to extend the Red Line to Lexington.
Defensive indeed.
Defensive indeed.
You say you can't do certain programs well without busing, but they do have busing, and yet BPS doesn't seem to do much of anything well. On the bubble of state receivership, declining enrollments, ever-rotating cast of superintendents, etc. Everyone blaming the last mayor or last superintendent is getting tiresome.
Checkout https://www.ridezum.com/
Busing is one issue BPS could have and should have solved with some Ai technology.
As the city budget shrinks that might actually motivate some creative solutions !
Maybe we could enlist some Harvard or MIT students to help us figure out a solution, I think they are smart?!
And the neighborhood school buildings work fine if BPS partnered with some of the cash flush companies in the area to sponsor various programs, you could resourse share between schools that are close together like the Channing, Grew and Roosevelt in HP and the Conley, Mozart and Bates in Roslindale to create school networks similar to the colleges of the fenway. You can also renovate and expand neighborhood schools over a summer or even some projects can be done during holiday breaks with the right planning and eliminate the need for building new buildings in the short term.
Politics is what continues to hold back fixing BPS and their schools sadly. Fix school safety / behavoral issues in schools having issues and all other problems would go away rather quickly as all BPS schools would be in demand again.
Boston did reorganize its
Boston did reorganize its school bus routes using an MIT algorithm. Wasn’t it a horrible fiasco?
This is a joke, right?
This is a joke, right?
They did
Boston Public School District Saves $5 Million in Operational Costs with School Bus-Routing Algorithm.
https://www.itskrs.its.dot.gov/2019-b01397
School Buses
Required to retrofit diesel in 2010
Many are now electric.
Old cars - emission standards have been about the same since 2000.
Don't forget the propane buses
More of those than electric now, and they're not perfect, but they emit fewer harmful emissions than diesel buses.
Yes, "required" and
Yes, "required" and "commitment" are words. The third of Boston school buses are still diesel, aren't they?
Google is a Thing
Massachusetts did diesel emission retrofits starting in 2008, completing in 2011: https://www.mass.gov/doc/masscleandiesel-school-bus-retrofits-discontinu...
Car emissions were cut most substantially when leaded gas was banned and cars with catalytic converters were mandated - a process starting nearly half a century ago. Cars rarely lasted 5-10 years around here back then due to rusting out. The most substantial changes were pre-2000. Not too many old cars out there from before then. Since the 2001 regs on mobile source air toxics, gas powered vehicles have only had incremental changes.
Timeline for emissions controls here: https://www.epa.gov/transportation-air-pollution-and-climate-change/time...
Wow
Our newest troll just dragged a big ole red herring across the comments and everyone fell for it.
Where in the article does it talk about buses and old cars?
I'm still convinced
this is just a ChatGPT bot Adam set up to drive engagement.
You mean like the …
… John Costello and the Magoo?
If they are, I applaud adam for creativity.
Makes a good conspiracy theory, in any case.
Did You Laugh When You Wrote That?
...and then cried about your pathetic graying wrinkled lonely existence?
You are such a bag of sad.
Add that to the anxiety closet catalogue
Now Projecting: Fear of Aging.
Whoever programmed this one...
You might want to tweak your parameters - it's tipped the scale from "Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino" to "Clint Eastwood at the 2012 Republican Convention".
Lol!
Quite apt.
"And another thing, I'm not mad."
"Please don't put in the paper that I got mad."
Don’t poke the bear.
But hats off. Touché!
Oh, this is easy, just deny
Oh, this is easy, just deny them port entry.
Let's change the subject
I am often entertained by how some people insist on inserting their own agenda, even if barely related, to assure that their point of view is heard, even when it has nothing to do with the original post. However, it is worth acknowledging the level of cleverness it takes to do that.
The topic was boats and quickly diverted to school buses.
Amazing.
Good reportage from GBH
“We are continuing to work with our stakeholders. customers, and tenants to reduce their emissions,” Massport told GBH News in a written statement.
Yet in the same article it says the agency refused to do an environmental impact study seven years ago when asked by those same community stakeholders.
Poor working people always wind up paying with their health and their very lives for economic growth.
… and the same reportage that
… and the same reportage that says asthma hospitalizations have dropped less in Chelsea than statewide, and includes a chart showing just the opposite.
Massport doesn't work for us
They work for their own Kingdom of Grift, pretty much.
When the new jet patterns nuked the "listening stations" with noise, they pulled down the data feeds so nobody outside of Massport could analyze it before it was "cleaned" and "adjusted".
They had to be sued into funding a study of impacts of jet emissions on appalling (even for Massachusetts) asthma burdens in the surrounding communities.
If there is an "authority" that needs a housecleaning, Massport is a good place to start.
Do you have a link to
Do you have a link to anything about the listening stations? Chelsea is doing noise studies to argue for funding for noise proofing right now. The downtown area is right under the final approach for runway 15.
asthma
I wish he were comparing Chelsea to communities with similar demographics but not on the harbor. State on the whole is not a great comparison because demos so different.
Can this problem be solved at
Can this problem be solved at the local or state level? Or would it require federal regulations or international treaties?
The article doesn’t mention what other port cities are doing. Are there restrictions that can be imposed on visiting ships? Is shore power a viable thing if Massport decided to do it?
The idling vehicles waiting at drawbridges seems like an easier problem to solve. Just put up signs saying to turn off your engine. Some countries in Europe even require this at railroad crossings, which are much quicker than the 30 minute wait at the Chelsea drawbridge. This problem might solve itself as more vehicles become electric or hybrid.