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Comments
A gift
By massmarrier
Thu, 04/07/2016 - 6:28pm
48 minutes later, still in the same burg? That's why God invented bars. Enjoy the moment.
Also "moderate delays" (30
By coffeeweasel
Thu, 04/07/2016 - 6:37pm
Also "moderate delays" (30 minutes, no train) on the Green line. I was sorely tempted to go get a drink somewhere.
always be prepared
By Malcolm Tucker
Fri, 04/08/2016 - 11:01am
Carry a flask and/or nips with you.
I always carry
By Big fatass with...
Fri, 04/08/2016 - 8:09pm
both of my nips with me.
Adaptation
By SwirlyGrrl
Thu, 04/07/2016 - 6:57pm
Ah yes - there have been days when my husband and I have driven in together that we take one look at the traffic and dive into Lucky's.
Dive into a dive
By massmarrier
Thu, 04/07/2016 - 7:01pm
Splendid phrasing...
If you live in the suburbs,
By anon
Fri, 04/08/2016 - 6:37am
If you live in the suburbs, please consider public transportation as an alternative to driving into the city. Cambridge was not designed to handle a massive influx of drivers at peak times. Thanks!
Commuting from the suburbs to
By eddiil
Fri, 04/08/2016 - 9:10am
Commuting from the suburbs to Cambridge via public transit is a PITA. It generally involves an expensive, unreliable, infrequent commuter rail train AND the unreliable red line or a bus that gets stuck in traffic (EZRide alone takes 15-20 min). Add in the cost of parking at the CR stop and it's no wonder so many people still drive.
I suspect that people that live across the river in nearby neighborhoods/cities like Allston, Brighton, Brookline, and Newton also contribute heavily. Anecdotes indicate that a "crosstown" commute like that sucks on public transit because the rail lines are hub-and-spoke and few buses go across the river to commuting destinations (and those that do are slow). Maybe Cambridge should sponsor some express bus service to Kendall Sq....?
I don't understand how west
By anon
Fri, 04/08/2016 - 5:44pm
I don't understand how west coast cities manage to fund huge bus networks, including express buses to employment centers, while all we can manage to Kendall is the 64, 85, and CT2, which are less than 5 miles long and not too frequent even at rush hours.
Planning at the T consists of shuffling things around while keeping the same total number of bus-hours of service. What do we have to do to expand the bus network?
It's also the shitty road network
By Roman
Fri, 04/08/2016 - 7:53pm
There are five operational crossings of the Charles river coming in from the west in Boston/Cambridge (Soldiers Field Road, JFK St, Western/River St, BU Bridge, Mass Ave). For all of those, there are only three crossings of the Mass-Pike (Mass Ave, BU Bridge, Cambridge Street). Any bus network that doesn't just have it's own lanes, but it's own separate road network, is going to get stuck in that mess coming in from Brighton, Brookline, and Newton.
LA is flat as a pancake and has four-lane roads with turn lanes and shoulders as the basic building block of a perfectly regular grid system that's interrupted only by mountains to the north of the city. Busses have a place to go.
Bostonians don't have that, and somehow believe that reducing and capping road capacity further with by dumping car lanes for bike lanes, slowing down car and bus lanes with sharrow lanes, and refusing to fucking knock down buildings to make room for roads like every civilized country in Europe and Asia has done will somehow make the traffic go away.
Then move to LA
By SwirlyGrrl
Fri, 04/08/2016 - 8:03pm
Their road systems were built for cars. Ours were not built for cars, and they cannot be modified to satisfy car demand. That experiment was attempted already. It failed.
Nobody is stopping you.
Where was it "tried"?
By Roman
Fri, 04/08/2016 - 9:55pm
The best I've ever seen up here is "half-assed with pomp and circumstance." Here's a hint: if the traffic lights are perpetually exactly out of sync with eachother because the only guy who gets to fiddle with the control box is somebody's cousin instead of a real traffic engineer, that's not "trying," that's "not even trying."
Everywhere
By SwirlyGrrl
Fri, 04/08/2016 - 10:18pm
All over the city.
Didn't work.
Do your own homework - plenty of history, plenty of trail.
Give that Statue of Robert Moses a kiss while you are at it.
BS
By Roman
Fri, 04/08/2016 - 10:29pm
How exactly has it been tried "everywhere" when everywhere you look you still see the same two-lane cowpaths that were there from day one?
Do your own damn homework and defend your assertions with facts instead of doubling down on more assertions and "impartial" opinion pieces.
Commuting from the outlying suburbs into the city, generally
By mplo
Sat, 04/09/2016 - 4:35am
has never been that reliable, because there really is no good, decent public transportation in the suburbs, and there never has been.. It's very limited. I remember commuting from the suburbs into the city for a number of years, both by car and by public transportation at times, but, at least, there weren't as many cars on the roads back then as there are today. Also, public transportation, especially from the outlying suburbs and exurbs, has gotten way worse, as well.
Glad I live here in the city.
If you're driving through Kendall Square
By anon
Thu, 04/07/2016 - 7:48pm
then you're part of the problem. Kendall should emphasize public transit, and restrict car access to commercial and safety.
Kendall is very transit oriented
By SwirlyGrrl
Thu, 04/07/2016 - 9:43pm
It is also very bike friendly.
The problem: Baker and his merry band of Great and General Sycophants are far more interested in creating fake crises at the expense of transit users in order to fulfill their destiny as union destroyers than they are in actually having a working transit system that makes it possible for nearly all to use those transit connections.
They don't use it and couldn't give a shit. Even if Boston and Cambridge subsidize their districts heavily.
Charlie Baker's constituency consists mainly of people who
By mplo
Sat, 04/09/2016 - 4:40am
live out in the far suburbs and exurbs and don't use public transportation. What's ironic is the fact that this guy got voted into office as the governor of the Bay State in the first place, because he's been into cutting public transportation in the first place. If the MBTA is permanently shut down, as Charlie Baker would like to see happen, Boston will cease to function as a real city. I can hardly wait for the next Gubernatorial election here in the Bay State, so I can try to help put this guy out to pasture.
Eff you
By Will LaTulippe
Thu, 04/07/2016 - 10:36pm
You take a bus from Brighton. You know who's part of the problem? Those who perpetuate the mandate of working from 9 to 5.
I started a job in Kendall this week. I have to show up for training twice a week for six weeks. Venue for all the other days of this six month temp assignment? Casa de Will, because the Internet exists and I'm a big boy.
I want to know how many people who blame drivers would ever make the walk/bike ride/train ride avoided by those who do elect to drive. It reeks of abortion opposition to me sometimes.
Well, I guess all those
By Verbal
Thu, 04/07/2016 - 7:56pm
Well, I guess all those suburban commuters should have voted to fund the T and increase the gas tax. If they'd done that they wouldn't be stuck in traffic.
Sucks to be in a problem of your own making.
I have no sympathy for people stuck in traffic. They are, as they say, the traffic.
Disengenuous much?
By Roman
Thu, 04/07/2016 - 9:16pm
Traffic is a problem of government not matching transportation capacity (roads, trains, subways) to demand (residents, employers, taxpayers both).
Your brand of liberalism is a problem of blaming Them (suburbanites, car owners, "the rich") for aforementioned governmental incompetence and demanding a shakedown in order to keep not solving the problem.
> Traffic is a problem of
By anon
Fri, 04/08/2016 - 6:27am
> Traffic is a problem of government not matching transportation capacity (roads, trains, subways) to demand (residents, employers, taxpayers both).
What exactly do you think the gas tax is supposed to fund? Are they supposed to pull the money for infrastructure out of thin air?
Gov't doesn't just respond to demand
By SC from JP
Fri, 04/08/2016 - 9:53am
The government shapes demand.
A higher, inflation-indexed gas tax would discourage driving on the margins.
Investing the proceeds in a better-performing T would encourage more people to use it.
Wrong, wrong, and wrong
By Roman
Fri, 04/08/2016 - 7:40pm
1. The government of a free democracy operates with the consent of and serves at the pleasure of the citizenry. If the people say "jump," the only correct response is "how high?" If the people want to drive, the only correct response is is to increase road capacity first, and try to persuade (with words, not the passive-aggressive BS you liberals seem to like) to fund and use trains. This approach has worked wonders in such leftist bastions as Portland, Los Angeles, and Texas, which are all building out subways/light rail in addition to continual investment into their highway networks.
2. Subways, commuter rail, and dedicated busways spread out over a wide enough area to attract enough riders to alleviate motor vehicle traffic is going to cost way more than any kind of 'marginal' tax revenues from gas taxes that are redirected from road maintenance from the rest of the metro area towards half-assed transit gestures in the urban core. Again this passive-aggressive stuff.
3. The isn't underperforming because of a lack of money. It's underperforming because it's run by idiots*. Fire all the upper and middle managers who got there by union rules and seniority instead of competence and replace them with licensed civil engineers, and maybe then I'll be willing to entertain the notion that they T needs more money. Until then, get your house in order.
*Idiots who for their most recent tricks, have demonstrated that they a) don't know how to keep the red/orange-line snow removal equipment in good repair in the event of nasty weather, b) can't be bothered to develop checklists for their operators to turn on the ATC bypass in the trains so that they don't speed off without a driver when the signals fail, c) can't be bothered to hire people who understand how the red line signals work so that they know what to fix instead of just limping along on bypass mode, d) somehow managed to turn a 4 mile trolley extension over an existing right-of-way into a 3 billion dollar project.
How about some non-passive aggression
By SwirlyGrrl
Fri, 04/08/2016 - 10:20pm
Go fuck yourself.
[waiting for your "libruhls like you blah blah fart always never blah" response ...]
What'd we say about drinking and posting
By Roman
Fri, 04/08/2016 - 10:31pm
?
Not that so much
By SwirlyGrrl
Thu, 04/07/2016 - 9:42pm
They shouldn't have voted for an avowed transit hater keen on destroying our transit system.
Cambridge is partially to blame
By Ari O
Thu, 04/07/2016 - 10:26pm
A lot of people in and out of Kendall Square ride buses. The CT2 is crammed at rush hour, the 85 packs in passengers, as do the 64 and 70 (which serve the periphery of Kendall), and the EZRide Shuttle to North Station. There are probably 20 or 25 buses an hour through Kendall, carrying 40 to 50 passengers each. But does Cambridge have bus lanes? Nope. Need that space for parking spaces. Even better bus stops (i.e. floating stops) and some signal priority would help. But then some folks in cars might complain.
Oh, and Two-Timin' Tim Toomey refuses to allow trains on the tracks in Kendall, because what good would that do? Better to have gridlocked traffic where no one can go anywhere. And this isn't isolated. It was worst last winter, of course, but any given weekday it can take half an hour to get through Kendall. (The Red Line today was, as far as I can tell, running fine. Of course, it's damn near capacity. But let's not invest in that when we can add a lane to 128 for a cool third of a billion dollars.)
the old Kendall Square
By anon
Thu, 04/07/2016 - 10:57pm
Apropos of nothing, but I remember the days of the 70s and early 80s when Kendall was a ghost town...even the old F&T diner seemed to always have a sign on it that said "closed", even when it was open.
Don't forget the Turnpike!
By CopleyScott17
Fri, 04/08/2016 - 8:45am
Don't forget the Turnpike!
Bus lanes--ha!
By eddiil
Fri, 04/08/2016 - 9:17am
Bus lanes sound like a good idea, but will the paint on the road even be dry by the time they become parking for Mr. "I'll only be here for a minute" and Mrs. "I'm making a delivery--where am I supposed to park?"
Yeah, it's called a loading zone
By Roman
Fri, 04/08/2016 - 7:41pm
and traffic enforcement. Somehow dedicated loading zones will materialize if some cars get towed while still idling with the inside.
Construction
By johnmcboston
Fri, 04/08/2016 - 9:48am
We also have Main st east through Kendall closed as they rebuild the sidewalks, and Broadway @ Ames with construction in the intersection slowing things down. So your two roads 'out of town' are now major bottlenecks....
Don't forget that Kendall Square is now a big tech area,
By mplo
Sat, 04/09/2016 - 4:54am
and many, if not most of the people who work in those jobs come in from the suburbs and exurbs.
As a bus rider, though, it
By anon
Fri, 04/08/2016 - 7:37am
As a bus rider, though, it still sucks
What was weird was just after
By Samuel Murphy
Thu, 04/07/2016 - 8:56pm
What was weird was just after Porter square it just opened up and was faster than most rush hours. Could there have been a few rain fender benders that jammed stuff up?
Which roads in Kendall Square
By cden4
Fri, 04/08/2016 - 10:04am
Which roads in Kendall Square get backed up?
I bike through there many afternoons around 6 pm, and honestly there isn't much traffic at all that I can see. Am I missing something?
Main Street, Broadway...
By anon
Fri, 04/08/2016 - 2:15pm
Main Street, Broadway...
But the worst IMO is the clusterfuck at the intersection of 28 and ELH Blvd (though I refer to it as Memorial) + bridge to Charlestown
Which part of Broadway? I
By cden4
Fri, 04/08/2016 - 3:58pm
Which part of Broadway? I usually use the stretch between Hampshire St and the Longfellow Bridge and it never appears to be that bad.
That's because the big dig made it a hell of a lot worse than
By mplo
Sat, 04/09/2016 - 4:49am
it already was. It's like that pretty much all the time, which is disgusting.
As much as I think that public transportation is needed,
By mplo
Sat, 04/09/2016 - 4:50am
I also admit to having a car, and, even in the city, if I know I'll be back very late at night, if I need to do errands for my mom, or if I need to replace the acetylene tank for my silversmithing torch, for example, I'll use it. Last winter, when we had all the snow on the ground, I found myself hoofing it in the evenings to public transportation (a 10-15 minute walk from my house) to my TKD classes, or even appointments, and, if I worked out after class and stayed late, I'd take a taxi home. No big deal. The same thing for when I wanted to go some place, as well.
Often, I'll just drive partway, and walk the rest of the way, for an errand or an appointment. No big deal. If I have an appointment or an errand downtown, I hoof it to public transportation (the MBTA) and take the MBTA to where I'm going.
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