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First the Olympics, now IndyCar
By adamg on Fri, 04/29/2016 - 6:21pm
The Globe reports Bostonians have once again crushed the dreams and hopes of rich people who just wanted to have some fun. Yes, IndyCar Boston is dead.
City Hall blames IndyCar:
The City of Boston will always be open to opportunities that will positively showcase our city, however as we continued to work with Boston Grand Prix they were unwilling or unable to meet the necessary requirements to hold an event of this size. The Mayor feels strongly in protecting the taxpayers and limiting the impact to residents, and we are not shy that we held them to very high standards."
Neighborhoods:
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Comments
news cycles
Any coincidence of the free community college announcement at the beginning of the day being followed by a Friday afternoon, bury it/forget it story about another failed project...?
(That being said, good on Mahty for the school thing. Now let's hope the schools are funded sufficiently so that the students will qualify for the program.)
5pm Friday is a very popular
5pm Friday is a very popular time to announce things you don't really want to.
Friday News Dump
is the term
Reorg
I deleted the email from the city either earlier today or yesterday about the reorg of the city's tourism bureau / using consultants, and my take now is that they did that specifically b/c of IndyCar "debacle"
And here we thought ...
It was just because of "Top Chef."
The official reason is that
The official reason is that Boston is just becoming too popular that they need more tourismbureau to keep up.
Kind of foolish to have Indy
Kind of foolish to have Indy car racing in Boston, think this is Montreal.
Whoever came up with the idea in the first place is a moron!
Just think of all the police the city would need to cover miles of crowded streets, who will pay for all their overtime, corporate sponsors such as Gatorade, I don't think so.
What the city should really focus on is a soccer stadium for the New England revs.
Too bad...
I would have loved to see the IndyCar races. They're a lot more fun than just going around in circles on a track.
Look, we're all gonna be dead some day. What the hell is wrong with having fun on the way?
I think if it wasn't for unreasonable government interference, ("Look, ocean will rise here, maybe, someday, so no racing for you without a permit from some bullshit new City agency. Should have known. Sorry.") we'd have the Indy race.
At least the New England coast isn't rising as fast as it once was from the melting of the glaciers here 11,000 years ago.
A soccer stadium? If you can build it without $50 mill in taxpayer promises, fine. Bet you can't.
What's fun about
Overnight construction for 3 months prior to the race, tearing up median strips, taking down light/sign posts, narrowing sidewalks, and generally screwing up life in the convention center/congress st area for 1/4 of the year? 3 days of racing? Don't forget, another month to put back the medians/sidewalks/sign/lightposts. Yah, sounds like a blast.
Dueling tweets
"Its"
Damn it, Jim!
No, actually.
As much as I'd love another affirmation of my low opinion of Emily Rooney, she got it right, here. One only uses "it's" as a contraction for variations of "it is."
Nevermind
Actually, she used both "its" and "it's" in the same sense, guaranteeing that she'd be wrong at least once. My negative opinion of her is reaffirmed. :)
That wasn't her tweet. So yes
That wasn't her tweet. So yes, nevermind.
Emily Rooney is a clueless
Emily Rooney is a clueless rich kid who has never rode the T. She knows nothing about handling of money or what is good for the people of Boston.
She rode it once!
I'm not one to defend Emily Rooney, but she rode the T once, in snowmageddon 2015, when she went to help shovel out a college or some institution. Her friend who drove her there wasn't able to drive her back home, and dropped her (and her shovel) off at a Green Line stop.
She told Jim and Margery that aside from being nervous about how to pay/buy tickets, it wasn't too bad, and she would ride the T again. Haven't heard anything about a sophomore attempt...
RIP
i didnt mind the idea, but i don't live there and wouldnt blame any residents of that area not wanting it.
however, i'm all for those schmucks in providence getting it and might consider going to check it out!
tl;dr NIMBY?
WTF does tldrnimby mean
WTF does tldrnimby mean
It means
Too long; did (or do) not read
Not In My Back Yard
It's coming down here?
Does that mean we might actually get a repaved road? Because that would itself be a miracle.
If people really want to see drivers racing
through the streets, why not just go up to Seaver, Blue Hill Ave, Columbia Road of a weekend evening?
If people really want to watch pit crews
in action, go to Bay State Road on move-in day.
Yes! And Sally wins pole
Yes! And Sally wins pole position!
Don't complain to your local police department about that though. We aren't allowed to chase them.
- a Boston Cop
Which is probably a good thing
I wouldn't want wayward youth or bystanders injured in high speed chases. That doesn't make it easy to stop racing or reckless driving, and I don't have the answers. Is it possible to get evidence on camera and cite car owners for excessive speed or reckless driving?
It would be possible to get
It would be possible to get the plate, there are cameras at some intersections on BHA.
But I doubt you could prove that the owner of the car was the one operating it at the time of the infraction, so citing him or her would be impossible. I don't think the cameras are THAT good.
- Boston Cop
I was going to make the same
I was going to make the same comment but say Beacon street or the Jamaicaway. Boston drivers do whatever they want and are hardly punished for the tremendous damage they cause.
I know...
I almost got taken out the other day on my bike while stopped at a light (with my foot on the curb!) by a guy so busy trying to make the light that he forgot it was a two-way street. Drivers here are f'ing terrifying and we treat it like some charming regional quirk.
A thought
Rather than the expected blame against the "no to anything" crowd, why don't we blame Marty Walsh for signing a multiyear deal that obligated an entire section of the city, complete with residents and businesses, to deal with an incredibly disruptive event? Without any public input? Without checking to see if there might be issues like EPA-adminsitered Brownfields? Or what other government agencies might need to be involved? All so that a couple of former associates could make a few bucks?
He blew this. Him. He needs to own it. But we know the dimwits will blame the rabble-rousers who try to point these things out, because it's the Boston Way.
Agreed
I think Boston would have been pretty up on Indy Car, if it had been done right. It's like getting married: you might really want to some day, butthat doesn't mean you'd appreciate it if your family suddenly arranged a marriage for you, even if it would have been a good match.
i prefer tophats
to butthats
to deal with an incredibly
By that metric, perhaps we need to seriously reconsider holding the Boston
Professional Foreign Runner FestMarathon every year.It was one thing when ALL runners participated in the same race, when the field of runners was much smaller than now, and the disruptions to local streets lasted seven or eight hours at the most. Now it's the idiotic "separate races based on which "group" of runners you fall in" nonsense, with all day closures along most of the route, and multi-day closures choking off the area around Copley Square.
Also, somebody should really tell the Boston Arrogance Association and the City of Boston that this is no longer the 1950s, and many people are actually WORKING on Patriots Day.
Lulz
This is the opposite of true. The qualifying times have gotten consistently faster, and now the cutoff is even faster than the qualifier.
Except for the charity runners
I think Roadman might be okay with a few thousand 3:00 marathoners, but those who buy their way in are a bit slower, hence the extended day.
For the record, I was cool with this race, and I'm not sure what the complications were with it, but it does look like the old "no fun" Boston won again.
Johnny Kelley took like nine
Johnny Kelley took like nine hours to finish his last few Bostons. Technically he got in by qualifying.
Post race cleanup is not much different than it used to be. I think they used to start letting traffic onto Beacon at 5pm, and closed the finish line at 7pm (after a noon start). But the pre-race closures today are kind of nonsensical.
That's the other thing
I was going to be PC about the whole thing, but the qualifying times for 70+ is a lot more generous. Then, if you are physically challenged, like being a little person or running on a prosthetic leg, you get all the time in the world to finish, but those universes are small and I didn't want to make Roadman out to be insensitive. I think the charity runners are probably the ones he has issue with. Well, he has an issue with the roads being closed for 12 hours, but I am talking the underlying issue.
agreed
they should probably get rid of fenway park and the garden too because i dont really like the disruptions to my routine and those businesses also employ a lot of foreigners as well
When events at Fenway Park and TD Garden
routinely result in half the streets in those sections of the City being shut down for hours (or days) at a time, then you might have an argument.
When marathons result in
When marathons result in 33000 deaths in the U.S. every year you might have an argument.
Running actually saves lives.
You mean like Yawkey Way and
You mean like Yawkey Way and Van Ness, which are completely shut down, and Causeway Street, which is brought to a standstill? You mean like that?
One day
The Marathon is one day. The bollards go up and come down within a day. And it has evolved, so it's been easier to accommodate the growth.
Indycar would take over that entire section of the city for weeks to set up the asphalt and barriers. Weeks. If not months.
But thanks for bringing up the expected trope of trolls who think that the "might as well ban the marathon!" argument is meaningful.
Terrible comparison.
Noise from the marathon doesn't reach 140 decibels, nor does the marathon store gas tanks in a flood zone. If IndyCar had succeeded they would've had to modify a road, by disturbing a toxic waste site beneath.
Marathon is a non-profit public event. People know of its existence before they choose to live on the route. IndyCar is a for-profit corporation. Residents of South Boston were never allowed to have a say about their own neighborhood. Residents wouldn't have had access to their own parking garage. Sidewalks would be transformed into cattle pens.
BGP offered no mitigation for the deafening level of noise. They had no emergency plan, no ADA plan. The marathon is a community event, Indy tickets cost $99 - $1500.
6 1/2 months of yearly construction would've been a huge step backwards for long-term transportation plans, and bike infrastructure.
140 decibels is quiet
Indy cars are quiet if you're comparing them to the Wellesley scream tunnel.
So what if non U.S. citizens
So what if non U.S. citizens compete in the
marathon? It's an international event! Crawl back under your rock, xenophobe.
With the...
Moniker 'roadman', and adding in the xenophobic gripe, I'm just convinced he's Markk's alt. Not sure if we've already figured that out or not yet, but it's becoming more apparent to me.
Spin spin
I am dying to see the spin the administration is going to put on this flip flop. I just hope the few people in this City that votes remember this in the next election.
Fixed
First the Olympics
then the St Patrick's Day Parade, then the GE handout now the Indy Car Race.
If it were Formula 1 like in Monaco
I would be all for it. But Indy cars? Isn't that a bit downmarket for Boston?
Disrupting SilverLine on Labor Day weekend was never a good idea
Lots of students are traveling to Boston that weekend, many of them arriving at Logan Airport. The IndyCar race would have prevented the Silver Line from running between the airport and South Station.
Thanks for being super
Thanks for being super neutral on your reporting, said no one ever, Adam.
Don't mention it
There's more where that came from.
Thanks for the link where
Thanks for the link where some of the comments lambast your headline!
You mean the link where the
You mean the link where the comments re-affirm exactly what the initial post said?!
Super neutral on your reporting
Is that in the mission statement?
Bottom Line
Translation: in a city of small geographical extent and high population density that predated paved roads by about 300 years, and was never subjected to systematic areal bombing, a multi-day high-speed car chase event is a very tough fit.
One sided
The only people in favor of this idiotic idea was the Mayor and all those who don't live in or near Boston.
Part of the problem is the
Part of the problem is the lack of development. Organizers wanted to drop a fully-formed event on a neighborhood without building up to it, incrementally.
They were trying to throw the frog into a pot of boiling water instead of raising the heat a few notches at a time... Okay, that wasn't constructive of me.
If they had structured their proposal to build it from a small event to a larger one over a span of two or three years, or if they hired a PR firm with some imagination - they probably would've had more success.
For example:
- a few months out, do a promotional tie-in with the auto show at the convention center. Have IndyCars on display in the exhibit hall. Have some IndyCars lead an opening-day parade down Summer St - could become a good visual (like the elephants parade across the bridge and into the Garden when the circus came to town)
- Year one: have a smaller event on part of the eventual route. A drag race or something (I know, they're not drag race vehicles). Maybe make it a time-trial or elimination race to qualify for one of their other events someplace else.
- Generate some good publicity and promote interest by doing a tie-in with the city's vocational high-schools: bring one of their cars (or even just the engine (probably a used/retired race car)) to the autoshop program for the kids to work on. Organize some sort of pit-crew events.
- provide guarantees on hiring locals
- promote yourselves a bit by throwing a crumb to environmental concerns. Buy a bunch of specially-decorated bikes for Hubway. Show how all the tires used by the race cars are going to be recycled - build playground equipment or shred them to be part of spongy pavement at a playground
- instead of looking like you're spending all your time trying to woo City Hall, the DOT, the Governor, the Convention Center Authority, and MassPort; spend some time with the neighbors and find out what they'd want - both logistically for the event and as a permanent improvement quid-pro-quo.
- this last one is as much (if not more) on the public authorities as the Organizers: Have a *^&%#$ing open process where the permit requirements are known to all parties from the start.
- do satellite promotional events around the region
Well, I'm sure they'll find something for themselves. Probably Patriot Place, or maybe the Andelman Brothers will rent them the drive-in for a week
Adam it amazes me how much
Adam it amazes me how much you don't like fun events. You are a bonafied liberal.
Bonafied?
Nay, I'm a certified liberal. Why, for awhile, I was even a card-carrying ACLU member - just to piss people like you off. I'd ride the T and anybody who had the remotest hint of a smile I'd just flash that card right at them and sternly wag my finger at them and tell them to knock it the frick off. And then I'd come home and kick the dog, and unfurl my copy of the Times and sit there in my lounger, smoking my pipe and sipping my sherry and harrumphing at the world.
Hey, somebody has to do it, thanks for recognizing my work!
Ah - you're makin' that up!
Ah - you're makin' that up!
After all... When was the last time anybody smiled riding the T?
Dude
You probably think anyone who can spell correctly is a flaming liberal. Egg-head college types and whatnot.
What does "to bonafy" mean?
It's no secret at all
Oh, wait. That's BonoFly.
Nevermind.
"to make into...
...an asshole?"
To be continued...?
This interesting post just appeared on the CityofBoston site:
http://www.cityofboston.gov/news/Default.aspx?id=20610
It's like a bad end-of-season sitcom cliffhanger...
Well, then
Another reason to make sure Walsh isn't running things in a couple of years.
They're just taking a "gap
They're just taking a "gap year"...
While I was never really strongly for-or-against it, I did think the whole thing was somewhat odd, especially in how it was rushed so much in order to occur this year.
One interesting thing is the last sentence's mentioning of a "strong local promoter", which could give more credence to the theory that it was really a funding issue, and the whole "red tape" argument was IndyCar's cover-up for a lack of ticket sales and/or interested sponsors.