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March 11, 2009

San Francisco Subway
Riders board the San Francisco subway
(Photo courtesy New York Times)
 

Highlights

  • Business leaders push for 25 cent gas tax hike (Boston Globe)
    By Noah Bierman -- A group of five major Massachusetts business organizations said today that the state needs a 25 cent per gallon gas tax hike -- higher than Governor Deval Patrick’s 19 cent proposal -- to fix the state’s transportation system. “The political stakes are high, but the leadership here is necessary,” said Paul Guzzi, president and CEO of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce.
San Francisco Subway
Riders board the San Francisco subway
(Photo courtesy New York Times)
 

Highlights

  • Business leaders push for 25 cent gas tax hike (Boston Globe)
    By Noah Bierman -- A group of five major Massachusetts business organizations said today that the state needs a 25 cent per gallon gas tax hike -- higher than Governor Deval Patrick’s 19 cent proposal -- to fix the state’s transportation system. “The political stakes are high, but the leadership here is necessary,” said Paul Guzzi, president and CEO of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce.

     

  • Green Line Extension Agreements Reached (Commonwealth Conversations)
    Transportation Secretary James A. Aloisi, Jr. and Somerville Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone announced today that they have reached agreement on two important aspects of the extension of the Green Line through Somerville to Medford. In order to provide maximum pedestrian and bicycle access to the Green Line, and to support the City’s efforts to expand alternative transportation routes, EOT has committed to underwriting the cost of planning and design for an extension of Somerville’s Community Path. [...] In addition, EOT has agreed that, if a planned Green Line maintenance facility is ultimately located in the Innerbelt-Brickbottom district of Somerville, it will be designed and sited in ways that preserve livability, access, and development potential.

     

  • Parking permits may be adopted city-wide (Somerville News)
    By Tom Nash -- Somerville's streets without parking permit requirements have drawn the ire of the Board of Aldermen, with an initial step taken at last Thursday's meeting to find out what would happen if all streets were taken into the system. The board cited concerns about the parking competition that would be brought by the MBTA through the city and Cambridge residents who poach spots during the work day. Roughly one third of Somerville has unregulated street parking, a majority of which lies in the area that would be serviced by the green line extension.

     

  • The Wild Bunch (New York Times)
    By Robert Sullivan -- SOMETIMES, when I am biking, I remember the ’80s, and I shudder. I remember, in other words, when biking was an extreme sport, when, if you were a biker, you had a lot of locks and a lot more nerve. Just the other day, when I was enjoying the bike lane down Clinton Street in my neighborhood, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, I stopped at a red light. And after the crossing guard smiled and chatted with me, after the cars pulled up alongside me and did not honk, I experienced a flashback from 1987: my regular trip from West 113th Street to Central Park, navigating honks and taunts, the mayhem that was then on Cathedral Parkway.

     

  • How We Can Save Our Roads (PARADE)
    By Earl Swift -- Last March, a bridge inspector discovered a crack six feet long in a concrete pillar supporting Interstate 95 on its elevated course through Philadelphia. Mindful of the Minneapolis bridge collapse that killed 13 people in August 2007, alarmed state engineers promptly shut down two miles of the nation’s busiest highway in both directions. For two days, the eight-lane interstate’s 184,000 daily users were detoured onto two-lane streets. The jams were epic. “Completely clogged,” recalls Chuck Davies, who oversees highway design in Philadelphia. “Crawling. Bumper to bumper.”

     

  • Transit Use Hit Five-Decade High in 2008 as Gas Prices Rose (New York Times, Washington Post)
    By Michael Cooper -- More people rode the nation’s public buses, subways and commuter trains last year than in any year since 1956, when the federal government created the Interstate highway system, according to a report by a transit association. Americans took nearly 10.7 billion rides on public transportation in 2008, a 4 percent increase over the previous year, according to the report, by the American Public Transportation Association, a nonprofit organization that represents transit systems. The report was to be released on Monday in Washington at the association’s annual conference. Use of public transportation in the United States has risen 38 percent since 1995, the report said.

"Streets"

  • Would car traffic bring back the crowds? (Boston Globe)
     
  • LivableStreets responds: Walk the walk in Downtown Crossing (Boston Globe)
     
  • Catching eyes and nays (Boston Globe)
     
  • Mayor's walking tour skirts downtown woes (Boston Globe)
     
  • Mass. Ave. battle revs up again (Boston Globe)
     
  • News in Brief: Paying for Concord Ave improvements; Putting residents first for parking (Boston Globe)
     
  • Village merchants are thinking future chic [Mattapan] (Boston Globe)
     
  • Road lines yielding to wintry barrage (Boston Globe)
     
  • From Tokyo to Brooklyn: Good Streets and What Defines Them (Regional Plan Association)
     

Bicycling

  • Hub getting in gear for citywide 'Bike Share' program (Boston Herald)
     

Transit

Cars/Parking

Transportation financing/Government

  • City awarded $40m for repair of roads from stimulus funds (Boston Globe)
     
  • Business leaders push for 25 cent gas tax hike (Boston Globe)
     
  • Patrick pays house call to talk up gas tax (Boston Globe)
     
  • MBTA: Billboards a good sign (Boston Herald)
     
  • Transportation Sec. Aloisi Answers Your Questions (WBZ)
     
  • Westwood creates pedestrian and bicycle safety committee (Daily News Transcript)
     
  • Mass. researches VMT program (Daily Free Press)
     
  • Patrick's stimulus wish list set to go (Boston Globe)
     
  • 19-cent gas tax hike proposal too low, transit advocates say (Boston Globe)
     
  • Transit reform plan faces critical stretch (Boston Metro)
     
  • T rider won't stand for more fare hikes (NECN, WCVB)
     
  • Activists urge T to scrape up dough, avoid hike (Boston Herald)
     

Parks

Development projects

Out-of-state

National trends

International news