Smooth as silk. Newton had done their stretch maybe a year/year-and-a-half ago, and crossing the city line into Boston had been like riding off the edge of the Bonneville Salt Flats straight onto the surface of the moon.
I know paint is not infrastructure but if this gets green lane markings it will be absolutely amazing.
>Most weekday mornings, I begin my day by stealing something. Technically speaking, I commit a civil infraction. Not only do I knowingly break the rules, I feel like I’m the sucker if I don’t cheat the public system that makes my life go.
>I hop on the Green Line at an above-ground stop, glance at the fare box, then walk right on by.
>Nearly all of us do.
>In summer 2024, the MBTA debuted its fancy new collection system so people could board and pay at back doors on the Green Line’s above-ground stops, a way to speed up the boarding process. Before then, fare evasion still happened, but most riders lined up in front and paid with a CharlieCard. Some riders boarded in back and waved a plastic card, a bit of theater to persuade the conductor they held the monthly pass.
>Now we don’t even pretend. The T, which is fully aware of what we’re doing, needs to figure out a way to recoup the revenue it’s losing.
I don't get this: the author is openly and unironically admitting that he doesn't pay his fare on the MBTA?
A grown man employed at the region's most prestigious media outlet? He could've written the story without admitting to being an antisocial jerk who commits fare evasion because he believes that only suckers pay.
Both sides of the Cummins Highway cycle track (physically separated bike lane) are essentially complete from Annafran St. up to the bridge over the Fairmount Line train tracks. There's just some green lane painting left to be done. This stretch is only 7/10ths of a mile but it's almost as good as a Dutch fietspad (although obviously far less safe in practice owing to Massachusetts driver competence).
East of the Fairmount tracks, the south side (eastbound cycle track) is still roped off and impassable, while the north side (westbound cycle track) is mostly paved to within a block or two of Mattapan Square/America's Food Basket (although still missing some curb ramps).
One of the worst pedestrian experiences in the city has gotta be walking east from Boylston & Mass Ave. toward Hynes and the Pru (but it's not like Boylston & Mass Ave. is a major hub for pedestrians and transit users, or anything).
Coming up on Cambria Street, you're treated to a line of parking spaces along the curb, with no ramp and no crosswalk. To keep going, you have to step out from behind a parked SUV of your choice, with absolutely no idea whether some cheapass parking-meter-hunter who just blasted out of Boylston/Mass Ave is about to take that gentle 30‑degree turn onto Cambria at 40 mph. So unless you can either walk backwards or crane your neck 180 degrees like Linda Blair, your entire life is in those drivers' little iPhone-filled hands.
Then if you survive that, you land on the crappy pedestrian island in the middle of Boylston/Cambria/St. Cecilia, where the wobbling curbstones have been floating unattached to the sidewalk for most of the last decade, and where for some reason they're twice as high as everywhere else in the city. Hard on the tires of the Bluebikes that get wonked in and out of the station in the middle of the island, and even harder on pedestrians' knees.
If you make it onto and off of the island without ripping your patellar tendon or spraining your talocrural joint, you're treated to another crosswalk-less, high-curbstone experience at St. Cecilia, dodging the trucks gunning it up the ramp from the Hynes loading dock. For me, the whole experience is probably the funnest 250 feet of my day.
Over the last 30 or so years, grand plans for this block have been dangled before us by a parade of hucksters including administrators in the adjacent musical college, snake-oil air-rights salesmen from the authorities overseeing the interstate highway and train tracks underneath, Mumbles, Mahty, et al.
Alas at the end of the day we've gotten zilch in the way of improvements (or even basic maintenance).
So in the spirit of the World Cup, could we finally spare what, maybe a hundred grand out of the special-event sprucing-up budget for an honest-to-God ADA‑compliant crosswalk? For the FIFA fanboyz who will be walking through this intersection at some point next month, if for no one else