09.09.2023
Diving deep into Boston history | Contrarian Boston finds new fans on the radio | Wind and solar not yet up to the job? | Revamp of Boston’s Summer Street off to rough start |
News tips? Story ideas? Email us at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com
What are they thinking? Wu administration’s revamp of key downtown Boston thoroughfare sparks furor
Boston transportation officials are carving out dedicated bus, truck and bike lanes on already traffic-clogged Summer Street.
And biz leaders, convention industry officials and South Boston pols are fuming.
Under the city’s new pilot program, Summer Street will be reduced to a single lane from South Station down past the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center to East First Street in South Boston, with a separate lane for buses and trucks and another for bikes.
The big changes to Summer Street will “bolster safety measures and promote sustainable transportation for both residents and visitors,” the mayor’s press office said in statement.
Not so, say critics, who argue the dramatic constriction of the key artery will result in traffic gridlock, frustrating conventioneers and business people attempting to get to events at the convention center and its Omni headquarters hotel.
In fact, a traffic study paid for by the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority looked at the impact of dramatically narrowing Summer Street and effectively restricting car traffic.
The study, reviewed by Contrarian Boston, gives poor and failing grades to key intersections, though with the caveat that the bus lane, in this scenario, was in the center rather than on the side of road.
Critics of the Summer Street shrinkdown - including MassPort, another big player in the Seaport - have asked for months for the city to do a study before rolling out the changes, to no avail.
“We have highlighted time and again our city, state and region are in a worldwide economic competition,” wrote U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch and a bevy of other South Boston elected officials in a letter to Boston’s transportation chief.
The letter goes on to warn of dire consequences, including traffic gridlock that could “decrease productivity, disincentivize future investment, and further limit foot traffic - which may cause businesses to relocate elsewhere.”
Gridlock on Summer Street as Boston transportation officials roll out revamp of key thoroughfare
Pushing back against opponents of the plan is Jim Aloisi, former state transportation chief and director of the MIT Transit Research Consortium.
Aloisi contends the dedicated bus lanes have a track record of reducing traffic. He expects that will be the case with Summer Street as well.
“The fears that people have are never borne out by the reality of how it plays out,” Aloisi told Contrarian Boston.
However, the problem is that people attending events at the BCEC or staying at nearby hotels or, for that matter, coming in from the suburbs, aren’t going to take the bus.
They are going to drive or take an Uber.
To dismiss these concerns as just a bunch of complaints by deep-pocketed business interests would be a mistake.
Most business people are cautious, especially when it comes to politics. The last thing they want to do is cross the mayor on one of her prized initiatives, like the Summer Street bus and bike lanes.
That they are risking Wu’s displeasure by getting the word out, then, is telling.
“Nobody wants to go up against the mayor,” said one executive.
File under: Some things never change.
Contrarian Boston hits the big time: GBH radio hosts Eagan and Braude have some fun with our story on Healey’s Nantucket fundraiser from hell
That would be Margery Eagan and Jim Braude, co-hosts of Boston Public Radio.
The pair clearly got a kick out of our story earlier this week on the college-aged climate change protestors who crashed a pricey Nantucket fundraiser for the governor.
Our piece questioned claims by members of Climate Defiance that they felt threatened by the crowd of well-heeled Healey supporters, many clearly over 60, after the protesters turned the wine and cheese party into a scene of chaos and confusion.
The claims by the young activists didn’t ring true to us, especially after reviewing the video of the mess and talking to one of the guests.
Boston Public Radio co-hosts Jim Braude and Margery Eagan
As we noted, did they truly think that some of the prominent business people and developers at the event, or that matter Healey, “were going to orchestrate a beat down? Throw wine at them? Force feed them hors d'oeuvres?”
“I should clarify, if anyone listening wants to force feed me hors d'oeuvres, I am available anytime between 2 and 11 the next morning,” Braude quipped.
You can find Braude and Eagan discussing the Nantucket story with Sue O’Connell, co-publisher of Bay Windows and a regular contributor on GBH’s Boston Public Radio on media issues, at about the hour and twenty minute mark of their Sept. 6 show.
Hot off the presses: An epic history of Boston hits the bookstores
Welcome to Boston, the city that reinvents itself every century or so.
That’s one takeaway from the magnificent and masterful “A History of Boston” by Dan Dain, a top commercial real estate lawyer by day, author at night.
Dain’s book, just released in hardcover by Peter E. Randall Publisher in Portsmouth, N.H, looks at all nearly 400 years of the city’s history with a particular focus on the ebbs and flows of its economic fortunes.
Yet the manuscript is much more than that, covering everything from the original topography of the peninsula that would one day become Boston to the city’s role as the birthplace of both the abolition and anti-immigration movements.
And the book also offers both an implicit and at times overtly stated warning, that Boston’s current success is not cast in stone, and that the progress of recent decades came only after 60 to 70 years of stagnation and malaise covering a good chunk of the 20th century.
We’d say that warning is particularly timely right now given some of the challenges Boston faces, particularly when it comes to housing.
“Boston is ascendant. But it has not always been so. Indeed, for most of the twentieth century, Boston was at a nadir,” writes Dain, chairman, president and co-founder of Dain, Torpy, Le Ray, Wiest & Garner, PC. “Trying to understand what has caused Boston, throughout its history, to swing between periods of urban success and failure is what has motivated me to explore the history of Boston.”
Interested in learning more? Dain is slated to speak about his new book on Sept. 18 at 6:30 p.m. at the Cambridge Public Library. (The event is ticketed - here is the link.)
You can catch Dain again at Newtonville Books on Oct. 5 at 7:30 p.m.
“A History of Boston” is set to hit local bookstores Sept. 19, and is slated to be carried by Brookline Booksmith, Harvard Book Store, Porter Square Books, Belmont Books, Concord Bookshop, Newtonville Books, and Wellesley Books.
Or you can pre-order through bookshop.org, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.
Happy Reading!
############################################################################
You are reading the free edition of Contrarian Boston. Here are some of the stories a paid subscription would unlock:
Spinning the housing numbers: Wu administration downplays dramatic drop in residential construction
Project Sunlight: Health code violations at Boston restaurants
Oyster war: Cohasset sues state, neighboring town, for greenlighting shellfish farms in its harbor
Brookline gets its local news back: Online-only news startup launches full-service journalism
School testing debate heats up: Ed and biz groups challenge proposed anti-MCAS ballot question
Globe looks to hire a media reporter. What it really needs is an ombudsman.
Please click below to subscribe. Thank you!