Monday May 14 03:36pm
I won!
It was my first race ever, and I came in first. I’m batting 1,000. Maybe it’s time to retire, while I’m still on top.
This is just an amazing shot of Washington Street in Jamaica Plain 25 years ago when the elevated came down.
Sunday Apr 22 09:19pmOld Orange Line demolition. Fall, 1987
Photo by Chris Lovett
I love it when this guy plays his hurdy gurdy at Harvard Station.
Sunday Apr 22 08:42pmhurdy gurdy in real life. so legit. (Taken with instagram)
I am a wandering, bitter shade,
Never of me was a hero made;
Poets have never sung my praise,
Nobody crowned my brow with bays;
And if you ask me the fatal cause,
I answer only, “My name was Dawes”
‘Tis all very well for the children to hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere;
But why should my name be quite forgot,
Who rode as boldly and well, God wot?
Why should I ask? The reason is clear —
My name was Dawes and his Revere.
When the lights from the old North Church flashed out,
Paul Revere was waiting about,
But I was already on my way.
The shadows of night fell cold and gray
As I rode, with never a break or a pause;
But what was the use, when my name was Dawes!
History rings with his silvery name;
Closed to me are the portals of fame.
Had he been Dawes and I Revere,
No one had heard of him, I fear.
No one has heard of me because
He was Revere and I was Dawes.
Helen F. Moore,
published in Century Magazine, 1896
Thursday Apr 19 10:05am
When I saw this subway I immediately started imagining a horror film, with a similar plot to Final Destination but with hallucinations and a lot more hysteria. Less “BOO!” and “Run or shrapnel will kill us!”, more psychotic plot twists that induce paranoia. Why must I be brilliantly creepy at such selective times? .-.
See, and I just imagine riding the train to the end of the line and meeting the White Rabbit.
Saturday Apr 7 05:27pm
Thursday Apr 5 12:49pmUnofficial Historical Map: An Animated History of the MBTA
This is something you just have to look at: an amazing animated timeline of the Boston MBTA Subway over at Andrew Lynch’s Vanshnookenraggen blog (check out his future MBTA maps while you’re there).
To my mind, this work is far superior to the animated history of the New York Subway map that was floating around the interwebs a little while back: it’s clearly dated on the map, it’s fully annotated, and even has a slide show version below the animated GIF so you can flick through the years at your own pace. What’s fascinating to me is the almost complete reinvention of transit in Boston as the original elevated lines get torn down and replaced by subway.
An amazing work, and fully worthy of a 5 star rating. I’m not going to steal Andrew’s thunder by posting the full GIF here: click on the image or here to visit his site and watch the years roll by!
Wednesday Apr 4 08:53pmFirst trolley of Boston’s present-day MBTA system. “Allston,” “Pearl St.,” and “Park St.” displayed on the car. 9/1/1897
On a sunny fall afternoon at 3:30 p.m. on September 25, 1948, this rare color photo of Braves Field in Boston was taken from a seat in the left field pavilion. The photographer captured Jeff Heath in front of the Wigwam’s new electric scoreboard as the Tribe left fielder was about to haul in a fly ball third out off the bat of NY Giants catcher Sal Yvars in the eighth inning.
Hard to believe that there’s still a little bit of Braves Field left at Boston University.
Wednesday Apr 4 08:44pmThis is a really cool video showing a drive around Boston using a time lapse camera. Analysis at Universal Hub determined that this was filmed around 1964 rather than 1958. It’s amazing how recognizable everything is after 50 years! I’d love to watch it a slower speed.
Sunday Mar 18 11:38pm
This makes me all kind of happy. The future of Forest Hills is looking brighter.
Friday Mar 9 09:55amCasey Overpass to be torn down, replaced with surface roads
- The state announced Thursday that it will not rebuild the aging Casey Overpass that carries the Arborway over the Forest Hills MBTA station in Jamaica Plain but instead will replace the deteriorating structure with surface roads.
This is a great look at the wasted opportunities of park & ride transit stations. Imagine the little villages that could be built near Boston at Riverside Station in Newton, Route 128 Station in Westwood, or the Anderson Regional Transportation Center in Woburn.
Of course the sea of parking around Forest Hills Station right in Jamaica Plain would be the best place to build a dense, transit-oriented village.
Friday Mar 2 01:52pmIf we built village of small streets today, where would we locate it?
One great candidate would be a park-and-ride lot, which is a parking lot located next to a subway, light rail, or commuter rail station. These parking lots do the job of getting some people to use public transit who wouldn’t ordinarily take it.
But that’s just the problem: the people who use park-and-ride lots don’t ordinarily take transit. The reason they have to drive to a train station is that they don’t live near it. That’s why building new neighborhoods next to transit (called transit oriented development in planner lingo) has become popular in the last 10 years. If we built a small streets village next to transit station, then we’d have a whole village of people who could use transit for all of their trips longer than a walk or bicycle ride away.
There are countless park-and-ride lots to consider, but we’ll look at just a couple. Greenbelt Station is located in Maryland at one end of Metro’s Green Line, which goes through Washington, DC and back out to Maryland. If you’ve ever hopped a ride on the Bolt Bus from New York City or the bus from BWI Airport, you may have visited this station.
Greenbelt Station’s parking lot has 3,399 all-day spaces and uses an area of 37 acres. Is that large enough for a village of small streets? Let’s use the village of Jakriborg, Sweden as an example, since that was built next to a train station and we’ve discussed it before.
The whole village of Jakriborg is just 12.5 acres, and over 500 families live there! Do a little basic math and you find that, at the average US household size of 2.6, almost 4,000 people could live in a small streets village that extends no further than the current boundaries of the parking lot. We’d still have plenty of room for buses, taxis, and Zipcars on the edges.
Even the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Telč, Czech Republic fits on the Greenbelt park-and-ride lot. Built during the Renaissance, Telč is organized around a large town square with small streets surrounding it.
We would of course craft the village to best fit the site. But as you can see, there’s no reason why well over 1,000 people couldn’t live in a village of small streets on the site of a former park-and-ride lot.
There are plenty more park-and-ride lots on Metro. This example at Landover Station is 16 acres in area with 1,866 parking spots. Around 1,600 people could live here in a small streets village. Which would you rather see here? Parking spaces for 1,866 commuters or houses, apartments, shops and restaurants for 1,600 village residents and visitors from all over the DC region?
We’ve invested billions of dollars in providing these sites with a rapid transit system that whisks passengers away every 6 to 20 minutes, from 5 am to 12:30pm weekdays and 7am to 2:30am on weekends. What’s really the best use of this land?
Let’s take these parking lots and build small streets villages.
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If you’re curious to find out how many people could live in a small streets village next to a park-and-ride lot near you, use this handy tool to measure the site in Google Maps.
Tuesday Feb 28 01:34pmPAUL MCMORROW
Ripe for building on Orange Line
- Activists from both sides of the Charles are assembling again, with the goal of redeveloping neighborhoods along the length of the Orange Line corridor.
A good article that sums up my thoughts on bike helmets. Yes, everyone should wear them but not because of a law. It’s more important to focus on improved facilities and getting more people riding bikes.
Friday Feb 24 10:47am