A plan with a specific timeline would be good. Even if the timeline ends up being wrong, just having it would be better than not having it.

I bet the handbook would recommend a traffic signal for this purpose. Might work a bit better than a stop sign.

You could enforce it by widening the sidewalk on those turns so that it's physically impossible to park there. That seems to be the preferred solution for intersections, anyway. It does cost money though. May not be practical immediately.

Why not both?

Signal modernization is already happening. It's really not that hard to get the train to stop at a specific point. Maybe a bit of training for the drivers. Other cities even have driverless trains that can stop precisely enough for platform screen doors to work.

I'm really fascinated by this - why exactly are you here? What do you hope to gain by posting in a subreddit for a city you hate, insulting talking about how much you hate the city? I'm sorry to hear that you're stuck living somewhere you dislike this much. But I don't really understand what we can do for you.

If the snowstorm is bad enough, every travel method will be disrupted. Driving would certainly be just as delayed, or more, along with a high risk of getting into a crash. Biking would barely work at all. Walking could work if you have the right gear, but you need to be prepared and take it slow. Flights would be delayed or cancelled. Busses might be ok, if there are bus lanes for enough of the route and the plows got to them, but even that's iffy. There just isn't a good way to travel when the snow is that bad, and holding the commuter rail to an unrealistic standard doesn't really help.

It's generally not the progressives who run crying to the Republicans when people talk about raising the gas tax.

Gas tax needs to be revisited soon anyway. Once most cars are electric, the gas tax stops being meaningful at all. We need a vehicle miles traveled tax instead.

So in your mind, it's not a benefit to reduce weather related power outages unless you can eliminate them completely?

I'm all for doing all of these things. In the end we do have to prioritize which ones have the most value for their cost, if nothing else just to decide what order to do them in. NSRL has extremely high value, but also extremely high cost. I still think it's so important that we should bite the bullet and do it sooner rather than later.

With NSRL, I'd rather double track the commuter rail line from Assembly to oak Grove than extend the orange line. That would provide connectivity to all the southern commuter rail lines. Some of the route (especially the bridge over the Mystic River) already has 3 orange line tracks, so you could turn the third track into a commuter rail track instead of rebuilding the bridge. You'd mainly need new construction from about Wellington to Oak Grove. Still expensive, but probably somewhat comparable to all the grade separations you'd need to build to extend the orange line.

As for the silver line and 1 bus, the main benefit of rail over bus is higher capacity. They could even be light rail lines. Regardless, they both urgently need their own right of way so they stop getting stuck in traffic.

PS - This debate is much more productive than arguing over whether we even should build transit, which is all a lot of people seem to want to talk about. I hope the legislature and Maura Healey are having a similar debate, not the other one.

Plenty of cities have airport people movers of some sort. It would make tons of sense to build that. Usually they're automated, grade separated light rail, not exactly trams.

IMO the suburban subway extensions are mostly redundant with the regional rail conversion. With regional rail, all those cities will already have subway like frequencies, and it'll even be faster than a subway line. If any currently unserved spot on the line needs service, infill stations can handle it. I realize there are some trips that would be better served by a subway extension, but i doubt it's enough to be worth the cost if you're already doing regional rail.

What that lets you do is spend the subway money creating new lines in the city - starting with one on Mass Ave, and another on Washington Street. Then you serve currently underserved areas closer to the city center and the suburban towns, at the same time, with the same amount of money.

Others have mentioned the awful headways, which really desperately need to be fixed. Apart from that, the reliability and speed is there. The train will come, and it will be fast once it does. It just might take a bit. IMO this is much better than the situation before the shutdown, but the headways are still unacceptable.

You just have to remember Reddit isn't reality. People sit on reddit whining and complaining about everything (myself included). But there's a lot more people out there doing the work to make the city safer and nicer for everyone.

Between Acela and Regional, Acela wins for speed. Regional usually wins for price, but not always. The speed difference isn't such a big deal that it would decide it for me. I'd usually pick whichever is cheapest.

Baggage - you just roll it onto the train. There are luggage racks above the seats. They have plenty of room.

Booking - ASAP. It's not like the airlines where prices fluctuate. Amtrak prices are only based on how many seats are open, so they pretty much only ever get more expensive as the trip time gets closer. Also, book two separate single tickets, not a round trip ticket. It's much easier to deal with canceling only one of the two segments if you have to.

Other than that, if you're traveling while it's light out, sit on the left side of the train when heading to NYC (right side when heading to Boston). You get great views of the waterfront in CT. If you really want to see the NYC skyline, reverse that advice.

I suggest you read my other comments in this thread. I've actually been very consistent. I don't give a single shit what is legal, either for cars or for bikes. I only care about what is safe.

I strongly disagree with the idea that whether it is legal or not actually matters. All it changes is whether people do it or not. I doubt most drivers in the states where it is legal actually know about it.

That said, this is conjecture that I don't have direct evidence for. I searched and can't find evidence for or against. So in the interest of not arguing in circles, I'm going to leave it at that and stop replying here.

You're correct that my perception that an Idaho Stop is safer is irrelevant. However, the linked study showing that it is safer is definitely relevant. I don't understand what you're missing here. The Wikipedia article is right there in my original comment, and the study is cited with a link in that article.

I think it's safe because of that study cited in the Wikipedia article I linked. Do you have any counter-evidence?

> People don't expect anyone to jump the light.

I think you missed the key point. You wouldn't jump a stop sign when people are moving, so you don't jump the light in front of people who are moving. If you do, you're not doing an Idaho Stop. You're just being an idiot. The whole point is you only jump the light when there's nobody coming, and therefore nobody to surprise.

Not what the law currently says, sure. My safety trumps the law though.

Not what drivers expect? Only if you're not following the spirit of an Idaho Stop. At a stop sign, you're supposed to stop and only proceed if and when it's safe to do so. Going out in front of moving cars wouldn't be safe, so you shouldn't do that, even if it's legal.

I'm not going to sacrifice my safety (or others safety) at the altar of the law. I'm just not. The law isn't some sacred thing that's worth dying for.

Anecdotes aren't evidence. But even if they were, that anecdote wouldn't be - if you're treating the red light like a stop sign, you still wouldn't go while people are crossing. So that behavior would be illegal even if Idaho Stop was legal.

I agree that everyone is an asshole while transiting in this state. I don't agree that the law trumps safety.

Those people are in cars and can kill me. Bikes can't do that. If you want to go against the evidence I posted that it's safer, you're going to have to provide counter evidence of some sort.

I just posted a link showing it's safer for everyone and you're telling me it's less safe for everyone?

It's actually safer for everyone if cyclists treat red lights as stop signs and stop signs as yield signs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_stop