Transportation

accessibility, bike paths, masspike, mbta, ride sharing, rmv, roads and traffic, rules of the road, statewide transportation funding

State Transportation Committee Considering Bike Safety Bills

WBZRadio 1030? reported on Senator Brownsberger’s efforts to pass bike safety legislation and highlighted his bill S1810? An Act to protect vulnerable road users by requiring certain vehicles to be equipped with side under-ride guards and blind spot mirrors. “If you ride along on your bicycle on the road, you’ll see some trucks where you could just about ride underneath those trucks,” said Brownsberger. “This [bill] would require those kinds of trucks to have a side guard so that if a cyclist did broadside the truck, they would be deflected instead of ending up getting run over by the wheels.”

DCR Storm Management Plan

Every winter our office receives questions about snow removal on DCR properties. DCR and MassDOT share responsible for snow removal on DCR roadways, sidewalks and paths. DCR has passed along its Storm Management Plan, which details its snow removal policies including the priority order in which its properties are cleared of snow.

After a year of work and $32 MM dollars, MBTA failed again

A piece of broken rail forced shuttle service along the Ashmont branch of the Red Line during rush hour Tuesday morning, an issue the MBTA believes resulted from a quick drop in temperature this week. “The exact cause remains under investigation, but it is believed to be related to the extreme drop in temperatures (from …

Continue reading “After a year of work and $32 MM dollars, MBTA failed again”

Leadership — the scarce resource in the transportation system

Leadership is scarce in the transportation system in Massachusetts. By that, I emphatically do not mean that the current leadership is weak. Rather, I mean that every management team has a finite capacity to plan and to solve problems and that the range of challenges facing MassDOT’s management team is very broad.