ummm, ok. Blue skies here. Everything fairly normal. Certainly the feds have their impact on the country as a whole but as the post states: Mass has the highest GDP per capita in the country. So one could assume that we can make prudent decisions with those dollars and find ways to make said networks reliable and effective. But no blame the feds or the other 49 states or some other deflection.

We control our destiny. The more people understand this the more things will improve. The great federal rescue from 2008 replaced windows in the next town over from me. They spent hundreds of billions on the program and we got windows. I'm sure a few towns over got a short road repaved and somewhere else replaced a water main. We control our path forward. Time to fix the roads, the rails and the utilities.

Not sure we can blame 49 other states for how we don't take care of our own crap.

but for some reason has dogshit transportation networks...

Ideal Sub Shop on Dudley St in Roxbury. Anything on the menu is good. Tuna is fresh out of the can. All cold cuts fresh sliced right in front of you. A lot cheaper than $15.

I said hundreds OR thousands. A small hyperbole as I wasn't aware of the 750...

How do you pay for the wastewater treatment for this project? You have two options: a large septic system (note that this uses a lot of land area) or a plant. Millions to build a plant. Divided over the 750 units will probably make the units cost prohibitive. Your ideas on "figure it out" ignore reality.

Most zoning should be local driven not state. It is better that way. We can certainly agree to disagree and I don't expect any change in peoples views on this but most people prefer local to state or national control for a reason.

I disagree with law affecting other towns and not simply land within a short walk of a T Station. The AG may simply be doing her job. I have a problem with the law itself extending too far beyond the practical side of how best to create denser housing that has great options of mass transit. Forcing holden to build hundreds or thousands of units puts those people on the highways and not the MBTA.

That is not what is in the news. The town of Holden is being threatened by the AG and it is miles from an MBTA station. I definitely agree (and have posted a few times in this thread) that we should build very densely near existing MBTA stations. The original TOD law did a good job at this and should be continued. I don't allowing a Prudential Tower at each station should be the result but something large enough and dense to both help plus allow direct access to the MBTA system.

All those employers pay triple the RE tax compared to homeowners in Boston. I owe Boston nothing for my existence within its borders. Would love to have a 5 minute commute to my desktop.

What is the benefit to the state to build 100 units in 100 communities that have weak connections to get into Boston? would it not be better for the environment and for people's mental health that they have shorter commutes not longer?

creating long commutes is not a great solution to the "crisis".

This doesn't even make any sense. Benefits of Boston? Car alarms, break ins, high cost of rentals, noise, traffic, lousy schools? I chose to live in a quieter and calmer town. I left whatever benefits you imagine for something else. This doesn't give everyone else the right to force their views on zoning on my town. I also don't get to force my views on Boston or other communities.

I am happy about my choices and everyone who wants to hinder that will find me an enemy in some fashion.

Gillette is in the burbs...128 has loads of office spaces as well as other cities like Worcester, Lynn, Springfield. You are missing the point that the infrastructure exists to handle the load IN THE CITIES. No need for special treatment plans or even large scale construction of new schools or roads. I am near an MBTA station for a reason. I expect that others will want that same thing and I think it makes sense. Evicting a bunch of cows because there is a T station half hour drive away (followed by a 90 minute commute) seems like a dumb place to harass a town over how many units they put in.

fight the good fight all you want. I hope this becomes a major issue in the next election and people will vote out the people that pass this style of reform. Feel free to vote how you wish.

For what it's worth, I have never advocated creating zero growth communities. This state brags about how smart it is but on this issue, how smart is it to build out farm land in Holden when you have much better options near actual MBTA stations? The roads are overloaded. Putting more apartments farther from the jobs is a bad strategy. Building hundreds of new wastewater treatment plants out side the MWRA system is also a costly mistake in my opinion. I recognize something is needed to be done, I work on housing projects all over eastern mass.

Two elements fix the supply bottleneck. 1) Zoning reform. Approve any building permit request that matches the zoning of any lot within 100' of the subject parcel. This would cut permitting times into a fraction of the time now. 1 year becomes 30 days. This would include dimensional and use reform (multi vs single fam). 2) Any site within 1/2 mile of an MBTA rapid transit or commuter rail station could build with the same density of any other building near an MBTA station (this would ramp up the TOD successes that have helped increase supply.

Anything else should be incentivized through the tax code to increase supply and not beat down people's throats. Carrot is better than the stick.

Nothing in my deed says its frozen in time. Zoning is presently decided on locally by local people looking out for their local community. Once you allow the state to start picking and choosing these elements for all zoning then Mass will have jumped the shark.

There is still a smaller population in Boston compared to the 1960's. The sewer and water infrastructure in place can handle any of this growth for the next few decades EASILY. Farm communities would have to build waste water treatment plants plus schools to do what can be easily done in the urban areas. Suburban communities would similarly have to increase the size of their piping systems and other infrastructure to handle large increases in population.

Plus most of the jobs are in the cities...so commuting shorter distances will put less a stress on both roads and rail infrastructure.

I never said it was BP's role to house everyone. There are other cities in the state plus I have stated here and elsewhere that I agree with increasing density near commuting options. I have these right in my backyard (defeating your main argument). I am 100% in favor of very dense housing options near MBTA stations.

I live near people now, I never said otherwise. You can't buy land near the quabbin anyways...its protected from development.

I don't live on a cul de sac...my house was built in the 80's from leftover scrub land (side of a hill) and wasnt much use for farming or anything. Removing the houses there now and replacing with triple deckers is not the answer to the housing "crisis".

FWIW, we should preserve rural farmland as much as possible so that we can feed people....building denser in the urban areas is the best answer to supply issues. Boston is going crazy building lab space...they should build more condos to go along with them.

so you want to pay for building 100 new WWTPs and school additions in all these communities to "fix" the problem? It's not nimbyism that is fighting against this...its reality. A wastewater treatment plant costs millions. For a few hundred units this adds tens of thousands to the cost of each unit. Whereas Deer Island has plenty of capacity to add these same units at no additional cost. Same with the school problem. Most of the fix is in the urban core where the infrastructure already exists to handle it. An alternative is to pick one town to become a city and grow it...not little mini villas all over the state.

We bought in the suburbs because we don't like the noise or the crime of the city. You alter that dynamic and you will push people farther out. That said, I am in complete favor of increasing density close to the MBTA stations/routes. Including my own town.

Lighten up Silver. Most women don't like feverish angst either... :-o

You must be fun at parties. Hockey isn't toxic. Haz waste is toxic.

yes, this makes sense....build the bridge that will handle 10 buses a day vs one that carries 1/3 the traffic coming out of the city. (both at the same cost....) /s

Ben Affleck...mf'er is from cambridge.

How about Dusty Rhodes. He was a legend.

Taxes ..... 99.2%

Monthly Pass .... $4000

East Bay Grille is good food and nice atmosphere. Right along the water.

This is the saddest line of thinking in transportation and the economy. Induced demand is a farce in a lot of ways. The primary way is that the capacity that no longer fits on the narrow road find a way through 3 paths. One is mass transit (this is good). Another is jamming the path (this is bad) and the final is to seek alternate routes (also bad). Right now "induced demand" completely jams up many local roads slowing down local travel and mass transit (buses/trolleys) that operate on those routes.

Developers and builders will always flock to build the easiest and most profitable projects (this is not evil or bad..this is human nature). You keep increasing the non residential buildings with relatively little increase in the residential then you get what you have today. Imbalance. Not sure how you eliminate demand or whether that's even a good idea.

Yes, keep doing nothing and not increasing supply and we can have this same discussion for the next 30 years.

It would be more than we are doing now. It takes time to get them funded and built so any talk of crisis solving is way overblown. If they make the zoning options better and the permitting time short then thats a big help. If not, it will SSDD.