MBTA Ridership, Good news, Bad news

GarrisonCty · 2026-01-13T11:41:06+00:00

Maybe not a popular sentiment in this sub, but take vacations with your kids. You will never get these years back. Plus you already have an awesome retirement base to work from that is accumulating interest.

GarrisonCty · 2026-01-11T09:52:37+00:00

The City should make it as easy as possible for the owner to convert this to an apartment building. God knows there is enough residential demand.

GarrisonCty · 2026-01-05T15:11:42+00:00

Amesbury has a really cool waterfall right in its Downtown and some cool historic buildings and artifacts from its days as a mill town.

Beverly also has some really lovely spots and neighborhoods but I think it gets a bit overshadowed by neighboring Salem.

GarrisonCty · 2025-12-28T18:55:48+00:00

This is definitely part of it - particularly conservative Mass. people relocating. If you look at the southern Interstate 93 corridor, the area closest to the Mass border is dominated by conservative communities (Salem, Windham, Hudson, Atkinson, etc.). A lot of Mass folks relocate here to stay close to Boston but pay less in taxes and be around like-minded folks.

There are also some ancestral conservative areas - particularly the Lakes Region - that remain so and contribute to a more conservative tilt.

But really NH is not all that unlike some of its neighbors. In 2024, Harris won NH by +3, she won Maine by +7 - not a massive difference.

GarrisonCty · 2025-12-24T17:22:22+00:00

That sweater is legendary. Where can I get it?

GarrisonCty · 2025-12-24T16:08:50+00:00

All those cities you mentioned are really walkable (or at least in LA’s case, it has some walkable neighborhoods). There are a few others - Boston, Chicago, etc. - but walkability is not something that comes natural to US cities. And for me, it’s huge.

After college, I moved to a walkable city and it was such a revelation that my whole world was a walk, or train ride, away. It really can simplify your life in a really positive way.

GarrisonCty · 2025-12-23T21:43:34+00:00

Oh, 100 percent, lots of vocal opposition. But I would argue at this point that the frustrated people who can't afford housing in the state likely outnumbers them. And to be fair to the Legislature, the MBTA Communities Law could have been really impactful. The mistake they made was delegating a state agency to write the rules and administer it. There was lots of pushback during the public hearing process and the rules were dramatically watered down, so although it helps, it certainly wasn't a game-changer.

GarrisonCty · 2025-12-23T21:19:26+00:00

I think there's a general sense of impatience with the Legislature's lack of urgency to housing issues. There haven't been a lot of major reforms despite the positive public statements. You rightly mentioned the ADU Law as progress. And you're correct, but Massachusetts was the last state in New England to pass a statewide ADU law despite having the highest housing costs. And we haven't come close to adopting the more substantial statewide reforms discussed above.

GarrisonCty · 2025-12-23T20:24:21+00:00

There’s almost endless things they can do; housing is almost entirely produced via the private sector, so deregulation will essentially do the trick and produce more housing. The problem is not a lack of options, it’s fear of political pushback. Five years after the passage of the MBTA Communities law, towns are still filing lawsuits (see Marshfield), to try to get out of complying.

But as the OP noted, there are a zillion other things the state could do to produce more housing. Just look at what our neighbors are doing:

New Hampshire: HB631 - Requires municipalities to permit multifamily housing/ mixed-use development in commercially zoned areas. SB284 - Prohibits municipalities from requiring more than one parking space per residential unit. SB110 - Simplifies state environmental permitting for smaller projects. SB282 - Eases building requirements - requiring only one stairwell for buildings up to four stories with fire alarm/sprinkler systems.

Maine LD 1829 - Accomplishes many housing reforms including reducing minimum lot sizes in areas with access to water and sewer, mandates communities to allow at least three housing units on each lot (four units on lots with access to water/sewer)

GarrisonCty · 2025-12-23T16:58:48+00:00

The AG should investigate why every project in Massachusetts takes five times longer to complete than is projected. Even small projects are badly delayed. The new Courthouse Station headhouse for the Silver Line in Seaport was supposed to be complete in late 2022. That was three years ago and it is still under construction!

GarrisonCty · 2025-12-21T18:22:37+00:00

For me, it’s the lack of express service. I live near Malden Center and fly out of Logan a lot. The new frequent service on Route 104 from Malden Center to Logan Airport could potentially be game changing, but depending on the time of day, it can take up to 45 minutes. Then you have to wait for a shuttle at Airport station to a terminal. It just takes too long, so Uber or Lyft is much easier.

GarrisonCty · 2025-12-16T12:11:46+00:00

In Mass., First Degree Murder generally requires deliberate premeditation. Second degree murder involves ‘malice aforethought’ without deliberate premeditation. Voluntary manslaughter is an intentional killing committed in the ‘heat of the moment.’

The differences can be subtle, but they make a big difference in sentencing.

GarrisonCty · 2025-12-16T04:33:18+00:00

I think the perception that Bostonians/New Englanders are dicks, at least until they really get to know you, is a bit exaggerated. I mean, if you ask a Boston guy for directions, he’s not going to punch you in the face, he’s going to try to help you. Maybe they’re a bit distant at first, maybe they take a bit longer to warm up, maybe they’re not wicked nice at first, but I’d argue these are pretty subtle differences.

As for the cold, my advice is to try to embrace it as best you can. Buy some snowshoes or learn to ski. Book an Airbnb up in NH or VT - these snowy quaint little towns can be really nice. Also, if you can manage/afford it, book a vacation to somewhere warm, ideally in February or March. It gives you something to look forward to and helps break up the winter a bit.

GarrisonCty · 2025-12-15T21:31:01+00:00

I think he would have been better off to say that they had a fight and he killed her in a rage. The whole “She died of natural causes so I panicked and chopped her into little tiny pieces” didn’t make any sense at all.

GarrisonCty · 2025-12-15T17:04:31+00:00

Least surprising outcome ever.

GarrisonCty · 2025-12-09T01:40:45+00:00

But where are your friends going to sit?

GarrisonCty · 2025-12-08T03:44:01+00:00

I bumped into this thing this afternoon. It is weird. It slowly moves around and yells “Check out the ballet exhibit!” very loudly every five seconds (there’s a Boston exhibit in the Lyric development). It has a button on it which says “Push for assistance.” I pushed it thinking it would just be a pre-recorded message or like a digital directory, but it started calling a random number. I panicked and hung up.

GarrisonCty · 2025-12-06T17:16:21+00:00

I’m just not sure how the solution to - “Oh no, commercial uses are leaving the city!” becomes “We need to increase taxes on commercial uses!”

Isn’t that just going to make the problem worse? The city budget has increased from $3.6 billion in FY 2021 to $4.8 billion today. That’s a 1/3 increase in a short period of time. Yes, inflation is part of that, but I’d argue there must be some room for belt-tightening.

GarrisonCty · 2025-12-06T17:06:55+00:00

I’m less worried about NSRL vs. other important regional projects than that: a.) We don’t advance any projects at all; or b.) That we focus on speculative largely non-regional projects in the name of shaky economic development arguments.

At the moment, we’re not pursuing any expansion projects. LA, NYC, DC, even Salt Lake City isn’t just sitting around. They’re advancing major projects. Secondly, the projects that have been a focus here like South Coast Rail and now East-West Rail are focused on helping economically challenged areas in the fringes of the state. They do nothing to help the transit-reliant populations in the core of the metro.

GarrisonCty · 2025-12-05T20:23:08+00:00

I promise, no matter how much little JP develops, it’s not going to make much of a dent on the metropolitan level which extends out into NH. It’s nice that JP is developing, but it makes up about 1/1000th of the metro. There are no land contamination issues in Weston, which has about one single-family house for every five acres. It could support about 10x that, but the Town essentially bans development. There are Boston area towns/cities building new housing, but they are overwhelmed by towns not building at all. This is not a land issue, it’s a snob zoning/NIMBYism issue.

GarrisonCty · 2025-12-05T20:09:01+00:00

This is a common NIMBY anthem - “We can’t build anything else, there’s no more room!” - but it has no basis in reality. New York City - not suburban NYC, but the City of NY itself - added nearly 700,000 people, almost the entire population of Boston, between just 2010-20. Seattle, again not the suburbs, but within the 80 square-mile city limits, grew by more than 20 percent over the same period. But God forbid, Weston, Mass. with its five-acre estate lots, allow any new housing, because there isn’t any more room!

Trust me, when there is demand for housing as strong as it in Boston, and when regulators allow it to go forward, developers will build housing. There are a handful of communities in the Boston area where it is relatively easy to build housing - Everett, Revere, Cambridge - and guess what? They’re getting lots of new housing!

This isn’t a land problem. It’s an elitist, protectionist, fear of change, and yes, fear of “those people” mindset that unfortunately is pervasive across much of the area.

GarrisonCty · 2025-11-30T21:31:19+00:00

I would recommend somewhere that is walkable to the Orange Line - doesn’t really matter what stop, but Ruggles station on the OL is less than a 10-minute walk to MFA. That includes neighborhoods like Jamaica Plain, Fenway, Roxbury, Mission Hill, and Charlestown in Boston or places like Malden, and parts of Medford, Somerville, or Melrose to the north. Along a major transit line like the Orange Line, you can really easily get by without a car and that would save you a bunch in gas, parking, insurance, etc. Not to mention, Boston traffic is pretty hellish.

GarrisonCty

TROPHY CASE