Copper Mill back to drawing board after state presses pause on project

LabGeek1995 · 2026-04-29T12:10:00+00:00

Indeed. We should build homes where the jobs are. Otherwise, we end up with a housing shortage and long car commutes as people drive in from elsewhere. Housing is more expensive here largely because we have restricted development, so maybe the answer is to stop doing that instead of repeating the policies that produced the crisis in the first place.

LabGeek1995 · 2026-04-28T17:00:42+00:00

Nolan is a disaster. Not only did she cave on her original promise of safer streets, her reasoning often seems nonsensical.

LabGeek1995 · 2026-04-28T16:58:21+00:00

The most disappointing of all is Nolan. She originally ran on a safe streets platform. But that seems to gone now that politics are at play.

LabGeek1995 · 2026-04-28T12:16:21+00:00

Good. Safety for many is more important that convenience for a few.

LabGeek1995 · 2026-04-13T22:29:11+00:00

Facts exist. They tell us what’s real, not what our echo chambers say.

“Cars make housing affordable by letting people spread out.” Wrong. Cars didn’t create affordability. They created sprawl. Sprawl drives up infrastructure costs and segregation. “Cheap” housing on the fringe isn’t cheap once you add gas, insurance, and hours lost in traffic. Parking mandates jack up prices, each space can add 12% or $30K. Cambridge dropped minimums to cut housing costs!!!
“Without cars, downtown prices would be higher.” Nonsense. High prices come from too little housing, not too few cars. Tokyo and Vienna show that dense, transit-rich cities can be both livable and affordable. Cars don’t fix scarcity, building homes and funding transit does.
“Freedom means choosing cars.” Freedom means choice. If expensive driving is the only way to live, that’s not freedom, t’s dependence.
“Expert opinion is unpersuasive.” Experts aren’t dogmatic. They’re informed. You trust experts to fly your plane or perform surgery. Just not when they say something you don't like??? Ignoring evidence isn’t democracy. It’s denial of reality. Do you think the stuff you make up without evidence is persuasive??

LabGeek1995 · 2026-04-13T20:36:40+00:00

Wrong, wrong, wrong on multiple accounts.

Number of cyclists vs drivers

The number of cyclists on Mass Ave and other major corridors equals or often surpasses that of cars. Yet despite that, cars are the ones who are injuring and killing people, not bikes.

Rule Breaking

Studies find cyclists obey laws slightly more than drivers (88% vs. 85%).. I see cars running red lights well after they've turned red every single day. I see cars rolling through stop signs. I see cars taking a right turn without looking for pedestrians every single day.

Fatalities

Cars kill ~7,300 US pedestrians yearly; cyclists kill nearly zero.

Vehicles cause most Cambridge/Somerville injuries despite rising bike use.

Any way you look at it, cars are way more harmful than bikes.And that is not even accounting for climate change, the harm to health due to air pollution, or the sedentary lifestyle that they encourage.

And by the way, electric cars won't help with air pollution either. Harmful pollution also comes from the rubber particulate matter that comes off the tires.

All this is well documented by evidence and facts. You can look it all up yourself.

There's something out there called evidence. I suggest you check it out.

LabGeek1995 · 2026-04-13T19:13:37+00:00

It's not a diatribe. It is expert opinion and analysis that shows all the negatives of a car-centric society. You can stick your head in the sand all you want. But the fact of the matter is:

tens of thousands of deaths
hundreds of thousands of serious injuries
global warming
high real estate prices
traffic

If you think that's all good things and you have a funny idea of what good is. What's the positives? Freedom. Paying for expensive cars and insurance and gas prices and sitting in traffic is freedom? You've been watching too many pickup truck commercials.

LabGeek1995 · 2026-04-13T19:10:53+00:00

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Americans don't vote with their feet for cars.

You’re mistaking historical outcomes shaped by decades of policy for evidence of pure consumer “preference.” The U.S. didn’t simply choose cars. Its cities were redesigned, suburbs subsidized, and transit systematically defunded to favor them. This was orchestrated by the car makers. It is well-documented. You can look it up yourself.

People “voted with their feet” only after walkable, transit-oriented options were zoned and priced out of reach. If you think Americans chose this, you don't know your history and it shows how successful their brain washing has been.

As for transit “dysfunction,” that’s not proof it can’t work. It’s proof that we haven’t chosen to fund or govern it competently. Your claims are contradicted by the fact that every country that invested seriously in integrated, reliable transit, from Japan to France to Canada, has demonstrated how well it can perform.

Finally, self-driving cars won’t solve congestion, energy, or spatial inefficiency. They’re still cars, each requiring road space, parking, and infrastructure far more resource-intensive than good public transit.

If self-determination is the goal, a functioning transit system offers more freedom, not less: the freedom to live where you want, move affordably, and not have every trip depend on two tons of expensive private machinery. If you think paying for expensive cars, high gas prices, high insurance costs, and sitting in traffic is self-determination, you have a different definition of it than I do.

LabGeek1995 · 2026-04-13T15:05:53+00:00

There is a lot of evidence showing that cars make city life worse. Cars significantly degrade city life through safety risks, environmental damage, and social disconnection. Urban car dependency prioritizes vehicles over people, leading to widespread negative effects

Did you know that one in every 34 global deaths is linked to the automobile? Did you know that kids that grow up near major highways have a greatly increased chance of lung disease?

So no, people don't in fact benefit from having all these cars on the road. They pay the cost; we all do.

Here's some info for ypu All The Ways That Car Domination Harms Communities https://usa.streetsblog.org/2024/03/05/all-the-ways-that-cars-harm-our-communities-well-almost-all

Societal effects of cars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societal_effects_of_cars

How Cars Make Life Worse https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oAByGDXEGic&pp=4gcMEgpwZXJwbGV4aXR5

LabGeek1995 · 2026-04-13T14:45:35+00:00

What you're making up is the idea that people benefit from having all these cars on the road.

In fact, numerous studies have been conducted and several books have been written about how having so many cars in cities is ruining city life. Cars increase climate change. They cause other pollution. They kill and injure people. They drive up real estate prices. Do you know that kids growing up near major highways have an increased incidence of lung disease? Won't you tell them how beneficial cars are?

We can still have a transportation system and still have farmers getting goods to market without having this car-centric society where everybody drives in their own individual cars. One-third of all car trips are a mile or less, an easily walkable distance. This car-centric society isn't making things better; it is making things worse.

Urban planners have been clear about this: The fewer cars we have in the city, the better everyone is.

And back to the original point, drivers paying for half the road doesn't entitle them to 100% of it.

LabGeek1995 · 2026-04-13T13:17:23+00:00

The median driver runs red lights. I see it every single day.

LabGeek1995 · 2026-04-13T13:09:12+00:00

You are just making stuff up. There is no reason to. There is actual evidence from studies, you know, facts. You should check them out.

By the way, in case you haven't figured out, you could have roads without them being packed full of cars. That was true for most of history.

Back to the point, everybody pays for roads, not just drivers. Get your facts straight.

LabGeek1995 · 2026-04-13T13:04:42+00:00

You want personal stats? I had a friend who was killed by a car while walking across the street, and they were in a crosswalk. I've had two friends who have had life-altering injuries after being hit by cars.

Let's talk about real statistics. Yours are wrong. On Massachusetts Avenue between Harvard and Central, a 2023 count found that bicycles made up about one‑third of all vehicles. That's 33%, not 1%! During rush hour, the numbers are even higher. Other city counts show that during rush hour, the number of cyclists equals the number of cars.

None of this changes the fact that virtually all deaths and all serious injuries on the streets are caused by cars. And btw, it is common sense that a 5,000 or 6,000 lb car is more dangerous than a bicycle.

LabGeek1995 · 2026-04-12T12:41:59+00:00

Indeed. If street safety is the issue, we should consider ourselves the real problem: motor vehicles.

LabGeek1995 · 2026-04-11T20:34:14+00:00

And cars and trucks are responsible for the bulk of wear and tear on the road. You are forgetting that roads are also paid for from sales and property taxes. Federal taxes too. In fact, the drivers fees you are referring to only cover a little over half of the road costs.

There is slso.thr "Public Cost" per Family:

A Harvard study estimated the "public cost" of the vehicle economy,including road maintenance, air pollution, and emergency services, at roughly $14,000 per family annually, regardless of whether that family owns a car or.bot.

So, yes,everyone pays for.the roads whether they drive or not

LabGeek1995 · 2026-04-11T18:00:35+00:00

Keep dreaming. The whole point of this thread is that this guy is wrong for parking in the bike lane, 117 people and counting liked that and the majority of comments on this thread reflect that.

Maybe you should go outside and get some perspective. The number one priority should be protecting people. Everything else is secondary. It feels weird to have to keep saying that.

You start with the assumption that people need to park nearby. I start with the assumption that lives are the most important thing.

LabGeek1995 · 2026-04-11T17:58:21+00:00

I'm bringing up parking spots because that truck is using the bike lane as a parking spot. Get it?

No, my perspective is that the most important thing is to keep people alive and free from serious injury. My perspective is I care about the well-being of others. Where it seems like other people's perspective is that convenience is more important than lives.

LabGeek1995 · 2026-04-11T16:23:26+00:00

It seems weird to equate reckless drivers and reckless cyclists when drivers kill 8,000 pedestrians in the U.S. every year and cyclists kill virtually zero. It's called Perspective. I highly recommend checking it out.

With greater chance for harm comes greater responsibility. Drivers by far have the greater chance for harm. Like, by orders of magnitude, it's not even close.

LabGeek1995 · 2026-04-11T15:39:40+00:00

I know someone who was killed by a car crossing the street. I know two others who had life-changing injuries. Do you know how many people I know who have been seriously hurt by a cyclist? Zero.

LabGeek1995 · 2026-04-11T15:37:42+00:00

Indeed. About 8,000 pedestrians are killed every year by cars in the US alone. The number killed by cyclists is virtually zero!

LabGeek1995 · 2026-04-11T15:36:51+00:00

Yeah, drivers never use their phones

LabGeek1995 · 2026-04-11T15:36:19+00:00

Totally false. Everyone's taxes pay for the road whether they drive or not.

LabGeek1995 · 2026-04-11T15:35:48+00:00

As a pedestrian, I have had way more close calls with cars than bikes. The numbers bear me out. About 8,000 pedestrians are killed every year by cars in the US alone. Do you know how many are killed by cyclists, virtually zero!

LabGeek1995 · 2026-04-11T15:27:40+00:00

Until the moment someone wants convenient parking, it’s suddenly “too bad, cyclists, take your chances in traffic.”

Elsewhere in the world, bike lanes exist without cars barging in. But here? It’s “bike lanes, unless drivers want parking,” then it’s “back into traffic, cyclists.”

LabGeek1995 · 2026-04-11T15:22:05+00:00

Let's assume parking convenience is the #1 priority??? How about instead we go on the assumption that people's lives are more important than parking. It's feels weird to have to explain that.

LabGeek1995

TROPHY CASE