I mean, how many real cities does NJ have? Hoboken/JC, Newark, Paterson, Elizabeth? That's already being generous. Hoboken and Jersey City have made strides in road safety. It all comes back to car dependency though, whether it's in the 'burbs or in the city. And the measures proven to improve pedestrian safety all involve traffic calming / road diets / making things generally worse for drivers by not prioritizing them on 100% of streets and roads.

I imagine a visitor from any major western European city would be dumbfounded at the state of infrastructure and public transportation in Boston these days.

To be fair, (Greater) Boston, with its huge student population, is part of the Northeast Corridor, which connects cities from Boston to DC and has the best intra- and intercity passenger rail in the US-- not that that's a very high bar, but still.

Yay for car-dependent surburban sprawl! (?)

File this under "Yeah No Shit". What's one person gonna do if nothing else changes with MBTA organization or funding?

You could see who's playing at the Stone Pony if you're into music. The Asbury Festhalle & Biergarten often has live local music as well. Lots of good food and drink options if you're gluttonous like myself.

... Who's gonna tell him/her?

I guess the question is why our days are no longer centered around solar noon. Intuitively, that has to be the most natural way, evolutionarily speaking. Our circadian rhythms haven't changed drastically since the Industrial Revolution. That's not the kind of time scale evolution operates on.

^ This guy/gal gets it. It's more nuanced than "I want the sun to set every day at 8 PM so I can exercise after work!!"

Otherwise known as switching to permanent Eastern Daylight Time. Yes, I agree for the New England states.

Using Boston as an example, the earliest sunset time on EST last year was 4:11 PM EST in early December 2022. You realize that this would mean a sunset time of 5:11 EDT if we had switched to permanent DST? It's not like 8:00 PM sunsets would be a year-round thing with permanent DST.

Four hours?? I'm not sure it's that long. But I hear your point. The idea still being tossed around; here's a recent Globe article on it. The general public seems to interpret it as a way to alleviate the housing crisis in Greater Boston. People will use any excuse they can get to avoid upzoning and building more housing in Boston and the inner suburbs and to appease the NIMBYs. I know some people are open the idea of supercommuting (I am not one of them). A Springfield-Boston commute would really only be viable if it's high speed rail, not the current iteration of the T commuter rail trundling along. I'm not holding my breath on that.

I cackled at that when I watched the press conference yesterday. Could we (as Americans) for once admit that we're flailing when it comes to implementing safe, reliable and effective public transit? There's so much to learn from other cities in Europe, east Asia and elsewhere. The whole "we're #1... at everything!" shtick is so tiresome, to me at least.

A Springfield-Boston connection is meaningless if you can't get around Boston in a timely fashion at the other end. Unless you work right at South Station.

I'm guessing you're one of them youngins who doesn't use paper money anymore? Looks like a regular $10 spot to me. Why would you think it's counterfeit?

palinsafterbirth right now.

>Those existing cities and areas are built on very old infrastructure that wasn’t designed for denser development.

Manhattan Island was once a fur trading post settlement with a similar problem. They made it work OK.

>Vermont can have abundant wild spaces AND housing.

In fact, limiting sprawl and increasing housing density (and density in general) will allow for more wild areas to be preserved.

>My other gripe is there's not a lot to do.

I think you done messed up if you moved to Vermont expecting big city amenities and culture.