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Comment by sveme | Hacker News Reader

Boston and Munich are about the same size; yet the public transportation system in Munich is significantly better (speed, coverage, comfort of stations and trains, accessibility) than that in Boston. That does not have to be. Instead they spent a couple of billions on the big dig.

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In fairness, while the Big Dig was a total crapfest while in progress, the end result made a tremendous positive difference to the walk- and bike-ability of that area. It's still not perfect (four+ lanes of angry commuters), but it's not like they could just get rid of I-93.

Totally agreed on the dollars for transit part, though. Still way too much emphasis on making cars' lives easier in Boston at the expense of everyone else.

"cars' lives"

Every car at the moment contains a person. Objectifying people so it is easier to hate on them is not nice. People should realize by now that it is not just privileged rich assholes that drive cars. A well working personalized point-to-point transport system (cars plus roads) can save the person working 70 hours a week at two low paying jobs much precious time.

If you can afford to park in central Boston every day, you are almost certainly not that poor. A monthly parking pass is like $400-500. That's like a quarter of the pre-tax income from a full-time minimum wage job just to park at one of your jobs.

Cars just aren't a good use of space in the context of a city. A person in a car has multiplied their volume by 10 or 20. Sure, sometimes it's needed, for hauling some cargo, but I really think there are better things we could do with all the space required to support everyone owning a car (and, btw, I have one myself, so I'm not innocent) so that they can sit in traffic twice daily and a few times on weekends.

>That does not have to be. Instead they spent a couple of billions on the big dig.

So basically if MA wasn't up to it's neck in corruption it would be able to get more done with its dollars.

I assure you. Everyone in MA who pays attention knows this just like everyone knows water is wet. The problem is that nobody in MA pays attention.

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