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Comment by kappasan | Hacker News Reader

A big Jacobs fan here, but I remember reading her book (The Death and Life of...) and also about Robert Moses and thinking "hmm both sides have a point" so she'd probably hate me if she was still alive.

I personally think she was a bit too trusting of the (cybernetics-adjacent?) idea of order spontaneously arising from chaos.

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I live a ways outside of Boston. Local opposition did kill some prior projects that would have probably been unfortunate. But the Big Dig was a big net win at the end of a long day—thank you rest of the country for funding thanks to Tip O’Neill. Would never have happened as purely a grassroots thing.

The big dig seems like a profoundly expensive project that produced a small benefit for drivers compared to what building public transit and bike infra with the same money could have done

The Big Dig was probably at least as much about aesthetics and reuniting neighborhoods as it was about improving driving. And indeed it succeeded in the former more than the latter though the elevated central artery was pretty much a disaster on both counts. But no one could say that out loud. There were some minor transit improvements though that was already pretty good in the area and cycling was pretty much not on anyone’s radar at the time.

It was an enormous cost, but given that there was an elevated highway there before, I don't think "remove the highway entirely" was a real option; it'd be like trying to delete I-5 from Los Angeles. Burying it was the next best option. as part of the environmental mitigation for this, several good public transit projects were legally required to be built. Only some of them have actually been built, mostly very late and to a lower standard than was promised (e.g. bad fake BRT instead of light rail). If they actually built what they were legally required to build it would've been a huge win for transit too; as it is, it's a minor win for transit too. It's a real shame they didn't do the north-south rail connector at the same time.

I do love schlepping between south and north station every time I visit family in Maine!

The transit links between the two stations are awful with any amount of luggage and nothing direct even without.

I usually just walk

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