James Aloisi

Guest Contributor

Stories by James Aloisi

Attract Amazon + fix the T

Tracking Transportation/ Economy/ Transportation/ Opinion

Attract Amazon + fix the T

Leverage new HQ to extend, connect Blue Line

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WE BOTH HAD THE SAME THOUGHT as soon as we heard about Boston vying for Amazon’s new headquarters facility: Locate it at Suffolk Downs and leverage the opportunity to take a giant leap forward in improving local and regional mobility. Suffolk Downs on paper is an ideal site for a large campus complex: over 100(...)

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A Boston tower and the law of unintended consequences

Economy/ Transportation/ Opinion

A Boston tower and the law of unintended consequences

Building above FAA height limit will affect traffic at Logan

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I WAS REALLY BAD IN MATH and physics in college. My brain was wired to appreciate things like alliteration and metaphor, not equations or abstract laws of nature. But I remember one law that was referred to on occasion – how every action has an equal and opposite reaction.  That’s what I’m discussing today –(...)

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Trump misunderstands history’s arc

Politics/ Opinion

Trump misunderstands history’s arc

Comparing Washington and Lee is a false equivalence

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“A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE is a dangerous thing.”  It’s an old saying that perhaps resonated more clearly than ever before when one heard the person holding the office of president of the United States equating the secessionist leader Robert E. Lee with the nation’s first and third presidents.  Painting with a broad brush dipped in a(...)

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Rep. Straus’s idea is a really bad one

Tracking Transportation/ Politics/ Transportation/ Opinion

Rep. Straus’s idea is a really bad one

Don’t rob Peter (Massport) to pay Paul (Metropolitan Highway System)

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AUGUST.  That lazy, hazy month without an official vacation day because, well, everyone is either on vacation or slowing down because everyone else is on vacation.  Like that bewitching period between Thanksgiving and New Year, when everyone is preoccupied with keeping or avoiding the holidays, August is a sort of Bermuda Triangle of a month,(...)

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My flag won’t be flying this July 4th

Politics/ Opinion

My flag won’t be flying this July 4th

Our nation faces the most existential crisis since the Civil War

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THERE’S NO FLAG flying above the front porch of our place in Maine this year.  That flag was a personal expression of belief in the fundamental integrity and stolidity of this great 241-year-old experiment in self-governance. It was an expression of hope in the fundamental goodness and right-headedness of our people, who may have different ideological perspectives but(...)

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Greenway is no secondhand coat

Politics/ The Back Story

Greenway is no secondhand coat

‘We ought to be so much better than this’

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RECENT NEWS THAT state and city officials are attempting to devise new funding mechanisms for the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway Conservancy prompts a reflection on how the Conservancy came into being, and what the expectations were about how this urban gem would be funded and sustained over time. Let’s take a short trip down memory(...)

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We must learn from Seaport District failures

Tracking Transportation/ Economy/ Transportation/ Opinion

We must learn from Seaport District failures

The next tests come at Allston Landing, Suffolk Downs

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THEY WERE GATHERED in the spectacular replica of the US Senate chamber at the Edward Kennedy Institute, a panel of local thought leaders discussing how Boston’s past might inform Boston’s future.  The discussion, organized under the auspices of Imagine Boston 2030, drew a large crowd because among its panel members were legends of the city’s(...)

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Lessons from the collapse of Bridj

Tracking Transportation/ Transportation/ Opinion

Lessons from the collapse of Bridj

Quality counts, but transportation also requires subsidies

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THE STARTUP MOBILITY COMPANY that tested the potential for innovation in the transportation sector announced on Sunday that it was shutting down effective immediately.  Bridj might have changed the face of mobility in Greater Boston with the power of its algorithms and its plush 14-seat vans, but there was a vast gulf between the promise(...)

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When does reform end and revenue begin at the T?

Tracking Transportation/ Transportation/ Opinion

When does reform end and revenue begin at the T?

At Pioneer, it’s always more reform – never revenue

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SO THERE I WAS, enjoying a brisk late April morning and about to dig into the newspapers (and breakfast), when my iPhone beeped and up came CommonWealth’s Sunday Upload. My pavlovian response was to stop everything I was doing and read what was on offer on the Upload. Turns out it was the folks at(...)

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Have you gone on a pilgrimage?

Opinion

Have you gone on a pilgrimage?

Everyone should set personal goals and try to reach them

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Photographs from Jarrett Barrios’s Facebook page. HE’S IN A SELF-IMPOSED NEWS BLACKOUT so he won’t be reading this. At least not for a while. My friend Jarrett Barrios — a former Massachusetts state representative and senator, now CEO of the Los Angeles Region Red Cross — is walking the famous Camino de Santiago in northern(...)

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