darren is Not Going Back @bikepedantic@transportation.social
Bikes and stuff. Widow, dad, taking it bird-by-bird.
So many things are improved by 🦪,🚲, & 🪕.
Just me, very much not my employer. Opting in to be searchable via #tootfinder. #fedi22
Joined Feb 2023
darren is Not Going Back
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I used to think self-driving cars were going to be the next big thing and I couldn't wait to get one, but I've been teaching these robots what traffic signals and crosswalks look like every time I sign into a web site for 10 years and they still don't seem to have any clue so I'm out.
darren is Not Going Back
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Collaboratively brainstormed and solved a problem pretty elegantly with a small group of colleagues, and yeah, i'm giving myself a bureaucratic gold medal.
darren is Not Going Back
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Speak softly and carry a bag of human skulls
darren is Not Going Back
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With EVs getting heavier and heavier, it stands to reason that their extreme acceleration is potentially deadly.
Are EVs too fast? The problem with bringing speed to big SUVs and trucks
darren is Not Going Back
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There are 20,000 people on the waitlist for affordable housing in #CambridgeMA. And yet, a proposed ~8 story affordable building at 2072 Mass Ave was killed by people claiming it was "too tall" (there's a building that height a block away!) or would mean competition for "their" street parking.
To fix this, the Council is considering increasing height limits on affordable housing projects, so they wouldn't need special permits.
Sign the petition to show your support: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf9zDU-qYFHvMoumIc_uWV8IUJu893WkRre_QINhB_HMGRETg/viewform
darren is Not Going Back
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Customer: MY HUSBAND HAS MOVED FROM DUBLIN (DUB) IRELAND TO (2) SAN FRANCISCO (SFO) SO WE CAN LIVE TOGETHER.
DMV: DUB, DRUG REFERENCE
Verdict: ACCEPTED
Traffic is more of a mess on/around the Alewife Brook Parkway because one driver took an entire heavy-rail transit station out of service. But not for these three, at least.
As a former resident of the Alewife area, it's also sad to me that this article (and seemingly everyone else) thinks of Alewife only as an end-of-line station that exists solely for Lexington's benefit.
*Thousands* of people live within a short walk of the station now, including residents of the 500+ affordable units at Rindge Towers. One guy paid his $9, and for reasons unknown, used his car to shut down a critical transpo mode for those thousands of people. When do their voices get heard?
Lots to chew on in this report on the Alewife station closure:
*Repairs will be upward of $1M, but how much are the shuttling ops, and loss of time/productivity of thousands of station patrons having to remap their entire transpo patterns?
*Alewife apparently has 2,471 spaces to store crash-machines. How many people could we house in that space?
*Crash was intentional. Let's name/shame every news outlet that called this an "accident."
*When's Alewife reopening?
darren is Not Going Back
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This is a fascinating study. Cars have rewired our brains to excuse the inexcusable.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/31/23579510/car-brain-motornormativity-study-ian-walker
darren is Not Going Back
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The 4” bike signals are back at Cedar Street 👀
Either I grew half a foot since they last were installed, or they’re a lot lower now. Probably a hybrid.
Either way, exciting to have them back; Wish it didn’t take 4 months for them to get ordered to installed. We need more people making 4” bike signals in the US.
Watching a bunch of private shuttle runs that replicate our bus route, and having the kid ask every time, “is that our bus?” is a dagger to team morale
#cargobike -> red line -> 47 bus to longwood is a nice multimodal adventure with the kid, but damn these austerity headways
Announcing my candidacy for any/all public offices on a platform of outlawing the Harvard / Central slow zone.
I had said publicly awhile back that I would be applying, but I'm backtracking on that. Life is very much in the way, i can't make that kind of time commitment.
The City of Cambridge is recruiting for members of the Planning Board! If you are awesome, please apply!
The Planning Board usually meets 2-4 times each month on Tuesday evenings at 6:30PM. Meetings can last about 3-4 hours. Plus, 2-4 hours before each meeting reviewing materials such as plans and documents.
Members get a $6K annual stipend.
Apply with cover letter and CV here by March 6: www.cambridgema.gov/apply
darren is Not Going Back
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Our politics reporter @samjmintz has a preview of some of the big transportation bills that will be up for debate in the State House this year:
https://mass.streetsblog.org/2023/02/06/this-years-legislative-agenda-includes-rail-electrification-congestion-pricing-and-traffic-enforcement-cameras/
#mapoli
darren is Not Going Back
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Update on postings:
The Twitter cross-poster I was using has stopped running, and with the impending destruction of the Twitter API there is no point finding an alternative cross-poster.
I expect the Twitter account to go dormant this week (see above) and am working on updating the bot to post directly to Mastodon, but I am not a programmer and am kinda busy so timeline is iffy, but hopefully in the next week I have it figured out.
Bikes and stuff. Widow, dad, taking it bird-by-bird.
So many things are improved by 🦪,🚲, & 🪕.
Just me, very much not my employer. Opting in to be searchable via #tootfinder. #fedi22
Joined Feb 2023
