I am so sad today, and I just wanted to let my kid loose on Memorial Drive
to kill a couple of hours outside, something we’ve been waiting to do since last fall. DCR sucks, everything sucks.

@bikepedantic On moving to Mastodon, I considered that I should actually turn some of the things that would have otherwise been useless Twitter threads into useless blog posts instead.

Then I realized that the key word of that was "useless", which is why I have neither created threads nor blog posts recently.

@crschmidt @bikepedantic You should create your useless blog posts anyhow, they create a (public) record of what you were thinking, they may become useful later. If someone had told me that I would be posting youtube videos illustrating bicycle-pedestrian stuff to a social network for cranky old people when I made them, I would not have believed it. Yet here we are....

@grammasaurus @bikepedantic DCR is the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation, who are tasked with maintaining a number of public spaces in MA. Unfortunately, many of MA’s best public spaces are sullied by highways running through them, and in practice, DCR is more heavily focused on protecting access for cars than for people or recreation, ruining many of these public spaces as parks.

@crschmidt @grammasaurus which is why the other name we have from them is the Department of Cars and Roads 😡

And so sorry @bikepedantic it would’ve been a nice day for it

@Cambikelanes @grammasaurus @bikepedantic I usually go with "Department of Conservation of Roads" -- since that often feels like the thing they are especially dedicated to conserving.

@bikepedantic @grammasaurus @Cambikelanes @crschmidt Governor Healey was on Boston Public Radio the other day and when asked about this said something to the extent of "the law only allows it to be car-free on Sundays" and that the Legislature would have to change the law to allow car-free Saturday to continue. That is the first time I've ever heard that cited as a reason. I'm very curious what the law actually says.

@cden4 @bikepedantic @grammasaurus @Cambikelanes The law says no such thing. The law _requires_ it to be open on Sundays, but there's absolutely no reason that they couldn't close it more often. It's an absolutely senseless argument that has only been invented by DCR + supporters in the past few weeks.

The closures started as pilots nearly a decade before it was codified into law!

https://twitter.com/johnhawkinson/status/1645552922992705536

@cden4 @bikepedantic @grammasaurus @Cambikelanes Actual law as passed is available at https://archives.lib.state.ma.us/bitstream/handle/2452/39912/1985acts0457.pdf?sequence=4&isAllowed=y . It's clear that DCR is explicitly granted authority to close it, but given that it has been closed many times before (and since!) outside the confines of the enabling law, there's no legal justification for the idea that they _can't_ close it other times.

@crschmidt @Cambikelanes @grammasaurus @bikepedantic Yeah. The law is saying that they are authorized and directed to close it on Sundays. But I am not aware of any other law that states that it may not be closed at other times. (There are other times in which it already is, for example for special events like Head of the Charles and the Dragonboat Festival.)

@cden4 @bikepedantic @grammasaurus @Cambikelanes @crschmidt the governor is such a disappointment

@bikepedantic I'm so sorry. Grief sucks.

@bikepedantic I'm sorry Darren, I also grieve. These days the bad times are more likely to be measured in hours rather than days. Which I'm grateful for. You are a great dad and are doing good things for your community.

@bikepedantic ❤️❤️