Word: highway
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This new year marks a large step backward in Boston’s transportation policy. As Big Dig construction winds down and Boston drivers fully enjoy a snazzy new highway system on their fellow taxpayers’ dime, less fortunate mass commuters must now pay 25 percent more for every ride they take out of their own pockets. The Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) has invoked a variety of excuses for the fare increase, but those who ride the T to work every day know that the idea is an ironic—if not sinister—redistribution...
Whereas public transportation serves to reduce traffic, pollution and particularly roadway maintenance costs, the Big Dig has raised costs for the MBTA by forcing the authority to rebuild and relocate stations and track lines that were intruding on highway construction. In addition, the 1991 Big Dig contract with the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection requires that the MBTA complete a series of projects to provide mitigation for the new Central Artery’s environmental impact. In an independent report released in 2002, the Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research estimated that these mitigation efforts alone would cost the MBTA...
...just not a feasible way to address Massachusetts’ rush-hour crunch. As cleverly right-under-our-noses a location as the Pike’s median may seem, it is hardly ideal in practical terms—a magnetic express along the same route as the existing highway would be of little use without branches connecting to suburban communities, and those branches would take yet more land and money. Even worse, the Pike delays that would be necessary for the monorail’s construction would be devastating—just ask commuters on the Van Wyck Expressway...
...along the Seine in the 13th is already under development, and other sites along railroad concentrations in the north and northeast of Paris would be prime candidates. Some architects have argued that well-planned high-rises can help reconnect Paris to its suburbs, now cut off by the belt highway around the city proper. "Of course Parisians say they're against new tall buildings when the question is posed in the abstract," says Jean-Pierre Caffet, the deputy mayor for urban development. But he hopes that minds will change when specific, high-quality projects are presented in the months...
...Still, signs of progress are everywhere. The once-dysfunctional phone system, for example, has become far more efficient since the telecommunications sector began opening up to private competition in the 1990s. The quality of roads has improved, thanks to an ambitious "golden quadrilateral" highway-building scheme that is connecting India's four largest cities. The government has also been setting up Special Economic Zones, havens that offer speedier regulatory approvals, low taxes, guaranteed power?and shelter from socialist-era labor laws that require a company with more than 100 employees to get government permission to lay off workers...