From time to time, I see plans for intercity rail service into Boston going via Springfield. These include in-state rail plans to run trains between the two cities, but also grander plans to have train go between Boston and New Haven via Springfield, branded as the Inland Route, as an alternative to the present-day Northeast […]

A bunch of us at the Effective Transit Alliance (mostly not me) are working on a long document about commuter rail through-running. I’m excited about it; the quality of the technical detail (again, mostly not by me) is far better than when I drew some lines on Google Maps in 2009-10. But it gets me […]

There’s a distinction between light- and heavy-touch forms of management and control. Light-touch systems try to stay out of the details as far as they can; heavy-touch systems do the opposite. American business culture considers light touch to be superior, and I think this is especially prominent in the public sector, which has some ready-made […]