Life After Grad School

While Americans are building larger and larger homes (we’re talking 4,800 sf mansions), a group of German students figured out a way to live perfectly fine on 81 square feet, or should I say in 729 cubic feet. A few cubes are actually being built as student housing in Munich. The article is in German, but if you click on the three images, it will open up a slide show of 15 pictures, enough to get a pretty good idea. Very cool, although certainly not for the claustrophic.

Finally. It was about time somebody at the MBTA decided to start promoting public transit in Boston. Almost every day the T gets pummeled, often for good reason, by the press, bloggers and writers of mean-spirited, totally unproductive web sites which shall not be named here. But don’t we all know that bad news sells better and that people will not remember the 10 pleasant experiences but only the 1 bad one.

Apparently the MBTA decided that it’s time to create some good news and promote the system. They provided the Boston Globe with cost comparisons of driving and taking transit from suburban locations in an attempt to attract riders who are feeling the gas price crunch. This may or may not change anybody’s commuting habits, but it does signal an attitude change at the T, one that shows an awareness that maybe it’s time to put some effort into attracting new riders. That same day, the General Manager published an editorial in the Metro (page 7) pointing towards recent accomplishments and upcoming iniatives that will improve the system. There is no doubt that the MBTA needs more money to become a world class transit system. In the meantime, I am hoping for more displays of creative thinking and good management.

Leave it up to a lawyer to puzzle me with this question: as drivers why do we stop at a red light anyways? Oh, a few obvious answers came to mind: because we’re law abiding citizens, because we don’t want to get a ticket, because we don’t want to get hurt or hurt anybody else, out of habit …

This question followed my diatribe about how we should increase the fines for running red lights to CA levels ($340), because you’ll need fines that high along with appropriate enforcement to cut down on red light running, which is not only dangerous but drives me nuts. Mind you, I’m not talking the “dark orange light” running, everybody does that. I’m talking about “three cars ahead of me already ran a red light, so I can too” kind of red light running. On the list of things I hate about Boston traffic it’s only surpassed by the “let’s make a left turn before oncoming traffic realizes that the light changed” manoeuvre, which almost got me into a bike accident recently, when I was the - very alert - oncoming traffic.

I suppose the original question is less relevant when we’re talking about a busy intersection. I for my part stop because the prospect of being run over by an SUV going the other way is not really that appealing. I kind of like to live.

But then there is the situation at 2am when the light is red, no traffic to be seen within miles and no sensor built in that would change my light to green in the foreseeable future. On a bike I would probably run the light. For some reason when I’m driving a car, I feel less inclined to do so. So, why do I stop (and wait for the light to turn green)? Brainwashed by German drivers ed? Too afraid of a ticket even though no cop is anywhere to be seen? I don’t really know, but I stop. And sit there and wonder if there shouldn’t have been a 4-way stop at that intersection (if lightly traveled all the time), sensors that will trigger the light or a roundabout that would render the whole discussion irrelevant and facilitate traffic flow beautifully - as long as everybody knows the very simple rules that is.

All this also raises the question of why Boston pedestrians don’t feel inclined to stop at a red light EVER. But the answer became abundantly clear after I spent my first full year here: it’s too darn cold in the winter and too darn hot in the summer to be standing around waiting for a light to change color.

We found ourselves in Providence last weekend for a wedding and discovered that despite its ranking as the second largest city in New England and the presence of several universities and colleges, including RISD and Brown, it’s not exactly a metropolis. Here are some of the things we learned:

To do when in Providence:
- See WaterFire, an installation of fire sculptures in the recently uncovered rivers that has drawn many visitors and helped revive downtown Providence.
- Eat ice cream.
- Wander around Thayer Street, read the top layer of the flyers stapled to anything pole like, have a slice of Pizza and check out the student scene.
- Stay at the Annie Brownell House B&B, where golden retriever Lady is waiting for you to drop a few crumbs of your delicious breakfast.
- Leave town, drive to the coast, crash a private beach, play in the waves, build a sand castle and have a mud fight. And bring a surf board or boogie board to enjoy the waves even more.
- Check out the Providence Monthly for local events and hidden treasures BEFORE going exploring so that you know to stop when you see the sign for Daddy’s Bread near Kingstown (an unmanned self-serve store that sells bread on an honor system - you just take the bread and leave money).
- Eat more ice cream, then go have yourself a lobster.

Not to do when in Providence:
- Walk around town in the middle of August in 100 degree weather and who knows what humidity.
- Try to find entertainment or a store that sells books, videos, etc. (or any store for that matter) that is open after 6pm on a Sunday.
- Leave town on a train the day after a thunderstorm caused damage to the railroad’s signal system.

Have you ever read the breakdown of the price of gasoline at the pump and wondered where your gas tax dollars go? One would guess that the gas tax primarily funds highway construction and maintenance and one would be right, although it by no means constitutes the highways department’s only funding source. So, out of the 18.4 cent per gallon the federal government levies (which does not take into account additional state taxes), 15.44 cent go to the Highway Account, 2.86 cent contribute to the Mass Transit Account and 0.1 cent go to LUST. I kid you not, somewhere in the federal government sits a bureaucrat who thought it would be appropriate to go with the straight acronym for the “Leaky Underground Storage Tanks” trust fund. While this is mildly funny, the fact that we need a trust fund for leaky underground storage tanks is a bit disconcerting. I suppose awareness of a problem (and funding of the fix) is a good first step to solving it.

But the problem with the gas tax lies elsewhere. While it has been a reliable transportation funding source, thanks to all car-loving Americans who made up for the general trend towards more fuel-efficient vehicles by driving more, the gas tax is not indexed to inflation. Since the last federal gas tax increase in 1993 the cost of building and maintaining infrastructure has gone up by more than 30%, while the gas tax rate remained the same. The increase in fuel consumption has started to level off, much to the joy of environmentalists and to the dismay of those who are trying to find money to fix the crumbling bridges and potholes the size of Texas. Unfortunately the prospects for increasing the gas tax rates are non-existent under Republican leadership and in times when gas prices are as high as they are now (although a quick look at $6 a gallon gas prices in Europe should remind us all that life is still good in the U.S. of A). Of course voluntary taxation has not quite caught on either …