Massachusetts: Transportation

Things must be pretty tense on Beacon Hill these days. Mary Connaughton's aggravated. Aloisi's irritated. Therese Murray is dissed.

Again ... the frustrating thing about the Transport Reform Rodeo down at the State House is the lack of specificity. Certainly, Jim Aloisi ought to act like a grownup, and if he feels that he has been treated disrespectfully, he can choose to ignore the nanna-nanna-boo-boo and try to respond to the substance of any particular complaint. I think any legislator can similarly discount Mr. Aloisi's outbursts. Does this need to be personal, folks?

And what the hell is "this" about, anyway?

Recently, we've had the Governor's Chief of Staff, the Secretary of Transportation, and the chair of the Joint Transportation Committee all hold forth on this blog.

As the debate over the gas tax goes forward it's interesting to note that supporters, including the Governor and his Secretary of Transportation are asking us all to own up to a collective responsibility for our broken roads and bridges, our inadequate public transportation system, and our debt. (Note the use of the pronoun "our")

Mayor Curtatone in the Somerville News says "anyone who has followed this issue seriously already knows that there's really no way around the need for new revenue. To get our troubled system back on track - a necessary step toward revitalizing our overall economy - it won't be enough just to cut or consolidate (although we have to do that, too).

Nearly as soon as new Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood floated a trial balloon of taxing motorists based on how many miles they drive rather than how much gasoline they use, the White House shot it down this afternoon. In an...

In our chat with His Excellency the Governor last month Patrick applauded Secretary of Transportation Aloisi for his familiarity with political graveyards: "he knows where the bodies are buried. And you know, the sad reality is that we have to dig up a lot of those bodies, and bury them properly."

I asked the Secretary for his reaction, and was impressed by his response. First, Aloisi said, politics is personal, and experience helps. He attended the Harvard Extension School at night to get an MA in History -- which he said is his true passion (he had me right there, of course, .