Sam Yoon Running for Mayor in Boston on Transportation Reform Agenda
Boston is, in the scheme of things, a pretty well-governed city with a low crime rate and a public school system that, unusually for a big city, performs above the national average when you control for demographic factors. That’s all probably part of the reason that incumbent Mayor Thomas Menino has been in office since 1993. But that only means there are new issues people need to talk about. For example, City Councilman Sam Yoon is running on a strong platform of transportation reform:
Transportation isn’t just cars
The Menino administration has finally started to introduce limited measures that will make the city more bike-friendly. But gestures are not enough. The real problem is that we have an outdated transportation department and mixed up planning. If we want to be the cleanest, greenest, 21st century city in America, then we must get this right. Street design that moves people – on bike, on foot and on rapid public transit should be the focus. Cars are just one part of the breadth of transportation solutions and Boston should be leading the way.
He’s also right about charter school caps. Obviously, there are other issues in play and lots of local-to-Boston details I’m not on top of, so don’t take this as dispositive. But since this blog likes to cover transportation and urban reform issues, I thought it was worth noting this.
19 Responses to “Sam Yoon Running for Mayor in Boston on Transportation Reform Agenda”
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June 16th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
The last transportation-reform-oriented mayoral campaign in Boston was not a success. See “Walter J. O’Brien.”
It did, however, provide the world with an excellent and amusing campaign song.
June 16th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Poor Charlie. (And it’s Walter A., not J.)
June 16th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
NB: the last time an incumbent mayor of Boston lost an election, it was 1950. And the gentleman in question (who’d been elected mayor on four separate nonconsecutive occasions over the course of a quarter century) spent a portion of his final term in jail (he lost to the guy who was acting as interim mayor during his…absence). So the weight of recent history suggests the man once known as Mumbles will still be mayor until he longer wants to be mayor.
June 16th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
I visited Boston last year and stayed in a hotel a 1/4 mile from a T stop. It was really easy and convenient to use the T system to get around the city. Based on an admittedly short visit, a transportation campaign seems unnecessary.
June 16th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
That would be Curley? He was famous all over the country. Still is.
June 16th, 2009 at 7:30 pm
Mumbles was a great mayor for bringing Boston back from the brink. His style of leadership and vision of a good city was just what was needed during the 1990s and early 00s, when the goal was to throw off the post-WW2 doldrums and achieve the type of urban renaissance that many cities – starting with Lowell – underwent during that period.
But times have changed. Successful cities like Boston need someone with vision at the helm. Tom Menino thinks “green power” is when the city’s park department employees play hardball during contract negotiations.
June 16th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
The T system you used probably consisted of the Red Line, and the C, D, or E branches of the Green Line (streetcars that go underground downtown). Visitors to the city have little reason to use the Blue Line or the hearing-damaging, never-coming Orange Line.
The T is great if you happen to live near one of the subway/streetcar lines. Buses in Boston, however, are little better than buses elsewhere in the country (it is interesting to note, however, that people of all ethnicities take the bus, unlike what I witnessed on my eye-opening trip to Philly where I was one of three non-black people among about 60 and one of one non-black-haired people). The city, though, has the density that would accommodate streetcars or busways to a much greater extent than they are employed.
Also, Menino is in love with the Silver Line, which claims to be bus rapid transit (BRT), but in fact is just a normal bus line that has shelters that tell you when the next bus is coming. He’s foursquare behind a boondoggle project to join a bus line designated as the Silver Line to another bus line designated as the Silver Line with a very expensive tunnel under the center of the city, which threatens the foundations of historic buildings and is not especially desired by people or businesses on the two lines.
Boston is also fairly awful for bicycling–the streets are narrow and there aren’t any bike lanes. Cambridge, right across the river and with development patterns similar to non-downtown or non-Back Bay Boston, has plenty of bike lanes and is just as easy to drive in.
Transit in Boston hasn’t really made any progress in the past decade or so (a derelict commuter rail line has been reopened), unlike places like Charlotte or Dallas which, from their development patterns, should be far less hospitable to transit.
June 16th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
“Boston is, in the scheme of things, a pretty well-governed city with a low crime rate and a public school system that, unusually for a big city, performs above the national average when you control for demographic factors.”
Given that Matt Y hates Boston, this is big of him. On behalf of all Massholes, I’d like to offer a temporary truce to his New York-born, DC-centric, once-upon-a-time-exploiter-of-Boston’s-educational-resources self.
Seriously, I do.
June 16th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
I’m hoping the lengthening of the green line trains will help, but at the rate they’re finishing the platforms it’ll be a while before we thin out the crowds on the green. The blue line is much better now that the trains have gone from 4 to 6 cars in length. Much of the misery of riding the T is dealing with thoughtless riders who don’t understand that their selfish, stubborn behavior around the doors just holds up the whole system. They just stand there thinking ‘I can’t move: I’ve got to keep my spot and be near the door for when I get off two stops from now.’ Meanwhile, because they won’t move out of the fucking way, it takes another ten seconds for people to get off, and then another ten for people to get on.
June 16th, 2009 at 9:45 pm
Visitors to the city have little reason to use the Blue Line…
Unless, they, um, arrive or depart via the airport.
Yoon definitely seems the smart choice for progressives, FWIW. I’m no Menino-basher, but he doesn’t seem interested in smaller, quality of life issues (clean streets, graffiti, aggressive panhandling). On these non-critical but annoying issues, things seems to have gotten modestly worse in Boston. Also, the city’s electrical grid is atrocious. For the life of me I don’t understand why Menino doesn’t use the opportunity of N-Star’s crappy service (don’t buy ice cream on 95 degree days if you live in my neighborhood, because there’s a one in three chance you’ll lose electricity sometime in the evening — usually at a critical juncture during a close Red Sox game) to play the populist. Anyway, he hasn’t exactly been a terrible mayor, but five terms is really too much for anybody. It’s simply not conducive to good government.
June 16th, 2009 at 10:00 pm
And we all understand, don’t we, that Sam Yoon (whom I like, but I don’t live/vote in the city) will be elected mayor of Boston at the same time I’m hired to manage the Red Sox, right?
June 16th, 2009 at 11:16 pm
Boston needs new leadership and Sam Yoon can provide that. Menino has been adequate as mayor, but that is not good enough. We need a new vision to make us a 21st Century city.
June 17th, 2009 at 7:20 am
The transit system is a morass of waste. See, from an indisputably liberal site, the problems than are not going to be solved by Sam Yoon:
http://www.bluemassgroup.com/diary/15356/time-to-reboot-the-mbta
June 17th, 2009 at 8:38 am
Living in the Boston area, so far the impression I’ve got from
the media is that Sam Yoon is a bit of a joke. As efgoldman
says, Yoon has no chance at all. Menino is regarded as
basically ok, and with 2 World Series, 3 Superbowls, an NBA
championship, and even the Bruins showing signs of life,
Bostonians are pretty happy these days and not in any mood to
march on City Hall brandishing pitchforks. The city works
pretty well, Menino knows what he’s doing, doesn’t make a big
fuss about anything, and isn’t going to tour the country making
crappy jokes at our expense like that asshole Romney.
This may well be unfair to Yoon and his policies, but I’m
pretty sure the election isn’t going to be decided on
substantive issues of transit policy (has any election ever
been ?).
June 17th, 2009 at 10:11 am
This will be a good one to watch, especially in the off year. The dynamics of this race are classic – iconic machine pol defending his seat against young, well-educated electoral phenom. Besides, Boston needs a good race. The last competitive mayoral election was in 1983.
June 17th, 2009 at 10:31 am
I think Yoon’s candidacy is far more about positioning
himself for the future – once Menino decides to retire -
rather than having a chance of unseating Menino this time
round. Really no-one has anything bad to say about Menino,
which is quite astonishing, given the usual level of vitriol
and corruption of big-city politics …
This is what Yoon’s *supporters* say about Menino:
http://www.dotnews.com/2009/yoon-launches-bid-calls-meninos-style-outmoded
“We don’t have a problem with Menino,” said Toan Vinh Than, head of the Vietnamese Small Business Association, while sitting at a table with his association members.
Than, who owns an auto body shop in Dorchester, said Menino should step aside to let a younger generation take over. “Menino, he’s been effective. It’s time for a change.”
Anthony Robinson, president and CEO of Youth in Crisis Ministries, said he felt it was his “civic duty” to support Yoon. “It’s time for a change,” he said, echoing other supporters other supporters like Than.
He added, of Menino, “I can’t say he’s been doing anything wrong.”
June 17th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
“The dynamics of this race are classic – iconic machine pol defending his seat against young, well-educated electoral phenom.”
Really ? Getting 15% of the vote and coming third out of
eight candidates makes Yoon an “electoral phenom” ?
Menino is at 67% popularity. He wins this time round without
breaking a sweat. But he’s getting old and has health issues,
so next time round he probably retires and then it gets
interesting.
June 17th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
Jason L,
Why would you never use the Orange Line? The Orange Line goes, among other places, to some of the beautiful parks on the southwest edge of Boston (Arnold Arboretum, Jamaica Pond, etc.) And the Blue Line, of course, runs to the airport so you would need to use it if you fly in.
June 17th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
All of the public transportation in Boston is about getting you in and out of Boston, or around Boston/Cambridge. The MBTA buses don’t do much to take you from one outlying city to another.
I wouldn’t mind an expansion of the bus system for the cities on or around Route 128. Given how much single-driver traffic clogs it on a regular stretch, an HOV lane and bus routes traveling on it and fanning off it would be useful.