the lovely mass pike

so we drove from massachusetts to pennsylvania yesterday to spend thanksgiving with my family. we left around 8am and hit a little traffic but it wasnt too bad. im told by some friends that left around 9am that the mass pike was at a crawl. thankfully we left on the earlier side. obviously you have to factor in the holiday and that there are generally more cars on the road. however the mass pike drives me crazy...so i had to address it.

tolls in general
the tolls should be removed. they were originally put into place to pay for the building of the mass pike and the taxpayers were told that it was temporary and once the turnpike was paid for, the tolls would be removed. yet they remain, and the rates continue to rise.

we had a chance this year to add a ballot measure that would have allowed voters to decide whether the tolls should be removed. however the folks at close the tolls did not receive enough signatures to get the measure added to the ballots. i know i had some of you sign the petition, but lets work to get it added to the 2010 ballot.

there is another group called the toll equity trust that is actually suing the turnpike authority for misappropriations of collected toll monies. according to them, 58% of collected tolls are used to pay for big dig debt and not for turnpike expenditures.

fast lane
from what i could find, approximately 40% of drivers use the fastlane. the turnpike authority reports that they save an additional $0.30 for every toll dollar collected when drivers use the fastlane. so why isnt more emphasis placed on rewarding those with a fastlane pass? by getting more people to use the fastlane, it means less money lost paying for toll collectors.

check out how many actual fastlanes exist at tollbooths and where they are located. on our trip yesterday i noticed that at the sturbridge tolls (a notorious choke point for traffic) that there were 7 open tollbooths. of those seven, 2 were for fastlane users, 4 for cash payers, and 1 that could be for either. again, why are we not rewarding fastlane users?

wasted revenue
david hartgen is a professor of transportation studies at the university of north carolina charlotte and a fellow of the reason foundation. in july 2008 he produced his 17th annual report on the performance of state highway systems. you can find it here. there is lots of valuable information about every state in the report. the one area i wanted to highlight was the amount of money spent per highway mile. massachusetts ranks 2nd only behind new jersey with $749,070 per highway mile! should there be a pothole anywhere in the state with that amount of money spent?! where does all of this money go?


enjoy the rest of your turkey day celebrations.

the year ends...kind of

so street cleaning ends on november 30th. our street is on a tuesday sweeping schedule. so that means today is the final day i have to be concerned with which side of the street im parked on, what time it is if i am parked on the wrong side, whether the sweeper has come by already and its safe to move my car back, how to get to the tow lot to get my car back, and how much its going to cost to pay the ticket and get my car out of the tow lot.

fun fact: for fiscal year 2008, the city of boston issued 1.53 MILLION parking tickets, collecting $63.3 MILLION! thats an average of $41 per ticket. the fine for a street sweeping violation is $40. that cant be coincidence can it?

beat it meter maids, sorry parking enforcement agents. see ya april 1st.

football and overeating

for me, yesterday officially kicks off the holiday season of overindulging.

six years ago yesterday i met my beautiful bride for the first time. she had just purchased a tambourine and was taking part in a two person parade through the north end of boston. long story short, they came over to my place for from grilling and college football and six years later we continue to celebrate november 22nd as what is now known as parade day. so yesterday we had some friends over to enjoy a roast and a whole chicken and our friends brought all the delicious side dishes to accompany them. add in a few bud lights or red wine and the pats/jets game and the holiday season was underway.

this year we will spend traveling to PA to be with my family. and having an italian mother, there is never a shortage of food. i swear that my mom doesnt actually eat any of the food she prepares. she just serves it, then starts preparing the next meal. the football this year will come in the form of several of the family alma maters in the playoffs. villanova (mom/dad/sister) hosts holy cross. william & mary (me) takes on weber state. elon (brother) goes to richmond. UNH (wife) heads to mcneese state. and appalachian state (sister again) hosts south carolina state. of course very few of these games will actually be on tv but hopefully we can at least catch some scores throughout the day.

so loosen your belt. get in some exercise when you can. try to take everything in moderation. be ok with putting on a few pounds. and enjoy yourselves, your family and friends these next couple months.

federal debt

at the urging of my buddy todd i watched the movie I.O.U.S.A., a 2008 documentary aimed at educating the public about the exploding federal debt and how scared americans should be. the sad part is that most people in the general public just have no clue. and worse yet, more of an interest in watching american idol or dancing with the stars than learning about this "boring" stuff.

in 2000, the federal debt was approximately $5 trillion. by the time this movie was made, the debt had risen to approximately $9 trillion. as of november 2009, the debt is now a little over $12 trillion. the country can not continue on this path.

no matter what side of the political aisle you reside, the information in this movie is compelling, shocking, frightening and should be common knowledge of the general public. if you are a netflix kind of person, you can even watch it instantly.

need some laughs?

ive been addicted to comedian bill burr's monday morning podcast recently. look for it on itunes.

he does another podcast with a comic named joe derosa called uninformed radio. you cant find it on itunes yet but you can listen from their website.

My ideas on street sweeping and trash collection

i had to address this issue first because my friends have heard me talk about it enough. my friend thereasa even wrote about the issue after hearing my rantings one too many times. ive written emails to my local rep and mayor with my ideas but didnt even receive the polite generic "thank you for contacting us" response.

so heres the issue in a nutshell...
in doing a little research on the city of bostons website i found out that most of the street sweeping (63%) is done prior to trash collection. while the trash collectors do a relatively fine job, there is inevitably going to be some trash that doesnt make it onto the truck and thus sits in the street for a week until street cleaning occurs again. so essentially the street is clean for 1 day out of the week.

i believe that if just a few changes were made to the scheduling of these two events during the week that the amount of time with clean streets could be maximized.

heres the breakdown of street sweeping..











scenario #1 - the easier solution
move trash collection day from wednesday to tuesday. even without changing the street sweeping schedule that means that 64% of the street sweeping occurs after trash collection.

scenario #2 - the more involved solution
very little street sweeping is done wed PM (8%) or thursday (1%). move trash collection to tuesday and all/some of tuesday street sweeping to wed PM or thursday. this would result in nearly 100% street sweeping occurring after trash collection.

so what are the potential pitfalls or problems?
* all the signage pertaining to street sweeping would need to be changed which potentially could be costly. however with a little planning it may just require moving a sign from one street to another, not creating a whole new sign.
* residents would get confused about when to put out the trash or when they need to move their cars. perhaps at first but then wouldnt everyone just learn the new pattern?


am i missing anything else as to why this is a bad idea? of course this becomes a moot point in a week as street cleaning ends november 30th.

i have further ideas involving the street sweeping schedule and snow removal....but lets wait for the winter to really get here before that conversation starts.

In the beginning...

my first posting on my first blog. its very odd considering i dont know who is going to read this.

so what does the blog name mean?
i tend to get up early on saturday mornings while my wife enjoys sleeping in. i make myself an iced coffee and take our dog millie for a walk around the neighborhood. when we get back home, millie jumps back into our bed and goes back to sleep. thats when i tend to sit down in front of the computer to read the news and research topics that interest me. the topics can run the gambit -- political, sports, local community, or just weird facts. if my political leaders tracked when they receive emails from me, im pretty sure it would reveal that 95% of them arrive on a saturday morning.

as a kid i once wrote short stories revolving around a character named dirk hannah and ive always had a general interest in writing but have never really pursued it in any capacity. for a few years right after college i kept a journal. it started as a way to document a cross country trip but then morphed into just my daily musings on my life. this blog will help me continue to catalog some of my thoughts.

i may post more often then only saturday mornings but i hope you find some level of enjoyment or amusement in the things rattling around my head.