Posts Tagged ‘bike lanes’

As you are no doubt aware, the new president wasted no time issuing a flurry of Executive Orders, which have the usual suspects clutching their pearls. He has restored Mt. McKinley to its rightful name. He has ordered that the Gulf of Mexico will henceforth be the Gulf of America. He has ordered all federal […]


Idle thoughts

08Nov24

From the front lines of the War on Gas-powered cars This week, the Town Council decided that Wakefield should comply with a virtually unknown, 15-year-old state regulation requiring “No Idling” signs to be displayed on school grounds. The issue came up after Councilor Bob Vincent did one of his signature deep dives into the legal […]


My new favorite town board is the Environmental Sustainability Committee and its countless offshoots. The ladies have been busy this summer, meeting 10 times in the months of June and July alone! Such a frenzied pace befits a group tasked with saving the planet. As the chairwoman called a recent meeting to order, she hoped […]


Idle thoughts

21Sep23

For sheer entertainment value, last week’s Wakefield Town Council meeting had it all: pathos, bathos, drama and farce. And they say there’s nothing good on TV anymore. Let’s dive right in with the most contentious issue of the evening. Chairman Jonathan Chines had ordered eight “NO IDLING” signs to be put up on Main Street […]


You probably remember the term “one percent” or “one-percenter,” which became popularized during the “Occupy Wall Street” movement. Theoretically, it referred to the richest one percent of the population, who are said to have most of the money, property, and power in society. In reality, it was used to demonize any productive individual who had the audacity to earn and accumulate any quantity of wealth. […]


Last Saturday’s Special Election, which saw 18 percent of the voters give 100 percent of Wakefield homeowners a hefty tax increase, brought back a hazy memory from about 40 years ago. As a member of the Board of Assessors in the 1980s, Paul Faler was a fierce advocate for residential taxpayers. As I recall it, […]


Charging ahead

22Aug19

We’ve already established that the only thing keeping you from trading in your Subaru for a Schwinn is the lack of bike lanes. Now it turns out that all it will take to get you into a new electric vehicle is for the town to install a few public electric vehicle charging stations. So, which […]


A simple plan

02Aug19

If you’re looking for someone to blame for bike lanes, look in the mirror. That’s in effect what the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) is saying in a recently released document called the Massachusetts Bicycle Transportation Plan. MassDOT has developed the Bike Plan “to be an actionable investment strategy to guide its decision-making and bicycle […]


Natural history

24May19

I made my feelings known on the topic of bike lanes a few weeks ago. I’m not a fan, but they’re coming, as just one part of a $15 million downtown infrastructure project. Rightly or wrongly, I associate bike lanes with some other obnoxious trends, like the demonization of automobiles and fossil fuels. The internal […]


I have some bad news and some worse news. The bad news: Bike lanes are coming to Wakefield Square. The worse news: There’s not a thing you can do about it. Why, you ask? The answer can be expressed in one word: money. The town wants $15 million from the state for a Main Street […]