The Codcast

It was 10 years ago that MassINC launched its Gateway Cities initiative with a report documenting the challenges -- and huge opportunities -- in the state’s once vibrant industrial cities.

“Massachusetts’ proud, old manufacturing cities must be counted, on balance, as distressed,” it said. Yet, concluded the report, “For the first time in decades, these cities’ reconnection to prosperity seems at least imaginable.”

A decade later, MassINC, the non-partisan public policy think tank that publishes CommonWealth, has continued to carry out research showing some of the pathways to renewed prosperity in Gateway Cities. It has also pushed initiatives to help them get there, such as a MassDevelopment project that has placed mid-career “fellows” with expertise in urban planning and development in Gateway Cities to help with strategic planning, site acquisition for redevelopment projects, and other initiatives.

But none of that would be happening without the energy and initiative of residents in the 26 Massachusetts communities that have been dubbed Gateway Cities, says Maureen McInerney, public affairs associate at MassINC, in this week’s Codcast. “They say, yes, we are ready to take this and run with it,” she says of leaders in the communities. She says they are simply looking to MassINC as a “catalyst” to help them tap the energy and potential in their community.

One new approach to that catalyst role at MassINC is the publication this month of a magazine spotlighting interesting people, initiatives, and ideas taking hold in Gateway Cities. Gateways is a glossy 80-page magazine that tells the tale of today’s Gateway Cities through stories rather than the research reports that are the bread and butter of MassINC’s Gateway Cities Innovation Institute.

Everyone knows about the retrenchment and redistribution of resources by media outlets, especially newspapers. While some regions have filled the vacuum with blogs purporting to be news but are really opinion pages in disguise, true local news and events often go uncovered.

The Codcast this week is an MBTA twofer: James Aloisi and Josh Fairchild of TransitMatters make a pitch for an overnight bus service pilot and also interview Matthew Casale, a staff attorney from MassPIRG, about the accuracy of a reliability indicator the T is using.

Everyone knows about traffic congestion in Boston. It’s why we’re often late for meetings. It’s why sightseeing firms are paring back their tours because the tourists are spending too much time sitting in traffic. And it’s why many Boston officials are worried Amazon will take a pass on the city -- traffic is just too heavy already.

What a lot of people don’t realize is that the federal government is subsidizing this congestion. Tax policies approved in the 1970s and 1980s give a break to people who drive to work and park in employer-provided or employed-subsidized parking spots. Normally that type of fringe benefit would be taxed as income, but under federal law employees are granted an exemption of up to $255 a month.

The federal tax break is most valuable to people in the highest tax brackets who are commuting to areas where parking is most expensive. “We’re subsidizing them to drive in precisely the places and at precisely the times that experience the most congestion,” said Tony Dutzik, a senior policy analyst at the Frontier Group, during a Codcast interview with Josh Fairchild and James Aloisi of TransitMatters.

As you pore over the bids for Amazon’s second headquarters, put your headphones on, call up The Codcast, and listen to Shirley Leung and Chris Dempsey talk about what’s at stake.

Leung, a pro-growth columnist for the Boston Globe, and Dempsey, the director of Transportation for Massachusetts and one of the leaders of the No Boston Olympics campaign, find more common ground than you might think. But they also have some fundamental differences, which makes the conversation both entertaining and enlightening.

Buying booze the modern way by CommonWealth Beacon

The tough-on-crime era of the 1980s and 90s has given way to what some are calling the smart-on-crime era, a time in which policymakers and politicians are rethinking what it takes to keep communities safe while also giving criminal offenders the best shot of getting on a more positive path after paying their debt.

That debate will come front and center on Beacon Hill this fall, as lawmakers take up bills that would address perceived shortcomings in the current system. The most ambitious proposal was unveiled last week by Sen. Will Brownsberger, cochairman of the Joint Committee on the Judiciary, who is this week's guest on The Codcast.

When it comes to the November match-ups for mayor in Boston and Lawrence, it looks like very different tales of two cities, one where a highly competitive race is now on tap, and one where that seems unlikely.

That’s the assessment from this week’s Codcast with Yawu Miller, senior editor of the Bay State Banner, and Ted Siefer, a CommonWealth contributor who penned a feature for the magazine’s summer issue taking stock of Lawrence Mayor Dan Rivera’s first term and teeing up the reelection race he was facing.

Everyone talks about equity these days. Pay equity, gender equity, racial equity. You can add to that list mobility equity and neighborhood equity, areas that are affected by all other social and economic equity issues.

Chris Osgood, Boston’s chief of the streets, says successful transportation planning now has to start at those equity points in order for the city to have a viable system that meets everybody’s needs. In a conversation with Josh Fairchild and Jim Aloisi of TransitMatters for The Codcast, Osgood detailed what Boston’s hopes and plans are for a multi-modal transportation system in a city where as many as 60 percent of the residents don’t own cars.

Boston’s streets and sidewalks comprise 9 square miles in a city that is only 48 square miles in total. Chris Osgood, with the odd but apt title of Boston’s chief of the streets, is the person in charge of not only maintaining that infrastructure but making sure that residents have access to it whether they drive, bike, or walk.

Osgood, joined by Vineet Gupta, the director of policy and planning for the Boston Transportation Department, and Josh Fairchild and James Aloisi of Transit Matters, said on The Codcast that his charge from Mayor Marty Walsh is to find ways of incentivizing commuters and residents to rely less on their cars and to take advantage of other modes of transportation that help reduce greenhouse gases.