In the end, for Springfield, 2021 may have come to define the city’s limits. Some of those limits were long overdue. Courts ruled twice on the limits of Mayor Domenic Sarno’s power and the coronavirus revealed the limits of his influence. But those limits also
Springfield bucked a local trend as its population grew a clip faster than much of the region. The Census Bureau released community-level data Thursday confirming the commonwealth’s growth principally happened in its east. Yet, the information still included some surprises. These both benefited and hurt Bay State localities reflecting both longer-term trends and how the coronavirus possibly warped results.
LONGMEADOW—Some months ago, a stone-faced Senator Eric Lesser appeared on a split screen with Governor Charlie Baker during a committee hearing on the early vaccine campaign. Lesser laid into Baker, for a botched website rollout among other errors. His Excellency expressed visible frustration.
SPRINGFIELD—President Joe Biden has raised the stakes on his presidency, laying out a suite of proposals from infrastructure investment to rebuilding the nation’s social support system. Many of these will soon land in the virtual and physical hearing rooms of the House Ways & Means
The Trans-Commonwealth Railroad is a series on the challenges and efforts to connect the length of Massachusetts by rail. Despite officials in 413 mashing the accelerator as if on a clear stretch of Pike, East-West rail entered 2021 with only muted optimism. Governor Charlie Baker,
The Trans-Commonwealth Railroad is a series on the challenges and efforts to connect the length of Massachusetts by rail. The $50 million Longmeadow State Senator Eric Lesser secured in the Senate Transportation bond bill for East-West rail is unlike the previous budget orders on the
UPDATED 2/13/20 8:33AM: To identify one of the speakers based on another media report. SPRINGFIELD—On Wednesday night, supporters of added rail service between Western and Eastern Massachusetts packed a room at the UMass Center in downtown for the Massachusetts Department of Transportation first public hearing
NEWTON—The same highway and rail line that divide Boston also splits Newton. In the capital city, the corridor separates neighborhoods from each other. Here, it pierces several of this city’s villages. Frothing traffic spills out into veins of streets, branching outward from the Turnpike. The Worcester Line tracks and dismal stations along I-90 provide little relief.
Some time ago the Massachusetts Department of Transportation—or simply MassDOT—announced plans to replace an aging viaduct east of the former Allston Turnpike tolls in Boston. The agency will bring the Pike to ground and elevate the adjoining Soldier Fields Road. That decision was widely praised.
BOSTON—All that was left was the oath and it was over. A new era had begun. Jo Comerford, the former nonprofit policy leader and MoveOn.org campaign director, formally became the new senator for much of the Upper Pioneer Valley Wednesday. Her swearing in was also