Spring is in the muggy, fetid air on the MBTA
Jeremy C. Fox for Boston.com
The setting sun shone down as an outbound Orange Line train approached Roxbury Crossing.
Jeremy C. Fox can be reached at jeremy.fox@globe.com.
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Northeastern University honors first responders at commencement ceremony
With the cloud of the Marathon bombings still hanging over Boston, Northeastern University began the city’s commencement season Friday to recognize its students’ achievements and the work of region’s first responders.
More than 20,000 students, family members, friends, faculty, and staff gathered in TD Garden Friday morning to cheer and celebrate the graduating class. But the joyous day, which played out amid heightened security, was not without solemn reflection on recent events.
“While we have much to celebrate we are joined in the shadow of tragedy," Northeastern President Joseph E. Aoun said in his opening remarks. “We are feeling a conflicting mix of emotions: joy and pain, triumph and loss. Fortunately, we also draw strength from one another.”
Aoun recognized the first responders, law enforcement officials, and ordinary citizens who helped at the finish line after the bombings, including Northeastern students in the Bouve College of Health Sciences originally there to offer first aid and routine assistance to marathon runners.
"But when disaster struck there was nothing routine about their response. They immediately put their education to use and when confronted with the worst they brought out their best," he said, asking the students and advisors to stand for a round of applause.
Northeastern also gave every person in attendance a blue and yellow bracelet with ‘Boston Strong’ and ‘#NU2013’ written on it.
To a long, roaring applause and standing ovation, first responders came onto the stage with Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis, who accepted an honorary doctorate in public service on behalf of the first responders and law enforcement officials who sprung into action to help others in the wake of the bombings.
Governor Deval Patrick, presenting the honorary degree, said “During the traumatic attack on our city and in the hours and days that followed, you ran toward danger to care for the injured, comfort the bereaved, and keep our citizens safe from further harm."
Nikesh Arora, senior vice president and chief business officer at Google; Jack D. Bryant, president of engineering firm Bryant Associates and a member of the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II; and Barbara Lynch, CEO of Barbara Lynch Gruppo were also awarded honorary degrees.
In his commencement address World Bank president Jim Yong Kim encouraged students to use the tools and skills they have developed to successfully face a future that was uncertain, but full of possibilities.
"My challenge to you is this: set bold goals, deliberately and consciously build your willpower, and use your time well,” he said.
E-mail Kaiser at Johanna.yourtown@gmail.com. For more news about your city, town, neighborhood, or campus, visit boston.com’s Your Town homepage.
Road closures in and around Boston Sunday for Walk for Hunger
Road closures and traffic delays are expected in Cambridge and Boston and several neighboring communities Sunday as more than 40,000 people are expected to participate in Project Bread’s 20-mile Walk for Hunger.
The walk to raise money for hunger relief and prevention will start Sunday, May 5, at 7 a.m. at the Boston Common, and will lead to several road closures in the area, including the closing of Charles Street between Boylston and Beacon streets between 6 a.m. and 6.p.m. The outbound side of Commonwealth Avenue from Arlington Street through Kenmore Square will be closed from 6 a.m. to 11 a.m., and other streets around the Boston Common and Kenmore Square will also be closed. The route map can be found here and a full list of the street closures and traffic restrictions can be found here.
In Cambridge, Memorial Drive will be closed between Fresh Pond Parkway and Western Avenue from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday, and other closures, parking restrictions and traffic delays are expected.
In Brookline, the outbound side of Beacon Street will be closed between St. Mary’s and Carlton streets from 7 a.m. to noon.
In Newton, Exit 17 from I-90 Westbound will be closed from 10 a.m. until the heavy flow of walkers subsides around 2 p.m. and other closures and delays are expected.
In Watertown, Greenough Boulevard will be closed between North Beacon and Arsenal Streets will be closed to vehicles from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Boston's New Urban Mechanics initiative named one of top 25 in nation by Harvard
Jeremy C. Fox for Boston.com
Downtown Boston.
A City of Boston initiative has been named one of the top government innovations in the country by an institute at Harvard University.
The Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics is among 25 semifinalists for the Innovations in American Government Award, presented by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
“These top 25 innovations in government offer real, tangible ways to protect our most disadvantaged citizens, educate the next-generation workforce, and utilize data analytics to enhance government performance,” Stephen Goldsmith, director of the center’s Innovations in Government program, said in a statement Wednesday.
“Despite diminishing resources, these government programs have developed model innovations that other struggling agencies should be inspired to replicate and adapt to their own communities,” Goldsmith said.
The Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics works to deliver an array of transformative city services to residents, ranging from enhancing public spaces, to increasing civic participation, to improving educational outcomes, according to Harvard.
The 25 initiatives were selected by a panel of researchers, practitioners, and policy specialists, Harvard said. The Innovations in American Government Award winner and four finalists will be announced in the fall.
In the list released Wednesday, the programs are presented in alphabetical order and are not ranked.
The Ford Foundation created the award in 1985 to draw attention to effective government programs, Harvard said. The awards program has since recognized more than 400 government initiatives at the local, state and federal level, as well as tribal governments, and provided more than $22 million in grants to support efforts to help disseminate those programs.
A full list of the Top 25 programs is available here.
Jeremy C. Fox can be reached at jeremy.fox@globe.com.
Follow him on Twitter: @jeremycfox.
Follow Downtown on Twitter: @YTDowntown.
Video | MBTA takes steps to boost safety, security throughout system
(Matt Rocheleau for Boston.com)
The temporary extra patrols of well-armed police officers and soldiers in MBTA stations are gone. But the quest to bolster the long-term safety of the public transit system is far from over.
The T still has $80 million in unspent federal homeland security grants, which have been doled to public transportation systems across the country since 2002.
The $60 million in federal grants spent by the T over the past decade has helped make the agency a national leader in the industry of public transit safety.
“The efforts toward security and policing that the MBTA has had in place for a number of years have really been looked at as a benchmark for the industry,” said Greg Hull, director of operations, safety and security for the American Public Transportation Association.
And, when the bombs went off at the Boston Marathon two weeks ago, officials at the MBTA said that, while shocked and devastated like the rest of the city, they were prepared, largely due to the new equipment and training acquired in recent years.
“It was controlled chaos,” said Randy Clarke, senior director of security and emergency management for the MBTA and the Massachusetts Department of Transportation.
He described the atmosphere of the T’s central hub for dispatch and communications, or Operations Control Center, as officials scrambled to secure stations and stop some service after the explosions at Copley Square, and then again several day later when the system was shut down during a lengthy manhunt.
“I hate to say we’re used to crises and trained for them, but we are,” Clarke said.
On Monday, two weeks after the Marathon bombings, MBTA officials gave a tour of the control center, which includes some of the transit industry’s most sophisticated technology for daily operations and security.
FULL ENTRYSome pay phones in Boston to offer free Wi-Fi Internet hotspots this summer
Free Wi-Fi Internet access will soon be broadcast from 16 existing pay phones in Boston.
And officials from companies leading the effort hope to, pending city approval, rapidly expand the service so that a total of about 100 existing pay phones across Boston will offer free wireless Internet hotspots by the end of this summer. By the end of next summer, they hope they will have reached a total of about 400 payphones citywide.
The effort, called “FreeBostonWiFi,” is being carried out on a trial basis, company officials said.
So far, the city’s Department of Innovation and Technology has approved Wi-Fi installations at 16 pay phones, located around City Hall, Faneuil Hall, Downtown Crossing and Long Wharf, according to Tyler Kratz, president of DAS Communications, which is one of four private companies partnering on the effort.
RCN Business Services, LCC International Inc., Pacific Telemanagement Services and DAS Communications announced their plan at a conference in Boston last week.
Four temporary demo sites were set up at pay phones near the Hyatt Regency hotel where the conference was held, the companies said.
One site at Cambridge and Court streets near City Hall Plaza was heavily used even though nothing was done at the site to advertise that the Wi-Fi signal was there.
“People had no idea it was there unless they saw it on their phone,” or other mobile device, said Kratz. “People were using it quite a bit. It blew my mind.”
Over about a 24-hour span last week, about 18,000 mobile devices “noticed” the Wi-Fi. About 2,000 devices connected and more than 200 people spent and average of 17 minutes using the Internet connection, he said.
“There’s a demand for this,” said Kratz.
He said the Wi-Fi service at that payphone by City Hall was supposed to be permanent. But, last week it was struck by some bad luck. A vehicle rammed into and damaged the booth. But, Kratz said the companies plan to have it replaced and restore Wi-Fi service within a couple of weeks.
The other 15 pay phones in line to get Internet hotspots are also located in downtown Boston and in areas that draw a high number of pedestrians, including commuters, business professionals and tourists.
Kratz said another focus will be to add the service to pay phones in low-income areas of Boston where some people cannot afford their own Internet access.
“Boston is a great city. With all of the college students and the young people it’s perfect demographically,” he said. “And we really want to make sure this is not just clustered in one spot.”
The Wi-Fi hotspots will offer around-the-clock Internet access for an unlimited amount of time at no cost to users or taxpayers.
The signal is usually accessible within 100 to 200 feet of the kiosk, though range can vary depending on whether there are objects or structures around the kiosk that could interfere with the signal.
To connect to the Wi-Fi hotspots, users need to select FreeBostonWiFiSSID on their mobile device and then accept the connection’s terms and conditions. No password is needed and no personal information gathered.
The companies that own the kiosks and run the service pay for installing and maintaining the new infrastructure at the payphone stations.
Some of the kiosks themselves have advertisements on them to generate revenue for the companies, but Kratz said the Internet service will not display ads on users devices.
"The partnership is giving new life to telephone booths that have almost become extinct due to the evolution of the cell phone," said a statement from Jeff Carlson, vice president and general manager of RCN Boston. “Small cell and Wi-Fi technology deployed through this partnership is another step toward delivering high quality wireless by lighting up hotspots in Boston using RCN's unparalleled fiber network."
The payphone kiosks will broadcast Wi-Fi in part by using small cell technology, which allows mobile devices, such as cell phones, to work.
"It's interesting and a little ironic that capacity demands from the cellular market has allowed for the repurposing of existing phone infrastructure, like payphone kiosks,” said a statement from E.J. von Schaumburg , vice president of Advanced Mobility Solutions at LCC International. “Utilizing small cell technology, we can take advantage of the excellent kiosk locations throughout an urban area and deliver high quality cellular capacity at the street level."
Last summer, a pilot program launched in New York City in which free public Wi-Fi Internet hotspots were emitted from routers installed at about 10 payphones.
Kratz said his company has been involved with the efforts in New York City and that his company now runs Wi-Fi from about 20 payphones there and plans to soon add the service to about 40 more payphones.
City officials in New York have said they plan to have Internet service added to all 12,000 payphones there.
Several weeks later after the program debuted in New York, two at-large City Councilors in Boston – Felix G. Arroyo and Ayanna Pressley – proposed doing something similar here.
Kratz said he has since met with Arroyo to discuss replicating the service in Boston and that he and other city officials have been instrumental in helping it launch.
Use of payphones has become rare because of cell phones. Some payphones no longer function to make calls. Others have been removed entirely.
Wi-Fi hotspots will help restore some use to the old payphone kiosks, officials have said.
The first-ever payphone was installed at a bank in Hartford in the late 1800s.
Since 1997, the number of payphones nationwide has dropped from an estimated peak of about 2.2 million to about 400,000, according to a petition that the American Public Communications Council, which advocates for payphone use, sent to the Federal Communications Commission last spring.
Kratz said the roughly 400 payphones in Boston his company hopes to bring Wi-Fi to are all owned by Pacific Telemanagement Services. He said there are few others in the city.
Kratz said his company is also in talks with city officials about the possibility of having free wireless Internet access broadcast from key municipal buildings, like police and fire stations, as well as from old-fashioned fire alarm boxes around Boston. But, Kratz said, no agreement has been reached and other companies are pitching similar ideas to the city.
E-mail Matt Rocheleau at mjrochele@gmail.com.
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Annual bird and tree walks to welcome spring in Back Bay Fens
The Fenway Civic Association is welcoming spring to the Back Bay Fens with a morning of bird watching and a tree walk.
The annual bird-walk and spring blossom ramble set for Saturday, May 4, will begin at 7 a.m. with a bird walk guided by naturalist and historian Gerry Wright.
The walk, open to all levels, will begin at the central flagpole in the Fenway Victory Gardens across from 11 Park Dr. and will spot the sight and sounds of the birds in the Back Bay Fens each spring.
At 10 a.m. forester Mathew Cahill from the Boston Natural Areas Network will lead the “Spring Blossom Ramble” that will focus on the trees that bloom in spring.
The tree walk is co-sponsored by Boston Natural Areas Network and the Emerald Necklace Conservancy. Coffee and refreshments will be provided by the Whole Foods Market on Westland Avenue.
E-mail Kaiser at Johanna.yourtown@gmail.com. For more news about your city, town, neighborhood, or campus, visit boston.com’s Your Town homepage.
Huntington Ave. to get more shared lane markings for bicyclists
Shared lane markings are being added to a portion of Huntington Avenue in an effort to make the road safer for bicyclists.
The city’s Boston Bikes program is painting shared line markings on Huntington Avenue from the Brookline town line to Ruggles Street.
The white markings show two arrows and a bicycle on the road indicating that the road must be shared between cyclists and drivers.
According to a notice by Boston Bikes, the shared lane markings are designed to provide guidance to drivers and encourage them to drive slower, while designating a safe riding zone for cyclists and encouraging them to ride more predictably, and not ride on the sidewalk. The markings also make pedestrians and vehicles more aware of cyclists.
No parking will be lost and traffic will not be impacted by the installation of the lane markings, which takes place at night over one to three days.
E-mail Kaiser at Johanna.yourtown@gmail.com. For more news about your city, town, neighborhood, or campus, visit boston.com’s Your Town homepage.
A Twitter tribute to MBTA Officer Richard Donohue
AP Photo/Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority
In this 2010 photo provided by the MBTA, Richard Donohue Jr., left, and Sean Collier pose together at their graduation from the Municipal Police Officers' Academy.
Jeremy C. Fox can be reached at jeremy.fox@globe.com.
Follow him on Twitter: @jeremycfox.
Follow Downtown on Twitter: @YTDowntown.
Loud banging sound to start as part of Muddy River project
A testing project on the Muddy River will involve short, loud bangs that will sound similar to a gunshot starting Tuesday, says the US Army Corps of Engineers.
The construction, which is part of the $30.9 million Muddy River Flood Risk Management and Environmental Restoration project in Boston, will be done three times every other day, about 15 to 30 minutes apart, according to the agency.
The testing is to determine the depth needed to create support shafts for later developments and is expected to be completed by May 10, the Army Corps said.
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