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Just got the call the kidlet's been waiting for

Boston Public Schools are closed on Friday. This was followed by a few minutes later by a press release from the mayor's office with the following sub-headline:

Extended vacation one last gift from Mayor Menino to students of Boston

Also:

A Snow Emergency and parking ban for the City of Boston will take effect TOMORROW, Thursday, January 2 at NOON. Boston Public Schools will be CLOSED FRIDAY, January 3. City business will be as usual tomorrow. Discounted parking will be available at 10 a.m. at several parking lots and garages to cars that display Boston resident parking stickers: http://www.cityofboston.gov/snow/parkingmap.asp

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Comments

Just got the facebook update saying a parking ban goes into effect at noon tomorrow.

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Let the space saver stories begin!

(I'm sure space savers were already out in certain parts of the city before New Year's Day!!)

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Ugh this winter is gonna suuuuck

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but open tomorrow?

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BPS wasn't supposed to start after the break until Friday, so there was never any school tomorrow anyway.

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They still have to report tomorrow. Hope their travels are safe.

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They should just put out an ABP that says "Take the MBTA at your own peril. We expect major delays and disabled trains on every line, including the Commuter Rail. Buses? Forget it!"

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Soon the MBTA will be adopting Hubway's 3 season schedule and close preemptively for the winter.

The MBTA has a habit of quietly stopping to do things they've always done and then claiming they could never do that same thing because it is impossible to do in the first place.

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People don't believe me when I tell them the T actually ran during the famed Blizzard of 78. Or, I should say, it ran until it could no longer operate due to conditions. At least the intent was there to operate as long as possible. People basically just carried on. Now everything preemptively closes days before a flake of snow even falls. When did that nonsense start?

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The Blizzard of '78 was poorly/not predicted.

The Hurricane of '38 was poorly/not predicted.

Guess what? PEOPLE DIED.

We now have far more accurate predictions well ahead of time. That's why the preemptive cancellations - why put people in danger? Our school district's superintendent decided to hold school despite forecasts a few years back, and I ended up with a house full of my son's stranded friends who couldn't get home and whose parents couldn't get them when the bus company cancelled the hill bus (the one that goes where MBTA buses can't) due to the weather. Also figure in that we are going to have extreme cold temps on the heels of this storm, and the prospect of heating up and booting up schools for one day where you might end up with stranded kids and teachers doesn't seem wise.

People didn't used to be smarter or tougher - they used to die, they got surprised and stuck, or they managed.

UPDATE: The Mr. says that T employees in the 1978 blizzard were told to stay home if they were already home, and the T shut down when the extent of the storm was understood.

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Human life is important, but only up to a point, albeit a high point. You can't use it as the fulcrum for an argument of issues that are larger and more far reaching to society at large than the local transit ability to get through a snow storm (and, by the way, the T subways can certainly run just fine in the snow). Your reasoning that the fear of the *potential* for people dying, and therefore NOT doing something that might have otherwise been done and done well, means you're already hamstrung by the message reiterated by an alarmist and overly dramatic sense of "news," - really just a way of screaming "look at me, no ME, NO ME" louder and louder every year.

Our transport technology has never been better, and is constantly improving (disc brakes, 4wd cars common place, freaking collision *avoidance*?!?!). Life support and saving tech is the same. People are still gonna die because they made mistakes.

Good old common sense, knowing ones limitations, learned skills, and experience - these are the things each individual must take upon themselves to evaluate, and decide weather to drive that car, bus, train, jump that puddle, cross the street, step on the brakes or look at your damned phone, etc. Live your life on our planet while you're here, not at home, curled up in fear. (hehe)

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wear tin foil on your head to "foil" the rays of mind control and dilute dilute dilute!

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This is neither a blizzard nor a hurricane. Twenty years ago, I would have been waiting for my school to show up on the screen, and it never would. Not for a few inches of snow. We do shut shit down far faster and for less snow than we used to, and not because people have been dying all over the place. However, it IS safer and we can avoid people ditching their cars on the roads.

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Your teachers were local hacks with a "normal school" certificate who never left the town they grew up in and lived 5 blocks from the school.

Your school was at most 1/2 mile away, probably less.

Your dad worked less than 5 miles from your home, as did your mom - if she worked outside the house.

There was enough money in the budget to fund more than adequate plowing to get people around, and about half of the cars that are now out there trying to get around.

Get the picture?

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Came in from west this morning and 290/190/2 weren’t even touched over night with only 2-3 inches of snow since midnight.

When I was in high school at the turn of the century they would have been cleared to the pavement before morning. Now they'd rather wait until morning to forgo paying time and a half, and save it for the rest of the storm.

We no longer do the things we used to because "everything is so expensive" (ie labor costs for the state). Seeing as incomes haven’t been keeping up with growth, it’s not really the case that things are expensive more so than were operating in a new paradigm where most people and the states just can’t afford this stuff while were shoveling cash to those “job creators” in the 1% of the 1%.

People paychecks and government tax revenues are being starved, so we shut things down because we can’t afford the same sort of services. Just like we put off maintenance, or have politicians come up with hair brained ideas to raise revenue from groups they think won’t hurt their re-election prospects.

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"Twenty years ago your teachers were local hacks with a 'normal school' certificate who never left the town they grew up in and lived 5 blocks from the school.
Your school was at most 1/2 mile away, probably less.
Your dad worked less than 5 miles from your home, as did your mom - if she worked outside the house."

Are you sure you are talking about 1994? Sounds more like 1954 to me. 1994 was NOTHING like that. And with forced busing in place since 1974, I'm sure no kids, in the public school system anyway, were going to school only 1/2 mile away. And in 1994 mothers were not stay at home mothers any more than today.

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because you said what I wanted to except better

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Active long term coddling with kid gloves and injection of fear & "drama" via television news, ostensibly for ratings, for the past 20 years. The resultant social effect of that becomes: everyone's a scardey-cat and can't do a damn thing themselves. Cutting the fundamental will and guts off of people by the knees will enable your (the general populations) rights to be eroded slowly and then usurped in public when deemed necessary, and also make it much easier to do so "un-publicly, in the dark."

We all live together on this planet, and can handle anything that comes our way by working together. Fear only drives people away from each other so they are more easily controlled and manipulated by those small selfish ones who try.

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"Active long term coddling with kid gloves and injection of fear & "drama" via television news, ostensibly for ratings, for the past 20 years. The resultant social effect of that becomes: everyone's a scardey-cat and can't do a damn thing themselves."

I tend to agree. For years now, the news media have people convinced things are disastrous, even when they are not, for their own ratings (monetary gain). They also create a false hysteria for things like the so-called "Black Friday". Hence, they've got everybody sensitized and jumping at shadows for snowstorms that some years ago might have meant just carrying on, if with some increased difficulty, or shutting things down if it really warranted it. But there really is no need for this total shutting down of things on such a regular basis now, for essentially average snowstorms. I'll go out on a limb and say I didn't even agree with the "shelter in place" thing with the T shutting down and everything closing, during the Marathon bombing. Is that the way for a major, world class city to act?

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In the same style of writing!

So amazing - its almost like Anon1 and Anon2 are closer than twins ... or a pair ...

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That whole day was a test of systems, equipment, and protocols in the real world. Either that, or they all said, "hey, lets get this new equipment that the federal government paid for out rolling so we can 1) see how it works, 2) prove it usefulness, and C) show any potential bad guys what they'd be up against if they ever tried this in any cow town."

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