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WinsingtonIII t1_j81dd7j wrote

Metro Boston is far, far away from encroaching on Western MA so I don't really get the rivalry. I like Western MA and want it to remain it's own thing, but it's way too far away for commuter condos to Boston so I don't really get the concern about metro Boston somehow encroaching on it. It's not like Easthampton is Worcester.

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BovaDesnuts t1_j81dzrj wrote

No, it isn't. Some people who work in Boston live in palmer so they can afford to live

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WinsingtonIII t1_j81ed44 wrote

How many? The numbers must be very small.

I've met a couple people that live in southern Maine and commute to Boston, doesn't mean southern Maine is the Boston metro, because 99% of people there don't commute to Boston.

Either way, I don't get the E. MA/W. MA rivalry thing. I like both and there's no need for some weird tribalism between them IMO.

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BovaDesnuts t1_j82lpkv wrote

>How many? The numbers must be very small.

There's 100 people in my office and at least 3 of them. That number is growing with rent prices. If high speed rail goes in along the CSX lines, it'll get far larger far faster.

>Either way, I don't get the E. MA/W. MA rivalry thing. I like both and there's no need for some weird tribalism between them IMO.

It started in the 1600s when Boston militia left 53% of western settlements to a slow death of rape, torture, and execution in the name of ethnic cleansing before taking all the credit (and profit) for what Captain Turner did. Then they screwed war vets out of their paychecks with insider trading and started a revolt by being such unbearable assholes nobody wanted to help. Then they sold Springfield out. Recently, Boston scrapped a few thousand jobs in Springfield on a whim, broke its promise to keep tolls off the last 4 exits of I-90 so Western residents could travel east to west at more than 25mph, and planned a high speed rail nobody out here wants to keep housing prices lower in Boston as a "solution" to the housing crisis there at the cost of the citizens they care least about. Like Enfield or Dana.

So probably 400 years of what can be described at absolute best as constant douchebaggery. It's what it takes to get a state highway named after Daniel Shays, destroyer of courthouses and co-founder of Vermont.

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Fit-Anything8352 t1_j82fjn6 wrote

If the east-west rail project happens then maybe it won't be so impractical for commuters...

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