The problem with existing service is it requires going through South Station or Back Bay which burns a lot of time. If you live in Somerville, for example.

Wow. It’s amazing how fast they can build stuff when they actually want to. I was there in the summer and the old rails were still there with trees growing in them.

From what I can tell via recent google maps images, construction is happening from Hillside Rd (near 128) all the way east to Linden St and possibly Beaver St. Basically all of the Waltham section. I really appreciate the city doing it all at once instead of wasting time and money splitting it up into tiny segments. I hope they can be convinced to plow it.

Unfortunately the Worcester/Springfield route does nothing for people in the NW part of the region. At this point I would settle for a bus once an hour.

Find the Rockland Trust bank between Main St and Stow St just east of 95/128. (Riding up Main St isn’t great but you could go through Brandeis and Cedarwood, also a big hill but no traffic, or take the 70 bus to the end.)

Exiting the bank parking lot, across Stow St is the unofficial entrance behind a gate that’s usually open or you go around it. Follow the informal path across the old rail bridge, keep going straight and follow the power lines. It’s all rideable except the second bridge which is short. After the second bridge (over the MBTA Fitchburg Line) the pavement starts. On the left there are some easy MTB trails too.

If you want only pavement, find Kendal Green T station and go south about a half mile to the trail. Getting there is more sketchy than some dirt because it’s hilly and shoulder less.

I’d normally start looking in April but May is okay. I would not recommend looking at apartments until you’re actually here to do it in person. Read up on the rental market/process.

It’s not off cycle. It’s the second busiest month for moving, behind only September.

Extra subway service starts around noon, and there are some extra late night commuter rail trains but everything else is on a Sunday schedule. All service is free after ~8pm, mainly to manage crowding at stations.

Sunday schedule on the six major holidays: New Years Day, Memorial Day, July 4, Labor Day, Thanksgivng, Christmas Day. Some other holidays have a Saturday schedule. It’s listed somewhere on the web site.

Thank your bus driver. Plan to wait 10-15 minutes for trains or check the apps.

That’s great news! They must have recently bought it.

Those are so expensive that it doesn’t make sense unless you’re rich. None of them are in convenient locations, and the W Roxbury one has been fighting the landlord over all kinds of sanitation issues so stay away.

It probably can be done but you’d need a supportive landlord and some luck in not attracting negative attention from neighbors and city officials. It’s not a legal dwelling so if someone complained you’d be done. Maybe not a big deal in a camper as then you could move quickly, but to where? I’ve seen vans around Cambridge and Somerville where I live but they disappeared in the fall. Nobody seemed to bother them in the summer. In the cities of course they’d have to move often for street cleaning, although some were on private driveways. Luck with neighbors largely depends where you set up. If you found someone with a backyard in my neighborhood in East Somerville and built a yurt or parked a RV, absolutely nobody would care. But in more expensive and lower density areas like Arlington you might have a problem. Getting utilities is also a problem. The only MA towns that allow “tiny homes” are Great Barrington and Nantucket so not Boston area, but since 2019 Somerville allows an ADU which is basically a tiny home in the backyard of another house (city officials couldn’t cite any examples when I called recently). There are subreddits for tiny home, van and RV dwellers that would be helpful.

I hope that in the near future we can move past the flawed thinking that drivers just need information and encouragement, and have proper physical protective barriers.

No it doesn’t allow smoother traffic. They just cut off the car going straight and there’s still a big line. Or they can’t go anywhere so they just block the crosswalk. P.s. a lot of bike lanes are dangerous so yes sometimes people can’t use them. Every biker I’ve ever known wishes they could use the bike lanes all the time.

Good luck with that. We don’t do much traffic enforcement here. The city has explicitly focused on street design and regulations in place of enforcement. I think both are important. What we also need to do is move the traffic signals back to the stop line so that cars can’t see it if they go past it and into the crosswalk. That’s standard in Europe.

That’s not how it’s practiced though. Cars roll right up into the crosswalk and get in everyone’s way.

This must be a (bad) joke but I’m going to take it seriously for a minute.

I have a friend that lives in Holden and I never see them because it’s very difficult to get to. Perhaps if I lived in Worcester it would be easier but there’s no bus service in Holden I wouldn’t be biking on those narrow hilly roads in the winter.

Moving to a place where your children cannot get around on their own, especially when they have voiced their concerns which you are ignoring, is simply child abuse. In a few years you’ll be complaining that your child has disowned you and you can’t see why.

I’d be most worried about putting it in a place where it won’t blow away.

In my limited experience the older large buildings are cheaper so try to find those, especially if you can compromise on kitchen quality, no outdoor space, etc. It will be a struggle.