Manhole covers are pretty tightly regulated in MA ever since a bad one killed somebody. That and the occasional explosions

The East Boston waterfront is a really pleasant walk, from Lopresti Park to the Airport ferry terminal area.

If it makes you this angry you should change jobs or houses to get out of it.

The private Friends of the Public Garden, who maintain most of the Common and Public Garden statues and facilities

The MBTA has committed to the concept, but has not identified a clear strategy to achieve it. The proposed construction of a train layover facility at Widett Circle would help open up options.

Yes, the extreme lag times and costs are a national regulatory problem with how transit projects are funded, overseen, and constructed. Which means they're going to impact us for any MBTA transit project. It can't be done faster or cheaper without seceding (messy) or passing fundamentally new federal transportation legislation (unlikely since we just passed a new one that made things worse)

Blue Line to Lynn is not very feasible without significant state legislation changes due to environmental impacts, and would also require significant takings of private property since the right of way in Revere and Lynn has been built upon.

This is correct, as part of the Terminal E expansion there were plans for a people mover that became plans for a moving sidewalk to Terminal E that became no plan.

They'll be ripping up the whole road in a few years for MGH expansion and red-blue connector, so they didn't want to spend the money now just to tear it up again

Yeah, the framing on this (and other tourism related things in the Boston area) is truly absurd. Many communities would sacrifice their firstborns for tourism numbers like Salem's. Heck, Plymouth planned for Plymouth400 for 50 years and wasn't expecting much more visitors than Salem normally gets. Managing the traffic is a tough job, but with the funding they receive they can more than do it.