I’m not a fan of semis: I know they’re vital to America but they contribute significantly to the carbon footprint and they’re very intimidating to motorists. I suppose if I had a son-in-law, a Teamster, I’d feel different.

I can’t help but think that they’d be many fewer 18-wheelers on I-90 if the intermodal yard in Brighton had not been eliminated several years ago. There trailers/containers would arrive via train and were off-loaded onto trucks for delivery, much of it local. CSX or whichever railroad owned the huge Beacon Yard – ConRail, PennCentral, New York Central, Boston & Albany, depending on which iteration you want – sold the massive freight yard and now flatbed cars are off-loaded in the distant Westboro yard outside of Worcester. Hence the heavy truck traffic on the Mass Pike into Boston.

Speaking of trucks and their proliferation, a recent article in The Boston Globe Magazine featured the Conley Terminal off Summer Street and how 120,000 trucks a year come in and out of South Boston annually, spewing untold tons of particulates in the air. Years ago the urban planners had not thought too much before they decided there did not need to be a rail connection with that terminal, as all other containerized ports have for theirs, which make them more attractable to shippers.

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Get used to the large trucks, as I tell myself.