McGrory’s 20th-century perspective — that Boylston Street would be better if vehicle traffic could move unimpeded — is almost amusing. He’s certainly right about one thing, though: “There’s little middle ground” in this debate. He seems to feel that bicycles deserve their own space on the streets of Boston as long as they don’t ride on the streets he likes or cause him one minute of delay on his drive.

Nathaniel Woodward

Stockbridge

City has made a mess of what was a beautiful street

Thank you, Brian McGrory, for a timely and well-reasoned column about the changes to Boylston Street. Having worked in that area for 20 years, I was appalled, on a recent return visit, to see the chaotic mess this beautiful street has become. In general I applaud efforts to support commuters who pursue alternatives to driving a car into the city, but these changes have to make sense.

Leaving the bike lane discussion to others, I question the new bus line as not only intrusive but also unnecessary. In my experience, when there were three lanes, the bus was rarely slowed by traffic, and given that there are bus stops all along Boylston Street, it would seem the dedicated lane makes no difference in terms of bus speed or time of the commute.

As new efforts to move people through the city — by bike, car, or bus — are introduced, I hope that the architects of these changes are evaluating whether they achieve their goals and that they are willing to rethink things if they do not.

Pat Kelleher

South Boston

Long past time for vehicular traffic to make room on the roads

The Brian McGrory column criticizing the bike lanes on Boylston Street unfortunately follows the historical American ideology favoring motorized transportation. This is most evidenced by his complaint that “what used to be three through lanes … has been reduced to a maximum of two.” The headline itself, “Is the Boylston Street bike lane really necessary?” only serves to maintain the hegemony of motorized transportation, something which is way past time for change.

McGrory’s testament that various forms of transportation, such as delivery drivers, are “not going away” is a surrender to these drivers frequently double-parking and violating other regulations while often interfering with other vehicular traffic as well as cyclists and pedestrians. Nowhere to be found in his piece is the suggestion of enforcing laws.

Stating that there is insufficient walk time for crossing the street at selected intersections is a valid criticism, but more importantly, all roads should simply be safe for all users, including pedestrians.

We obviously need improved planning and good implementation. Cheap shots, though, are not helpful.

Robert Rosofsky

Milton

We should think even bigger: Imagine car-free boulevards

Brian McGrory is lamenting necessary and reasonable changes that haven’t been executed well. But the fact is we don’t need fewer bike lanes. What we need is fewer cars. For that matter, maybe we don’t need any cars on Boylston or Newbury street. They could be magnificent boulevards — no congestion, no chaos; more outdoor seating.

Not only in Copenhagen but also in numerous other European cities the concept works well: enough parking around the city center, public transportation, and a network of bike lanes. The result: vibrant pedestrian zones and commercial centers.

The Boylston Street bike lane is not the problem. Rather, it is the lack of a well-planned, visionary infrastructure concept for the entire city. But that requires all of us changing our relationship to cars, agreeing on funding, and accepting a period of construction. Either we do and come out much better at the end of it, or we keep living with traffic jams and a noisy, messy Boston.

Michaela Nielsen

Quincy

Meanwhile, pedestrians are left to dodge cars — and bikes

I thought Brian McGrory was spot-on in his criticism of the disaster that traffic on Boylston Street has turned into. It led me to wonder whether our municipal government is actually preparing Bostonians to participate in a new pedestrian olympics.

We have long competed for the greatest number of falls on broken pavements and close encounters with cyclists (old-fashioned and increasingly motorized) speeding on sidewalks as well as in bike lanes. A new competition would involve attempting to cross Boylston Street at intersections where it’s impossible to tell whether there’s oncoming traffic because cars and delivery vans are blocking the view. One popular event would be to identify the pedestrians who use the most colorful language in yelling at drivers and cyclists who come close to hitting them — or in describing the politicians who have created this mess.

Kathryn Ruth Bloom

Boston

I biked to Boylston Street to run an errand. In short: Thank you, Mayor Wu.

Contrary to what columnist Brian McGrory argues, people who bike to the Prudential Center, Copley Square, the Boston Public Library, or the restaurants and stores in Back Bay have an entitlement to Boylston Street equal to drivers.

On Sunday afternoon, I needed to pick up an item at a store in the Pru. Having commuted by bike to my downtown law office for decades, I knew the quickest way to get there and back was by bicycle. Thanks to the new bike lanes that Mayor Michelle Wu has championed, it took me little more than 15 minutes to get to the Prudential Center from Brookline by way of Beacon Street, Mass. Ave., and then Boylston. There was an available bike rack next to a street busker. I picked up my item and headed home, crossing Newbury Street, closed to vehicular traffic on Sundays in the summer and crowded with shoppers, tourists, and others enjoying the fresh air.

The round trip took me an hour, including the shopping. I couldn’t have done that in a motor vehicle.

I concede that the two vehicle lanes on Boylston were crowded with cars, but from what I saw, the cars moved about as fast as in the old days of three lanes for which McGrory longs.

Boylston Street was not built for only motor vehicles. It was built for people who travel on Boylston Street in many ways.

Thank you, Mayor Wu.

Andrew M. Fischer

Brookline

Yee will renew his battle with Olympic silver medalist Hayden Wilde of New Zealand, whom Yee hunted down in the final moments of the men’s individual triathlon in Paris to win gold. Boston is a bit like home turf for Yee, who has long been sponsored by Boston-based New Balance.

“I remember coming down my first time to the Lenox and staying outside the where the Boston Marathon finishes,” Yee said. “And over that week of the Boston Marathon, whilst I was here, just feeling that buzz and that energy about the area, and for me, I really kind of fell in love with this place a little bit, just the energy and how excited everyone was.

“I’m excited that we’re finally able to race here.”

The supertri League is a global race series that features some of the world’s best athletes in a unique format that sees them complete three consecutive swim-bicycle-run sequences; instead of finishing their run and heading for a postrace meal, they’ll be heading straight back into the water.

“You have to think about so many different elements to the race,” Spivey said. “How you’re going to set your bike in transition, what gear you’re going to be in, if you’re going to rack your bike forwards or backwards, how many running shoes you’re going to have … It’s like all these little intricacies that you know you have to think about.”

The supertri race will serve as the closing act Sunday afternoon. The weekend starts with the kids race Saturday morning before the Olympic-distance triathlon — a 1.5-kilometer (0.93-mile) swim, a 35-kilometer (21.75-mile) bike ride, and a 10-kilometer (6.2-mile) run — at 7 a.m. Sunday. That will be followed at 8:40 a.m. by the sprint-distance race, with each leg exactly half the distance of its Olympic-distance counterpart.

Athletes will complete the swim in the harbor at Carson Beach, bike up and down Day Boulevard through Pleasure Bay, and run through Moakley Park before finishing back at the beach.

Then Sunday morning’s competitors will be able to relax with a drink and a bite to eat and watch some of the best triathletes in the world go head-to-head at 12:30 p.m.

“All of my athletes will be off the course, done and dusted, medals around their neck, beer in their hand, slice of pizza, feeling the glow of their own race,” race director Michael O’Neil said. “And then, boom, 12:30 hits, this just incredible spectator event with the world’s fastest athletes fresh off of Paris.”

“It’s really cool,” said Yee. “Triathlon’s always been a community-based sport; we’ve always focused on including everyone, no matter what level you are. People will be able to race their own race, have their own ambitions, their own goals, and then also be able to kind of appreciate what we’re doing as well.

“And from that point of view, hopefully we’ll be able to inspire some of the younger generation that have come and potentially tried the sport for the first time.”

O’Neil, once an agent in the sport before moving full-time into ownership and operation, had a longstanding connection with multiple-time triathlon world champion Chris McCormick, one of supertri’s founders.

The Boston Triathlon wasn’t quite ready for that sort of venture yet, but bringing supertri to Boston seemed like a matter of when, not if.

“It was a little early in their development, and it was also an interesting growth period for the Boston Triathlon, and I felt like it would not have been good timing to bring it to Boston then,” O’Neil explained. “We’re at a place now where this would be a good fit for us.”

That didn’t mean it was an easy undertaking to add a top-level pro race to an event that O’Neil said was already “an eight-ring circus.” With a few dozen permits required, swim clinics, media, and road closures already to account for, O’Neil and co-director Will Thomas had to figure out how to stage supertri, too.

It helped that they caught some natural breaks. The looped nature of the course made the unusual transition from the run back to the swim possible. The road closures for the race meant they already had two large parking lots either side of the McCormack Bath House at Carson Beach at their disposal to add another ring to the circus, as O’Neil and Thomas coordinated operations with their supertri counterparts in Europe.

As it turns out, from thousands of miles away, they were already on the same page.

“So we laid this out, and we had our first call with their ops guys and they had the whole thing mapped out just like we did, just from looking on Google Earth,” O’Neil said with a laugh. “And when we rolled [our plans] out, they started laughing, and they’re like, ‘This is going to be great.’ ”

So before supertri heads to Chicago, London, the south of France, and Saudi Arabia, it’ll start in South Boston.

“It’s a real honor,” O’Neil said. “There’s only five of these in the world, only two in the US, and this is the first time they’ve ever staged a race at an event that they don’t own. I think it’s a real testament to Boston being just a legendary sports town.”

Amin Touri can be reached at amin.touri@globe.com.

If you own or manage a manufacturing, distribution or warehousing facility it’s time to get serious about artificial intelligence. That’s because the technology is starting to mature into something that is actually generating ROI. Software and hardware vendors are rolling out AI technologies both independently and as part of their existing products and leveraging these technologies is critical for increasing productivity, reducing overhead and increasing profits.

Here are four areas to consider.

Robotics

Manufacturing and distribution businesses of all sizes are investing heavily in AI-powered robotic technologies for the shop floor. Walmart is rolling out autonomous forklifts driven by AI software. Amazon is deploying hundreds of human-shaped warehouse robots to lift and move packages as well as independent drones to monitor traffic, safety and workflow. A German company called Robco is lending out robots that perform lathe turning laser engraving and palletizing (the robots can then be reconditioned and used for other customers as needed). Other robots are being used in food processing and baking operations to independently mix ingredients and then load finished products into cartons and cases.

Some think that humanoid robots are for the movies. But that’s not the case. They’re appearing more frequently on the shop floor – alongside and in lieu of workers.

For example, 1X creates an abundant supply of labor via safe, intelligent humanoids for the manufacturing floor. Agility Robotics is pumping out tens of thousands of humanoid warehousing robots. Boston Dynamics now makes an electric powered version of its humanoid robot Atlas. Apptronik’s Apollo is a general purpose humanoid robot designed to work in the plant and the office.

Unbox Robotics offers a bunch of AI “swarm robotics” to “accelerate the parcel sortation and order fulfillment to facilitate efficient express logistics operations delivering seamless end customer experience.” United Robots produces AI-powered robotic cleaners, disinfectors and carriers that do everything from removing microbiological contaminants to safeguarding workers to tugging heavy loads or carts. Other humanoid robots designed to perform all sorts of industrial tasks – and winning awards and – are now available (or coming soon) from companies like Figure AI and Sanctuary AI.

The robots on the manufacturing floor are controlled through the cloud using platforms provided by Nvidia (the chipmaker refers to the new platform as “a general-purpose foundation model for humanoid robots.”) and the aforementioned Agility Robotics, which the company says can “command a robot army, say, to start moving bins to a conveyor belt at a particular time.” Not sure I like the sound of that, but OK.

Internet of Things

Industry Week’s VG Govindarajan and Venkat Venkatraman write that smart companies like Rolls Royce are using “fusion technology” being powered by AI is turning yesterday’s equipment into thinking, intelligent machines.

“Tractors have become “farm-based computers” linked to precision agriculture cloud systems,” they write. “Rolls-Royce offers “Power by the Hour” agreements for its aircraft engines. This approach ensures that Rolls-Royce is responsible for the maintenance and performance of its engines, with costs linked to the hours that the engines are in operation.”

Firms with complex processing applications – particularly larger power generation, oil and gas, chemical and food and beverage manufacturing companies – are now implementing AI platforms like UptimeAI which uses sensors to monitor, analyze, evaluate and alert when there are disruptions, malfunctions or other problems that can create anomalies, loss of efficiency and safety issues.

Other software firm and hardware manufacturers are partnering to create Internet of Things (IoT) sensors that are using AI technology and models. The sensors are then installed on manufacturing equipment for the purposes of “making hardware smart” using audio, video, vision, temperature and pressure sensing.

3-D Manufacturing

A variety of companies – like Fathom Digital Manufacturing , Protolabs and Stratasys – are using AI to create 3D printing solutions to “dramatically accelerate the product development cycle” that allow manufacturers to design, create, test and evaluate prototypes in “a matter of days, rather than weeks or months.”

Consolidating Data Into Large Language Models

For AI to work, large databases must be built from disparate information.

One company called EthonAI has launched a new software platform that they say “is designed to provide managers and engineers with a “sixth sense” to follow what’s happening within their factories more closely.” The platform brings together data from multiple sources and then uses AI to make recommendations for management.

“With AI tools, it can be easier for companies to identify patterns that produce poor quality products and implement changes quickly,” writes Rae Hartley Beck. “When a greater percentage of final products pass quality control, less waste is produced and more value is created for companies.”

Another company bringing data under one roof – Sight Machine – recently announced a partnership with Siemens AG to create a manufacturing data platform for collecting, contextualizing, and analyzing all types of manufacturing data to improve production. Sight Machine’s software “analyzes the entire history of production runs to determine the best settings for the current conditions.”

Microsoft announced a number of initiatives to bring data under one roof using “Copilot templates” so that their customers can “create their own copilots.” The idea is for employees to use natural language queries to retrieve data – like asking the large language model why a machine is breaking and getting insights to help resolve the issues faster.

Manufacturers in the auto industry are reportedly investing in internal AI applications to help improve production scheduling, minimize line stoppage, testing chemical mixtures, aligning data from different sources to better communicate with suppliers and customers and sourcing materials based on real time availability around the world to reduce supply chain bottlenecks.

In the back office, cloud computing platform ServiceNow has released financial, customer service and operations software designed specifically for manufacturers that uses AI to do things like automatically recommend replacement parts for customer maintenance, automatically manage customer exceptions, communicate independently with suppliers and autonomously log a problem and deploy a field technician with the necessary knowledge, skills, and equipment to manage the task. Other manufacturing software makers like Epicor, SAP and Sage are rolling out similar AI based functions.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT was released in November, 2022. It created a flurry of activity, jumpstarted a tidal wave of investments, launched countless startups and forced every software and hardware company to double down on their AI offerings. Less than two years later, manufacturers are now starting to see the results of these efforts. And we’re just getting started.