I-695, Soutwst X-Way, Mystic Valley Prkway, S. End Bypass

Commuting Boston Student said:
Near as I can tell the Expressway still would have had to plow through/by Curry College and wreak havoc on the Fairmount and Readville lines - and possibly Mattapan too.

And then you figure, the expressway had to end somewhere, and none of the options for where it ends look good to me - merge it into the Mass Pike? Slam the Central Artery even more with two highways worth of traffic? Send it over Storrow and the Tobin to the NE Expressway?

None of those options sound thrilling to me, except possibly the Tobin one.
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It wouldnt have gotten that close to Curry College. The right of way actually still exists in parts. It would have routed through fowl meadow and then crossed neponset valley parkway west of Truman Parkway the passed behind stop and shop and run parallel to Hyde Park Avenue.

At the end it would have merged with the pike as an extension but it was an alternate to just end at the inner belt I believe.
 
It's unfortunate there are not more nice interchanges in Boston area highways like the one depicted in these photos.
 
HenryAlan said:
I think your thesis is flawed, because it assumes that the park could arrive at it's current state within only a few years time. Thinking about the section Ron refers to as "lovely" (and I agree), it was not always so. 15 years ago, it was probably not too different from the section between Ruggles and Jackson Square. If the highway had been there all along, and come down five years ago, we wouldn't have 25 years of organic development around these parcels. And I suspect that the intervening presence of a highway would have so damaged the surrounding neighborhoods, that 25 years would not even be adequate to get to what is there now.

That is to say, if a highway had been built and later torn down, we might very well be looking at a still damaged neighborhood in the year 2030. That would be 50+ years of harm, compared to the 15 or so that the area actually suffered.
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I'm not quite sure what organic development you're talking about. And I'm not sure how terribly the highway would have left these neighborhoods. They're still among the more socioeconomically deprived and underdeveloped parts of Boston. The scar already left by the pre-highway demolition has to account for some of this, and I'm not sure a highway being there would have made it much worse.

As for the parks, you're all exaggerating their worth. We're not talking about the Emerald Necklace here. They're also just as much an impediment to these neighborhoods' ability to have been stitched back together.
 
czsz said:
They're still among the more socioeconomically deprived and underdeveloped parts of Boston.
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The majority of it goes through neighborhoods that are either already ritzy (the South End), or are rapidly gentrifying (Eastern edge of JP, Mission Hill, Fort Hill). The only parts that are socioeconomically deprived are the old projects along the way, and that's hardly the park's fault.
 
The organic development I reference is things like re-purposing the Brewery complex. And as underground points out, it isn't exactly going through the poorest neighborhoods anymore.
 
czsz said:
I'm not quite sure what organic development you're talking about. And I'm not sure how terribly the highway would have left these neighborhoods. They're still among the more socioeconomically deprived and underdeveloped parts of Boston. The scar already left by the pre-highway demolition has to account for some of this, and I'm not sure a highway being there would have made it much worse.
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I assume you never get beyond Melnea Cass blvd. Go down to Lamartine st and think about an eight lane highway within spitting distance. Not much worse? And interstate cloverleaf at Forest Hills? As to socioeconomically disadvantaged - try buying a house between Stony Brook station and Forest Hills. Let's see... here's a two condo 1870s-era house on Lamartine st - assessed value $1 million. You think an interstate wouldnt matter?
 
ablarc said:
Provocative thought; never considered that. It would have damaged both Cambridge and Boston, however.
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It probably would have meant the municipality of Cambridge would have been dissolved and added to Boston (proper). As high-density neighborhoods, when you contemplate the amount of land the city currently has choked up by Harvard, MIT, and Lesley College, Cambridge doesn't have much area as it is to earn from. With the highway included, Cambridge's days may have been numbered next to its City of Boston behemoth.

Somerville would have gotten a big hit too since Union Square was also to bear the brunt of Route 2 traffic coming through from Northwest of Boston along the path of the Fitchburg Line.
 
Before there was a Southwest Corridor park, before there was land clearance for a never-built highway, this was a railroad right-of-way. A pretty disruptive one, too, crossable in only a few places. The Jamaica Plain neighborhoods on either side were always divided from each other by it, as they postdated the railroad. What's there now is a great improvement over any previous condition.
 
JonFrum said:
I assume you never get beyond Melnea Cass blvd. Go down to Lamartine st and think about an eight lane highway within spitting distance. Not much worse? And interstate cloverleaf at Forest Hills? As to socioeconomically disadvantaged - try buying a house between Stony Brook station and Forest Hills. Let's see... here's a two condo 1870s-era house on Lamartine st - assessed value $1 million. You think an interstate wouldnt matter?
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I think that house might still be that highly assessed today had the highway just been torn down a few years ago in favor of parks. It might even be more highly assessed because it could build off the buzz of an area enjoying liberation from the shadows of the interstate.

BTW, what Forest Hills cloverleaf? There were only plans for an interchange with the Inner Belt...near where the MFA is (see below map). Not to mention that Forest Hills has been marred for years by its roadway configuration, highway or not.

BostonHPDetailLevel1.jpg
 
Are we deciding on whether we would have built CAT or the Inner Belt, with the 93 having already been built? Or whether we'd build the elevated 93 or the Inner Belt, then replace the elevated 93 with CAT later as in real life?

I'm going to assume you meant the former, since it's a more interesting hypo. Tough one, too. If the Inner Belt had been built instead of either the Pike or 93, Boston would be a lot more like Paris, with a cohesive inner core and a serious barrier between it and outer neighborhoods. Less of Boston's better architectural stock would have been destroyed (no contest between Haymarket Sq. and Cambridgeport). Arguably, Boston would have retained a lot more attractiveness vs. Cambridge, where Central Square would have probably suffered from blight into the present day. There probably wouldn't have been as much of a different effect due to the southern part of the Inner Belt, since Melena Cass already forms a formidable barrier there anyway. Hard to tell whether Longwood would have suffered or benefitted from increased highway proximity; it would have probably been a much more autocentric place, though. The Newmarket area / South Bay, on the other hand, would have been much more attractive and developable than today, and gentrification/development in Southie probably would have begun much earlier and had been more advanced by now.

Honestly, I think it might be a draw.
 
Yes, thinking about it from a time where no highways exist yet, but you know they will be coming.

I think Boston would be a better place today if that happened.
 
If it were up to me, I would have never built any highways inside of Route 128. A network of boulevards and city streets would distribute traffic within the urban core. This is how the interstate highway system was originally intended to be built (around cities, not through them.) I also would have extended all the rapid transit lines to Route 128.
 
Under any circumstance, Inner Belt was a bad idea. You know how Assembly Square/Wellington looks thanks to 93 proximity? That's what much of Cambridge, Brookline, Longwood, Roxbury, and beyond would have ended up becoming.

As it was, and I say this a bit regretfully, the Central Artery (yes I mean the elevated one) wasn't actually placed in that much of a destructive route, all told. Yes, buildings and squares were destroyed. But overall, Atlantic Ave had already had a rail El, there were surface freight tracks, and besides, the waterfront back then wasn't something that was seen as particularly special or worth knitting into the Financial District (dirty, industrial, ugly). The separation of the North End was probably the worst impact... but that's mittens compared to what would have happened in terms of the separation of Cambridge, Brookline, Roxbury, JP, etc under the Inner Belt scenario.
 
I don't think a highway necessarily gives an area a forlorn, Assembly Square feel. The Masspike extension certainly didn't accomplish that in Fenway. Most of the destruction that would be carried out for the Inner Belt already took place and produced the Melena Cass wasteland; the main difference we're really talking about would be the vivisection of Cambridge.
 
Fenway had already developed along a rail chasm before the Pike extension. I wasn't Melena Cassed.
 
We're talking about putting a highway through medium density areas vs high density areas. The current alignment doesn't kill off Fenway because the area's dense enough to survive it. Assembly Sq can't handle 93 because the density's lower. Build the inner belt and you're going through more Assembly Sq's than Fenway's (Cambridgeport and Somerville, not the Fenway section, obviously).
 
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