Let's pretend for a minute, though, that we're evaluating the Arborway line on its merits. The Arborway opposition has long rallied around the preservation of parking on Centre and South Sts. for the benefit of local businesses. The contention being that parking spaces eliminated to make room for turning trains and stops would cripple commercial traffic.
Seriously? Are we actually talking about more than fifty or so spaces along the whole route? Do opposition groups actually think more potential customers use these spaces than would ride a restored Arborway train?
Ideology often informs the transit debate in JP more than practicality. Parking spaces are the neighborhood's equivalent of shadows. While the presence of the latter frightens a small, vocal subset of the community in greater Boston, in JP the loss of a single parking space is viewed as something that will destroy business along Centre St. It doesn't
really make sense, and is rather a proxy battle along ideological lines.
Losing parking in absence of any kind of trade-off would naturally be a negative to any business, but introducing train sets carrying between 177 and 350* people by your front door every ten minutes would seem to negate the loss of that one space. Especially for those businesses facing the loss of a space or two outside their front door so that a station may be built. It's practically a customer-funnel.
There are some who wish to distance themselves from the idea of JP as a part of an urban area. Keeping the automobile at the top of the transportation heap, with (paradoxically) the bicycle next on the list.
This is reflected in the opposition to anything that might improve transit access. Living in JP, you constantly hear about how the buses impede auto traffic, how the physical presence of real bus / train stops would destroy businesses, how the loss of a single parking space for the sake of improved transit access would destroy businesses, how how buses are dangerous to bicyclists, how trains are dangerous to bicyclists, how sidewalk bump-outs that would make the buses / trains ADA compliant would impede traffic and be dangerous to bicyclists. Sure, Centre is either full of speeding cars / completely gridlocked, but that's nothing compared to the ideological enemy that is mass transit.
* 60' articulated buses are often near-full by the the time they leave Centre. I'm operating under the assumption that a one-seat ride to JP, connection to the Green Line and increased vehicle capacity vs. the #39 bus would result an Induced Demand-related increase in ridership.
60' articulated buses have a capacity of 90-ish people. A single-car Green Line train carries estimated 177 passengers (and thusly, about 354 on a standard consist)
