It's apparently my week for "Crazy Transit Pitches, Unusual Modes Edition."
The
Miami Metromover is one of the few, if not the only, successful APMs deployed within a city core. Miami's heavy rail system,
Metrorail, has
two stations in
downtown, but there are somewhat
on the periphery. Metromover connects to Metrorail's Government Center station, and circulates through a few bidirectional loops through downtown, essentially solving the last mile problem, and extending the reach of public transit comfortably throughout all of downtown. Stations are located about 700-1000 feet apart in downtown, with branch lines that extend north and south over divisive highways and a river, with somewhat longer distances between stops.
A rapid transit system that serves the periphery of the employment hub, with distributed destinations that are a little far to walk to from the station? Sound familiar?
The Longwood Automated People Mover, or LAPM:
(Apologies for the janky labels, my bad for not using a lossless strategy there.)
Line 1:
Longwood <> Boston University Medical Center, via Longwood Ave, Ruggles St, Melnea Cass Blvd, and Albany St (2.5 miles)
Line 2:
Kenmore <> Nubian via Brookline Ave, Francis St, and Roxbury Crossing (2.5 miles)
Densely spaced stations in the Longwood core provide near-front-door service for most of the hospitals. Slightly longer stop spacing elsewhere keeps travel times reasonable while still providing service to the neighborhoods that will be impacted by the construction of an elevated APM.
Miami's Metromover (which is a similar overall system length) runs about 25 feet wide between stations and about 50 feet wide at stations. It also has single track segments (including at least one that basically runs right alongside a building), which are able to fit in an envelope less than 15 away from the edge of the building (at least, according to my measurements on Google Maps). This would definitely be a tight squeeze in Longwood.
So, alternatively, the segments over Longwood Ave and Francis St could be made single-track:
(Some stop locations need to be adjusted to be closer to cross-streets if we use one-way services.)
The system can also be simplified, focusing on a Longwood <> Ruggles route (with or without the BU Med Ctr extension depicted below)...:
...or a Longwood <> Nubian route:
(Or even a Kenmore <> Nubian route but I didn't draw that one out.)
Done properly, an elevated APM could also provide improvements to the street below by providing protection from foul weather and relief from summer heat.
~~~
Now, these look cool on a map, of course, and I do think illustrates some ways that Longwood is friendlier to closer stop spacing. Plus, like, those transfers in the two-line system look pretty darn good: radial services on Washington, the SE Corridor, Huntington, and at Kenmore all get a direct transfer to services that get you a short walk away from all the hospitals, and a circumferential service on the Fenway Branch (i.e. from Harvard and/or Kendall) gets an easy transfer to solve its last mile problem.
But... as usually happens when I crayon something like this for Longwood, I come back to: well, if we're gonna build an elevated, why not run conventional light rail on it?
Well, one reason is that -- probably -- you'd want larger stations for light rail (though I suppose you could design the system for single cars exclusively). Light rail may also be a bit louder; I've noticed that APMs often use slightly more boutique technology (e.g. rubber tires), which could make an el more palatable. It's also possible that APMs could handle sharper curves than LRT, though from what I see Miami's system limits itself to 70' curves, which our light rail will continue to comfortably accommodate (I think).
But even if light rail is out... why not run
the planned 30 buses per hour on the elevated instead?
Buses can handle tight turn radii (and do so quietly). Buses can run on quiet engines. You might need to use some wrong-way running if you need to resort to center platforms, but that's not super difficult. The biggest challenge would be building loops to allow buses to turn, but that's not insurmountable either.
And (a) grade-separated corridor(s) through Longwood would provide a huge reliability boost for the Dorchester bus network (along with crosstown routes like the T66 and T12) -- an infrastructure improvement whose effects would be felt not just in the local neighborhood, but across the entire system.
So... an APM would be cool, but an elevated busway -- with prepayment, level boardings, sheltered platforms, and all the amenities of modern BRT -- that would be even cooler.