The Southwest Corridor infrastructure can service the Centre/South Streets corridor. But to make that argument, you need to improve the safety of the major connecting streets for bikes. They are barely safe to drive!
While this is true, I would argue that in terms of the "Centre/South St: Transit Lanes or Bike Lanes, gotta pick one" discussion it's irrelevant because it's always true no matter what improvements are or aren't made to Centre/South St. If nothing is done, the major connecting streets should be made safer for bikes to improve the accessibility of JP from the Orange Line, if full bike lanes are installed on Centre/South St then this should happen to connect two major cycling corridors, and if transit lanes are installed then Centre/South St needs to be stitched into the Southwest Corridor to provide bicycle accessibility. There is no situation where these bike lanes shouldn't be installed, basically.
For the Columbus Avenue corridor with the center running bus lanes, why would we even consider bike lanes? There are bike paths in the Southwest Corridor Park running adjacent to Columbus. This corridor has had some of the best (and heavily used) bike infrastructure in the city for over 30 years!
Well, that's not the part of Columbus with the center running lanes, though they are coming to that section, too. The initial build was between Jackson Square and Seaver St., which is to say a part of Columbus that is perpendicular to the Southwest Corridor Park. It's not an area that is remotely well served for biking, unlike the section to which you refer.
As a side note, it's completely unscientific but I think it's at least somewhat telling that while going through on Street View, I saw a grand total of 2 cyclists (One of whom was not using the bike lanes), one parked bike, and a Bluebikes dock more than 75% full. I'm not convinced this is a major cycling route with a huge volume of cyclists just waiting to protest the removal of their barely existent lanes.
I would claim that this argument actually works even better with Centre/South Streets. Not every street needs to have bikes, especially if you want a vibrant pedestrian-focused area.
Hard disagree on this. Centre/South is a major shopping and dining corridor, one that people should and in fact do, approach by bike. You are right that it's unscientific, and I'd argue that if your familiarity with an area is derived from street view, you are going to miss a lot of nuance. I bike that corridor often and I always see several other bike riders. It is heavily patronized by bike, because there are so many destinations. The SW Corridor park is great as an express route to downtown, but the JP destinations aren't along it, they are along Center/South. Contrast that with Columbus, which is for the most part just a transportation corridor without any significant destinations.
If you want to make the case for avoiding duplication, I'd argue that high quality transit already serves JP in the form of the Orange Line, and that the 39 bus is sufficient for local service, especially when combined with bike and pedestrian options.
If you want to make the case for avoiding duplication, I'd argue that high quality transit already serves JP in the form of the Orange Line, and that the 39 bus is sufficient for local service, especially when combined with bike and pedestrian options.
If the goal is "Sufficient transit service" then you are correct, current service is sufficient. But should the goal of urban design be adequacy? No, it should be excellency, and Centre St has the potential to become an absolutely amazing destination in its own right, joining Newbury St as one of the best (Or at least most popular and well known) shopping/dining areas in the city owing to its good Streetcar Suburb bones. Coolidge Corner has been doing quite well recently, and I see no reason why Centre St shouldn't aim even higher, but as long as the only "right there" transit is the 39 I cannot see it happening.
To make things worse, the road network in the region is fundamentally broken and heavily depends on Center St and South St, so you can't make travel lanes one-way either.
I mean, we could always revisit this assumption. No doubt that it would result in more circuitous routes for people living on the streets right off Centre/South St, but it would do equally well in cratering the number of vehicles using the street in the first place, balancing it out to some extent. Yes, congrestion on the Jamaicaway would increase, but so what? Boston isn't a city for drivers, and it never has been. I don't see why JP can't be a car maze like Downtown already is. To be clear, this "Cars just... figure something out we're going to do our own thing" attitude can't work everywhere, but if there's one place in the entire city where I can be most confident that it would work out, and we would end up with a vibrant retail and dining center popular with locals and tourists, accessible by foot, by bike, and by transit it would have to be Centre St through JP.
The 1500' option honestly does not strike me as unreasonably close. High ridership stretch, elongated linear destination zone, and comparable to Boston's original downtown. And, even with the benefits of a "heavy metro" design, this subway would still be served by LRT vehicles, running shorter consists than HRT: having four stations means you can having four trains loading and unloading passengers simultaneously; fewer stations mean fewer vehicle doors opening simultaneously. So, 1500' still seems like a reasonable contender.
In addition to density within this region, another factor to consider is speed for through-Huntington traffic. In this case, it contains significant demands from Brookline, Reservoir, Newton, Riverside and Needham. They see the following numbers of stops between Brookline Village and Copley (exclusive on both ends):
Today, via Kenmore: 4 stops
At most 5 stops with an Aspinwall infill
Huntington reroute: 7 stops, roughly with today's stop spacing (with Fenwood Rd and Riverway eliminated)
That a shorter, more direct route results in more steps is counterintuitive, and I'm afraid will hurt ridership. Also, Mission Park has been omitted in the discussion above, but whether it should be retained does matter.
I'll also note that stop spacing of 3000' upwards is not unique to HRT lines. GLX averages about 3400' per stop between Medford/Tufts and East Somerville. That is indeed excessive on Huntington given the region's job density (not just LMA, but also Northeastern, MFA and many other colleges), but it's not without precedent.
This is definitely a fair rejoinder and an interesting point. Lots of variables that I think may impact this, including job locations/destinations, walking distance tolerance, travel time tolerance, and we've talked about some of those in the past.
But this does bring up an idea we've occasionally mentioned before: quad-tracking the Extended Huntington Ave Subway. You could take a local/express model -- D + N run express (e.g. Brookline Village, LMA, Northeastern, Symphony), while E makes all-stops. Alternatively, all trains could make all stops, but double tracking (even if only at stations) would allow multiple trains to berth at once, which could address the "how many doors" problem.
I think that an initial build could be done with provisions for subsequent quad-tracking, which would enable a "wait-and-see" approach.
This is the current northern exit of Brigham Circle. The reason why this works is the abundance of pedestrian paths in the area, which is pretty self-explanatory from the diagram:
To Longwood Ave: Similar walking distance
The top green path is similar to the red path
To blocks between Longwood Ave and Francis St (e.g. Dana-Farber): Similar walking distance, if not slightly shorter
To Francis St: 500' longer, but not too much
This is mostly Brigham and Women's, which already enjoys a shorter walk than the other hospitals anyway
If there's another stop at Ruggles St, the only ones whose walks become significantly longer are MassArt, which isn't as major of a ridership generator as the hospitals. I'm not saying there should only be one station within this block, but if there is, I think this a better location than either Longwood Ave or Francis St intersections.
I really really need to redo my LMA Walkshed analysis. But in any case, you've raised an interesting point. I think that, in terms of how I was thinking about this problem from a simplified perspective, I'd still consider this location to be in the Francis St "zone" -- in part because the exact headhouse locations are very much going to be TBD pending actual engineering design and review. The 600' between Francis and Wigglesworth St (what a name) feels somewhat within the "margin of error" to me. And either way, we're talking about a station location weighted toward the south end of the LMA.
But I think your analysis is solid, and in any case is a good reminder of the potential variability here.
Arborway
I am pretty hesitant to weigh in on this discussion. But I can't help myself.
1) To me, this discussion seems pretty far removed from "Streetcar or No Streetcar?" and really is "Transit Lanes or No Transit Lanes" (or "Transit Lanes or Bike Lanes?"). Particularly without transit lanes, I don't see how a resurrected Arborway Line will be appreciably better than today's status quo. The main benefits I can see are increased capacity, and a OSR to downtown; the first one is reasonable, the second one I have thoughts on below. But is the capacity increase worth the cost? That's not obvious to me, and it is also not obvious to me that the capacity increase would be transformative for the neighborhood.
If you want to make the case for avoiding duplication, I'd argue that high quality transit already serves JP in the form of the Orange Line, and that the 39 bus is sufficient for local service, especially when combined with bike and pedestrian options.
Most of Centre and South Streets sit between 10 and 15 minute walks from the Orange Line:
I don't think there's any other corridor so fully within the 15-min walkshed of existing stations that we would think to (re)build a rail line to. The closest I can see is the 57 corridor, but only east of Chestnut Hill Ave.
In both cases, I think that means the bar is set rather high in terms of needed ROI.
3) A resurrected Arborway Line recapitulates the boutique "subway-streetcar" model that currently only exists on the B and C, wherein neighborhoods outside the Inner Belt get a surface route (with surface stop spacing akin to a bus route) that then provides an OSR into downtown. For over 100 years, every other neighborhood, from Cambridge to Roxbury, has had to choose between subway-stop-spacing vs a forced-transfer-2SR. Resurrecting the Arborway Line to provide a subway-streetcar OSR from JP to Downtown feels... not great to me. Given limitless resources, I think the idea has real merit, but I think ranks low on the priority list.
4) If JP wants a streetcar for the sake of having a streetcar, then I think there are three pretty straightforward options:
Convert the 39 (Arborway <> Back Bay): run the same route as today, but using rails, and a surface loop/terminal at Copley and/or Back Bay. Given the aforementioned existing high demand, the extra capacity of LRT on the current route might be worthwhile
Layer an Arborway <> LMA Upper surface service on top of a Hyde Square <> Downtown subway (and short surface) service: if LMA or Brigham Circle is going to be turning Urban Ring LRT (as mentioned in my earlier post), there's no reason a JP streetcar couldn't do the same. This service would run at street level before being joined by the E Line emerging from the subway for an extension to Hyde Square, where the E would terminate while the streetcar would trek onward through mixed traffic (diagram in spoiler box)
Build a "neighborhood streetcar" Arborway <> Hyde Square <> Jackson Square: sometimes transit is more about creating a sense of place than about moving quickly. If the aim is to build a streetcar for the sake of creating a certain kind of urban space, this route could be a good candidate. It would be anchored at the north and south by strong transfers to multiple lines but would definitely not be fully load-bearing -- the 39 would definitely need to remain in place
Going off the data used for the BNRD Remix map, ~73,000 people live within .25 mi of C branch stops (Including the Central Subway but I don't see any clean way to take that data out so we'll use 73k as a conservative estimate), and about 63k live within .25 mi of #39 stops. And yet, C Branch ridership was 50% higher in 2011 than #39 weekday ridership was in 2022, compared to the C's 15% higher population. On the B Branch it's even more extreme, 35% higher population for 300% more weekday riders, but I think that's somewhat less comparable. Given that Green St and Stony Brook are the two least used stations on the OL, I don't think those people are walking the 10-15 mins to the OL, I think they're driving. I don't think it's unreasonable to conclude that an E Branch restoration would add at least 2000 new weekday transit riders just from local commuting ridership, without taking into account weekends or new traffic coming to JP from elsewhere in the city. The Hyde Square extension was estimated to cost $40 million in 2017, about $50 million in 2024 dollars, so let's use $80 million as our cost per mile. At 1.9 miles from Heath St to Forest Hills for $152 million, those 2000 riders providing $4.80 in fare revenue per weekday would entirely cover the cost of the line within a couple generations ignoring all potential for future growth, property/sales taxes, etc. and all the benefits (However large or small they may be) it would bring to the quality of the urban space that are much more difficult to attach value to. For the relatively small financial cost, (Even if the political cost is admittedly high), I would consider that well worth it.
Going off the data used for the BNRD Remix map, ~73,000 people live within .25 mi of C branch stops (Including the Central Subway but I don't see any clean way to take that data out so we'll use 73k as a conservative estimate), and about 63k live within .25 mi of #39 stops. And yet, C Branch ridership was 50% higher in 2011 than #39 weekday ridership was in 2022, compared to the C's 15% higher population. On the B Branch it's even more extreme, 35% higher population for 300% more weekday riders, but I think that's somewhat less comparable. Given that Green St and Stony Brook are the two least used stations on the OL, I don't think those people are walking the 10-15 mins to the OL, I think they're driving. I don't think it's unreasonable to conclude that an E Branch restoration would add at least 2000 new weekday transit riders just from local commuting ridership, without taking into account weekends or new traffic coming to JP from elsewhere in the city. The Hyde Square extension was estimated to cost $40 million in 2017, about $50 million in 2024 dollars, so let's use $80 million as our cost per mile. At 1.9 miles from Heath St to Forest Hills for $152 million, those 2000 riders providing $4.80 in fare revenue per weekday would entirely cover the cost of the line within a couple generations ignoring all potential for future growth, property/sales taxes, etc. For the relatively small financial cost, (Even if the political cost is admittedly high), I would consider that well worth it.
Going off the data used for the BNRD Remix map, ~73,000 people live within .25 mi of C branch stops (Including the Central Subway but I don't see any clean way to take that data out so we'll use 73k as a conservative estimate), and about 63k live within .25 mi of #39 stops. And yet, C Branch ridership was 50% higher in 2011 than #39 weekday ridership was in 2022, compared to the C's 15% higher population. On the B Branch it's even more extreme, 35% higher population for 300% more weekday riders, but I think that's somewhat less comparable. Given that Green St and Stony Brook are the two least used stations on the OL, I don't think those people are walking the 10-15 mins to the OL, I think they're driving. I don't think it's unreasonable to conclude that an E Branch restoration would add at least 2000 new weekday transit riders just from local commuting ridership, without taking into account weekends or new traffic coming to JP from elsewhere in the city. The Hyde Square extension was estimated to cost $40 million in 2017, about $50 million in 2024 dollars, so let's use $80 million as our cost per mile. At 1.9 miles from Heath St to Forest Hills for $152 million, those 2000 riders providing $4.80 in fare revenue per weekday would entirely cover the cost of the line within a couple generations ignoring all potential for future growth, property/sales taxes, etc. and all the benefits (However large or small they may be) it would bring to the quality of the urban space that are much more difficult to attach value to. For the relatively small financial cost, (Even if the political cost is admittedly high), I would consider that well worth it.
Something's clearly wrong with the 39's ridership draw. It did 19,040 weekday riders in the 1990 Blue Book (first counts after the bus extension to Back Bay and streetcar reinstatement to Heath gave the route its final shape and audience), down to 14,877 in the 2014 BB, down to 11,600 in the 2018 counts. Despite all the population and business growth on the corridor and the capacity introduction of 60-foot buses in the last 20 years, the transit shares for the corridor keep dropping. There is probably something large behind your comparative theory with the C corridor. The audience is finding something major lacking with the service.
This got me thinking. The latest iteration of my crayon/GLR map has three services using Ruggles St: an H Harvard <> Ruggles service, an L Brigham Circle <> Mattapan service, and an M Brigham Circle <> BU Med Ctr service. The L and M run along Huntington before turning on to Ruggles, so aren't a concern here. So, really, the 2000' spacing would only impact something like my Harvard <> Ruggles service.
...
All of which is to say, maybe it wouldn't be so bad to reconfigure these services to not require a transfer at Huntington & Ruggles. Something like this:
H: Harvard <> Brigham Circle L: Brigham Circle <> Nubian via Ruggles M: Brigham Circle <> BU Med Ctr via Ruggles
H gets more direct service to Longwood, and through-Longwood journeys are still possible through a cross-platform transfer at LMA station. (Which, yes, should be renamed.) And given that the BNRD is relocating a number of bus transfers from Nubian/Ruggles directly into the LMA (more on that below), having the Urban Ring services do the same has benefits as well.
One downside here is that Regional Rail commuters transferring at Ruggles will have a less-direct route to BU and to Harvard's Allston campus. Transferring at Back Bay and doubling back to Lansdowne or West Station isn't the worst solution, but it's not great especially for Allston, where an additional transfer at West Station will probably be required. So, it'll definitely a question of comparing pros and cons.
~~~
[I was gonna post something further about integrating a Dorchester BRT network into this whole thing but now I've gone deep down the mapmaking rabbit hole, so I'll go ahead and hit the "post" button now, and come back with more thoughts later.]
Making good on this promise now. I was gonna write more background here, but I've already written a lot on the general topic of the Dorchester bus network and what makes it unique. (See for example here.)
One of the things I've been thinking about for a while is the way that multiple paths across the LMA might be served by a combination of circumferential Urban Ring services and radial Dorchester services. The BNRD's extension of the 22 and 28 and the reroute of the 66 into Longwood mark a notable shift for routes which, historically, were oriented toward a transfer hub at Nubian (Dudley); that orientation was slightly redirected to Ruggles + Roxbury Crossing, but kept a lot of the topological features consistent, in particular the orientation to transferring to the Orange Line, or other surface routes.
The extension into Longwood continues this westward shift in the center of gravity for these routes, and thereby shifts some of the "transfer pressure" away from Nubian. One potential ramification of this is a reduction in the need for circumferential OSRs terminating at Ruggles or Nubian -- if the Ruggles/Nubian "transfer point" has been moved to Longwood, then, for example, a Grove Hall <> Harvard 2SR could be achieved via a transfer in Longwood, rather than at Nubian.
Anyway, blah blah blah, here's the map:
The network of pale green lines (with the thin black centerline) are BRT routes, evolved from the proposed T22, T23, and T28. They make various surface stops not marked on this map, and run at high frequencies. I have no idea what the BNRD is imagining for Francis St to accommodate the number of buses they are proposing, but assume that whatever lanes, busways, you name it, get built there will also be used by these services.
Then they turn north along Brookline Ave, to hit up very nice transfer points to the Pink Line (service to Harvard, with a short walk to a Bronze Line transfer at The Fens for service to Kendall), Purple Line (service to West Station, and transfers from Regional Rail commuters heading to Longwood), and Green (+ Blue) Line(s) at Kenmore.
Given the conversation has now grown substantially in all directions, I will first address very specific points mentioned above. Most of this is intended as fact-checking, whereas any opinions will be explicitly labeled. Further opinions will come later. (Also, this is not intended to take sides.)
Ironically, while the entire comment mostly concerns Arborway and JP, I'll start with one point that's not:
I really really need to redo my LMA Walkshed analysis. But in any case, you've raised an interesting point. I think that, in terms of how I was thinking about this problem from a simplified perspective, I'd still consider this location to be in the Francis St "zone" -- in part because the exact headhouse locations are very much going to be TBD pending actual engineering design and review. The 600' between Francis and Wigglesworth St (what a name) feels somewhat within the "margin of error" to me. And either way, we're talking about a station location weighted toward the south end of the LMA.
My original point was that, even if you consider the Wigglesworth St "LMA-Brigham" station as in the "Francis St zone", it does almost exactly as well as the "Longwood Ave zone"(aka LMA station) for the vast majority of "westbound" destinations on Longwood Ave. Thus, either Wigglesworth should be considered as within both "Francis St zone" and "Longwood Ave zone", or the distinction between zones is negligible to begin with. (The only exceptions are MassArt and Wentworth, but if you're willing to consider 600' as the margin of error, then both institutions also fall within the margin of error from Wigglesworth.)
Fact: 3x as many riders use OL's Green St and Stony Brook stations as the 39's parallel corridor (in the downtown direction). People absolutely do walk to the Orange Line.
Weekly 7-day ridership in Fall 2019:
Location
Ridership towards downtown
Green St
17389
Stony Brook
18234
OL combined
35623
39 (Arborway - Perkins St)
11031.3
Both numbers likely overestimate demand specifically from Jamaica Plain to downtown. OL's ridership also includes those east of the SW Corridor (though this density map suggests it's not super dense, with the notable exception of Egleston Sq at Columbus/Washington where people can also take the 22 instead of walking to Stony Brook). 39's ridership also includes those who are getting off along Huntington Ave, especially at LMA, who are likely agonistic about whether they have a through ride to downtown. (In fact, outbound 39 has 16903.7 boarding between Mass Ave and Riverway, even greater than the 11031.3 figure above! While a good chunk of them will ride to Forest Hills, I estimate at least 50-70% do indeed go to Hyde Square or JP.)
Aside: 5258.6 riders get off a northbound 39 on the segment mentioned above per week. They are either connecting to OL at Forest Hills, or travelling within JP.
Hard disagree on this. Centre/South is a major shopping and dining corridor, one that people should and in fact do, approach by bike. You are right that it's unscientific, and I'd argue that if your familiarity with an area is derived from street view, you are going to miss a lot of nuance. I bike that corridor often and I always see several other bike riders. It is heavily patronized by bike, because there are so many destinations. The SW Corridor park is great as an express route to downtown, but the JP destinations aren't along it, they are along Center/South. Contrast that with Columbus, which is for the most part just a transportation corridor without any significant destinations.
Fact: Jamaica Plain residents do bike to work. In fact, its share of biking commuters stands out significantly in Greater Boston!
The analysis below only look at transportation to work, and thus they may not specifically use the Center-South corridor; but on the other hand, it also doesn't account for the recreational cyclists that @HenryAlan described. Either way, it suffices to show (indirectly) that driving is not behind the "underperformance" of the 39 that @TheRatmeister mentioned.
The red region shows the rough boundaries of Jamaica Plain, bounded by Perkins St to the north and SW Corridor to the east. The green line is the 39 corridor. Because census tracts are not divided perfectly by street grids, the pair yellow and pink dots each denotes a single census tract that crosses the boundaries I've drawn.
The census tracts in JP have a bike share between 5.1% and 10.2%. The northern tracts generally have lower bike shares, while the SW tract has the highest at 10.2%.
You can already see how this region stands out on the map when zoomed out (though the visual effect was also partly due to the tracts immediately to the east, especially Eagleston Square). The 5-10% bike share outperforms many neighborhoods, including some even denser ones such as South Boston, most of South End, East Boston, Everett and Chelsea. The only regions with large swarths of >6% tracts are:
Cambridge and Somerville (Excellent bike infrastructure, major job destinations like Kendall, MIT and Harvard relatively nearby, also lots of college students)
Charlestown (Close to downtown, bus service relatively underwhelming)
Brookline Hills (???)
Fact: Not too many JP residents commute with a car (driving alone or carpool) -- but most of them have at least one car per household. This should directly refute the claim of @TheRatmeister that they're driving to work; but on the other hand, it also means making the neighborhood car-free is impractical.
This map shows the percentage of people using a car to work, similar to the previous one. (I didn't include the colored dots this time.)
Note: This map's color scale was manually adjusted to provide greater distinction on the lower end.
36% of Jamaica Plain residents drive to work. (This figure is remarkably consistent across all but one of the census tracts.) While it's higher than Camberville, South End, East Boston and the areas enveloped by the B/C/D branches, it's lower than many, many other neighborhoods, often notably so:
Roxbury, Dorchester and Mattapan (!), where you'd expect higher transit dependence
Most of Chelsea and all of Everett
Most of the 57 corridor (especially those that aren't very close to the B)
Most of Malden and Medford, except the tract containing Malden Center
Roslindale and West Roxbury
Also, South Boston has a virtually identical drive share
Overall, this is a pretty impressively low car share among neighborhoods served by transit. If you consider the walk to Stony Brook and Green St to be inadequate, it would be even more impressive.
This map shows the percentage of households with no vehicles available:
Across the census tracts, JP generally see 20% of households with no cars. It gets even lower to the west of the 39, where as little as 6% or 12% of families are car-free. This means the vast majority of JP households have a car, which needs to be parked somewhere.
Unlike the previous chart, however, this car-free stat is anomalously low. That it's much lower than the "well-served neighborhoods" (Camberville, South End, East Boston and the areas enveloped by the B/C/D branches) should be no surprise. But 20% is lower than Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan, Chelsea and the denser parts of Everett, even though JP has lower share of car commutes than all of them.
And if you take the worst-case 6% at face value, that specific part of SW Jamaica Plain is absolutely terrible -- comparable ones are Belmont, NW/SW Malden, Medford other than the square, Arlington other than the center, Newton Corner, etc.
Going off the data used for the BNRD Remix map, ~73,000 people live within .25 mi of C branch stops (Including the Central Subway but I don't see any clean way to take that data out so we'll use 73k as a conservative estimate), and about 63k live within .25 mi of #39 stops. And yet, C Branch ridership was 50% higher in 2011 than #39 weekday ridership was in 2022, compared to the C's 15% higher population.
Fact using a different methodology: Using the Census OnTheMap job takers counts as a proxy for population, I found that the C's walkshed has 98% more job takers than the 39's unique walkshed (i.e. not covered by the E). This matches pretty well with my own calculations of ridership: the C's corresponding ridership on this segment is either 31% or 55% higher depending on how you count it.
These numbers don't suggest nearly as massive of an underperformance of the 39 (or overperformance of the C) as you said. If anything, it shows the reverse: The 39 may be overperforming, despite lower population and poorer service! But, on the other hand, it shows the population in Jamaica Plain that are closer to 39 than OL may be smaller than people may think.
(I suspect the discrepancy is because the Remix map counts populations along Huntington Ave towards the 39, and perhaps downtown residents towards the C. On the other hand, Census OnTheMap doesn't count college students.)
Even using actual population data (which requires scripts or dedicated maps, like this density map), you can clearly see that Coolidge Corner is much denser than Jamaica Plain, especially parts south of Hyde Square:
The following polygon is roughly the C's walkshed, defined as the midpoints from the B and the D. Some leniency is given near Reservoir and Beaconsfield. It has 14,349 job takers. (FYI, that's 11,272 jobs/mi^2, ranking on the upper end among those in my previous post, near equal to Somerville and Chelsea. If I zoomed into Coolidge Corner instead, it would have been much denser!)
The following polygon is the 39's walkshed, that's not closer to the Orange Line and not already served by the E at Heath St. It has 7,250 jobs, nearly half of the C!
(In terms of density, that's 9,073 jobs/mi^2, inbetween Warren St and Everett on my previous list. While still dense, it's slighly less than the entire C corridor. However, practical considerations are stacked in favor of the C and against the 39: Coolidge Corner itself is much denser than shown above, whereas excluding the Hyde Square section will likely make the 39 even less dense.)
Here are the number of boardings in Fall 2019:
Route
Both directions
Inbound only
C (Coolidge Corner - St. Mary's St)
23938
20125
39 (Arborway - south of Heath St)
18305.8
13001.6
39 (Forest Hills - south of Heath St)
29971.7
24667.5
39 (Full route)
67098.2
34557.7
I ignored school trip pattern 39.7.
Let's first throw the "39 full route" out as that's an apples-to-oranges comparison. Then:
Comparing the C to the 39 excluding Forest Hills, the C's bidirectional boardings is 31% higher, and its inbound boardings is 55% higher.
Which one to use? I myself prefer bidirectional boardings in this case. The 39 may see riders going outbound to Forest Hills to catch the Orange Line. (There are 3165.7 weekly outbound boardings on Centre St and South St.)
Comparing the C to the 39 including Forest Hills, the 39 actually wins, by 25%.
However, this captures additional patterns that may be irrelevant to Jamaica Plain. Not only are the JP-OL riders counted twice per round trip, but more importantly, it includes those going from Forest Hills (especially transferring from other buses) to LMA.
Opinion: Even if the analysis above supported your initial comment, there are still many reasons why the C could have overperformed, beyond just "one-seat ride to downtown" or "higher capacity".
To me, the most important is more reliable service. I myself have seen many cases of the 39 operating 20+ min headways, especially on weekends but also sometimes on weekdays, and that's before considering delays mid route. In contrast, the C typically sees 10-min or better headways 7 days a week. Such differences can erode rider confidence real quick, but they can theoretically be solved without LRT conversion or a one-seat-ride to downtown.
Opinion based on some fact: This is veering off-topic, but in general, I would not take the B's ridership at face value.
A significant amount of population along the B is college students, especially graduate students, both for BU and BC. They have very different demographic characteristics and transit needs as working adults; the one that's most pertinent to this discussion is significantly reduced demand for downtown Boston.
This map shows the percentage of residents currently enrolled in a graduate or professional program:
Edit: I've removed this claim as I had a misunderstanding of the US Census data on my part. In particular, the "% enrolled in graduate school" is only among those who are enrolled in some school, not anyone living here. I've removed the figure, but will leave this content crossed out for record keeping.
This is not even considering undergraduate students, who typically live much closer to BU campus on Comm Ave or BC campus, but some of them nevertheless still take the B as a "campus shuttle" within BU due to how stretched out the campus is.
The million dollar question is how much effect these graduate students have on the ridership patterns, and how atypical (or not) the B is because of it. I don't have an answer to the question yet. In Fall 2019, 50547 riders board the B in either directions per week, 39437 of whom are heading inbound (meaning 11110 are heading outbound). Somewhat equivalently, on inbound B trains, 39437 riders board and 8178 riders alight. This suggests roughly 21% of trips that start on the B end on the B. However, this is not totally anomalous: From the table above, this figure for the C is 16%, and for the 39 between Forest Hills and Heath St exclusive, 29%. So far, these figures don't suggest a crazy turnover pattern yet.
I will hopefully revisit this analysis in greater detail, but it's not crucial to the discussion right now.
All the discussion focuses on the small region to the west of Orange Line. Which makes you think... What about east of Orange Line?
As seen above, there's surprisingly good density along Seaver St from Egleston Square to the Grove Hall vicinity, despite one side being Franklin Park. So I plugged both polygons into Census OnTheMap: "OL West", primarily Jamaica Plain; and "OL East", roughly centered at Egleston and extending down Seaver St.
Area
OL West (Jamaica Plain)
OL East (Egleston)
Job takers
8,172
8,501
Area (mi^2)
0.847
0.955
Density (jobs/mi^2)
9,648
8,902
(Note: The JP polygons in my previous replies didn't include regions that are closer to OL than the 39, but this one does.)
So:
OL East has slightly more residents than OL West, and only slightly lower population density.
OL West is almost entirely within a 15-min walk from Orange Line stations. While the majority of OL East is covered in a similar span, the outer ends are a 20-35 min walk away.
OL West has an existing Key Bus Route (39) that goes all the way into Back Bay, and quite plausibly, another future rapid transit stop at its edge, Hyde Square. Transit fans frequently call for LRT to be restored, giving them a one-seat ride to other parts of downtown and the entire subway system.
OL East has another Key Bus Route (22), but it only goes to Ruggles, requires a transfer to go virtually everywhere, and it does not run articulated buses. Even though the bus has the highest-quality transit priority corridor in the region, there's zero incentive to improve it further. Very, very few people even propose LRT on this corridor (though coincidentally @Riverside just did this above), and the odds of a through-running LRT into Park St is zero, zero, zero, zero, zero.
I even went to check the 22's ridership. In Fall 2019, the stops on Columbus Ave and Seaver St get 19165.7 riders per week (both directions), higher than the 39's 18305.8 in the aforementioned section. This is before Columbus Ave bus lanes were implemented, and the route doesn't even capture the entire "OL East" polygon.
So why aren't we having active debates regarding a Green Line branch to Egleston and Seaver St, regarding "excellency in urban design", or "absolutely amazing destination in its own right, joining Newbury St as one of the best"? Regarding a cost-benefit analysis of such an LRT extension, and "all potential for future growth, property/sales taxes, etc. and all the benefits" from it? (Other than the availability of power lines along the Centre-South corridor, but I feel that alone doesn't make the cut.) Or, forget about LRT, what about "something major lacking in the service" or even some articulated buses?
In other words... How many other blocks of about 9,000 jobs/mi^2 are out there, needing better transit service, and yet not getting any calls for an LRT of any route (or occasionally an HRT line) even from transit fans? Is it because they don't have a catchy name for the neighborhood, akin to "Jamaica Plain", "Chelsea", "Southie", "Coolidge Corner" and others, for these crayon proposals to brand themselves as? Or is it because they lost the privilege of having historical streetcars well before 1985 (many of which had already stopped running into downtown another couple decades before they were bustituted)?
Regardless of the reason, there seems to be at least one such block -- which happened to be right next door, on the other side of the Orange Line, yet only caught my attention thanks to a density map.
I initially had the same thought, but the B connecting people living along the line to a major center outside downtown (BU) is a lot like the 39 connecting people living along the line to. a major center outside downtown (Huntington). Maybe they're not that dissimilar.
So why aren't we having active debates regarding a Green Line branch to Egleston and Seaver St, regarding "excellency in urban design", or "absolutely amazing destination in its own right, joining Newbury St as one of the best"? Regarding a cost-benefit analysis of such an LRT extension, and "all potential for future growth, property/sales taxes, etc. and all the benefits" from it? (Other than the availability of power lines along the Centre-South corridor, but I feel that alone doesn't make the cut.) Or, forget about LRT, what about "something major lacking in the service" or even some articulated buses?
I would say the main reason is because it's not the lowest of low lying fruit, at least technically. If we decide that our priorities on Centre/South St are not drivers, then we can just do it, it's not prohibitively expensive and it's just an extension of an existing service so no new connections are needed. I think another contributing factor to the urbanism argument is that since streetcars in the area haven't run for so long, the urban fabric has adjusted, and the streetcar suburb has faded away and been forgotten. There is also of course the fact that JP is a 'hip' place, and so elevating it further into a destination that represents Boston in a relatively short time frame than Dorchester, where the reputation alone will be a significant problem on that front. Redeveloping into a streetcar suburb is definitely possible here, though.
I would also say that we are already talking about this, and this is one place where something is actually happening. As you said the Columbus Ave bus lanes are getting major ridership, and I have no doubt the BHA lanes will be an even bigger success. GL to Mattapan comes up fairly regularly, both in semi-official proposals and fantasy maps, and in the past I have brought up the topic of a tram network that would focus a lot on this area.
My original point was that, even if you consider the Wigglesworth St "LMA-Brigham" station as in the "Francis St zone", it does almost exactly as well as the "Longwood Ave zone"(aka LMA station) for the vast majority of "westbound" destinations on Longwood Ave. Thus, either Wigglesworth should be considered as within both "Francis St zone" and "Longwood Ave zone", or the distinction between zones is negligible to begin with. (The only exceptions are MassArt and Wentworth, but if you're willing to consider 600' as the margin of error, then both institutions also fall within the margin of error from Wigglesworth.)
OL East has another Key Bus Route (22), but it only goes to Ruggles, requires a transfer to go virtually everywhere, and it does not run articulated buses. Even though the bus has the highest-quality transit priority corridor in the region, there's zero incentive to improve it further. Very, very few people even propose LRT on this corridor (though coincidentally @Riverside just did this above), and the odds of a through-running LRT into Park St is zero, zero, zero, zero, zero.
...I did? I didn't mean to. The pale green lines with black centerlines are meant to be BRT corridors, running modified versions of the T22, T23, and T28 (if not more).
I did include an LRT line along this corridor on my Transportation Dreams map, but I add the following comment in my appendix to the map (emphasis added here):
New light rail line along Columbus Ave and Blue Hill Ave: partially utilizing Pink Line tracks, and then using center-running transit lanes down Tremont, Columbus (already present, with more planned), Seaver, and Blue Hill, this line would connect Mattapan and Dorchester to Longwood Medical Area, with transfers to the Orange Line, Gold Line, Pink Line, and Commuter Rail (Regional Rail). Due to its layout and geography, Dorchester has a unique set of transit needs, and I actually don’t think a light rail line here is the best way to address those needs. However, there are many reasons a community might want a light rail line, beyond the utilitarian need for commuting. If Dorchester residents wished to have a light rail line for the sake of having a light rail line — as a way to stitch together their community, as a placemaking tool for their neighborhoods — then this route is what I would recommend, balancing feasibility, modest commuting utility, and cost-effectiveness.
(I ultimately included the line in part because a fantasy map inevitably makes choices that might, in real life, be vetoed by the community; even though I think it's pretty likely that Dorchester residents would veto a commuting-oriented LRT line along this corridor, I figured it was more "fair" to give the neighborhood a piece of the fantasy pie anyway.)
In other words... How many other blocks of about 9,000 jobs/mi^2 are out there, needing better transit service, and yet not getting any calls for an LRT of any route (or occasionally an HRT line) even from transit fans? Is it because they don't have a catchy name for the neighborhood, akin to "Jamaica Plain", "Chelsea", "Southie", "Coolidge Corner" and others, for these crayon proposals to brand themselves as? Or is it because they lost the privilege of having historical streetcars well before 1985 (many of which had already stopped running into downtown another couple decades before they were bustituted)?
And yeah, I'm gonna go there: regardless of intention, those extraordinary exceptions create a disparity in service that mirrors (and probably reinforced) racial divides in the city.
Overlay the B and Arborway Lines, and we see that Boston's majority white neighborhoods located over 4.5 miles from downtown kept their OSR subway-surface route for decades longer than nearby majority black neighborhoods of equal or lesser distance from downtown.
Is it racist to call for the restoration of the Arborway Line? No, absolutely not. But what I want to highlight is just how unusual the idea is, and how much it aligns with racial divisions and a probably-but-not-certainly-unintentional pattern of racial disparities in service that goes back decades.
Arborway Advocacy
On a related but separate topic: 20-30 years ago, advocacy for restoring the Arborway Line was organized and active. In fact, as I recall it, it was one of the most, if not the most, organized advocacy group in the region.
But now, I don't think I ever hear public advocacy for it? The proposed extension to Hyde Square clearly enjoys a lot of support, including at official levels. But a full restoration of service is not something I can recall seeing in the last 10 years. (If someone can prove me wrong, please do!)
Which then raises the question: do people in JP even want the Arborway Line restored?
On a related but separate topic: 20-30 years ago, advocacy for restoring the Arborway Line was organized and active. In fact, as I recall it, it was one of the most, if not the most, organized advocacy group in the region.
But now, I don't think I ever hear public advocacy for it? The proposed extension to Hyde Square clearly enjoys a lot of support, including at official levels. But a full restoration of service is not something I can recall seeing in the last 10 years. (If someone can prove me wrong, please do!)
Which then raises the question: do people in JP even want the Arborway Line restored?
The Arborway Committee, the major organization that backed full Arborway restoration, has pivoted to backing the Hyde Sq. extension as a political reality. They still want the full thing, but realize that they need to get Hyde Sq. on the board as a first salvo to slay the stigma against new street-running mileage before re-mounting Centre & South Streets.
The advocacy is still there, but they've got to get wins on the board to achieve what they want and Hyde Sq. is a necessary first phase for that.
Is it racist to call for the restoration of the Arborway Line? No, absolutely not. But what I want to highlight is just how unusual the idea is, and how much it aligns with racial divisions and a probably-but-not-certainly-unintentional pattern of racial disparities in service that goes back decades.
This is an excellent point, and is worth mentioning. I think you can kind of get around it because almost as much of 39 ridership comes from bus transfers at Forest Hills, many of which are from routes serving Dorchester and Mattapan, as comes from JP local riders. It could be argued that for these ~10k weekly riders, improving the 39 does represent a better connection between LMA and Dorchester/Mattapan.
But ultimately there's no getting around it. JP is a rich(er) neighborhood, and restoring Arborway service would make it richer. Perhaps between improving connections at Forest Hills and the expansion of BHA service, this inequality could be somewhat reduced?
The proposed extension to Hyde Square clearly enjoys a lot of support, including at official levels. But a full restoration of service is not something I can recall seeing in the last 10 years. (If someone can prove me wrong, please do!)
And if I had my druthers, a follow-up to a Hyde Square extension would be a Jackson Square extension. If we are going to bring back street running LRT, let's bring it to where it can be more useful.
I think you can kind of get around it because almost as much of 39 ridership comes from bus transfers at Forest Hills, many of which are from routes serving Dorchester and Mattapan, as comes from JP local riders. It could be argued that for these ~10k weekly riders, improving the 39 does represent a better connection between LMA and Dorchester/Mattapan.
Sorry, can you remind me where this stat comes from? (I know there's been a lot of back and forth, so I may have missed it.) It is true that the BERY model is basically designed to make all trips 2SRs (under the assumption that everyone is commuting into downtown). But with multiple "downtowns", that gets trickier -- transferring to Orange doesn't quite give you a 2SR from (say) Washington St in Roslindale. So that's a fair point that the 39 or a resurrected Arborway Line would address that use case.
(Do we have data on how many bus transfers at Forest Hills are actually coming from Mattapan or Dorchester? Of the 16 routes serving FH, only 4 look to me like they serve Mattapan/Dorchester [16, 21, 30, 31]. And, assuming T28 reliability could be high enough, all four of them would enjoy a 2SR to Longwood via the T28.)
And if I had my druthers, a follow-up to a Hyde Square extension would be a Jackson Square extension. If we are going to bring back street running LRT, let's bring it to where it can be more useful.
Some might find it more useful to go out to go in. An outbound E train to Jackson, followed by an inbound Orange Line train might work well for some, not to mention the option for inbound OL riders switching if their destination is LMA.
Jackson serves several bus routes that might benefit from a GL transfer option
So it's a short extension that accomplishes a lot for enhanced routing options. Further into the future, it might also provide rail service to lower Roxbury, Grove Hall, etc.
(Do we have data on how many bus transfers at Forest Hills are actually coming from Mattapan or Dorchester? Of the 16 routes serving FH, only 4 look to me like they serve Mattapan/Dorchester [16, 21, 30, 31]. And, assuming T28 reliability could be high enough, all four of them would enjoy a 2SR to Longwood via the T28.)
Here is the number of weekday boardings and alightments at Forest Hills by route:
About 1/3 of weekday ridership comes from the Dorchester Routes (16, 21, 30, 31), another 1/3 comes from other routes that mainly serve lower income neighborhoods (32, 40, 42, 50), with the rest coming from routes serving some mix of Roslindale, West Roxbury, and Walpole, which are generally higher income. I would say that especially for LMA commuters that live in Hyde Park or Mattapan, two of the lowest income areas in the city, the 39 and the transfer at Forest Hills is incredibly important. I don't doubt that a restored Arborway service would cater to higher income riders, but it's definitely more nuanced than "This line is only for rich people."
If we decide that our priorities on Centre/South St are not drivers, then we can just do it, it's not prohibitively expensive and it's just an extension of an existing service so no new connections are needed.
Assuming the 39 corridor is turned into either one-way traffic or entirely car-free, how would you redesign the street grid to ensure that the 80-94% of car owners in Jamaica Plain don't get totally screwed over?
By this, I'm not saying "we're losing parking lots" or "our trip will get slowed down by 2 minutes". Even without being car-centric, I think it's still important in ensuring cars (including those that are not used for commutes) don't need an impractically long detour to get anywhere, and don't become impossible to get out of the alleys altogether.
The entire segment from Hyde Square to Arborway consists of around 30 alleys, whose homes and parked cars aren't going anywhere. The vast majority of them are one-way; some are only connected to South St and nothing else. Few north-south corridors exist as alternatives, particularly to the east around SW Corridor. Few east-west corridors exist to bring them to the north-south ones, almost all of which are 20-25' wide and one-way; putting more traffic onto them also affects the cyclists and pedestrians on these east-west alleys. Plus, even in the "one-way 39" scenario, half of the alleys (15-20) will have to cut through the transitway no matter what -- there's no way around that.
Unlike many other areas, this is not a place where you can tell cars to "just turn around at the next block" or "just use a parallel street". I think there's a much bigger nuance here than simply saying "we shouldn't prioritize cars".
