MBTA Buses & Infrastructure

[Equilibria]

River St and Western Ave are a one-way couplet, with 2 travel lanes on each street. Convert one lane on each of the two streets to a bus-only lane.

Yeah, I actually think Cambridge is doing that on River. I don't know why I said that.

 

[HenryAlan]

Man, I used to take the 73 to Cushing Sq fairly regularly for a good long time. Miss those days (in general, but also it was fun to catch the 73 from Harvard)

I used to work on the block between Belmont and Mt. Auburn streets, just past the split and used either the 71 or 73, whichever one left Harvard Station first. The commute was from Brookline Village, so kind of a trek, but it never seemed to take that long, going D to Red to TT. Just a smooth and easy ride, with convenient transfers.

 

[bigeman312]

I used to work on the block between Belmont and Mt. Auburn streets, just past the split and used either the 71 or 73, whichever one left Harvard Station first. The commute was from Brookline Village, so kind of a trek, but it never seemed to take that long, going D to Red to TT. Just a smooth and easy ride, with convenient transfers.

The 66 was that bad, huh?

 

[DAVE]

How will this affect the overhead wires for the Silver Line? Are they transferring those to BEBs too?

 

[HenryAlan]

The 66 was that bad, huh?

In those days, yes, because it was completely unpredictable. I could wait 5 minutes for it, or I could wait an hour. Whereas the D-Line was usually a 10 minute wait at worst. Now, with all the transit apps, probably the 66 would work better, but it still might have issues with the traffic between Coolidge Corner and Union Square.

 

[Brattle Loop]

How will this affect the overhead wires for the Silver Line? Are they transferring those to BEBs too?

They're getting diesel hybrids that'll run on batteries instead of the wires through the Transitway.

 

[FK4]

In those days, yes, because it was completely unpredictable. I could wait 5 minutes for it, or I could wait an hour. Whereas the D-Line was usually a 10 minute wait at worst. Now, with all the transit apps, probably the 66 would work better, but it still might have issues with the traffic between Coolidge Corner and Union Square.

Yeah, one of the single most positive things that could be done for the whole bus system would be to address--whatever it takes, for gods sake--the bottleneck between Comm Ave and N Beacon, especially the southbound leg. Could be done by banning parking and adding a bus lane, but...

 

[FK4]

So I’ve suggested this a few times in different places on this site that as part of a revitalization of Franklin Park and its main entrance, the T should do something to designate the routes that go there. With the free 28/29 routes the T should figure out a way to emphasize Franklin Park as a destination thru signage and advertisements (“take the free bus to Franklin Park). If they can ever really make both of these routes into BRT, they should name them something more than numbers, too.

 

[737900er]

Has there been any commitment that once the BEBs are purchased for North Cambridge on 71/73 that service will return to the Lower Busway at Harvard or that the BEBs purchased for North Cambridge will have doors on the left?

Looking at the renderings on p24 of the presentation, the buses do not have left-hand doors.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Has there been any commitment that once the BEBs are purchased for North Cambridge on 71/73 that service will return to the Lower Busway at Harvard or that the BEBs purchased for North Cambridge will have doors on the left?

Looking at the renderings on p24 of the presentation, the buses do not have left-hand doors.

They answered "yes" to that as a question in the Feb. 15 community meeting. Presumably this North Cambridge BEB fleet will have lefty doors.

 

[HelloBostonHi]

They answered "yes" to that as a question in the Feb. 15 community meeting. Presumably this North Cambridge BEB fleet will have lefty doors.

I remember it more being a "we're exploring the possibility of left doors during the RFP process" than a full yes. Which was ironic after they spent the first half of the presentation talking about how they were removing trolleybuses to unify the fleet and allow buses to run different routes.

 

[Texasian]

This might be a really dumb question and it may have been asked before. What prevents the MBTA from just reversing the direction of operation in the upper busway? I'm assuming it has something to do with how the portal(s?) interact with the street grid?

 

[The EGE]

Then you have redundant northbound busways, and no southbound.

 

[ceo]

If you reverse the upper busway, you'll have the wrong-side door problem on both levels. Or do you mean reverse the lower one?

 

[Texasian]

If you reverse the upper busway, you'll have the wrong-side door problem on both levels. Or do you mean reverse the lower one?

I meant reverse whichever busway the trolleybuses used to run through.

 

[ceo]

Right now, the 71/73 buses go in the south portal from Mount Auburn St to the upper busway, discharge passengers, go out the north portal, loop around the Common, come back in the north portal to the lower busway, pick up passengers (this is where the wrong-side door issue arises) and head out the south portal. The other buses, e.g. the 77, go in the north portal, discharge in the lower busway (also on the wrong side, but it's less of an issue for discharging), loop around the Bennett St garage and come back in to the upper busway to pick up. If you make the busways both run the same way, all buses will have to both discharge and pick up at the same time, and get to or from their routes through the middle of Harvard Square, which kind of defeats the purpose of a busway.

 

[Charlie_mta]

What is preventing the discharge/pickup of people in the lower busway, using right-hand doors? Many years ago that was allowed in that busway tunnel. Do universal access requirements prevent doing that now?

 

[TrolleybusFoaming]

What is preventing the discharge/pickup of people in the lower busway, using right-hand doors? Many years ago that was allowed in that busway tunnel. Do universal access requirements prevent doing that now?

All other Harvard Busway routes (the 74/75/77/78/96) discharge passengers in the lower busway using their right-hand doors. Although there's a curb cut there, it's probably not great, with buses forced to stop at a certain point on the curb and let passengers off into the wall.

 

[DBM]

By the way, the North Station--Downtown--Seaport BRT corridor proposal is back. First floated in very late 2019--the announcement was linked to upthread here.

So I assume it went into some kind of pandemic hibernation.

Anyway, here it is now--at least, here's BTD inviting people to an open house on it, in late April:

https://www.boston.gov/calendar/north-station-seaport-multimodal-corridor-open-house

Very annoyingly, alleged link to the project page is 404ed--I guess they're trying to draw-out the suspense....

 

[as02143]

All other Harvard Busway routes (the 74/75/77/78/96) discharge passengers in the lower busway using their right-hand doors. Although there's a curb cut there, it's probably not great, with buses forced to stop at a certain point on the curb and let passengers off into the wall.

Those routes alight passengers there. The challenge is that the 71 and 73 board almost all their pax there.