Hear me out on this: break up the Silver Line.
SL1: going inbound, turn left on to Congress St rather than today's ridiculous loop. Proceed to South Station in physically separated lanes (a la Columbus Ave), optionally with an intermediate stop at A St. Going outbound, do a jog over to Haul Road and get on the Pike right away.
View attachment 47849
SL2: reroute out of the Transitway on to an extended center-running Congress St busway. Extend from South Station down Essex to Chinatown + Boylston. (Alternatively, bypass South Station and go to State via Post Office Sq.)
View attachment 47850
SL3: keep in Transitway, with frequencies maximized by devoting all electric/battery running stock to this service (with SLW short-turns).
(Images drawn from
here, though I'm arguing for something slightly different there.)
Is this set of proposals assuming the $100 mil budget and thus no GLR? Then yeah, I do think something along the lines (plus a Summer St BRT system) is probably among the best budget plans.
However, I think in the most realistic real-world scenario, arguing for Congress St bus lanes when Summer St just went through a redesign to include them (albeit
imperfectly) is an uphill battle, even though it would dramatically improve SL1.
SL1 runs direct from South Station to Logan Airport Terminals along Congress St, no intermediate stops. All Silver Line branding is dropped for this route in favor of Logan Express branding with free MBTA transfers.
Yeah, the idea of making SL1 a pseudo SS-Logan express is a good one despite not being new. But, for one thing, I'm concerned about using Logan Express branding for it. People, especially tourists and occasional transit users
(including suburbians), are unlikely to treat Logan Express as proper rapid transit, especially if they have a different fare structure and/or are not properly advertised on T maps (at least one of them seems highly likely). The fact that most other Logan Express are long-distance suburban routes certainly doesn't make it any better.
For another thing, if you're running on Congress St anyway, making a stop at where
@Riverside indicated wouldn't hurt.
SL2 continues to run from South Station to Design Center through the Transitway with significantly increased frequencies. Buses would be rerouted along Harbor St rather than Northern Ave, with Harbor being restricted to bus-only use. This route would be fully converted to LRT in the future.
Does anyone know why SL2 was routed via Northern Ave (instead of Harbor St) in the first place? That seems like an odd decision. Perhaps it's to provide fast bidirectional service to the
Northern Ave / Tide St intersection, which borders a bunch of companies and factories to the north?
Regardless, I speculate you might be able to get by without bus lanes over there, as traffic probably isn't too bad.
A new <15 min headway bus route between JFK/UMass and Boylston, with the bus infrastructure you described to better connect Seaport and downtown with more local stops. This would run alongside the T7 on a Congress St busway.
Are you saying something like this?
That's actually a
very interesting and relevant proposal. One issue I always had with the (T)7
(despite its popularity, especially with commuters) is that it serves too little of South Boston. In addition to connecting to Seaport, the route above also gives a greater part of Southie a one-seat ride to South Station and Financial District, which almost guarantees popularity -- South Boston is
the most downtown-centric neighborhood anywhere in Boston.
I'd terminate the route at Andrew, though. You're unlikely to get many commuter rail riders from JFK/UMass, as they'll probably just ride to South Station.
Of course you could always go even deeper but at that point cost has scaled even more drastically and completely beyond any benefits the project would bring.
You can't go deeper if you want to connect to the existing SL platforms at South Station. The SL Phase III proposal already did almost the maximum grade between South Station and Chinatown, in order to have a double stacked SL Chinatown station
(platforms on two different levels due to limited ROW width) below OL Chinatown.