Crazy Transit Pitches

czsz said:
While we're in the realm of crazy anyway we might as well keep/build new trolley tracks for the B and C in the old central tunnel up to Government Center to permit through service...
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Kenmore Loop is there because that was exactly the BERy plan in 1932:
-- Central Subway gets heavy-railed with a subway extension up Comm Ave., Brighton Ave. running Blue-style cars. Eventually peeling off onto North Beacon to meet the Worcester Line and go to Riverside.
-- C would stay trolley and loop at Kenmore on the outer tracks. Kenmore's station design is exactly the same as Maverick's was before the 1952 Revere extension: heavy rail on one set of tracks, trolley incline and loop on the other.
-- Huntington Ave. subway (built 1940 to Northeastern) eventually goes to Brookline Village, takes over the then-commuter rail Riverside Line, and both flanks of heavy-rail lines out of downtown meet at Riverside Yard. Of course, back then they were also thinking Copley would get a flying junction instead of that infernal at-grade bottleneck they ultimately penny-pinched.
-- Watertown would be served by a Red Line extension from Harvard under Mt. Auburn St. to an East Watertown station at the Shaw's building (Shaw's is actually an old, half-rebuilt trolley carhouse and still has some ancient streetcar vestiges and buried track in the basement loading area. Watertown Branch and Lexington Branch would get a Mattapan-style high speed line going from H2O Sq. to Alewife/Arlington Heights with the heavy rail transfer in the middle.


Too bad the Great Depression forced BERy to scale back so severely, because this is almost exactly what we've been aiming for on a lot of the fantasy maps in this thread.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
-- Huntington Ave. subway (built 1940 to Northeastern) eventually goes to Brookline Village, takes over the then-commuter rail Riverside Line, and both flanks of heavy-rail lines out of downtown meet at Riverside Yard.
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That doesn't surprise me, since at the time the current Green Line and Framingham/Worcester Lines were part of a circuit commuter railway and people were used to trains running the loop.
 
Matthew said:
What becomes of Arborway in that scenario?
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There were plenty of streetcar lines still running around on the surface then. The 66, which crossed the C. Every current route out of Forest Hills and Dudley. A couple other overlapping routes through JP Center and Brookline Village that used parts of the same E trackage. There would've been 2 or 3 places to turn trolleys running on South Huntington as a feeder from a heavy rail line. I don't know if they envisioned it going to buses eventually, but it fit the heavy-rail trunks + streetcar nodes setup they were evolving the system into.
 
I found this on Flickr...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/carfreejim/4312293667/

4312293667_b1c1e1dde0_z.jpg


Boston "T" Expansion proposal - 1995

Here was my dream transit system for Boston when I lived there from 1992 to 2003. no luck... seems like china will surpass us in quality transportaton real soon.
Comments and faves

carfreejim (27 months ago)

I did this 15 years ago and I wish I could find the original hand drawn version that fits over the city map so If I ever got inspired I could make another version more geographically accurate. Here is some of the reasons from memory why I added the following lines:

COPPER LINE is one of my favorites, it circles the city so you dont have to always go through downtown to get anywhere. goes to UMass, JFK library, Expo, zoo, JP, Brookline, Allston (with a stop at Annas Taquoria on Harvard st), harvard Sq, Sullivan Sq, East Boston and Logan Airport (where they need to replace the car rental diesel buses with a people mover)

YELLOW LINE is an innerloop connects south boston waterfront park, sprawl bigbox mall (southbay plaza) southend, run under traffic-clogged MassAve to MIT and landmark theater (called it tech square) connect to copperline.

PINK LINE is an underground version of the new Silver Bus Line introduced a few years ago. the Pink line connects Airport to North Station, South Station (the big dig was supposed to connect N and S stations with rail before Gov. Weld messed it up) down washington street in southend, dudley square, JP.

SILVER LINE could be called the design line, connects design center with world trade and expo center and L-street gym.

Extended Blue line a few blocks from Bowdoin to connect with redline at Charles making it much easier for Cambridge to get to airport.

Extended Green line from lechmere to copper line
 
I love that there's a stop called "Anna's Taqueria," although for the most part, I don't think much of this map. It adds too much congestion to some inner zones, places rail in some locations that would be incredibly expensive to build, and fails to extend much service to outlying neighborhoods. I realize the Copper Line handles some of that last issue, but it doesn't enlarge the service area, which is something that I think also needs to happen.
 
My eyes exploded. I hereby decree that all fantasy maps may only have 45 degree angles if taking an angular approach, and must use standard curve radii if using a fluid approach.
 
I just thought it was interesting because of the fact that it's a proposal from 1995. Interesting to see where we think the T should go today compared to the outlook in the 90s.

And yeah, the disgusting WMATA stylizing made me almost throw up.
 
Yes, although if you look at the routing itself, it may be a bit novel. Though it might be intended to go up Washington Street, it looks like it's actually routed a little more to the east, possibly going up Harrison Ave. (particularly since the Pink Line doesn't intersect the Orange Line but rather goes straight to South Station). While I don't think that's really the best route, at least it's something different.

I think the ideas in the map suffer from planning it from the perspective of a making a "fantasy T diagram"; stuff looks good on the diagram, but when you mentally plot it geographically, it looks awful.

I remember some of the fantasy maps I drew as a (very little) kid; I could draw the spider map by heart, and did so basically every day. Eventually I decided to change it up a bit and extend some lines. I remember one line (a Brown Line) went up Dartmouth Street from the South End into Back Bay, went all the way up Dartmouth Street until it got to Storrow Memorial, at which point it split into two branches, one going east, the other west, one going until Charles Street and the other going until Mass Ave, I believe. Ha, and I drew in a gazillion stops on the Back Bay section, because looking at the system map when I was that little (I was, like 4 or 5), it looked like there were a gazillion streets in Back Bay!

The only other things that come to mind about my old extension maps are that I very firmly believed that the proposed Blue-Red Connector should instead go all the way to the Hatch Shell (but only that far!) and that I once designed a Yellow Line that hit all the islands in Boston Harbor! (Like Thompson Island, Long Island, all of those.) I think I recognized even then that such a line was sadly not feasible...
 
A+ for a stop named "Anna's Taqueria".

F for a stop named "Tea Party" (I know it was 1995, but still.)
 
Commuting Boston Student said:
Yes, I know.

Why does that matter?
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Because some would read it as an endorsement, particularly since the name is so charged now.

But politics aside, it's also not a very good name, in my opinion. The Boston Tea Party Museum is not a well-known landmark, and if the museum closed (which I believe it did a few years ago, to reopen this June), the name would have to be changed or just look odd. Better to name the station "Seaport Boulevard" or "Oliver" (after the cross street on the Downtown side). Or even just move it north a bit, and call it "Rowes Wharf."

Tangentially, do people have any sort of "naming philosophies" for new or renamed stations? For example, here is mine:
-names should be concise and, ideally, short
-subway station names should not actually have "station" in them, unless they are at an actual railroad station, like South Station or Back Bay Station
-stations that are named after streets should not have "street" in their name (so, "Green," not "Green Street," or "Morton," not "Morton Street"); ideally, the same goes for stations named after squares
-exception to the above: if it is a streetcar or BRT stop, in which case "Street" or "Square" should be included. Aesthetics aside, if done consistently and widespread, it would help people know what to expect when they are going to a station/stop for the first time
-I feel less strongly about including labels such as "Avenue" or "Road," but my preference is also for those not to be included, unless to do so would create problematic ambiguities (ie. the aforementioned "Tea Party" stop should be renamed "Seaport Boulevard," and not just "Seaport," because it wouldn't actually be in the Seaport)
-piggybacking off of that, I like stops to be named after neighborhoods or localities whenever they are located near the center of them (which is why "Seaport" doesn't work for me for the "Tea Party" example)
-unless completely impossible, I really dislike naming stations after buildings or institutions, particularly those that may undergo name changes (see "NE/Tufts Medical Center")
-if you must name something after an institution, again, try to make it short and concise (ie. go with "Library" rather than "Boston Public Library"); this style seems to be more in line with historical, BERy-era names that I've seen, although that may just be me
-lastly, I like to reuse historical names whenever possible; so if service were ever to be restored on the Saugus line, I would love to see those old names reused, even if in slightly different locations (assuming, of course, that doing so wouldn't misidentify neighborhoods)

Obviously, this is just the set of rules that I use for myself when planning out new stations, and I don't mean to disparage anyone else's name ideas. These rules simply reflect my own sense of aesthetics. :)
 
Maybe in order to strike a balance, we could rename South Station "Occupy Station".
 
Riverside said:
Because some would read it as an endorsement, particularly since the name is so charged now.
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The point I was trying to subtly make without being confrontational: people who would equate a subway station name to a political endorsement are wrong and frankly quite stupid. Don't take them into accoun, just go ahead and let them make fools of themselves.

That having been said, I agree with some of your naming conventions, but I reorder them in a different set of priorities:

  1. If the station is near a landmark institution (i.e. Aquarium, Northeastern, Tufts), name it after that institution
  2. If the station is near a non-institution landmark (i.e. parks, memorials, the Esplanade, Castle Island), name it after that landmark
  3. If the station is in or near the center of a district, name it after that district (and include District, i.e. Theater District, Financial District)
  4. If the station is near the center of a neighborhood or similarly sized region (i.e. Downtown Crossing), name it after that neighborhood
  5. If the station is in or near a named square, name it after that square
  6. Name the station after a street only if no other name can reasonably be applied to it

I arranged the hierarchy this way so that, in my opinion, the maximum amount of useful information is contained within the station name.

A street name - and especially in a town like Boston where (for the most part - the major exceptions that come to mind are South Boston / SPID and the Back Bay) the roads are based on cow paths from the 1800s and lack any real naming convention - gives you little to no information about your actual location, especially when factoring in the relative length of some roads. This goes double for people who haven't lived in Boston for a long time.

BostonUrbEx said:
Maybe in order to strike a balance, we could rename South Station "Occupy Station".
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Nah, that doesn't quite work.

Now, Occupy Park Street on the other hand...
 
Commuting Boston Student said:
The point I was trying to subtly make without being confrontational: people who would equate a subway station name to a political endorsement are wrong and frankly quite stupid. Don't take them into accoun, just go ahead and let them make fools of themselves.

That having been said, I agree with some of your naming conventions, but I reorder them in a different set of priorities:

  1. If the station is near a landmark institution (i.e. Aquarium, Northeastern, Tufts), name it after that institution
  2. If the station is near a non-institution landmark (i.e. parks, memorials, the Esplanade, Castle Island), name it after that landmark
  3. If the station is in or near the center of a district, name it after that district (and include District, i.e. Theater District, Financial District)
  4. If the station is near the center of a neighborhood or similarly sized region (i.e. Downtown Crossing), name it after that neighborhood
  5. If the station is in or near a named square, name it after that square
  6. Name the station after a street only if no other name can reasonably be applied to it

I arranged the hierarchy this way so that, in my opinion, the maximum amount of useful information is contained within the station name.

A street name - and especially in a town like Boston where (for the most part - the major exceptions that come to mind are South Boston / SPID and the Back Bay) the roads are based on cow paths from the 1800s and lack any real naming convention - gives you little to no information about your actual location, especially when factoring in the relative length of some roads. This goes double for people who haven't lived in Boston for a long time.
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Hmm, yeah, I like your hierarchy of naming conventions. I think I actually agree with most of it; it's just that, in the course of planning my own "crazy transit pitches" (some of which I will eventually get around to posting), I've found that many of my stations just end up in places where there really is nothing but the street to identify it pithily.

And as for maximum amount of useful information in a station name... ehn, I dunno. I feel like information is widely available enough now, through internet directions before you go out traveling, smartphone use while you're traveling, and (pretty decent) maps available in stations, that the station name itself doesn't need to be the primary source of information.

I mean, look at some of the station names we have now: State, Park, Boylston, Massachusetts Ave... I mean, unless you've been told that your destination is two blocks south of State Street station, on Congress Street, the name "State" doesn't help you know that that station is closest to Post Office Square.

And let's say you needed to go to 700 Boylston Street, and you don't know Boston (and didn't know how to use Google Maps). You might go to Boylston Station and walk down the street! Of course, by the time you get to 700, you'll have passed Arlington and Copley and you'll feel pretty silly.

My point is that most station names in Boston are basically placeholders. You could rename many of them, and they would have equally useful or useless names. So you might as well make the placeholder as short and memorable as possible.

But I do agree with your point about the unhelpfulness of stations named after streets; I just feel that there often isn't a better alternative.

And your point about "Tea Party" is well taken, though I still think that the name, politics aside, is poorly chosen, odd at best. But I apologize for being obtuse about your subtle efforts. :)

On the note of crazy pitches, however, I must say that I've always liked the idea of linking the city's 4 major transit terminals (Logan, South Station, North Station and Back Bay), and our friend from Flickr does attempt to [partially] do that... though not the way I would do it. I would link Logan directly to South Station, and then run services from South Station to Back Bay and North Station respectively. It's interesting to think, though, that the TWT wasn't open to general traffic when this map was made.
 
Riverside said:
And as for maximum amount of useful information in a station name... ehn, I dunno. I feel like information is widely available enough now, through internet directions before you go out traveling, smartphone use while you're traveling, and (pretty decent) maps available in stations, that the station name itself doesn't need to be the primary source of information.

I mean, look at some of the station names we have now: State, Park, Boylston, Massachusetts Ave... I mean, unless you've been told that your destination is two blocks south of State Street station, on Congress Street, the name "State" doesn't help you know that that station is closest to Post Office Square.

And let's say you needed to go to 700 Boylston Street, and you don't know Boston (and didn't know how to use Google Maps). You might go to Boylston Station and walk down the street! Of course, by the time you get to 700, you'll have passed Arlington and Copley and you'll feel pretty silly.

My point is that most station names in Boston are basically placeholders. You could rename many of them, and they would have equally useful or useless names. So you might as well make the placeholder as short and memorable as possible.

But I do agree with your point about the unhelpfulness of stations named after streets; I just feel that there often isn't a better alternative.

And your point about "Tea Party" is well taken, though I still think that the name, politics aside, is poorly chosen, odd at best. But I apologize for being obtuse about your subtle efforts. :)

On the note of crazy pitches, however, I must say that I've always liked the idea of linking the city's 4 major transit terminals (Logan, South Station, North Station and Back Bay), and our friend from Flickr does attempt to [partially] do that... though not the way I would do it. I would link Logan directly to South Station, and then run services from South Station to Back Bay and North Station respectively. It's interesting to think, though, that the TWT wasn't open to general traffic when this map was made.
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It was actually the maps that are in the station right now that I was thinking of when I laid out that hierarchy, since, as you say, the difference is mostly academic when factoring internet/smartphone access.

For people who don't have smartphones or were poor planners or just like looking at the map, the information contained within a station name is more useful - and especially so when dealing with the non-geographically-accurate system map.

You are absolutely correct on there sometimes being no better alternative, though. (Though, let me say for the record that if it was up to me, Park Street would immediately be renamed Boston Common effective immediately.)

No hard feelings about the point. :)

As for linking the four major transit hubs... I would argue that Back Bay doesn't quite count, since it's already linked to North Station via Orange Line and through service between Back Bay and South Station is a trivial thing.

Connecting North Station, South Station and the Airport in a triangle - that'd be the best course to take, I think. I came very close to drafting an AirTrain Boston-Logan that would replace the Silver Bus with an El, but I'm certain it's impossible to get clearance to build a bridge approximately where the Ted Williams Tunnel is right now, and I don't like my chances much better on a bridge over the Chelsea River. (To say nothing of what the public's reaction to that might be...)
 
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