Crazy Transit Pitches

[winstonoboogie]

There's that whole park. 93N is only the width of Atlantic Ave, so the only issue is the 90W-93N ramp, which I believe is pretty deep. The thing also doesn't have to be completely underground, it could just be in a cut. It just has to be deep enough so the Atlantic Ave ramps can get over it.

The highway tunnel is under the park as well. There are emergency exit staircases from the tunnels coming up into the lower bus terminal lobby and there is another staircase at the northern end of the park. The tunnels heading north from the Southeast Expressway and East from the pike come together and merge under Atlantic at that point.

Edit:
Streetview image fom tunnel merge
https://www.google.com/maps/preview...m4!1e1!3m2!1sV6P6vVH3dUWgANGm11baMQ!2e0?hl=en

 

[davem]

The highway tunnel is under the park as well. There are emergency exit staircases from the tunnels coming up into the lower bus terminal lobby and there is another staircase at the northern end of the park. The tunnels heading north from the Southeast Expressway and East from the pike come together and merge under Atlantic at that point.

It's not that I don't believe you, but are you really saying there isn't 10 feet down you can dig? As far as I can tell from crappy sources like streetview, the ramps are at least 20' down. A tunnel just below the surface or an open cut (perhaps covered with a raised platform or walkway from SS-the bus terminal) should fit. Emergency exits can be rerouted.

And note that if the Atlantic Ave ramps weren't an issue, this thing could just stay on the surface, using the former bus loop as the portal.

 

[winstonoboogie]

It's not that I don't believe you, but are you really saying there isn't 10 feet down you can dig? As far as I can tell from crappy sources like streetview, the ramps are at least 20' down.

There are emergency exit stairwells, supports for the bus terminal building, all in the way. The MBTA gave brief consideration to building a portal back when Romney was governor and they were first starting to consider backing away from building Silver Line Phase III. Their analysis found there was no space on Atlantic for a portal because of the location of the highway tunnels. They also found there was no room for a portal on Essex until after a tunnel crossed west under the I-93 southbound (original Dewey Sq) tunnel, and even that would put a portal right in the middle of the narrow section of Essex in Chinatown.

 

[George_Apley]

Unless something changed...

Just based my comment off of what F-Line wrote [URL="http://www.archboston.org/community/showpost.php?p=183986&postcount=60]here[/URL]. May well be wrong. He'd have to clarify what the doc he referred to was.

 

[Equilibria]

This proposal for the green line seems almost more reasonable than crazy. If the Fenway center development moves forward (which most of us agree it won't) what's the likelihood that this actually gets put on the table for discussion. The potential service down Washington and to the seaport through SS would be huge, at least in my mind. I would love to see this whole interchange happen.

FWIW, to handle game day/event traffic, I like c_combat's idea for BLX, at least to Kenmore.

Bear in mind that as reasonable as the GL Tufts station might seem, it depends not only on the tunnels from Boylston and to Washington St. that feed it directly, but on the lead-in tunnels to the East and West. Ok, you don't have to build both of those at first... extend the tunnel Boylston though to Washington and leave it at the Dudley GL as Phase I, but to really make this worth it, you need either the BBY tunnel or the SS tunnel, both of which are a mile long and not exactly easy to build themselves.

The whole package probably still costs the billion or so that SL3 would have, just with way more impact. Nonetheless, the MBTA has, in its entire history, build ONE downtown subway tunnel, and that one was tacked onto the Big Dig and built through the TD Garden's basement parking garage. Maybe you can count SLW, but that was through a bunch of empty parking lots.

All in all, it's still pretty crazy.

 

[davem]

^I would say leave the dudley connection for last, since it involves installing tracks from dudley up.

SS to Tufts can be done halfway at grade I believe, which saves a bunch of cash.

Tufts to BB is *somewhat* easy, as it mostly involves moving the Pikes retaining wall 30' to the north, installing tracks, and covering it with a street. The hard part is from the existing Huntington subway to Back Bay, although the actual back bay station has a clear path through the garage thanks to the pike onramp.

Of course the main bemefit is that it would drastically alter the throughput of the green and silver lines, and create a bunch of new routes. Much better bang for the buck compared to the SL phase 3 BS

 

[Equilibria]

^I would say leave the dudley connection for last, since it involves installing tracks from dudley up.

SS to Tufts can be done halfway at grade I believe, which saves a bunch of cash.

Tufts to BB is *somewhat* easy, as it mostly involves moving the Pikes retaining wall 30' to the north, installing tracks, and covering it with a street. The hard part is from the existing Huntington subway to Back Bay, although the actual back bay station has a clear path through the garage thanks to the pike onramp.

Of course the main bemefit is that it would drastically alter the throughput of the green and silver lines, and create a bunch of new routes. Much better bang for the buck compared to the SL phase 3 BS

I'm not arguing with either of those points, just that even this may be too much. There's just no precedent for this kind of project in Downtown Boston in 75 years (obviously I'm not counting the Big Dig as similar).

 

[bobthebuilder]

I'm not arguing with either of those points, just that even this may be too much. There's just no precedent for this kind of project in Downtown Boston in 75 years (obviously I'm not counting the Big Dig as similar).

The fact that this statement is true (in terms of mass transit infrastructure) is why something borderline crazy needs to be done. If small investments and improvements were made through the years, things would be different. However this city is growing, it is getting more dense and it is getting less car dependent, so we need big transportation spending. As some have mentioned before, the improvements that should be focused on first are in signaling/switching and replacing the ancient fleet. After that, big money needs to be spent in infrastructure.

I understand, it's still no easy undertaking, and would require massive funding and will undoubtedly run into a bunch of unexpected issues; but from everything I've seen so far, this general routing has seemed to have the least amount of conflicts and the most benefit.

 

[393b40]

The fact that this statement is true (in terms of mass transit infrastructure) is why something borderline crazy needs to be done. If small investments and improvements were made through the years, things would be different. However this city is growing, it is getting more dense and it is getting less car dependent, so we need big transportation spending. As some have mentioned before, the improvements that should be focused on first are in signaling/switching and replacing the ancient fleet. After that, big money needs to be spent in infrastructure.

Modern Boston is too small-thinking for doing something ambitious like this. Or maybe it's just the cynical New Englander in me that doesn't believe the State and Boston could ever pull such a project off nowadays.

 

[bobthebuilder]

Modern Boston is too small-thinking for doing something ambitious like this. Or maybe it's just the cynical New Englander in me that doesn't believe the State and Boston could ever pull such a project off nowadays.

I agree with this somewhat, I think there are great ideas out there, but they are met with crippling NIMBY-ism by people who fail to see the big picture.

 

[George_Apley]

^ So Boston is too provincially crippled by local politics to ever do anything ambitious that might ease our transit woes? Because if we can't, Boston is going to stagnate fairly quickly in the coming decades.

 

[JeffDowntown]

^ So Boston is too provincially crippled by local politics to ever do anything ambitious that might ease our transit woes? Because if we can't, Boston is going to stagnate fairly quickly in the coming decades.

Considering the fact that Boston did pull off the Big Dig (whatever you think of the execution, it is there!), I think this is a pretty jaded view of what Boston and Massachusetts are capable of.

I really believe that the tide is turning concerning automobile dependence. There are wealthy voters in the city who really do use the T (and more every year!). The status quo will not be allowed to prevail.

 

[393b40]

So Boston is too provincially crippled by local politics to ever do anything ambitious that might ease our transit woes? Because if we can't, Boston is going to stagnate fairly quickly in the coming decades.

Boston will have similar problems to what Silicon Valley is going to have: Both cities will price themselves into slow and prolonged decline, but unlike Silicon Valley - Boston has to compete with the financial and growing technical giant that is NYC practically next door. VC money is flowing into Boston and driving the economy because they can exploit cheap (relatively speaking) and extremely talented young college and higher-degree graduates thanks to the central and metro regions insanely good education infrastructure.

Some VC money is more rooted here than other money; for example Bio-med VC's will probably continue to pick Boston because the talent needed for those companies is:

1) Hard to find usually
2) Requires lab infrastructure
3) Found easily at Harvard, MIT, Mass General etc etc.

But other VC money, for example, software-focused VC's are riding a bubble that is going to pop eventually (or at least the social application madness, which has fueled software's insane growth since 2000 - and can rely on 20 something developers because they don't need domain expertise to design and implement this particular class of software)

Software companies though can be located anywhere. As a software engineer I can work remotely 90+% of the time. It may make sense for a software company to keep a small presence in a city so it can be close to customers or funding, but we don't need huge offices anymore housing tens, hundreds or thousands of developers. Software companies are going to wake up eventually and basically say:
(1) We don't need a dedicated physical location in the city for our developers.
(2) Therefore, we do not need to pay SV, Boston or NYC wages because our workforce can be geographically diverse.

This is the danger in having a one or two-trick economy. Boston needs to get a maintain-cost or get cheaper and also diversify it's industry if it wants to survive the 21st century.

/Thread Derailment

 

[Matthew]

In any mature, reasonably built-out system the benefit/cost ratio of new infrastructure is going to be lower than it was in the past, and give less impetus to proponents.

The Big Dig did show that we were able to do megaprojects, at terrifying expense, and the benefit/cost ratio suffered accordingly.

 

[Matthew]

(1) We don't need a dedicated physical location in the city for our developers.
(2) Therefore, we do not need to pay SV, Boston or NYC wages because our workforce can be geographically diverse.

You say this, and I get your logic, but companies are moving back into San Francisco anyway. I think there's still a compelling basis for physical proximity.

 

[George_Apley]

Considering the fact that Boston did pull off the Big Dig (whatever you think of the execution, it is there!), I think this is a pretty jaded view of what Boston and Massachusetts are capable of.

I really believe that the tide is turning concerning automobile dependence. There are wealthy voters in the city who really do use the T (and more every year!). The status quo will not be allowed to prevail.

I agree. The state government just needs to come around to the new realities. As car ownership declines, and builders start putting up more buildings without parking, the legislature needs to simultaneously invest in transit. Becoming less car centric doesn't do us much good if public transit is too crippled to pick up the slack.

 

[393b40]

You say this, and I get your logic, but companies are moving back into San Francisco anyway. I think there's still a compelling basis for physical proximity.

Good point. Cities do have some intangibles; for example - finding talent does not become just a matter of dealing with HR and recruiters. Your employees can recruit people through everyday social interactions. SV is kind of special in that regard, why that is true - I am not sure. But, talent in SV moves around a lot because companies poach like nobodies business - Google, Apple, Facebook and a couple other companies just got in a lot of trouble for trying to prevent this. There is also just a metric ton of raw, young talent in and around SV.

Basically what I am saying is I think we're all waiting for some highly respected, media-darling A-list CEO to try out the fully or almost-fully remote idea and make it wildly successful. Businesses are about the bottom-line usually so if they can make a big cut in staffing expenses that could be millions of dollars saved that can go towards other things which generate more money for the company.

 

[George_Apley]

For what it's worth:

I just made a new thread for Boston's future in light of urbanism, economics and public policy here

 

[Matthew]

I agree. The state government just needs to come around to the new realities. As car ownership declines, and builders start putting up more buildings without parking, the legislature needs to simultaneously invest in transit. Becoming less car centric doesn't do us much good if public transit is too crippled to pick up the slack.

Minor nit: there isn't a choice to be made "between transit and parking." Minimum parking requirements don't make up for lack of transit. If you took everyone off the MBTA and put them in cars then the entire street and highway network would be completely overwhelmed. The result would be that many people would stop trying to travel and probably leave the region entirely, as the economy shrank, until a new equilibrium was reached. And putting up more parking lots won't change that. You would just be able to store more cars, not necessarily move them around.

 

[George_Apley]

^ I don't disagree. My feeling though, is that if the economy is making moves to reduce car-dependency and simultaneous investment in transit does not happen in the medium-term then the network will likewise be overwhelmed in a similar way, choking the city's economy off until a new balance is achieved.