Crazy Transit Pitches

Fantasy: The state establishes tolls in the CAT to fund MBTA capital projects. Reality: You can't toll 93 because of federal interstate funding. Compromise: establish high speed tolls at the end of each CAT offramp... technically, that then tolls the city streets, not the highway. Sort of a limited congestion charge. Thoughts?
 
Shepard said:
Fantasy: The state establishes tolls in the CAT to fund MBTA capital projects. Reality: You can't toll 93 because of federal interstate funding. Compromise: establish high speed tolls at the end of each CAT offramp... technically, that then tolls the city streets, not the highway. Sort of a limited congestion charge. Thoughts?
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Reality: Placing a toll at the end of every off ramp where traffic has no choice but to go through it constitutes a toll on the CAT. This wouldn't hold water.

It doesn't matter, since the long-standing policy of the federal government against tolling interstates is changing.

Tolling the CAT is doable, potentially within 10 years, and a wholly reasonable course of action to take.
 
Not if you're using I-93 to get from Quincy to Manchester... isnt' that what interstates are for?
 
cozzyd said:
Not if you're using I-93 to get from Quincy to Manchester... isnt' that what interstates are for?
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Well, yes and no. I-95 to I-93 goes to Manchester too -- the long way around.

There should be a price to pay to use the short route through the dense urban core that cost $16 B to build.
 
If there's going to be any tolls on 93, it needs to pay for fixing the SE Expressway with full-regulation breakdown lanes...and every bridge replacement that has to go along with such an undertaking. I'm all for finding more MBTA funding sources, but if tolls are going to pay for something the road that toll is on goes first on the list. And here--so long as MassDOT doesn't try to cram more HOV capacity into it--there is a very worthy project to fund in making the worst expressway in the state more resilient to disruption by giving it the full 128 treatment on both its left and right shoulders.

^--- This can pay for the Savin Hill reconfig of the Red Line and Old Colony tracks (bury Braintree under surface Ashmont at the pinch point and double-track commuter rail), which is an expensive fucker in itself. So wouldn't be completely without beneficial MBTA angle despite being 93-centric.
 
Not sure if this the correct forum (I'm new) but I've been thinking about traffic flow around Haymarket and it seems like it would be improved by making Hanover and North St. each one way. North St would run one-way inbound to Congress and Hanover would run out from Congress towards the Surface Road. A one-way North St. would allow for three lanes in to Congress instead of the current two, allow for a dedicated right turn & left turn only lanes with a middle lane that could go either direction along with expanded sidewalks/bikelanes. Hanover St could then carry any outbound traffic to the Greenway and Sudbury on days when Haymarket is in session. I don't see North St. outbound to the greenway being a popular route and any traffic that really needs to get from Congress to the Greenway could use Milk to cut over. Is this a crazy idea?
 
BPLange7, welcome. Your idea might not be crazy enough for this thread ;)

Theres another thread for more realistic pitches.
 
Also, doesn't sound like a 'transit pitch'.

But to consider it: doesn't Boston have enough in the way of one way streets? They're not very friendly to local business.
 
Can we get back bay canals even if climate change doesn't happen? because I really want Back Bay canals.
 
Well, the pike canyon will probably become a canal on its own, so we just need to add some feeders.
 
The "cityscaping" ideas are just silly urban-design think pieces.

The accepted solution to rising sea levels is a storm surge barrier such as something like the St Petersburg (Russia) Dam or the barrier across Venice (Italy)

usually proposals either focus on an "inner" barrier (protecting "downtown" like a barrier @ the Verrazzano would for NYC, or, in Boston's case an "inner" one for Boston-Winthrop (only)

SEA__1275665801_6760.jpg


And usually an "outer" altnerative. For NYC it would go from the Rockaways (Kennedy Airport) to Red Hook (NJ). For Boston, a logical outer barrier would go from Nahant to Hull. (discussed in the Sea Level Rise video thread)

In most of these, you have the option of building a road or circumferential transit or trails across the top/bottom of the barrier
 
So West Medford is a major problem to increasing service on the Lowell Line - eventually you start getting enough Lowell locals and Haverhill expresses and Downeasters and maybe NH service that 60 will be a constant mess.

So my proposal: demolish the Dunkies, the liquor store, and take the one tiny double-decker off Circuit. Built a curved overpass that doesn't ruin the little downtown area. Playstead turns down the former 60 alignment to Canal Street.

J1d2eOn.png
 
Why not raise the rail up onto a viaduct? Is the grade too sharp because of the Mystic River Bridge?
 
The EGE said:
So West Medford is a major problem to increasing service on the Lowell Line - eventually you start getting enough Lowell locals and Haverhill expresses and Downeasters and maybe NH service that 60 will be a constant mess.

So my proposal: demolish the Dunkies, the liquor store, and take the one tiny double-decker off Circuit. Built a curved overpass that doesn't ruin the little downtown area. Playstead turns down the former 60 alignment to Canal Street.

J1d2eOn.png
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That's gonna make a fine mess of the place. It's a square with 5 converging bus routes, dense-ish sidewalk retail, and a fire station. I really don't think you can disrupt the street grid like that, engineering-possible or not. How would such a similar thing fly in [insert square here] in Somerville instead? I doubt it...it would get destroyed during community input, and for defensible reasons.


I think the only way grade separation works is:

1) Sink the tracks into a pretty steep dip coming off the Mystic Bridge. 1400 ft. of running room off the bridge before it has to level out under Route 60. 1.5 or 1.7% grade on the Mystic side, closer to 1% on the outbound side. 1.5% gets you to 21 ft. depth by the time it has to level out, adequate 100-year clearances for double-stack freight with no electrification or autoracks with electrification. 1.7% gets you 23'8" depth, future-proofed for double-stack freight under electrification. Note that this is better than the following commuter rail grades: Wellington tunnel on Haverhill/Reading (3.5%), Neponset bridge on the Old Colony (3%), Mystic bridge on the Eastern Route (1.6% Somerville side / 2% Everett side).

2) Bridge over Canal St. with equal roadway rise to the tracks' fall by that point in the incline.

3) Retaining walls poured to the ROW property lines so it is 4-track width and can take a GLX extension someday from Route 16.

4) After crossing under Route 60, widen out the cut a little bit more so you can do ramps down to the platform. Island platform probably works best. Regs are for 5' minimum unobstructed platform width (add extra cushion from there for benches, signage, etc.), although with an island having center signage and shelter supports and whatnot that probably means 10-12' width to meet the unobstructed regs. Cut has to future-proof for a rapid transit station displacing a commuter rail station, so make sure width is such that it can fit 2 thru commuter rail tracks and 2 island station GLX (or HRT) tracks at 6 cars' length. Which probably means you can do an 800 ft. full-high island commuter rail platform with 1 freight + Downeaster passing track off to the side, and still have a little slack space along the walls. Have the cut narrow the slack space to the north as it passes the 6-car threshold for whenever that becomes an RT station. If/when the station flips modes you'll be able to lop off some platform length and return that to just track space.

4a) Let's assume that the ugly-ass Rite Aid is history and there's a little bit of intersection realignment and air rights to tap. Let's also assume that if something clearance-wise in the cut needs adjustment there's play room for a 1-2 ft. 'hump' in Route 60 and the aligned intersections, which could nuke the Dunkies if it has to (I'm gonna take a wild guess that Dunkies is too-prime a property and will get redeveloped).

5) Can be constructed by doing one single track shifted to far west side of ROW (aligned with this maintenance-of-way siding), temp mini-high platform in the Rite Aid parking lot, and soil stabilization to dig two-thirds of the trench. Then shift single-track into the trench (may need to close station entirely or do a 1-car mini-high out by Playstead Park). Finish the other wall of the trench, pour platform, install second + passing track. No service disruptions except for the temp platforms, no freight disruptions.


That preserves and improves the square, eliminates the crossing, and future-proofs it for all height and width clearances for: tallest/widest freight under diesel, tallest/widest freight under electrification, GLX rapid transit extension displacing commuter rail station, and HRT conversion of GLX + extension displacing commuter rail station.

Pricey. But it's a 100-year solution you don't get by warping the street grid or building an ugly-ass ultrawide viaduct blotting out the sun over the square.
 
Reading through this document I found while surfing the web, and was curious what they meant by the bolded parts.
For the purpose of organizing the proposals, the metropolitan
area was divided into corridors. In the urban core area, there
were two main proposals contained in both documents: a connection
between the Blue Line and the Green Line via a new tunnel under
Beacon Hill and the Boston Common linking Bowdoin station to the
subway under Boylston Street, and a circumferential transit line
running around the downtown area from South Station to Sullivan
Square in Charlestown. In addition, the Transportation Plan listed
other possible improvements including a rail connection between
North Station and South Station and the restoration and
revitalization of South Station.
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http://ntl.bts.gov/DOCS/boston.html

This paper is from 1993, and Bowdoin's been there since (1913?). Are they talking about the MGH extension and it's just poorly worded, or what?
 
No this was a separate proposal from the 1940s where the Green Line would be converted to heavy rail and connected to the Blue Line. I forget where it would have run out to and on which line but when Kenmore Sq station and the Huntington Ave Subway were both built they were built to be converted to heavy rail later on.

Edit: Ok so I read the section in question and it seems this is actually from the early 1970s when the MBTA was brand new. Still, this proposal is probably a hold over from the MTA plan from 1945.

If you keep on digging you get to the PMT 1978 plan which includes such plans as the Green Line D-E Brookline Village Connector. Interestingly, much of the other plans for expansion were carried out (Red Line extensions, Orange Line extensions, Green Line extensions). The Blue Line still gets no love!
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
No this was a separate proposal from the 1940s where the Green Line would be converted to heavy rail and connected to the Blue Line. I forget where it would have run out to and on which line but when Kenmore Sq station and the Huntington Ave Subway were both built they were built to be converted to heavy rail later on.

Edit: Ok so I read the section in question and it seems this is actually from the early 1970s when the MBTA was brand new. Still, this proposal is probably a hold over from the MTA plan from 1945.

If you keep on digging you get to the PMT 1978 plan which includes such plans as the Green Line D-E Brookline Village Connector. Interestingly, much of the other plans for expansion were carried out (Red Line extensions, Orange Line extensions, Green Line extensions). The Blue Line still gets no love!
Click to expand...

Re-microwaved proposal from the 1945 BTC map. The pre- Mass Pike plan for a rapid transit line to Riverside along the B&A would've been HRT with some radical surgery on the Central Subway at Park and Boylston to turn them into HRT + LRT superstations. The D was always going to be trolley; Riverside was just a superstation where both modes met on separate flanks. This downtown surgery (which presumably they figured they could get away with because urban renewal was right around the corner and would've cleanroomed all the building impacts) would've accommodated both modes side-by-side somehow. Although they didn't really napkin-sketch it out.

The 1970's proposals (obviously without the B&A option) might've provided some basic descriptions on what the possibilities were, but it never got studied out in any halway-useful detail.


There wasn't a whole lot of push for full-on conversion of the Green Line to HRT after the early-1930's. The reason BERy was provisioning for that was because the railroads were at their absolute peak prowess in the 1910's and 20's. They had bought the NYNH&H's very minor Shawmut and Mattapan branches for the Red Line extension south of Andrew, but figured that was all they were gonna get because every other desirable rapid transit expansion corridor was along an overstuffed RR mainline making some monopolist money hand-over-fist. They figured that closely-paralleling subways and Els were the only way to get where they needed to go. Hence, the Everett extension of the Orange Line being put on-alignment for an El of Main St. Malden instead of along the Western Route tracks. And Kenmore being provisioned for a subway extension up the A Line alignment and North Beacon, paralleling the B&A a couple blocks south.

Once the Depression hit and the profit party was over for the railroads, it was a moot point. The financial weaklings like the Boston, Revere Beach & Lynn (Blue Line) were imploding to abandonment. Load relief lines like the Highland Branch, Needham Branch, and West Roxbury-Islington (half- Orange candidate, half- paved-over for Route 1) were easy buy-low opportunities. And the RR's started converting their 4+ track mainlines to bi-directional signaling so they could deal with the cash crunch and wartime steel shortage on 2 tracks instead of 4...which made the B&A, NEC, Western Route, Old Colony, Lowell Line, and Revere/Lynn part of the Eastern Route fungible co-tenant opportunities.

So even if the non-reservation surface streetcar routes were all eventually doomed, once they had choices in the matter for RR ROW's the Green Line was too ham-fisted a retrofit to bother radically rebooting. It probably would've evolved exactly how it did when the D opened: as a modern interurban with just a couple legacy reservation branches too high-traffic to get rid of, not as a full-blown metro. It would've gone to Woburn like on the 1945 map and they would've aggressively purged the E past Northeastern and maybe the B between Packards and Chestnut Hill Ave. in lieu of just C to BC and an A truncated at Union Sq. But otherwise, pretty much what we've got now + GLX Medford.
 
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