General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

I've wondered why the T doesnt use Day and Dover between Davis and Mass Ave like the historical 96 street car did. Probably too challenging now with both sides with parked cars. Seems like on regular rather than emergency shuttle days tho it wouldn't be that challenging to restrict one side of parking for shuttle operations.
 
Teban54 said:
Minor note: During Green Line D branch shutdowns, shuttle buses typically use Beacon St, Park Dr and Brookline Ave, so that they can stop right at Fenway station on Park Dr.

As for Alewife, I wonder if it's better to run shuttle buses from Porter instead of Davis. However, that will be confusing operationally.
Click to expand...

Got it, tweaked the map slightly.

So a Brookline Village - Kenmore /Lansdowne Station rail replacement shuttle bus route is slightly longer, with a deviation to Beacon St. to serve Fenway Station, instead of remaining on Brookline Ave. directly to Kenmore. It is faster for a passenger to board a Route 60 bus to Kenmore, instead of taking a Highland Branch rail replacement bus; that boards at Rt 60's bus stop at Longwood & Brookline Ave.; that subsitutes the D's Longwood stop.

It goes to show how running rail replacement shuttle buses is very difficult to do for railway ROW routes that do not follow street grid patterns. The more direct street routing you choose, the more further distance the front door to a subway and railway station is from the rail replacement shuttle bus stop. Given rail replacement shuttle buses need high frequency to mimic subway frequencies and capacities, an indirect routing on the street grid is a huge penalty for maintaining frequency. The most direct street route is usually served by a more direct and ordinary bus route. It's a problem when running buses overnight as a night bus network, how do we deal with the subway and rail routes with no bus route?

Only the outer portions of the B, C, and E branches are busable immediately. The E branch is subsituted with the 39 bus. The B and C branches just need equivalent bus stops, outside of the 57 on Commonwealth Ave. The shuttle buses for these 2 branches follow the most direct route, so there is minimal delay, and a rail replacement bus can operate to and from Kenmore Station to Cleveland Circle and Boston College in a reasonable time and speed. They can also be given a bus route no# for their surface portions west of Kenmore, say, 56 and 53 for the B and C. The western portions of the B and the C Branches are the hidden portions of the bus network, having been the only 2 routes to not be axed from the historical streetcar network, and therefore displayed on subway maps and omitted from bus maps.

This might go into the Crazy Transit Pitches/Infrastructure sandbox thread, but if a hypothectical Highland Branch operated as a rapid transit subway line into South Station via I-90, rail replacement shuttle buses would need to serve Lansdowne Station, instead of Kenmore Station. 2 crazy ideas: can rail replacement shuttle buses could remain on Beacon St. and stop there? Or if is it better to stay on Brookline Ave., and have Fenway passengers board shuttle buses a bit ways away from the subway stop? It's an interesting idea, if we convert another rail ROW into a subway line, then that's another route that needs rail replacement shuttle bus routing onto the street grid.
 
How do well-run transit agencies deal with this type of problem? If this exact thing happened in Tokyo, for example, how long would there be diversions and how would they handle the situation?
 
jklo said:
It's pretty clear that the real purpose of the law has nothing to do with TOD or even the MBTA. That Boston wasn't included in it should have been an obvious clue.
Click to expand...
What difference does it make whether Boston is included? It already 100% meets the requirements.
 
chrisbrat said:
this almost certainly isn't the appropriate forum, but i dunno where else is for this
Click to expand...
Also, holy shit, that damage is even more extensive than I originally thought based on the first few pictures I saw. And the piece of concrete is apparently still on the roof?
 
Red line diversion occurring on the north side with some mention of the slow zones. However, it is a bit alarming that the north (socioeconomically wealthy) side is getting addressed first and is mostly running near track speed while the state of tracks in the south side is clearly much more dire.

1675693474200.png
 
HenryAlan said:
What difference does it make whether Boston is included? It already 100% meets the requirements.
Click to expand...

Does it? I'm sure there have been plenty of projects rejected by the BRA because of density.
 
jklo said:
Does it? I'm sure there have been plenty of projects rejected by the BRA because of density.
Click to expand...
The density requirement of this law is 15 units per acre within half a mile of a T station. Show me a T station in Boston that doesn't meet that requirement.
 
HenryAlan said:
The density requirement of this law is 15 units per acre within half a mile of a T station. Show me a T station in Boston that doesn't meet that requirement.
Click to expand...
I'll give a cheeky answer for a bit of fun: I think the Drydock Ave @ Black Falcon Ave SL2 stop doesn't meet that requirement (if we look at half-mile walksheds; if we measure purely by crow-fly distance, the units over in City Point check the box). But I think this is a case where the exception proves the rule.
 
Does it? I'm sure there have been plenty of projects rejected by the BRA because of density.
Click to expand...

As written, the law requires a community to have at least one district that meets the 15/units and 0.5 mi criteria. Boston clearly meets this, as there is at least one district that meets the requirement.
 
chrisbrat said:
this almost certainly isn't the appropriate forum, but i dunno where else is for this
Click to expand...
I think this is a good thread for this: Very multi modal operational crisis for the MBTA: A Car in a garage damages a station, suspending train service and requiring bus adaptation.
 
fatnoah said:
As written, the law requires a community to have at least one district that meets the 15/units and 0.5 mi criteria. Boston clearly meets this, as there is at least one district that meets the requirement.
Click to expand...

If that was really the case, then why bother excluding Boston then. And Boston really should be held to a higher standard anyway.
 
jklo said:
If that was really the case, then why bother excluding Boston then. And Boston really should be held to a higher standard anyway.
Click to expand...
Construction in Boston (and likely Cambridge) has the highest cost per square foot of anywhere in the T service area.
If a goal of the policy is to maximize the T accessible housing available, then construction outside of Boston yields more units per $ spent. (And likely more units that approach some level of affordability without heavy subsidies.)
 
JeffDowntown said:
Construction in Boston (and likely Cambridge) has the highest cost per square foot of anywhere in the T service area.
If a goal of the policy is to maximize the T accessible housing available, then construction outside of Boston yields more units per $ spent. (And likely more units that approach some level of affordability without heavy subsidies.)
Click to expand...

But little to no demand at market rates. New construction might be slightly cheaper but is still very expensive in the burbs, esp when you factor in parking is non-negotiable.
 
jklo said:
If that was really the case, then why bother excluding Boston then. And Boston really should be held to a higher standard anyway.
Click to expand...
Inefficiency should be enough of an answer. Boston is known to be more than compliant, so this law doesn't address an issue that exists in Boston. What exactly would be the point of such a law existing that de facto can't be applied?
 
Wasn't the entire point of this law to try to spur TOD in suburbs where T stations exist, as Boston has been shouldering the brunt of new housing built for the region? As already pointed out - pretty much every T stop in Boston (and I would guess Cambridge/Somerville/etc) would already meet this criteria. I am fairly certain this was to explicitly target the burbs and beyond.
 
Last edited:
Riverside like the end of the D line? That's an 11 mile detour from Alewife (google maps - about 7.5 miles as the crow flies). I can't imagine that's a normal substitute for Alewife vs and number of CR stops, the new Tufts green line stop or w/e.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top