Green Line Extension to Medford & Union Sq

Kind of amusing that they held it in an incomplete state for so long before opening. They still haven’t installed the FVMs.
 
bigpicture7 said:
Updated plans filed for park space beneath the new GL viaduct.

Design Update - Open Space and Multi‐Use Path
View attachment 61708
^From above link

As part of special permit:
www.cambridgema.gov

PB-175

Special Permit Application
www.cambridgema.gov www.cambridgema.gov
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No photos, but this is under construction now. The ground is being dug up and I saw the construction workers having a meeting this morning at the site.
 
bigpicture7 said:
I only support this if there's a provision for further northward extension to Fairbanks
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The people of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wyoming are very hurt by your neglect of their transit needs!

Also, will some of the cars short turn at Park and Government Center, or will all run through to GLX?
 
JeffDowntown said:
The people of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wyoming are very hurt by your neglect of their transit needs!
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Well if they cared so much, they could have showed up at the community meeting

JeffDowntown said:
Also, will some of the cars short turn at Park and Government Center, or will all run through to GLX?
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Yes, in order to sustain reasonable service levels in the urban core, some will short turn. Nonetheless, we can still achieve acceptable 19-day headways on the Anchorage branch if we do -- but that will balloon to an unacceptable 21-day headway if the much-needed Fairbanks extension is assumed, so we'll have to halt this project and study it for another 7 years before proceeding, during which time all transit equipment assumed for the study will have become obsolete, so we will again have to restart the study at that point. Further questions can be directed to the next community meeting in April of 2047, conveniently scheduled concurrently with the next Red-Blue connector community meeting.
 
ceo said:
The obvious next step. (source: https://bsky.app/profile/shoshana.bsky.social/post/3lszoikl3fs22)
View attachment 64499
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Actually, that's not far off from the electric interurban network of the late 1800s that spanned vast distances between cities. Here's the 1899 one for Massachusetts. The midwest had similar vast networks.

1899_Massachusetts_electric_railways.jpg
 
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Its insane that in the 1800s small towns like upton or milford had electrified rail and today places like lynn, readville, west roxbury do not. Upton was voted the most boring town in massachusetts lol, but hey in the 1800’s they could ride the lightning.
 
stick n move said:
Its insane that in the 1800s small towns like upton or milford had electrified rail and today places like lynn, readville, west roxbury do not. Upton was voted the most boring town in massachusetts lol, but hey in the 1800’s they could ride the lightning.
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By 1920 Lynn had direct trolley service to Scollay Square via the Eastern Massachusetts Street Railway, where you could then transfer to the BERy system.
 
I walked over the Broadway bridge in Ball Square today and noticed that all of the utilities that were routed over the temporary utility bridge have been removed. I recall that the plan, after the project was rebid, was to keep the utilities on that bridge permanently for cost savings, but it looks like that didn't end up happening. Anyone know if there's a plan to remove the bridge eventually?
 
themissinglink said:
When can we expect to see ridership stats for the GLX stations? I'm surprised we haven't heard more about ridership by now, as it's been almost three years since the extension fully opened.
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I saw crews doing manual ridership counts at Gilman a few months back, but I don't know when that data might be released. Manual counts are, as far as I can tell, the only way to get reliable ridership estimates given that the vast majority of riders do not "validate" their fares (for which I blame the T for making the validation process extremely cumbersome) and the fact that only the Type 9s, which are banned from the E because of the street-running sections, have automatic passenger counters.
 
Ruairi said:
I'd be curious about the amount of people using the path, seems very popular especially at commuter times.
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The city of Somerville's Mobility division has recently started publishing annual KPIs/key performance indicators - worth a look with some nice stats on various transportation modes, safety trends, and an overview of the city's various transportation projects. The 2023 KPI presentation had this slide with weekly counts on the Community Path @ Cedar St, showing a bump in traffic following the CPX opening. 2023 peak traffic was close to 30k users/week. Data source was a EcoVisio counter, same company as the one on Broadway near Kendall. However, it's hard to separate out this effect from seasonal variation since the graph doesn't show data from other years for comparison. There was also no mention of this counter in the 2024 KPI presentation so maybe this was temporary?

Another source is Somerville's annual bike/ped counts of AM/PM peak commute hour traffic, viewable in this interactive map (note: beware that the viewer displays averages rather than sums if you're looking to combine AM+PM or multiple locations). These counts are done manually with the help of volunteers and the exact timing/day of week can be a bit variable, and the viewer does not separate out counts along the path vs. crossing the path (though the raw data does), so take with a grain of salt. The School St/Medford St intersection saw peak hour user counts exceed 700 in 2023 after the CPX opened, which is an increase of ~400-500, though it went back down after the detour by the high school ended. The crossing by Somerville Junction Park had nearly 900 users in the PM peak hour last year. There were also usage bumps in the already well-used older section of the path closer to Davis Sq, though not as drastic.

I do wish there was a count location further east, on the more barebones section of the path - this would give a better sense of bike commuter traffic vs. neighbors taking a short walk/ride on their local section.

And finally, there was this bike counter that was temporarily deployed on the path near Lexington Park in July 2024 (7/17-7/23) in an attempt to capture any mode shift related to the Red Line shutdown (here's a blog post about it). Looks like ~1,500-1,600 bikes/day during that time.
 
pfd12 said:
The city of Somerville's Mobility division has recently started publishing annual KPIs/key performance indicators - worth a look with some nice stats on various transportation modes, safety trends, and an overview of the city's various transportation projects. The 2023 KPI presentation had this slide with weekly counts on the Community Path @ Cedar St, showing a bump in traffic following the CPX opening. 2023 peak traffic was close to 30k users/week. Data source was a EcoVisio counter, same company as the one on Broadway near Kendall. However, it's hard to separate out this effect from seasonal variation since the graph doesn't show data from other years for comparison. There was also no mention of this counter in the 2024 KPI presentation so maybe this was temporary?

Another source is Somerville's annual bike/ped counts of AM/PM peak commute hour traffic, viewable in this interactive map (note: beware that the viewer displays averages rather than sums if you're looking to combine AM+PM or multiple locations). These counts are done manually with the help of volunteers and the exact timing/day of week can be a bit variable, and the viewer does not separate out counts along the path vs. crossing the path (though the raw data does), so take with a grain of salt. The School St/Medford St intersection saw peak hour user counts exceed 700 in 2023 after the CPX opened, which is an increase of ~400-500, though it went back down after the detour by the high school ended. The crossing by Somerville Junction Park had nearly 900 users in the PM peak hour last year. There were also usage bumps in the already well-used older section of the path closer to Davis Sq, though not as drastic.

I do wish there was a count location further east, on the more barebones section of the path - this would give a better sense of bike commuter traffic vs. neighbors taking a short walk/ride on their local section.

And finally, there was this bike counter that was temporarily deployed on the path near Lexington Park in July 2024 (7/17-7/23) in an attempt to capture any mode shift related to the Red Line shutdown (here's a blog post about it). Looks like ~1,500-1,600 bikes/day during that time.
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wow, thanks for the awesome post!
 
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