"Dirty Old Boston"

stick n move said:
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This station was used by bus route 1 until the Mass Pike started construction around 1964, at which time its south entrance was permanently cut off by the Mass Pike. Prior to the Mass Pike, the building housing the station extended south over the RR tracks to Boylston St. I remember riding through it on the trackless trolley until 1961, then the bus after that. It was a really nice and convenient indoor connection to the GL from the No 1 bus, and I don't see any physical reason why it couldn't have been preserved as a station after the Mass Pike construction.
 
Charlie_mta said:
This station was used by bus route 1 until the Mass Pike started construction around 1964, at which time its south entrance was permanently cut off by the Mass Pike. Prior to the Mass Pike, the building housing the station extended south over the RR tracks to Boylston St. I remember riding through it on the trackless trolley until 1961, then the bus after that. It was a really nice and convenient indoor connection to the GL from the No 1 bus, and I don't see any physical reason why it couldn't have been preserved as a station after the Mass Pike construction.
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The south side of the former surface indoor bus station at the Auditorium GL station is shown here, as seen from Boylston Street. It is the low rise windowed building with the shallow sloped roof. Building a bridge with an extended bus station over the Mass Pike, to connect this building with Boylston St, to reactivate the former station footprint wouldn't be a problem. Link to Google streetview here. It could be part of future air rights development over the Pike at this parcel.
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Charlie_mta said:
The south side of the former surface indoor bus station at the Auditorium GL station is shown here, as seen from Boylston Street. It is the low rise windowed building with the shallow sloped roof. Building a bridge with an extended bus station over the Mass Pike, to connect this building with Boylston St, to reactivate the former station footprint wouldn't be a problem. Link to Google streetview here. It could be part of future air rights development over the Pike at this parcel.
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I mean, it hasnt been part of any of the proposed air rights yet, but that does raise a question- why *isn't* it a part of the air rights parcel? I realize that the air rights are being run by MassDOT, but especially here when they're supposed to be building the MBTA a new accessible station? Surely they can coordinate something, especially when the terra firma is so limited.

The same applies to fenway center and the substation & vent structures there - surely they could have been buried in the new development, as they managed to do on parcel 12?
 
Charlie_mta said:
The south side of the former surface indoor bus station at the Auditorium GL station is shown here, as seen from Boylston Street. It is the low rise windowed building with the shallow sloped roof. Building a bridge with an extended bus station over the Mass Pike, to connect this building with Boylston St, to reactivate the former station footprint wouldn't be a problem. Link to Google streetview here. It could be part of future air rights development over the Pike at this parcel.
View attachment 69083
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I like this idea. I wish there were more indoor connections like that. And it still catches me by surprise sometimes when you say you remember these places. Here are couple more pics of the old "Massachusetts Station." Pictures definitely from before your time:

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massachusetts station - Digital Commonwealth Search Results

An online library of photographs, manuscripts, audio recordings, and other materials of historical interest from libraries, museums, archives, and historical societies across Massachusetts.
www.digitalcommonwealth.org www.digitalcommonwealth.org

The downside would be all the extra turns the bus would have to make through busy intersections. It would add a few minutes to an already slow bus. Plus, that would be a lot of investment just for a single bus route, the #1.

I really think something needs to be done to improve the bus stop there on Mass Ave. northbound. We could do a poll, but that's my candidate for "worst MBTA bus stop." It's a bus stop and Green Line transfer next to a convention center and the busiest pedestrian street in the city. The sidewalk is completely inadequate for that volume of people. The sidewalk is regularly blocked. People walk in the street. The awning there isn't actually big enough for people waiting for the bus when it rains. A dedicated busway like you're suggesting sounds good. Alternatively, you could expand the sidewalk. Get ride of the left turn lane onto the Pike. Expand the sidewalk 10 feet and install a bus shelter.
 
ritchiew said:
The downside would be all the extra turns the bus would have to make through busy intersections. It would add a few minutes to an already slow bus. Plus, that would be a lot of investment just for a single bus route, the #1.

I really think something needs to be done to improve the bus stop there on Mass Ave. northbound. We could do a poll, but that's my candidate for "worst MBTA bus stop." It's a bus stop and Green Line transfer next to a convention center and the busiest pedestrian street in the city. The sidewalk is completely inadequate for that volume of people. The sidewalk is regularly blocked. People walk in the street. The awning there isn't actually big enough for people waiting for the bus when it rains. A dedicated busway like you're suggesting sounds good. Alternatively, you could expand the sidewalk. Get ride of the left turn lane onto the Pike. Expand the sidewalk 10 feet and install a bus shelter.
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If you don't make any other changes then yes, there are problems. But what if it's bundled with a bunch of other changes?
  • Pedestrianized Newbury St, so no more conflict with vehicles turning out of Newbury
  • Transitway on Mass Ave, either in the center or on the eastern side to minimize conflicts with vehicles
  • Harvard Pedestrian/Cycle bridge so transit vehicles have their own lanes
  • Mass Ave LRT, the big one.
 
ritchiew said:
What do you mean by this one? like, a whole new bridge parallel to the Mass Ave bridge? Was there ever a proposal for that?
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I'm not sure if it has been proposed but I think it should be. The bike lanes on the Harvard Bridge took it down from 4 to 2 lanes. Move those to a new bridge and then you can use the 2 lanes you just reclaimed for transit.
 
Charlie_mta said:
It was a really nice and convenient indoor connection to the GL from the No 1 bus,
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This is also something I've just been thinking about lately. There used to be sooo many rapid transit stations around Boston that were designed so you could transfer from a trolley/bus to the train, all indoors. Or at least, under a roof. Many of the stations even had ramps to take the trolleys/buses up or town to the train level. Most riders would essentially get a stair-free, cross-platform transfer. At various times: Sullivan, Dudley/Nubian, Forest Hills, Harvard, Broadway, Andrew, Fields Corner, Ashmont, Wood Island, Lechmere, and on and on. I had forgotten about this one you're pointing out, Charlie, at current day Hynes.

There aren't a lot of those kinds of stations that survived. Harvard, Andrew, Forest Hills... um.... oh, Alewife counts. I'm sure people will help me remember others. Even when a station like, say, Fields Corner has a busway, the busway isn't covered. They could put up an awning or something. But instead, that transfer could mean like 20 feet of getting rained on. There's no reason it has to be that way. It's just a small indignity for transit riders.

I wonder under what circumstances it would make sense to build something like the old Sullivan, where buses would bring people all the way up to the rapid transit platforms. Does anyone in the world still do this?

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Unfortunately, the 1960s-1980s era of subway expansion absolutely whiffed on transfer design, as have many of the rebuilds since. (Ashmont and Fields Corner are particularly egregious examples.) It's not just a Boston problem either - every rapid transit project since midcentury seems to have that problem.

Ultimately there needs to be a design standard established - and enforced - to ensure that designs actually work for passengers. It's too easy for those designing stations to claim that it's too expensive, or too difficult for maintenance, or simply to not be thinking about the passenger experience. Having standards of "there must be a weather-protected route from bus to train" and "there must be X square feet of protected waiting area for every Y passengers transferring at the peak hour" would go a long way.
 
It's such a shame that BERy was literally a global pioneer in how to build an efficient, connected urban transport network with high quality transfers and then we completely whiffed it afterwards. Everett, (Old) Sullivan, Dudley, Egleston, Maverick, Fields Corner, Ashmont, and Broadway were all built with high-quality, weather protected transfers.
 
TheRatmeister said:
It's such a shame that BERy was literally a global pioneer in how to build an efficient, connected urban transport network with high quality transfers and then we completely whiffed it afterwards. Everett, (Old) Sullivan, Dudley, Egleston, Maverick, Fields Corner, Ashmont, and Broadway were all built with high-quality, weather protected transfers.
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Very true. BERy was top notch for transit planning and design. I think a big factor in the shift in transit design philosophy in the 1960s was the movement to suburbanize Boston, to make it appear more wide open and single level, more country-like, in an effort to lure people back who had fled to the suburbs. In contrast, the 1920s and 30s were replete with visions of multi-level, dense futuristic cities, but by the 60s that had deflated into a suburbs-in-the-city approach, as in Charles River Park and GC, typical of the "New Boston" developments at at the time. Highways were primary, transit was placed second. Hence the careless obliteration of the indoor bus station at the GL Hynes station when the Mass Pike was plowed through Boston, plus the other transit transfer reductions you and ritchiew noted above. .Hopefully we are moving back to a more urban high-density model for the city and the transit facilities that go with it.
 
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