Silver Line to Chelsea

Re: Silver Line to Chelsea (Study Meeting)

Did you look at the key bus route improvement plan to see what you think of the new stop spacing?
 
Re: Silver Line to Chelsea (Study Meeting)

Matthew said:
Did you look at the key bus route improvement plan to see what you think of the new stop spacing?
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You mean the key bus program that was supposed to go into effect Fall 2011?

And now its 2013 and nothing has been done outside of endless meetings?

MBTA: Where even moving a "bus stop" sign takes 2+ years.
 
Re: Silver Line to Chelsea (Study Meeting)

Yes, they did update their site to a 2013 schedule and I managed to find some signs of life in the program. So maybe it will finally happen.
 
Re: Silver Line to Chelsea (Study Meeting)

The proposed stop spacing are better but still too close together. In areas that are only served by buses and not subways, I don't understand why it's necessary to have so many stops. Why is it okay for subway riders to walk half a mile but not bus riders?
 
Re: Silver Line to Chelsea (Study Meeting)

Matthew said:
Did you look at the key bus route improvement plan to see what you think of the new stop spacing?
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Is there a link to this updated plan? TBH, no idea what you're referencing to, but highly interested in seeing it.
 
Re: Silver Line to Chelsea (Study Meeting)

cden4 said:
The proposed stop spacing are better but still too close together. In areas that are only served by buses and not subways, I don't understand why it's necessary to have so many stops. Why is it okay for subway riders to walk half a mile but not bus riders?
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Because old people.

Look at E vs 39. Old people on bus because it gets them closer to their door.
 
Re: Silver Line to Chelsea (Study Meeting)

BostonUrbEx said:
Is there a link to this updated plan? TBH, no idea what you're referencing to, but highly interested in seeing it.
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They went through the 15 key bus routes and eliminated 20% or so of stops

....in theory, no "construction" has started yet, because moving signs takes years of work.

Youll find the route pdfs here with the changes

http://mbta.com/about_the_mbta/t_projects/default.asp?id=19047

Naturally, all the USEFUL changes like 66 straight up harvard and into the tunnel arent happening.
 
Re: Silver Line to Chelsea (Study Meeting)

novitiate said:
Nice job blurring out the destination on the bus.
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If that was a Green Line display, I wouldn't have noticed -- would look just like the real thing from anywhere more than 10 feet away.
 
Re: Silver Line to Chelsea (Study Meeting)

Seems like a good choice for a pilot program but I doubt there will be much of a demand for it. Maybe a BRT from Chelsea and Revere to Airport station would be the most useful section.
 
Re: Silver Line to Chelsea (Study Meeting)

vanshnookenraggen said:
I doubt there will be much of a demand for it.
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Possibly. Probably depends on what the final travel time to South Station is. If it's quick enough, it could poach some North Shore Blue Line riders going to the Seaport or Downtown. It could also be faster for people in East Boston looking for a Red Line connection. Add the general intended audience, and it could be pretty successful. At least, successful enough for a pilot. Maybe more.
 
Re: Silver Line to Chelsea (Study Meeting)

BostonUrbEx said:
If that was a Green Line display, I wouldn't have noticed -- would look just like the real thing from anywhere more than 10 feet away.
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Hey, they probably got a great deal on those surplus Game Boy screens sitting in a warehouse since 1989.
 
Re: Silver Line to Chelsea (Study Meeting)

For only a 3-minute difference in travel times between the street-running and max-build/Urban Ring-recycling dedicated ROW, take the street-running. Those numbers tell us: 1) the Urban Ring ROW in Chelsea-proper on the freight spur and Eastern Route is slow as hell, and 2) the streets west of the bridge just are not congested enough to merit the extra cost.

And it will cost bigtime...those projections for the 2 build alternatives are almost laughably low. If that CTfastrak abomination between Hartford-New Britain is teaching us anything, it's that trying to graft 2 full-width bus lanes onto an active rail mainline and an abandoned 2-track branchline throws up so many unforeseen design obstacles that it's impossible to keep it within cost. That atrocity is costing CT taxpayers 4x its original projections and isn't done bloating yet. Too many speed constraints around rail curves with inadequate road shoulder space to be had, too much land-taking, too many overhead bridges that have to be nuked out of orbit and rebuilt twice as wide for safe passing or signaled on the busway as single-file underneath, and too many grade crossings where the angle and sightlines don't work for a bus that has to brake *and* steer on a non-fixed path.

On this ROW this driveway on Cottage is a busway no-go. No shoulder space, and the building's loading docks are at the far corner of the building leaving trucks backing out blind onto the ROW all day long. This block before Eastern Ave. and the bridge is impossible without land-taking and leveling 1 of these 2 neighboring warehouses. Or having a one-way road between blocks where buses at Cottage wait at a red light for buses at Eastern to pass, and vice versa. Clusterfuck. The Family Dollar store abutting the Broadway bridge would have to get leveled to widen that overpass. And either a building abutting the south side of the Washington St. overpass has to go or the Heard St./Washington intersection has to get cut in order to shiv a busway next to Chelsea CR station. No way to do this without blowing up buildings or doing some sections of signals + single-file buses at the property pinch points under the overpasses a la the design compromises CTfastrak is making. For the price tag the T is quoting here and the scant travel time difference between alternatives, evidence strongly points to going very constrained and very slow through here.


Don't bother. The existing/under-construction Massport haul road nets the biggest time savings. And it does that because it's sitting on what used to be a 4+ track linear Eastie freight yard. All they're doing is scooping out the artificial fill between Brennan St. and the 1A ramps that the DOT dumped in when it demolished the yard to build 1A in the mid-50's, and putting in new retaining walls that re-establish the old property lines of the ex- yard cut. That's why the haul road construction is flying so cheaply under the radar (well...plus Massport is actually competent at running a construction project). Dimensions here are totally different from what's on the other side of the river on the ex- running tracks; the T has a very big sense of false security projecting costs for a Chelsea busway based on costs for the Massport Eastie haul. The land use footprint couldn't be any more different between the two.


Get max usage out of Massport's handiwork and try not to tart up the surface bus stops in Chelsea with any Washington St. excess so that $25M doesn't bloat to $75M...and this is going to be a damn good service that'll be fully underway in a couple years. Press forward with the rest for +3 stinking minutes on the schedules, and we pretty much know how this will play out: 10 years of hype and overpromises, a giant "WTF???" when the price tag gets revised up into 9 figures, residents angry by the land-taking and fucked up traffic patterns the busway design compromises force, another cut-and-run from the state perpetuated on a neighborhood that's already been burned by this before, and heaping mistrust all around. This is "Keep It Simple, Stupid" situation if ever there was one.
 
Re: Silver Line to Chelsea (Study Meeting)

While they're at it, they ought to improve Chelsea station a little. It's the only non-accessible station on the line save for limited-service River Works and Prides Crossing. At the very least, plunk a couple mini-highs down. It was the last station to open before the T started building accessible stations.

But if they can grab a few million somewhere there's no reason not to just go ahead and built full-highs under 1A, where there's enough room under the abutments for three tracks (if you need a clearance track) plus two 12x650 platforms. Can't quite get 800 feet due to Spruce Street, but 650 feet will platform 7 cars.
 
Re: Silver Line to Chelsea (Study Meeting)

The EGE said:
While they're at it, they ought to improve Chelsea station a little. It's the only non-accessible station on the line save for limited-service River Works and Prides Crossing. At the very least, plunk a couple mini-highs down. It was the last station to open before the T started building accessible stations.

But if they can grab a few million somewhere there's no reason not to just go ahead and built full-highs under 1A, where there's enough room under the abutments for three tracks (if you need a clearance track) plus two 12x650 platforms. Can't quite get 800 feet due to Spruce Street, but 650 feet will platform 7 cars.
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The freight clearance route ends at Everett Terminal, so every current Newburyport/Rockport stop can go full-high with exception of an Everett casino infill (we covered all the numerous ways that stop is unbuildable for CR in the Casino thread).

Very little of the co-mingled freight + passenger mileage in this state requires wide-load capacity except for the heavy-duty 24/7 mainlines that ship anything and everything all the time (CSX Albany-Framingham, Pan Am to Maine, P&W, NECR), major interchange and major yard connectors (Framingham Secondary + Franklin Line/Readville, Conn River Line), autorack routes (the currently mothballed terminals at Framingham and Charlestown via Lowell Line), and specialized oversize-load terminals (Everett via Lowell Line). Tanker cars (Fore River/Quincy via Old Colony, that recently KO'd proposal to do ethanol through Chelsea and Eastie), trailer-cube intermodal (that Marine Industrial Park proposal via Fairmount), and all misc. local deliveries (boxcars, hoppers, gondolas, most types of lumber racks) fit just spiffy through full-highs or--in the case of trailer-cube flatcars--in the gap underneath where the platform edge juts out.



Chelsea's got room for an 800-footer if they extend it under the Washington St. overpass. Plenty of space for that and also a ramp up to Washington and/or Broadway to hit the bus transfers on both of those streets. But that just makes a busway that much harder to pull off here without nuking buildings and taking private property. As long as this is going to be a CR stop they never want to flip it to the Spruce-Arlington block. The trains would be blocking Spruce all day long, there'd be a dwell time penalty by not being able to open all doors on those long Newburyport/Rockport consists, and it would miss all the useful buses that are supposed to make this station a key growth site for CR/bus transfers and reverse-commutes. More harm than good, and another reason why Silver-Chelsea does barely any better time on a dedicated busway vs. on-street for the extreme cost and compromised footprint. It doesn't make a lot of sense to do a radical ROW makeover until they're ready to drop a few bil on the Urban Ring where the ridership is going to be overpowering. And even then...hopefully light rail because that requires hardly any land-taking to fit on the existing footprint vs. the swath of destruction required for building any halfway-decent speed busway.
 
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