Recent content by JeffDowntown

Harvard would have a huge conniption about any pedestrian zone that blocks shuttle access from their Cambridge Campus to the Allston Campus via the Anderson Bridge. They run an extensive shuttle schedule between the campuses. They tend to throw their weight around on these types of topics.

Yes, they made that claim on March 6, when they finished the work on the Back Bay to Forest Hills section. "New, modern signals are now fully installed across the Orange Line." I guess "fully" and "across" don't have the standard meaning in MBTA-speak.

10 years ago when I was on the Chinatown Masterplan Committee. we were advocating for relocating the roads on either sides of the Turnpike Pit (Herald and Marginal) to become a boulevard over the Pike, with park land. This frees up terra firma footprints along the pike that could anchor some...

To do this right, it is more like a 20 mile mega project, but still seems more effective than trying to patchwork 70 miles of complex shoreline inside the harbor area. The harbor portion of the dike is pretty complex to allow for tidal flushing of the harbor, and large ship traffic, but the...

I think for a major international airport you are going to need more forms of access than just a transit line (but seawall and transit are clearly important).

With the kinds of storm surges anticipated, the surge is not going to just go through Rumney Marsh or Hingham. Those surges will breach and likely wipe out low-lying parts of Winthrop and Hull -- creating clear paths into the harbor. Unless you seriously reinforce Winthrop and Hull you have a...

Your harbor barrier mega project only works if you also fortify the coast north and south of your mega dike. Otherwise you just get an end run flood situation that fills the harbor from either side of the barrier, and still floods all of the susceptible areas.

They are not done yet with the signal upgrades. Shutdown in late August will complete most of the missing sections (I believe).

Storage of empty 2 ton metal transportation containers is prime use for a waterfront location, so I hear from Americans.

I think the food trucks are suffering from the same issue that lunch spots in Boston Proper are also being hit by -- lost foot traffic. In office is no longer guaranteed M-F; more likely T, W, Th with W as the heaviest day. The foot traffic, particularly on M and F is noticeable reduced, hence...

Copley Square hosts events on something like 100 days of the year, 80 to 90 farmers market days (2x per week from mid-May to late November) plus about 15 other major events. The beautiful green grass you show was often torn up muddy tracks from vehicles hauling event equipment. It was costing...

I think a traffic study would find that Berkeley is absolutely slammed already because it is the access route to Storrow Drive. We really need to reduce the number of vehicles trying to move through the area to likely make this work. If you end up with severe backups on Stuart and Berkeley...

I suspect someone in Cambridge would need to come up with pretty attractive financing or other support to change the calculations. Certainly doable, but it would take real money. Realize that all the reallocation work is also further design costs (more sunk costs).

Someone at DivCo has done the long term discounted cashflow analysis, and determined that waiting for future lab and market rate housing is worth more than cashing in now on really hard to finance affordable residential.

The Metropolitan in Chinatown did a pretty good job of this. It is a full block development that does not feel like a monolythic development.