I-90 Interchange Improvement Project & West Station | Allston

[stick n move]

True, fixed.

Is the new readville yard still happening since they are now building the yard at widette?

 

[BosMaineiac]

True, fixed.

Is the new readville yard still happening since they are now building the yard at widette?

Yes. The Readville facility will be for diesel locomotive repair, much like BET on the north side. With the severing of the grand junction during this project, it looks like a south side diesel facility will be entirely necessary (unfortunately).

Widett is not planned to have the same facilities as the Readville yard.

 

[OldColony]

I don’t really know what the forum sentiment is but I think it would be better to just link non-paywalled articles instead of copying and pasting them. I’m sure Streetsblog could use the clicks/revenue.

Fair use quotes are fine and helpful, along with a link to the full article. Stick n move provided just that, which I appreciate. It encouraged me to click the link and read the full article.

 

[Badusername]

Fair use quotes are fine and helpful, along with a link to the full article. Stick n move provided just that, which I appreciate. It encouraged me to click the link and read the full article.

I agree that’s what we should do, but Stick n move fixed it after the fact. The original comment was a copy of the full article, which I think is fine if there’s a paywall but otherwise not ideal.

 

[Teban54]

Since the article mentioned the Cambridge St bridge will be rebuilt, and that the 4-lane bridge (and 4-lane road north of the Pike) narrows to 2 lanes south of the Pike:

Is there any reason not to have two bus lanes on the rebuilt bridge? This is an important corridor used by the high-frequency 66 bus (and the 64 currently), which already see a lot of congestion on Cambrige St even though a lot of the congestion is from the 2-lane bottleneck.

 

[stick n move]

I agree that’s what we should do, but Stick n move fixed it after the fact. The original comment was a copy of the full article, which I think is fine if there’s a paywall but otherwise not ideal.

It wasnt a copy of the full article, but regardless I agree with the sentiment that it was too much and so its fixed.

 

[OldColony]

I agree that’s what we should do, but Stick n move fixed it after the fact. The original comment was a copy of the full article, which I think is fine if there’s a paywall but otherwise not ideal.

Didn't realize that's what happened, so thanks for the correction. Fair use quotes are fine, but copying a full article is not OK in any case, and particularly if the content is behind a paywall.

 

[Longfellow]

Since the article mentioned the Cambridge St bridge will be rebuilt, and that the 4-lane bridge (and 4-lane road north of the Pike) narrows to 2 lanes south of the Pike:

Is there any reason not to have two bus lanes on the rebuilt bridge? This is an important corridor used by the high-frequency 66 bus (and the 64 currently), which already see a lot of congestion on Cambrige St even though a lot of the congestion is from the 2-lane bottleneck.

I suppose the pertinent question would be, two side running bus lanes on the bridge that merge into that narrow intersection over there probably don't do much for the slowness which is caused by the traffic in the area, and the lack of lanes, etc.. You'd want it to connect to something in my opinion. Unless we feel like we can get bus lanes the length of the stroad portion of cambridge st, in which case extending those lanes to thru the bridge could be worth it.

Either way from the "advocates" that seem to be the most heard on the project they want 2 lanes for sure. There was a guy in one of the Youtube videos recently who talked at length about how unsafe it is at 4 lanes. Not that he's wrong, but that's the direction.

 

[Teban54]

I suppose the pertinent question would be, two side running bus lanes on the bridge that merge into that narrow intersection over there probably don't do much for the slowness which is caused by the traffic in the area, and the lack of lanes, etc.. You'd want it to connect to something in my opinion. Unless we feel like we can get bus lanes the length of the stroad portion of cambridge st, in which case extending those lanes to thru the bridge could be worth it.

Either way from the "advocates" that seem to be the most heard on the project they want 2 lanes for sure. There was a guy in one of the Youtube videos recently who talked at length about how unsafe it is at 4 lanes. Not that he's wrong, but that's the direction.

Yeah, this is the point where I have to disagree with the "advocates", and I wonder if they ever take the 66 bus. For a heavily utilized transit corridors like this, the ideal should be 2 travel lanes, 2 bus lanes and 2 (hopefully protected) bike lanes, for a total of 55-60 ft wide.

The section south of the Pike is currently 48 ft wide, with 2 travel lanes, 2 dedicated bike lanes and street parking. I'd argue that's actually narrower than we'd like - just because that's the case today doesn't mean it's ideal. Plus, in a hypothetical future with enough momentum to remove street parking, the Union Square section would have enough width for shared bus/bike lanes, which does mean 4 vehicle lanes throughout the corridor.

It would be a huge missed opportunity if the bottleneck shifts from the Union Square section to the Pike bridge. The former can be improved in the future; the latter cannot once the replacement bridge is built.

 

[michaelw37]

This is what the South Station Expansion DEIR says about mitigations to the Tower 1 chokepoint.
View attachment 49810
Basically, it's the very slow speeds that lead to a lot of crossing conflicts. If the trains cleared the switches at 25-30 MPH instead of 5-10 MPH, there'd be a lot more flexibility as the switches could cycle faster for differing directions. It's not an unlimited bump, but it stays ahead of Regional Rail traffic growth. And Cove + Broad have more potential for speedups than Tower 1, so the planned speedup interlocking mods to those two take a considerable load off Tower 1.

Beacon Park layover just doesn't provide enough benefit being cut down from a dozen trainsets to 8 (with relentless pressure from Harvard to keep cutting), and with :15 minute service + expresses + a much-expanded expanded Amtrak schedule squeezing through Back Bay and Lansdowne the slots are going to be very constrained for deadhead moves during shift changes. You can't be burning a few TPH through there on strictly deadheads. It pretty much wouldn't work during hours when Amtrak has a slot, meaning you'd be diverting to Widett at certain conflicting times regardless. Had they done the original Widett-less layover plan that spread the expansion capacity around BP and Readville, those conflict slots would have to divert to Readville or the nooks-and-crannies around Southampton that they already use...meaning Tower 1 gets stressed regardless. It was very traffic-limited, and indicative of how much they were grasping at straws for space anywhere they could find it before the centralized Widett parcel fell into their laps. It's definitely a better ops situation now with the current layover plan.

Thank you for this detailed response! I'm curious, what do you make of the argument that the extra layover space would not be needed if the MBTA moved to a frequent regional rail model where trains didn't park during the mid-day, but continued operating at least 30 min frequencies? Or if NSRL got built, so trains ran through to the north side?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Thank you for this detailed response! I'm curious, what do you make of the argument that the extra layover space would not be needed if the MBTA moved to a frequent regional rail model where trains didn't park during the mid-day, but continued operating at least 30 min frequencies? Or if NSRL got built, so trains ran through to the north side?

1) Trains still need to park overnight. More trains than today if there's going to be :30 Regional Rail and :15 Urban Rail service right from 5:00am and in the reverse peak direction. So that means there has to be some sort of substantial central layover somewhere. The Layover Analysis report I linked to calculated those overnight numbers for service growth on the current system, and you just increase it from there when applying Regional and Urban Rail. Again...Beacon Park's constantly shrinking size meant that it wasn't going to host a large enough share of the needed parking spots to satiate the need, meaning some other site needed to step up.

2) Trains will still need to adjust consist sizes from peak to off-peak at shift changes. Some advocates are wedded to this perfect platonic ideal where the consist minimums run all day and never change size due to the intense personal belief that the peak ridership spikes will simply flatten with work-hour flexibility magically appearing overnight, but that's a load of rubbish. There'll always be a substantial 7:00-9:00am and a 4:00-6:00pm ridership spike in Greater Boston, with the heaviest-loading lines needing more cars at peak. That change is going to be even more volatile if we adopt single-level consists with lower seating capacity, so achieving platonic ideals in one realm (flats all the time) negatively impacts achieving platonic ideals in another realm (same-size consists all the time). It'll require pit-stops at the yards to exchange shorter-for-longer consists and vice versa. The yards might not be as full on the off-peak as they are today, but there is still going to be significant shift-change activity systemwide driven by the peaks that requires use of a central layover yard.

3) NSRL cuts down on the central layover usage, but doesn't eliminate it. The :15 Urban Rail zone in particular is very space-constrained for installing outer layovers (problematic for #1 and overnight storage), so at crew shift changes there's going to be ample number of trains going in/out of service at the central terminals just on overall churn, nevermind when size adjustments in #2 come into play. There are plenty of thru-running systems around the world that have central layovers that get a lot of use in spite of the perfect-is-the-enemy-of-good transpo blogosphere contingent saying they shouldn't exist. The best you could say is that if Widett in an NSRL future doesn't need all its trainset berths, they can give over a portion of that rail space for bus storage and manage to consolidate the Albany St. garage for redevelopment. But it's never going to zero-out (especially re: #1).

 

[Koopzilla24]

Yeah, this is the point where I have to disagree with the "advocates", and I wonder if they ever take the 66 bus. For a heavily utilized transit corridors like this, the ideal should be 2 travel lanes, 2 bus lanes and 2 (hopefully protected) bike lanes, for a total of 55-60 ft wide.

The section south of the Pike is currently 48 ft wide, with 2 travel lanes, 2 dedicated bike lanes and street parking. I'd argue that's actually narrower than we'd like - just because that's the case today doesn't mean it's ideal. Plus, in a hypothetical future with enough momentum to remove street parking, the Union Square section would have enough width for shared bus/bike lanes, which does mean 4 vehicle lanes throughout the corridor.

It would be a huge missed opportunity if the bottleneck shifts from the Union Square section to the Pike bridge. The former can be improved in the future; the latter cannot once the replacement bridge is built.

The stretch from Union Sq to Harvard Ave really shouldnt have street parking with all the off street parking in the area as well as non-permit side streets. If anything, this stretch of Cambridge street should've done what Washington St in Roslindale does with peak bus lanes that have full time bike lanes (not that this is a good configuration as is seen on Washington) but would provide at least some time savings.

Full-time bus lanes for the Cambridge St bridge and further eastbound are very dependent on if they significantly improve 64 headways beyond their current 20min peak which isn't in BNRD unfortunately. Following the stop at Linden St, 66 drivers are immediately trying to get into the left lane for the upcoming turn. 64 drivers will get over to the left once they can see if nobody is at N Harvard St and nobody has pulled the stop request to avoid backups from the Mass Pike on-ramp. Obviously this aspect would change with the new street grid but the lanes would still likely be subject to a decent number of cars making right turns and occupying a shared bus/turn lane that 64 drivers would want to merge out of to avoid anyway. This all doesnt matter if the 64 is rerouted to serve West Station as is also proposed. At the BNRD headways of 30min or better, mixed traffic running for the 64 would make more sense for this segment (should def be bus lanes approaching Soldiers Field Rd) and a better use of the lane space would be a wide concrete barrier protected bike lane or grade separation on a widened sidewalk like Brookline Village.

Heading westbound there should be a sidewalk level bike lane extension and peak hours bus lane to Windom St from Soldier's field Then at minimum a shared bike/bus lane until N Harvard where the 66 joins into a dedicated bus lane (with protected/separated bike lane to the side with removal of parking or parking protected to Lincoln) through to the previously mention Union Sq segment bus lanes.

Of course all this is under current Cambridge St traffic patterns as exactly how the new grid and travel patterns will be are unknown especially with the on and off ramps of I-90 being moved to not directly interface with Cambridge St.

 

[Tallguy]

Quincy's cost is scandalous. Quite literally a scandal, as the whole process was re-bid when the initial bids came out insanely high in a way that the bidders could not fully explain. While the costs for these types of projects have unfortunately increased lots, there is no way in hell Quincy Garage is the bellwether for how these will price out in the future. And most garages on the system are not so antiquated as Quincy needing full replacement, so the costs of retrofits to existing facilities will be lower than the outright replacement going on in Quincy.


It's not more garage space needed per bus, it's more buses needed per garage. BEB fleets require much larger spare ratios than diesel or diesel-hybrid fleets because of % of the fleet that will be down at any given hour for charging.

That's why IMC/IRC is the way to go