MBTA Construction Projects

Roxxma said:
Why even bother if it's that far out of the way? That location is about the same distance down the tracks from the casino's main entrance as Sullivan Square is, barring an exclusive busway, gondola, monorail, or pre-2006 Wellington Station style Wonkavator, shuttle buses would sit in the same traffic as everyone else, and it's almost exactly a mile to Chelsea Station. I guess I can see the advantage of having a straight shot down Broadway to the casino, and it is closer to Everett's downtown, but a commuter rail station at Sullivan would connect the Orange Line to both the Newburyport/Rockport and Haverhill lines and serve as a much more useful transit hub for the whole area.
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F-Line to Dudley said:
Any one of the siting alternatives is going to be extremely pricey. At Encore-proper has the steep grade that has to be flattened out and distended with fill, which is going to make maintaining service during construction way harder and more expensive and also breach thorny questions about possible soil contamination under that stretch of trackbed that used to abut the ex-Monsato complex on both sides (which was very expensive to remediate on both the Gateway Center and Encore halves when those parcels were redeveloped). Anywhere on the (mostly) tangent track from the MBTA Everett Shops to the outskirts of Sweetser carries considerable extra cost for relocating the critical Everett Jct. complex of switches away from the would-be platforms. At Sweetser-proper you've got to regrade the track superelevation (though if all trains are stopping there it won't matter much if the superelevation goes away and trains are overall more speed-restricted), re-space the freight lead to create room for platforms, do a lot of drainage work, probably need to relocate some power line towers a few feet like SL3 had to, likely blow-up/rebuild both 1956-built Broadway overpasses because the sidewalks are too hilariously far from ADA-compliant to serve even the general vicinity of any station entrance, and pay more in materials for precision-cut curved platform slabs (though the curve itself would probably be within-tolerance for full-highs).

For what we're paying for renovated/not-new stations in these crazy times I would think all 3 of these new sites would be pushing upper-end 8 figures with tangible blowout potential to $100M. When more overall ridership to these sites' catchment is still going to be heavily tilted towards Orange<->bus in any universe given the innate ridership disparities between very frequent vs. much less-frequent modes, it's going to be hard to justify the pain threshold after the study tallies up the estimates. At any of the sites. Everett has to really want it BAD and be prepared to advocate like hell to overcome the surefire sticker shock for any of these sites. More than just an "Oh, Kraft and Wynn got our back so Y.O.L.O." sentiment, because clearly the private investment is not going to be nearly enough relief at the likely prices.
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@Roxxma the "raw" distance doesnt necessarily matter as much as the psychological distance. Which is to say: walking across a bridge—or any desolate stretch, no matter whether it's desolate and beautiful or desolate and ugly—is always going to feel like a longer walk than walking through a very dense and activated area. If Sweetser could accommodate a station, and if the area through which one would walk to get to the casino was redeveloped (either Rt 99—less likely since I think a lot of those on-street buildings are new—or, better yet, the land behind them) so that there was a very active corridor with shops, malls, hotels, restaurants and it was a nice, warm, enclosed, exciting walk to get from Sweetser to casino, the actual distance would be perceived to be less than it actually is.

Factor in better development of Alford/99 itself and a corridor to the stadium and this would be even better.

Add in Regional Rail and esp NSRL and you have even more justification since you can catch North Shore folks with former and the rest of the region with the latter, all superior to Sullivan.
 
FK4 said:
@Roxxma the "raw" distance doesnt necessarily matter as much as the psychological distance. Which is to say: walking across a bridge—or any desolate stretch, no matter whether it's desolate and beautiful or desolate and ugly—is always going to feel like a longer walk than walking through a very dense and activated area. If Sweetser could accommodate a station, and if the area through which one would walk to get to the casino was redeveloped (either Rt 99—less likely since I think a lot of those on-street buildings are new—or, better yet, the land behind them) so that there was a very active corridor with shops, malls, hotels, restaurants and it was a nice, warm, enclosed, exciting walk to get from Sweetser to casino, the actual distance would be perceived to be less than it actually is.
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Piggy-backing off this to share some work we've been doing at the MPO on how heat influences perceived distance for people walking: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264275124006498

www.ctps.org

NO-HEAT Project | Boston Region MPO

Home » Our Work NO-HEAT Project — Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) Action Grant
www.ctps.org www.ctps.org

Everett has been one of the key partners on this work with a particular focus on the area south of Rt 16
 
So is air rights development dead then and they are just proceeding with station upgrades? Wouldn't be terribly sad if the off center rectangles are no more
 
KCasiglio said:
Piggy-backing off this to share some work we've been doing at the MPO on how heat influences perceived distance for people walking: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264275124006498

www.ctps.org

NO-HEAT Project | Boston Region MPO

Home » Our Work NO-HEAT Project — Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) Action Grant
www.ctps.org www.ctps.org

Everett has been one of the key partners on this work with a particular focus on the area south of Rt 16
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We talked about similar concepts somewhere way back on the green line reconfiguration thread. I was saying that in the event we had a new F Line to Roxbury, and a new back bay tunnel under Stuart, that continued onto South Station, that such an intersection would work well as being called “Tufts” even if the new station were under that modernist church that covers up the old portals. The point is that underground subway connections can be quite far, but if the space that connects them is contained in some way, people will treat it as a single entity. You see it in New York and London, where some stations require huge amounts of walking underground, even tho they are technically “one station.”
 
FK4 said:
@Roxxma the "raw" distance doesnt necessarily matter as much as the psychological distance. Which is to say: walking across a bridge—or any desolate stretch, no matter whether it's desolate and beautiful or desolate and ugly—is always going to feel like a longer walk than walking through a very dense and activated area. If Sweetser could accommodate a station, and if the area through which one would walk to get to the casino was redeveloped (either Rt 99—less likely since I think a lot of those on-street buildings are new—or, better yet, the land behind them) so that there was a very active corridor with shops, malls, hotels, restaurants and it was a nice, warm, enclosed, exciting walk to get from Sweetser to casino, the actual distance would be perceived to be less than it actually is.

Factor in better development of Alford/99 itself and a corridor to the stadium and this would be even better.

Add in Regional Rail and esp NSRL and you have even more justification since you can catch North Shore folks with former and the rest of the region with the latter, all superior to Sullivan.
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Also, shuttle busses to/from the Revs games to a Sweetser Circle station, using reserved bus lanes on Alford Street, would work well IMO.
 
The POMO station was a big deal back when that neighborhood struggled, it filled a yawning hole in the streetscape that isn't noticeable now.
 
Apparently this is what it looked like pre fire in 1899

1769108972556.jpeg

Link

Then this was there before the pomo station.

1973
1769109043360.jpeg

Link
 
Anyone know what's going on with the Ruggles improvement project? Over the weekend I happened to be there, and saw a sign saying the Columbus Street entrance would be closed for two years, starting imminently.
 
KCasiglio said:
What is the pitch for this? Would they eliminate Porter?
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"We have no short-term memory of the last several studies that showed almost no ridership for an Alewife Commuter Rail station that's laughably far askew from the Red Line station, so we're just going to light some more money on fire to study again until we forget about those results too in a few years."

Pretty much.
 
I think there's a potential market specifically because it wouldn't be colocated with the Red Line station - a station with access from Alewife Brook Parkway and Wheeler (both sides of the tracks) could serve the south side of the tracks rather better. There's been a fair bit of development flanking the tracks, and Fresh Pond Mall is begging for TOD. I don't think now is the time to build the station - it will be much more valuable with regional rail and especially NSRL, and will slow the line down less once it's electrified. But maybe now is the time to start thinking about it.
 
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