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I lived in the Alewife area for a year or so, in one of those big apartment complexes. I moved away (back to S Medford), partially because the area felt weird. A friend referred to the area once as "the uncanny valley", which had me in stitches, because it's true. ABP was certainly a factor but...

as in, the sign's existence in Kenmore, or the view of the sign from Waltham?

Yeah I phrased my comment as curiosity (3) because I had low confidence in its value, but seeing that there is some interest, I would say that: surface connectors are an end-state (2) only if Boston is able to adopt an Amsterdam-like attitude towards autos eventually pedestrianize enough midtown...

Riffing off of that, could the initial build just be center-running BRT, with the busses turning around at/near Back Bay in lieu of hooking into the Huntington GL? The Nubian-bound SLs could also be merged into the network. You could imagine something like this: * SL0 is Back Bay to (City...

Potentially stupid question, but how farfetched would it be to shut down some streets to traffic in order to connect the GL to the Transitway via the surface? I know that the running consensus here is to connect the Huntington subway, not the Boylston subway, to the Transitway. But let's...

That plan is... shockingly awful. What's the best way to oppose this as a regular person (who doesn't live in Boston proper)? Write to our state rep? Complain at a public meeting?

I believe that a cable tram is distinct from modern LRT in that the former is propelled by "grabbing onto" an externally-powered cable that is running underneath the street, whereas the latter has an engine on board. In that sense, cable trams and gondolas are both "cable cars" whereas LRT is...

That first picture is charming, and also not completely detached from reality. Makes me think "looking north up the Fort Point channel if the USPS facility were redeveloped in the style of the Leather District".

The BPDA finalized their Seaport Strategic plan yesterday, which recommends an Essex St tunnel (pg 24) but conveniently leaves out any specifics on where that tunnel should surface: (That whole document is interesting, although IMO it reads as a collection of reasonable-to-crazy pitches rather...

Going back even further, all the post-big-dig Seaport redevelopment was guided by a SBW Public Realm Plan. BPDA's document finder sucks on mobile so I can't actually find the final plan, but here's a 1997 draft of it back from when it was still officially called Seaport. To @Charlie_mta 's...

You make very good points. My hesitation, though, is that if a stadium goes up without a TOD master plan for the whole area, then it might naturally end up being surrounded by wide stroads, huge parking lots, and other car-centric developments, which could be hard to roll back for a very long...

Yup. Their incentives need to be fixed, and as far as I know, only the legislature can do that. Public authorities only work well when their business's success aligns with public interest.

Well, they were: https://voice.somervillema.gov/assemblynp/

There are many components that make something a place. Institutions, People, and Architecure are three big ones. Major loss of any of those categories would contribute to the place feeling hollow, as if the place is gone and all that remains is the geography and its name on a map. For Boston...

Yeah, it almost feels like all the "car stuff" that is joyfully absent in so much of Somerville is shoved into Brickbottom. SomevilleByDesign, which as far as I can tell is the "implementation team" of the once-a-decade SomerVision report, has a nice aerial view of Brickbottom: This photo...

The city's own planning documents agree with you, in particular this map from SomerVision 2040 distinguishes the two (and, interestingly, also distinguishes them from "Boynton Yards"): The SomerVision 2030 Self-Guided Bus Tour has some interesting details on the distinction on Page 25. In...

@Teban54 I'm particularly interested in the stretch of Magenta between South Station and Bay Village. How feasible is that particular alignment? Is that a flyover, or does it use exisiting CR tracks? I presume it's not a tunnel under the South Bay interchange. I thought I remembered you and...

Strawman crazy-tier pitch: Run the RL under the MM until AH, at which point it continues under 2A, terminating near or under the Burlington Mall. All cut-and-cover. Probably no stops between AH and the mall, but TOD along 2A in Lexington could warrant an infill stop in the future. The rest of...

Which would you prioritize, though? My sense is that the Arlington stops just obviously deserve rapid transit--they're already dense, both residentially and commercially, and every time I'm in the area it's full of people doing things outside of cars. The Rt 2 alignment is interesting, but...

l think the difference between "crazy but feasible" and "god mode" is lost on an audience like the MBTA subreddit. I think most of those folks would like Boston to be propelled straight into a Western Europe level of transit without thinking about all the intermediate steps that it'll actually...