A-Line Reactivation

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davem

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I forget which thread we were talking about it in, but here is my idea for rebuilding the A as a median-separated line to Brighton Center. (It's a work in progress and far from finished.) I can send the sketchup files to anyone who wants them.

White is the trolley reservation, green is greenspace, teal is platforms.

Segment 1: Packard's Corner to Chester Street.
Seg1.png

Packards Corner is relocated to in front of the Shaws, along with Babcock being closed. Brighton Ave is narrowed to 1 lane outbound.

Segment 2: Chester Street to Union Square.
Seg2.png

Single lane Brighton Ave with 200' turn lanes. Also featured is my new street grid for the triangle formed by Harvard, Cambridge and Brighton avenues, inspired by an atlas on ward maps.

Zoomed in Harvard Ave showing better detail of the interaction between the platforms, turn lanes, bike lanes and parking stalls. This is typical of the treatment of the entire street. (Another benefit: the sidewalks are able to be 3' wider across from the platforms, which is directly in front of Tavern in the Square and Big City. Anyone who walks here on a Saturday night can testify this would be amazing).
HarvardAve.png


Segment 3: Union Square to St Josephs.
Seg3.png

My least favorite part. While no demolition is required, 5-10' of front yards would have to be taken on both sides of the street. In all honesty I think street running would be better here, but I'm trying to be realistic here and I think the city would be more likely to emminant domain than construct a new street running trolley line. (Oh yeah, I pushed Everett Street through as well.)

Segment 4: St Josephs to Brighton Center.
Seg4.png

Minor land taking here, mostly of public property and the hill in front of St E's. A stop at Cunningham Square is essential I believe despite the proximity to the terminus in Brighton Center to both absorb the kids at Brighton High and Taft (who currently mob the B at Warren Street), as well as allow residents who live off Dustin and Sparhawk to not have to walk as far.


Edit: I had meant to post this in the Design a Better Boston forum...
 
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Cool, though I've given up any hope of this ever happening.

Minor correction: You mean "eliminate Babcock St station" although St Paul should go too.

Bringing Brighton Ave to one traffic lane in each direction would be nice. It's bad enough that drivers treat it like a racetrack with all the people on foot around. Always fun playing frogger at the crosswalk, never sure if the guy in the other lane is going to stop.

If you're going to imagine a street grid, why not make those streets smaller? No sense in replacing an out-of-place suburban-style parking lot (Rite Aide/CVS lot) with an out-of-place wide arterial road.
 
Matthew said:
Minor correction: You mean "eliminate Babcock St station" although St Paul should go too.

If you're going to imagine a street grid, why not make those streets smaller? No sense in replacing an out-of-place suburban-style parking lot (Rite Aide/CVS lot) with an out-of-place wide arterial road.
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RE: the station names, you are correct and I fixed it. I agree about St Paul, I would rather see it moved in front of the Agganis arena.

As for the extended Allston Street, its not as wide as it looks. Its 50', allowing for 8' parking stalls, 6' bike lanes, and 11' travel lanes. It simply appears large in comparison with the existing 25' wide Allston Street (which is dangerously narrow, one of the only streets I would argue for widening). The 4+ story development that would likely be built along it would also suit the width.

It also connects with Denby Road on the other side of Cambridge Street, which then connects to Braintree Street, effectively creating a bypass from Cambridge St, Brighton Ave, and Harvard Ave all the way to Coolidge Corner if you make the left onto Winchester St.


The other new street to the right of the DEAF center would be a one way from cambridge st to brighton ave, making it useless to cars other than abutters, but very useful to pedestrians. Both of these streets also allow for on street parking to take the place of the spots lost in the A-Lines creation.
 
11' travel lanes are freeway-width. If you are interested in enhancing pedestrian safety, I recommend narrowing the streets -- instead of inspiring people to go freeway-speed on wide roads. If you want people to feel safe while speeding at 60mph, then by all means go for freeway-width roads.

Also, the wide roads waste a lot of land which would be better spent on actual uses like living or working.
 
Highway lane width is 14'.

11'-0" is the minimum for truck and major bus routes. Not sure, but I believe this is the minimum required for street running trolleys,

10'-6" preferential minimum for residential traffic and the occasional bus.

10'-0" is the minimum for a public street to be accessed by emergency vehicles.

Parking lanes 7'-0 for sedans, 8'-0" for small trucks/vans, 10'-0" for trailers.

Bike lanes no less than 5'-0 and no greater than 7'-0" feet for one way traffic.

Herb Chambers is the biggest foe to any A line restoration.
 
Matthew said:
11' travel lanes are freeway-width. If you are interested in enhancing pedestrian safety, I recommend narrowing the streets -- instead of inspiring people to go freeway-speed on wide roads. If you want people to feel safe while speeding at 60mph, then by all means go for freeway-width roads.

Also, the wide roads waste a lot of land which would be better spent on actual uses like living or working.
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I'm interested in getting pedestrians off of U.S. 20, actually.

Now, the easiest way to do this would be to rebanner the end of U.S. 20 onto a set of more freeway-esque roads. This requires effectively the cost of signage and nothing else to do, moves that road to a more logical endpoint at the Storrow/93 interchange, makes it more palatable to crush Brighton Ave. to pedestrian-friendly levels and bestows U.S. highway numbering on Soldiers Field Road and Storrow Drive.

Naturally, because it's the easiest thing in the world to do (seriously, zero construction required! Creates a more natural flow for U.S. 20 that doesn't require a turnoff! There's literally nothing to argue against here!), it won't happen, which leaves us with a few inelegant solutions.

Crushing Brighton Avenue should happen, but as long as it holds the U.S. Highway designation, it's unlikely to happen. It's insane that people cross that road at street level, but anything that would let them cross not at street level (foot bridge, using the station, etc.) will 'ghettoize' pedestrians and we can't have that. And, while keeping everything the way it is now is the easiest solution, it also means the problem doesn't get solved.
 
Matthew said:
That's not what FHWA says:

http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/geometric/pubs/mitigationstrategies/chapter3/3_lanewidth.htm

Highway - 12 feet
Arterial - 11-12 feet
Collector - 10-12 feet
Local - 9-12 feet
Click to expand...

You are really going to follow Federal "safety" 'standards' that magically think 12'-0" belongs on everything from a 15mph quaint country lane to a 75mph six lane expressway?

http://nacto.org/
http://www.transportation.org/

Rebadging Storrow Drive to a highway would be a disaster in the long term. Don't even suggest that poison pill. We'd be looking at the esplanade getting obliterated in the name of "safety & capacity issues". The thieves in the statehouse would be very happy to oblige the desires of federal contractors and engineers for the influx of construction cash to constituent union construction firms.
 
Lurker said:
You are really going to follow Federal "safety" 'standards' that magically think 12'-0" belongs on everything from a 15mph quaint country lane to a 75mph six lane expressway?
Click to expand...

No, quite the opposite: I am merely pointing out that the FHWA thinks 12' lanes are suitable for highways, and 11' is pretty close to that. In fact, I totally agree that it's insane to build local roads to that standard. Unfortunately, that has been done in too many cases...

MassDOT is actually agreeing to cut down lanes in some cases already; for example, the River/Western Street bridges currently have 12' lanes and those will be reduced to 10.5' in the redesign, in order to accommodate wider sidewalks and a cycle track.

http://www.massdot.state.ma.us/char...rn_River/River_Western_presentation031312.pdf
 
The issue here is that the first thing anyone looks to do when they propose redesigning an area of town is downgrade whatever high-capacity road happens to be in the area. That traffic has to go somewhere, so it's always assigned to some other nearby arterial that someone else has proposed to downgrade.

Some roads have to be higher-capacity. I can see why directing Federal attention to a road like Storrow Drive could be risky (I doubt the DOT would actually accept that proposal without serious infrastructure changes to Storrow), but the concept of making lesser highway routes clear and efficient is a good one.

The key is to strike a balance of roles between major roads. A city needs lesser highways like Storrow as much as it needs 2-lane w./ LRT roads like Brighton Ave. would be in this design. Downgrading everything in sight makes just as much sense as building everything under the sun did in the 1950s.
 
I think that's missing a key piece of the picture. That view enshrines current traffic levels as "sacred" and inviolate. Instead it should be viewed as a trade-off. Sure, you could try to keep current traffic levels, but what is it costing you to do that? And I mean cost not only in terms of money, but also more difficult to quantify measures of safety and general "livability".

Is it really worthwhile to preserve Brighton Avenue as a 4-lane road when (hypothetically) we're about to add a light rail line down the middle of it? A line that has the potential of serving 20-30 thousand people per day?

Is preserving Storrow Drive as a grade-separated freeway really worth what it does to the Esplanade?

Traffic levels can go up or they can go down, but if you view current levels as a hard floor, then things will only get worse.
 
Oh Jesus Christ, please talk about this somewhere else.

Having Brighton Ave be one lane with turn lanes is not a downgrading in capacity, considering every-day activities on that road. At most given times of day, there is at least one double parked vehicle every second block, typically more. The only time this condition does not exist is late at night, when total loads are no more than a quaint country lane.

The difference between having an 11' lane with a 6' bike lane and having two lanes as present is that people will be only using one lane in the first place, therefore not forced to dangerously merge when they come on a double parked vehicle. If a vehicle does double park in the bike lane (which as a biker I don't like but...) there is still ~9' to squeeze by at a safe, moderate speed vs a high speed merge and blowby.

While I do posses knowledge of federal road codes, my decision on width was based on typical conditions present in a realistic, dense, urban environment like Allston, not some arbitrary number in a book.

Now can we get back talking to the logistics of A-Line restoration after I took the time to carefully attempt to plot out a solution and not more about lane widths, unless it is pertinent to the A itself?
 
Davem,

Brillaint job. I'm a road designer by profession, a registered professional civil engineer, and your design for the streets looks fine to me.
 
davem said:
Having Brighton Ave be one lane with turn lanes is not a downgrading in capacity, considering every-day activities on that road. At most given times of day, there is at least one double parked vehicle every second block, typically more. The only time this condition does not exist is late at night, when total loads are no more than a quaint country lane.
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Exactly -- the 'four lane' section of Brighton Ave is really two travel lanes and two de facto standing lanes. It can most certainly be downgraded without any real impact to traffic flow.

I really like the plans, btw. My only gripe is the incredibly close distance from Warren/Sparhawk to St. E's; that would be a distance of around 500 feet from platform edge to platform edge. I'd suggest combining the two stops or moving the St. E's stop just west of Winship so it is more accessible to Brighton Center.
 
What if the A line branched from the B at BU bridge onto the ROW under the elevated pike, and through Beacon Yards to Cambridge St? That would yield faster service and avoid a significant stretch of street, right?
 
Lurker said:
10'-0" is the minimum for a public street to be accessed by emergency vehicles.
.
Click to expand...

9'-6" actually, at least thats what San Francisco has been able to haggle down road redesigns to.
 
This continues my question a couple posts above about running the A through Beacon Yards. Does anyone else think that the original routing of the A to Brighton Center as Davem (re-)proposes too closely parallels the B line? Seems to me that every A line stop along this route until about Warren/Sparhawk is in 10 minutes walking distance of a B line stop.

Seems to me that transit coverage would be far more efficient by running the A down North Beacon, then sharp left on Market Street to Brighton Center. That could combine with my idea for using Beacon Yards to further branch away from the B line. On the other hand, I don't know if these streets are wide enough to support reservations... I'm sure N Beacon is tighter than the old routing.
 
Isn't "Fairmounting" or "GLX-ing" to ~ West Newton the easiest solution?

Con: you'd miss the middle of most of the neighborhoods. Could end up being more Orange Line than Red Line

Pro: but you'd be very close to a lot of them. And the cost has got to be degrees lower. The overall coverage area might also be better since you'd get closer to Lower Allston. I'd love to see a 10 min walk diagram comparing the options.
 
While adding rapid transit along this route would be nice, I can't help but feel this would be worse than the B line is. The stretch from Packards Corner through the North Beacon/Cambridge Street intersection would be an absolute mess.
 
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