underground
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Just one of the many reasons no city can succeed basing itself around cars:
A-Line Reactivation
- Thread starter davem
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Just one of the many reasons no city can succeed basing itself around cars:
Asisde from NYC, Boston is probably the least car-centric city in the US.
Whigh, in the spirit of answering ant's question from the previous page, what is it exactly you are trying to argue? This is not a discussion of what projects the MBTA should tackle considering it has zero budget to do any of the aforementiond. The vast majority of what you write has approximately nothing to do with the A line or restoration thereof.
I was doing some research at work today for something unrelated to this, but I came across commuting data by zip code-- even with the public transit access that Allston has, commuting alone by car is still the #1 choice for commuters.
In Brookline the same thing was true.
In Brookline the same thing was true.
Or anything to do with A/B at all. Outside of maybe the Brighton Music Hall, Allston isn't exactly a destination. The mayor isn't coming to play trivia at the White Horse, you're not coming from Lexington to go dancing at Joshua Tree, people from the south end aren't going to go to AWOL for their graphic tees, and the hipsters in Somerville and Cambridge aren't going to the Sil'. The A/B businesses are for and patronized by the people of A/B. You're point to point argument is moot because there is no reason to go point to point in the first place.
The A line does however expedite the trip to and through Allston Village. Its purpose is twofold: first, to provide a more efficient mode of transportation for the throngs of people who currently pack into the 57 like sardines; and second to increase the throughput of trains from Packards Corner through BU, increasing the capacity of the worst part of the line.
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That isn't surprising at all, considering how much of 02134 is actually poorly served. Only the southern third has truly good transit access. The reverse is true of Brookline where only the northern third has really meaningful transit access.
I would agree, however if you read the first post of this topic you would see this proposal, or the discussion I was hoping to provoke, doesn't require running trolleys in the street either.
In addition, this is a reactivation of prior, and expansion of existing service. I don't believe there is an overcrowded bus that replaced 100 years of streetcar service running down the train tracks through Somerville or out to Lynn. Its not even in the same league as the E, because unlike South Huntington, Brighton Ave is wide enough to put in a trolley reservation.
PS. It's Lechmere and Somerville. With all the time you must spend reading street signs driving everywhere I'm surprised you misspelled both.
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underground
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Are you saying that those zips are choosing cars over public transit? Because it seems to me that a lot of them can't really choose since there's no or spotty public transit options. I mean, statistics also show that the vast majority of people choose to live on Earth and not the Moon.
Yeah, because they don't happen to live and work somewhere that's readily served by both. 22-26 year olds (like myself) don't want to pay $300 a month to park downtown for their job.
Makes sense-- tons of students live there.
Why is everyone so quick to point to the students to explain high transit usage along that corridor? There is a very large young professional population in Allston-Brighton that more than supports the Green Line on its own. The students are just icing on the cake.
DominusNovus
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It does seem that many people seem to have more hostility towards cars than is warranted. Even Jane Jacobs pointed out something along the lines of 'the car is not the enemy." The better our mass transit system is, the better it is to drive around the city. If transit advocates can get that message across better, as opposed to the "cars suck, buses and bikes are teh awesome!" message, I think we can get more people on board.
Yes, she pointed out that cars are much better than horses, but every horse was replaced with something like 8 cars. The problem is erosion of cities by automobiles, not the vehicles themselves, but the excessive accommodation of them.
F-Line to Dudley
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I think that's a little overblown. The viewpoints get a little polarized here by a few posters that go all-or-nothing on car vs. transit. Some on honest enthusiasm, some on thread pollution grounds (and lately, a whole lot of the latter
). Fact is it's never that simple, there is never a one-size-fits-all solution, and city streets are very much multi-modal by nature. This debate gets obscured by the annoying tendency these days to dumb everything down into two opposing sides where one must "win" and one must "lose" with the winner doing some gloating postgame celebration. It's one of the worst tendencies of this political environment, but it is unfortunately pervasive and warps debate right down to this level.No, I dont know the answer, it's not very user friendly compared to Nielsen/Spectra where I get some of my other information for work.
I think that's a little overblown. The viewpoints get a little polarized here by a few posters that go all-or-nothing on car vs. transit. Some on honest enthusiasm, some on thread pollution grounds (and lately, a whole lot of the latter
Agreed-- I am by no means anti-transit, it's got a time and a place in places where space is at a premium, but anywhere that's been developed since about 1925 is car centered and needs to have reasonable access to areas built before 1925.
By ripping up those pre-1925 places and installing parking lots and wider roads? Or some other means?