A-Line Reactivation

Car owners have "reasonable" access everywhere. Highways are sufficent and parking (whether street or garage/lot) is plentiful even in areas like the North End. So the question is: do non-car owners have reasonable access to the same employment and shopping centers? No, hands down. If we are going to talk about balance and equity we should do so honestly.

Then we can throw on the fact that ensuring cars have what you deem to be reasonable access to the dense core will actually destroy the unique and alluring characteristics of that core itself driving ever greater numbers of residents, visitors and attractions to the carburbs. See: Detroit, Atlanta, etc.
 
Shepard said:
Car owners have "reasonable" access everywhere. Highways are sufficent and parking (whether street or garage/lot) is plentiful even in areas like the North End. So the question is: do non-car owners have reasonable access to the same employment and shopping centers? No, hands down. If we are going to talk about balance and equity we should do so honestly.

Then we can throw on the fact that ensuring cars have what you deem to be reasonable access to the dense core will actually destroy the unique and alluring characteristics of that core itself driving ever greater numbers of residents, visitors and attractions to the carburbs. See: Detroit, Atlanta, etc.
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Highways that get congested starting at 6:15 in the morning and don't clear up until after 10 aren't sufficient.

The vast majority of adults have cars, the same argument can be made about cellphones or computers. I have access to a lot more information because I have a smartphone than someone that has a regular cellphone. Like it or not, they're here to stay and essential to modern life. Try going on a ski trip by taking the train (even if it did still go up to Bethel ME), or any vacation with children.

Basically every major city depopulated in the 1960s through the 1980s-- those without interstate access even more so, as trains proved to be inefficient for transporting finished goods. The cities depopulated largely for a few reasons--
forced desegregation/ethnic conflict-- detroit as an example.
removal of reliance on trains/ships for transportation and the cargo container revolution-- which removed the need for keeping factories on the waterfront or near rail lines and made it much easier to move factories to a centralized location to leverage economies of scale-- Baltimore and NYC being prime examples of this
decaying/non-existent infrastructure that hadn't been expanded/built to meet the needs of truck centered supply chains- try running a goods based business in Boston while the old central artery was there.
Consumer preference-- believe it or not, but families with three kids would prefer to live in the suburbs with a lawn, swingset, and quiet road that kids can ride a bike in

Cities have repopulated because of: demographic trends, a shift to a knowledge based economy, consumer preference (by people without children) and relative ease of transportation access.

Chicago has quite reasonable highway access and a vibrant urban core that wasn't chewed up by road construction. The same goes for Minneapolis, Cincinatti, and Kansas City. Grabbing another 50 feet of right of way along I-93 wouldn't ruin those areas, but it would make one hell of a difference in having a functional road system that doesn't require getting up at 4:30 to beat the morning traffic into the city. And you can shout park and ride with transit all you want, but the simple fact is that adds 20 minutes to a commute, which because of insane anti-sprawl laws that raise the price of housing, already requires a 40 minute drive in traffic to the park and ride.

Matthew said:
By ripping up those pre-1925 places and installing parking lots and wider roads? Or some other means?
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In limited locations it has to/should have been done. There was a lot of insanity in the highway construction era (at one point there was a consideration of creating an intermediate belt between the inner belt and 128 along where chestnut hill ave is), but the system that was proposed was a good medium that provided the best possible system with as minimal neighborhood impacts as possible.

And yes, parking lots sometimes get built, but remember, about 15 years ago everyone around Boston was up in arms about cellphone towers ruining the landscape. Parking lots are hardly an issue here in disrupting the urban fabric versus other places that are 100% car centric like Dallas, Houston, or Orlando.
 
Versus other places that lack urban fabric is what you really mean. If you want Orlando, move there. Boston has no need to replicate that model, especially when many of us live here specifically because it doesn't. Your argument amounts to this: suburban car commuters are more important than urban residents. I reject this completely.
 
I'm with Henry, the more car infrastructure you introduce the less likely you'll get something like a:

quiet road that kids can ride a bike in
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The suburbs sound nice for that sort of thing but when every single trip requires an automobile this multiplies tremendously the amount of high speed automobile traffic that endangers children. The cul-de-sac pattern only works for people in the "sack" so-to-speak. Everyone else is on a feeder route.

I feel that one of the primary arguments for living in a traditional urban area (not necessarily a city!) is increased safety while walking, for children as well as adults. I've seen it in Tokyo, where some of the quietest streets are in the heart of the city. Here, on the other hand, people are so mentally saturated with the idea that cars dominate cities, that they forget that this is not naturally the case.

Americans depopulated cities in the 20th century for a number of reasons, some of them quite ugly. It did not help, either, that people were effectively barred from using their own streets because high speed automobile traffic was prioritized over all.

The damage that was done can be undone. People can live in cities, with families, just as they did for many centuries before. We're already seeing the shift back, and it's not just by "people without children" either. A lot of the problems that drove people out in the past have been solved, or are moot. In the end, hopefully, people will have a choice of environment; whether rural, suburban or urban. But currently, the scales are tipped intensely in favor of suburban development, and that's not a reflection of consumer preference -- that's a compulsion by overbearing regulation and archaic zoning laws. And it's only natural that some of us push back.

I think this is where some of the sentiment for the "A" line comes from. Arguably a bus can do just as well if given the same treatment. But the streetcar represents a time period when city living wasn't considered hostile to families, to be abandoned for the suburbs as soon as feasible.
 
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Matthew said:
People can live in cities, with families, just as they did for many centuries before. We're already seeing the shift back, and it's not just by "people without children" either.
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There are also plenty of younger people in their 20s (myself included) who may eventually decide to have a family and who would much rather live in an urban environment that's good for families and doesn't require a car. If you ignore this demographic, they'll just move to places like Vancouver or San Francisco instead (yes, these cities have their own issues for families too).
 
Shepard said:
Car owners have "reasonable" access everywhere. Highways are sufficent and parking (whether street or garage/lot) is plentiful even in areas like the North End. So the question is: do non-car owners have reasonable access to the same employment and shopping centers? No, hands down. If we are going to talk about balance and equity we should do so honestly.

Then we can throw on the fact that ensuring cars have what you deem to be reasonable access to the dense core will actually destroy the unique and alluring characteristics of that core itself driving ever greater numbers of residents, visitors and attractions to the carburbs. See: Detroit, Atlanta, etc.
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First of all, the North End does not have plentiful parking, unless you include expensive garages.

Second, if we're still talking about Boston specifically, non-car owners have plenty of access to employment, shopping, recreation, all that stuff. What specifically can the non-drivers not get to? Yes, they can't get to, oh, Gillette as easily. But, compared to the people in the suburbs, its much easier for them to get to the cornucopia of shopping and recreation within the city.
 
^^^ Dominus

What's wrong with that? Why shouldn't things in the city be easier for city residents than for suburbanites? Using your Gillette example -- the sort of thing Khota proposes is analogous to a coalition of urban residents demanding a high speed train be built to Foxboro, paid for with suburban property taxes and land takings. It's only fair!

metasyntactic said:
There are also plenty of younger people in their 20s (myself included) who may eventually decide to have a family and who would much rather live in an urban environment that's good for families and doesn't require a car. If you ignore this demographic, they'll just move to places like Vancouver or San Francisco instead (yes, these cities have their own issues for families too).
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Don't worry meta, having a family in Boston works just fine, at least in some neighborhoods.
 
First of all, the North End does not have plentiful parking, unless you include expensive garages.
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The garages are priced to the market. And there's parking along most commercial streets. And guess what? If I live in the city I pay for those street spots to be built, maintained, plowed, etc. Whether I own a car or not I pay for those spots. And only car owners benefit from them.

Now, I live in a small place so I could really use some space to store my ski equipment in the summer and my beach gear in the winter. So I could always set up a locker on one of the parking spaces in front of my condo. But no! That public space has been specifically reserved for people with cars. Whether they helped pay for the space or not.

People need to move away from the heuristic that has been ingrained by 50 years of highway building: roads are built for cars; the sides of roads are built for parking; more and bigger roads = more access and convenience. In general, this is not true for urban residents.
 
Thanks AFL. I get annoyed when other local residents demand that they be given free street parking on publicly owned right-of-way. If the city is being forced to give them free land, how about I get some free land? Of course that's silly, but so is demanding a right to free parking.

Also I neglected to dispel Kahta's illusion that we could ever build highways that don't get congested at peak hours. Congestion is not a "problem" that can be solved. It's a symptom of equilibrium. Unless you build a 50 lane highway (and then where are they going to park?) which is ridiculously overcapacity, it's impossible to "solve" congestion. If you want to try and avoid that fate then somewhere there needs to be an incentive not to use the road at that time. Otherwise, congestion will always form and will function as the disincentive itself; just as queues will form to purchase a scarce product in times of high demand.
 
Is the parking really free? I thought it was either metered, or resident-only, in which case you have to buy a yearly permit to use it.
 
Matthew said:
Also I neglected to dispel Kahta's illusion that we could ever build highways that don't get congested at peak hours. Congestion is not a "problem" that can be solved. It's a symptom of equilibrium. Unless you build a 50 lane highway (and then where are they going to park?) which is ridiculously overcapacity, it's impossible to "solve" congestion. If you want to try and avoid that fate then somewhere there needs to be an incentive not to use the road at that time. Otherwise, congestion will always form and will function as the disincentive itself; just as queues will form to purchase a scarce product in times of high demand.
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Matthew, I have to take point on this. As last time, I don't think congestion is always equilibrium. But that logic, if we decided to just all of a sudden just blow up all the highways within Route 128. The locals roads like 28 and 99 will be insane congested. But its' okay but that "equilibrium."

I can see side with an argument that there are some problems where congestion is unsolvable as the cost to solving it is too great (like a 50 lane highway), but you keep arguing like any congestion is equilibrium.

The earlier points about the North End, Cul-de-sacs, Orlando and etc sounds to be as reasonable arguments. I definitely agree that we can make cities as places desirable to live rather than the image Kahta painted which demonstrate the current thinking of the eventual trajectory of moving to the suburbs (and I also believe there other non-transportation factors or green grass factors that is driving people to live in the suburbs than the city - also I believe that the newest generation have a much large element that wants to return to the city - or at least something less suburban). But your point about the 50 lane highways and equilibrium is misstated.
 
Ron Newman said:
Is the parking really free? I thought it was either metered, or resident-only, in which case you have to buy a yearly permit to use it.
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Metered spots only charge a nominal fee. We know from area garages that hourly pricing should be priced 10-20x what the meters charge. And besides, meters apply less than 1/2 the week (8am-8pm six days/week).
Resident stickers are free.
There are also plenty of free "2 Hour Limit" spots that are up for grabs.
 
Matthew said:
Thanks AFL. I get annoyed when other local residents demand that they be given free street parking on publicly owned right-of-way. If the city is being forced to give them free land, how about I get some free land? Of course that's silly, but so is demanding a right to free parking.

Also I neglected to dispel Kahta's illusion that we could ever build highways that don't get congested at peak hours. Congestion is not a "problem" that can be solved. It's a symptom of equilibrium. Unless you build a 50 lane highway (and then where are they going to park?) which is ridiculously overcapacity, it's impossible to "solve" congestion. If you want to try and avoid that fate then somewhere there needs to be an incentive not to use the road at that time. Otherwise, congestion will always form and will function as the disincentive itself; just as queues will form to purchase a scarce product in times of high demand.
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I'm not sure if it's the lack of others reading comprehension or my writing style, but I'm no in way suggesting building highways that don't get clogged and I'm not suggesting turning comm ave into a storrow drive type of road.

I just think there needs to be a system in place around boston that serves the needs of the entire region and provides a comparable level of service to cars/trucks to what other cities have. Downgrading storrow drive without using the MassPike to take it's place (which I've seen mentioned here more than once) is an excellent example of how Boston can appear to be even less friendly to outsiders and businesses than it already is.

For example, it's unreasonable for there to be congested traffic from I-93 down to the sullivan square lane drop or from the braintree split to the city. It adversely impacts Boston without question because people that aren't from here don't understand how that's appealing in the slightest.
 
Also, I don't think the 'equilibrium' of a congested highway is necessarily something that exists independent of other load-balancing options. I don't think anyone has a particular attachment to their car - they drive because they perceive it as the easiest option. Yes, adding more lanes or taking lanes away affects the immediate perception of how 'easy' driving is, but I don't think that the immediate response is something that doesn't fade away in time.

Conversely, if we can ever get past the 'helping one harms another' kind of competition between drivers and transit-takers, we could have a transit system that load balances with the roadways to the point where people would more readily consider parking along Route 128 and taking the T the rest of the way in.
 
Commuting Boston Student said:
Conversely, if we can ever get past the 'helping one harms another' kind of competition between drivers and transit-takers, we could have a transit system that load balances with the roadways to the point where people would more readily consider parking along Route 128 and taking the T the rest of the way in.
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I don't think many of us have that mindset, but this is a focused discussion regarding an urban corridor, that can't be easily enhanced for car traffic without causing significant harm to other stakeholders. Whereas we probably can do something for transit here.
 
Let me try to gather 3 responses into one:

Congestion is a symptom of the equilibrium between driving and other transportation choices; the number of lane-miles in an area limits how many cars can be moving at once. So, in ant's hypothetical scenario of making highways disappear, the remaining roads would reach a new equilibrium state with congestion and fewer cars. Presumably, people would find other ways to make their trips, or cut out those trips entirely. Whether that's good or bad is a much more complicated, case-specific question and can't be answered in general.

Conversely, if all the proposed highways of the past suddenly sprang into existence, then a whole bunch more cars would be able use the roads. But we would still eventually reach an equilibrium state with congestion; there would just be more cars driving around at the same time. It is likely that half of them would be hunting for a parking space, since that supply also becomes a big limiting factor when the number of cars on the road increase.

Congestion is just an indication that supply is less than or equal to demand. We don't really charge for use of the roads, so the only pricing mechanism is traffic delay, which wastes time. People who place value on their time look for alternatives, if possible. If it takes longer to drive than to walk, bike or take the train, then people will switch. If driving is faster, they will switch back. As CBS pointed out, it all balances.

If it were just a question of balancing trip capacity, though, it would be simple. However, transportation choices are intertwined with land usage, which affects quality of life dearly. One way is the encroachment of blighting highway right-of-ways and overpasses. Another way is that the more automobile capacity increases, the more the demand for parking lots increases, which is used to justify tearing apart the city. I think that's a terrible result, but some folks disagree.

I am curious which examples Kahta is thinking about when discussing "comparable level of service to cars/trucks to what other cities have." Which ones?
 
For example, it's unreasonable for there to be congested traffic from I-93 down to the sullivan square lane drop or from the braintree split to the city. It adversely impacts Boston without question because people that aren't from here don't understand how that's appealing in the slightest.
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Kahta, do you see the irony in your statement? You just picked two highway choke points where major T stations exist. For goodness sake the Braintree T station has a 1,400 spot parking garage and runs along a new commuter rail line in close proximity to multiple ferries. But your solution would be to increase the highway capacity there instead of incentivising people to use one of the four modes of mass transit available in the area.

Increasing highway capacity in Braintree (for example) will just create a new bottleneck elsewhere (indeed there are already chokepoints to the north at Neponset and to the south where Rt 3 drops a lane in Weymouth).
 
HenryAlan said:
^^^ Dominus

What's wrong with that? Why shouldn't things in the city be easier for city residents than for suburbanites? Using your Gillette example -- the sort of thing Khota proposes is analogous to a coalition of urban residents demanding a high speed train be built to Foxboro, paid for with suburban property taxes and land takings. It's only fair!
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Nothing's wrong with it, I'm just disputing the statement that there's plenty of parking. I personally think there's virtually no reason to drive around the North End or park a car there for any length of time (2 hour parking is not a realistic option for residents, only customers).
 
HenryAlan said:
I don't think many of us have that mindset, but this is a focused discussion regarding an urban corridor, that can't be easily enhanced for car traffic without causing significant harm to other stakeholders. Whereas we probably can do something for transit here.
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Bingo. That stretch of Brighton Ave just does not work at all for cars, buses or people. I live between Brighton Ave/Cambridge St/Washington St and Comm Ave and, if driving, will almost always opt for Comm Ave (even with its many follies) over the deathtrap of double parking, horrific pedestrian interaction, bad light timing, etc. along the Brighton/Cambridge/Washington corridor. Just not worth the aggravation.
 
Just goes to show how worthless all those "traffic studies" they do are. Reality defies the oversimplified predictions.
 
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