Additional lane on the Southeast Expressway

This is where LEHD maps would come in handy. Sadly, Massachusetts is one of the few states for which that is not yet available.
 
whighlander said:
I just posted the 2010 US Census Survey estimated that 310,000 people (16+ age) work within the Boston city limits and that about 15% walk to work and 4% work at home
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I think you are misreading this info. I believe it is a study of Boston residents who commute, not Boston workers. Employment in Boston is significantly higher than 310,000, more like 520,000.
 
It took me nearly an hour to get down to South Shore Plaza from Roxbury this afternoon. Someone broke down around exit 11 (southbound) in the right-most lane. Because of the lack of a breakdown lane, typical Saturday traffic which should have been moving smoothly, was backed up past exit 18 all the way to the tunnel, because of the tiny little bottleneck (down to 3 lanes) miles away. After you passed the car and the cop, traffic was moving completely smoothly. 93 really needs breakdown lanes!
 
Sounds fair to me. How about 1 breakdown + 3 southbound + zipper + 3 northbound + 1 breakdown lane?
 
I work in outside sales, so I'm always on the road. If its anywhere near rush hour, I prefer to circumvent the city completely on 95, rather than try to get through the SE expressway. 93 just sucks, and its unpredictable, too, which is worse than slow; when you have to deal with traffic jams going against rush hour or in the late evening, something's wrong.

I know that people here don't like highways, and I understand that you can get a city with too many of them (LA... ugh), but I don't think its unreasonable to have one major highway in each cardinal direction to get in and out of the city. Boston's got the right placements of its interstates, but the SE needs improvement.
 
Matthew said:
Sounds fair to me. How about 1 breakdown + 3 southbound + zipper + 3 northbound + 1 breakdown lane?
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I'd rather see the zipper eliminated and turned into a median, because you and I both know how the conversation about widening (!!!) the highway to put space between the zipper barrier and everything else will go so we don't need to have that conversation, and having some extra space to pull a car off into like a median is better than having to somehow get it over multiple lanes of traffic if the breakdown occurs in the high-speed lane.
 
datadyne007 said:
It took me nearly an hour to get down to South Shore Plaza from Roxbury this afternoon. Someone broke down around exit 11 (southbound) in the right-most lane. Because of the lack of a breakdown lane, typical Saturday traffic which should have been moving smoothly, was backed up past exit 18 all the way to the tunnel, because of the tiny little bottleneck (down to 3 lanes) miles away. After you passed the car and the cop, traffic was moving completely smoothly. 93 really needs breakdown lanes!
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DominusNovus said:
I work in outside sales, so I'm always on the road. If its anywhere near rush hour, I prefer to circumvent the city completely on 95, rather than try to get through the SE expressway. 93 just sucks, and its unpredictable, too, which is worse than slow; when you have to deal with traffic jams going against rush hour or in the late evening, something's wrong.
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Both of these posts get at the heart of the problem. Having zero margin for error on breakdowns means that the highway can not only get locked solid by a single breakdown at any traffic load--including Saturday--but it can happen so fast it's impossible to plan around. I have relatives on the South Coast I visit every couple months...usually on one of these Sat. morning/afternoon situations. I stopped even bothering with Storrow/93/24, which is the faster route if it "works", in favor of 2/128/24 every time. Because a few times I got burned by checking the traffic online or on the radio before leaving the driveway, getting the all-clear, and then in the ensuing 20 minutes something happened down in Dorchester or Quincy that had me seeing a sea of solid brake lights as soon as I spit out of the tunnel at South Bay. Bang...miles-long backup faster than you can even react to with an every-10-minutes traffic report on WBZ.

It's like the whole Expressway is one giant amplifier. The slightest little anomaly in flow gets grotesquely warped and inflated downstream in a seismic shockwave. As if the whole thing is set ringing like a giant bell. I can't think of another regional highway that's capable of doing that with the suddenness of 93. This must be a fun one for a traffic engineer to fire up in modeling software and see how adding a 200-ft. stretch of breakdown lane here and there affects the resonances.
 
DominusNovus said:
I know that people here don't like highways, and I understand that you can get a city with too many of them (LA... ugh), but I don't think its unreasonable to have one major highway in each cardinal direction to get in and out of the city. Boston's got the right placements of its interstates, but the SE needs improvement.
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Contrary to popular rhetoric across the country, Greater LA does not have very many freeway miles considering its gigantic population. I can't find anything more recent at the moment, but here is a listing from 1999; obviously not much has changed for largely built-out areas like NYC, LA, Boston, SF, etc.

In addition to not having a glut of freeway lane miles, Boston's traffic woes boil down to four other issues:
1. A stagnant, hub-and-spoke public transportation system,
2. A non-grid surface street network,
3. Mechanical traffic lights incapable of adapting to changes in traffic flow (including pedestrian and bicycle traffic), and
4. Horrendously poor driving etiquette

Now, clearly we can't re-work all of Boston so it fits in a nice grid, but the other issues can most certainly be resolved with investment and education initiatives.

Commuting Boston Student said:
I'd rather see the zipper eliminated and turned into a median, because you and I both know how the conversation about widening (!!!) the highway to put space between the zipper barrier and everything else will go so we don't need to have that conversation, and having some extra space to pull a car off into like a median is better than having to somehow get it over multiple lanes of traffic if the breakdown occurs in the high-speed lane.
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I agree -- the zipper provides marginal benefit and seriously constricts flow in the non-rush direction. So what we end up with is a congested freeway both inbound and outbound whereas one direction ought to be more free-flowing. That, and I don't think you could fit 2 full-width shoulders and 7 lanes of traffic in the current 8-lane right of way.
 
omaja said:
Contrary to popular rhetoric across the country, Greater LA does not have very many freeway miles considering its gigantic population. I can't find anything more recent at the moment, but here is a listing from 1999; obviously not much has changed for largely built-out areas like NYC, LA, Boston, SF, etc.
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In this matter, its not so much the miles/population but the miles/acre. The population patterns of the two metro areas are very different, as well, which certainly affects (and is affected by) traffic.
 
I'm not sure what you mean. Regardless of how you slice it, neither Boston nor LA has many freeways for their relative populations and land areas. Sure, Boston is more centralized and significantly denser in its core while LA is multi-polar and has relatively uniform density across its footprint. But at the end of the day, LA doesn't really have too many freeways; it lacks alternative methods of transportation. Conversely, Boston suffers from its underdeveloped freeway network, though it has a more developed public transportation network that 'helps' (I use the term loosely ;)) it cope.
 
omaja said:
I'm not sure what you mean. Regardless of how you slice it, neither Boston nor LA has many freeways for their relative populations and land areas. Sure, Boston is more centralized and significantly denser in its core while LA is multi-polar and has relatively uniform density across its footprint. But at the end of the day, LA doesn't really have too many freeways; it lacks alternative methods of transportation. Conversely, Boston suffers from its underdeveloped freeway network, though it has a more developed public transportation network that 'helps' (I use the term loosely ;)) it cope.
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LA's 30-in-10 (30/10) is a game-changer though.
 
FWIW, this is more recent data:

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2007/hm72.cfm

Boston's jumped up to 0.62 freeway lane miles per 1000 people. I think this probably reflects changes in classifications.

Code: 
 Kansas City 					1.26
 St. Louis 					1.07
 Houston					0.82
 Cleveland					0.82
 Columbus					0.78
 San Antonio					0.76
 Jacksonville					0.74
 Providence 					0.74
 Pittsburgh					0.73
 Baltimore					0.72
 Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington					0.72
 Indianapolis					0.72
 Cincinnati 					0.71
 San Diego					0.67
 Minneapolis-St. Paul					0.65
 Boston 					0.62
 Orlando					0.62
 Virginia Beach					0.62
 San Francisco-Oakland					0.61
 Buffalo					0.60
 Seattle					0.60
 Denver-Aurora					0.59
 Riverside-San Bernardino					0.58
 Atlanta					0.56
 San Jose					0.53
 Milwaukee					0.53
 Detroit					0.49
 Washington 					0.48
 Philadelphia 					0.46
 Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana					0.45
 Phoenix					0.45
 Sacramento					0.44
 Portland 					0.43
 New York-Newark 					0.40
 Miami					0.39
 Tampa-St. Petersburg					0.38
 San Juan					0.34
 Chicago 					0.33
 
The Big Dig added freeway lane miles, since it is wider than the elevated road it replaced. Also, the Ted Williams Tunnel and I-90 extension may have opened between the previous stats and 2007.
 
Another data source: http://mobility.tamu.edu/ums/

Boston MA-NH-RI:
Code: 
Year	Pop(1000) FwyLane-Mi Fwy/Pop
1982	 3,450 	 2,000 	0.5797101449
1983	 3,475 	 2,000 	0.5755395683
1984	 3,485 	 2,000 	0.5738880918
1985	 3,500 	 2,000 	0.5714285714
1986	 3,510 	 2,000 	0.5698005698
1987	 3,530 	 2,005 	0.5679886686
1988	 3,560 	 2,005 	0.5632022472
1989	 3,600 	 2,005 	0.5569444444
1990	 3,610 	 2,005 	0.555401662
1991	 3,620 	 2,010 	0.5552486188
1992	 3,630 	 2,010 	0.5537190083
1993	 3,640 	 2,015 	0.5535714286
1994	 3,655 	 2,015 	0.5512995896
1995	 3,680 	 2,015 	0.5475543478
1996	 3,700 	 2,015 	0.5445945946
1997	 3,760 	 2,040 	0.5425531915
1998	 3,880 	 2,090 	0.5386597938
1999	 3,875 	 2,140 	0.5522580645
2000	 3,900 	 2,190 	0.5615384615
2001	 3,940 	 2,240 	0.5685279188
2002	 3,970 	 2,300 	0.5793450882
2003	 4,000 	 2,370 	0.5925
2004	 4,050 	 2,410 	0.5950617284
2005	 4,120 	 2,550 	0.6189320388
2006	 4,200 	 2,550 	0.6071428571
2007	 4,205 	 2,550 	0.6064209275
2008	 4,210 	 2,550 	0.6057007126
2009	 4,252 	 2,550 	0.5997177799
2010	 4,294 	 2,563 	0.5968211458
 
Thanks for the newer statistics, Matthew. It is interesting to see the spike which is no doubt due to the Big Dig and perhaps a change in classification of freeway-equivalent roadways in the area.

datadyne007 said:
LA's 30-in-10 (30/10) is a game-changer though.
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It certainly is and something Boston should strive to emulate!

Bringing this back around to the topic, whether or not Boston has or doesn't have a lot of freeway miles shouldn't be a deterrent to upgrading safety and reliability (not necessarily capacity) on its most important roads. In addition to adding full-width shoulders wherever reasonable, the state should really look into improving ramp geometry, increasing merging lane length, and clearer/more obvious signage and lane markings.
 
omaja said:
Bringing this back around to the topic, whether or not Boston has or doesn't have a lot of freeway miles shouldn't be a deterrent to upgrading safety and reliability (not necessarily capacity) on its most important roads. In addition to adding full-width shoulders wherever reasonable, the state should really look into improving ramp geometry, increasing merging lane length, and clearer/more obvious signage and lane markings.
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I totally agree and that was exactly my point earlier. It's not ok to simply just leave the highway below safety and functional standards just because you don't like highways*.

*Excuse me, "highway impacts"
 
I agree, safety and reliability are paramount. How about my 1+3+1+3+1 suggestion from earlier? Or, perhaps stagger the breakdown lanes.
 
Depends. If there's a choice between having a substandard road or taking homes and businesses to bring it up to standard, I'd rather keep the substandard road.

One thing I like about Boston, compared to other cities, is that it tries to squeeze as much road as possible into as little space as possible, even if this means building sharp turns and limited merge distances.
 
datadyne007 said:
I totally agree and that was exactly my point earlier. It's not ok to simply just leave the highway below safety and functional standards just because you don't like highways*.

*Excuse me, "highway impacts"
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I guess that depends how much you feel the current highway codes actually promote safety. Boston's auto accident rate is well below Atlanta's, for example, and it's not hard to see which city has more "compliant" roadways. One reason is that federal regulators don't take into account decades of acculturation to environments less friendly to freewheeling auto use.

Also, to put what Ron said another way: should we demolish the North End because it doesn't allow for recommended turning radii for firetrucks? Safety shouldn't always be the paramount consideration.
 
I was thinking safety of people (all modes) rather than "safe for big trucks to turn." But that does bring up an interesting point. Fire trucks in this country are very large because most roads have been designed to be very large. And then, because the fire trucks are large, new roads are designed even wider to accommodate them. It's an unfortunate cycle which causes fire marshals to be at odds with city residents, and results in streets less safe for walking, though easier for fire trucks.
 
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