Back Bay turnpike ramps

belmont square said:
a similarly scaled line of rowhouses that front the park, lying across the service alley from the backsides of the existing building...
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A good solution, though politically thorny for the reason you give.

Those new rowhouses would have to front a narrow street with the park across the street. Think what a developer could get for those: better than Louisburg Square, better than Union Park, better than Gramercy or Berkeley Square.

But with the highway gone...

Or maybe TC and Padre are right.
 
I think that would take up more space than the highway does now, resulting in a net loss of parkland. Also, the affluent people who now live on the north side of Beacon Street would scream about losing their river views.
 
^ Well, there you go, it was impossible all along.
 
Not impossible, but I think any new buildings would have to be 1-2 stories lower in height than the ones in Beacon on order to preserve the existing views. They would also need at least a little setback from the alley, though maybe not quite as much as the existing buildings on the other side of the alley.
 
Ron Newman said:
I think any new buildings would have to be 1-2 stories lower in height than the ones in Beacon on order to preserve the existing views. They would also need at least a little setback from the alley, though maybe not quite as much as the existing buildings on the other side of the alley.
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Like a mews, make-believe servants quarters for plutocrats: the creme-de-la-creme of luxury housing. Add 50% to the per-square-foot asking price.

Brilliant, Ron!
 
Next meeting Oct 8, 6-8 pm

http://blog.mass.gov/transportation...back-bay-ramps-bowker-overpass-study-meeting/

A Public Information Meeting to provide an update on the study has been scheduled as follows:

Wednesday, October 8, 6:00-8:00pm, Boston Public Library, 700 Boylston Street

The study foundations (goals, objectives, evaluation criteria, and study area), existing conditions analysis, and alternative screening have all been completed. The study is evaluating eight potential build alternatives in addition to the no-build alternative. Four of the alternatives will involve construction of new ramps along the Turnpike in the Back Bay and four of the alternatives will involve reconfiguration of the Bowker Overpass through the Charlesgate. The eight alternatives are listed below.

* Back Bay Ramp Alternatives

Back Bay Alternative 1: Construction of a new I-90 westbound off-ramp to Berkeley Street with closure of the existing I-90 westbound on-ramp from Arlington Street.
Back Bay Alternative 2: Construction of a new I-90 westbound off-ramp to Trinity Place with closure of the existing I-90 westbound on-ramps from Clarendon Street and Arlington Street.
Back Bay Alternative 3: Construction of a new I-90 westbound off-ramp to Brookline Avenue.
Back Bay Alternative 4: Construction of a new I-90 eastbound on-ramp from the Bowker Overpass northbound.
Bowker Overpass Alternatives

Bowker Alternative 1: The Bowker Overpass is removed and all movements are accommodated on the Charlesgate Roadways
Bowker Alternative 2: The Bowker Overpass is lowered to an at-grade roadway and the Charlesgate roadways are downgraded to provide only local access
Bowker Alternative 3: The Bowker Overpass is removed and a new interchange is constructed connecting the Turnpike to Boylston Street with the local connection to Storrow Drive maintained at Charlesgate
Bowker Alternative 4: The Bowker Overpass is removed and a new interchange is constructed connecting the Turnpike to Boylston Street, with the local connection to Storrow Drive provided by a new interchange with Massachusetts Avenue
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Back Bay Alternative 2: So the only WB Pike on-ramp will be from Huntington? That doesn't seem sufficient.

Back Bay Alternative 4: I don't see how this possible. The rail line isn't trenched, unless you're removing a lane of the pike, how could you possibly have that merge in?

Bowker Alternative 4: Dumping more traffic onto Mass Ave is a ridiculous idea.
 
Back Bay Alternative 1: I like this one.

Back Bay Alternative 2: I don't see how they can do this without removing the new park that was just built on Clarendon St. (FYI the westbound on-ramps at Huntington and Mass Ave would remain.). I'm not a fan of this one.

Back Bay Alternative 3: This would dump a lot of traffic onto Brookline Ave, which I really think is a bad idea, for a number of reasons. One idea that I've seen is to remove the westbound on-ramp at Mass Ave and convert it into an off-ramp and extend Newbury St Extension. That would allow drivers to go to Charlesgate or to Brookline Ave, which would distribute traffic better. I think this is an interesting idea.

Back Bay Alternative 4: This is tough from an engineering standpoint but actually I think an on-ramp should be further east. Not sure where though.

Bowker Alternative 1: Yes please do this now.

Bowker Alternative 2: Nope, too much pavement. We need the parks back, not an at-grade Bowker.

Bowker Alternative 3: I don't like the loss of connectivity or the fact that the Storrow ramps will remain.

Bowker Alternative 4: HORRIBLE idea. Mass Ave is already a congested mess and connecting it even more to Storrow would make it 10x worse.
 
1 & 2: Either of these is logical. I never understood why there were 2 WB onramps in a 1/4 mile radius with no companion offramp. Probably have to do some frontage road work extending/reshaping Marginal and Cortes, but this is obvious.

1 is what you do if you can't extend the frontage to Clarendon aligned with the current onramp. 2 is what you do if you can. I'd say shoot for 2 and immediately fall back to 1 if/when the neighborhood objects.




3: Re: cden4's point about Brookline Ave. I think if they merge the ramp onto one-way Newbury St. pretty far back of Brookline Ave. the heavy game-day queues will sort themselves. If the merge is at Kenmore St. that's past the last Newbury apartment building and all the on-street parking in the backlots can go for turning lanes. Realign Newbury @ Brookline by consuming that little wedge-shaped parking lot into a straight signaled intersection for left turns and a right-turn traffic island...then time the signals with the Kenmore signals...and it'll probably be OK.

More of your Sox game traffic is coming from 128 by Pike EB than it is from the O'Neill tunnel and Pike WB so it's not uncapping an explosion. It is taking a lot of induced demand off Storrow WB and the Bowker. I'd do it. It's a load-shift more than new-new traffic.



4.1: Post-haste!!!

4.2: NO! 4 lanes of Bowker over Pike = 4 lanes on Charlesgate at-grade just fine. This is adding lanes. Add not-dead grass and river, not lanes. Bad MassDOT, bad!

4.3: For Storrow's sake this is exactly the same as #4.1, so OK. I have no idea how the Pike component is even engineering-feasible because of the tracks and street grid EB and tunnel + overhead bridges WB. Renderings, please? I'm skeptical it can be done without ugly hacks that make things worse.

4.4 Renderings, please? As with 4.3 I don't see how the Pike component is engineering-possible.

Now...assuming the Bowker goes and the ramp sprawl under Mass Ave. is compacted into a narrower footprint that frees up more Esplanade acreage, I could see some changes here. Assume the Mass Ave.-to-Cambridge offramp from Storrow WB switches to a more sane right-handed exit with the roadway compacting. You could/should then add a correspondingly low-profile Cambridge-to-WB onramp because that would take a lot of Cambridge-originating traffic off Memorial and Beacon St.-to-Charlesgate. That's a good idea. That's a big aggregate improvement to traffic flow.

Adding a Mass Ave.-from-Boston to Storrow EB onramp splitting quickly off Back St. is a good idea. Storrow would get a lane reduction from 6 to 4 in this vicinity with a lot of the merging and weaving eliminated from the ramps + roadway being compacted. So this doesn't require any widening, just a short stretch of recycled existing footprint for the accel lane while everything behind it gets compacted. Helps and is inocuous because it likewise takes traffic off Beacon and Charlesgate and eases the left-turn queues on Mass Ave. @ Beacon. And takes traffic off Boylston for reaching Copley. Substantial improvement over today.

A full interchange with a left-turn from Mass Ave. to Storrow WB...bad idea. You already do exactly that with the Beacon left-turn so it gains nothing but extra induced demand and an extra signal cycle backing up traffic on the bridge. Ditto allowing left turns from Cambridge onto that Storrow EB ramp on Back St., which likewise requires a left-turn signal Keep this 3/4 ramp setup to Storrow right-turn only where it peels off the Cambridge traffic and eliminates 1 pattern of lefts from Boston...and that's it.



I still think if they really want to slice out the most induced traffic they need to allow free movements to/from downtown and Allston and put the toll gantries west of Cambridge St. to serve to/from Newton. They of course don't want to do that, so people are still going to be hard-wired to beat the tolls by over-using Storrow. Think, MassDOT, think. You don't have to collect a toll from everyone to pay for the Pike realignment. Purely intra-city is a minority of total Pike traffic. You get plenty of revenue to/from the west and the wear-and-tear savings on Storrow, Memorial, and local street congestion lowers your aggregate long-term costs in the area of impact to offset the rest.

I also think they really need to do that Pike WB-to-Birmingham Pkwy. offramp and corresponding onramp from Nonantum Rd. on other side of the rotary @ the Brooks St. light to load-spread on the severely under-capacity west river roads for people heading to Harvard and Watertown. That peels all Watertown-bound traffic from Newton Corner and Harvard-bound traffic from Allston. And more people will be willing to pay the toll for how many minutes that'll save. I know it's outside the downtown scope of these options...but that's critically related to all this. And easy as hell to do because you can just outright claim Birmingham's useless slab of pavement for the offramp and cut Birmingham from fucking up Market St. (which seems to be its only purpose in life).
 
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