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Beacon Street- Brookline
- Thread starter mass88
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metasyntactic
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Shouldnt that have been done two years ago when the entire street was rebuilt from scratch?
That would have made too much sense. This way now that they redid Beacon and it was looking nice, they will come tearing through and make things a mess again.
Seems like this thread is as good as any to post a request.
It always gets mentioned on this board about how when they recently redid Beacon Street, they put in all the wiring for signal prioritization, but I am having trouble finding official documents that show this.
Can someone help me out? I'm living in Brookline now, and I'd like to know as much about this as possible.
Thanks!
It always gets mentioned on this board about how when they recently redid Beacon Street, they put in all the wiring for signal prioritization, but I am having trouble finding official documents that show this.
Can someone help me out? I'm living in Brookline now, and I'd like to know as much about this as possible.
Thanks!
F-Line to Dudley
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Here's the kerfuffle between Brookline and the T: http://www.boston.com/news/local/ar...ghts_but_t_isnt_along_for_the_ride/?page=full
I saw some Brookline Transportation Board meeting minutes from May that says the parties are talking again and the T has warmed up to the idea. Town appears to have long ago signed/sealed/delivered the traffic study Pesaturo was all pissy about in that article; I can't find it anywhere online, though. We know all too well "warm up to" ≠ "ready to fund", but that's a decided improvement over the dismissive tone they were taking before.
All the traffic lights on Beacon between city lines are computer-programmable from a central location. On the C it's just Cleveland Circle in Allston where that's not true. So the light cycles can be set to anything via software without field workers needing to be out there. And they've already got emergency vehicle prioritization that triggers those strobe light beacons on top of the signal masts.
To do transit vehicle priority they'd have to install the detectors, but the digital system and software are compatible with those out-of-the-box. Most common application is an optical detector that detects the shape of the bus or trolley and is just sensitive enough to tell a T bus apart from a private bus. For the trolleys the little sensor would just get mounted on top of the existing trolley signals pointing at the track.
Not too expensive. You're talking maybe $150K for the add-on hardware + labor + training to do up the whole corridor vs. the $2.3M the town sunk into the original signal replacements. There's also some legalities to work out about town-control signals with a state-control transit ROW to hash out so there's a way to mediate future disputes, plus a who-pays-for-what split on maintenance going forward. Basic inocuous red-tape stuff.
They just have to bloody do it. I mean, they announced it with fanfare for the 39 as a priority project and we're still waiting, waiting, waiting for it to get done.
BTW...here's some independent traffic modeling reading on what it would do for Beacon. Caution: lots of hard maths.
http://iris.lib.neu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1022&context=civil_eng_theses
I saw some Brookline Transportation Board meeting minutes from May that says the parties are talking again and the T has warmed up to the idea. Town appears to have long ago signed/sealed/delivered the traffic study Pesaturo was all pissy about in that article; I can't find it anywhere online, though. We know all too well "warm up to" ≠ "ready to fund", but that's a decided improvement over the dismissive tone they were taking before.
All the traffic lights on Beacon between city lines are computer-programmable from a central location. On the C it's just Cleveland Circle in Allston where that's not true. So the light cycles can be set to anything via software without field workers needing to be out there. And they've already got emergency vehicle prioritization that triggers those strobe light beacons on top of the signal masts.
To do transit vehicle priority they'd have to install the detectors, but the digital system and software are compatible with those out-of-the-box. Most common application is an optical detector that detects the shape of the bus or trolley and is just sensitive enough to tell a T bus apart from a private bus. For the trolleys the little sensor would just get mounted on top of the existing trolley signals pointing at the track.
Not too expensive. You're talking maybe $150K for the add-on hardware + labor + training to do up the whole corridor vs. the $2.3M the town sunk into the original signal replacements. There's also some legalities to work out about town-control signals with a state-control transit ROW to hash out so there's a way to mediate future disputes, plus a who-pays-for-what split on maintenance going forward. Basic inocuous red-tape stuff.
They just have to bloody do it. I mean, they announced it with fanfare for the 39 as a priority project and we're still waiting, waiting, waiting for it to get done.
BTW...here's some independent traffic modeling reading on what it would do for Beacon. Caution: lots of hard maths.
http://iris.lib.neu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1022&context=civil_eng_theses
Just dug around the town website a bit based on the posts here, and it seems like there is a warrant for Town Meeting to consider funding a study of signal priority, which seems to be what the T wanted back in 2007. Though why they need a study to show that letting their trolleys get priority at intersections would benefit them sounds insane to me.
F-Line to Dudley
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Just dug around the town website a bit based on the posts here, and it seems like there is a warrant for Town Meeting to consider funding a study of signal priority, which seems to be what the T wanted back in 2007. Though why they need a study to show that letting their trolleys get priority at intersections would benefit them sounds insane to me.
Stalling tactic? It's not like a crapload of traffic studies weren't a pre-existing requirement for Brookline getting grant money to install the $2.3M digital signals in the first place. They wanted a streamlined corridor with nimble centralized signal programming for ALL vehicles and had to supply all that evidence when they filed for outside money.
I think the T's attitude changed when Menino erupted at them a few years ago (that Globe article I can't find) about why they haven't done it yet on Huntington. Huntington's equally configured for plug-in transit priority out to Fenwood (Mission Park and Riverway the last 2 analog signals on Huntington-proper). In that case the E would get the sensor mounts on all the reservation trolley signals, the 39 would get adjacent sensor mounts on the traffic light crossbars, and the crossbar sensors would detect both the buses and trolleys on the street-running portion.
Hizzoner got listened to a lot more intently than the Brookline Transportation Board does. Although it hasn't exactly gotten the T moving on all the overt promises they made for that corridor, let alone the non-promises they made for Beacon.