Boston's Comprehensive Transportation Plan Unveiled 3/7/2017

dshoost88 said:
Number of Uber trips beginning or ending in Boston:
7,580,000 (2014)
27,000,000 (2016)

Between Uber and Lyft, this means ride share accounted for at least 80,000 trips per day in 2016. And if Uber's flat fare packages gain traction and become a fixture in the rideshare scene, then our policymakers and planners will need to think very seriously about how this affects all transportation modes.
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If those packages become popular, Uber and Lyft will go bankrupt even faster, saving the city a fortune
 
And if we all sprout wings, there will be no traffic.

Seriously though, there is not enough road capacity anywhere on the planet for autonomous cars to remotely reduce the need for public transportation at peak hours
 
timsox6 said:
Really interesting document overall. As to there being no "big ticket" items, I feel like South Station Expansion and West Station's construction are pretty major, and this plan relies on those two things' happening. Extending the Green Line and Orange Line won't be cheap either. Same for the Indigo Line. And repurposing that freight rail line into the Seaport. But I suppose none of those are really on the city to get done alone. All the bike infrastructure is what makes me happy.

I don't see this proposed plan as precluding other, larger projects. If the MBTA or MassDOT or a private developer wants to do something bigger, or even if the city decides that it wants to leave this plan or can afford something more, they can go right ahead. Meanwhile, hopefully, our streets will be becoming far friendlier to cyclists and pedestrians and car travel will be reduced.
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Orange line one stop to Roslindale - how much do you guys think that will cost? People have been asking for this for decades. There's also apparently space for 3 tracks along the entire ROW to Needham - which could potentially allow both the CR and the orange line run adjacent to each other. Seems like a lot of bang for buck there.

bike infra makes me happy too. I wish they were doing a more comprehensive look at capital improvements and doing things like default protected intersections and outlawing the use of sharrows.
 
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rinserepeat said:
Orange line one stop to Roslindale - how much do you guys think that will cost? People have been asking for this for decades. There's also apparently space for 3 tracks along the entire ROW to Needham - which could potentially allow both the CR and the orange line run adjacent to each other. Seems like a lot of bang for buck there.
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I'd like to see Orange to West Roxbury and Green to Needham ASAP with commuter rail removed in that area. The Orange Line vs commuter rail boarding counts in the MBTA Blue Book for Forest Hills seem to suggest that making commuter rail go away in this corridor ought to work fine. (And I wonder if these subway extensions to be able to get the Needham commuter trains out of South Station might be more shovel ready than South Station Expansion.)

bike infra makes me happy too. I wish they were doing a more comprehensive look at capital improvements and doing things like default protected intersections and outlawing the use of sharrows.
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Or maybe at least sharrows should come with a requirement to have a 20 MPH speed limit for motorized traffic and traffic calming measures to get drivers to drive that speed?

One thing I'm wondering about with protected intersections is whether Dutch style protected intersections will fit in some of the smaller spaces we might find around Boston.

Did this report say that they wanted bus lanes on Mass Ave with no discussion of whether Mass Ave is getting protected bike lanes?
 
curcuas said:
Seriously though, there is not enough road capacity anywhere on the planet for autonomous cars to remotely reduce the need for public transportation at peak hours
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Unless those autonomous cars turn out to be really good at enabling carpooling. Or possibly manage to safely operate with tighter spacing (narrower lanes and/or closer following distances) than human drivers.

IIRC, the report said something worrying about whether the less affluent would be able to afford to own self-driving cars. That misses the point; the big deal with self-driving cars is that a Zipcar-equivalent service can have the car meet you at your home instead of you needing to walk to the parking space, and also there's the potential to get better utilization for something like a shopping trip if you don't need to return home in the same vehicle you arrived in and therefore don't need to store the car idle in the parking lot while you're shopping, and this may also enable a downsizing of parking lots in shopping locations. If automonous vehicles can combine the best features of something like Lyft (one way trips, car picks you up and drops you off where you want) with the best features of something like Zipcar (the wages of the driver don't have to be built into the cost of using the service), I am hopeful that autonomous vehicles can offer service at a per-trip cost which is more affordable to people with limited wealth / income than the services available today.
 
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rinserepeat said:
Orange line one stop to Roslindale - how much do you guys think that will cost?
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I'm thinking $ 0.5 to 1 billion, probably closer to the latter. That seems to be the floor for any MBTA rapid transit expansion project.
 
Charlie_mta said:
I'm thinking $ 0.5 to 1 billion, probably closer to the latter. That seems to be the floor for any MBTA rapid transit expansion project.
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https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2016/05/09/green-line-extension-new-cost says $2.3 billion, maybe more, for the 6 station Green Line Extension. And I think the Green Line Extension price tag includes a maintenance facility, a $37 million bike path (which is expected to be 90% pedestrian use and 10% bike use), moving commuter rail tracks, 6 stations, etc. I think for $1 billion there's a pretty good chance the Orange Line conversion could get all the way out to West Roxbury.
 
Re: SL1 traffic delays

FenwayResident said:
It would have been nice to see a couple of "big ideas" in there too, even if they're not entirely realistic. Things like a blue/red connector, SL tunnel to Logan, etc.
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Even if we had infinite funding to start the EIS and construction on a dedicated new tunnel across the harbor tomorrow, it would probably take a few years to build.

What we should be able to get done in 2017 if the SL1 is getting stuck in traffic in or near that tunnel is to increase the tolls for single occupany vehicles at peak travel time until traffic flows freely again.
 
Charlie_mta said:
I'm thinking $ 0.5 to 1 billion, probably closer to the latter. That seems to be the floor for any MBTA rapid transit expansion project.
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No. The cost of adding a single stop in roslindale while keeping the commuter rail active to needham. That's a single station and likely a single track spur from forest hills. My guess is somewhere between $50-100 million.

Edit - this is the least complicated leg - widest section of he ROW. Would complicate plans for the bike path from the square, though.
 
^ I think in greater boston we are too conditioned to think of things in terms of binary large-scale improvements -vs- status quo. We have not historically been in a mindset of continuous, steady improvement of our systems (e.g., we are not used to the occasional $100m project, here or there, every other year)....instead it tends to be things left to rot, versus, "the big dig"...and because of this mindset, I can understand why people think that every single project therefore must be $1bil+

That is simply not the case. I agree that there is a plethora of $50-$100m incremental improvement projects out there that we simple are not in the habit of chipping away at. That's not how our budgets have worked historically. But it should be.
 
^ parking garages in the city cost around 50-100 million. That's also the range of the work currently being done up at forest hills. I think the problem is that if you want federal $ they often force you to include cars.

But I agree about transit projects. People have wanted and additional stop on the red line for a while now too. Assembly stop on the orange line was paid for by the developer. I'm wondering if there's a similar mechanism in roslindale - rights to develop those two parking lots if it comes with investment in an orange line station (which I believe would be the biggest ticket item for a single stop expansion). The only risk is abutters who would care about noise from a subway running all hours, but you just build some sound barriers and give them the bike path (which can double as fire access).
 
West Station

The report proposes several connections for West Station:

  • Commuter rail
  • Bus service to Harvard Sq
  • Bus service to Kendall Sq
  • Bus service to Longwood Medical Area

And those are all generally things that should be built and operated, with the possible exception that if Green Line conversion of the Grand Junction Railroad happens, trainstituting the Kendall service would be appropriate.

But I think we should also be persuing some additional connections:

  • Bus stops for Mass Pike buses, both intercity and MBTA express. This should be set up to minimize the extra distance a bus has to travel when using these stops vs if the buses skip the West Station stop, to discourage buses from skipping West Station: perhaps the freeway could have an exit that would serve just a two lane in each direction busway (one lane for passing, the other for stopping), and then as the buses proceed to the end of the busway there'd be a dedicated entrance back onto the freeway.
  • 32 from Wolcott Sq to Harvard Sq via South St, Centre St, South Huntington, Harvard St, Babcock St, West Station. This comes reasonably close to being a straight line, and might be good for diverting some trips away from the congested Park St transfer location. I think rebuilding the north end of Babcock St with a 20' or 25' increase in elevation and building a bus bridge across the West Station commuter rail and Mass Pike bus platforms would probably be the way to make this work.
  • Bus service to Central Sq in Cambridge.
  • Green Line A branch service from Harvard Sq to Park St. I think the proposal archboston has seen for this involves a bunch of tunnel construction; since tunnels are hard to find money for, maybe we could instead route that train along Babcock St and the bus bridge I'm proposing across West Station.
  • Modify bus 22 to remove the Jackson Sq to Ruggles segment, and instead send it along Heath St, South Huntington, Harvard St, and Babcock to West Station and Harvard.

Also, their map seems to possibly imply that the route to Longwood they're proposing may be via Park Drive and Brookline Ave. I'm wondering if Babcock to Coolidge Corner and then Longwood Ave its whole length is an alternative worth considering; maybe this could be part of a plan to reroute bus 15, with its east end reaching the Savin Hill Red Line station, and the west end rerouted to skip the Roxbury Crossing to Ruggles segment and instead take St Alphonsus St, Longwood, and Babcock, continuing to West Station and Harvard.
 
Re: Roslindale / Assembly Orange Line

rinserepeat said:
Assembly stop on the orange line was paid for by the developer.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_(MBTA_station) has some cost information and talks about a mix of federal, state, and developer funding for the $57 million estimate, but then it also says there was a $29 million contract. It doesn't seem to be clear on what each party ended up paying.
 
This video touches on the question of what happens to housing availability for less affluent renters when tranportation improves, but at least some of the presenters seem to miss the point that making sure that zoning laws allow the construction of an adequate quantity of market rate units throughout an area is important.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMoHdEDxVww
 
Re: SL1 traffic delays

Joel N. Weber II said:
Even if we had infinite funding to start the EIS and construction on a dedicated new tunnel across the harbor tomorrow, it would probably take a few years to build.
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Isn't the point of a 15 year plan to have projects that take a few years to build?
 
Compared to the 1949 MTA Expansion Plan that laid out rail expansion for the next 100 years, this Go Boston 2030 Plan has no vision at all; a weak, pointless plan.
 
Charlie_mta said:
Compared to the 1949 MTA Expansion Plan that laid out rail expansion for the next 100 years, this Go Boston 2030 Plan has no vision at all; a weak, pointless plan.
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Granted we've still got some decades to go until the 100-year mark on that one, but how many of those rail extensions have they built? I'd expect this plan will be implemented to some degree.
 
^ Yeah; anyone can lay out a grand vision that has no chance of being implemented. We were supposed to have flying cars by now.

A great strategy has near term and long term elements. I like the 2030 plan in general, but wish there were a 2050 version drawn up in parallel.
 
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