Bowker Overpass replacement?

[Ron Newman]

I think it's a reasonable tradeoff to regain full access to the Esplanade parkland and Charles River front from the Beacon Hill, Back Bay and Kenmore neighborhoods.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

I think it's a reasonable tradeoff to regain full access to the Esplanade parkland and Charles River front from the Beacon Hill, Back Bay and Kenmore neighborhoods.

You are literally advocating for throwing federally mandated safety regulations to the wind - but, more directly, what you are advocating for is hundreds of crashes and at least a dozen fatalities yearly.

That's not hyperbole or exaggeration or speculation as to what "might happen." There's actually a pretty damn good reason as to why shoulders and acceleration/deceleration lanes exist. And, look, I don't disagree that urban freeways suck and the condition of the Esplanade today is not that great - but this really isn't the way to go about solving the problem.

You've gone full Mark from Arlington but in the other direction. Please reconsider your opinion on this matter.

 

[omaja]

On top of everything else that has been said, the Pike doesn't need another lane, anyway. It could actually drop a lane in each direction in favor of continuous full-width shoulders.

 

[jass]

You are literally advocating for throwing federally mandated safety regulations to the wind - but, more directly, what you are advocating for is hundreds of crashes and at least a dozen fatalities yearly.

That's not hyperbole or exaggeration or speculation as to what "might happen." There's actually a pretty damn good reason as to why shoulders and acceleration/deceleration lanes exist. And, look, I don't disagree that urban freeways suck and the condition of the Esplanade today is not that great - but this really isn't the way to go about solving the problem.

You've gone full Mark from Arlington but in the other direction. Please reconsider your opinion on this matter.

I take it the arroyo seco parkway is a bloodbath with marines stationed to guarantee order?

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Los+...=1ckLDWNPPfF5qPQC_g2k2Q&cbp=12,16.63,,0,12.63


https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Los+...=XfVpmujZwDUqRYbAn-6xjQ&cbp=12,248.08,,1,5.24

 

[omaja]

^ That's not an apt comparison since you're talking about downgrading a road that is already on par with the Arroyo Seco. Eliminating Storrow and restriping the Pike with even narrower lanes will decrease safety and throughput.

 

[jass]

Lower the speed limit then. Instant safety.

 

[George_Apley]

Speed limit on Route 2 west of 128 is 45mph, everyone drives 65-70. And there's ample space for police enforcement of the speed limit there. How would we enforce this new low speed limit on the Pike in Boston if there're no shoulders to pull people over? Constant surveillance speed cameras?

 

[Equilibria]

Lower the speed limit then. Instant safety.

Guys, stop this anti-car militancy. It's unbecoming. You're now advocating reducing speed (and therefore throughput) on a major national highway so it can be rebuilt in defiance of Federal safety design standards in a way that will put ordinary drivers at mortal risk, solely so you can remove a useful and highly-traveled connection between otherwise unconnected employment centers. Your reason for all of this: restore a hundred feet or so of width to a park that is currently twice that wide and never in its entire history has had the profile you propose. The Esplanade (once it ceased to be a tidal marsh) was a narrow grassy strip with a few trees. It was widened IN RESPONSE to the construction of Storrow Drive to compensate for parkland lost to construction. No Storrow, no lagoons. I can't see what you claim to be "restoring" here.

 

[Matthew]

Just as an aside, reducing speed limit on a highway does not reduce throughput because inter-car spacing must grow at higher speeds. If everyone uses the "two second" rule of thumb then the maximum theoretical throughput is 1800 cars per hour per lane regardless of speed (this only applies at highway speeds).

Arguably, from empirical studies, the highest practical throughput seems to occur at 40-45 mph. If that's what you cared about, then you would suggest that rush hour speed limits be held at that rate.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

I take it the arroyo seco parkway is a bloodbath with marines stationed to guarantee order?

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Los+...=1ckLDWNPPfF5qPQC_g2k2Q&cbp=12,16.63,,0,12.63


https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Los+...=XfVpmujZwDUqRYbAn-6xjQ&cbp=12,248.08,,1,5.24

Yeah, I'd say that road is an excellent example of what might happen.

http://www.scpr.org/programs/offramp/2012/08/23/28052/california-department-of-transportation-torn/

The Arroyo Seco Parkway - formerly the Pasadena Freeway - is one of the oldest freeways in the west. Opened in 1940, the narrow, windy road connecting Pasadena and downtown served the city well for decades. But over the last 20 years both motorists and transit officials have seen the peaceful mountain pass turn into a high-speed raceway. It's caused a number of accidents and constant headaches for local residents.

http://southpasadena.patch.com/articles/fatal-car-crash-the-110-tuesday-morning-south-pasadena

An 18-year-old male from Los Angeles was killed around 1 a.m. Tuesday after losing control of his vehicle on the southbound Pasadena (110) Freeway just south of Orange Grove Avenue in South Pasadena, according to the California Highway Patrol (CHP).

The man was driving at an unsafe speed, before veering off and hitting the center concrete wall of the freeway, accordng to reports. His Honda was then hit by another male driver, 78, from Artesia, who was transported to Huntington Memorial Hospital for minor injuries.

The 18-year-old male was pronounced dead at the scene.

http://southpasadena.patch.com/arti...-caltrans-leiana-ramirez-fatality-110-freeway

Following the tragic fatality of 10-month-old Leiana Ramirez—who burned to death in a vehicle that was rear-ended on the Arroyo Seco Parkway—several residents offered suggestions on how to make the highway safer.

"Why don't we reduce the speed limit to 45?" Gloria Guerin commented on Patch in September.

"The installation of cameras would be justified along the parkway to discourage speeding," Tuncer Toprakci echoed.

It's not like I had to dig that deep to start finding fatalities. Oh, but hey, at least not all the crashes are fatal!

http://southpasadena.patch.com/articles/rain-causes-commuter-nightmare#photo-9574933

An early morning one-car accident on southbound 110 Freeway sent a female driver of a Toyota Tundra to Huntington Hospital with minor injuries Friday morning.

"Anytime it rains for the first time, roads get really slick," said South Pasadena Captain Danny DeAngelis.

South Pasadena rescue personnel (paramedics and fire fighters) arrived on the scene of the overturned vehicle around 7:45 a.m., and treated the woman who was already removed from her car.

The freeway was closed while California Highway Patrol and rescue units worked the scene—causing a massive backup to the dismay of commuters.

The accident was one of many reported on local thoroughfares.

http://southpasadena.going.com/topics/Arroyo+Seco+Parkway

^ That's not an apt comparison since you're talking about downgrading a road that is already on par with the Arroyo Seco. Eliminating Storrow and restriping the Pike with even narrower lanes will decrease safety and throughput.

Just as an aside, reducing speed limit on a highway does not reduce throughput because inter-car spacing must grow at higher speeds. If everyone uses the "two second" rule of thumb then the maximum theoretical throughput is 1800 cars per hour per lane regardless of speed (this only applies at highway speeds).

Arguably, from empirical studies, the highest practical throughput seems to occur at 40-45 mph. If that's what you cared about, then you would suggest that rush hour speed limits be held at that rate.

I should point out before I continue that I don't give a damn about throughput. If we need to cut throughput in half or lower to meet acceptable levels of safety, so be it. That having been said,

Lower the speed limit then. Instant safety.

Lowering the speed limit on its own isn't going to solve the problem (which, let me restate, would be a problem of our own creation) - and lowering the speed limit to something like 45 mph isn't going to do a damn thing.

As long as we're living in the alternate universe where we've got absolute impunity and can wipe our asses with the MUTCD, let's go all the way and drop the speed limit to 25 mph and signalize the entire road. Traffic lights at every interchange - that, and the low speed limit, is probably going to be enough of a correction for no shoulders / no merges.

At that point, though, it really isn't an Interstate anymore - which leads right into my endgame of un-bannering the Pike Extension and cutting the Pike at 128. I-90 east of 93 turns into I-193 (or, hell, since we've already crushed all of our opposition, it goes away entirely and becomes a mass transit tube), and the Roadway Formerly Known As The Mass Pike gets re-bannered as US-20. Perfect! One less unseemly urban freeway running through Boston.

And just so we're perfectly clear, nothing in the last two paragraphs is something I'd actually support. Ever.

Guys, stop this anti-car militancy. It's unbecoming. You're now advocating reducing speed (and therefore throughput) on a major national highway so it can be rebuilt in defiance of Federal safety design standards in a way that will put ordinary drivers at mortal risk, solely so you can remove a useful and highly-traveled connection between otherwise unconnected employment centers. Your reason for all of this: restore a hundred feet or so of width to a park that is currently twice that wide and never in its entire history has had the profile you propose. The Esplanade (once it ceased to be a tidal marsh) was a narrow grassy strip with a few trees. It was widened IN RESPONSE to the construction of Storrow Drive to compensate for parkland lost to construction. No Storrow, no lagoons. I can't see what you claim to be "restoring" here.

If we're going to launch into a semantics argument, taking all the land lost to Storrow Drive back for the Esplanade fits the technical definition of a "restoration." We could, in fact, take that land without having to give up the Esplanade expansion and end up with an Esplanade wider than it's ever been. Doing so would also reconnect the Esplanade to Back Bay, and it wouldn't take much more to also link into the Public Garden/Boston Common, the Comm Ave Mall, the Fenway Gardens and even the Rose Kennedy Greenway (which might actually afford that abomination some measure of legitimacy.)

As an abundance of parkland is one of the things that makes Boston great, eliminating Storrow Drive and restoring/expanding the Esplanade is a laudable goal. It's probably not achievable, though, at least not in the short term.

 

[jass]

Speed limit on Route 2 west of 128 is 45mph, everyone drives 65-70. And there's ample space for police enforcement of the speed limit there. How would we enforce this new low speed limit on the Pike in Boston if there're no shoulders to pull people over? Constant surveillance speed cameras?

Speed cameras are more accurate and less biased than cops, so absolutely. If 40mph is the safe speed for the pike inside Boston, than set it at that speed with penalties that make it worth adhering to.

Mind you, route 2 west of 128 probably shouldnt be set at 45mph

 

[Matthew]

Although it was criminal to build Storrow Drive originally (and cruel to name it after the Storrow family, who opposed such a road), I'm leaning towards the idea that it would be best to replace it with a normal city street rather than total removal.

When Storrow Drive was built the Mass Pike extension did not exist. Now it does. So the purpose of the city street in the Storrow right-of-way should be for local travel and permeability. That means the grade-separation must come down. Currently, Storrow acts as a barrier to both foot and automobile traffic, by funneling people and vehicles through a limited set of entrances and exits. The associated ramps also waste a tremendous amount of parkland. The Bowker should also be removed and turned into a normal city intersection, or possibly involve a roundabout.

Storrow Drive should not be a limited access highway. It should also not be completely removed. Instead, it should be linked with nearly every cross street, allowing full permeability, and easy crossing on foot. Why? Well besides increasing access to and from the Back Bay, Kenmore and possibly Allston, it is about safety too. I've been walking along the paths at dusk only to be surprised by the oncoming headlights of a police cruiser where you would least expect it. The reason, I realized, is that the Esplanade is difficult to access not only for the citizens, but also for the police. There's a long, unfortunate history of danger in that park after dark, and Storrow Drive did not help matters by cutting it off from the rest of the city even further.

So in summary, Storrow Drive should be a normal city street with at-grade intersections, advantageous for local automobile travel as well as pedestrian permeability. The speed limit may be lower, but it's already quite low theoretically (if not in practice) and you may end up finding it more convenient if you don't have to go out of your way to use grade-separated ramps for entrances and exits.

Sound reasonable?

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

Although it was criminal to build Storrow Drive originally (and cruel to name it after the Storrow family, who opposed such a road), I'm leaning towards the idea that it would be best to replace it with a normal city street rather than total removal.

When Storrow Drive was built the Mass Pike extension did not exist. Now it does. So the purpose of the city street in the Storrow right-of-way should be for local travel and permeability. That means the grade-separation must come down. Currently, Storrow acts as a barrier to both foot and automobile traffic, by funneling people and vehicles through a limited set of entrances and exits. The associated ramps also waste a tremendous amount of parkland. The Bowker should also be removed and turned into a normal city intersection, or possibly involve a roundabout.

Absolutely - turning Storrow into a 4-lane boulevard (or, hell, even a 5-lane - 2 lanes each way plus an extra left-turning lane for westbound traffic) with crosswalks, sidewalks, signals and a 25-mph speed limit would work wonderfully. (I'm pretty sure that's actually what the Esplanade 2020 people are calling for, in fact.) We do that, get rid of Back Street, and connect all the cross streets directly to Storrow and I'm willing to bet that people would find that traffic actually flows better on that road even though its capacity was, in theory, shot to hell.

The only potential problems I can see with that are the Mass Ave. Crossing (we probably can't get away without ramps there) and the BU Bridge, which you can't access from Storrow anyway.

I will, however, take objection to your suggestion of a Charlesgate roundabout. I really don't understand why people keep suggesting them or talking them up - they're awful for both drivers and pedestrians, and never the best option except in very specific circumstances. (Namely, when you for some reason absolutely need to have 5 or more directions of traffic intersecting.)

Anywhere else, a signalized intersection is better.

 

[Equilibria]

When Storrow Drive was built the Mass Pike extension did not exist. Now it does. So the purpose of the city street in the Storrow right-of-way should be for local travel and permeability. That means the grade-separation must come down. Currently, Storrow acts as a barrier to both foot and automobile traffic, by funneling people and vehicles through a limited set of entrances and exits. The associated ramps also waste a tremendous amount of parkland. The Bowker should also be removed and turned into a normal city intersection, or possibly involve a roundabout.

Storrow Drive should not be a limited access highway. It should also not be completely removed. Instead, it should be linked with nearly every cross street, allowing full permeability, and easy crossing on foot. Why? Well besides increasing access to and from the Back Bay, Kenmore and possibly Allston, it is about safety too. I've been walking along the paths at dusk only to be surprised by the oncoming headlights of a police cruiser where you would least expect it. The reason, I realized, is that the Esplanade is difficult to access not only for the citizens, but also for the police. There's a long, unfortunate history of danger in that park after dark, and Storrow Drive did not help matters by cutting it off from the rest of the city even further.

So in summary, Storrow Drive should be a normal city street with at-grade intersections, advantageous for local automobile travel as well as pedestrian permeability. The speed limit may be lower, but it's already quite low theoretically (if not in practice) and you may end up finding it more convenient if you don't have to go out of your way to use grade-separated ramps for entrances and exits.

Sound reasonable?

Not to me, no. The fallacy here is that Storrow and the Turnpike are redundant roads. They may parallel each other to the point of the Bowker overpass, but they are spokes which provide access to entirely different extremes of Central Boston. Leverett Circle and South Bay are 1.75 miles apart as the crow flies. Assuming no rapid non-signal-neutered alternatives (like Memorial Drive), it's over 2 miles longer to use I-90/I-93 to access Leverett Cricle from A/B. I just did that today in reverse, and it wasn't bad, but this was New Year's Eve and there was no commute traffic.

The only way I might consider removing or downgrading Storrow a good idea was if the A/B interchange were reconfigured to make accessing redundant roadways on the Cambridge side easy and efficient, but you guys want to do away with Memorial Drive, too. I could also see reconfiguring the Bowker to bring the Storrow mainline to the Turnpike and removing the section of Storrow behind BU that actually is redundant (and that would do wonderful things for the BU Campus, BTW) I actually wonder if it would work from a traffic perspective to send 1 lane in each direction off the Pike there and reconfigure things for safety past that point as a six-lane road (Which is the only way you could ever fit a diamond interchange there).

Again, removing a glorified ramp with limited use as was done in SF and PDX is not remotely the same as this. Deck it? Sure. Reconfigure some interchanges? Fine. Build a subway under Back St. and see if traffic declines and then make the decision? Sounds good to me, but currently, people use this road and they need this road.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

Not to me, no. The fallacy here is that Storrow and the Turnpike are redundant roads. They may parallel each other to the point of the Bowker overpass, but they are spokes which provide access to entirely different extremes of Central Boston. Leverett Circle and South Bay are 1.75 miles apart as the crow flies. Assuming no rapid non-signal-neutered alternatives (like Memorial Drive), it's over 2 miles longer to use I-90/I-93 to access Leverett Cricle from A/B. I just did that today in reverse, and it wasn't bad, but this was New Year's Eve and there was no commute traffic.

They're not redundant roads. One should be serving local traffic, the other distance traffic. For the record, Storrow is just over 2 miles from end to end. Assuming you're moving at 20 mph - 5 below the speed limit I propose - it's still going to take you all of 3 minutes to go from one end of it to the other. If you're pushing it and going 5 over, you can clear the entire roadway at just 2 minutes!

As I said, dropping the speed limit and signalizing the road will, paradoxically, make the road flow better. It won't be locking up every time something goes wrong, and you won't have to hurry-up-and-brake. You don't need to treat it like a drag strip to get where you're going quickly - and, in fact, you don't need that road to be a drag strip to get where you're going quickly. That's the real fallacy here.

 

[Equilibria]

They're not redundant roads. One should be serving local traffic, the other distance traffic. For the record, Storrow is just over 2 miles from end to end. Assuming you're moving at 20 mph - 5 below the speed limit I propose - it's still going to take you all of 3 minutes to go from one end of it to the other. If you're pushing it and going 5 over, you can clear the entire roadway at just 2 minutes!

Um... stoplights? Queues? Additional local traffic being dropped onto Storrow from all of those local roads at the signalized interchanges? Apply that same logic to another road:

The full length of Storrow Drive from Cambridge St. to Leverett Circle is 3.65 miles long. That's Route 9 from the Lee Street (the Reservoir) to Copley Square via Huntington Ave. It's Comm. Ave from the New Balance HQ to the Public Garden, or Beacon St from the Back Bay to Cleveland Circle. Even leaving out the section parallel to the Pike, that's still the same as the entire Brookline stretch of Beacon St. from Cleveland Circle to Kenmore. Are any of those roads you would consider efficient access routes?

If you can demonstrate that there's much call for accessing the residential Back Bay from the Western Suburbs and vice versa, then your argument looks a little better. Even then, Comm. Ave. and Beacon St. also serve that purpose, as would new Pike ramps.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

Um... stoplights? Queues? Additional local traffic being dropped onto Storrow from all of those local roads at the signalized interchanges? Apply that same logic to another road:

The full length of Storrow Drive from Cambridge St. to Leverett Circle is 3.65 miles long. That's Route 9 from the Lee Street (the Reservoir) to Copley Square via Huntington Ave. It's Comm. Ave from the New Balance HQ to the Public Garden, or Beacon St from the Back Bay to Cleveland Circle. Even leaving out the section parallel to the Pike, that's still the same as the entire Brookline stretch of Beacon St. from Cleveland Circle to Kenmore. Are any of those roads you would consider efficient access routes?

If you can demonstrate that there's much call for accessing the residential Back Bay from the Western Suburbs and vice versa, then your argument looks a little better. Even then, Comm. Ave. and Beacon St. also serve that purpose, as would new Pike ramps.

Stoplights would assign priority to Storrow over the cross streets. An additional lane for left turns on the Westbound side solves the queuing issue, and, assuming proper coordination of all the signals, you should only expect to hit one or two of them on an end-to-end journey. Even at 30 seconds each, that's only one more minute on your trip. If you can't afford an extra 60 seconds on your commute, I don't know what to tell you - other than to schedule your time better.

The additional local traffic is regulated by the stoplights, and that also helps keep the flow at a consistent rate. No uncertainties.

Route 9, Commonwealth Avenue, and Beacon Street west of Kenmore are all efficient access routes in my opinion, yes. They're reasonably wide without being overly wide, move people where people generally want to go, and - horror upon horrors - all of them have signals, too.

New Pike ramps create an entirely different problem in weaving between exits and entrances. Turning Storrow into a local access road precludes the creation of any new ramps, and redundancy between it and Comm Ave will help both roads through better load balancing. The mile-long gridlocks aren't going to happen anymore.

 

[Equilibria]

Route 9, Commonwealth Avenue, and Beacon Street west of Kenmore are all efficient access routes in my opinion, yes. They're reasonably wide without being overly wide, move people where people generally want to go, and - horror upon horrors - all of them have signals, too.

You're cherry-picking parts of my argument without addressing my question. Yes, of course Route 9, Comm. Ave, and Beacon St. are efficient routes in theory, but I'd never want to drive the entire length of Beacon St. in Brookline as my primary access route to Kenmore Square, particularly when I may have driven for 30 minutes just to get to the start. This is about the distance you go on these routes, not just the fact that you're on them.

Also, all of those roads are in dense urban or semi-urban areas with evenly distributed origins and destinations along their length. Storrow is not. It is a heavily-traveled connector between a major origin (the Turnpike) and a major destination (North Station, the North End, TD Garden, the MoS, all of East Cambridge, Charlestown, etc.) All traffic from the west into those areas uses it. In fact, since the Tobin Bridge intersection with 93 has no ramps to the South, Storrow is the only through connection between to anywhere on Route 1 from the West, and that routing has no other options going around the city since the Northeast Expressway was never extended to 128.

Finally, once your surface avenue is 5 lanes wide, how is that different from the current set-up from a pedestrian standpoint? Sure, there's more crosswalks, but couldn't you build 2 or 3 pedestrian bridges and make access better? A 5-lane boulevard plus a LRT reservation probably takes up the same ROW as the current road, if not more, so no new parkland. Again, if you think the Back Bay needs the additional local access, that's fine, but I don't think this is about that. If it's about building a cut-and-cover Blue Line, then okay, but that could go under Back St. or Beacon St. to more effect. This is about wanting to idyllically reclaim every last square foot of this city for the "enlightened" who embrace the car-free lifestyle and choose (and can afford) to live there (I'm not talking about you personally, CBS, but more the general mood).

Again, there is a 100-to-500-foot-wide strip of parkland for the public use along the river. In a vacuum, sure it would be great to have a grand surface boulevard there and set up the thing like Copacabana Beach. It would be beautiful. However, in a functional city there need to be roads like Storrow, and this routing, while it might not be the most ideal, is the one we've got. Not every part of a good city is pretty. Some of them have to do work.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

You're cherry-picking parts of my argument without addressing my question.

The only cherry picking I see here is you taking one part of my post and cutting the rest of it.

Yes, of course Route 9, Comm. Ave, and Beacon St. are efficient routes in theory, but I'd never want to drive the entire length of Beacon St. in Brookline as my primary access route to Kenmore Square, particularly when I may have driven for 30 minutes just to get to the start. This is about the distance you go on these routes, not just the fact that you're on them.

The distance in question is somewhere between 2 and 3.65 miles. At an average speed of 20 miles per hour, that's somewhere between 6 and 11 minutes. At an average speed of 45 miles per hour, which is almost certainly better than what you're getting on Storrow today, the time to travel is between... 2 minutes 40 seconds, and 4 minutes 52 seconds. We'll round those up to 3 and 5 minutes, respectively - and that means, at worst, slowing Storrow down is going to cost you 6 minutes on your commute time.

Is 6 minutes really going to make or break anyone's commute? Again, if it is, I don't know what to tell that person because there's an awful lot that can go wrong in the world to cost someone six minutes.

Also, all of those roads are in dense urban or semi-urban areas with evenly distributed origins and destinations along their length. Storrow is not. It is a heavily-traveled connector between a major origin (the Turnpike) and a major destination (North Station, the North End, TD Garden, the MoS, all of East Cambridge, Charlestown, etc.) All traffic from the west into those areas uses it. In fact, since the Tobin Bridge intersection with 93 has no ramps to the South, Storrow is the only through connection between to anywhere on Route 1 from the West, and that routing has no other options going around the city since the Northeast Expressway was never extended to 128.

Right, which is why Storrow has merit as a road that exists right now, and thusly I am not trying to have it removed, nor advocate for its removal.

Finally, once your surface avenue is 5 lanes wide, how is that different from the current set-up from a pedestrian standpoint? Sure, there's more crosswalks, but couldn't you build 2 or 3 pedestrian bridges and make access better?

There's also sidewalks. People hate being funneled into specific access points like pedestrian bridges - I, personally, don't have a problem with them, but I'm not most people. That aside, crosswalks mean direct-to-door access between the Back Bay residences and the Esplanade.

A 5-lane boulevard plus a LRT reservation probably takes up the same ROW as the current road, if not more, so no new parkland.

I don't want an LRT reservation. I oppose surface running along that corridor - and since the people of Boston have no imagination for an El (beyond El-based trauma and horror stories, there's no shortage of those), that leaves tunneling.

Again, if you think the Back Bay needs the additional local access, that's fine, but I don't think this is about that.

I honestly have no idea where you got the impression that I don't think the Back Bay needs the additional local access. I think that's one of the major selling points of turning Storrow into a boulevard.

If it's about building a cut-and-cover Blue Line, then okay, but that could go under Back St. or Beacon St. to more effect.

Not without another Big Dig, it can't. We know what's under Storrow Drive, so we can effectively tunnel under it without having to worry about nasty surprises. Back Street / Beacon Street are an entirely different story, and any tunneling under them would require a very expensive, time-consuming and messy documentation process.

Of course, if you ask me, that should happen anyway, because as long as we don't have documentation for all these centuries-old mystery utilities, that's a preventable disaster waiting to happen - but most people don't get excited about pissing billions of dollars into a documenting project for 19th century sewage. It's just not sexy.

This is about wanting to idyllically reclaim every last square foot of this city for the "enlightened" who embrace the car-free lifestyle and choose (and can afford) to live there (I'm not talking about you personally, CBS, but more the general mood).

This is a bullshit argument. Owning a car doesn't preclude you from using transit, for one thing, and mass transit isn't for "the enlightened," nor is it for the rich or the poor or any other singular group of people.

For that matter, neither are cars. I think there is a place for both. I don't think we need to have people hauling ass at 50 or 60 mph down Storrow for it to be a useful road. If I did, I'd be sitting here arguing for an expansion of the road to get proper shoulders on it.

I still don't give a damn about (maximum) throughput, but that's because I'd much rather 1800 cars per hour creep along Storrow at a 'pedestrian' 25 mph than have 1800 cars per hour stopped and idling on a road with a theoretical limit of 45+ mph.

Again, there is a 100-to-500-foot-wide strip of parkland for the public use along the river. In a vacuum, sure it would be great to have a grand surface boulevard there and set up the thing like Copacabana Beach. It would be beautiful. However, in a functional city there need to be roads like Storrow, and this routing, while it might not be the most ideal, is the one we've got. Not every part of a good city is pretty. Some of them have to do work.

Sorry, but this is also a bullshit argument. Things don't have to be ugly to do a job and do it well. We can have a beautiful, grand boulevard where Storrow is now that's effective at moving people from one end to the other at the same time, as well as effective at moving people into and out of the Back Bay.

Just because some or all of our existing infrastructure is ugly doesn't mean it all has to be.

 

[Matthew]

Access to/from the Back Bay and Kenmore is one of my primary arguments.