Bowker Overpass replacement?

[Equilibria]

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.

Again, you're twisting my words to make a straw man. I never said everything has to be ugly looking. Hell, there are people on this board who I've heard eulogizing the Central Artery and elevated Green Line because they found the grit beautiful. I'm saying that you need to have a unified plan for the entire city in which it is assumed that there will be ample efficient access for all modes and commute patterns. That's very different from going from street to street trying to optimize for a single ideology of New Urbanism to the detriment of the entire system.

There is simply no principle of traffic management that would tell you that adding a whole bunch of stoplights and additional local traffic to a road while increasing the number of intersections will make that road more efficient. You are increasing flow and decreasing capacity. If 1800 cars are idling on Storrow today, then the 2500 cars that would be there after the downgrade would still be idling, only in addition to traffic congestion they'd be queuing for 5 minutes at each stoplight.

Honestly, I don't know where you get the idea that stoplights add that little time to a commute on a heavily-traveled artery. On Route 9 at Eliot St, I have personal experience with queues of over half a mile. That doesn't sound like much, but it's the distance from Clarendon St. to Gloucester St, and it can take 4 or 5 light cycles (something like 10 minutes at least) to clear that single signal at rush hour on what I think is a similarly loaded road, except for the fact that there isn't large amounts of local traffic entering from one side on Route 9.

You assume an "average speed of 20mph." That means no queues, all green lights, since one probably doesn't typically exceed 20mph much in flowing traffic in the city. That's not remotely realistic. 6 minutes is bad enough just by changing free flow speed. You're advocating 3 or 4 5-minute waits at traffic lights in heavy traffic (if not longer), so the number is really more like 20-30 minutes added to the commute.

For local access, one can currently take Comm. Ave, running parallel to Storrow Drive 275 feet away, less than a half a mile to reach a full interchange between the two. Given that you're advocating slowing down Storrow to the West of the Bowker Overpass, I fail to see how local access by car is improved much by downgrading Storrow. Pedestrian access doesn't improve much either, in my opinion - I respect that people may not "like" the bridges, but they do provide efficient access to the park. The only access that truly improves, IMO, is by transit if you assume a Riverfront Subway, which is probably a prohibitively expensive project no matter where it is.

That Storrow exists as a through route from the suburbs to the city and runs through a local neighborhood without serving it thoroughly bothers people and I get that. However, to use a transit analogy: the Lowell Commuter Rail line has passed through Somerville for decades without stopping. To give Somerville transit access, I don't think this board would have advocated adding 6 stations to the CR in Somerville, then telling commuters who complain about the added delay that they should take the Haverhill Line since they both start at North Station and kind of run parallel for a bit. GLX is intended to provide access without overly burdening the long-distance commuters, the same way as Comm. Ave. does for Storrow in the Back Bay.

 

[Matthew]

I disagree. Limited access grade-separated roadways can cause additional unnecessary congestion because of the loopy, indirect routing it forces on users. Sometimes having more direct options is better overall, even though your individual average speed may seem to be slower, you end up getting there more smoothly. This is why I've been impressed at how the Dutch (for example) have deployed roundabouts so successfully. To the American eye, they seem crazy and dangerous, because we are obsessed with traffic over-engineering. But they actually can work really well, much better than signaled intersections. Their main downfall is spatial.

Anyway, I didn't intend for this to be set in stone, nor am I particularly attached to one way of doing it. I just brought up roundabouts as an example. Everything would have to be analyzed and tailored for this specific context.

I think the main point is this: the design of Storrow and the streets around the Esplanade should be fundamentally changed in philosophy from serving as a bypass to being accessible and permeable for local neighborhoods. The reasons are: the Pike now exists as the through-route, Storrow is decaying and subpar as a limited access freeway anyhow, accessibility is considered to be more important these days than it was in the 50s, and the Esplanade needs to be better connected to the city and those tiny bridges don't cut it.

It might mean compromises but I just don't see why we have to continue to propagate the decisions that were made 60 years ago without revisiting them in light of all the changes the past few decades have brought.

 

[bbfen]

I guess you're predicating this on the residents of the Back Bay wanting/needing additional penetrations via Storrow. I agree that access to the Esplanade is subpar and should be explored but I don't think making it easier for cars to drive around the Back Bay is the way to do that.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

Again, you're twisting my words to make a straw man. I never said everything has to be ugly looking. Hell, there are people on this board who I've heard eulogizing the Central Artery and elevated Green Line because they found the grit beautiful.

I apologize if I come off that way. I'm not trying to make a straw man, or twist your words. You said:

Not every part of a good city is pretty. Some of them have to do work.

I interpreted that as the argument that function should come at the expense of aesthetic value, or rather that we should accept a compromise on aesthetic values simply because something is 'functional.' I don't buy that argument - frankly, it's an argument that pisses me off, and not just when applied to roads. I get just as irritated when I'm told to accept an ugly building or an ugly bridge just because 'it works.' I'm not saying that you were actually trying to make that argument, but quite a few people do. Sorry for jumping down your throat.

I'm saying that you need to have a unified plan for the entire city in which it is assumed that there will be ample efficient access for all modes and commute patterns. That's very different from going from street to street trying to optimize for a single ideology of New Urbanism to the detriment of the entire system.

I do, actually, have a unified plan that provides ample and efficient access to everybody. It gets served up piecemeal here because I don't really see the merit in creating a thread just to evangelize on what the city would look like if I had total control and about $2 trillion to spend - but I do, actually, have a general plan that I would like to see people working towards.

And I do recognize the need for cars. It's an unpopular standpoint here, and I support a number of car-friendly or car-neutral things that are certainly very unpopular, such as free parking and garages at major outlying transit stations like Alewife, Wellington, and Quincy Adams - as well as cheap parking at stations closer to downtown like Aquarium or South Station (something which no doubt is infuriating in its own way to some people). I would much rather see people taking mass transit because they want to and because it's a good deal for them, than because we've forced them to through punitive action.

Some things that I advocate for - like turning expressways into boulevards or banning on-street parking - certainly seem to be punitive and anti-car, but I'm not advocating for them because I hate cars or want to punish people for driving.

There is simply no principle of traffic management that would tell you that adding a whole bunch of stoplights and additional local traffic to a road while increasing the number of intersections will make that road more efficient. You are increasing flow and decreasing capacity. If 1800 cars are idling on Storrow today, then the 2500 cars that would be there after the downgrade would still be idling, only in addition to traffic congestion they'd be queuing for 5 minutes at each stoplight.

Honestly, I don't know where you get the idea that stoplights add that little time to a commute on a heavily-traveled artery. On Route 9 at Eliot St, I have personal experience with queues of over half a mile. That doesn't sound like much, but it's the distance from Clarendon St. to Gloucester St, and it can take 4 or 5 light cycles (something like 10 minutes at least) to clear that single signal at rush hour on what I think is a similarly loaded road, except for the fact that there isn't large amounts of local traffic entering from one side on Route 9.

You assume an "average speed of 20mph." That means no queues, all green lights, since one probably doesn't typically exceed 20mph much in flowing traffic in the city. That's not remotely realistic. 6 minutes is bad enough just by changing free flow speed. You're advocating 3 or 4 5-minute waits at traffic lights in heavy traffic (if not longer), so the number is really more like 20-30 minutes added to the commute.

Actually, roads have their highest throughput (ergo, max capacity is achieved) at LOS E. In other words, the road is working at its best if it's slightly congested.

But more to the point, the traffic lights and left-turn queue lanes are there to actually break up the gridlock. I'm not sure where you're getting "3 or 4 5-minute waits" from - at most, it'd be 30 seconds per traffic light, and you'd only reasonably expect to hit 1 or 2 because Storrow traffic would be prioritized - the only time the lights would be red is if someone is trying to make a left turn onto or off of the road, or if a pedestrian has called the pedestrian crossing phase. The lights shouldn't be cycling regularly, and if they are, that means somebody has screwed up somewhere along the line.

The idea is that everyone moves along at an average 20 mph and only needs to stop once, twice if they're unlucky, rather than having stop-go-stop-go-stop in bumper to bumper traffic. I get that it seems like more lights would have the opposite effect - but not if they're programmed correctly.

For local access, one can currently take Comm. Ave, running parallel to Storrow Drive 275 feet away, less than a half a mile to reach a full interchange between the two. Given that you're advocating slowing down Storrow to the West of the Bowker Overpass, I fail to see how local access by car is improved much by downgrading Storrow. Pedestrian access doesn't improve much either, in my opinion - I respect that people may not "like" the bridges, but they do provide efficient access to the park. The only access that truly improves, IMO, is by transit if you assume a Riverfront Subway, which is probably a prohibitively expensive project no matter where it is.

Local access to and from the Back Bay, Beacon Hill and the West End are all vastly improved by turning Storrow into a Boulevard - especially Beacon Hill, which is a confusing and barely-navigable mess of one-way streets with no rhyme or reason to them. West of Bowker, the only beneficiary is Boston University, which gets full and direct access to the Esplanade back, as well as improved access to the Pike via Storrow and a reworked Storrow/Pike interchange. Still, it's not like there's not a wide range of people who would benefit from this. I think it's absolutely worth doing.

That Storrow exists as a through route from the suburbs to the city and runs through a local neighborhood without serving it thoroughly bothers people and I get that. However, to use a transit analogy: the Lowell Commuter Rail line has passed through Somerville for decades without stopping. To give Somerville transit access, I don't think this board would have advocated adding 6 stations to the CR in Somerville, then telling commuters who complain about the added delay that they should take the Haverhill Line since they both start at North Station and kind of run parallel for a bit. GLX is intended to provide access without overly burdening the long-distance commuters, the same way as Comm. Ave. does for Storrow in the Back Bay.

See, I don't think Storrow needs to be a long-distance route. Between BU at one end and North Station/TD Garden at the other, plus the whole of Back Bay and Beacon Hill, and MIT directly across the river, there's actually an awful lot of endpoints on that route which aren't being adequately served by the street grid we've got there.

I think the long-distance route for east-west traffic is the Mass Pike, and the north-south route I-93. And while I admit that I would have preferred them never built in the first place, they're both here now, they're both here to stay, and I do believe removing them now would cause more damage than keeping them does. They're just too important. Sorry, Matthew, I know you disagree with me.

Storrow, in the grand scheme of things, is not that important for long distance travel. In another universe, if we'd built the NE and SW expressways out to 128, I'm certain I'd feel differently - but as it stands, no, I think we'll be just fine if we turn Storrow into a boulevard.

 

[Matthew]

Hmm? I don't advocate removal of those particular highways, for the reasons you gave. Done is done. Sometimes I like to point out that they were far more expensive than they were worth, is all.

 

[Ron Newman]

I don't know of anyone who advocates removing the Mass Pike. Decking it over with buildings would be nice, though.

 

[massmotorist]

A lot of this thread is sprinkled with some incorrect assumptions that are resulting in false conclusions.

First off, the idea that signalizing Storrow and turning it into a local roadway will not result in a huge decrease in throughput and massive increase in travel time and congestion is nuts. I suspect that these statements are made by those who don't drive on a regular basis and are thinking more theoretically than in terms of actual, real-world impact. So even if you aren't explicitly anti-car, you might be missing some critical perspective.

Throughput matters. Because if you rearrange a roadway to get less throughput, the same number of people still want to use the roadway. But the roadway can't handle them. So you get massive, around-the-clock backups a la the Central Artery circa 1995. You can't look at a roadway and think about it without real-world perspective. And you can't imagine travel speeds as if you're in a post-zombie apocalypse world and you're the only roadway user. Yes, it wouldn't decrease travel time that much if you're the only user, but you aren't. There are tons of other people using that roadway - and under these proposals, this would include bicyclists, pedestrians, etc. And the layout of the underlying infrastructure impacts how users interact with each other. Yes, the cycle time for one cycle might not be the 5 minutes that Equilibria cited, but once you realize that in the real world you're going to be there for multiple cycles, and also factor in a pedestrian phase and a turning lane phase, it will be.

I think this theoretical view of things is a big part of how people lose perspective. It might seem that Storrow and the Pike are redundant, particularly on a map, but if you have to use these roadways on a regular basis during peak and near-peak hours you realize that in the real world they serve very different areas, and they are incredibly inferior substitutes for each other. If you want to use one to visit an area best served by the other, it takes a hell of a lot longer to reach your destination. My job takes me to practically everywhere along and within Route 128, so I see this, but I can totally understand how someone would not get this if they don't drive these roads on a regular basis (and especially if they don't drive at all).

Secondly, a speed limit is a regulatory device that is used to narrow the distribution of speeds. It is set scientifically by engineers based on a speed study of the distribution of existing operational speeds on a road.

Changing a speed limit has no effect on average speeds. If set too low, a small percentage of drivers will dangerously attempt to abide by it, and another small percentage will disregard it entirely and drive far too fast. If it's set excessively high, a small percentage of drivers will drive too fast for their driving ability. Either way, you get an increase in accidents.

So talking about speed limits as a solution to anything is generally counterproductive - they'll be set by engineers based upon a tabulation of operating speeds, which are in turn based upon the underlying characteristics of the roadway and the driver's perception of them. If you want to change operating speeds, you need to change roadway geometry and characteristics - or if there's a hidden hazard, ensure the driver can actually perceive that hazard.

Now you can talk about instituting a broad system of surveillance and automated ticketing machines, but at this point you're lost in the weeds, creating all kinds of potential for corruption and terrible incentives to avoid true engineering solutions to improve safety, and forgetting what your underlying objective was. The evidence shows that these systems often increase accident rates anyway.

Finally, I worry about the direction that New Urbanism and smart growth has been going in. It's important that when people have good ideas with sensible foundations based on reality that they aren't taken to extremes, with caveats and qualifications removed and the idea reduced to a religion. Parking minimums, regulatory restrictions on density, underinvestment in transit, and huge-scale displacement of businesses and homes are bad things, but that doesn't mean that cars are an evil to be avoided, minimized, and demonized and roadway capacity is something to be scoffed at with objective measurements of traffic projections and levels of service dismissed with a wave of the hand and recitation of "induced demand".

History is replete with examples of movements that were once sensible and necessary winning their fights and then taking on a life of their own, becoming an echo-chamber. In the 70's Keynesians forgot that government deficit spending doesn't help employment when it's inflationary, and liberals forgot that unemployment and inflation can't be legislated away. In the aughts and the current decade conservatives have forgotten the lessons of the Great Depression and Econ 101, and keep fighting battles they've already won.

There's lots of stuff we can agree on as long as we aren't forgetting lessons we've already learned (expressway lane narrowing, speed limits, limited access roadways) and pushing for stuff that penalizes or blames the "other" (whether motorists, pedestrians, bicyclists, etc) for our ills. Roundabouts are a good example that's been mentioned here.

 

[Matthew]

Because if you rearrange a roadway to get less throughput, the same number of people still want to use the roadway.

This is just wrong. We've been going over just this false assumption for a long time now. Traffic engineers always assume that traffic is a force of nature, that people will just blindly pile themselves into giant traffic jams. Always assume that, from the smallest to the biggest projects. They also always assume that traffic grows at 0.5% per year, without question.

In reality, people adapt to what's available. That's where induced demand comes from, for example.

My philosophy is that we should find out what works for the people in the city and the neighborhood and then design the safest, best road within those constraints, not the other way around. We should not hold ourselves hostage to traffic projections.

 

[bbfen]

Exactly, a variety of factors influence roadway use in urban areas. Reliability and availability of public transportation, traffic and parking are three of those inputs. I had hopes that MassDOT would be more comprehensive in planning and proposing multi-mode solutions.

Bowker is the perfect example, as it's ostensibly the point of this thread. It's being discussed as a repair/replacement in the context of servicing motor vehicles. But what about the pedestrians who use it or interact with it? And bless their bleeding hearts, the cyclists?

 

[datadyne007]

Bowker is the perfect example, as it's ostensibly the point of this thread. It's being discussed as a repair/replacement in the context of servicing motor vehicles. But what about the pedestrians who use it or interact with it? And bless their bleeding hearts, the cyclists?

Pedestrians and cyclists are all accounted for in the DCR plans. They want to leave the current on-ramps as bike access to the planned newly-landscaped Esplanade.

 

[kenmoreResident]

I still prefer the version I worked up. It doesn't provide as many roadway lanes, but it does reduce overpass encroachment of the Muddy River.

I like your version also Charlie. I like how everything is pushed westbound to allow for the opening of the Muddy. I would propose supplementing what you have with the additional Pike access made possible if the city is willing to allow a one way Brookline Ave between Kenmore and the Landmark Center, as described a few posts back. This should reduce traffic to/from Storrow and Longwood.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

A lot of this thread is sprinkled with some incorrect assumptions that are resulting in false conclusions.

First off, the idea that signalizing Storrow and turning it into a local roadway will not result in a huge decrease in throughput and massive increase in travel time and congestion is nuts. I suspect that these statements are made by those who don't drive on a regular basis and are thinking more theoretically than in terms of actual, real-world impact. So even if you aren't explicitly anti-car, you might be missing some critical perspective.

I actually do drive regularly. Not in the city of Boston, because as I'm sure you're aware, that's an infuriating experience most hours of the day. It's probably very bad for my blood pressure and one which, thankfully considering how close I am to an Amtrak station and how close everywhere I want or need to be in Boston is to mass transit, I'm able to avoid.

Is driving in Providence, Cranston, and Warwick an identical experience to driving in Boston? No. But it's certainly quite similar.

Throughput matters. Because if you rearrange a roadway to get less throughput, the same number of people still want to use the roadway. But the roadway can't handle them. So you get massive, around-the-clock backups a la the Central Artery circa 1995. You can't look at a roadway and think about it without real-world perspective. And you can't imagine travel speeds as if you're in a post-zombie apocalypse world and you're the only roadway user. Yes, it wouldn't decrease travel time that much if you're the only user, but you aren't. There are tons of other people using that roadway - and under these proposals, this would include bicyclists, pedestrians, etc. And the layout of the underlying infrastructure impacts how users interact with each other. Yes, the cycle time for one cycle might not be the 5 minutes that Equilibria cited, but once you realize that in the real world you're going to be there for multiple cycles, and also factor in a pedestrian phase and a turning lane phase, it will be.

Turning Storrow into a boulevard will decrease throughput - that's not in dispute. Like I've said, I don't give a damn about throughput - I'd much rather have 1800 vehicles moving than 2500 vehicles stopped.

No matter what we do to Storrow, however, it'll make travel times and congestion go down - in part because of what hasn't really been addressed by the people advocating for it to stay as it is. The fact is, Storrow is a piss-poor roadway by just about every engineering metric we've got - and I'm quite happy to assign subpar design a good portion of the blame for why Storrow locks up.

Turning it into a 5-lane boulevard with full-width sidewalks (and full-width lanes) actually stands a very good chance of taking up more space than the 6-lane expressway does. (Hell, if someone gets the bright idea to slap down on-street parking 'for the Esplanade,' and/or if we have to install bike lanes despite the presence of the Dr. Paul Dudley White Bike Path right on the Esplanade, we could end up with a 5-lane road that has the footprint of an 8- or a 9-lane one!) So, in some way, I'm actually arguing that we should widen Storrow - by taking Back Street and extending the footprint inland rather than consuming more of the Esplanade, but widening it all the same.

In fact, I'm counting on the Bike Path to keep cyclists off of Storrow Boulevard, and even though I expect the corridor to be widened over the existing Back Street, I also expect the threat of eating away at even more of the Esplanade to shut down the bicycle lobby before they can manage to force a cycle track into the design.

But to the point of the light cycles - I don't expect the lights to be cycling regularly. I expect the default state to be all greens on through Storrow, with green for lefts only being called if someone is actively queuing up for a left and the ped phase only called if someone's actively attempting to cross. Right in/right out for EB traffic and exactly three places on the entire stretch (BU Bridge, Mass Ave and Longfellow) where EB traffic would need a left exit, not counting the Pike interchange or the two bridges west of it (i.e., Soldiers Field Road - which is really an extended Pike offramp and can remain as such without issue). The only real concerns in the left phase department, then, are those three interchanges and exiting movements from WB.

Now, if the ped phase doesn't get called with any measure of frequency, then there's no real problem here. If it is getting called frequently, then obviously the existing conditions of the road were not meeting the ped access demand and the conversion to a boulevard is fulfilling a pent-up need. Same deal with the left-turn phases - either there's minimal demand for local access and those phases go uncalled nine times out of ten, or there's a sizable demand for local access and converting Storrow Boulevard is worthwhile.

Either way, I don't see the lights as being nearly as disastrous as you guys are saying they would be unless the people who programmed them did so incompetently, leading to things like empty phases being called when nobody is actually trying to turn. The fortunate thing about incompetent installation, of course, is that it can (and would) be easily corrected.

I think this theoretical view of things is a big part of how people lose perspective. It might seem that Storrow and the Pike are redundant, particularly on a map, but if you have to use these roadways on a regular basis during peak and near-peak hours you realize that in the real world they serve very different areas, and they are incredibly inferior substitutes for each other. If you want to use one to visit an area best served by the other, it takes a hell of a lot longer to reach your destination. My job takes me to practically everywhere along and within Route 128, so I see this, but I can totally understand how someone would not get this if they don't drive these roads on a regular basis (and especially if they don't drive at all).

Storrow and the Pike are completely redundant between their interchange and Mass Ave. I'll buy that they're not redundant east of Mass Avenue - except for that Back Bay isn't served by Storrow at all, Public Garden/Boston Common access from Storrow is inefficient at best (and would be improved by Storrow Boulevard) and Hynes/Back Bay/the Pru/Bay Village/the South End are all well-served by the Pike instead of Storrow.

East of the Common is Beacon Hill, which upon closer inspection, seems to have some direct access to and from Storrow EB already - and, I'll concede that direct freeway access to MGH from Allston/Brighton and all points west is lost in the conversion to Storrow Boulevard. That's my only concession to your point, however - the West End, the North End and North Station/TD Garden are all well served by I-93. The Northeast Expressway, too.

If you ask me, and I'm sure this isn't going to fly over well, I think upgrading the Pike and fixing the spaghetti bowl disaster that is the Pike/93 interchange, in conjunction with a Storrow Boulevard conversion, would more than adequately meet the needs of everyone better than keeping Storrow Drive as an expressway. And if that's what it takes, I'm willing to throw in with widening the Pike to get Storrow "downgraded." I've been avoiding the word downgrade because I don't think it's a downgrade, but there you go.

Secondly, a speed limit is a regulatory device that is used to narrow the distribution of speeds. It is set scientifically by engineers based on a speed study of the distribution of existing operational speeds on a road.

Changing a speed limit has no effect on average speeds. If set too low, a small percentage of drivers will dangerously attempt to abide by it, and another small percentage will disregard it entirely and drive far too fast. If it's set excessively high, a small percentage of drivers will drive too fast for their driving ability. Either way, you get an increase in accidents.

So talking about speed limits as a solution to anything is generally counterproductive - they'll be set by engineers based upon a tabulation of operating speeds, which are in turn based upon the underlying characteristics of the roadway and the driver's perception of them. If you want to change operating speeds, you need to change roadway geometry and characteristics - or if there's a hidden hazard, ensure the driver can actually perceive that hazard.

Now you can talk about instituting a broad system of surveillance and automated ticketing machines, but at this point you're lost in the weeds, creating all kinds of potential for corruption and terrible incentives to avoid true engineering solutions to improve safety, and forgetting what your underlying objective was. The evidence shows that these systems often increase accident rates anyway.

25 mph was an arbitrary number I threw out. If that's too low, 35 works too because you are absolutely right. Driving 5 or 10 over is perfectly normal and I'm not even being sarcastic when I say that because I do it myself on a regular basis.

I refer to the speed limits more as a general guide of how fast I think traffic would or should be moving on that road, and I expect the presence of sidewalks, crosswalks and traffic lights to be all the calming measures that are needed to achieve that speed without any enforcement (even though routine enforcement would be possible through parking a cop on one of the side streets with a radar gun every now and then). I don't know, maybe it's hopelessly naive optimism on my part to assume that people won't try to blow through an intersection with a crosswalk at 50+ even if the lights are all green - but I think it'd be enough.

 

[Matthew]

I should also point out that maintaining the grade separation of Storrow Drive is going to be an upwards of $500 million project due to the necessary replacement of the deteriorating tunnel as well as the Bowker overpass.

Before we spend $500+ million, we should really spend a lot of time thinking about why we'd want to duplicate the whole 1950s-style bypass anyway. Remember, the ideology behind the building of roads such as Storrow Drive was the Utopian vision that in the future everyone would move out to the suburbs and all travel would be done by automobile. Local access didn't matter to those engineers because they thought the city would be abandoned in favor of planned outlying Garden Cities and the like. We now know better. So we should do something better.

 

[AmericanFolkLegend]

Turning Storrow into a boulevard will decrease throughput - that's not in dispute. Like I've said, I don't give a damn about throughput - I'd much rather have 1800 vehicles moving than 2500 vehicles stopped.

Throughput is a function of speed and volume of cars on the road. 2500 vehicles stopped = 0 throughput.

 

[Kahta]

Before we spend $500+ million, we should really spend a lot of time thinking about why we'd want to duplicate the whole 1950s-style bypass anyway. Remember, the ideology behind the building of roads such as Storrow Drive was the Utopian vision that in the future everyone would move out to the suburbs and all travel would be done by automobile. Local access didn't matter to those engineers because they thought the city would be abandoned in favor of planned outlying Garden Cities and the like.

Wrong. From the 1948 highway plans:

Lets play a game: How many substandard design features can you count here?


A quick look at traffic volumes shows that anything involving a "downgrade" of storrow is an awful idea.

Storrow East of onramp at BU campus... roughly 70,000 vehicles per day

Storrow East of Charlesgate.... Rougly 90,000 vehicles per day

Meanwhile in roughly the same area, Beacon st + Comm ave outbound carry about 30,000

MassPike west of Allston carries roughly... 90,000

MassPike east of charlesgate carries Roughly.... 120,000

Leverett Connector under Leverett circle gets roughly.... 40,000



For reference, Route 9 at Hammond St does about 40,000 vehicles a day and without ped cycles, that light can take 4-5 cycles to get through at rush hour.

So even if storrow was downgraded and lost half of it's volume through shifting to other roads and overall reduced demand, it would still be about as bad as Route 9, while in the meantime, also significantly worsening traffic in the Back Bay, Brookline, Brighton, and Cambridge.

Want some other shining examples of "at grade" roads that carry as much traffic as a downgraded storrow?

Fresh pond parkway west of the charles river... about 50,000

Fresh pond parkway at alewife... again about 50,000

Route 28 at the charles river dam.... about 35,000

Riverway at Brookline ave... about 30,000

All of these roads carry a fraction of the volume of what storrow drive does today and they have significantly worse outcomes for: pedestrian access (try crossing anywhere at the above mentioned roads that isn't signalized), congestion, mobility, and quality of life for people that can't afford or don't want to live in Boston. Let's get real and drop the bullshit fantasies about eliminating storrow and/or the turnpike and/or the central artery and get into the real world. If those roads were to go away, there are a few predictable results, none of which are appealing to anyone that currently uses them now, uses them after being downgraded, or lives immediately adjacent to them after a downgrade. I am acutely aware of what it is like living next to a low volume expressway when I lived in NH for a few months for work.

It was awful and I completely sympathize with the arguments against building or even maintaining highways, but it is very important to understand the role that Boston plays in the economic vitality of the region. Replacing 18 wheelers with box trucks won't do anything but make things even MORE expensive in Boston than they already are (Shaws/Star Market's zone pricing in Boston takes a 60% margin on the same Grocery items that Walmart sells at a 20% or even a 10% margin in other markets). We do not live in 1890 anymore where shipping is too expensive to make large economies of scale feasible. In the real world it doesn't make sense to ship finished goods by train because of lean inventories, so please don't give me that nonsense.

We cannot turn back time and magically double or triple the population that lives within 128 in any practical amount of time. Regardless of your personal feelings on cars, they are here to stay. The best way to manage them is not to treat them as an adversary or legislate them to death, we already tried that with affordable housing in MA and it dramatically enhanced sprawl and drove housing prices up.... just let the market work on parking. But at the same time, keep parking minimums in place. The revenue per square foot of a parking garage versus an apartment isn't even close and what would end up happening is that surplus cars would end up on streets. And don't suggest charging market rates for resident stickers, is it a good idea? Yes, without question, but like everything else, it would only result in political leadership being voted out of office, because "free parking" makes a great campaign slogan. Even if the supply of resident stickers were suddenly fixed, it would just create a black market (like taxi medallions in NYC).

The best solutions to fixing the traffic problem have already been suggested in some cases as long as 70 years ago.... most of these places still deal with roads that have been deficient for almost half of a century...
storrow drive gets cut and cover
when the I-93 viaduct is eventually rebuilt add express lanes to 128
build out existing mass transit to park and rides only when express access can be offered (red line, Orange line, Blue Line) Riverside park/ride isn't time competitive to downtown even when compared to a presently congested turnpike.
upgrades to existing roads instead of some of the interstate type facilities that were proposed (mystic valley parkway, alewife brook parkway, Fresh Pond Parkway, arborway/jamaiciaway), just throw left turn lane or two or a two way, one lane underpass in key locations... anything would be an improvement at those places
Give Route 9 the Storrow Drive treatment and grade separate wherever possible between 128 and brookline village... Route 9 was never upgraded out of fear that a competing E-W connection with the inner belt would throw the pike into bankruptcy by offering a free route and the original highway plans called for an upgraded route 9. Same reason that 290 and 209 weren't built.
2/2/2/2 Route 1 between Revere and 128.
Grade separate 1A up to Route 16 in Revere or extend a Lynn connector to the Salem Turnpike and 1A by the GE plant on the abandoned I-95 ROW

Extend the blue line to salem and then up to 128 by the north shore mall
Bring the Orange line down to 128 and up to 128
Extend the Red line to 128

We should not hold ourselves hostage to future traffic projections.

We didn't. This was the proposed 1948 system for the volume numbers above.

This is just wrong. We've been going over just this false assumption for a long time now. Traffic engineers always assume that traffic is a force of nature, that people will just blindly pile themselves into giant traffic jams. Always assume that, from the smallest to the biggest projects. They also always assume that traffic grows at 0.5% per year, without question.

In reality, people adapt to what's available. That's where induced demand comes from, for example.

As for induced demand.... just look at total employment numbers which are probably a pretty good proxy for peak demand.

Also, look at the total number of drivers...Lets be honest here, induced demand didn't fill in highways, women's rights, population growth and economic expansion (total and per capita productivity) did.

Combine that with the dramatic restrictions on upgrading density in the urban core or building new homes basically since 1970, and at the same time, building almost no new infrastructure or upgrading existing roads, and you find where the highway and mass transit system in MA is today.

 

[omaja]

A quick look at traffic volumes shows that anything involving a "downgrade" of storrow is an awful idea.

Storrow East of onramp at BU campus... roughly 70,000 vehicles per day

Storrow East of Charlesgate.... Rougly 90,000 vehicles per day

Meanwhile in roughly the same area, Beacon st + Comm ave outbound carry about 30,000

MassPike west of Allston carries roughly... 90,000

MassPike east of charlesgate carries Roughly.... 120,000

Leverett Connector under Leverett circle gets roughly.... 40,000



For reference, Route 9 at Hammond St does about 40,000 vehicles a day and without ped cycles, that light can take 4-5 cycles to get through at rush hour.

So even if storrow was downgraded and lost half of it's volume through shifting to other roads and overall reduced demand, it would still be about as bad as Route 9, while in the meantime, also significantly worsening traffic in the Back Bay, Brookline, Brighton, and Cambridge.

Do you have a source for the Storrow number? Not to say I don't believe you (thought it does seem to be a bit high?), but I've been able to easily find the state and federal routes on the MA state website and can't seem to find anything on Storrow.

Meanwhile, the Pike is severely underutilized - 120K for eight lanes? At any rate, it could easily absorb the true through traffic that is taking Storrow instead while a four lane boulevard-style Storrow would easily handle the existing local flows.

 

[Kahta]

Do you have a source for the Storrow number? Not to say I don't believe you (thought it does seem to be a bit high?), but I've been able to easily find the state and federal routes on the MA state website and can't seem to find anything on Storrow.

Meanwhile, the Pike is severely underutilized - 120K for eight lanes? At any rate, it could easily absorb the true through traffic that is taking Storrow instead while a four lane boulevard-style Storrow would easily handle the existing local flows.

http://mhd.ms2soft.com/tcds/map/Default.aspx?loc=Mhd&t=spot

Wow.

First off, the Pike isn't underutilized, it only moves at peak periods relative to other highways becuse of the tolls at Weston and Allston. Secondly, the through traffic largely takes the pike already. Thirdly, if there was an established, fact based, need for storrow in 1945 to handle local traffic based on [severely underestimated] 1970 projected volumes, how has that situation changed since then?

Finally, Storrow serves an entirely different area than the Pike and if it were downgraded and even if volumes dropped by 2/3, it would then be as dysfunctional as the other roads that I mentioned that aren't grade separated, while dumping the remaining traffic through copley square or the central artery. It's pretty clear from the volume of traffic that gets off of storrow near downtown that it serves a critical role in keeping traffic off of local streets or from further congesting the central artery.

 

[AmericanFolkLegend]

Regardless of your personal feelings on cars, they are here to stay. The best way to manage them is not to treat them as an adversary or legislate them to death.

Bet someone said that about streetcars once too. Just because something exists now and you have adapted to it, doesn't make it the best and only solution for society.

As for induced demand.... just look at total employment numbers which are probably a pretty good proxy for peak demand.

I can't tell if you intentionally miss this point, but you ALWAYS miss it with your pro-auto posts. No one said the population shouldn't increase. No one said, the workforce shouldn't increase. But if we didn't build highways, can you imagine, just for a second, in an alternate universe, where cars weren't kings and highway lanes weren't currency, that the growing population might have settled in a different geographic pattern?

Hint: Europe.

 

[kmp1284]

And as most of continental Europe plunges into economic oblivion and irrelevance one lone fuckwit in Boston still sings their praises.

 

[Matthew]

Great post Kahta, I don't have much time right now, but I will try to reply to a few things.

There were plans in the 40s calling for all kinds of transit expansion, I've seen it before, they did understand the consequences of the highways they were planning to build. Unfortunately, it got dropped and most of the plans were never built. The "coordination" document kind of hints at it with their mention of "if and when New Haven railroad service is discontinued to South Station" bit.

The understanding in terms of parking of the consequences of all those cars being routed into downtown was dropped too, until the Clean Air Act forced it back on the table.

The very first line of the very first document says that the traffic is predominantly local in character. How does a bypass help them?

You claim that Route 9 should be grade separated like Storrow? We call that road by it's name, Boylston St/Huntington Avenue. Turning that into a limited access grade separated road seems like a horrible idea. Yes, it would divert some drivers from the Mass Pike (the least of the problems -- Brookline would just love you) just as Storrow Drive does today.

Induced demand is a phenomenon observed on a much smaller scale than economy-wide changes such as women moving into the workforce.

just let the market work on parking. But at the same time, keep parking minimums in place

This seems like a contradiction? How does the market work when there's parking minimums? The point of them is to undercut the market.

Okay I'm out of time but I just want to say that I'm not opposed to cars and I've already taken flack for that but I think we should have our streets be designed first and foremost to serve the people who have to live next to them everyday, that we should value accessibility and permeability rather than raw speed.