Bowker Overpass replacement?

I know some here will object to any taking of breakdown lane space from the few places on the Pike extension that has it, but i woke up this morning unable to go back to sleep thinking of this issue and how it relates to a St Marys eastbound onramp. I find the feedback here very interesting and useful and though provoking, but also sleep depriving (at least for me last night). Anyway, as F-line points out, the eastbound onramp proposal the state suggests seems very expensive and difficult. Contrast that with St Marys Street/Park Drive. As I've said, I would propose shifting the Pike northward but now just onto PART OF this breakdown lane (not all of it), and in the space created add a ramp down from the St. Marys street Pike-crossing area onto the Pike eastbound. The advantages: "location, location,location": this location serves the Longwood area very well. They could drive north past the Landmark Center, across Beacon, and onto the Pike eastbound. Far better for this traffic to have a ramp here, than traversing across the Fenway to the Bowker. Advantage 2: The construction seems so simple and straight forward here, a tiny fraction of the cost of what the DOT proposes for eastbound access at the Bowker. There is room! Yes, you have to take some breakdown lane, but you can leave enough breakdown area that cars in trouble could still coast to get into breakdown space on either side of the Pike shift. Given that most of the Pike extension has no breakdown lane at all, giving up this bit of breakdown lane seems reasonable and fairly safe, as you can still coast to safety off the traffic lane. Given the alternatives i really think the state should be considering this. Just my two cents worth, and a thank you to the group for your previous expression of breakdown lane concerns which caused this refinement. And I do understand if some of you still object to any taking of breakdown lane!

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You need to take more than the breakdown lane to fit that. The breakdown lanes's narrower than a 12 ft. lane so the right lane has to go, and a ramp is considerably wider than a 12 ft. lane. So to shift the entire highway around requires blowing up the overpass entirely and rebuilding it with different center abutments. The ramp also has to be entirely clear of the RR tracks before it descends into the canyon or else it kneecaps the clearances.

That's true of any ramp the entire span of the Back Bay. St. Mary's, Beacon, Brookline Ave., Charlesgate/Bowker, Mass Ave., and Boylston. All of them have the same center abutment configuration: http://goo.gl/maps/W7Ss9. Specific to St. Mary's, it also wouldn't work because it's a one-way.


The only place I could think of where you could skirt this issue is Mountfort St. by the BU Bridge, where the Worcester Line has some buffer from the street in the pit (Note: despite the vegetation overgrowth by St. Mary's, there's no more room to take because Mountfort's held up by a drainage embankment).

http://goo.gl/maps/XR3ju

This would still require a major, major bridge reconfiguration of the Carlton St. overpass because the span would have to be extended 100 ft. south to fit the Worcester Line realignment. And require the entire Comm Ave./BU Bridge intersection to be majorly realigned and compacted to free up Carlton from its quasi-rotary use. And there is still the issue of it being a really bad-angle turn.

No place for an offramp here because the Worcester Line can't be shifted at the Comm Ave. overpass due to building abutments. But if you had to shiv in an onramp anywhere, Carlton @ Mountfort is the literal only place this is going to work without violating the laws of physics or interstate safety standards for new construction. I would make sure your plan incorporates a full BU Bridge intersection streamlining and streamlining of the Carlton/Mountfort intersection to make the turning radius from Carlton WB less awkward. And remember...watch your ramp placement over the RR tracks. It can't dip down one inch until it is totally clear of the tracks, or else it wrecks the commuter rail clearances.
 
I'm going to try and throw out my own idea. I know the discussion moved towards Carlton @ Mountfort. But I want to try and take a shot at thinking outside the box.

I want to look at the Bowker Overpass as a location for an Eastbound Onramp. It died due to lack of space between Ipswich St, Worcester Line, and upcoming curve area. Some suggested taking Ipswich St. but got attacked because the city, a bus line, Red Sox, nightclubs, and an apartment building will all scream bloody murder. Also one of us here uses it as a bike route. :p

But between looking at Ipswich St. can help making this possible or going all the way to Mountfort to add to the spaghetti with its current tanglements and poor angle. I want to take a stab at Ipswich St. again. If physically possible, maybe it's the best option. Here's my illustration:

4NN7Cu9.jpg


The light blue shows an underpass/surface level connectionBolyston St to Ipswich.

The orange lines shows the bridge would shift left but look similar to the current set up once off the bridge like before.

The red line shows a fly-over leading to the merge.

The green line shows the new configuration of the east side of Ipswich St. Not longer it will go under the bridge to the west side. Except perhaps as a pedestrian/bike connection along the tracks.

What's not pictured is Charlesgate points north will either be surface or have no connection to Storrow.

If no connection, Charlesgate traffic from points South that intends to go west on Storrow would take a Westbound Pike Ramp that there still multiple locations to discuss separately. From points Charlesgate traffic North, that can be addressed with the planned Pike realignment (and moving-the-tolls-west/outright removal) with an East bound Off Ramp even to Charlesgate or somewhere else. A west bound off-ramp have multiple option. Including Newbury St or directly to Charlesgate. I can go back to illustrate, but first, I need to check if even this idea is even plausible.

I know we mentioned the political issues, but I'm hoping a connection to Bolyston Street would mollify the nightclubs, Red Sox, and bus line. Meanwhile keeping a connection to Charlesgate E and some distance would keep the apartment building at bay. Maybe keep a pedestrian/bike path under the overpass along the tracks would help too (which is ironic with a new overpass to kill another overpass, but at least at a quieter area)?

By physical laws and highways standards, my gut feeling that there's still not enough space. Possible the railroad curve is too sharp, the red line On-ramp would need grades too steep, the merge area is still too short**.

**Alternative thought, if it is not too short, then the on ramp can just go off from the bridge too. Pictorially, the red line just go straight to the orange line.
 
Is there possibly room to have exit or entrance ramps at the median (left-side) instead of on the right? I've seen this configuration in downtown Chicago.
 
ant8904 said:
I'm going to try and throw out my own idea. I know the discussion moved towards Carlton @ Mountfort. But I want to try and take a shot at thinking outside the box.

I want to look at the Bowker Overpass as a location for an Eastbound Onramp. It died due to lack of space between Ipswich St, Worcester Line, and upcoming curve area. Some suggested taking Ipswich St. but got attacked because the city, a bus line, Red Sox, nightclubs, and an apartment building will all scream bloody murder. Also one of us here uses it as a bike route. :p

But between looking at Ipswich St. can help making this possible or going all the way to Mountfort to add to the spaghetti with its current tanglements and poor angle. I want to take a stab at Ipswich St. again. If physically possible, maybe it's the best option. Here's my illustration:

4NN7Cu9.jpg


The light blue shows an underpass/surface level connectionBolyston St to Ipswich.

The orange lines shows the bridge would shift left but look similar to the current set up once off the bridge like before.

The red line shows a fly-over leading to the merge.

The green line shows the new configuration of the east side of Ipswich St. Not longer it will go under the bridge to the west side. Except perhaps as a pedestrian/bike connection along the tracks.

What's not pictured is Charlesgate points north will either be surface or have no connection to Storrow.

If no connection, Charlesgate traffic from points South that intends to go west on Storrow would take a Westbound Pike Ramp that there still multiple locations to discuss separately. From points Charlesgate traffic North, that can be addressed with the planned Pike realignment (and moving-the-tolls-west/outright removal) with an East bound Off Ramp even to Charlesgate or somewhere else. A west bound off-ramp have multiple option. Including Newbury St or directly to Charlesgate. I can go back to illustrate, but first, I need to check if even this idea is even plausible.

I know we mentioned the political issues, but I'm hoping a connection to Bolyston Street would mollify the nightclubs, Red Sox, and bus line. Meanwhile keeping a connection to Charlesgate E and some distance would keep the apartment building at bay. Maybe keep a pedestrian/bike path under the overpass along the tracks would help too (which is ironic with a new overpass to kill another overpass, but at least at a quieter area)?

By physical laws and highways standards, my gut feeling that there's still not enough space. Possible the railroad curve is too sharp, the red line On-ramp would need grades too steep, the merge area is still too short**.

**Alternative thought, if it is not too short, then the on ramp can just go off from the bridge too. Pictorially, the red line just go straight to the orange line.
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Not going to work. Both east and west sides of Ipswich have to be fluidly connected to the intersection or bloody murder gets screamed. I don't see a plausible re-route for the 55 the way those roads are angled, and there's not enough space to put a west-side connector that doesn't angle as sharply as Charlesgate bending back from the intersection. Switch away from 45-degree angle on Google and you'll see how impossible your connector trajectory is.

And you can't shift the Worcester Line here. It's only 350 ft. between Ipswich-facing buildings on either side of the overpass. Putting in that access road reduces the space for the Worcester Line shift to less than 300 ft., probably as little as 250 when the curve onto Ipswich is accounted for. And that doesn't buy you more than 2...3 feet at most to shift the tracks around, which in turn doesn't even begin to give you enough room to shiv in a ramp. And thus you have the same problem as before: because a ramp has a wider footprint than the 12 ft. Pike right lane + the no-shoulder, it's several feet too wide to drop out of the sky on that footprint. The only way it can work is by lane-dropping BOTH sides of the highway, nuking the bridge, and building new bridge abutments shifted several feet north. Which turn this into a $100M project.



I'd honestly stop trying with EB ramps to Charlesgate. It just can't be done without either serious harm to the neighborhood, safety violations for new interstate highway construction, or a megaproject's worth of bridge rebuilding to shift abutments.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
You need to take more than the breakdown lane to fit that. The breakdown lanes's narrower than a 12 ft. lane so the right lane has to go, and a ramp is considerably wider than a 12 ft. lane. So to shift the entire highway around requires blowing up the overpass entirely and rebuilding it with different center abutments. The ramp also has to be entirely clear of the RR tracks before it descends into the canyon or else it kneecaps the clearances.

That's true of any ramp the entire span of the Back Bay. St. Mary's, Beacon, Brookline Ave., Charlesgate/Bowker, Mass Ave., and Boylston. All of them have the same center abutment configuration: http://goo.gl/maps/W7Ss9. Specific to St. Mary's, it also wouldn't work because it's a one-way.


The only place I could think of where you could skirt this issue is Mountfort St. by the BU Bridge, where the Worcester Line has some buffer from the street in the pit (Note: despite the vegetation overgrowth by St. Mary's, there's no more room to take because Mountfort's held up by a drainage embankment).

http://goo.gl/maps/XR3ju

This would still require a major, major bridge reconfiguration of the Carlton St. overpass because the span would have to be extended 100 ft. south to fit the Worcester Line realignment. And require the entire Comm Ave./BU Bridge intersection to be majorly realigned and compacted to free up Carlton from its quasi-rotary use. And there is still the issue of it being a really bad-angle turn.

No place for an offramp here because the Worcester Line can't be shifted at the Comm Ave. overpass due to building abutments. But if you had to shiv in an onramp anywhere, Carlton @ Mountfort is the literal only place this is going to work without violating the laws of physics or interstate safety standards for new construction. I would make sure your plan incorporates a full BU Bridge intersection streamlining and streamlining of the Carlton/Mountfort intersection to make the turning radius from Carlton WB less awkward. And remember...watch your ramp placement over the RR tracks. It can't dip down one inch until it is totally clear of the tracks, or else it wrecks the commuter rail clearances.
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F-Line thank-you for the detailed analysis. It's the details like that that I appreciate and fear. Ah well. I have learned a thing or two, or three or four. Thank-you.
 
One short thought that came to my head that I'm wait to hear it shot down. What if we bury the Worcester Line for a short segment? Can that space now give enough to put a ramp?

For a specific location, let's say in my picture bury the line from the start of East side Ipswich Street to somewhere west past the overpass. Straight red line to the orange line overpass as you also pointed out that the overpass can't angle enough to go over the orange lines in the picture. Still shifting the bridge west to give even more space.
 
Carlton/Mountfort is getting blown up and completely redone ... maybe 2015-2016. People at MassDOT seem to agree that it is a total mess as is.

So does that change anything?
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
The city, 55 bus riders, Trans National Group, Red Sox, all of the Landsdowne clubs, and these apartment dwellers would scream bloody murder. And that's probably completely justified of them. Ipswich might be sub-critical on the grid, but it's most definitely not superfluous.
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What about narrowing it into a one-way Westbound with no parking (or one side if you must). Take the extra few feet at the wall and this should be sufficient. FWIW, I would do a similar thing on Newbury / the north side.

You can already traverse the Bowker eastbound here along the river. As for the bus, choose an alternate stop, the spacings are already pretty close and it's a pretty low usage bus with non-commuter boardings.

Why do the Red Sox care? I can see a convenience for Landsdowne, but that's all. TNG doesn't particularly seem to care about having a street facing side except to advertise to the Pike.

Everytime I have been on this street it feels pretty desolate. Unfortunately there is the brand new building at the corner across from Lucky Strike. The only people who I can see having a legitimate gripe are the Fenway Studios people.

No need to respond, simply a suggestion. Anyway, it's pretty clear that designing an interchange (no matter how many exits) here with the Pike is a real challenge that may ultimately make the entire concept unachievable.
 
Interesting news about Carlton/Mountfort, though given that, the mDOT Ramp Study must have looked it over for Pike connectivity, but perhaps one hand at mDOT doesn't know what the other hand is doing.

Ant, I have thought of a short tunnel for the track for sometime now in a fantasy part of my brain. The narrowness of the train lines means a narower, easier to build tunnel than would be needed for vehicles. I wonder if perhaps not enough length to get to the depth required though. Also, from several mDOT public hearings I have attended any talk of a tunnel in a post big-dig Mass is just a showstopper with them. The January meeting slides had a kind of phony tunnel study because at the December meeting an audience member badgered mDOT to look at the idea, but from the body language of the mDOT boss it seemed to me he was trying to keep himself from blowing up at this talk of a tunnel. And on the slides themselves, big yellow print, something like 'NOT RECOMMMENED BY the DOT" on the two tunnel slides. This is just to convey a perception I have and others attending these Pike Ramp meetings have had also. They are all tunnel-scared over there now.

And Paul's one way Ipswich, matching a one way Newbury is another thought. I do agree with the desolate description. I never like walking that steet there. The removing parking is something that keeps cycling in and out of my head, and giving that space to the Pike ramp, esp if there was someway to get the state to build a couple of modest parking decks along Newbury with resident parking, maybe above the Harvard Club lot east of the Bowker and over some existing smaller lots west of the Bowker before Kenmore Street, and the same at that existing Ipswich/Boylston surface lot. Could even offset some of the expense with extra spaces for Red Sox game parking maybe.
 
Has anyone thought more about a ramp to Boylston St overpass? There's a bunch of open space, a really wide street, and some kind of vacant lot, down in the cut underneath Bukowski's and just before Dalton St. Surely some of that could be taken to make space for a ramp on the eastbound side of the highway?

The tracks would need to be shifted as well, although it does not look completely impossible since it would imply easing the existing curve.

Anyway, just spitballing an idea from standing on Dalton St and looking over the side.
 
ant8904 said:
One short thought that came to my head that I'm wait to hear it shot down. What if we bury the Worcester Line for a short segment? Can that space now give enough to put a ramp?

For a specific location, let's say in my picture bury the line from the start of East side Ipswich Street to somewhere west past the overpass. Straight red line to the orange line overpass as you also pointed out that the overpass can't angle enough to go over the orange lines in the picture. Still shifting the bridge west to give even more space.
Click to expand...


No. Impossible.

1) Anywhere near the Muddy River is a nonstarter.

2) Anywhere near Kenmore is a nonstarter because of the Green Line tunnels passing below.

3) There's a whole lot more groundwater than just the Muddy, so it's unknown what else could be a blocker.

4) 2.2% is the FRA maximum grade you can have for a RR incline without a waiver, and it's preferably less because that's going to slow a big 6-car diesel pulling out of Yawkey to a crawl. 16 ft. is the minimum tunnel clearance. So you need at least 800 ft. of runup on each side to do it. That's 1600 ft. Plus some leveling out at the bottom of the tunnel. Where is that space available around here? Measure on Google Maps between any 2 bridges west of Beacon (GL tunnel), Brookline Ave. to Charlesgate, Muddy River bridge to Boylston. I can't come up with more than 1400 ft. between any bridge pair.



Fatal blockers. So we're back to Mountfort/Carlton and a BU Bridge intersection reconfig as the only option.
 
Matthew said:
Has anyone thought more about a ramp to Boylston St overpass? There's a bunch of open space, a really wide street, and some kind of vacant lot, down in the cut underneath Bukowski's and just before Dalton St. Surely some of that could be taken to make space for a ramp on the eastbound side of the highway?

The tracks would need to be shifted as well, although it does not look completely impossible since it would imply easing the existing curve.

Anyway, just spitballing an idea from standing on Dalton St and looking over the side.
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Where are going to shift any of this: http://goo.gl/maps/NW0kA.

Pike WB is pinned in place by the building foundation and the Green Line tunnel (see the closed underpass to Hynes from the Mass Ave. bus shelter) the entire length from Mass Ave. to the BBY tunnel. Worcester Line is pinned into place by the conjoined Mass Ave. and Boylston overpass/air rights. And there's only 350 ft. of wiggle room between Ipswich and the locked-in-place overpasses to shift the tracks. That doesn't buy you more than 1-2 ft. of shifting for maybe 100 feet.


It's the same problem as before trying to slice Ipswich in half and work with the space underneath the Bowker for track-shifting.
 
Seems like "Boston Mass Pike Ramps" deserves a thread of its own for discussion.
 
davem that is beautiful. DOT should hire you right now!
 
I was talking about the triangle between Cambria St/Boylston St/Dalton St on the eastbound half of the Pike. It's all empty underneath there, if you go to the overpass and take a look.
 
So why not this: a 90-degree right turn from the overpass onto a ramp that enters eastbound Mass Pike on the left (at the median)? Maybe even paired with a corresponding left exit from the westbound Pike, sharing most of the same structure?
 
datadyne007 said:
The point is that you can't replicate unsafe conditions in 2014. It's like building a new building with asbestos. We know it's dangerous and would never build something new with it. The same applies to roadways.
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Data -- there are theoretical ideals and then there's -- "Close enough for practical purposes" there are a whole bunch of gnurdly non-PC jokes with that theme

Today, almost all of the interchanges along Rt-128 where its overlaid with I-95 / I-93 wouldn't make the grade these days -- there's no where near enough distance to accommodate the hgih density on/off ramp traffic -- Poster Child being I-93/I-95 in Woburn where 350,000 daily vehicles are shoehorned into infrastructure designed for 100,000

So in that guise I suggest a long-time-ago LA Freeway solution to dense interchanges needing additional ramps -- "the Disappearing Exit Ramp"

Driving along with multiple lanes in parallel and suddenly you see a sign overhead of say lane 4 from the right that looks like a Hermaphrodite Libneration Symbol and translates into --- "Merge L/R" -- The lanes to the Left will continue unaffected while those to the right eventially exit to local streets.

However, the lane that you are on is about to exit --- not to the left or right -- but to descend to merge with the Freeway below

Mean while just after the Descending Ramp* -- the void in the Freeway structure is re-occupied with an Ascending ramp which rises and eventually merges from the left with the lanes to your original right

I suggest that the Pike could support exits and entrances in the same fashion with just some tunneling needed to make the connections

* Note that we have our own version of the "Disappearing Ramp" -- just in front of Mass Eye and Ear -- Storow Drive just ascended from its E-bound tunnel splits with the two left-most lanes descending into a tunnel connecting with the bridge to I-93 N

Meanwhile the Right-most lanes are joined from their right by traffic from Leverett Circle and the whole eventually moves to the right to occupy the space previously occupied by the descending lanes enabling the L turn onto Obrien Highway by the old Lock and several right turns to I-93 S and local streets
 
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Ron Newman said:
So why not this: a 90-degree right turn from the overpass onto a ramp that enters eastbound Mass Pike on the left (at the median)? Maybe even paired with a corresponding left exit from the westbound Pike, sharing most of the same structure?
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Left exits are strongly discouraged by current interstate regs for new construction in pretty much all instances except an expressway-to-expressway exit with high-speed ramps. And that particular type of drop-out-of-sky left ramp is probably a rule breaker. 2 primary reasons, plus a third unintentional consequence that's location-specific to the Pike:

1) Forcing trucks confined to the right 2 lanes to weave all the way left to get off. Then start slooooowww on a left-merge onramp into the highest-speed traffic. Dangerous, and creates bottlenecks. Drive some of CT's lefty-happy 1950's expressways and that quickly becomes apparent.

2) Weaving the left travel lane is strongly discouraged. Design's supposed to prioritize sightlines for the fastest traffic and the traffic passing left, so an S-curve around a solid ramp obstruction is dangerous. (Legal) left exits, when they do exist, are almost always at a point where the median is widening. Never when there's a packed-tight stretch of guardrail. The only exception for newer construction is the I-84 and I-91 HOV lanes north and east of Hartford which have left exits. But that's an HOV, and the sightlines are unbroken by the exits because the highway was given extra-generous padding on approach to those exits.

3) Wherever this exit is, it'll be the last one before the Back Bay tunnel. Oops...all those hazardous-cargo big rigs now get off in the middle of BU or Fenway side streets to game the system because the state gave an inch. And making hard rights or hard lefts at these intersections and having to back up in the middle of the road to straighten the truck. Enforcement helps, but look at the dumbass truck drivers who still take Storrow. It's beyond enforcement's reach to keep them all from slipping through the cracks.
 
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