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So, let's discuss in the Seaport Transportation thread the bus-centric alternative.
I’m not in favor of closing threads. In a year from now, if someone wants to post something about seaport gondolas (wisely or unwisely) this is the place. Maybe append the thread title to say CANCELLED so there’s no confusion.So shall we close this thread?
I didnt realize Mexico City was building two new gondola lines.
And check out the timeline: Announced in Feb 2019, set to open December 2020.
Can you imagine if Americans could build stuff in a timely fashion?
M.C.'s also doing the walk-and-chew-gum-at-same-time thing. 36-mile electrified EMU + level-boarding commuter rail line to Toluca opening 2022 (slight COVID-induced delay) joining the 17 mainline miles + 2 branch Tren Suburbano system that opened in '08. Plus an extension of Metro Line 12. They're not perfect...Tren Suburbano System 2 and System 3, which were to more-or-less follow the Denver RTD model, are still tardy. So is Tren Suburbano System 1's mainline extension and third branch. The light rail system is overdue for more expansion, as Guadalajara LRT Line 3's (missing its 9/1/2020 open date because of COVID) has put political pressure on Mexico City to give rapid transit some more love. And their AFC 2.0-equivalent fare integration effort, which is nice and tight for LRT + TT + bus, is struggling like a lot of their other North American contemporaries to do full-on cross-agency contactless incorporating the HRT Metro and commuter rail.
But, yeah, the usual-suspect challenges don't seem that daunting when you're still able to multitask multiple builds on multiple modes without excess bellyaching. Now...Mexico v. U.S. aside Mexico City is yuuuuuuuugely bigger than Metro Boston by any measure and thus the scale of supportable transit expansion isn't direct comparable at all. But as long as NYCTA is the brightest-burning admin dumpster fire in the Western Hemisphere the CDMX metro area can gleefully dunk on the MTA all they want.
I was in Medellin at the start of 2020 and rode their gondola lines around for a day. They are literally take-your-breath-away awe-inspiring. I was struck by two things:
i) How fantastic the gondolas are for Medellin, bringing together neighborhoods (and people!) that really couldn't have been connected by any other type of infrastructure in such a practical and efficient way; and
ii) How absolutely poorly-suited that same sort of gondola system would be for Boston / the Seaport (for a whole number of reasons!).
Medellin was also able to walk-and-chew-gum-at-the-same-time. They built (and are still building) the gondolas connecting isolated neighborhoods in the hillsides down to the valley, but they also built traditional heavy rail rapid transit running through the valley itself, plus plenty of traditional bus and BRT.
Mexico City has a year-round construction season, and minimal regulatory or NIMBY pushback. So its full speed ahead for projects there.Can you imagine if Americans could build stuff in a timely fashion?
Mexico City has a year-round construction season, and minimal regulatory or NIMBY pushback. So its full speed ahead for projects there.
It is not just a matter of pros and cons. Transit modes are not totally fungible.Every mode has pros and cons.
I used to take the silver line (SL5) about 4x a week and it really wasnt as bad as people want to make it out to be. No dead trains to halt the whole network, no fires on tracks etc etc.It is not just a matter of pros and cons. Transit modes are not totally fungible.
Modes have different functionality for different situations. Proper transit planning matches the mode to the needs of the situation.
Gondolas are really useful in overcoming terrain obstacles -- connecting places hard to connect with other modes. But they have low capacity and slow throughput.
Other modes have different strengths that can be matched to the requirements of the situation. Pick the wrong mode and you get crappy transit (Silver Line I am looking at you). It is not like every transit decision could use any mode. Often you really really should not use a particular mode in a situation.
The SL branches through the South End are far more mode-appropriate than the ones through the Seaport. I think when people point to the SL as a mode-choice travesty they're generally referring to the Seaport routes.I used to take the silver line (SL5) about 4x a week and it really wasnt as bad as people want to make it out to be. No dead trains to halt the whole network, no fires on tracks etc etc.
I used to take the silver line (SL5) about 4x a week and it really wasnt as bad as people want to make it out to be. No dead trains to halt the whole network, no fires on tracks etc etc.
The SL branches through the South End are far more mode-appropriate than the ones through the Seaport. I think when people point to the SL as a mode-choice travesty they're generally referring to the Seaport routes.
I would disagree - I think most people would point to the Roxbury/South End routes as the travesty given they were supposed to be light rail to replace the existing heavy rapid transit in the area, and the fact that the bus lanes aren't even protected making them rather a joke, especially in the winter. The Silver Line through the seaport, for what it was decided to do (connect SS and Logan) really is pretty OK - at least it has mainly grade separated routes, especially with the ramp now into the tunnel.
That doesn't really characterize the essential problem with SL-Washington. It's that a majority-minority neighborhood had its HRT mode of transit taken away, was given an "equal or better" binding commitment, and then got stuck with a much more limited-capacity mode as the replacement whose detachment from rapid transit imposed extra practical hurdles to fanning out further via local-bus transfer. Compounded by all the years wasted trying to design-mash it into the Transitway when that was flat-out not feasible nor the least bit desired by a neighborhood that simply wanted its one-hop transfer utility back. The mode shares in Roxbury have never entirely recovered in 33 years from the breakage in levels of service and how much harder that made multimodal transfers to pull off now vs. then. But the fact that the artic buses are not as stuffed as 4-car HRT trains over the same corridor used to be is the primary lingering after-effect of how it doesn't do its stated job nearly as well. They aren't running "at their level"...the "level" got bludgeoned down to what they were running due to linked trips never again being as dead-simple to time and pay for as before.
All captured in incredibly absorbing fashion in that amazing documentary, "Equal Or Better: The Silver Line Saga," by Kris Carter. Should be required viewing for all AB *initiates* (heck, all ABers, period).
Pay close attention to how he salts his Worshipfulness Himself, Fred Salvucci!
1) The Red Line extension and the new Orange Line (SW Corridor) did, in fact, get built and the two bookended Washington Street (I'd like to better understand how far a walk from Washington Street it is to the two lines)
I haven't had the chance to watch that documentary (aiming for tomorrow actually), but the Red Line is mostly a non-entity in terms of useful transit for the Washington Street corridor. It's way off to the East, and the only way you were accessing it from the Washington Street corridor was going to be by bus regardless of OL alignment.
Now, on paper, the SW corridor alignment doesn't look *that* bad, but the divergence gets worse the further you get from Forest Hills. From Egleston Square to Stony Brook, it's about a 4/10ths of a mile walk, which is a huge difference, especially considering that the far end of that neighborhood (over by Franklin Park) just had their walk to the train doubled. Nubian is in an even worse situation - it's 6/10ths of a mile to Roxbury Crossing, along Malcolm X Blvd, where you're mostly passing by schools and a mosque, and at the end of all that you have to cross the racetrack that is Columbus. No one is trying to do that just to then get on the Orange Line, and if you're headed to Nubian from elsewhere, you're not taking the Orange Line to then have a 6/10ths of a mile walk to get there. And of course, Roxbury Crossing and Stony Brook aren't really equipped to be bus hubs, so you get Jackson Square and Ruggles instead, which are even further from the squares where things are happening. The need to shoot over to Jackson and/or Ruggles for most major busses to have that OL connection extends the run length and notoriously breaks the headways during AM and PM rush.
From a car-centric perspective, SW Corridor isn't far from Washington at all. From a pedestrian perspective, it's uselessly far.