[CANCELED] Summer St. Gondola

Status
Not open for further replies.
I've lived here for 40 years and never made that connection, because it is too low frequency. It is NOT rapid transit.

If you HAPPEN to be at South Station at the magical witching hour when it works, great, otherwise the triple connection is faster and more reliable.

https://d3044s2alrsxog.cloudfront.n...nts_and_Press_Releases/BackBay WEB 052316.pdf

8:00
8:01
8:04
8:10
8:12
8:14

If this is a problem for you, I dont think public transit is for you.

And that "magical witching hour" is commonly referred to as "peak demand hour".

After 10pm? Yeah, take the subways. But thats not when most people are moving between the stations is it?
 
If this is a daily activity, you will have the trains memorized.

If it isnt, you will use CityMapper.

There is no point in spending money to facilitate a trip that currently works just fine. There are many more pressing issues.

You are fixating on a very specific trip, which I agree is only one transfer. That said, what about somebody going to Kenmore? North Station? Almost anywhere on the Green or Orange requires a second transfer, so the issue is actually more relevant than you seem to think. If the Silver Line could make it as far as Boylston, then it would have that connectivity and become significantly more useful to all OL/GL riders, not just those who happen to have Back Bay/Copley as one of their end points.
 
You have the BRT using the State Police ramp to get into the Ted Williams Tunnel but the regular SL continues to use the same convoluted route; why?

The purpose of the diagram was to contrast the BRT proposal vs the current SL in order to sell it for the competition. Presumably, if the MSP caved and let transit vehicles use the ramp, the SL would get to use it as well.
 
Work continues on this:

Globe: Could a gondola system be coming to Boston’s Seaport District?

Jon Chesto said:
[T]he dreamers behind the novel idea are dead serious about building a gondola and are slowly trying to bring it closer to reality, including gathering support from the developers of a high-profile Seaport hotel project that was directly in the path of the proposed route.

Millennium Partners and Cargo Ventures envision a one-mile gondola system running above Summer Street to provide transportation between South Station and 12 acres they plan to develop in the city’s marine industrial park. The cable cars would run anywhere from 30 to 50 feet above ground.

Developers of the 1,054-room Omni hotel to be built across from the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center seem more enthusiastic about the idea since Millennium and Cargo Ventures agreed to alter the proposed gondola path slightly. Part of the route would be lowered so the cable cars wouldn’t pass directly in front of guest rooms.

[...]

Meanwhile, the congressman who represents the area, Democratic Representative Stephen Lynch, said he met earlier in February with Mayor Martin J. Walsh and other local elected officials to promote the gondola project.

“The mayor has a solid understanding of the transportation issues,” Lynch said in an e-mail. “This gondola system would carry the equivalent of 40 buses per hour, while reducing vehicular traffic and eliminating carbon emissions. While the route of the gondola may change, I am totally committed to working with Mayor Walsh to move this process forward.”

[...]

The revised route would still be anchored at one end by South Station, with the main trunk running above Summer Street, but ending at the entrance to the marine industrial park instead of within Millennium’s development in the park. Millennium, which has already developed several luxury residential towers in Boston, said it would pay the roughly $100 million construction cost.

The project still faces several hurdles, as neither the City of Boston nor the Massachusetts Port Authority, a major landowner in the neighborhood, have expressed support for it.

[...]

Just imagine what $100 million could do for the Silver Line...
 
I recently learned that Philadelphia spent $11 million building an aerial gondola to Camden.

The project was cancelled after only one support pier was built
 
I recently learned that Philadelphia spent $11 million building an aerial gondola to Camden.

The project was cancelled after only one support pier was built


So that project lacked support? :)
 
Boston globe has some renderings of what the gondola stations could look like:


180131BostonCablewayPresenation_FinalPresented-78.jpg


180131BostonCablewayPresenation_FinalPresented-84.jpg


180131BostonCablewayPresenation_FinalPresented-74.jpg


There are more in the article:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/03/01/here-what-proposed-gondola-for-seaport-gondola-would-look-like/acx6qZnrmQJZr77LSL6ofL/story.html
 
Ive been there a bunch and never noticed. It seems way too low to make it across the river. Big ships go by.
That looks like the base of a tower, not the entire thing. The actual tower would be much taller and T-shaped.
 
This looks a hell of a lot like an elevated rail system, especially at the stations. I thought Boston hated elevated transit, and I can't believe this will ever fly (no pun intended).
 
That hardly looks efficient or speedy. Much cheaper and probably faster to simply run a bus every five minutes.

And every day there's a winf over a certain speed, the gondola doesn't operate?

And it doesn't look to be ADA compliant.
 
Tech bro's overly complex solution to a very simple problem. Like the Chinese bus that would drive OVER traffic this is all hype.
 
I'm all for it. Sure I'd love more busses or even a trolley system there, but this project will do more than just transport people. It will create a certain unique neighbourhood character.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top