[CANCELED] Summer St. Gondola

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Charlie_mta said:
Elevated systems and stations over the streets of Boston took over 60 years to get rid of. Now they're going to put up new ones? I don't think so.
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Decking Summer Street does seem like the only feasible option (albeit not that realistic) that would be better than the 7 bus to shuttle people from SS down to the Marine Industrial Park area. Or the Gondola I guess.
 
DominusNovus said:
What exactly are the negatives?
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Lots of negatives, which have been covered on here before:

- There's already a relatively new, underutilized transit tunnel equipped with stations paralleling the proposed gondola route. I'd rather see light rail installed in that tunnel with the funding, instead of a redundant gondola;
- The elevated stations and structure that would blight the streets, buildings and sidewalks below. Remember the North Station area before the Green Line elevated came down?
- Potentially poor access for the disabled to the gondola cars;
- The fare charged to riders could be high.

I'm sure I missed some, but those are what I recall.
 
Its just really bad value for money.

You can get much more capacity for much less money with a bus lane. And/or by increasing throughput in the Silver Line tunnel

I mean for fucks sake it's proposed to go over perhaps the widest, straightest street in the entirety of downtown Boston. And its redundant with a fucking brand new transit tunnel.

This thing solves no problems and creates several. This thing should have been laughed off the stage the moment it saw the light of day. The fact that we're even still discussing it is itself an embarassing farce.
 
Charlie_mta said:
Lots of negatives, which have been covered on here before:

- There's already a relatively new, underutilized transit tunnel equipped with stations paralleling the proposed gondola route. I'd rather see light rail installed in that tunnel with the funding, instead of a redundant gondola;
- The elevated stations and structure that would blight the streets, buildings and sidewalks below. Remember the North Station area before the Green Line elevated came down?
- Potentially poor access for the disabled to the gondola cars;
- The fare charged to riders could be high.

I'm sure I missed some, but those are what I recall.
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The only actual negative listed there was the potential blight. That the Silver Line exists is not a negative, its just something else that could be done. The other two concerns are entirely hypothetical - it coild be argued that a gondola, flush with its loading platform, would be more accessible than light rail or BRT, where the vehicle has to have a loading ramp of some sort for the disabled.

As for the blight, I’m very unconvinced. The physical structures would be minimal, since the gondolas won’t need heavy tracks like North Station did.
 
BeeLine said:
Are we missing an opportunity? This may not be as crazy as it seems.http://www.bbc.com/future/gallery/20190103-the-rise-of-the-urban-cable-car
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The opportunity we are missing is to run a bus in a reserved lane across flat and preexisting bridges & streets (Summer, Congress, Seaport)

Aerial gondolas are really more appropriate where you don't have a street you can run a bus on.

The BBC article only has real examples that fit one of two use cases:
- Hilltop-to-Valley (OHSU from waterfront light rail to hilltop campus), and all those Colombia & Caracas examples.
- Leaping over a River (Roosevelt Island to 2nd Ave) and the London Olympics example

Neither of which applies to the Seaport.

A much better analogy for "where they work" would be from Chelsea to North Station alongside the Tobin, or up to the top of Orient Heights from the Blue Line.

Other than that Boston has lots of busway-ready streets that all they need is some paint, shelters, and political will to take a lane from cars.
 
I was thinking more along the line of the Seaport (South side of the BCEC), over the Fort Point Channel, and along the Mass Pike to the Backbay Station. That would connect the two convention/hotel clusters.
I could also see an extension to the cruise terminal (seasonal ?) to tap into the tourist trade.
 
Guess it's worth reiterating that the whole purpose of this is to shuttle people (workers) down to the Marine Park redevelopment. Millennium agreed to fund something, but I imagine they won't fund anything unless it's better than the status quo (which is the 7 bus down a wide open Summer Street).
 
It seems to me that most of the fo us is on how other options are better, and less on how a gondola would be bad. It would take up so little actual real estate that I really steuggle to understand the opposition.
 
DominusNovus said:
It seems to me that most of the fo us is on how other options are better, and less on how a gondola would be bad. It would take up so little actual real estate that I really steuggle to understand the opposition.
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It is a pretty goofy idea.
 
jklo said:
It is a pretty goofy idea.
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Goofy perhaps. But it could very well work and the point that it would take up little precious roadway real estate is important.
 
DominusNovus said:
It seems to me that most of the fo us is on how other options are better, and less on how a gondola would be bad. It would take up so little actual real estate that I really steuggle to understand the opposition.
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There other option - buses in a bus lane, or even a surface trolley, would be:

- cheaper to build
- cheaper to operate and maintain
- faster
- higher capacity
- more reliable
- less distruptive to public space

Whether the gondola is 'BAD' some abstract sense is sort of beside the point.

And the point is that it is much, much 'WORSE'
 
I mean with how the Seaport was built out with extremely little concern for sea level rise/flooding, the gondola may be the only option in coming years :-x
 
CSTH said:
There other option - buses in a bus lane, or even a surface trolley, would be:

- cheaper to build
- cheaper to operate and maintain
- faster
- higher capacity
- more reliable
- less distruptive to public space
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Source?
 
You know how when you go skiing, you take a bus from the parking lot to the lodge and then a gondola from the lodge to the top of the mountain? Why isn't there a gondola from the parking lot to the lodge? Because you don't use something expensive and unreliable when you can use a bus. Why don't you take a bus to the top of mountain? Because it would take an unacceptably long time up a zillion switchbacks for the bus to get to the top of the mountain.

Gondolas only exist to surmount physical obstacles. There is no physical impediment to using buses on Summer Street. Ergo, a gondola is a poor choice for Summer Street.
 
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