Cap the CAT on/off ramps| Rose Kennedy Greenway

stick n move

stick n move

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They've been floating around ideas about what to do with the on/off ramp parcels of the rose kennedy greenway for a while. I have a few ideas Ill post over time, other people feel free to also. Any news can be posted here too. Heres my first idea for the last on/off ramps by the Merano.

https://postimage.org/app.php
 
It would be cool to have a big Boston History Museum, or a botanical garden, or maybe even a huge YMCA.
 
Semass said:
It would be cool to have a big Boston History Museum, or a botanical garden, or maybe even a huge YMCA.
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How about a new stadium for the Patriots right there?
 
Semass said:
It would be cool to have a big Boston History Museum, or a botanical garden, or maybe even a huge YMCA.
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No, no, no.... those ideas are way too appropriate. We'd never propose things like that for the Greenway in Boston!

Oh wait, yeah we did :-(
 
I made this a while back while the Northern Ave Contest going on. I doubt this is possible, but I essentially took parts of the Northern Ave bridge and covered the set of ramps closest to Quincy Market. When I submitted it, I had retail and restaurants in mind, but after the fact, I think a History Museum would be more suitable here.
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Another angle showing how it fits in with the rest of the greenway.

Extra photo.
 
stick n move said:
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I like it, but I would extend it over N Washington Street to create a "High Line" elevated park over the ramps and connecting with ground level beyond both ends of the ramps. I would do the same with the other Central Artery ramps near Quincy Market, Northern Ave and Dewey Square.

I would also replace some areas of the steps with a ramped surface, so it's ADA compliant; a somewhat random mix of step and ramp areas would be interesting.
 
Here's my concepts for covering about half the area of the ramps. The cover would slope up to about 12 feet at its highest. Terracing could be used to break up the slopes.

Here are the before and afters, from north to south:

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Like it. Taking it one step further, are all the ramps really needed? For example, southbound on 93, do you really need exits at both Purchase Street and South Station?
 
Shepard said:
Like it. Taking it one step further, are all the ramps really needed? For example, southbound on 93, do you really need exits at both Purchase Street and South Station?
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You sound like somebody who doesn't drive around the city much.... Take away either one and the other will become an untenable disaster. Purchase Street in particular funnels traffic into the financial district and seaport. In this case, the off-ramps work together to help separate vehicles in a difficult to navigate area.
 
Semass said:
It would be cool to have a big Boston History Museum, or a botanical garden, or maybe even a huge YMCA.
Click to expand...

For fun I put this together for parcel 12 some years back. Maybe a bit hard to tell from this angle, but the idea was to absolutely NOT cover the ramps, but simply work around the ramps in hopes of saving that ten or twenty million dollars in extra money that nobody has been willing to spend to cover them in the last twenty years.

The concept would be a Boston Museum/Visitor Center with some exhibit space, some digital exhibit space, visitor info center, public bathrooms all in the footprint around the ramps. Which was the original designated use for parcel 12, (recall the glass ship design) but then it turned out to be too expensive to build over the ramps.

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Obviously, the powers that be are going in a different direction seeking to repurpose them as open space parcels to be part of the greenway instead of building civic buildings on them as originally planned, but I humbly suggest that building over the ramps even if it is just walkways is a gratuitous waste of public money and there is plenty to be gained aesthetically with more modest improvements around the ramps themselves.

Especially parcel 12 with all that usable ground level space that would otherwise be wasted on walking ramps to nowhere if those plans from a couple years ago ever move forward.
 
I agree, much better than the pedestrian ramp to nowhere.
 
Shepard said:
I agree, much better than the pedestrian ramp to nowhere.
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Took some searching but here is thr original Boston History Museum design... To my eye I like the design, but they could just flip it on its side and use the available ground level space. Would look fantastic and would have been more in reach financially.

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I never understood that design. Why is the Cheshire Cat grinning at me like that?
 
I always assumed it was a structural choice so that a large mass could be elegantly cantilevered on top of a very narrow support.
 
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