Channel Center | Fort Point

Gotta give credit to the architects, they were given boxes and they did the best with it.
 
I like the 3D effect going on with the sun hitting it:

15361831990_2cfc758032_b.jpg
 
The light show they've got going on the garage in the evenings is fantastic. And the park gets solid use, even today when it was not exactly warm out...
 
All parking garages should have that sort of masking treatment (though this one, admittedly is top of the line) to mask those depressing layers of concrete that are so common with parking garages. Too bad the city can't have that requirement when it comes to building a parking garage.
Frankly, after reading the article about how this came about, it's refreshing to see a developer stick to his plans and follow through with what he/she said was to be the final outcome of the project instead of VE'ing it down.

http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/r...-center-garage-getting-new-look.html?page=all
 
An unpleasant surprise to me: widening of A Street is planned. Hearing April 16th, 10 a.m., Room 801 City Hall.

Looks like they want to do the "anti road diet", converting right-of-way width from 3 lanes to 4. And knock down a whole line of recently planted trees to do it. Completely insane. So much for Vision Zero? The widening decision seems to be driven by Level-of-Service based planning.

Slides (see pg 42): http://www.bostonredevelopmentauthority.org/getattachment/4d1422ae-0ee4-4be0-97d2-2691d772179f

Memo: http://www.bostonredevelopmentauthority.org/getattachment/6ea061f3-27e9-402b-99e4-04f6e2b9f19e

The A Street Widening shall be allocated by the BRA
to the first Proposed Project of a Participating Owner Party for which a transportation
study undertaken as part of Article 80 review demonstrates that upon construction of such
Proposed Project, the level of service at intersections along a material portion of the
length of A Street from West Second Street to Melcher Street will be diminished to F by
reason of the transportation impacts of such Proposed Project.
Click to expand...
 
Matthew said:
An unpleasant surprise to me: widening of A Street is planned. Hearing April 16th, 10 a.m., Room 801 City Hall.

Looks like they want to do the "anti road diet", converting right-of-way width from 3 lanes to 4. And knock down a whole line of recently planted trees to do it. Completely insane. So much for Vision Zero? The widening decision seems to be driven by Level-of-Service based planning.

Slides (see pg 42): http://www.bostonredevelopmentauthority.org/getattachment/4d1422ae-0ee4-4be0-97d2-2691d772179f

Memo: http://www.bostonredevelopmentauthority.org/getattachment/6ea061f3-27e9-402b-99e4-04f6e2b9f19e
Click to expand...

I'm concerned about the bike lanes being only 4ft wide..
 
And the travel lanes being 11 ft. It's a blast from the past.
 
That is horrible street design and there is no need to have it that wide especially since it has to get thinner again at either end.
 
Is there a comment period, anywhere to send feedback, etc?
 
I'm not against it since this really is the only arterial street down there but they could have mitigated it with 10' lanes and been fine. There WILL be more car traffic but that doesn't mean they have to give them the most space. Having that extra foot as a buffer for the bike lanes is a huge safety improvement.
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
I'm not against it since this really is the only arterial street down there but they could have mitigated it with 10' lanes and been fine. There WILL be more car traffic but that doesn't mean they have to give them the most space. Having that extra foot as a buffer for the bike lanes is a huge safety improvement.
Click to expand...

If that April 16th meeting is a PIC meeting, then I might be able to ask one of my contacts to at least bring up the narrow bike lane.
 
The current conditions are two travel lanes along with a buffered bike lane that occasionally narrows into a 5-ft standard unprotected bike lane.

There is a whole line of freshly planted trees right where they are planning to chop the sidewalk.

This widening is a terrible idea.

IMG_20150406_120232.jpg
 
Oh the treemanity. This isn't the end of the world. A St now is basically an alleyway. Come all that new development and it's the only street there it needs to be wider. Plant trees along Seaport Blvd or Congress St where they are needed.
 
Right. Widen A street even though it drops back down to two lanes at either end. Don't explore connecting B street to "west service road" next to the convention center, and extending Wormwood, Binford, and Iron streets. Because if history has shown us one thing, its that widening arterials always works better than permeability of routes...

*facepalm*
 
Hey, they did a nice job on that park's edge, why tear it up over nothing?

The projections of traffic are ridiculous wolf-crying as usual.

Widening roads is a bad idea, it will just turn this into a four-lane speedway (that ends abruptly), and will destroy a good chunk of the park as well as the semi-decent bike lanes that exist now.

What in the world for? Because some faceless bureaucrat/engineer used some wacky model that predicts that everyone and their dog is gonna buy a car and drive it to Channel Center? And it rates an "F" on the level-of-service report card? Sigh. That is practically the essence of 1950s-style thinking.

The shitty parts of the South Boston Waterfront are the wide roads! We've been decrying that for ages on this forum. Why make another mistake? Isn't it bad enough there already?
 
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