Courthouse Station

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mass88

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I got off at this station for the first time and was simply impressed. I think it's safe to say this is easily the most impressive transit station in the entire system, exceeding even Harvard Square in my opinion.

I can't help but wonder why such a massive station was built for the Silver Line. Is this station even highly used?
 
mass88 said:
I got off at this station for the first time and was simply impressed. I think it's safe to say this is easily the most impressive transit station in the entire system, exceeding even Harvard Square in my opinion.

I can't help but wonder why such a massive station was built for the Silver Line. Is this station even highly used?
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Not yet. It was overengineered in anticipation of Fan Pier and Seaport Square.

I'm always raving about Courthouse on here. Glad to see someone else on my side too. The station is incredible.
 
People might actually use courthouse if Seaport Blvd wasn't lined with fences. The planned intersection for Seaport & Farnsworth? Fenced off, making just a bit more inconvenient. The best way to the courthouse itself? Fenced off parking lot. Doubling your walking trip, at least, possibly even tripling. The planned intersection for an extension of Fan Pier Blvd? Fenced off. Forget about walking to One Marina or the new Vertex buildings.
 
I was lucky enough to get to go to the opening of that station and it really did take my breath away. The idea was that they wanted a station that could accommodate the growth over the next 25 years. I personally think it's a bit over done but whatever.

I have more issues with the fact that it's a bus station rather than the cost.
 
BostonUrbEx said:
People might actually use courthouse if Seaport Blvd wasn't lined with fences. The planned intersection for Seaport & Farnsworth? Fenced off, making just a bit more inconvenient. The best way to the courthouse itself? Fenced off parking lot. Doubling your walking trip, at least, possibly even tripling. The planned intersection for an extension of Fan Pier Blvd? Fenced off. Forget about walking to One Marina or the new Vertex buildings.
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Currently it does dump you out in a wasteland, yes. The scene will be much different when all those lots finally get filled in. I just don't know if any of us will be alive to see it happen...
 
The tunnel and station should, in a rational world, be converted to a light rail line; either an extension of the Green Line central subway via Boylston and South Station, or as a leg of a waterfront RKG light rail surface/tunnel line. The existing tunnel could be converted to a combo LRV and bus tunnel, similar to the LRV/bus tunnel in downtown Seattle. That way the buses for Logan Airport could still use it.



Seattle-Transit-Tunnel.jpg
 
I imagine heads at railroad.net would start to puff smoke and eventually implode if they saw rail sharing space with rubber. That's a cardinal sin isn't it?
 
bbfen said:
I imagine heads at railroad.net would start to puff smoke and eventually implode if they saw rail sharing space with rubber. That's a cardinal sin isn't it?
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Yeah well railfans are a particularly crazy clique (no offense to any of them). The Seattle tunnels are exactly what the Silver Line should be.
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
Yeah well railfans are a particularly crazy clique (no offense to any of them). The Seattle tunnels are exactly what the Silver Line should be.
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I like this idea, but only if the light tail becomes connected to something else. With out an extension into the rest of the city, adding rail does nothing to actually provide improved transit. Rail in a shared tunnel can go no faster than the buses in front of the trolleys. And since rail can't go in the Ted Williams, what does it give us within the existing infrastructure? Adding rail only makes sense if it is connected with the rest of the LRT network. Given that requirement, it's not quite so simple a thing as laying some tracks.
 
There are bus systems, including articulated, which can have a guide wheel run along rails in order to allow buses to drive faster in tunnels without worry of deviation in direction of travel. The systems are specifically designed with having buses share rail tunnels with trams. Buses will never fit in the central subway, but should be sharing the silver line tunnels and the emergency tunnel @ the TWT which shouldn't be just for emergencies.
 
The Children's Museum and the Court House tried to get the station located closer to them the but McCourt wanted it closer to his property.
 
bbfen said:
I imagine heads at railroad.net would start to puff smoke and eventually implode if they saw rail sharing space with rubber. That's a cardinal sin isn't it?
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Actually, alot (most) of them are busfans, too. It's just the moderators that flip.
 
The Silver Line system in the Seaport always reminded me of Seattle's tunnel. I agree that this is exactly what the Silver Line should be. Seattle's tunnel was also exclusively used by buses for almost twenty years before they finally got their act together and installed a light rail system, a fact that Silver LIne light rail advocates should find encouraging.
 
Seattle's subway/bus system is inferior to Boston's in almost every way in my opinion. Once you get underground in downtown, it can be very slow moving considering buses and trains are sharing the same tunnel. I got stuck behind a broken down bus on my last trip and that created quite the wait.

In any event, the station is fantastic and simply massive. You would think it was a transfer station, like Park Street. Imagine is DTX or Park Street looked as good as the courthouse station?
 
The biggest fail is that the only way to switch sides (without paying again) is crossing the busway.

Also, seating on the platform is lacking.
 
Dual-mode tunnels aren't a new thing. Not here, either (Harvard bus tunnel used to do both in the 50's). I don't know how it would work with two-wire TT trolley wire and LRV pantographs to prevent a panto from shorting out the TT return wire, but I think it's done elsewhere in the world by spacing them out of the panto's range and letting the TT's trolley poles spread out horizontally more than it otherwise would. They do make pole + panto compatible power wire...Green Line had that until the early 90's to support running the PCC's out of Watertown.


BostonUrbEx said:
Actually, alot (most) of them are busfans, too. It's just the moderators that flip.
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Yes, although I think they intentionally test him by sneaking in as much trackless trolley talk as possible. At least nobody's been made to sit in the corner all-caps style over Urban Ring talk in a long time.

The new site admin, Jeff, is great. Came originally from the poster, not moderator, rank-and-file and has taken some of the mods out to the woodshed for being not-nice control freaks and lectured some of the RR employees to not be condescending jerks to the 'normals'. T forum has been a lot less uptight since then. And was encouraging that the guy was responsive to complaints about the moderation, because there was a particularly high-profile thread deletion + mass warnings incident this summer that nearly sent a bunch more longtime posters to the exits (same time I first regged here...*cough*).

Now, if the ex-site admin would simply stop spamming threads with tears of impotent rage over lost superpowers. . .:rolleyes:
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Dual-mode tunnels aren't a new thing. Not here, either (Harvard bus tunnel used to do both in the 50's). I don't know how it would work with two-wire TT trolley wire and LRV pantographs to prevent a panto from shorting out the TT return wire, but I think it's done elsewhere in the world by spacing them out of the panto's range and letting the TT's trolley poles spread out horizontally more than it otherwise would. They do make pole + panto compatible power wire...Green Line had that until the early 90's to support running the PCC's out of Watertown.
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I've always imagined the trackless wires being higher up than the panto wire, with the panto wire being the centerline between the trackless wires. That way the panto won't ever touch the trackless wires no matter how close or far apart they are. Just have to make sure the trolley poles don't ever touch the panto wire.
 
SPID with extensions to traditional Southy is sufficiently large that the existing Court House, Wortld Trade Center, Silver Line Way, and future back of the BCEC should be the new "big 4 -- aka Park, DTX, State, Gov Center).

This will take decades but there will be some other transit to run around (above / below) the SPID
-- perhaps Raytheon-style PRT or something yet uninvented) -- it will and will need to tie into the SilverLine and the rest of the T
 
BostonUrbEx said:
I've always imagined the trackless wires being higher up than the panto wire, with the panto wire being the centerline between the trackless wires. That way the panto won't ever touch the trackless wires no matter how close or far apart they are. Just have to make sure the trolley poles don't ever touch the panto wire.
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I think they're the same height, and designed as such. All of the TT lines were trolley lines with the exact same running wires recycled...they just string up the return wire and leave the hot wire as-is. Some of them when they were first bustituted were both trolley and TT on the same wires so they could make non-revenue moves on the old trackage.


I don't know what would happen if the panto touched the return wire, other than trolley-won't-go. Steel wheel return current goes through the grounded running rail. But there's definitely places in the world that do this. Eastern Bloc countries have huge TT networks that never got dieselized, and kept and upgraded their streetcar lines to use pantographs. Maybe we can ask that new 27-year-old bloke who's running the show in North Korea...Pyongyang's got a pretty nice streetcar and TT system the days their electric grid is actually operating.
 
I agree that it's a great-looking station. BUT why are benches made of stone? One freezes one's ass in the winter. Also, what's the purpose of constantly running the east end escalators? They don't lead to an exit.
 
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