Crazy Transit Pitches

[vanshnookenraggen]

That's a sensible build out idea but I wonder how Harvard Sq/Cambridge residents would react to light rail running in mixed traffic down JFK St and across Memorial Dr. I see that as a non-starter. Also ending the line at Eliot/Brattle Sq would mean an awkward transfer to the Red Line and reduce the effectiveness of the whole project. At-grade running through Allston is no big deal but you gotta stick the terminal to make it work. It's not just about adding transit to Allston; this line would make a serious dent in diverting transfers at Park St from Red to Green. Having a simple transfer is required to make that work.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

That's a sensible build out idea but I wonder how Harvard Sq/Cambridge residents would react to light rail running in mixed traffic down JFK St and across Memorial Dr. I see that as a non-starter. Also ending the line at Eliot/Brattle Sq would mean an awkward transfer to the Red Line and reduce the effectiveness of the whole project. At-grade running through Allston is no big deal but you gotta stick the terminal to make it work. It's not just about adding transit to Allston; this line would make a serious dent in diverting transfers at Park St from Red to Green. Having a simple transfer is required to make that work.

It's exactly the route the Urban Ring BRT was to run, and Harvard prodded pretty heavily during the UR scoping about why BRT and not LRT. So I don't think that's any issue whatsoever for them.

If you have stops at Ohiri Field for the Stadium the entire street-running portion would be stop-free. It really is not very much overlap with the bad traffic. The traffic here sucks because of the uncoordinated DCR signals that have no protected lefts either direction on Memorial, and no protected lefts on the bridge side of JFK for westbound Memorial. That's a deficiency that should've never been allowed to persist as long as it has. Memorial lane-drops to the west for that insanely dangerous on-street parking, so making the left WB lane coming into the intersection left-turn only, lane-dropping WB from the intersection through the on-street parking to 1 lane, then lane-shifting EB to 2 travel lanes + a protected left solves that problem. Then the bridge should just flat-out get a protected left, even if some light sidewalk reshaping is required.

That pretty much solves the major traffic queue deficiency of the intersection. And coordinated signals from the Storrow interchange through Memorial take care of the rest. I believe the Mt. Auburn lights on JFK are already tied into Harvard Sq. It's entirely DCR's fault that they have done nothing to address this easy fix.


So...Harvard support isn't a problem. And traffic has an unexplored easy-reach mitigation to eliminate that problem on JFK. Eliot St. is well under-capacity since majority of the traffic turns on Mt. Auburn. That leaves the surface station, and the fare portability from the surface station as constraints to square.

Without a tap-on/tap-off Charlie transfer there is a whole freaking lot of things that won't work correctly across the system. Silver Line Washington rapid transit transfers today. Indigo-to-rapid transit transfers tomorrow. The Urban Ring to Red @ Kendall when the stations are locked in 2 blocks apart in the far future. This is a necessity. You have to be able to hit a transfer tap surface at your surface stop and be given a controlled 20-minute time limit to tap back on at the nearest station (and only the nearest station). You would have the same trouble if the Harvard trolley went down into the bus tunnel; it's outside the Charlie gates. So timed transfers have to be implemented way before there even is such a thing as an Urban Ring. It has to be implemented before Indigo goes online or the double-dip fares on that service are going to scare half the ridership away.

So that fixes the fare portability. Now you're left with the loop. I don't think there's a great solution to this. Bennett St.--Bennett Way--Mt. Auburn--Eliot St. is the easiest place by far to loop. The plaza in front of the hotel along Eliot is the largest spot available for sticking a surface station. Might even be able to barter with the hotel for moving the Thrifty Car Rental mini-lot that takes up half their garage capacity so you can knock down the Eliot-facing side of the garage, widen the plaza, and get 2 two-car train platform berths. Bennett Way has pocket storage for 1 two-car train. So...basically Heath St. with 1 extra trainset's capacity. Assume that Ohiri Field/Harvard Stadium station has a pocket track for turnbacks in the event of an emergency shutdown, much like Brigham Circle gets activated in an instant if there's a car accident on Huntington blocking the path to Heath. That's the throttle for keeping anything on the surface from fouling the grade separation in Allston.


That's the best you're going to do. Milton Pl. is too narrow to run tracks down to reach Brattle St. And without very invasive modification to the bus tunnel you've got no turnaround that doesn't involve getting snarled in Mass Ave. traffic for a loop around Cambridge Common. That's an extremely time-consuming and operationally ugly way to go.

So you have to compromise. Depend on the tunnel and you're going to more than double the price tag for the entire route and knock it well back of the priority pile. So the only way forward is to stage it. Get Allston built, get this plaza stop built on the loop, and provide ample signage for the out-of-towners up the block to the Brattle Sq. entrance of Harvard Station. Then start saving up money for the tunnel build. Approach it from the standpoint that it's temporary. This is not bad for a temporary setup. This would THRILL Harvard if it anchored their Allston campus sooner and got them a terminus in the Square 20 years earlier than it would've taken if funded in a monolith. It can't be funded in a monolith. That tunnel isn't as mission-critical as Red-Blue where heaven and earth could/should get moved to find that $250M+ right away. You probably have a litany of other Urban Ring-related pieces much more consequential. So the dilemma is: sooner with an IOU, or not at all because your priority list is too big to fund a monolith?

This is an easy call. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Good doesn't prevent you from achieving perfect later. Good gets you perfect sooner because the difference between funding a monolith and funding a two-phaser where the leading phase is the easier to fund can be counted in decades. The real Urban Ring proposal didn't try to build a grade separated Charles crossing on Day 1; I would say the official data is well-supportive of this way of doing it. There's nothing Crazy Transit Pitch about the street-running interim...except for doing LRT first instead of BRT, over the bridge in mixed traffic was the official rec.

 

[Deetroyt]

Without a tap-on/tap-off Charlie transfer there is a whole freaking lot of things that won't work correctly across the system. Silver Line Washington rapid transit transfers today. Indigo-to-rapid transit transfers tomorrow. The Urban Ring to Red @ Kendall when the stations are locked in 2 blocks apart in the far future. This is a necessity. You have to be able to hit a transfer tap surface at your surface stop and be given a controlled 20-minute time limit to tap back on at the nearest station (and only the nearest station).

F-line, how difficult would adding tap on/off capability be? Is it a simple software fix, or does it require some more complex and expensive hardware upgrades?

There's nothing Crazy Transit Pitch about the street-running interim...except for doing LRT first instead of BRT, over the bridge in mixed traffic was the official rec.

Do you mean "BRT first instead of LRT"?

Edit: Nevermind, I think i misread your sentence with the LRT vs. BRT part

 

[FK4]

The traffic here sucks because of the uncoordinated DCR signals that have no protected lefts either direction on Memorial, and no protected lefts on the bridge side of JFK for westbound Memorial. That's a deficiency that should've never been allowed to persist as long as it has. Memorial lane-drops to the west for that insanely dangerous on-street parking, so making the left WB lane coming into the intersection left-turn only, lane-dropping WB from the intersection through the on-street parking to 1 lane, then lane-shifting EB to 2 travel lanes + a protected left solves that problem. Then the bridge should just flat-out get a protected left, even if some light sidewalk reshaping is required.

That pretty much solves the major traffic queue deficiency of the intersection. And coordinated signals from the Storrow interchange through Memorial take care of the rest. I believe the Mt. Auburn lights on JFK are already tied into Harvard Sq. It's entirely DCR's fault that they have done nothing to address this easy fix.

So...Harvard support isn't a problem. And traffic has an unexplored easy-reach mitigation to eliminate that problem on JFK. Eliot St. is well under-capacity since majority of the traffic turns on Mt. Auburn. That leaves the surface station, and the fare portability from the surface station as constraints to square.

I have to say I am skeptical, though, of support for street running trolleys on JFK and Eliot. I think it's tough to say what JFK would look like with smart signalling, definitely could be better but having a Green Line train there seems like a pretty radical pill to swallow for a lot of people who would be involved in giving the go-ahead - though personally, I would settle for the surface option, for sure. How much would a tunnel from HBS to Hvd Sq cost? Maybe you could get Harvard and BU to pitch in some dough for it...

Also, regarding the suicide parking on Mem Drive, I can think of so many "two lane" road in this state that actually have parking in the right lane, despite lane striping designating it a travel lane. It's so stupid and dangerous. Why mark it as a travel lane at all? Mem Drive, 3A in Weymouth and Quincy, Indepence Drive in Brookline, the last section of Columbus that hasnt gotten a dedicated bike lane... it's just dumb.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

An under-river tunnel is megabucks. Easily as much or a little more than Red-Blue when you add up the river crossing, the long inclines to get under the river, the somewhat delicate open-cut tunneling between the JFK buildings, and the Harvard Station utility relocation to make the 3-track Red Line tunnel usable as a stub terminal (it's through the right-side wall at the bottom of the main entrance stairs).

Now consider how important Red-Blue is for downtown load-bearing. Then consider how comparably far less important this is for load-bearing. You will presumably have GLX to Porter long before this so it's not the Red reliever to downtown; it's an Urban Ring feeder primarily, and a 66 reliever if you can feed it out to Longwood after Kenmore. On the priority pecking order it's not going to really hit peak utilization until all pieces of the Urban Ring are complete and you've transformed the Green Line into a much more robust circulator. Then you've got some serious ridership to tap. But built in isolation or only when small pieces of the Ring are there...it's more like a Green Line branch.


So...what's the timeline?

-- You can't seriously front-load a tunnel to Harvard ahead of the rest of the circulator pieces, because the circulator pieces are where your mega ridership comes from. You can't steal funding priority from the other pieces you're dependent on for traffic justifying the capacity of an under-river tunnel. Harvard itself would probably harshly criticize for doing it in the wrong order. Given how long a build list is, you don't have a leg a stand on to prioritize this until a bunch of other megaprojects are done.

-- On the other hand, Lower Allston is a clean slate and you'd better claim that ROW sooner rather than later before it gets too built up. Grade separation is relatively inexpensive the less built-up the area is. And you do have some ridership to tap...it's more like a C- and E- ridership profile hyper-concentrated into a very large terminal and 4 efficient intermediate stops between BU and N. Harvard St. But given how fast a trip it would be the headways are going to be good. Plenty fine for 2-car trains at a loop if you had the hook-in point at BU: a Grand Junction LRT out of Lechmere or--preferably--a buried B from Kenmore to BU Bridge with an underground line split feeding to here and/or the Grand Junction. It's the new "A" branch.

-- The new "A" branch won't get your tunnel built by its lonesome. But it will hasten the tunnel build into fait accompli when your other megaproject priorities are paid for. It won't be something you can put off indefinitely because the passenger traffic will start swelling and demand mixed routings out there when the Ring's complete. However, if you do try to build it in a monolith and have to put it off till later...the traffic's going to be circulating through BU one-way and you will have to re-study to re-justify why it should get divvied up to Harvard. It'll take even longer to do, or won't get done at all.



How do you resolve these conflicts?
-- Build a monolith too soon and you hurt the city by putting costly infrastructure before the ridership source that supports it and delay construction of higher-priority projects.
-- Build a monolith too late and you have to re-justify its existence, and have much harder land acquisition in a more thoroughly built-up Lower Allston.
-- There is no "just right" middle ground for a monolithic build. If it's before the highest-priority pieces of the Ring it's clearly too early. If it's after the highest-priority pieces you're going to have a harder time.


So...set your Transit OCD perfectionism aside and treat the Harvard service and the tunnel capacity as two entirely different projects separated by entirely different decades.
-- Grab the grade-separated ROW when it's least expensive.
-- Build the street-running loop and establish the "new A branch" at branchline frequencies.
-- Focus full attention on the other core components of the Ring, and in getting the Green Line's downtown trunks as robust as possible (full Huntington subway, etc.).
-- By focusing full attention on the other core components you've ensured that the traffic growth merits the grade separation straight into the station and that this truly does rise to the level of justifying the price.
-- Fund it, build it, relocate the line from N. Harvard Ave. station into the tunnel portal behind the Stadium, start running 3-4 car trains on a regular "A" schedule from Downtown, a new "66" schedule whipping through Kenmore and Longwood, and a new "CT2+" schedule that does Harvard-BU-MIT-Lechmere so it gets the full blur of routings.


Probably can't do it any other way. Probably shouldn't waste your time thinking about how to do it any other way. Just treat it like you're building a Green Line branch with one project, and building the cherry on top of the super-circulator with a completely different project. They recycle the same infrastructure untouched out to N. Harvard St. and they reach Harvard Sq. the same, but one's a two-dimensional service and one's a three- or four-dimensional service. Don't picture them as being in the same universe...or one being the incomplete version of the other. It's not. It's all about dimensions of transit...and you don't get your multidimensional transit by building an under-Charles tunnel to Harvard Sq., first, you get it by building the pieces of the Ring first.

 

[Deetroyt]

-- On the other hand, Lower Allston is a clean slate and you'd better claim that ROW sooner rather than later before it gets too built up. Grade separation is relatively inexpensive the less built-up the area is. And you do have some ridership to tap...it's more like a C- and E- ridership profile hyper-concentrated into a very large terminal and 4 efficient intermediate stops between BU and N. Harvard St. But given how fast a trip it would be the headways are going to be good. Plenty fine for 2-car trains at a loop if you had the hook-in point at BU: a Grand Junction LRT out of Lechmere or--preferably--a buried B from Kenmore to BU Bridge with an underground line split feeding to here and/or the Grand Junction. It's the new "A" branch.

This brings up an interesting point. Of all the Beacon Park future development stuff i've read, I don't remember any of them discussing this. Does anyone know if MBTA has been at the table for BP planning meetings, to reserve this ROW? If so, what's the level of discussion on this?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

This brings up an interesting point. Of all the Beacon Park future development stuff i've read, I don't remember any of them discussing this. Does anyone know if MBTA has been at the table for BP planning meetings, to reserve this ROW? If so, what's the level of discussion on this?

For the most part it is provisioned.

Harvard has responsibility for reserving land north of Cambridge St. Their Allston Campus Master Plan reserves a path along Stadium Way: http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic130901.files/IMP_Exec_Summary_010907.pdf (see p. 40-41). Where it crosses Western Ave. is at the property line splitting parking lots, and at most claiming 1 row of parking. That all seems to be by-design when Harvard built those properties to be able to easily slide the ROW by with zero or very self-contained impacts to the lots. And I would assume that whatever Stadium Way-facing properties they build have generous front lawns set back from the street to keep that reserved space.


As for MassDOT...a little too early to tell because the Pike realignment design has only been narrowed to a few alternatives and is subject to further change in final design: http://www.massdot.state.ma.us/Port...llstonInterchange/task_Presentation100114.pdf. See the maps starting on p. 8.

Stadium Way, where this Harvard-reserved ROW is supposed to be off to the side of, is the second city street in from the river on the new street grid. The Grand Junction ROW is the dashed line passing under the Pike viaduct. And it's supposed to be left enough space under the viaduct for 2 tracks or 2 BRT lanes to cover all future possibilities. So to get on alignment to Stadium Way it probably goes like this:
-- The to-be-converted Grand Junction would follow the Houghton Chemical side of the track split (whether Houghton gets relocated or not, there'd still be space under the viaduct for the track split).
-- Instead of passing under to the viaduct to the south/Worcester Line side of the Pike it hugs the north side of the Pike along the westbound lanes and passes under the "East Drive" overpass of the Pike.
-- Between East Drive and Stadium Way it curves due north on alignment next to Stadium Way.
-- It bridges or underpasses Cambridge St. and the Soldiers Field Rd. connector, exits MassDOT land, and enters Harvard land.
-- Hugs Stadium Way the rest of the way, passes over/under Western Ave., and curves along the south border of Ohiri Field.
-- Stations at West Station, probably something by Cambridge St. and/or Western Ave., probably something at Ohiri Field/N. Harvard St.
-- For the street-running portion to the Square, right turn on N. Harvard at the station. I would assume if street-running there is a pocket track at this Ohiri Field station for turnbacks if there's a car accident on the street-running portion and service has to be short-turned (a la Brigham Circle when Heath is blocked).
-- The tunnel provision Harvard is leaving open curves behind the Stadium, turns around the back of the Stadium tracing an outline of the Stadium, and splits the athletic facilities on straight alignment across the river and splitting the JFK School complex into the Red Line tunnel (with appropriate utility relocation in the tunnel). One building in the way to zigzag around the corner, but that's the provision the University left on their own map so they seem to think it's doable without blowing anything up.
-- If/when the tunnel is built you'd build another overpass at N. Harvard St. from Ohiri Field + a small Lechmere-style incline to get up from at-grade in the field to over the street. Then drop back at-grade on the other side of the street behind the south side of the Stadium, and probably portal under before or after curving around the back/west side of the Stadium. Street-running service would continue uninterrupted for full duration of the tunnel construction, and a weekend shutdown would be all that's needed to switch the tracks at N. Harvard onto the ramp up to the new N. Harvard overpass and the new tunnel alignment.


Not hard at all on the Allston side. You could even have grade crossings of any driveways on Stadium Way so long as overpasses/underpasses are built across the thoroughfares. 3 thoroughfare grade separations would be required: Cambridge St., the SFR connector to Cambridge St., and Western Ave. Viaduct and East Drive underpass provisions are already there, everything else is at-grade, and for the street-running portion a substation boost out of North Cambridge on the existing TT network lets the light rail tie in its power source at the existing substation on Bennett Way. Not bad for construction costs. Your main task is simply getting a connection to an existing transit line...such as the bury-the-B-to-the-Bridge build, or the Grand Junction off of Lechmere. The Harvard-Allston branch itself is very easy.

But you can see that the tunneling, despite the helpful provisioning by the University, is a big job and not something you want to be doing until the Ring is built up enough to start pumping multiple routes out there. For sake of getting the trunk laid you are going to want that 1/2 mile of surface routing to the Square to anchor the first 1-2 decades of branchline service. Tunnel EIS and engineering alone are going to easily take 10 years to square before a single shovel goes in the ground, so there's no reason to shackle the projects together. If it becomes a typical MBTA vaporware tease for decades on end, that's where Harvard could start to lose interest in keeping its pre-reserved ROW clear. With timeframes that out-of-sync for feasibility of the builds, it is way better to treat the route and the tunnel as completely separate and uncoupled projects.

 

[davem]

F-line, I've got to disagree with your assessment.

The traffic in the square and getting across the bridge is terrible most of the day. It's really excruciating, just take a look at how many people get off at the first stop after the bridge and walk to the red line instead of staying on the bus a stop or two more when it drops them of in the busway / right next to the entrance. At best, a trolley would fair as well as a bus. In practice, it would probably do worse just because of massive congestion.

Then add to that the umpteen days a year the square is closed to all traffic and the buses have to reroute up Mem Drive. Are you going to lay a separate set of tracks for these occasions? Bustitute from Barry's to Harvard? Neither is a particularly palatable solution to what will likely be a massively used route once implemented.

Another major issue that needs to be addressed with street running is that in-street tracks are really, really dangerous for cyclists (and drivers when it's wet, looking at uHub). Harvard has so many cyclists going through it that I frequently have to walk a few blocks just to find a place to lock up. Unlike many of the places where street running is not an issue, Harvard has mostly two lane streets, and cyclists need to be constantly moving out of the bike lane and into general traffic to make turns. Cars also tailgate. It would probably only take weeks for the first cyclist to get caught in the tracks, hit the ground, and get run over. Yes, there are rubber inserts that can mitigate this to an extent, but they don't do well in winter, and there is the Ts questionable maintenance practices. And the rubber inserts do nothing to keep cars from sliding everywhere.

This isn't like adding tracks to Centre Street, which is a fairly linear corridor. This is a complex network of crisscrossing streets that would do terribly trying to accommodate 140'+ of train. I imagine that's why they built what's now the busway in the first place.

As for the substation in the tunnel, have the terminal be before it. Just because the tunnel extends straight to the wall of the lobby doesn't mean that the trains have to go all the way there. Have them end wherever there is room for 2 or 3 tracks plus a platform, and build a passage for people to walk to the lobby. Non-issue. All you loose is the cool factor of trolleys pulling straight up to the Dunkin Donuts.



My point being, if you're not going to build a new river crossing tied into the abandoned RL yard leads, then the project is straight up not worth doing. Either have the "new A" terminate at Harvard Stadium (a'la Watertown Yard vs Watertown Square), or go full blast. It's expensive, but it's not worth it otherwise.



Now what I don't think is necessary is grade separation between the Pike and the Charles. There are only going to be three crossings of any significance (Cambridge St, Western Ave and N. Harvard St), and all of those would likely have stations. A large problem on those streets right now that is only going to get worse as development in the area ramps up and adds more pedestrians and *stuff* is that there are limited traffic control devices on these streets, so traffic flies along at 40MPH+. A signal, particularly on Western and N.Harvard will help by slowing things down and giving peds a chance to cross.

A reservation with offset platforms and signal priority would plenty suffice. Granted, nixing three underpasses doesn't come close to making up the costs that a new, underground river crossing would be, but it's a start. The other bonus with running at-grade through Allston is you have the potential to use the Barry's Corner stop as a busway combined with rail for better transfers, as I've shown below. One of the stupid things about Barry's Corner right now is that bus transfers are a pain, you have to run across the street. A a decent amount of people switch from the 66/86 to the 70 and back.

 

[FK4]

I havent seen that image on the first page of the Harvard pdf in a long time... forgot how ambitious it was - burying SFR AND filling the whole area along SFR outbound from the stadium with buildings, too. Pretty lofty.

Edit - also, page 30 shows a stream. Can we please do this?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

F-line, I've got to disagree with your assessment.

The traffic in the square and getting across the bridge is terrible most of the day. It's really excruciating, just take a look at how many people get off at the first stop after the bridge and walk to the red line instead of staying on the bus a stop or two more when it drops them of in the busway / right next to the entrance. At best, a trolley would fair as well as a bus. In practice, it would probably do worse just because of massive congestion.

Then add to that the umpteen days a year the square is closed to all traffic and the buses have to reroute up Mem Drive. Are you going to lay a separate set of tracks for these occasions? Bustitute from Barry's to Harvard? Neither is a particularly palatable solution to what will likely be a massively used route once implemented.

Another major issue that needs to be addressed with street running is that in-street tracks are really, really dangerous for cyclists (and drivers when it's wet, looking at uHub). Harvard has so many cyclists going through it that I frequently have to walk a few blocks just to find a place to lock up. Unlike many of the places where street running is not an issue, Harvard has mostly two lane streets, and cyclists need to be constantly moving out of the bike lane and into general traffic to make turns. Cars also tailgate. It would probably only take weeks for the first cyclist to get caught in the tracks, hit the ground, and get run over. Yes, there are rubber inserts that can mitigate this to an extent, but they don't do well in winter, and there is the Ts questionable maintenance practices. And the rubber inserts do nothing to keep cars from sliding everywhere.

This isn't like adding tracks to Centre Street, which is a fairly linear corridor. This is a complex network of crisscrossing streets that would do terribly trying to accommodate 140'+ of train. I imagine that's why they built what's now the busway in the first place.

As for the substation in the tunnel, have the terminal be before it. Just because the tunnel extends straight to the wall of the lobby doesn't mean that the trains have to go all the way there. Have them end wherever there is room for 2 or 3 tracks plus a platform, and build a passage for people to walk to the lobby. Non-issue. All you loose is the cool factor of trolleys pulling straight up to the Dunkin Donuts.



My point being, if you're not going to build a new river crossing tied into the abandoned RL yard leads, then the project is straight up not worth doing. Either have the "new A" terminate at Harvard Stadium (a'la Watertown Yard vs Watertown Square), or go full blast. It's expensive, but it's not worth it otherwise.



Now what I don't think is necessary is grade separation between the Pike and the Charles. There are only going to be three crossings of any significance (Cambridge St, Western Ave and N. Harvard St), and all of those would likely have stations. A large problem on those streets right now that is only going to get worse as development in the area ramps up and adds more pedestrians and *stuff* is that there are limited traffic control devices on these streets, so traffic flies along at 40MPH+. A signal, particularly on Western and N.Harvard will help by slowing things down and giving peds a chance to cross.

A reservation with offset platforms and signal priority would plenty suffice. Granted, nixing three underpasses doesn't come close to making up the costs that a new, underground river crossing would be, but it's a start. The other bonus with running at-grade through Allston is you have the potential to use the Barry's Corner stop as a busway combined with rail for better transfers, as I've shown below. One of the stupid things about Barry's Corner right now is that bus transfers are a pain, you have to run across the street. A a decent amount of people switch from the 66/86 to the 70 and back.

OK? So don't build it.


I laid out the Catch 22 you've got for funding here. You can't float the cost of the tunnel until all the traffic is there to feed it via every other expensive part of the Ring, and your reserved ROW may not be there any longer if you wait 35 years for that to happen. Monolithic builds aren't possible over the span of decades you're going to have to spread your funding dumps around.


So...with that in mind, you have to come to grips with pros/cons of a street-running loop. If that's flat-out unacceptable, you have no other options for getting across the river and into the Square and it probably never happens. The end. No Harvard spur ever.

Given that the cost in Allston is reasonable, I think that's a pretty severe and absolutist take on it and would go back and re-examine the no-build (i.e. no steel-and-concrete other than tracks in pavement) options in triplicate to make absolutely sure there is there no way to manage the traffic. But whatever...scrub it from all of your fantasy maps if you don't agree. Just realize there is no happy medium ground here; the tunnel up-front is almost as expensive as a major chunk of the mainline Ring, and would be flat-out irresponsible to fund before any single chunk of the mainline Ring. Even in a Crazy Transit Pitches universe you would never be able to persuade the state to pre-empt a higher-priority piece for a monolithic build here. And you don't have forever to build the Allston ROW before the area gets too built up to make that cost-effective. That difference in project time sensitivity isn't splittable with one perfect killshot.



As for grade separation in Allston...that's the last place to pinch pennies. The land's wide open and is going to have dirt pushed all around it for the next 20+ years, build the simple overpasses of Western, SFR Connector, and Cambridge. It's going to cost you 10x as much to go back years later and grade separate when grade separation is needed (and it will be when you start sending additional Ring routes out there). You don't have to mitigate a mound of dirt pushed up into an embankment; you do have to mitigate abutting buildings and parking lots. And why rebuild stations when you don't have to?

Penny-wise/pound-foolish. That's the wrong thing to be trying to pare costs on while the land is at its most fungible and undeveloped. It doesn't make a big enough difference to the project cost.

 

[FK4]

I'm not sure it's such a tertiary priority. It's actually very low hanging fruit, compared to other crucial pieces. Yeah, the tunnel is expensive but the rest of the row is cheap, and it facilitates a pretty critical connection IMO - getting a one seat ride to Allston, Babcock (practically Coolidge corner), Harvard from any point inbound on the green line. Red / blue is a biggie, but the really critical piece is something in the LMA, and this could be part of that project... Then you've got your whole north south to LMA and ruggles squared away. The whole Kendall connection isn't needed since
Kendall is so close to downtown already, it's not a huge inconvenience to go intown to go north one stop to Kendall and honestly if grand junction wasn't just sitting there I doubt it would be part of the proposal at all...

 

[Deetroyt]

Not trying to be a dick, but how is Babcock practically Coolidge Corner? Seems to me like it would take at least 15 minutes to walk to CC if you go off at Babcock on the B line.

 

[Proposition Joe]

Not trying to be a dick, but how is Babcock practically Coolidge Corner? Seems to me like it would take at least 15 minutes to walk to CC if you go off at Babcock on the B line.

Having walked between Harvard Avenue and Coolidge Corner I would have to agree with this. Hubway stations might make such a route more tolerable, but not obvious or sought out.

 

[FK4]

Not trying to be a dick, but how is Babcock practically Coolidge Corner? Seems to me like it would take at least 15 minutes to walk to CC if you go off at Babcock on the B line.

From a transit perspective it is. 15 min walk tops to Coolidge. The point is that the for a person who lives anywhere in the vicinity of Coolidge, particularly north of beacon which is much more apartment heavy, it would be far more worth it to take this new "a" line to Babcock - either from Harvard itself or even from central->hvd, than it would be to go all the way downtown and take the c or the b.

 

[davem]

I used to live at Harvard and Comm. About half the time I would take the C home to Coolidge Corner and then walk, because even though it was a 15 minute walk vs a 1 minute walk, it was made up for by not having dealt with the B. I'm sure I wasn't alone.

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As to street running across the Charles and into the Square, I just don't see it as feasible. It's dangerous to cyclists, convoluted, would take for ever, and would have no way to get around the events that close down the square. It needs to be a tunnel or nothing. So, start with nothing.

The phase one build should be a spur off the B at the BU Bridge (or alternatively Babcock St), through Beacon Park, up "Stadium Way" and end right behind the Murr Center by Harvard Stadium. Stops at the new West Station (Beacon Park), Cambridge St (Lower Allston), Western Ave (Barry's Corner) and Harvard Stadium.

This alone would have heavy ridership. First, you get a direct transfer from the CR to the green line. Yawkey is the closest thing we've got now, and this would allow practically a cross-platform transfer. Second, you get three new transit stations right in the heart of prime developable land. You can build taller and denser in Lower Allston with a direct downtown connection right there. Third, the walk from Harvard Square station to Harvard Stadium is about a half mile. As it is, a ton of residents of Lower Allston walk to the Square to get downtown, to go out, and jobs. So making this final connection on foot isn't that big of a deal. It's been happening since Allston was known as "little cambridge" over a hundred years ago.

More importantly, with this popular new A line ending within visual sight of the straight-shot through the JFK school, you have a really strong case to build the tunnel, far more than trying to do it all in one shot from the get-go. Once people find out there is an abandoned tunnel running from the Harvard Square lobby to Eliot Square, it gets even stronger. Suddenly an expensive river crossing doesn't look so bad. Not to mention, Harvard is going to be jonsing for a one-stop rail connection between it's two campuses, and would probably kick in a bit of money. In all likelyhood, a good chunk of the costs could be paid for by private interests that benefit from the connection and not the public. Assembly, New Balance and West Station are all good examples of this. If anything, stopping short of crossing the river because it's too expensive would probably be a great ploy to get the public to not have to swallow the costs entirely.

TL;DR, an A line from Comm Ave to Harvard Stadium would have more than enough traffic to justify itself, even without a direct connection to Harvard Square. Once built, ridership and the duh obvious nature of building the connection would make the cost of a new tunnel more palatable. In all likelihood, private institutions could be coerced to paying for a significant amount of the new tunnel once the surface portion is up and running.

 

[vanshnookenraggen]

I still don't know, the whole project really does hinge on connecting Harvard to Allston. If you stop at the river the project is almost useless as most commuters won't really need to get from Kenmore Sq to Allston when they are coming from Harvard. They'd still need to get the bus at Harvard Sq to get across the river. The majority of the ridership would be coming from Harvard so Phase 1 would almost have to be a tunnel (or a bridge with a portal in JFK Park).

 

[Proposition Joe]

Wasn't sure where to put this. Potential Back Bay canal plan.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/ma...up03fK/story.html?p1=Topofpage:sub_headline_1

It seems like the canal thing from a little while back is still chugging along. I noticed this article from the BBC which also includes a handy graphic which I haven't seen before.

A couple of differences here from when I read about this a while back is the presence of water in the Mass Pike trench (connecting to an enlarged Fort Point?) and the disappearance of the Esplanade and Commonwealth Avenue.

Also I had trouble finding the canal posts, because I figured they weren't directly transit related and wouldn't be in this thread. Any interest in a canal/water project/climate change thread?

 

[Shepard]

I think the ULI was more bent on releasing provocative pictures than producing realistic plans. Nothing there makes any sense in regards to tidal management, traffic, utilities/foundations and general liveability. It's all about earning double-bonus-coolness points by combining the word Amsterdam with the phrase "climate change," shaking this up into renders that elicit a double-take and attaching them to a press release.

(Actually I truly do love the ULI and the work they do, so please pardon the cynicism this time!)

 

[Shepard]

Harvard A line endgame: el over the final stretch of N Harvard, deck over the Anderson Bridge and over memorial drive. Drop to grade into the park and bear on the surface into the reserve ROW between JFK school buildings. Portal into preexisting tunnel segment before Bennett St.

 

[George_Apley]

I think the ULI was more bent on releasing provocative pictures than producing realistic plans. Nothing there makes any sense in regards to tidal management, traffic, utilities/foundations and general liveability. It's all about earning double-bonus-coolness points by combining the word Amsterdam with the phrase "climate change," shaking this up into renders that elicit a double-take and attaching them to a press release.

(Actually I truly do love the ULI and the work they do, so please pardon the cynicism this time!)

Definitely. Not to mention that the Charles is not subject to the tides anymore... seems like it would be way simpler to harden the Charles River Dam, plus a Dutch-style storm barrier than any "OMG" system of canals.