Crazy Transit Pitches

Matthew said:
Spain and Japan have seen some of that as well. Railroad sprawl is the original kind of sprawl, after all.
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Alon Levy's a really good read on the China buildout. While they're building new HSR lines at a bugfuck pace and of course the U.S. and some other nations need to be doing the same, their construction costs are way too high for what they are building and it's digging them into a little bit of a debt hole. Conventional wisdom that they have much cheaper cost doesn't actually play out in reality. They're not U.S.-bad (or, specifically, New York-bad) at overhead...but they're worse than almost the whole rest of the world and in the same ballpark as the U.S. Which doesn't make a whole lot of sense on the surface, but Alon ties it in to a good case that totalitarian regimes or strong central governments pursuing "manifest destiny"-type overbuilds typically do a very poor job on cost controls since they treat manifest destiny as no cost too big to achieve. And then let their discipline go by the wayside and start ignoring some basic macroeconomic facts in the process. China is proving that case right now.


Where it gets bad is that China's entire economy is riding a bubble and showing signs of unsustainability writ-large for the kind of breakneck growth they're attempting at the central level. Their transportation costs may be a tiny, tiny slice of the pie but it's endemic of the overall pattern of behavior: trying to grow too big, too fast on-margin and forgetting a lot of their earlier discipline as it gets overheated to absurdity. The sprawl being created out of thin air is nuts, totally unsustainable, and the direct result of building too much too fast and having induced demand sharply outpace natural demand. At a certain level of overheating, manifest destiny outpaces smart planning and stops caring whether it gets backfilled by sprawl or induced demand or is serving pent-up demand. Demand grows slower than an ambitious government seeking instant gratification wants to grow.

So...it ends up being the same thing Industrial Revolution U.S. went through, just with a different type of government at the helm. We had tons of "railroad sprawl" in the 19th and early-20th century. It was just result of a private bubble, whereas expressway sprawl was a public bubble. Same result could've happened if public and private traded places. And is happening in China.


Ironically India, which got stereotyped more than any other country for "anarchistic overgrowth" 20 years ago, has taken much more progressive sustainability steps recently. Including on transportation and general infrastructure. It's still a lot of free-for-all on who's doing the building, but tighter controls are being placed on what sustainability standards are being met. Conventional wisdom said India was incapable of doing that because they passed up any attempt at population controls while China clamped down...and that population planning was supposed to be their difference in viability of sustainability planning. It's turning out not to be the case, because India's making it an explicit point to not go bugfuck with manifest destiny and trying to hew a closer line on building to actual vs. projected (and, thus, induced) demand.


It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out, but voluntarily or involuntarily China is not going to be building so many roads and rail lines in a few years when they have no choice but to pull back their debt spending. To the degree it leaves them with an incomplete system because major planned chunks of it had to be deferred by many years...well, Boston has a bunch of unused I-695 shields in a warehouse to send them as a gesture of "good luck with that".
 
I haven't heard anything on this in quite a while, but back in 2013 the plan was to redesign Rutherford Ave and eliminate the underground element, making it solely a surface street.

http://www.rcic-charlestown.org/

http://www.archboston.org/community/showthread.php?t=4507&highlight=rutherford+ave+surface

I haven't heard a peep about the project moving forward, but if it ever did, I was thinking the Wynn casino might present an interesting opportunity.

Everyone's been squawking about how the casino traffic will cause havoc in the already traffic-clogged Sullivan Square. Although not a cheap option, I was wondering if, rather than completely fill in all underground elements of Rutherford Ave., cap the fill in at the Sullivan Sq rotary. The remaining portion of tunnel directing traffic toward Everett would then be connected to the existing 93N exit ramp with a new Everett-only right lane that forks off and dips underground.

The new lane from the ramp would need to steal a little land from the big parking lot where school buses are currently parked, but not too much else.

It would mean that all incoming casino traffic coming from the South would stay off the surface streets in Sullivan Square completely.

Very crude representation of what I'm talking about.

 
MassDOT did have plans for a Haul Road that was to be a bypass of boulevarded Rutherford for all truck and high-speed traffic, but nobody's said a peep about it for half-dozen or more years.

It was supposed to go:
-- Start at, and access from, the Leverett Connector and Route 1 loop ramps on Rutherford.
-- Take the Community College backlot driveway next to the Orange Line tracks and CC station.
-- *Possibly* a set of narrow-profile ramps to Austin St. above to pry truck traffic from Memorial Dr. and McGrath/O'Brein up Austin to here. If not, then provisions to graft a parkway-grade interchange on later.
-- Continue following the CC backlots immediately adjacent to the 93 decks' abutments. On land currently occupied by 2 derelict freight RR tracks on that side of the decks.
-- Merge onto D Street, with roadway adjacent to the Mystic Wharf Branch RR tracks.
-- Sullivan rotary.
-- All truck traffic banned from Rutherford and redirected to the Haul Road.
-- IF it can be made wide enough, all high-speed thru traffic encouraged to go here. If it can't be made wide enough, then a narrower Southie Haul Road-type restricted setup with no shoulders. But the intent was to make it an all-traffic real bypass road unless any fatal blockers showed up on the width.


^^ Probably too difficult to ramp under the rotary for total grade separation onto Alford this way, because injection point off D St. is a little constrained. But if you elongated out the surface rotary a little bit to the D St. interface...basically shifting its egg shape from the 7:00 position to the 5:00 position and making the SW end a block longer, you probably could suck up all those streets and keep it free-flowing. Any which way the Rutherford bypass accomplishes 75% of the traffic goals in the whole area, and any smaller-scale mitigations to the Sullivan rotary more or less settle the rest.



Not sure why this has disappeared, and why nobody is talking about it with the casinos. Possible reason is that Massport's Charlestown Haul Road proposal got rejected by the neighborhood a few years ago. That was supposed to go. . .

-- Sullivan
-- Go through the Schraffts back lot
-- Follow the Mystic Wharf Branch track to the Autoport's westernmost driveway (shift tracks as-necessary to keep it crossing-free on the north-facing grass next to the road)
-- Pick up Terminal St. the rest of the way.
-- Ban all truck traffic from Medford St., where it currently has to go to reach Terminal Rd.

You'd think the residents would be ecstatic about that, but they threw rotten tomatoes at the plan and it was withdrawn by Massport to focus on Eastie Haul Rd. and Conley Terminal Haul Rd. instead. Maybe they'll take a second run at it someday, maybe they won't. Residents may have simply been misinformed on what the project was supposed to do and let fear get the best of them.

At any rate, cancellation of Charlestown Haul to the Autoport put a little bit of a damper on the urgency for the Rutherford bypass road, and I'm sure City Hall's spat with Everett and Wynn is playing politics at keeping it from coming back. But it's strange that no one has talked about it. Not even a base build that maybe omits the pricier elements like the Austin St. interchange. It's cheap construction on all that backlot and freight RR easement next to the 93 decks. Could easily be fitted into the priority order on last year's big transportation bill with a little reshuffling.

Your guess is as good as mine. It's definitely not a crazy pitch. It is/(was?) a very real, feasible, and cost-controlled proposal they were pushing as a semi-conjoined sibling of the Rutherford boulevarding project.
 
Crazy pitch:
Suburban ring corridor stretching from Wonderland to North Quincy, fully underground light rail commuter line connecting the Boston suburbs. (by way of a long tunnel that kind of forms an inner inner belt.). What you end up with is a fairly circuitous Big Dig. a All but a few stations have connections to major bus corridors, rapid transit, and/or commuter rail stations.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=zHBKbWS6THfI.kkUm8x_GZqHI
 
asap_mozart said:
Crazy pitch:
Suburban ring corridor stretching from Wonderland to North Quincy, fully underground light rail commuter line connecting the Boston suburbs. (by way of a long tunnel that kind of forms an inner inner belt.). What you end up with is a fairly circuitous Big Dig. a All but a few stations have connections to major bus corridors, rapid transit, and/or commuter rail stations.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=zHBKbWS6THfI.kkUm8x_GZqHI
Click to expand...

OK, truly a crazy transit pitch. I measure that as about 25 miles of virgin tunnel through NIMBY-land. That should clock in at a minimum $1 billion per mile. So $25 billion in construction and another $25 billion in legal fees for all the NIMBY's lawsuits.
 
asap_mozart said:
Crazy pitch:
Suburban ring corridor stretching from Wonderland to North Quincy, fully underground light rail commuter line connecting the Boston suburbs. (by way of a long tunnel that kind of forms an inner inner belt.). What you end up with is a fairly circuitous Big Dig. a All but a few stations have connections to major bus corridors, rapid transit, and/or commuter rail stations.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=zHBKbWS6THfI.kkUm8x_GZqHI
Click to expand...

Love it! Very, very crazy. Unfathomably expensive. There would be more demand and lower cost (due to distance of tunneling) if the ring was further in towards the urban core (Airport to JFK/UMASS, for example).

EDIT: For example, using the Silver Line Gateway ROW from Airport to Chelsea Station and continuing from there would dramatically reduce cost (existing surface ROW) and dramatically increase utility (a higher density corridor)
 
asap_mozart,

Utterly crazy, way too far out, way too expensive, way too many NIMBY opponents. I like it for a crazy pitch.

I note that you called it the NIMBY Line. I tip my hat on your use of sarcasm. However, two of your proposed stations, Newton Center and Thompsonville, are within about 3/4 mile of my back yard. I would absolutely be a YIMBY of this as drawn if you could come up with the $50B to litigate it and build it and if there was truly no way to spend that $50B elsewhere. If someone actually dropped $50B into the T's lap and I got to make the call on where it got spent, I don't think your plan would make my to-do list.

If, on the other hand, you could raise the cash and we could keep the Newton part of your ring where it is but swing the upper end southward to intersect with Harvard Station and thence on to Somerville at about Union Square, and swing the southern branch up to terminate at UMass Boston, you'd make my wife and several of our neighbors so happy that they'd probably order me out into the nights to go whack the inevitable Newton NIMBYs one by one. I'd be the psycho NIMBY killer. We gotta lot of academics in this neighborhood, a straight rail shot to Cambridge and UMB would be outstanding.

Oh, and what the hell, if we're swinging the northern end southward, let's terminate it at a loop that hits each Logan terminal, shall we? If I'm going to wallow in the selfish dreams your crazy pitch inspired, I may as well wallow shamelessly.
 
I know this is crazy, and I become the crazy one if I try to legitimize this proposal, but bear with me:

West, I think the part of the ring through Brookline, Newton, Watertown, and Belmont would be the most under-utilized part of the line. In terms of N-S transit through Newton, the 52 and the 59 are not begging to be upgraded to light rail at all.

The lowest density census tracts this line travels through are in Newton and Brookline. Also, Newton/Watertown/Belmont is the furthest this line travels from the center of the urban core. Not to mention that Newton, South Brookline, and Belmont are the least transit-oriented and transit-dependent communities that this line passes through.

If I were to re-route and make a little, teeny-tiny bit more sense of this proposal, I would follow a different route from West Medford to Forest Hills. From West Medford, I would propose the following stops:
  • West Medford
  • East Arlington
  • Alewife
  • Fresh Pond
  • Mount Auburn
  • New Balance
  • Brighton Center
  • Comm Ave
  • Cleveland Circle/Reservoir
  • Brookline Reservoir
  • Jamaica Pond
  • Forest Hills

Higher density, shorter route, existing ROWs, lower construction costs, fewer NIMBYs, higher utilization.
 
West said:
Oh, and what the hell, if we're swinging the northern end southward, let's terminate it at a loop that hits each Logan terminal, shall we? If I'm going to wallow in the selfish dreams your crazy pitch inspired, I may as well wallow shamelessly.
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While we are "crazy" (and that is this thread) let's complete the loop, and tunnel on under the harbor, then across Southie and finally complete the circle reconnecting with the southern end.
 
bigeman, your proposed shifts make good sense, even if it gives me a sad reaction. That dream didn't last long.

On the cross-Newton bus line, I think you are partly correct about the north-south routes, although I've always felt the 52 and 59 would have better ridership through Newton if it ran more often and if the streets could get unclogged. People who have the option of driving will just drive on side roads in their cars to avoid the bus slog and long traffic jams; they might ride those busses more if there were better reliability. The classic conundrum. Having said that, I agree that neither the 52 nor the 59 are anywhere near ready for serious discussion about going to even streetcar, much less tunnels, even if they could get boot-strapped up to optimum.

As for this:
Not to mention that Newton, South Brookline, and Belmont are the least transit-oriented and transit-dependent communities that this line passes through.
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There are parts of Newton for which this is extremely true, like the far Southern reaches of Newton - that is pure post-WW2 suburbia. But there are parts of Newton that are fairly transit-oriented and dependent, and this proposed NIMBY line connects several of them. None of Newton is so oriented and dependent as the South End or Cambridge, sure. But the D line has been in place a long time and many of the stations have not one iota of parking, so those neighborhoods have settled deeply into transit-oriented reality for those of us who work downtown or in Longwood. My wife and I both work and own only one car, which is often left parked as she can walk to work in good enough weather. There are Newtonites that literally GASP when they hear we have one car. Commuter rail serves a similar function on the North side of Newton, though with all the troubles of the commuter rail, and with the harsh reality that half the traditional commercial districts over there got wiped out by the Pike, and that tamps down the transit-orientation pretty severely.

Those parts of Newton that are fairly transit-oriented and dependent have a strong East-West alignment to the dependency. North-South, the 52 and 59 are huge dramatic steps down in transit-orientation, those who commute North-South mostly do so cars. Connecting the D line laterally to the "Indigo Line" would make for a big gain in transit density for the in-between parts of Newton (hence the fanatical NIMBYism you'd get there).

Odd place, Newton. I'm far from the only person in my immediate neighborhood who'd enthusiastically cheer a N-S streetcar line or even a dramatically more frequent and otherwise improved 52 / 59, even assuming those options would impact driving. But in some other parts of town the NIMBYism would be as ugly and as racist as it can possibly get. You can walk from my street to some of those areas in about ten minutes, and it's like you just walked from Brookline Village to Dedham as far as attitudes to the T go.
 
West said:
bigeman, your proposed shifts make good sense, even if it gives me a sad reaction. That dream didn't last long.

On the cross-Newton bus line, I think you are partly correct about the north-south routes, although I've always felt the 52 and 59 would have better ridership through Newton if it ran more often and if the streets could get unclogged. People who have the option of driving will just drive on side roads in their cars to avoid the bus slog and long traffic jams; they might ride those busses more if there were better reliability. The classic conundrum. Having said that, I agree that neither the 52 nor the 59 are anywhere near ready for serious discussion about going to even streetcar, much less tunnels, even if they could get boot-strapped up to optimum.

As for this:


There are parts of Newton for which this is extremely true, like the far Southern reaches of Newton - that is pure post-WW2 suburbia. But there are parts of Newton that are fairly transit-oriented and dependent, and this proposed NIMBY line connects several of them. None of Newton is so oriented and dependent as the South End or Cambridge, sure. But the D line has been in place a long time and many of the stations have not one iota of parking, so those neighborhoods have settled deeply into transit-oriented reality for those of us who work downtown or in Longwood. My wife and I both work and own only one car, which is often left parked as she can walk to work in good enough weather. There are Newtonites that literally GASP when they hear we have one car. Commuter rail serves a similar function on the North side of Newton, though with all the troubles of the commuter rail, and with the harsh reality that half the traditional commercial districts over there got wiped out by the Pike, and that tamps down the transit-orientation pretty severely.

Those parts of Newton that are fairly transit-oriented and dependent have a strong East-West alignment to the dependency. North-South, the 52 and 59 are huge dramatic steps down in transit-orientation, those who commute North-South mostly do so cars. Connecting the D line laterally to the "Indigo Line" would make for a big gain in transit density for the in-between parts of Newton (hence the fanatical NIMBYism you'd get there).

Odd place, Newton. I'm far from the only person in my immediate neighborhood who'd enthusiastically cheer a N-S streetcar line or even a dramatically more frequent and otherwise improved 52 / 59, even assuming those options would impact driving. But in some other parts of town the NIMBYism would be as ugly and as racist as it can possibly get. You can walk from my street to some of those areas in about ten minutes, and it's like you just walked from Brookline Village to Dedham as far as attitudes to the T go.
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I agree with everything you just wrote. I was born and raised in Newton and lived there for two decades, all told.
 
JeffDowntown said:
While we are "crazy" (and that is this thread) let's complete the loop, and tunnel on under the harbor, then across Southie and finally complete the circle reconnecting with the southern end.
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Let's close the loop but keep it crazy: run it along that cool storm surge protection system that the Dutch are just itching to build for us. You'd only need to tunnel under the gate opening, that'll only be a bit wider than the gap from Logan to Southie. There'd be wicked views on that part of the loop.

That skips Southie, but everything I've ever read suggests that the average Southie resident wants a new rail line even less than the average Newton resident. Amirite, or amirite?
 
West said:
Let's close the loop but keep it crazy: run it along that cool storm surge protection system that the Dutch are just itching to build for us. You'd only need to tunnel under the gate opening, that'll only be a bit wider than the gap from Logan to Southie. There'd be wicked views on that part of the loop.

That skips Southie, but everything I've ever read suggests that the average Southie resident wants a new rail line even less than the average Newton resident. Amirite, or amirite?
Click to expand...

This is only crazy until we actually have to build the storm barrier -- then it makes a ton of sense!
 
JeffDowntown said:
OK, truly a crazy transit pitch. I measure that as about 25 miles of virgin tunnel through NIMBY-land. That should clock in at a minimum $1 billion per mile. So $25 billion in construction and another $25 billion in legal fees for all the NIMBY's lawsuits.
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I think it would have extremely low ridership. There aren't enough trips made between those locations, and the distances involved for a trip to some place along one of the interior spokes would still be faster/easier for somebody to make passing through a downtown transfer station.
 
CSTH said:
We actually have to build the storm barrier already.
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Well, if we were rational actors, yes, we would be well into the planning and design of the storm barrier. It is a no-brainer that it is needed.

BUT, people are not rational actors. So we won't really get started before we have the first major flood taking out 25% of Boston.
 
CSTH said:
We actually have to build the storm barrier already.
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Yes, go ahead and mock up the Neponset-Winthrop barrier as part of this Crazy Transit Pitch,

Sadly, the most cost-efficient barrier (square miles protected per billion dollars) is a Hull-Winthrop barrier, which ends up being pretty useless for integrating transportation (unless it NIMBYs would let you make 128 a full belt, which I don't advocate)

Neponset-Winthrop (with an Airport spur) would be the kind of thing you'd build with Congestion Charge money.
 
^ Agreed, of course. I thought the FEMA-driven insurance rate hike a couple years would have been the trigger, with the big property insurance companies in the lead. But no dice (yet).
 
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