Could we restore the A branch as far as Oak Square? It could run in its own dedicated lane down the middle of Brighton Avenue and Washington Street (Problem: for busses to serve the green line stations, they'd need left-hand doors) with space for the terminal conveniently allocated where Cambridge street bulges out around the Franciscan Children's hospital.
Not hard, as that's exactly what the restoration advocates were demanding in the decades-long restoration lawsuit that was finally defeated in 1994. City of Newton was always against restoration, so the suit was exclusive to Oak Square revenue service + keeping the Newton trackage as legally-mandated non-revenue connection to Watertown Carhouse (then hoping they could woo Newton into eventual agreement).
The entire Brighton Ave. portion of the corridor has the existing median, with most of what used to be the median in Union Sq. now re-packed from the road lanes to the absurdly over-wide side plazas. Menino himself specced that the 1998-99 re-streetscaping of Brighton be done with that useless raised granite rump with plantings to salt the earth against further re-attempts at transit use and wage war on jaywalking, but it's easily replaceable. Rather than a reservation (still too narrow), you'd simply stripe the streetcar tracks to the LEFT of the yellow line in traffic separation with a slimmer running median (more like Mass Ave. N. Cambridge than the current crabgrass strip). At intersections (which are fewer in curb cuts than pre-'98) you would then accommodate the trolley traffic separation from the protected turn lanes by taking a parking row at the corner and 'lane-shifting' so the given carriageway went (L-R): trolley lane, protected left, travel lane/straight, travel lane/right). Today parking runs immediately to the corner at every intersection, so they aren't using the whole roadway's traffic distribution capacity.
At stops you don't even need to do left-handed door hacks on a very narrow median. You can simply install San Francisco-style bus ramps, as shown here on Market St. on the combo F trolley + bus lane:
https://goo.gl/maps/4dyup3hEXwN2PSBP6. Transit vehicles all stay straight-on LEFT when pulling up to the offset platforms, while car traffic bears RIGHT at the platform bulb-out. From the linked Street View example you see the ADA platform ramp for front-door boarding of the F Market's historic PCC's, so this even works with our incumbent LRV fleet and high-floor buses. Future such Boston applications like the Hyde Sq. extension of the E can do it just with the low platform, and accommodate E + 39 buses on the overlap. Market St. manages to do this just splendidly despite a curb-to-curb street width in the central-most Frisco CBD of only 55 ft., same as S. Huntington in Hyde Sq. and a few feet
less than S. Huntington on the Riverway-Heath section. And the forced bear-right for car traffic has the added unintentional effect of additional traffic-calming around transit stops and shorter-hop crosswalks from the centered platforms than you get on reservation-running lines. Market accomplishes it in tight spaces by being fairly judicious about parking across the corridor; there's none whatsoever anywhere close to the vicinity of the station bulb-outs. Brighton Ave. by contrast is
80 ft. curb-to-curb, so you could really do some un-cramped platforms there with the median replacement, lane-shifting of protected turn lanes, and relatively inocuous number of parking space deletions that can be counterpointed when the NIMBY's start screaming. I've seen the Market platforms in extensive action on prior trips to the Bay Area; it's extremely fluid and elegant in execution despite the maximally crowded surroundings, and a neverending line of multiple bus routes co-using it between tightish trolley frequencies. Made a believer out of me.
About the only thing subpar about the Frisco-style multipurpose street-running platforms are that they'd be a little awkward for snow removal the way they divide the pavement in offset fashion like that. But how many of those are you actually going to have total? Just re-doing the existing E street-running + Hyde Sq. extension for ADA (assume Fenwood + Back of Hill get dropped in the name of stop consolidation) that's 5 or 6 E/39 center-lane platformlet pairs total. You really think that's going to paralyze BPW snow plowing if the T gets out there 15 minutes earlier with a few guys in shovels and a snow-blower? Nothingburger.
So, for the Oak corridor the Packards Corner-Union Sq. segment has idealized traffic separation: 100% trolleys left of the yellow stripe with no autos ever getting in front of them, ample space for the Frisco offset platforms @ Harvard Ave. + Union, and complete co-running compatibility with the 57 for cross-Newton service (though I imagine the thru 57 becomes more of a CT
x in this scenario being able to shed the local stops). The streetcar would then have no choice but to do mixed-running on narrower Cambridge & Washington St.'s for the last 1.7 miles (comparison: Brigham Circle-Hyde Sq. = 1.3 mi), but at narrowest width of 50 ft. the Frisco platforms would still be fully implementable if they were directionally offset on opposite sides of the intersection and parking were taken for traffic to bear right around them. The median also makes brief reappearances in front of St. Joseph Prep (intermediate stop between Union @ St. Elizabeth's), in front of St. Elizabeth's, and at former Oak Sq. Loop.
So figure a stop selection of:
- Packards Corner ("union" A/B station flipped to opposite side of intersection)
- Harvard Ave.
- Union Sq.
- St. Joseph's Academy (Warren & Gordon St.'s block)
- St. Elizabeth's Medical Center
- Chestnut Hill Ave.
- Rogers Park (Foster & Lake St.'s block)
- Fairbanks St./Langeley Rd. (spacer to Oak)
- Oak Square
...and a CT
x replacing the 57 with a very limited-stop thru route to Watertown, and possibly extended Crosstown leg to Waltham Ctr. from a Kenmore starting point. Let's say it stops at BU Bridge, co-uses the Frisco-style platforms at Harvard Ave. + Union + St. Elizabeth's + Oak, and then goes its merry way.
Now...I do
not think that's a high-priority LRT appendage right now. We've got way bigger fish to fry first with the Urban Ring and LRT'ing Silver Line Washington St. However, if/when the Urban Ring buries the B out to BU Bridge you have so enormously traffic-tamed the B by eliminating the utter worst of the reservation prior to St. Paul St. that there's ample slack for fitting this in. Even amongst heavy UR traffic that's going to be splitting for Kendall and Harvard with multiple service patterns. B service used to be much more diffuse up the hill as A/B took even shares of the headways past-Packards. The latter-day restoration lawsuits sketched out the Oak restoration as being doable inside of much-increased B congestion by dropping headways up the hill on the B but strengthening the Boston College endpoint with run-thru C's via Chestnut Hill Ave. With Harvard Ave. duplicated on both routings with more overall service variety and Chestnut Hill Ave. (platforms flipped to opposite side of intersection) + South St. (or re-spaced equivalent) + BC seeing outright increases, the only stops seeing any reductions are Griggs, Allston, Warren, Washington, Sutherland, Chiswick. Which as-is are probably looking to be consolidated into -2 stops vs. today because of overly-close spacing on a few of them. Griggs/Allston/Warren or re-spaced consolidated replacements get eaten into by presence of Union/St. Joseph's/St. Elizabeth's in <2000 ft. walkshed. Washington stands most firmly on its own, but C Washington Sq. + A St. Elizabeth's are each flanking it in 2500 ft. walkshed. Sutherland and Chiswick already are misfits. So I don't think a reduction to 8-10 min. headways up the hill is necessarily "OMG! Transit loss! You monster!" if the aggregate frequencies are flushed higher to the surrounding walksheds. It's more like the pre-1969 demand distribution was when the frequences were outright divided at Packards, even though that's admittedly a very rough comparison to try to apply to Upper Comm Ave. characteristics that have changed a lot since.
Not an unreasonable pitch if we start clearing away other five-alarm priorities, especially because of the station compatbility with an interlaid-and-Crosstown'ed 57. Just regard the minimum prereq as building that BU Bridge subway extension for the UR so the garbage has been taken out with B reservation traffic conflicts first.
