Crazy Transit Pitches

Massachoicetts said:
Serious Proposition here:
Light Rail […] similar to the Green Line, but offsets on their own streetcar color:

2 Lines:
1a. From South Station, down Tremont, to Colombus ave to Seaver St.... and then off to Blue Hills avenue, stopping somewhere in Roxbury or Matapan.
[…]
The streets are all wide enough and I think that it would benefit the city so much.
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Bringing this back up from Reasonable Transit Pitches a couple years ago as the Brooklyn IBX gave me an idea. If the MBTA plans to put the Type 9s on the Ashmont-Mattapan, what about extending it on to a sort of South Shore Inter Neighborhoods Express (SINX). Run up along Blue Hill Ave in dedicated or shared bus lanes until jointing Massachoicetts’s line on Seaver St through Colombus to then turn down Melnea Cass to Southampton and Andrew. From there it could branch to Southie or Umass Boston.
I don’t know exactly how the dimensions align between the center bus lanes and Type 9s but if they can fit in those existing lanes along with buses then the stations would already be there. If the T plans to put the 9s on that line anyway then the maintenance and storage facility question would also be covered.
 
Koopzilla24 said:
Bringing this back up from Reasonable Transit Pitches a couple years ago as the Brooklyn IBX gave me an idea. If the MBTA plans to put the Type 9s on the Ashmont-Mattapan, what about extending it on to a sort of South Shore Inter Neighborhoods Express (SINX). Run up along Blue Hill Ave in dedicated or shared bus lanes until jointing Massachoicetts’s line on Seaver St through Colombus to then turn down Melnea Cass to Southampton and Andrew. From there it could branch to Southie or Umass Boston.
I don’t know exactly how the dimensions align between the center bus lanes and Type 9s but if they can fit in those existing lanes along with buses then the stations would already be there. If the T plans to put the 9s on that line anyway then the maintenance and storage facility question would also be covered.
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I like it! I’ll take a (very amateur) hack at assessing feasibility, within the context of a “crazy transit pitch.”

There are 24 Type 9 cars. For effective service, let’s assume that 19 can be in service at once, with five in reserves for maintenance, repairs, maintaining headways, etc.

Assuming five minute layovers at the termini, Ashmont - Mattapan is a 28-minute round trip. Looking at the average B- and E-Branch speeds west of Kenmore and Copley respectively (7 mph), we can assume another 9 minutes for the round trip if they terminate at Blue Hill Ave Station, for a total of 37-minute round trip. This still allows for headways as low as two minutes with one-car trains, or headways as low as four minutes with two-car trains.

For a northern terminus of Morton Street, we can assume a 50-minute round trip. With the aforementioned fleet, that would still allow up to 23 one-car tph, or 11.5 two-car tph, which is plenty! Let’s keep going …

For a northern terminus of Talbot Ave & Blue Hill Ave, we can assume a 62-minute round trip, which means we are down to a maximum of 18 one-car tph or 9 two-car tph, and end-to-end travel time of about 26 minutes. Still totally feasible, assuming the infrastructure is built for a light rail reservation in the median (a la Huntington, Comm Ave, or Beacon Street).

For a northern terminus of Franklin Park (using the Peabody Loop like the 45 bus), we have a 74-minute round trip, a maximum of 15 one-car tph or 7.5 two-car tph, and end-to-end travel time of about 32 minutes. Still operationally feasible, in my estimation.

For a northern terminus of Jackson Square, we have a 103-minute round trip, a maximum of 11 one-car tph, 5.5 two-car tph (with 5.5 and 11 minute headways, respectively) and end-to-end travel time of about 47 minutes. This would be comparable to a Green Line Branch in terms of distance, travel time, and headways.

The issue comes with extending service beyond Jackson Square. Extending this line any further north means something had to give. A choice needs to be made to do so some combination of the following: run one-car trains at peak times, accept that headways will never be better than 12 minutes, re-think how this corridor fits into the rest of the network, expand the rolling stock and planned maintenance/layover facilities to accommodate a more robust number of cars. So, once you start talking about running them all the way to Melnea Cass and even branching to South Boston, you are talking about a bigger undertaking than simply using the Type 9 stock and the planned facilities.
 
Koopzilla24 said:
Bringing this back up from Reasonable Transit Pitches a couple years ago as the Brooklyn IBX gave me an idea. If the MBTA plans to put the Type 9s on the Ashmont-Mattapan, what about extending it on to a sort of South Shore Inter Neighborhoods Express (SINX). Run up along Blue Hill Ave in dedicated or shared bus lanes until jointing Massachoicetts’s line on Seaver St through Colombus to then turn down Melnea Cass to Southampton and Andrew. From there it could branch to Southie or Umass Boston.
I don’t know exactly how the dimensions align between the center bus lanes and Type 9s but if they can fit in those existing lanes along with buses then the stations would already be there. If the T plans to put the 9s on that line anyway then the maintenance and storage facility question would also be covered.
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We had a discussion back in December that covered some similar ground: from here https://archboston.com/community/threads/crazy-transit-pitches.3664/page-255#post-442808 to about here https://archboston.com/community/threads/crazy-transit-pitches.3664/page-256#post-443437 with brief followup here https://archboston.com/community/threads/crazy-transit-pitches.3664/page-257#post-443704

I enjoyed @bigeman312's analysis based on runtime and fleet size!

Like I said back in December, I think LRT in Dorchester is feasible if you are looking to build an LRT for an LRT's sake as a placemaking exercise. Otherwise, I think it's hard to justify compared to the relative benefits of a full-build open BRT system.
 
I will quote The EGE's comment from the MBTA Buses & BRT thread a few weeks ago regarding LRT vs BRT on Blue Hill Ave:

The EGE said:
Not a half measure - bus lanes are more useful than rail on BHA. They allow overlapping services (22, 28, 29, 31) which can run to different terminals for connections. Buses are faster than trains when running at street level, even in dedicated lanes. The only advantages of rail on a surface corridor are capacity (nah, 60-foot buses every 5-10 minutes are fine here) and ability to run onto off-street rights of way (nope - no use through-running with the Mattapan Line, and it's far too long a surface route to go into the subway).
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Teban54 said:
I will quote The EGE's comment from the MBTA Buses & BRT thread a few weeks ago regarding LRT vs BRT on Blue Hill Ave:
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Why are we looking it as either/or? Center-running lanes in many european cities are combined bus/tram. Though not preferrable if trams are at high density, they can clearly share space at Mattapan terminal today and they could in the future as well.
 
as02143 said:
Why are we looking it as either/or? Center-running lanes in many european cities are combined bus/tram. Though not preferrable if trams are at high density, they can clearly share space at Mattapan terminal today and they could in the future as well.
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While I'm not opposed to running shared BRT/LRT lanes on this corridor, The EGE's original point is that when considering Blue Hill Ave's needs, BRT has several benefits but LRT somewhat fails to demonstrate a real, significant advantage.

If the projected ridership is high enough to warrant LRT's additional capacity, then I can see a dual mode corridor being worth the cost. But if not, having full BRT will likely be better. And in a world with 10-min headways on Fairmount Line, this assumption might not actually hold.
 
It’s clear that the best, next step would be center-running bus lanes. The (currently unanswerable) question is whether there will be a need/ability for more robust mass transit infrastructure on this corridor in the future.

The current battle is convincing the locals to get on board. The response has been mostly negative, which is incredibly disappointing. I live near the Columbus Ave center-running bus lanes and love it.
 
bigeman312 said:
It’s clear that the best, next step would be center-running bus lanes. The (currently unanswerable) question is whether there will be a need/ability for more robust mass transit infrastructure on this corridor in the future.

The current battle is convincing the locals to get on board. The response has been mostly negative, which is incredibly disappointing. I live near the Columbus Ave center-running bus lanes and love it.
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Why exactly are the locals against BRT in this particular instance? Seems like a problem of poor public involvement in the planning/design. I took over project management once of a proposed road realignment project requiring some right-of-way acquisition and some other features the locals didn't like. The locals were angry and up in arms pretty much about the whole thing. My associate and I met with them. respected and listened to the people, got their input, made the relevant adjustments to the project design, and got the project built.
 
Charlie_mta said:
Why exactly are the locals against BRT in this particular instance? Seems like a problem of poor public involvement in the planning/design. I took over project management once of a proposed road realignment project requiring some right-of-way acquisition and some other features the locals didn't like. The locals were angry and up in arms pretty much about the whole thing. My associate and I met with them. respected and listened to the people, got their input, made the relevant adjustments to the project design, and got the project built.
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Sounds like the City of Boston could use your help!
 
Charlie_mta said:
Why exactly are the locals against BRT in this particular instance? Seems like a problem of poor public involvement in the planning/design. I took over project management once of a proposed road realignment project requiring some right-of-way acquisition and some other features the locals didn't like. The locals were angry and up in arms pretty much about the whole thing. My associate and I met with them. respected and listened to the people, got their input, made the relevant adjustments to the project design, and got the project built.
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I would suspect part of the problem here is people have been lied to about BRT before, and the memory stings.

They are told they are going to get BRT level service and instead get a bus (looking at you Silver Line). And for the bus they are asked to trade parking and travel lanes. It is a bad tradeoff, when you are consistently lied to about BRT.
 
JeffDowntown said:
I would suspect part of the problem here is people have been lied to about BRT before, and the memory stings.

They are told they are going to get BRT level service and instead get a bus (looking at you Silver Line). And for the bus they are asked to trade parking and travel lanes. It is a bad tradeoff, when you are consistently lied to about BRT.
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The forum software needs a “this” reaction along with the “like”, “love”, etc. Because, yeah. This.
 
Too bad Cummins highway is too narrow for LRT or I'd see potential for connecting the Mattapan High Speed Line with LRT running between Needham Junction and Roslindale.
 
According to this Streetsblog article from October, the public concern around Blue Hill Ave is the usual “removing car lanes from a road for buses will increase congestion for my car commute” and “nobody will come to my small business if there isn’t 4 lanes of traffic and a parking lot in front of it.” This is despite the article citing 33% of the households in the area not owning a car and more than 50% of the people that travel along Blue Hill Ave currently doing so by bus.
There is also a disproportionate ratio of drivers to transit riders at public meetings raising their voice against the bus lanes despite being in the minority of road users.
 
Koopzilla24 said:
According to this Streetsblog article from October, the public concern around Blue Hill Ave is the usual “removing car lanes from a road for buses will increase congestion for my car commute” and “nobody will come to my small business if there isn’t 4 lanes of traffic and a parking lot in front of it.” This is despite the article citing 33% of the households in the area not owning a car and more than 50% of the people that travel along Blue Hill Ave currently doing so by bus.
There is also a disproportionate ratio of drivers to transit riders at public meetings raising their voice against the bus lanes despite being in the minority of road users.
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I think this is an interesting quote from the article:
Only one resident on the call identified herself as a bus rider, saying that she and her family would “love to have the infrastructure in the city to get rid of the expense and difficulty of owning the second car, but right now the infrastructure in the city doesn’t really make that feasible, and these changes would definitely do a lot towards making that possible for my family and I’m sure many others.”
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This resident is speaking in support of the bus lanes, but I think her same logic is worth considering in the context of opposition to the bus lanes. There clearly are journeys that Dorchester residents need to make that are not possible with public transit today. Close to half of Dorchester commuters commute by car (more than half if you include carpooling). The question then becomes, why do those folks drive rather than use transit?

Then, based on whatever the answer is to that question, we should ask, will bus lanes on BHA help any of those folks shift away from driving? My hunch (wholly unsubstantiated, so take with salt) is that the bus lanes would be a necessary but insufficient piece of a larger solution -- probably at least some of those folks drive because their commute doesn't map on to transit well, e.g. Warren St to UMass Boston: 45 min with a transfer by transit vs 12-26 min by car, and that won't change materially with bus lanes.

So, I think it can simultaneously be true that drivers are disproportionately speaking out in public meetings with bad-faith objections that don't consider the good of the community overall, and also that residents have legitimate travel needs that are not met by transit today and wouldn't be met using bus lanes, and therefore are reasonably anxious about their commute getting even more difficult.
 
Riverside said:
Then, based on whatever the answer is to that question, we should ask, will bus lanes on BHA help any of those folks shift away from driving? My hunch (wholly unsubstantiated, so take with salt) is that the bus lanes would be a necessary but insufficient piece of a larger solution -- probably at least some of those folks drive because their commute doesn't map on to transit well, e.g. Warren St to UMass Boston: 45 min with a transfer by transit vs 12-26 min by car, and that won't change materially with bus lanes.
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I think it’s important for city planners to communicate to the residents how getting buses to bypass traffic and decrease transit times will cause a mode shift for those who currently could take the bus but don’t because, why take the bus and be stuck in traffic when you could be stuck in traffic in your own car? And that this mode shift would free up capacity on the road for those who would not have a good transit connection to their destinations and need to drive themselves.
As we Boston residents know and @JeffDowntown highlighted, the City and the T do not do a great job of communicating their actions and intentions to the public.

Another note is that for a lot of people, especially those without much money, there is a point at which even if a bus takes longer than driving it is worth not having to own and maintain a car. Getting bus transit times down to that threshold is a goal to shoot for.
 
Koopzilla24 said:
I think it’s important for city planners to communicate to the residents how getting buses to bypass traffic and decrease transit times will cause a mode shift for those who currently could take the bus but don’t because, why take the bus and be stuck in traffic when you could be stuck in traffic in your own car? And that this mode shift would free up capacity on the road for those who would not have a good transit connection to their destinations and need to drive themselves.
As we Boston residents know and @JeffDowntown highlighted, the City and the T do not do a great job of communicating their actions and intentions to the public.

Another note is that for a lot of people, especially those without much money, there is a point at which even if a bus takes longer than driving it is worth not having to own and maintain a car. Getting bus transit times down to that threshold is a goal to shoot for.
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Agree with all this. My point is that I suspect the share of "commuters who are driving a route that otherwise could take the bus but are driving because it's just as fast" is probably on the smaller side, so I'm not sure that there will be a huge "speed-related" mode shift.
 
Koopzilla24 said:
According to this Streetsblog article from October, the public concern around Blue Hill Ave is the usual “removing car lanes from a road for buses will increase congestion for my car commute” and “nobody will come to my small business if there isn’t 4 lanes of traffic and a parking lot in front of it.” This is despite the article citing 33% of the households in the area not owning a car and more than 50% of the people that travel along Blue Hill Ave currently doing so by bus.
There is also a disproportionate ratio of drivers to transit riders at public meetings raising their voice against the bus lanes despite being in the minority of road users.
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I asked a friend who lives near BHA about this project. They love the idea -- they found the centered bus lanes on Columbus really good. When I sent them this article, they said that they felt something was missing for why people are really not supportive with the project. They explained it as the order of operations is wrong - i.e. 'why are you coming in with this major project when you cannot replace the lightbulbs that we've been asking for years.' There's a resentment that these requests do not get taken care of as quickly or as systematically in that area, compared to neighboring parts of Roxbury and Dorchester (let alone the predominantly White and rich areas like near downtown or in the suburbs).
 
I don’t even know where to post this, since apparently it’s a real thing and not just a Crazy Transit Pitch, but… Apparently Merrimack Valley Transit has won a federal grant to both institute ferry service between Newburyport and Haverhill, and apparently design the (bespoke?) solar powered ferries that would run the service? Sounds like a very cool idea! Just not sure I would’ve figured on an RTA being the one to (I think?) design the boats.

 
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