Crazy Transit Pitches

Shepard said:
I don't think he's following an abandoned ROW there across the Charles... maybe there was a crossing I don't know about? Dave?
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There is. Look in Waltham just south and east of the Museum of Industry and you'll see it. It's rotting piles now, but it's there.
 
His map shows it connecting much before that - somewhere between Brighton Landing and Watertown Square. I don't see how it comes off the Pike alignment to get to Watertown using existing ROWs...
 
I have it crossing from Brighton to Watertown behind the Arsenal Mall. There is a large embankment the behind the Sabb dealership that the Blue Line would run up, then cross on a new bridge Soldiers Field Road, the Charles and Greenough Boulevard. Then it would descend underground in the malls parking lot.

Here it is on Google Maps.

To deal with the encroachment on the Watertown Branch between Waltham and Watertown I've got it running under Pleasant St instead of the old ROW, since they run so close to each other anyway.


Data, your edit is right; since I've got a tunnel all the way to Brookline Village I consolidated some stops. The new Northeastern stop would be between the existing northeastern and MFA stop, closer to the MFA. I just kept the Northeastern name so it would have a stop named after it like all the other colleges. Same with Brigham Circle, one end would have an entrance at the circle, the other end of the platform would be around pretty close to Longwood Ave. Mission hill would be between Mission Park and Riverway, and Jamaicaway would be down by Heath St.
 
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There's no sense duplicating the Blue Line right of way between Revere and Lynn - you could easily have the junction right near Wonderland over/under the parking lots.
 
Davem,

Your map looks SICK. Mine is definitely more heavy rail, I prefer HRT although I do like LRT if done right. Perhaps I'm jaded when it comes to LRT because of my years of having to deal with the B line, as I still do... But I can appreciate how it works in SF as I've taken it there when I lived there, though not as much as I have dealt with our GL here. I suppose our GL would be much more efficient if proper signaling could be implemented (I know it's Americas oldest subway but it shouldn't have to directly reflect that fact). I think that your map hands-down provides the most incentive for people to forget about owning a car in not only Boston but all of Metro Boston as well. I'm not against using cars from time to time, but car ownership as a city resident can be burdensome to everyone. Not to mention how expensive it is in an already increasingly expensive city to live in.

I don't think that mine your you maps are too far-fetched, but what does make them far-fetched as things are today is our government spending money in the worst places. If our taxes went toward things that benefited everyone in society instead of corporations/war-profiteers then, things like this could absolutely be done. When I'm all in for an Essex Street tunnel and it's seems too expensive, I just think how much is spent on a week for occupying Iraq and Afghanistan or how much of our tax money thrown at already wealth corporations to keep being wealthy or how many extremely rich CEO's are able to keep their mountains of cash in overseas accounts that don't get taxed and thus put back into the US economy where it (would be nice) could help fund things that make the USA a better place.
 
Equilibria said:
It's not even worth commenting on the fact that this is crazy, that's the whole point. It would be great if someone would make a map in this style for the existing T... it's way better than their new map.
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30moarq.jpg


I did it. I didn't want to, but I did...


Still needs work but I don't care...
 
Did you enter this in the contest or did you (rightly) not want to sell your soul and talent to the T? You probably would have made it to the finals, if not won the contest...

All it needs is the key bus routes, as they are required on the new maps.
 
Nah, I didn't do the contest. I think I was living in Montreal or El Paso when it was going on. I may have entered if I had known.. Not cool with the stipulation on the rights though... MBTA can suck one..
 
c_combat said:
Nah, I didn't do the contest. I think I was living in Montreal or El Paso when it was going on. I may have entered if I had known.. Not cool with the stipulation on the rights though... MBTA can suck one..
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Ah too bad. I'd still love to see a finished one with the key buses and handicap accessible station icons. =)
 
c_combat said:
Davem,

…
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Thank you! And I couldn't agree more with everything you said. I showed the map to my roommate (who is an artist and into graphic design) and she was stunned when I showed her that other than the everett subway and a few small connections my whole system uses existing rights of ways. IMO, the only really "crazy" part of my pitch is digging a subway beneath Broadway all the way through Everett. However, I think the benefits of opening up that quadrent to development outweigh the cost.

Honestly, my favoring light over heavy rail is a recent change. I like the flexibility it offers, where it can run in a subway but also can street run if need be, and more importantly cross streets at grade. Without that flexibility the H, F and E lines would either be incredibly expensive or outright impossible to do. I did clean up some of the choke points that cripple the existing system as well. Copley junction is gone (in reality reduced to a special service / storage track), the B through BU is put underground from Kenmore to the bridge and heavily consolidated, as well as supplimented by the blue line. In addition, heavy-railing the D would require closing some important pedestrian connections where one can currently cross the tracks at grade. Eliot and Brookline Village jump out at me, but I'm sure there are others.

I've got a new version of the map I'm working on as I'm not happy with how cluttered I've got downtown. I've also extended the H to brookline village using the track the d currently throug longwood, and made the red and blue line more clear. Unfortunatly I'm in new york for a week sans computer, so it won't be done for a while. On a related note, I really can't spell and my phone has no spell check, so sorry for what I'm sure are myrad errors.
 
I agree that light rail on the surface is probably the most likely path for Boston rail expansions in the future. The cost of going underground is just too steep, and elevateds won't be tolerated.

I was reading an article about Zurich recently and it occurred to me that, in a way, the construction of the Tremont Street/Boylston Street subways may have led to the decline of streetcars and the rise of automobiles in Boston. By getting the streetcars off the surface, it was an early benefit to automobile drivers, who were not a force in 1900 but were by 1930. Of course that may have happened anyway, but, Zurich famously rejected multiple subway proposals in favor of surface transit improvements. And now look at them.
 
davem said:
I've got a new version of the map I'm working on as I'm not happy with how cluttered I've got downtown. I've also extended the H to brookline village using the track the d currently throug longwood, and made the red and blue line more clear. Unfortunatly I'm in new york for a week sans computer, so it won't be done for a while. On a related note, I really can't spell and my phone has no spell check, so sorry for what I'm sure are myrad errors.
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Nice dude, keep at it, I'd like to see the finished product. Enjoy NYC!
 
Matthew said:
I agree that light rail on the surface is probably the most likely path for Boston rail expansions in the future. The cost of going underground is just too steep, and elevateds won't be tolerated.

I was reading an article about Zurich recently and it occurred to me that, in a way, the construction of the Tremont Street/Boylston Street subways may have led to the decline of streetcars and the rise of automobiles in Boston. By getting the streetcars off the surface, it was an early benefit to automobile drivers, who were not a force in 1900 but were by 1930. Of course that may have happened anyway, but, Zurich famously rejected multiple subway proposals in favor of surface transit improvements. And now look at them.
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Makes sense, never thought about that before. Their reservation for public transit had an impact that can be seen today.
 
Matthew said:
I agree that light rail on the surface is probably the most likely path for Boston rail expansions in the future. The cost of going underground is just too steep, and elevateds won't be tolerated.

I was reading an article about Zurich recently and it occurred to me that, in a way, the construction of the Tremont Street/Boylston Street subways may have led to the decline of streetcars and the rise of automobiles in Boston. By getting the streetcars off the surface, it was an early benefit to automobile drivers, who were not a force in 1900 but were by 1930. Of course that may have happened anyway, but, Zurich famously rejected multiple subway proposals in favor of surface transit improvements. And now look at them.
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If I follow your logic... burying the streetcars made it easier for people to drive in to the city, which made car use more important, which resulted in a loss of many streetcar lines. I guess that's one way to look at it. But at the same time I don't think your alternate scenario would have somehow prevented the Central Artery or Pike Extension, which to me proved the real catalysts of downtown's parking lot era.
 
Matthew said:
I agree that light rail on the surface is probably the most likely path for Boston rail expansions in the future. The cost of going underground is just too steep, and elevateds won't be tolerated.

I was reading an article about Zurich recently and it occurred to me that, in a way, the construction of the Tremont Street/Boylston Street subways may have led to the decline of streetcars and the rise of automobiles in Boston. By getting the streetcars off the surface, it was an early benefit to automobile drivers, who were not a force in 1900 but were by 1930. Of course that may have happened anyway, but, Zurich famously rejected multiple subway proposals in favor of surface transit improvements. And now look at them.
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Yeah but by burying the rapid transit we couldnt have bustitution. Look at all the cities which used to have streetcars, and you'll find the ones without tunnels are no longer around for the most part.
 
c_combat said:
30moarq.jpg


I did it. I didn't want to, but I did...


Still needs work but I don't care...
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...And there's the map the T should be using. Tomorrow.

You probably at least need the SL1 bus, and Chelsea would be as much of a "future service" as GLX at this point, maybe Fairmount as well. Also, numbering the lines on the map is a good thought for the color blind - I was a little sad you left them out.

But you said you were done, and you already took my request :)
 
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