Is there a MBTA sponsered map of the urban ring anyone could link to me? Haven't had any luck in finding it
They did a (now very outdated) DEIR for BRT Phase II with maps. . .
BRT Phase II map:
http://www.massdot.state.ma.us/theurbanring/images/LPA_Figure.pdf
BRT Phase II station detail:
http://www.massdot.state.ma.us/theurbanring/downloads/Plan_Profile_Drawings.pdf
This is the non-grade separated, BRT "preferred alternative". Not Phase III total/near-total grade separation, not LRT. The mixed-traffic routings and deviations off rail ROW's obviously wouldn't be there on an LRT build, and would go away when it's Phase III time. No tunnels except that real dubious-looking thing plowing through Longwood. The station siting schematics are so old they're almost worthless, as a decade-later reboot of the study is probably going to get the stakeholders asking for completely different things than they did last time.
Notes:
-- Everything's approximate subject to further study...and pretty outdated at this point as you'll see below.
-- The tunnel was studied before their engineering problems mounted on Silver Line Phase III design and killed that project. Hence, streets
this narrow and that sharp S-curve under Huntington are 90% likely to be no-go's if/when they pick this back up. That's a condition that's changed with new information in the years since requiring a re-study.
-- In LRT they would not do all that mixed-traffic travel Lechmere-Sullivan-Assembly-Wellington. With no available off-road ROW's to make every single one of those stops on rail, the Wellington jog pretty much has to get dropped in favor of something glued to the Eastern Route all the way. The GLX carhouse final alternative didn't exist at all back then, so the route from Lechmere to Sullivan is obviously locked by GLX onto one alignment they didn't know much about back then. Routings by necessity will differ by rail or rubber tire mode. Don't assume this official map is a straightjacket you can't deviate from on trolleys. It's colored Yellow for a reason.
-- In LRT the Ring wouldn't deviate off the Grand Junction at Main St. for the rest of the trip to Lechmere, loop around the block at Kendall, and go down Land Blvd. It would stay on the GJ all the way. BRT and LRT routings differ by necessity.
-- Obviously that long ago they had no clue what the plan was around Beacon Park. Hence the crazy napkin scribbles on the Harvard spur.
-- They had no idea at the time whether they needed to hit Brookline Village or skip it and cut straight down Brookline Ave. to the Kenmore bus shelter. Brookline Vill. was predicated on creating a parallel busway next to the D tracks. That is probably going to be impossible because:
* You'd have to blow up a chunk of the Landmark Ctr. garage to make it happen. The Landmark and surrounding development have gotten much huger since the study. Changed condition they have to re-study.
* Tall development next to Yawkey Station on the Fenway Ctr. parcel is a near-certainty to permanently narrow the former freight ROW too much to fit buses. If it ain't wider than
this at the end of the existing Fenway Station path, there's no way to run 2 lanes of buses. They assumed the UR would be in advanced design before the buildings and that they'd have the property acquisition funded to grab the extra strips of land beforehand. Things have changed.
* Busways next to active rail ROW's are always more complex than anticipated. Connecticut is finding that out the hard way right now with its billion-dollar busway to nowhere mere feet from the Amtrak tracks, which keeps getting its speeds knocked down further and further from the width constraints. New information they didn't have when they did the study and will have to apply new metrics to. I would be mildly concerned about Silver Line Gateway BRT along the Eastern Route running into the same performance problems and related cost bloat...but that isn't anywhere near as constrained a space as the D around the Fenway platforms and the old freight ROW that's been reduced to alley width by new buildings.
* Olmstead would turn over in his grave if his handiwork got sliced up by a road on top of a double-wide (+ BRT buffer) D ROW. And there'll be an army of preservationists--some with very deep pockets--waging war on his behalf. Tall order for BRT.
-- Save for the on-road Sullivan-Assembly-Wellington jog off the rail alignment, the Chelsea-Logan segment is pretty much exactly the same BRT or LRT, exactly the same as Silver Line Gateway, and does build some sort of brand new grade separation at the Logan Terminal stops. So...1:1 with what we've been talking about here in various threads. Obviously with all-LRT it would stay bolted to the Eastern Route all the way to Assembly and omit the L-shaped Wellington detour.
-- Note it doesn't even enter the Transitway and just stops on the surface at WTC. They didn't exactly scope out service patterns too well here or break the patterns into likely segments...it just looks like a neverending one-seat loop. Further study would have to flesh out where the termini truly are. Good chance that they're going to want to tie it into the Transitway here for the direct free SS transfer the way the Seaport's growing now vs. 6-9 years ago when they were modeling this. Which in turn could change the routing of the entire SE quadrant + JFK spur. That SE quadrant was always the least fleshed-out part of the plan under any mode and most subject to change. You can see from all the mixed-running with nothing but a bike lane stripe that there's almost nothing in the way of permanent structures with that part of the build.
