DCR Allston-Brighton Riverfront Parks and Parkways

What is the actual process to hand off DCR's responsibility of their roads to MassDOT or City Municipalities? Not that they're much better, but have we really seen any good reason to have DCR manage some roadways?
 
stefal said:
What is the actual process to hand off DCR's responsibility of their roads to MassDOT or City Municipalities? Not that they're much better, but have we really seen any good reason to have DCR manage some roadways?
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It should be MassDOT taking these roads over from DCR. Many of these roads are numbered as state routes, plus they are major arterials for through traffic. The only reason these are in DCRs hands is history and tradition, a holdover from the early 1900s when these roads were actual parkways, and not the through arterials they became in the 1940s and 50s.
 
stefal said:
What is the actual process to hand off DCR's responsibility of their roads to MassDOT or City Municipalities? Not that they're much better, but have we really seen any good reason to have DCR manage some roadways?
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I would definitely rather see roads like this in DCR's hands than MassDOT's, and while the City of Boston would certainly do a better job with this redesign, there's only a handful of municipalities I can confidently say that about. DCR, at the very least, is willing to reduce roadway capacity. We've seen this on Hammond Pond Parkway and the proposed improvements to Memorial Drive. I doubt MassDOT would have come to the same conclusions.

Ultimately, the fact that DCR's mission is for recreational and active uses, as opposed to traffic management, is a great reason to keep any roadway that should have fewer arterial/highway characteristics out of MassDOT's hands. DCR's actions are often not those of an agency committed to safe, active transportation, but that is clearly a main priority for much of the roadway work they do. And in the meetings I've been to, DCR officials always seem to want to provide safer designs, but feel constrained by the "need" to not not cause traffic bottlenecks. This is a far cry from how I've seen MassDOT handle similar projects, and while that is the case, I'd rather see DCR make attempts for more bike and ped friendly roads than MassDOT engage in more congestion relief programs.
 
BeansTheCat said:
I would definitely rather see roads like this in DCR's hands than MassDOT's, and while the City of Boston would certainly do a better job with this redesign, there's only a handful of municipalities I can confidently say that about. DCR, at the very least, is willing to reduce roadway capacity. We've seen this on Hammond Pond Parkway and the proposed improvements to Memorial Drive. I doubt MassDOT would have come to the same conclusions.

Ultimately, the fact that DCR's mission is for recreational and active uses, as opposed to traffic management, is a great reason to keep any roadway that should have fewer arterial/highway characteristics out of MassDOT's hands. DCR's actions are often not those of an agency committed to safe, active transportation, but that is clearly a main priority for much of the roadway work they do. And in the meetings I've been to, DCR officials always seem to want to provide safer designs, but feel constrained by the "need" to not not cause traffic bottlenecks. This is a far cry from how I've seen MassDOT handle similar projects, and while that is the case, I'd rather see DCR make attempts for more bike and ped friendly roads than MassDOT engage in more congestion relief programs.
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MassDOT has traditionally been auto-centric, but the recently released preliminary designs by MassDOT for the Rutherford Ave and Grounding the McGrath projects are very much multi-modal "complete streets", moreso than this latest offering from DCR.
 
Charlie_mta said:
MassDOT has traditionally been auto-centric, but the recently released preliminary designs by MassDOT for the Rutherford Ave and Grounding the McGrath projects are very much multi-modal "complete streets", moreso than this latest offering from DCR.
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I certainly agree that the MassDOT plans for Rutherford Ave and McGrath are better than what DCR has put forward here. However, MassDOT expects the Rutherford Ave redesign to save drivers time, and has admitted that McGrath is overbuilt for the traffic it serves. When MassDOT is worried about congestion, they put out plans like we've been seeing for the Allston Multimodal Project and the Route 2 corridor study. I am unaware of any project MassDOT has endorsed that results in a reduction in roadway capacity in an already congested corridor, but would love to be proven wrong.

At the end of the day, both of these agencies are capable of producing quite good and quite poor designs. I don't trust either to do a particularly good job or to have their priorities straight. But I've seen DCR have a greater willingness to make capacity reductions in spite of existing congestion, and they do not seem to build almost anything with future traffic increases in mind. This might be something we just disagree on, but I prefer DCR as the lesser of two evils here.
 
Charlie_mta said:
Outstanding points are raised in that discussion, right on and correct. Pedestrians and bicyclists are screwed with the new design, traffic lanes are increased compared to the existing roadways, and urban heat islands are greatly increased with this so-called design.
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The missing crosswalks and unsignalized slip lane in the current condition aren't safe either.
 
I will note that for DCR roadways, it's entire bridge portfolio was transfered to MassDOT back in 2009 - it's why MassDOT is managing the Eliot Bridge renewal and responsible for the Reid Overpass / BU rotary project. I'll also note that DCR transferred parkways to MassDOT at the same time, including the above mentioned "good" examples of MassDOT road diets - McGrath / O'Brien & Casey Overpass were notably former DCR parkways transferred to MassDOT in 2009.
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That said, I agree with the general sentiment that roadways which occupy space that should be managed for recreation, not traffic, such as the river roads should remain with DCR. The mission of MassDOT is transportation first, only occasionally tempered with recreational uses.

Therefore, I personally opine a middle ground - DCR roadways that really are transportation assets should go to MassDOT, such as Fellsway between Mystic Ave and I93, or Land Blvd in Cambridge, or K-Circle. Like McGrath, those are just arterial roads that I don't think anyone will claim significant recreational value. The River Roads should stay with DCR.
 
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Meh, looks fine enough. Improvement over what's there now. What's the driveway at the west end for? I don't see any reason to need that and I'm certainly not in favor of adding a parking lot or something.

JeffDowntown said:
Which works well in locations where drivers know how to zipper merge -- which is not Boston.
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Eh, it's done all over the city. It mostly works, mostly in the same way as in the NYC area - people do basically zipper merge, but do it 1 inch away from the other car, yielding only when it is mechanically impossible to continue fitting 2 cars into the space. Slows down traffic on the other side of the light at least!
Charlie_mta said:
I agree. The existing setup at least has green space interspersed among the roadways. This new design is like one vast expanse of asphalt pavement.
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The obvious counter argument is that the green space in the middle of the rotary is a waste of green space. It's inaccessible to everyone and has no landscaping of substance. Better to your have your parkland where....people can get to it for recreation and where it can actually buffer river path from road.
 
millerm277 said:
Meh, looks fine enough. Improvement over what's there now. What's the driveway at the west end for? I don't see any reason to need that and I'm certainly not in favor of adding a parking lot or something.


Eh, it's done all over the city. It mostly works, mostly in the same way as in the NYC area - people do basically zipper merge, but do it 1 inch away from the other car, yielding only when it is mechanically impossible to continue fitting 2 cars into the space. Slows down traffic on the other side of the light at least!

The obvious counter argument is that the green space in the middle of the rotary is a waste of green space. It's inaccessible to everyone and has no landscaping of substance. Better to your have your parkland where....people can get to it for recreation and where it can actually buffer river path from road.
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I agree that this is an improvement. This would re-wild a good chunk of parkland, increasing the parkland from ~100 ft to ~300 ft between riverside to road. That’s a huge win.
 
This seems like as good an opportunity as any to eliminate Leo Birmingham Pkwy. Then you could straighten out the middle roadway section to align with SFR and have Parsons St T-into it. That’d let you eliminate at least some of those turn lanes.

The bike lane can of course stay. You can keep the frontage road too - probably T-ing it into Parsons. As far as I can tell, its purpose is to provide redundant access to each of those retail parking lots. Presumably, all that suburban-style retail won’t be there forever; you’d have plenty of options to redevelop that area with or without cars on the (former) Leo Birmingham ROW.
 
astroTrain27 said:
This seems like as good an opportunity as any to eliminate Leo Birmingham Pkwy. Then you could straighten out the middle roadway section to align with SFR and have Parsons St T-into it. That’d let you eliminate at least some of those turn lanes.

The bike lane can of course stay. You can keep the frontage road too - probably T-ing it into Parsons. As far as I can tell, its purpose is to provide redundant access to each of those retail parking lots. Presumably, all that suburban-style retail won’t be there forever; you’d have plenty of options to redevelop that area with or without cars on the (former) Leo Birmingham ROW.
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For better or worse, the decision to keep Leo Birmingham but shrink it down to two lanes has been finalized. You can see the meeting info here, and construction is already under way on those plans.

I do have to agree that the proposed plans are better than the current configuration, but not by that much. A new rec center would be fantastic, but if it is even remotely successful, the current design would basically ensure that someone dies going to or from it. While I hate making perfect the enemy of good, the current plans certainly do not meet my threshold for "good" yet.
 
Okay, here are the modifications I would make to the official proposal (see layout below).
Add a 10' wide landscaped median by shifting the western part of the westbound lanes 10; to the north, and likewise shift the eastern part of the eastbound lane 10' to the south. The median would also provide a pedestrian shelter in the middle of this busy highway. Also add a crosswalk on the eastern end, and delete the stub roadway on the western end. The landscaped median IMO gives the highway more of a "parkway" feel. Here 'tis:

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The stub roadway is for a future community center parking lot
 
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