Design a Better Fort Point Channel

Y'all are aware that Fort Point Channel used to be a lot longer, right? It used to extend to where the South Bay shopping center is now (which takes its name from the bay that was there)
 
CSTH said:
Put the Canary Wharf cross rail station in the middle of it, but for the NSRL & Red Line

canary-wharf-crossrail.jpg


crossrail-canary-wharf.jpg
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I'm telling you, an nsrl headhouse right in the middle would be spectacular
 
George_Apley said:
Thanks, I was trying to figure out how to word this earlier and then it slipped my mind. We should be leveraging the "natural" environment as much as we can to create flood resiliency, and the Fort Point Channel, with some alterations, could help do that. Filling it in would make Boston more flood-prone, not less.

A Dutch-style sea-wall would be ideal, but we need to look at every tool in the toolbox, just like the Dutch do. Learn to live with water.
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That's an interesting premise but I think the basis of that is when filling in wetlands.

And then, I read this article. https://www.bostonlivingwithwater.org/portfolio/a-futuristic-and-resilient-view-for-fort-point really preserves the historical Boston image.




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www.bostonglobe.com

Boston has a stormwater problem. Could blocking Fort Point Channel be part of the solution? - The Boston Globe

The Water and Sewer Commission is pushing a proposal to turn the downtown waterway into an enormous catchment basin that would drain one-tenth of the city during big storms.
www.bostonglobe.com www.bostonglobe.com
"The Boston Water and Sewer Commission has been studying a proposal to build a floodgate next to the federal courthouse at the mouth of the channel. The gate, when closed, would turn the waterway into a huge manmade bowl that could hold rainwater at high tides and prevent backups that are expected to increasingly flood city streets."

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(Sorry Stick)
 
JumboBuc said:
www.bostonglobe.com

Boston has a stormwater problem. Could blocking Fort Point Channel be part of the solution? - The Boston Globe

The Water and Sewer Commission is pushing a proposal to turn the downtown waterway into an enormous catchment basin that would drain one-tenth of the city during big storms.
www.bostonglobe.com www.bostonglobe.com
Click to expand...

The basic concept of a floodgate seems like an obvious no-brainer, and is the kind of thing that astounds me hasn't been already prioritized. Fund and build it as fast as possible, in that sense. It has significant benefits today, not just for future-proofing. It also looks like it makes sense to combine it with the Northern Ave Bridge, as that does seem like about the spot you'd want it for maximum utility.

It's a narrow channel and a skim through Climate Ready Boston Map Explorer appears to indicate that it's one the most obvious major risk points for Coastal Flood Risks in large sections of the city, especially going forward into the 2050s/2070s.

So I'm on board with all of that.

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What I don't entirely understand is why the "idea" seems to be focusing on "collecting" stormwater and the tides in terms of getting rid of that stormwater. It's certainly convenient when it works out that you can just hold all the water until later and let it out by natural flow then.

But...there's also a solution to too much water building up on the wrong side of your floodgate with an ocean on the other side, it's called some big pumps and some big outfalls above the level of said ocean. This is pretty normal practice everywhere floodgates are used on bodies of water that have a flow that also builds up behind them. I don't really see why we're emphasizing the storage as the big thing about this, the floodgate is the big thing.
 
millerm277 said:
The basic concept of a floodgate seems like an obvious no-brainer, and is the kind of thing that astounds me hasn't been already prioritized. Fund and build it as fast as possible, in that sense. It has significant benefits today, not just for future-proofing. It also looks like it makes sense to combine it with the Northern Ave Bridge, as that does seem like about the spot you'd want it for maximum utility.

It's a narrow channel and a skim through Climate Ready Boston Map Explorer appears to indicate that it's one the most obvious major risk points for Coastal Flood Risks in large sections of the city, especially going forward into the 2050s/2070s.

So I'm on board with all of that.

----------

What I don't entirely understand is why the "idea" seems to be focusing on "collecting" stormwater and the tides in terms of getting rid of that stormwater. It's certainly convenient when it works out that you can just hold all the water until later and let it out by natural flow then.

But...there's also a solution to too much water building up on the wrong side of your floodgate with an ocean on the other side, it's called some big pumps and some big outfalls above the level of said ocean. This is pretty normal practice everywhere floodgates are used on bodies of water that have a flow that also builds up behind them. I don't really see why we're emphasizing the storage as the big thing about this, the floodgate is the big thing.
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We really need some Dutch engineering over here. These are solved problems.
 
Many floodgates are passive: you close them at the last low tide before the storm and open again 11 hours later at the next low tide. Run this cycle twice if needed.

The rainwater basically never comes so early and fast that it is more water than a high tide would have supplied. Further the next low tide is sufficient to dump enough rainwater to repeat this for days
 
ceo said:
Y'all are aware that Fort Point Channel used to be a lot longer, right? It used to extend to where the South Bay shopping center is now (which takes its name from the bay that was there)
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All Y’all 😎
 
Go the other way too to follow the old footprint, and open up those canals by the Harbor, a la Yale 2014 Projects-that-seem-to-have-vanished-from-the-internet. (but a few remain)

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BeyondRevenue said:
Robert Moses Mode ENABLED
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Ha! love this.

One could also interchangeably say "Beast Mode enabled." Especially insofar as the wreckage created by Moses--the long-term crippling of NYC's urban vitality & economic dynamism (if you try to count how much a "car is king" philosophy actually subtracts from a metropolis' theoretical economic output), ecological/environmental resilience, etc.--vastly outweighs any one-night stomping by a Godzilla or Cloverfield-style mutant megamonster...
 
BeyondRevenue said:
Headline "Governor Baker: Fuck it. Lets build some stuff"

Robert Moses Mode ENABLED

View attachment 19214

And since you're asking, Yes. Photoshop is fun.
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This actually feels somewhat doable. It's cutting through industrial areas and you could probably re-route it in some ways to minimize the impact to the existing businesses. I can actually visualize what it would look like in reality. I find the idea of the Seaport as a kind of island kinda fun as well.
 
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