Encore Boston Harbor Casino | 1 Broadway | Everett

[Ruairi]

Come on... that is intentionally ignorant. There are tens of thousands of cars driving into the city going right past there. Taking a couple thousand cars off the road isn't crazy. Saying they should get on a train every hour in Woburn if they want to go to Boston is what's crazy.

It's not intentionally ignorant.
Look at the development around Sullivan.
Assembly, Encore, Hood park, Union Square.
Look at the dense residential areas of East Somerville and Charlestown.
You want to take 2000 cars a day off 93 and put them in the middle of all of that??
Yea, maybe build it at Woburn and put trains on every 15 mins. Makes more sense than dumping 2000 cars into Sullivan every day.
While we're at it. Throw on a congestion charge or toll 93. We should be doing everything we can do discourage people driving in to the city. Building a park and ride facility two stops from north station is what a traffic planner would have proposed in 1983

 

[Ruairi]

Those are big speculative ifs that haven't come to fruition. I am talking about the here and now on a fairly low hanging solution to keeping a thousand or two thousand people from driving more than a few hundred feet off the interstate.

There is surface parking in Sullivan Square now, which I think is crazy. So I am just talking about a garage with ground level retail on the street level to replace the surface parking.

The argument should be about pricing it so that every day commuters are parking in Woburn and riding in on the commuter rail. A garage in Sullivan in terms of the casino, would keep a lot of people off the road, specifically rt 99 and it would be useful for the occasional person coming into Boston looking for a good parking option of downtown Boston.

what??
You want to replace the surface parking with retail and loads more parking on top? who's going to use the retail? is it going to be 20 dunc's for all the commuters? Hows about building retail with transit oriented housing on top? Housing for people who want to work in Encore/Assembly/Hood park?

So all the cars leaving your garage heading north have to get back on 93 or 28 at Assembly, after the build out of XMBLY??
It's a terribly shortsighted idea.

 

[ant8904]

Jeez Tangent is getting dump on like crazy here. I can see his idea. It's simple, the more cars in garages, the less in the urban core. If cars are parking in Sullivan, it might be only 2 stops from North Station, but it still less cars driving on to Boston.

Now I also get why everyone else is getting so mad. In terms of pure distance, Sullivan Square should be Urban Core Boston as the Back Bay. Though current it is not. Sullivan Sq isn't an urban area. And to be fair for Tangent, neighboring Charlestown and Somerville is dense but also not urban in the same style as the Back Bay either.

My thinking is this for Park and Ride. For many car commuters, Sullivan is the first transit station they would pass on the way to Boston. This does raise a point that why not set it up for that car commutters stop driving at Sullivan rather than drive on to Boston. That is still a good.

At the same time, there is another station that makes a bit more sense if it's just a bit more reachable. Perhaps a better solution is to expand Wellington Circle's parking and reconfigure RT. 16 to be easier to get to it. Yes, that does mean making Rt.16 into a more exclusive highway and more direct access roads to the garage. But since many people who passes through Sullivan have to take more effort to get to Wellington (and even those who do go by Wellington then go through Sullivan, Wellington is on the "wrong" side - and just like how many fast food restaurants build shops on both sides, it will keep some from getting off just because it takes more effort to turn into Wellington). That way, the people are getting off their cars farther out and also in a more appropriate distance.

GLX's TBA expansion to Rt 16 should also have a park and ride too.

 

[tysmith95]

Tangent, I don't think you've ever driven Sullivan during rush hour. Sullivan would turn into gridlock with 2k extra cars.

What i'd like to see is better service to Anderson Woburn. There is a huge parking lot there, with room to grow and easy highway access.

 

[Ruairi]

My thinking is this for Park and Ride. For many car commuters, Sullivan is the first transit station they would pass on the way to Boston. This does raise a point that why not set it up for that car commutters stop driving at Sullivan rather than drive on to Boston. That is still a good.

Sullivan is an ugly wasteland but with the developments at Assembly/Encore/Hood/Union it will be part of the urban core in 10 years. (yea, not back bay but definitely way too urban for a park and ride off an elevated highway with just one off ramp and no on ramps).
GLX to rt 16 is the perfect place for a park and ride. Besides that, improve CR accessibility/frequency.

 

[mass88]

Tangent, I don't think you've ever driven Sullivan during rush hour. Sullivan would turn into gridlock with 2k extra cars.

What i'd like to see is better service to Anderson Woburn. There is a huge parking lot there, with room to grow and easy highway access.

One of the major issues with this area is the poor road infrastructure to begin with. This entire area should have seen a major upgrade and expansion given the casino was being built.

How long does it take, on the commuter rail, to go from Anderson to North Station? How reliable is the line - what percentage of trains run on time? I ask because I have a few co-workers who get on at 128 in Westwood (seems like a similar distance as Anderson) and they've been telling me that over the last few months, over 25% of the time trains are delayed by at least 15 minutes. This seems like a clear area where reliability is key to getting people to park in Woburn and ride in.

 

[ant8904]

Tangent, I don't think you've ever driven Sullivan during rush hour. Sullivan would turn into gridlock with 2k extra cars.

Again, I'm sure Tangent is thinking of pulling 2K cars that is gridlock in Sullivan Sq everyday to just straight up end their ride in Sullivan. Not pull 2k more cars into Sullivan on top of the existing number of cars.

Also I should point out in this logic, it would make sense in a hypothetical garage in Sullivan that it should be design that cars go into the garage before the Square. If one think about where's the more distance cars are coming from - which are the off-ramped cars from I-93, it would make sense to make a ramp going directly to a garage before the Square so it wouldn't add more cars in Sullivan while making it a place for I-93 commuters to get on the Orange Line in that location.


But then again, that's why Wellington with a faster way to get there is my compromise idea.

 

[Ruairi]

Again, I'm sure Tangent is thinking of pulling 2K cars that is gridlock in Sullivan Sq everyday to just straight up end their ride in Sullivan. Not pull 2k more cars into Sullivan on top of the existing number of cars.

Also I should point out in this logic, it would make sense in a hypothetical garage in Sullivan that it should be design that cars go into the garage before the Square. If one think about where's the more distance cars are coming from - which are the off-ramped cars from I-93, it would make sense to make a ramp going directly to a garage before the Square so it wouldn't add more cars in Sullivan while making it a place for I-93 commuters to get on the Orange Line in that location.


But then again, that's why Wellington with a faster way to get there is my compromise idea.

If you're coming south on 93 and want to go to sullivan you get off at Assembly. Why not just park there? If you're coming south on 99, why not take 16 to wellington. More parking in Wellington and Assembly, more housing/retail at Sullivan. That's what makes sense to me and I don't think I'm being "intentionally ignorant"

 

[Ruairi]

One of the major issues with this area is the poor road infrastructure to begin with. This entire area should have seen a major upgrade and expansion given the casino was being built.

How long does it take, on the commuter rail, to go from Anderson to North Station? How reliable is the line - what percentage of trains run on time? I ask because I have a few co-workers who get on at 128 in Westwood (seems like a similar distance as Anderson) and they've been telling me that over the last few months, over 25% of the time trains are delayed by at least 15 minutes. This seems like a clear area where reliability is key to getting people to park in Woburn and ride in.

Yup, Greater Boston's commuter rail is an antiquated mess. Make this affordable, comfortable, and reliable and you take a ton of cars out of the city. I know Tangent is just proposing a quick fix but I think his quick fix would cause more problems than it would solve and it would stifle the kind of development that's desperately needed in that area.

 

[Lrfox]

Tangent, I don't think you've ever driven Sullivan during rush hour. Sullivan would turn into gridlock with 2k extra cars.

What i'd like to see is better service to Anderson Woburn. There is a huge parking lot there, with room to grow and easy highway access.

Not only that but surface parking at Sullivan is almost always available (I’ve never seen it close to full) and cheap, so it’s not as if more drivers can’t use it already. The issue with Sullivan isn't parking capacity - it’s that you have to sit in traffic almost all the way into town on 93, and then you’ve got to fight for a spot on the train which is usually packed by the time it gets there.

 

[Arlington]

The point about employee parking garages is pretty simple: If the employee's last leg is on a shuttle bus, the employee garage should be *off* rail transit (like Logan's Chelsea garage was)

Using the Wellington T Garage literally one-for-one takes core-bound riders off the Orange Line, net-reducing rail use, while running an additional 1/20th of a vehicle (the shuttle bus) at Wellington.

The net:
No improvement in the car situation
Reduction in rail ridership
Small net addition of shuttle trips

That's pretty bad. Contrast this with, for example, putting a real employee satellite lot in some *lesser-congested*/not-transit-oriented location like the industrial area along Beacham street

 

[JumboBuc]

The point about employee parking garages is pretty simple: If the employee's last leg is on a shuttle bus, the employee garage should be *off* rail transit (like Logan's Chelsea garage was)

Using the Wellington T Garage literally one-for-one takes core-bound riders off the Orange Line, net-reducing rail use, while running an additional 1/20th of a vehicle (the shuttle bus) at Wellington.

The net:
No improvement in the car situation
Reduction in rail ridership
Small net addition of shuttle trips

That's pretty bad. Contrast this with, for example, putting a real employee satellite lot in some *lesser-congested*/not-transit-oriented location like the industrial area along Beacham street

True, but don't undercount the fact that Encore is already running shuttles from the casino to Wellington. By having employees park there too, they kill two birds with one stone. If that employee garage where somewhere else, they'd need duplicate busses.

That being said, I suspect the Wellington Encore employee garage is a short-term fix. Fact of the matter is that there just probably isn't a lot of spare garage capacity sitting around near the casino. Encore probably leased what they could find at Wellington, but in the longer term I expect them to build out more of their own employee parking infrastructure.

 

[tysmith95]

One of the major issues with this area is the poor road infrastructure to begin with. This entire area should have seen a major upgrade and expansion given the casino was being built.

How long does it take, on the commuter rail, to go from Anderson to North Station? How reliable is the line - what percentage of trains run on time? I ask because I have a few co-workers who get on at 128 in Westwood (seems like a similar distance as Anderson) and they've been telling me that over the last few months, over 25% of the time trains are delayed by at least 15 minutes. This seems like a clear area where reliability is key to getting people to park in Woburn and ride in.

It's a 25 min trip non express, and a 20 min trip express.

Reliability wise, I've taken the Haverhill daily, and i'd say you have a minor delay (5-10 mins) about once a week, a major delay (over 20 mins) like twice a year. It's more reliable than driving during rush hour.

 

[HenryAlan]

Sullivan is an ugly wasteland but with the developments at Assembly/Encore/Hood/Union it will be part of the urban core in 10 years. (yea, not back bay but definitely way too urban for a park and ride off an elevated highway with just one off ramp and no on ramps).
GLX to rt 16 is the perfect place for a park and ride. Besides that, improve CR accessibility/frequency.

This will only be true if a better walking route between Sullivan and Assembly can be established. Urban core areas provide both a transit station and a reasonable walk option to the next station. All of the OL stations south of Community College are within somewhat reasonable walking distance of each other. The entire corridor South to Forest Hills feels urban. Starting in Charlestown, most stations are not walk friendly nor easily reachable from one to the next without actually getting on a train. This is why people see them as places for plopping down parking garages -- they lack an overlapping walk catchment.

 

[Ruairi]

This will only be true if a better walking route between Sullivan and Assembly can be established. Urban core areas provide both a transit station and a reasonable walk option to the next station. All of the OL stations south of Community College are within somewhat reasonable walking distance of each other. The entire corridor South to Forest Hills feels urban. Starting in Charlestown, most stations are not walk friendly nor easily reachable from one to the next without actually getting on a train. This is why people see them as places for plopping down parking garages -- they lack an overlapping walk catchment.

Here's a proposal for a path that would allow you to walk from assembly to sullivan to East Somerville GLX (connecting with the GLX community path)
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=24ff39453a214f1281fab281ac6eb47b

I would also assume that the build out of Hood park would allow for a fairly easy walk from Sullivan to Bunker hill.

Add in the proposed footbridge over the Mystic to the casino and you could cycle/walk from leechmere to East Somerville GLX then Sullivan then on to the foot bridge in to Everett.

I know the 'Mystic connector' is just a proposal but as the area gets built out it shows that there are more options for connectivity.

 

[scorpio02150]

A friend who is in Construction keeps telling me that Encore IS going to purchase the Shopping Plaza where Target is located in Everett (behind the casino) and convert that entire area into a Golf Club.
I havent heard such thing; has anyone here confirm or dismiss the Golf course topic?

 

[kmp1284]

A friend who is in Construction keeps telling me that Encore IS going to purchase the Shopping Plaza where Target is located in Everett (behind the casino) and convert that entire area into a Golf Club.
I havent heard such thing; has anyone here confirm or dismiss the Golf course topic?

Maybe a driving range or a nine hole executive/par three course but there's not enough land there to build a full golf course. Oakley in Watertown, which is an extremely compact and short course, sits on about 90 acres. This property's barely 60 acres.

 

[George_Apley]

Can we just agree to stop building new golf courses. FFS.

 

[Coyote137]

That rumor was floating around a year or two back. Hard to see it happening, for multiple reasons.

 

[Jahvon09]

I never was a golf fan. Too boring for me!!