General Infrastructure

mass88 said:
They would have to widen Cambridge street to 3-4 lanes in each direction around the area where the on/off ramps to the Pike come onto Cambridge to give extra space.
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It's already 3 lanes in each direction. Trying to cut that down, since the on/off ramps are so dangerous. That's one of the reasons that MassDOT has made them perpendicular intersections.

1. Drop St. Mary’s St. Bridge
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You do realize that approximately half of the BU student population crosses the St Mary St bridge to get to class, every day, right?

Actually, any proposal for an on/off ramp near BU is going to have to convince BU officials that you aren't going to kill students with this new injection of traffic...
 
Matthew said:
It's already 3 lanes in each direction. Trying to cut that down, since the on/off ramps are so dangerous. That's one of the reasons that MassDOT has made them perpendicular intersections.



You do realize that approximately half of the BU student population crosses the St Mary St bridge to get to class, every day, right?

Actually, any proposal for an on/off ramp near BU is going to have to convince BU officials that you aren't going to kill students with this new injection of traffic...
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Which is why Storrow Drive is necessary and diminishing it would be a big mistake for the city. It would be nice to have more on/off ramps for the Pike, but there are too many challenges to adding them in.
 
How about we shuttle the money into real game-changing, capacity-increasing improvements to surface transit that actually improve mobility through frequency and reliability of transit on the existing infrastructure we have, first?

Granted, time and time again, transit has been proven to not actually reduce car traffic, just increase the throughput of an existing transport corridor since car demand at peak with no congestion pricing system will always max out road capacity. However, improved surface transit connecting the points of travel for those who use the Bowker would diminish the argument for keeping it in the first place, let alone making the Pike more accessible to local traffic.
 
DigitalSciGuy said:
How about we shuttle the money into real game-changing, capacity-increasing improvements to surface transit that actually improve mobility through frequency and reliability of transit on the existing infrastructure we have, first?

Granted, time and time again, transit has been proven to not actually reduce car traffic, just increase the throughput of an existing transport corridor since car demand at peak with no congestion pricing system will always max out road capacity. However, improved surface transit connecting the points of travel for those who use the Bowker would diminish the argument for keeping it in the first place, let alone making the Pike more accessible to local traffic.
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Probably not... the Bowker is mostly (I think) used by people commuting into the city from the west on the Turnpike and SFR/Storrow. If you're talking about surface transit, you mean buses and perhaps streetcars, which serve an entirely different population. With those modes, you can't even make a case for Park-and-Ride taking cars off the road...
 
mass88 said:
Which is why Storrow Drive is necessary and diminishing it would be a big mistake for the city. It would be nice to have more on/off ramps for the Pike, but there are too many challenges to adding them in.
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Part of why in the Bowker thread that I kept more focus on thinking a way to add a EB ramp there than around St. Mary's or Mountfort/Carlton St. The latter is already traffic hell. The former goes on streets just not made to take that much traffic with a lot more pedestrian traffic mixed in. If there is a way to squeeze around Charlesgate-Bowker then that's what it should be done.
 
MassDOT has announced the first public meeting of the Allston Realignment project.

A lot is going to happen with this project in the next several months. Can it get its own thread instead of being lumped in with everything else in "General Infrastructure"?

April 10
6:30pm
Jackson Mann Community Center Auditorium, 300 Cambridge Street, Allston

http://www.massdot.state.ma.us/Even...40/ItemID/1648/mctl/EventDetails/Default.aspx
 
They should have continued what they did on 93 near Woburn - putting another sign saying when the next train from a nearby park-and-ride is!
 
There's probably a thread for the Rt 128 widening between Route 24 (south) and Route 3 (north) but I couldn't find it. So here's some construction porn. construction porn.
Installing a 130' long, 2-lane highway bridge in one night.
 
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Can anyone tell me why Eastern Ave in Chelsea has MassHighway handholes in the ground? I'm just curious. I've been noticing them on my runs lately.
 
You mean those little boxes that say "Masshighway" on them that are on the sidewalks?
 
AmericanFolkLegend said:
Not sure where this should go.
Solar Roadways have gotten buzz before, but I just saw this YouTube. It provides a lot of fluff and very little info about feasibility, but I thought I'd share.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlTA3rnpgzU&feature=kp
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I think this is certainly an interesting concept. The video is mostly fluff, but if you go to their website, they seem to have some more technical info. I haven't had a chance to go through much of it yet tho.

http://www.solarroadways.com/intro.shtml

The best way for this to get off the ground would definitely be for people's driveways and parking lots. I think the ability to put solar panels in your driveway as oppose to on your roof makes it much more of an attractive option for the typical home owner, and if they can take their home off the grid, charge their electric cars, and maybe even sell some energy back to the grid, I think a lot of people would be interested. All depends on the final cost. It'll be interesting to see what the cost difference will be between these and typical solar panels.

Also, they're already almost at $1.5m on indiegogo. Pretty unreal if you ask me. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/solar-roadways
 
datadyne007 said:
Yep.
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I recently saw old maps where Eastern Ave did not exist yet, and it was labeled as "Proposed Highway". It is hardly a highway in our minds, but I suppose at the time it was planned/built, it was a very speedy bypass for traffic coming out of Revere.
 
This is part of the "Crossroads Initiative". There are more details in the PDF linked at the bottom of this page at the BRA: http://www.bostonredevelopmentauthority.org/planning/planning-initiatives/crossroads-initiative

They just narrowed each parking and travel lane by 6" to get the additional width for a buffer between the cycle track and the parking lane. Parking is now 7'-6" wide and travel lanes are 10'-6". There is no median.

fattony said:
Summer Street in the Seaport is getting a makeover including widened sidewalks, a cycle track, and new benches and trees - all while maintaining 4 travel lanes for cars. That must come at the expense of parking, travel lane width, and the median. All that should contribute to slowing traffic and improving the pedestrian experience.

http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2014/06/bra_plans_5m_sidewalk_overhaul
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So, 3 blocks of cycletrack? I hope they plan to continue that over I-90...

It's an improvement to be sure. And those sidewalks are truly atrocious right now.

They should really go down to 10' lanes here. Insistence on 10'6" seems more political than anything.
 
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