General Infrastructure

datadyne007 said:
^ eesh, that's even more detrimental to the neighborhood than the existing free-for-all toll plaza!
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I agree. What I'd really like is to depress route 1A through this area, and reestablish the original street grid above the depressed highway.
 
Big Dig, East Boston style.

Depress the expressway, and develop air rights over it:

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Depressing the highway would be nice, but I don't see how they could do the ramp geometry to meet current standards.
 
Well it's pretty sharp on the downtown side of things too......
 
Would it have enough room from coming out of the tunnel to get to the height of the current elevated section?
 
citylover94 said:
Would it have enough room from coming out of the tunnel to get to the height of the current elevated section?
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Yes. The transition from elevated to below grade would start at the on-ramp from the Airport, and end at Bremen Street.

Also, I've revised the layout to have the ramps function better:

30236218093_3c1b7a1d99_b.jpg
 
Scipio said:
WBUR has a great piece on a pumped-storage hydroelectric station carved into Northfield Mountain: http://www.wbur.org/bostonomix/2016/12/02/northfield-mountain-hydroelectric-station

These will only become more important as peaky sources like solar and wind make up more of the electrical system.
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Scipio -- Yes and No -- they are very much needed for unreliable sources like wind and solar

However, they are not cost-effective as currently designed -- the capital cost is very high -- you need essentially full continuous utilization to make it pay

Northfield was built in a different era -- Northeast Utilities [today part of Eversource] had built a whole bunch of big Nukes along the Connecticut Shoreline including the last and most expensive Millstone III [1150 MWe in 1986] -- the 3 plants at Millstone and the other Nuke, CT Yankee [582 MWe] at Hadam on the CT River ran continuously 24x7 producing 3300 MWe. Great for the busy industrial economy during the day. However in the middle of the night total demand in the CT River Valley was far less than the total generated by the Nukes. The result was that there was a generating surplus and no easy way to get it to where it might be used.

Northfield was the result -- run some high voltage high capacity wires along the CT River to a High Voltage / High Power Switchyard. Find a lake [or build one], dig a deep hole run some pipes down to a lower reservoir, install pumps/turbines turned / turning by motors/generators and you have a solution.

At about 9 PM you start pumping and pump until about 5 AM. At 6AM just as people are making coffee and turning up the heat you start draining and continue more or less during the day and on through rush-hour until finally people are finished cooking and demand begins to fall precipitously .....switch over to pumping and the process starts again. On weekends you do less draining and less pumping as demand never gets as large. This ideal as the capacity is always there, winter or summer.

However, it only works well for a predictable system -- it takes some time to reverse everything. As a result its not really very good for wind which is too unpredictable. Its not ideal for solar either, as the peak output of the solar arrays [few hours around local noon] is close-enough to the peak in demand that there is no really good extended pumping period with time available for the change-overs.

Perhaps by modifying the design of your pumped storage reservoirs and equipment -- you could engineer a pumped storage optimized for wind and solar.

During the Day you would use excess solar for pumping from 11 to 2 [local time] with draining beginning around 3 and going until 9.

Starting at 9PM [local] you would convert your plant to be optimized to use night time wind from 10 PM until 5AM -- when you would get ready to drain from 6AM until about 10 AM.... and be ready to convert to solar.

The problem comes when you have a cloudy day in the winter -- so no sun and then after the passage of the cold front [and some wind] it gets clear, cold and calm. So the demand peak shifts as heat comes on early and there is minimal reserve. In the summer you can have days with a lot of sun and a lot of heat, hence a lot of demand -- but no wind at night. You can also have summer hazy, hot, humid and cloudy for days at a time -- again no wind and less than full solar.

As a result -- You might have to build much bigger than Northfield with the capacity of the system designed around a 3 or 4 day aggregate demand with no net supply. This in turn means a much bigger reservoir and much greater siting difficulties.
 
Participatory budgeting is up for Cambridge:

Make your voice heard! From December 3-9, 2016, Cambridge residents age 12 and older can vote online or in person at numerous events around the city to decide how to spend $700,000 on capital projects to improve the community.
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Vote here: http://pb.cambridgema.gov/

(Unsure where this goes, so please move if necessary)
 
Whose job is it to maintain the reflectors on utility poles that are close to roadways? Is this the job of the utility that wants to put reflectors on to protect its poles or is this the job of cities and towns who have obligations to mark their streets?

Is there a separate set of obligations for other roadside hazards like trees, sign poles and guardrails? I'm assuming that the design standards for the reflector markings are covered in the MUTCD but if there were a badly marked stretch of road, to whom should I complain?

I have noticed that new utility poles placed by the electric company come pre-fitted with the MUTCD- standard white retro reflector. Is this their obligation or is it just a good business practice to keep their poles from being hit?

In the absence of good markings we also see abutters marking their driveways with all kinds of nonstandard stuff (red and blue disks) but I can hardly blame them given how inconsistent formal organizations are at applying and maintaining reflectors.

Do you think a utility would act if I called them and said your poles are unmarked on a particular stretch? They seem to do a good job of marking electric distribution poles but not such a good job on plain old street light poles.
 
Arlington said:
Whose job is it to maintain the reflectors on utility poles that are close to roadways? Is this the job of the utility that wants to put reflectors on to protect its poles or is this the job of cities and towns who have obligations to mark their streets?

Is there a separate set of obligations for other roadside hazards like trees, sign poles and guardrails? I'm assuming that the design standards for the reflector markings are covered in the MUTCD but if there were a badly marked stretch of road, to whom should I complain?

I have noticed that new utility poles placed by the electric company come pre-fitted with the MUTCD- standard white retro reflector. Is this their obligation or is it just a good business practice to keep their poles from being hit?

In the absence of good markings we also see abutters marking their driveways with all kinds of nonstandard stuff (red and blue disks) but I can hardly blame them given how inconsistent formal organizations are at applying and maintaining reflectors.

Do you think a utility would act if I called them and said your poles are unmarked on a particular stretch? They seem to do a good job of marking electric distribution poles but not such a good job on plain old street light poles.
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Municipality vs. utility maintenance authority re: poles is a notorious clusterfuck of a grey area. Varies town-to-town, and by parts of town. Not just statewide, but nationwide. There's no regulatory consistency whatsoever, and it's a total jurisdictional patchwork of who owns/controls what. Leads to a lot of paralysis and finger-pointing over who installed what incorrectly and whose job it is to fix what. Politics of Dig Safe are bad enough; overhead lines can be an even more notorious free-for-all. The Somethingawful.com traffic engineer thread has a lot of hilarious epic FAIL examples from of total lack of coordination. Stuff like poles being erected by the utility in the middle of traffic lanes and just being left like that coned-off for months/years while the utility and gov't snipe at each other. Anarchy.

Generally the municipalities that want more control or are big enough to exercise more control will pay the premium to own all their own poles and enforce local standards on the utilities that install them. City of Boston does because BTD is a large enough agency to handle it. Cambridge may too, IIRC. But most suburbs simply don't have the internal resources to do it, so it fragments quickly from there. And state DOT's only have some degree of self-interest on state roads.

New installations (by whoever) usually do stricter adherence to MUTCD reflectors and all other standards because it's easier to patrol compliance through the permitting paper trail required to erect a new pole in a new location. Fuggedaboutit when it's just an in-situ replacement of a broken/failing pole or minor reshuffle on the same footprint. And nobody ever upgrades an old pole with new reflectors unless some citizen complains up the chain to their Alderman Pothole to get something done in one spot. There isn't enough writ-large coordination to enforce consistency, so nobody bothers.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Municipality vs. utility maintenance authority re: poles is a notorious clusterfuck of a grey area. Varies town-to-town, and by parts of town. Not just statewide, but nationwide. There's no regulatory consistency whatsoever, and it's a total jurisdictional patchwork of who owns/controls what. Leads to a lot of paralysis and finger-pointing over who installed what incorrectly and whose job it is to fix what. Politics of Dig Safe are bad enough; overhead lines can be an even more notorious free-for-all. The Somethingawful.com traffic engineer thread has a lot of hilarious epic FAIL examples from of total lack of coordination. Stuff like poles being erected by the utility in the middle of traffic lanes and just being left like that coned-off for months/years while the utility and gov't snipe at each other. Anarchy.

Generally the municipalities that want more control or are big enough to exercise more control will pay the premium to own all their own poles and enforce local standards on the utilities that install them. City of Boston does because BTD is a large enough agency to handle it. Cambridge may too, IIRC. But most suburbs simply don't have the internal resources to do it, so it fragments quickly from there. And state DOT's only have some degree of self-interest on state roads.

New installations (by whoever) usually do stricter adherence to MUTCD reflectors and all other standards because it's easier to patrol compliance through the permitting paper trail required to erect a new pole in a new location. Fuggedaboutit when it's just an in-situ replacement of a broken/failing pole or minor reshuffle on the same footprint. And nobody ever upgrades an old pole with new reflectors unless some citizen complains up the chain to their Alderman Pothole to get something done in one spot. There isn't enough writ-large coordination to enforce consistency, so nobody bothers.
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In Boston we are getting a new series of utility "poles" that do not appear to be BTD regulated.

As Verizon does their FIOS roll-out in Boston, they are also installing a ton of micro-cell towers (tied into the fiber optic lines). They have flooded Chinatown with these towers over the past 3 weeks, nearly one per block. Totally stand alone towers, many right at the edge of the sidewalk, large rectangular bases (for the electronics) right at the curb, no reflectors of any kind. Many also block a significant part of the sidewalk. No one seems to be paying any attention.
 
Ok, time for a little tactical urbanism of streetside hazards:
Restoring white same-side/same-direction reflectors
Restoring yellow opposite-oncoming reflectors

For $9 a roll, it is a bargain way to make your neighborhood safer compared to thinking there's a bureaucracy you can leverage.
 
JeffDowntown said:
In Boston we are getting a new series of utility "poles" that do not appear to be BTD regulated.

As Verizon does their FIOS roll-out in Boston, they are also installing a ton of micro-cell towers (tied into the fiber optic lines). They have flooded Chinatown with these towers over the past 3 weeks, nearly one per block. Totally stand alone towers, many right at the edge of the sidewalk, large rectangular bases (for the electronics) right at the curb, no reflectors of any kind. Many also block a significant part of the sidewalk. No one seems to be paying any attention.
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Actually they are covered by the Public Improvement Commission, the all-powerful commission, that is in charge of any physical change to the public right-of-way - they don't review striping and might not review flex posts. They have been having hearings (10am Tuesdays on the 8th floor of City Hall every other week) about these, and many other projects, since at least the spring. The PIC is headed by the Public Works Commissioner with two public works staff and the BTD Commissioner making up the rest of the board. They typically have two hearings about projects, one to introduce it and another to approve/deny with, apparently, most real discussion happening behind the scenes between the two hearings - the public is invited to speak at these. Meetings are announced via Legal Notices in the Globe, and on the new City website here (use the public works filter) https://www.boston.gov/public-notices?title=&field_contact_target_id[]=6 but you can sign up for email notifications here: http://www.cityofboston.gov/publicworks/engineering/pic.asp
 
datadyne007 said:
All 23 Pike toll plazas have completed Phase I. Many are well into Phase II.

https://twitter.com/MassDOT/status/796789926809497600

Cw7ENxTXcAg2c34.jpg:large
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What will Phase 2 be like?

I think that the last thing that we need is another years-long Big-Dig-style project, especially not in East Boston.

The original one took too long, costed too much, there were kickbacks & shoddy deals, along with crappy construction. The agonizing wait had spanned to over 15 years.

The program costs had ballooned to over $26b! More money had to be forked up to cover the mistakes made. Leave it as is.
 
Randomgear said:
Actually they are covered by the Public Improvement Commission, the all-powerful commission, that is in charge of any physical change to the public right-of-way - they don't review striping and might not review flex posts. They have been having hearings (10am Tuesdays on the 8th floor of City Hall every other week) about these, and many other projects, since at least the spring. The PIC is headed by the Public Works Commissioner with two public works staff and the BTD Commissioner making up the rest of the board. They typically have two hearings about projects, one to introduce it and another to approve/deny with, apparently, most real discussion happening behind the scenes between the two hearings - the public is invited to speak at these. Meetings are announced via Legal Notices in the Globe, and on the new City website here (use the public works filter) https://www.boston.gov/public-notices?title=&field_contact_target_id[]=6 but you can sign up for email notifications here: http://www.cityofboston.gov/publicworks/engineering/pic.asp
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So I wonder if anyone required them to maintain ADA compliance on sidewalks? Because in Chinatown they are not doing so. Seems something this invasive should involve a bit of neighborhood outreach [rather than the oh so convenient excuse that "we posted notices", you just weren't looking hard enough to spot them]? Nothing in any of the standard City outreach to the neighborhoods.

Also, the installation choice seems unusual. In other cities where I have seen FIOS implemented (not exhaustive evidence), they apparently cut a deal with the local electric provider to pull fiber through the electrical undergound tunnels. The micro-cells end up on top of existing light posts, with the electronics up in the air on the existing pole.

Here they are digging up every street with a channel for cable, and installing all new poles. Seems excessively invasive. And all these channel cuts with the cheap patch jobs are going to be potholes galore by next spring.
 
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Jahvon09 said:
What will Phase 2 be like?

I think that the last thing that we need is another years-long Big-Dig-style project, especially not in East Boston.

The original one took too long, costed too much, there were kickbacks & shoddy deals, along with crappy construction. The agonizing wait had spanned to over 15 years.

The program costs had ballooned to over $26b! More money had to be forked up to cover the mistakes made. Leave it as is.
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Phase 2 just realign a the traffic going through the middle now to the sides where the existing highway is. It rebuilds the existing lanes and demolishes any pavement that is no longer needed. The only interchange where it does more than that is the 128 interchange in Weston. Phase 2 will build a new ramp from I-90 WB to Rte 128 which will involve building a small bridge. This will increase the merge space between the ramps that is currently about 100 ft
 
Hey folks,

There's a North Station Area Mobility Action Plan going on right now and they're looking to prioritize 41 community projects that have come up affecting different types of mobility (walking, biking, driving, buses, T accessibility, parking).

I came up with item 1.1--full/partial pedestrianization of Canal Street with commercial deliveries. At the neighborhood meeting last month, it tied for most community support. The BPDA has an online survey looking for more broad support to the improvements.

I'd really like to see Canal Street become a fully pedestrianized link between the Gov't Center Garage Redevelopment/Haymarket and the Hub on Causeway/TD Garden/North Station redevelopment. I think it would be the largest pedestrianization of a street in Boston since Quincy Market, and stands to further activate the neighborhood.

Please check out the survey and add your support to this project if you can. Thank you.
 
I completely agree. Pedestrianized canal street is begging to happen. Nice work, I'll add my voice to the survey!
 
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