General Infrastructure

I found this on Reddit the other day. It looks like petri dishes, but it's not. I think Boston could compete if they include the commuter rail. After all, that is what is considered rapid transit in the US.

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Boston is in there 4th up from the bottom 3rd over from the right. Look at Seoul 😮

Edit: Had NO idea Salt Lake city had such a large metro system for a city its size. Awesome.
 
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Any idea what these weird curb cuts on the Boylston Street bridge in the Charlesgate are? They're spaced about every 50 feet or so, and old photos show they were there by the early 1900s.

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The EGE said:
Any idea what these weird curb cuts on the Boylston Street bridge in the Charlesgate are? They're spaced about every 50 feet or so, and old photos show they were there by the early 1900s.

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I wonder if those are stormwater outlets. There do not appear to be street drains in that stretch of Boylston, so maybe drainage was planned into the park?
 
JeffDowntown said:
I wonder if those are stormwater outlets. There do not appear to be street drains in that stretch of Boylston, so maybe drainage was planned into the park?
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Yeah...ancient MDC-design flood cuts. I seem to recall seeing those elsewhere other side of the Fens, too.
 
The EGE said:
Any idea what these weird curb cuts on the Boylston Street bridge in the Charlesgate are? They're spaced about every 50 feet or so, and old photos show they were there by the early 1900s.

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Crazy coincidence. I walked up that sidewalk on Friday and noticed those (I initially noticed the decorative (?) stonework) for the first time, despite having passed through there thousands of time in my lifetime. I was going to tweet about the same question, but forgot.
 
I don't know if this has been discussed, but I am very leery about the changes made to the roadway by the Science Museum. They chopped the road from 3 lanes (inbound, towards the highways) to 1 lane, 1 bus lane, and 1 bike lane. Between Edwin Land Blvd and Museum Way, there is only room for 4-5 cars when the light turns red before all the cars will be stuck in the major intersection. Then heading towards the highways there is now 1 single lane that needs to disburse to 93N, 93S, and into the North Station neighborhood.

I realize it works *now* because there are barely any cars on the road. However, even with the extremely light traffic the double stacked light for Museum Way is an issue. I can't imagine how bad things will get when people start returning to work. I have seen some pretty bad jams here in the past, and that was with all 3 lanes available! I just don't see the current setup as a viable, long term solution.

Also, that bus lane causes a lot of confusion and I consistently see cars driving in it. Then if you want to go onto Storrow you need to cut across the bus lane to do so, and if you want to go to North Station it's the same thing (unbelievably confusing logjam at the light by the highway ramps). If people are trying to get out of the city, we should be making it as easy as possible to get on these highway ramps and off the surface streets! The current setup is possibly the dumbest thing (and biggest downgrade) I have ever seen in my life, and is going to fail miserably with even half the traffic levels as it used to have.
 
^Are the bus lanes permanent? I assumed that they were temporary to facilitate better movement for the Lechmere-N.Station shuttles while Lechmere is out of service for the Green Line.

I agree that it's kind of a mess over there now (even with reduced traffic). But I would imagine cars will learn not to drive in the bus lanes over time. I've watched the improvement on Broadway in Somerville since the lanes were installed. At first, cars drove in them regularly. After a while, that greatly improved (though I do see some double parkers). The turn onto Storrow is awkward though, and I can't imagine what traffic would look like at a normal rush with the lanes in place.
 
DZH22 said:
If people are trying to get out of the city, we should be making it as easy as possible to get on these highway ramps and off the surface streets! The current setup is possibly the dumbest thing (and biggest downgrade) I have ever seen in my life, and is going to fail miserably with even half the traffic levels as it used to have.
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Where are these people in cars going? If they are going to places along the Green Line, I'd rather they switch modes to the GLX.

Kendall Sq is booming and it needs better transit to North Station and Government Center. Bus Lanes can be part of that solution.

If they are going to/from "Greater MIT" (Lechmere to Kendall to Central), I'd really like the Kendall buses to run more frequently and provide really useful service from Central to Kendall to North Station via these bus lanes. Truly useful buses between North Station and MIT would also mean that Northside suburbanites would be able to ride commuter rail to Kendall.
 
Arlington said:
Where are these people in cars going?
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They're getting out of the area! 93N, 93S, 1N, 90W access is all in that little nexus. Instead it will become like the cluster-F around Alewife, where we can't get the cars onto 2W fast enough to unclog the streets. The last thing we need to do is artificially add another choke point that creates a 10 hour nonstop traffic jam throughout the area. As soon as cars start getting stuck in the intersection of the O'Brien Highway and Edwin Land Blvd it's going to become the worst gridlock in the entire city. I have taken this route many times to get out of the city and back to suburbs, and seen it in all sort of conditions. The new setup is going to raise the misery levels by 100. More cars will be forced into the neighborhoods, looking for cut-through's just to get out of the area.
 
^ That's not really how traffic works. A path of least resistance doesn't "unclog" it "induces" -- people re-route themselves onto the uncrowded link, often until it is no longer uncrowded.

It is as much the case that West Cambridge (or Charles River Dam Rd) are crowded because the promise of getting to/from the freeways makes it "worth it" to endure congestion on the local street.

Reducing lanes on CRDR will likely make traffic at both ends *better* (less)
 
I drive through there frequently since the changes took place. I rarely see people using the bus lane anymore, though the inbound light-cycle between Land Blvd and Museum Way continues to be bad, causing drivers to bunch up and block the intersection/causing them to ditch into the bus lane to avoid blocking the intersection. That needs to be fixed. Outbound, same thing, haven't seen many scofflaws in the bus lane for the full stretch.

During a typical (pre-COVID) rush hour, the outbound traffic on the dam road is a mix of people using it as a cut through to get to Gilmore Bridge to Rutherford Ave, using it to get to Land Blvd/Memorial Drive, or using it to get to 28. Of the 28 traffic, it's a mix of local traffic going into Cambridge/Somerville, semi-local traffic to Medford/Malden, and non-local people cutting off part of their 93 commute. Of all that traffic, the Mem Drive traffic and local 28 traffic is the least likely to be able to reroute easily. The rest is not reliant on the Dam Road to get to their destinations, it's just being used out of relative convenience/habit.

I also don't know if the bus lanes are meant to be permanent or just for the duration of the GLX construction.
 
HelloBostonHi said:
The new Kelly Sq:
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Wow...the number of bad-behavior moments in that span is still way too sphincter-clenching to be hanging a "Mission Accomplished" banner. But that's because it's physically impossible to build a Masshole-proof rotary, not any commentary on the quality of job they did @ Kelley. The degree of improvement over the old is stratospheric, but it didn't take more than 15 seconds of vid spotting the overspeeds and hard brake slams to conclude "Nope...still gonna avoid that place like the plague."
 
I still don't get why MassDot is shooting themselves in the foot re: East-West rail. It's an incredibly cheap project (at the "minium build" end) that has the possibility to score them huge political points in the state legislature, a place where they need all the votes they can get (especially with more big highway projects in Boston coming up).

Why on earth are they sandbagging a project that seems like it could be such a big political win for them? Am I misunderstanding the situation here?
 
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So a dumbass blew through the gates at the Morrissey Blvd. Drawbridge yesterday and got stuck, screwing traffic up for a good long while:
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1280945373817815040

This comment on the relevant UHub post raises a good question - what's the taxpayer money involved with keeping the bridge operational to accommodate a few dozen members of a yacht club? Not to mention the delays to drivers and pedestrians to give these guys access. I'm sure there's an MOU signed decades ago that's still valid, but it still feels like an unfair burden on the many for the benefit of a few.
 
Arenacale said:
So a dumbass blew through the gates at the Morrissey Blvd. Drawbridge yesterday and got stuck, screwing traffic up for a good long while:
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1280945373817815040

This comment on the relevant UHub post raises a good question - what's the taxpayer money involved with keeping the bridge operational to accommodate a few dozen members of a yacht club? Not to mention the delays to drivers and pedestrians to give these guys access. I'm sure there's an MOU signed decades ago that's still valid, but it still feels like an unfair burden on the many for the benefit of a few.
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Generally speaking all drawbridges in the US are regulated by the coast guard and they all must open on demand by any vessel. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg...CFR-2018-title33-vol1-part117.xml#seqnum117.5
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Wow...the number of bad-behavior moments in that span is still way too sphincter-clenching to be hanging a "Mission Accomplished" banner. But that's because it's physically impossible to build a Masshole-proof rotary, not any commentary on the quality of job they did @ Kelley. The degree of improvement over the old is stratospheric, but it didn't take more than 15 seconds of vid spotting the overspeeds and hard brake slams to conclude "Nope...still gonna avoid that place like the plague."
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The top left corner of the image is a serious problem. Theres no deflection, and none of them are yielding
 
Arenacale said:
So a dumbass blew through the gates at the Morrissey Blvd. Drawbridge yesterday and got stuck, screwing traffic up for a good long while:
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1280945373817815040

This comment on the relevant UHub post raises a good question - what's the taxpayer money involved with keeping the bridge operational to accommodate a few dozen members of a yacht club? Not to mention the delays to drivers and pedestrians to give these guys access. I'm sure there's an MOU signed decades ago that's still valid, but it still feels like an unfair burden on the many for the benefit of a few.
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With these situations right of way falls to who was there first. Since the water was there first they have right of way. I found this out reading about the portal bridge on the northeast corridor that has to also raise for boats and backs up the trains. Thats why in that case theyre building a taller fixed bridge.
 
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