General Infrastructure

Shepard said:
Are there plans to make this permanent - and look/feel permanent?

Stat, I don't see this as any less than the NYC interventions. If anything, actually, I think this goes further by truly creating an entirely new pedestrian plaza. Much of what NYC has done in the last few years has been restoring a semblance of balance back to pedestrians, but in ways that still generally feel hemmed-in and unpleasant (IMO - with exceptions).
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115 Winthrop Square/Winthrop Center's mitigation package makes it permanent with pavers and a flush curb. This trial was funded through the Millennium Tower mitigation package.
 
statler said:
This is fine but it still feels like a cut rate version of something NYC did five years ago. Same with the steps to nowhere.
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To be fair all of NYC's first plazas were cut rate too. They were designed to be temporary so they could be adjusted based on how well they worked. It's a smart plan.
 
Fair enough. Nothing wrong with coping good ideas.
 
I grant you that steps to nowhere is a bit silly, but it does send the message "hey, look! you can hang out in DTX even if you're not sketchy, and look, it's actually a bit boojie!"
 
statler said:
This is fine but it still feels like a cut rate version of something NYC did five years ago. Same with the steps to nowhere.

Oh well, an improvement is an improvement even if it isn't the most original idea.
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Street lights aren't original either. Glad Boston has 'em, though. :)
 
CSTH said:
So are they leaving the booths in place at the entrance to the Sumner? Looks that way from the prez, but it only shows 'Phase 1' - no 'Final'.

Leaving them there would seem to be the best option. That stretch of road is totally unique - you have a street-level city intersection, the highway, a lane drop, a 90-degree left turn, pedestrian crosswalks....and it definitely has it's own 'culture' in terms of the 'unwritten rules' of how the merge works at rush hour.

I just can't imagine that place being anything close to safe - or even functional - as 'open road' without a complete (and nearly-impossible) re-build of everything between the Logan ramps and the tunnel portal...
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Looks like removing the toll booths in Eastie has indeed created more problems than it solved.

https://www.universalhub.com/2018/neighborhood-gridlock-sumner-tunnel-changes-leave
 
Was just there this weekend and the signage coming from the airport is inadequate
 
Shepard said:
I grant you that steps to nowhere is a bit silly, but it does send the message "hey, look! you can hang out in DTX even if you're not sketchy, and look, it's actually a bit boojie!"
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Are we talking about the headhouse? We discussed those at length before, it was a nod to the old headhouse that was intended to be climbed and sat upon.
 
CSTH said:
Looks like removing the toll booths in Eastie has indeed created more problems than it solved.
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jass said:
Was just there this weekend and the signage coming from the airport is inadequate
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Until a year ago, I commuted through the Sumner every day. I count myself as truly fortunate for not having to do that anymore.

MassDOT has done a butcher's job on this critical piece of infrastructure. They were called to account at a public meeting last October at East Boston High School and were righteously excoriated for this shit-circus. Since than, little has been achieved beyond the persistently infuriating conditions for East Bostonians, North Shore commuters, and visitors to Logan.

Councilor Edwards has told me at a recent public meeting that MassDOT has refused to meet with the public and be held to account for this "solution."
 
Beton Brut said:
Until a year ago, I commuted through the Sumner every day. I count myself as truly fortunate for not having to do that anymore.

MassDOT has done a butcher's job on this critical piece of infrastructure. They were called to account at a public meeting last October at East Boston High School and were righteously excoriated for this shit-circus. Since than, little has been achieved beyond the persistently infuriating conditions for East Bostonians, North Shore commuters, and visitors to Logan.

Councilor Edwards has told me at a recent public meeting that MassDOT has refused to meet with the public and be held to account for this "solution."
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BB - I've just slowly been waking up to the fact that Twitter can actually be used, to a certain extent, to get local things done. Savvy users in my 'hood will hammer-tweet and tag local town halls and neighborhood groups who then retweet it, and also tag local reps.... and at least some of the time it does seem to get things done.

Harder with the state agencies, though. They seem to feel no need to ever be held to account, and are quite comfortable being the opaque bureaucracies they are.
 
Beton Brut said:
Until a year ago, I commuted through the Sumner every day. I count myself as truly fortunate for not having to do that anymore.

MassDOT has done a butcher's job on this critical piece of infrastructure. They were called to account at a public meeting last October at East Boston High School and were righteously excoriated for this shit-circus. Since than, little has been achieved beyond the persistently infuriating conditions for East Bostonians, North Shore commuters, and visitors to Logan.

Councilor Edwards has told me at a recent public meeting that MassDOT has refused to meet with the public and be held to account for this "solution."
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The main goal of this project was to tighten up the entry to the tunnel and restore the street network of nearby streets. For years residents wanted this area to feel more like a neighborhood and not a highway dumping you into a sea of pavement and a free for all entrance to the tunnel. These changes accomplished that goal.

Why are so many people cutting through the neighborhood? That ought to be what they try to fix first.
 
sm89 said:
The main goal of this project was to tighten up the entry to the tunnel and restore the street network of nearby streets. For years residents wanted this area to feel more like a neighborhood and not a highway dumping you into a sea of pavement and a free for all entrance to the tunnel. These changes accomplished that goal.
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I respectfully disagree. The MassDOT project prioritizes vehicles traveling south on Rt 1A (from Logan Airport or the North Shore) over vehicles on local streets.

sm89 said:
Why are so many people cutting through the neighborhood? That ought to be what they try to fix first.
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There isn't one root cause of the cut through traffic; part of it is "oral history," and part of it is navigation systems that offer active traffic forecasting and route alternatives. Good luck fixing that...

What a lot of people fail to understand is that the toll-plaza generated a positive side-effect -- traffic-calming. With the plaza, there was an "equalizing" scrum. It was tight and congested, but drivers made eye-contact at slow speeds, and figured it out.

Try merging from a traffic signal into a stream of vehicles moving at close-to highway speeds. Add a general sense of confusion and disorientation into the mix. Consider human factors, haste, stress, inconsideration, carelessness. MassDOT's design not only fails to take this spectrum of challenges into consideration -- it exacerbates them.
 
^ Exactly. I pulled a couple years of commuting through there too. It used to work because 1A drivers and merging drivers were on more or less equal footing.

That's going to have to be restored, somehow. I think the best option might be taking 1A traffic down to a single lane, and giving the local mergers a lane of their own. That'll still be tricky because people fight hard while entering the tunnel to get into the appropriate lane for their exit (e.g. left for 93, right for storrow) but itd be a start.

And to make that possible, you probably have to eliminate the 'offramp' entirely, so you have a merge rather than a weave where the logan ramp and the 1A come together, and so you don't also have a weave (now with that stop light) once it hits ground level.

Oh and to control the cut-through traffic you could perhaps add a toll gantry further north on 1A to track plates and charge a steep premium to anyone who exited and reentered etc.

But for the time being this is properly fucked.
 
I attended the public "feedback session" a year ago. I was disappointed that it was so easy to make the Commonwealth's traffic engineers appear witless and unprepared.

I asked if they were videotaping traffic and studying driver behavior. They asked why they would do that. I explained that the most accident-prone driver isn't drunk or high or texting -- instead they're simply confused; observing "the confused" as they interact with a piece of infrastructure may lead to design improvements. They indicated that they only studied vehicle counts to inform their design.

Pro Tip: If you're designing something for human use, human psychology will provide key data points.

It's clear that MassDOT is only prepared to answer questions that nobody asked...
 
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Beton Brut said:
I respectfully disagree. The MassDOT project prioritizes vehicles traveling south on Rt 1A (from Logan Airport or the North Shore) over vehicles on local streets.
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Exactly. Why would they prioritize an on-ramp over the highway which is just continuing its route into downtown?

Beton Brut said:
There isn't one root cause of the cut through traffic; part of it is "oral history," and part of it is navigation systems that offer active traffic forecasting and route alternatives. Good luck fixing that...
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When the highway flow is prioritized, there is no reason to filter through East Boston side streets to get to the tunnel.
 
sm89 said:
Why would they prioritize an on-ramp over the highway which is just continuing its route into downtown?
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Not prioritize. Load-balance toward equilibrium. Removing the toll plaza (with its traffic-calming side effect) has generated a predictable outcome -- capacity-induced demand. The downstream effect is a backup of residents who also need to commute through the tunnel, blended with late-comers from the North Shore who navigate their way out of the 1A traffic jam.

sm89 said:
When the highway flow is prioritized, there is no reason to filter through East Boston side streets to get to the tunnel.
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Your statement has no connection with reality. None at all.

If this is a solution, many of us would like the problem back.
 
Yeah and keep in mind there's just a single lane of 1A South feeding this, plus two lanes from the airport.
 
Beton Brut said:
Not prioritize. Load-balance toward equilibrium. Removing the toll plaza (with its traffic-calming side effect) has generated a predictable outcome -- capacity-induced demand. The downstream effect is a backup of residents who also need to commute through the tunnel, blended with late-comers from the North Shore who navigate their way out of the 1A traffic jam.
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Are you saying there is no induced demand onto side streets from giving more priority to the East Boston on-ramp?
 
No. Read what I wrote again.

And there is no "on-ramp" -- it's a traffic signal that allows "local" traffic to enter the tunnel.
 
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