General Infrastructure

It is also federal law (33 U.S. Code § 499. Regulations for drawbridges) that the water based traffic has the right-of-way. Basically boats were plying navigable waters before cars were on roads, so the boat traffic was viewed as more important than land vehicles when the US code was written. (You think of the drawbridge as an impediment to your car trip, but the US Code views the road over the navigable water as an impediment to important marine traffic; perhaps archaic, but you need to get the law changed to fix it.)

The Coast Guard is allowed to make accommodations in schedule to try to minimize the disruption of the land traffic, but the water based traffic always wins the argument.
 
JeffDowntown said:
Basically boats were plying navigable waters before cars were on roads, so the boat traffic was viewed as more important than land vehicles when the US code was written.
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It works the same way with railroads and streets: whichever "was there first" is generally not responsible for the costs and trouble that the other mode incurs in crossing.
 
Wash said:
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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Charlie Baker has no vision.
 
jass said:
The top left corner of the image is a serious problem. Theres no deflection, and none of them are yielding
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I think the alignment problem is substantially worsened by the interim construction markings with a single wide lane, which masks the geometry. The final design with two lanes will have significantly more deflection (and hopefully clearer yield line markings).
 
HelloBostonHi said:
I'd never seen these posted before on the MBTA site, they now have some pretty comprehensive design guidelines posted for the public for all different modes, I figured some of us armchair (and real) engineers in here would be interested: https://www.mbta.com/engineering/design-standards-and-guidelines
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CR design standards is a good one, because that includes all the specs about vertical/horizontal clearances, allowable ascent/descent grades, and treatment of the protected freight clearance routes on the system. This is the one I ref whenever citing geometric constrictions on a (Crazy or devil-in-details Not Crazy) Purple Line Transit Pitch.

CR stations/parking design standards is also a good one for enumerating the accessibility requirements of all aspects of a station...including things like egress slope and parking/sidewalk-area accessibility that, in real terms, end up causing more non-accessibility violations than the actual platforms that take up lion's share of attention. Also contains the actual verbiage (see p. 2.6) that sets the T's 800 ft./9-car default standard platform length (oft-cited for aB postings), amongst other standards.

The accessibility stuff is crucial because the Mass Architectural Board holds the line on some of the toughest state-level accessibility regs in the country, going well beyond the Federal ADA. Those docs spell out all the places where MA supersets the fed rules.
 
HelloBostonHi said:
I'd never seen these posted before on the MBTA site, they now have some pretty comprehensive design guidelines posted for the public for all different modes, I figured some of us armchair (and real) engineers in here would be interested: https://www.mbta.com/engineering/design-standards-and-guidelines
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I have copies of these in my office. I needed to recreate some Commuter Rail wayfinder signs for a roadway project was I working on and my contact at the T physically mailed me a copy of the 77 standards. Couldn't have been nicer to deal with.
 
Arenacale said:
Here come the exit number changes: https://www.boston.com/news/local-n...hway-route-exit-numbers-massachusetts-october
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But...BUH GAWD!...you're erasin' muh heritage! This aggression shall not stand!!! 🤬
-- Some NIMBY from Cape or New Hampshire​

sununutweet_0.png
 
I was hoping that this might be the opportunity to make the upper 128 exits less screwy... the numbers will still jump backwards at the split but at least they will keep increasing in the NB direction instead of inverting at the split and decreasing as you head towards Gloucester from Peabody... I'll take it.
 
Having the upper 128 exits measured from the start of the 128 designation on I-95 (at the southern Rte 1 interchange) is probably the most sensible solution, but is still kind of screwy.
 
ceo said:
Having the upper 128 exits measured from the start of the 128 designation on I-95 (at the southern Rte 1 interchange) is probably the most sensible solution, but is still kind of screwy.
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It's law, so unfortunately route overlaps that diverge at only one end are going to be screwy by nature.

Part of me is sad, however, that this was the last best chance to restore 128 Milepost 0 to its rightful starting place at Braintree Split. Now it's truly and forever clipped at Canton.
 
Ye Olde New England has a time-honored tradition of confusing signs (or no signs at all), streets that change names suddenly, duplicate streets with the same name in the same town, and arcane sequential exit numbers, while most of the country had mile-based exits years ago. Part of the Yankee charm.
 
ceo said:
Having the upper 128 exits measured from the start of the 128 designation on I-95 (at the southern Rte 1 interchange) is probably the most sensible solution, but is still kind of screwy.
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It’s not screwy. It’s a federal mandate. Connecticut and Florida have already done this and the sky didn’t fall for them.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Part of me is sad, however, that this was the last best chance to restore 128 Milepost 0 to its rightful starting place at Braintree Split. Now it's truly and forever clipped at Canton.
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Interstate routes (I-95 and I-93 in this case) trump an overlapping state route every time.
 
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Charlie_mta said:
Interstate routes (I-95 and I-93 in this case) trump an overlapping state route every time.
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Yes...the 93/95 primaries carry the exit signage on the overlaps. That's always been understood, because there's no mystery to how milepost exits work. But it does mean that North Shore 'solo' 128 is going to count mileposts from Canton split while "Traffic on the 3's" still namechecks Canton-Braintree as "128" twenty-three years after that stopped literally being the case. Because it makes infinitely more namefinding sense to namecheck the beltway as "128"...it's Yankee Division Highway all the same including on the '97-sunset Braintree section, and it's the only place on the map where 95 & 93 stop being orientated vs. direction to Boston.

The decision to sunset Canton-Braintree was some notoriously catty Celluci-era MassDOT arbitrary decision because some pencilhead was making icky-poo faces at the lingering regionalism. I think the official excuse was something along the lines of re-routing US 1 triggered some arbitrary rule about state-route overlaps in triplicate...which was complete BS because all those "93/US 1/MA 3" signs on the Expressway went up in flagrant violation of the same self-cited rule and still get faithfully renewed for another generation. That was the petty/pedantic part. The regionalism lingers because it actually makes the most logical wayfinding sense for telling a radial apart from a spine.
 
I remember some years ago the State tried to eliminate the 128 designation on all but the Peabody-Gloucester segment. The other segments would be I-95 and I-93, with no 128 signage.
 
kingofsheeba said:
It’s not screwy. It’s a federal mandate. Connecticut and Florida have already done this and the sky didn’t fall for them.
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The exit numbering up there is screwy now, and will be a different kind of screwy after the milepost change. It's hardly the end of the world, people have been navigating a more confusing setup for longer. But it's still screwy to go from exit 64 to exit 38 on the same road deck, which is what will happen in Peabody after the renumbering. The fact that it's logically consistent for those of us who pay close attention to transit doesn't make it less screwy for non-nerds.

Over on 395 and 290, which is a similar situation, they are using dual mile markers, and continuing the numbers seamlessly along the whole roadway despite the designation change at the Pike. And that is going to make logical sense to motorists.
 
I would argue that having them continue logically past the split on both roadways could accidentally result in more confusion. The exit from I-95 to Route 114 would have the same number as the exit from 128 to Route 114 but go to a different place (they're equidistant from the split). Having the exit numbers restart at a different place makes that problem far less likely. That said I'd put Mile Marker 1 at the split since the rest of 128 is toast.
 
chmeeee said:
I would argue that having them continue logically past the split on both roadways could accidentally result in more confusion. The exit from I-95 to Route 114 would have the same number as the exit from 128 to Route 114 but go to a different place (they're equidistant from the split). Having the exit numbers restart at a different place makes that problem far less likely. That said I'd put Mile Marker 1 at the split since the rest of 128 is toast.
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It's only more confusion if you're the Governor of New Hampshire. Milepost-based exits work the same way everywhere else in the country and damn near all over the world, so localized confusion quickly gets smoothed out by rote consistency. Believe me...Massholes didn't invent bitching about changing over from sequential to MP numbering. This is a time-honored tradition in every state that's made the flip. Confusion never ends up lingering.

This will be interesting, however, if we actually correct some of our bugfuck Interstate wayfinding. If I-93 ever gets re-routed over MA 3 that's going to resequence everything. If US 3 gets re-badged as I-293 between Burlington and Manchester that'll resequence everything in-state. If MA 24 gets I-x95'd from Westport-north but NOT the disconnected Fall River-south rump that'll resequence everything. If they ever clean up the flagrantly illegal 395/290 mess in Auburn (290 Waterford, CT to Leominster swallowing 190? 490 E-W between Worcester and 495?) that'll resequence everything. But...we're also not the first state to go through that dilemma and come out of it sans Civil War.
 
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