General Infrastructure

fatnoah said:
As a former resident of Melrose, I can confirm that the 3(!!!!) commuter rail stops there have turned that town into a post-apocalyptic hellhole. I had to move to Winchester, which only has two stops, but I still keep the door locked and rarely leave my house due to the rampant train-related crime. The only positive is that the convenient connection to the city has really kept property values depressed in those towns, which made it more affordable to live there.
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As a fellow fan of deadpan sarcasm, I salute you, sir.
 
fatnoah said:
As a former resident of Melrose, I can confirm that the 3(!!!!) commuter rail stops there have turned that town into a post-apocalyptic hellhole. I had to move to Winchester, which only has two stops, but I still keep the door locked and rarely leave my house due to the rampant train-related crime. The only positive is that the convenient connection to the city has really kept property values depressed in those towns, which made it more affordable to live there.
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Given your premise that three CR stops in one community is equivalent to hell, you must be in heaven that Winchester has only had one stop (vs two) for the past two years. 😂
 
Bus and bike lane going in on boylston st.

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Only in Boston
 
stefal said:
Seems like an astronomical waste of money, looking at the implementation plan...
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For the most part it's all pretty small things, a lot of improving those terrifyingly short merge lanes for example. That being said, there are a couple places where that gets quite expensive and in those cases I'm not sure it's worth it.

What I'm not happy to see is $50 million being spent on highway widening. That's more than enough to make a significant dent (About 25% of the way to Littleton/495 based on NEC electrification costs) towards electrification of the Fitchburg Line for example.

There's also some other things that I'm just not sure are necessary. Dual lane ramps seem... questionable, for example.
 
TheRatmeister said:
For the most part it's all pretty small things, a lot of improving those terrifyingly short merge lanes for example. That being said, there are a couple places where that gets quite expensive and in those cases I'm not sure it's worth it.

What I'm not happy to see is $50 million being spent on highway widening. That's more than enough to make a significant dent (About 25% of the way to Littleton/495 based on NEC electrification costs) towards electrification of the Fitchburg Line for example.

There's also some other things that I'm just not sure are necessary. Dual lane ramps seem... questionable, for example.
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Having gone over the rotary section, it seems like they're just ignoring induced demand. Their tables on the math for rotary improvements keep demand constant and show travel time reductions, rather than the other way around. That's basic stuff and its omission is nothing short of negligence.
 
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TheRatmeister said:
Having gone over the rotary section, it seems like they're just ignoring induced demand. Their tables on the math for rotary improvements keep demand constant and show travel time reductions, rather than the other way around. That's basic stuff and its omission is nothing short of negligence.
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That's true but I think a good number of people would stay on 2 instead of cutting through Concord if the Rotary was grade separated. Even though the time benefit AM EB wouldn't be that much (unless they grade separate the whole Concord segment or did some magic with light queues)

I agree that it's still not worth it.
 
jklo said:
That's true but I think a good number of people would stay on 2 instead of cutting through Concord if the Rotary was grade separated. Even though the time benefit AM EB wouldn't be that much (unless they grade separate the whole Concord segment or did some magic with light queues)

I agree that it's still not worth it.
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But it wouldn't change that either. Once travel for Rt 2 reached equilibrium again the same number of people would cut through Concord. If you want fewer people going through Concord then that route needs to be discouraged with lower speed limits, traffic calming measures, etc.
 
TheRatmeister said:
For the most part it's all pretty small things, a lot of improving those terrifyingly short merge lanes for example. That being said, there are a couple places where that gets quite expensive and in those cases I'm not sure it's worth it.

What I'm not happy to see is $50 million being spent on highway widening. That's more than enough to make a significant dent (About 25% of the way to Littleton/495 based on NEC electrification costs) towards electrification of the Fitchburg Line for example.

There's also some other things that I'm just not sure are necessary. Dual lane ramps seem... questionable, for example.
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100%. I'd never seen these until I moved to the PNW (Metro Portland, OR, specifically.). They do not work. All you're doing is creating another merge point, which is...always a challenge for people, but especially out here, where people do not pay attention while driving, traffic slows dramatically at every dual lane, signalized ramp.

Hate to think that Boston is adopting this terrible concept anywhere.
 
MassDOT would never have the audacity to buck conventional wisdom by talking about induced demand, and using it to drive their vision for a road.
 
TheRatmeister said:
But it wouldn't change that either. Once travel for Rt 2 reached equilibrium again the same number of people would cut through Concord. If you want fewer people going through Concord then that route needs to be discouraged with lower speed limits, traffic calming measures, etc.
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The Concord rotary is a bottleneck. The reason you have people taking all sort of conceptually bizarre routes to avoid it is because of the drastic difference in the road capacity of Route 2 on either side of it vs the throughput of the Concord rotary, and the degree to which that specific point acts as a bottleneck.

If fixed, you may at some point reach some equilibrium of delay where the average time it takes to get from 495 to 128/95 on Route 2 takes the same amount of time as it does today, from higher usage. But that will be the result of more generalized slowdowns on the corridor from high volume, not the high delay of that specific point.

That matters significantly when it comes to diversions.

Cutting through Concord does not save time when Route 2 is crawling along at 25mph along the corridor at rush hour. It only saves time when you are going to sit in a queue for the rotary for 20 minutes, but the moment you get past it you'll be back to highway speed.
 
I’m curious on the constraining impact the rotary has on desirability of real estate north/west of it for folks who commute to the city. I assume it has some, but I don’t think I have seen it quantified.
 
RandomWalk said:
I’m curious on the constraining impact the rotary has on desirability of real estate north/west of it for folks who commute to the city. I assume it has some, but I don’t think I have seen it quantified.
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Out around here I don't know if you can say town-by-town what highway they have most affinity for; its likely equally easy to get to 495/ Rt2 / Rt 3/I90. But if we stick to towns that actually contain the Rt 2 corridor, and if we use the DOR cherry sheet income / asset model as a proxy for desirability, heading east from the rotary, Concord itself and Lincoln are 8th & 9th on the Income per capita list, very nearby Carlisle is 10. Lexington is 14th. West of the rotary, Acton is 49th, Boxborough is 47th, Littleton is 77th, Harvard is 56th, Lancaster is 187. For context, Concord at 8th has DOR income per captia of 226k. At 49th, Acton is 92k; The 100k to 200k group contains towns that rank 11-38.

That said, I don't know that there is correlation to the rotary itself there. That area framed by Rt 3, 495 and 95 contains a solid portion of the high income towns outside the north shore, but at this edge you're seeing a lot of income drop off generally in a fairly consistent arc.

East one-town-over Bedford is 34th. Weston and Wayland are probably more I90 oriented, but are 1 and 7. Sudbury is a wobbler, but ranks 17th. Maynard ranks 156th. is technically west of Rt 2, but its primary route to Rt 2 is via 62, joining east of the rotary,
West One-Town-Over Stow is 41st, Groton is 54th, Westford is 61st, Ayer is 209, Shirley is 246th.
 
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Back in the 80s, DEC’s presence along the 495 belt definitely provided a boost to the far side communities.
 
RandomWalk said:
Back in the 80s, DEC’s presence along the 495 belt definitely provided a boost to the far side communities.
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Funny you mention it... they are apparently redeveloping the DEC/IBM site with housing and retail?
 
jklo said:
Funny you mention it... they are apparently redeveloping the DEC/IBM site with housing and retail?
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Littleton? Yea the town just approved a site master plan for that one. The existing buildings are staying, but it's fairly well massive. 804 units, mostly one bed, 241 2 bed and 79 3 bed family units, plus a hotel and retail and a shuttle to Littleton /495. I'll need to be convinced retail will work out here, since the newish The Point mall down the street still has an entire strip of vacant storefronts and several pad sites, but it's been vacant for years.

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Littleton has approved like 5 of these major site redevelopments over the past 5 years or so, but so far most of them haven't actually materialized, and one of them was literally proposed by a bank. If they couldn't make the numbers work, I don't know that anyone else could.
 
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