General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

Delvin4519 said:
True. The problem with Davis is that most shuttles must travel via Clarendon Hill. There's also the 96 bus route to get to Mass Ave. from Davis, but they still have to travel via Alewife Brook Parkway to reach Alewife. Alewife Station isn't really in a good spot to run shuttle buses inbound to Davis, Porter, or Harvard. It's surrounded by heavily trafficked highways and parkways, plus Fresh Pond and other limited left turn routes, to try to get into Cambridge/Somerville/Belmont proper. It's especially true for trying to follow the rail lines into and out of town.

This got me thinking tangently. Take a map of all dedicated ROWs for railways or transitways, and try to run rail replacement shuttle buses for as many railway/transitway ROWs as possible. It also gives a look whether a conversion of a railway ROW into a subway line could eliminate a bus route (result:, very few existing bus routes are able to be scrapped with a rapid transit extension).

Using a blank map of transitway/railway ROWs, and run an assumption that all the inner core ROWs are converted into subway w/ more frequent stations. In the inner core w/ the 1-121 bus routes, it's no big deal to run shuttle buses, but finding a good route to run shuttles close to the railway ROW gets harder once outside of the inner core of Boston.

Map of potential (unverified) shuttle bus routes for all possible railway/transitway ROWs in the inner core Boston area, alongside the Highland Branch, Braintree Branch, and Watertown Branch. Red are the shuttle bus routes. Black are the railway ROWs, and cyan is the subway/transitway ROWs.
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Alewife Station sticks out as being one of the worst spots to be running rail replacement shuttle buses. Running shuttle buses to replace a reactivated Watertown Branch subway/metro rail line through Alewife and Porter is very tricky and even worse than the existing Alewife Station as a terminus station, having to travel to Porter and Watertown, instead of Davis.

If a additional station or so were added to the Fairmount Line, then one tried to busitute the entire Fairmount Line, there's not a lot of good shuttle bus routes for the Fairmount Line.

Try this out for yourself, and share the possible results. Find a way to run rail replacement shuttle buses on as many lines as possible within the inner core area of Boston, bonus points if subway/regional rail service is extended to 128 with more frequent stations/stops. Assume any potential (not currently existing) station spot is an "actual" station that needs to be served with rail replacement shuttle buses as close to the station location as possible. These are the maps to base off of (I just cut the ROW off where the T buses stop running, regardless if it's an appropiate place to terminate a rail line or not). For now, assume existing roadway configurations remain in place.
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Minor note: During Green Line D branch shutdowns, shuttle buses typically use Beacon St, Park Dr and Brookline Ave, so that they can stop right at Fenway station on Park Dr.

As for Alewife, I wonder if it's better to run shuttle buses from Porter instead of Davis. However, that will be confusing operationally.
 
I've wondered why the T doesnt use Day and Dover between Davis and Mass Ave like the historical 96 street car did. Probably too challenging now with both sides with parked cars. Seems like on regular rather than emergency shuttle days tho it wouldn't be that challenging to restrict one side of parking for shuttle operations.
 
Teban54 said:
Minor note: During Green Line D branch shutdowns, shuttle buses typically use Beacon St, Park Dr and Brookline Ave, so that they can stop right at Fenway station on Park Dr.

As for Alewife, I wonder if it's better to run shuttle buses from Porter instead of Davis. However, that will be confusing operationally.
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Got it, tweaked the map slightly.

So a Brookline Village - Kenmore /Lansdowne Station rail replacement shuttle bus route is slightly longer, with a deviation to Beacon St. to serve Fenway Station, instead of remaining on Brookline Ave. directly to Kenmore. It is faster for a passenger to board a Route 60 bus to Kenmore, instead of taking a Highland Branch rail replacement bus; that boards at Rt 60's bus stop at Longwood & Brookline Ave.; that subsitutes the D's Longwood stop.

It goes to show how running rail replacement shuttle buses is very difficult to do for railway ROW routes that do not follow street grid patterns. The more direct street routing you choose, the more further distance the front door to a subway and railway station is from the rail replacement shuttle bus stop. Given rail replacement shuttle buses need high frequency to mimic subway frequencies and capacities, an indirect routing on the street grid is a huge penalty for maintaining frequency. The most direct street route is usually served by a more direct and ordinary bus route. It's a problem when running buses overnight as a night bus network, how do we deal with the subway and rail routes with no bus route?

Only the outer portions of the B, C, and E branches are busable immediately. The E branch is subsituted with the 39 bus. The B and C branches just need equivalent bus stops, outside of the 57 on Commonwealth Ave. The shuttle buses for these 2 branches follow the most direct route, so there is minimal delay, and a rail replacement bus can operate to and from Kenmore Station to Cleveland Circle and Boston College in a reasonable time and speed. They can also be given a bus route no# for their surface portions west of Kenmore, say, 56 and 53 for the B and C. The western portions of the B and the C Branches are the hidden portions of the bus network, having been the only 2 routes to not be axed from the historical streetcar network, and therefore displayed on subway maps and omitted from bus maps.

This might go into the Crazy Transit Pitches/Infrastructure sandbox thread, but if a hypothectical Highland Branch operated as a rapid transit subway line into South Station via I-90, rail replacement shuttle buses would need to serve Lansdowne Station, instead of Kenmore Station. 2 crazy ideas: can rail replacement shuttle buses could remain on Beacon St. and stop there? Or if is it better to stay on Brookline Ave., and have Fenway passengers board shuttle buses a bit ways away from the subway stop? It's an interesting idea, if we convert another rail ROW into a subway line, then that's another route that needs rail replacement shuttle bus routing onto the street grid.
 
How do well-run transit agencies deal with this type of problem? If this exact thing happened in Tokyo, for example, how long would there be diversions and how would they handle the situation?
 
jklo said:
It's pretty clear that the real purpose of the law has nothing to do with TOD or even the MBTA. That Boston wasn't included in it should have been an obvious clue.
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What difference does it make whether Boston is included? It already 100% meets the requirements.
 
chrisbrat said:
this almost certainly isn't the appropriate forum, but i dunno where else is for this
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Also, holy shit, that damage is even more extensive than I originally thought based on the first few pictures I saw. And the piece of concrete is apparently still on the roof?
 
Red line diversion occurring on the north side with some mention of the slow zones. However, it is a bit alarming that the north (socioeconomically wealthy) side is getting addressed first and is mostly running near track speed while the state of tracks in the south side is clearly much more dire.

1675693474200.png
 
HenryAlan said:
What difference does it make whether Boston is included? It already 100% meets the requirements.
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Does it? I'm sure there have been plenty of projects rejected by the BRA because of density.
 
jklo said:
Does it? I'm sure there have been plenty of projects rejected by the BRA because of density.
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The density requirement of this law is 15 units per acre within half a mile of a T station. Show me a T station in Boston that doesn't meet that requirement.
 
HenryAlan said:
The density requirement of this law is 15 units per acre within half a mile of a T station. Show me a T station in Boston that doesn't meet that requirement.
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I'll give a cheeky answer for a bit of fun: I think the Drydock Ave @ Black Falcon Ave SL2 stop doesn't meet that requirement (if we look at half-mile walksheds; if we measure purely by crow-fly distance, the units over in City Point check the box). But I think this is a case where the exception proves the rule.
 
Does it? I'm sure there have been plenty of projects rejected by the BRA because of density.
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As written, the law requires a community to have at least one district that meets the 15/units and 0.5 mi criteria. Boston clearly meets this, as there is at least one district that meets the requirement.
 
chrisbrat said:
this almost certainly isn't the appropriate forum, but i dunno where else is for this
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I think this is a good thread for this: Very multi modal operational crisis for the MBTA: A Car in a garage damages a station, suspending train service and requiring bus adaptation.
 
fatnoah said:
As written, the law requires a community to have at least one district that meets the 15/units and 0.5 mi criteria. Boston clearly meets this, as there is at least one district that meets the requirement.
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If that was really the case, then why bother excluding Boston then. And Boston really should be held to a higher standard anyway.
 
jklo said:
If that was really the case, then why bother excluding Boston then. And Boston really should be held to a higher standard anyway.
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Construction in Boston (and likely Cambridge) has the highest cost per square foot of anywhere in the T service area.
If a goal of the policy is to maximize the T accessible housing available, then construction outside of Boston yields more units per $ spent. (And likely more units that approach some level of affordability without heavy subsidies.)
 
JeffDowntown said:
Construction in Boston (and likely Cambridge) has the highest cost per square foot of anywhere in the T service area.
If a goal of the policy is to maximize the T accessible housing available, then construction outside of Boston yields more units per $ spent. (And likely more units that approach some level of affordability without heavy subsidies.)
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But little to no demand at market rates. New construction might be slightly cheaper but is still very expensive in the burbs, esp when you factor in parking is non-negotiable.
 
jklo said:
If that was really the case, then why bother excluding Boston then. And Boston really should be held to a higher standard anyway.
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Inefficiency should be enough of an answer. Boston is known to be more than compliant, so this law doesn't address an issue that exists in Boston. What exactly would be the point of such a law existing that de facto can't be applied?
 
Wasn't the entire point of this law to try to spur TOD in suburbs where T stations exist, as Boston has been shouldering the brunt of new housing built for the region? As already pointed out - pretty much every T stop in Boston (and I would guess Cambridge/Somerville/etc) would already meet this criteria. I am fairly certain this was to explicitly target the burbs and beyond.
 
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