General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

It's been done here before. The Harvard bus/trackless tunnel used to have simultaneous trolleys and buses until all the Cambridge trolley lines went by the boards in '58. They definitely gakked the Silver Line by not making it light rail, esp. Washington St. The engineers even admit it should've been, but the BRT lobby had the pols' pockets stuffed with cash.

I don't think it makes any sense to lay track in the Transitway until it's somehow joined with the Green Line. Which can't be done with the SL Phase III as designed because it's unbuildable. Digging under streets is too hard for there to be any more downtown subways. The Big Dig proved there's too many undocumented utilities, too many abutters and tight corners, too much landfilled debris under Boston, and too much geological nuttiness with the water table because of glacial-deposit rocky soil. The costs are so extreme it could never be justified again on a FRESH under-street dig (i.e. SL III, not things like the North-South Rail Link under 93 pre-provisioned by the Big Dig).

If they did something like laying an alternate-route Phase III tunnel 1-1/2 blocks under Shawmut Ave. to the Pike from the end of the abandoned Tremont St. tunnel, then under the RR tracks from South End to South Station...it's much more realistic engineering. They already would have to temporarily rip the s*** out of the NEC from Washington St. to South Station to build the half-mile long North-South Rail Link portal tunnel underneath the footprint of the Providence/Worcester tracks. If they combined those two projects and in the same dig dropped a light rail tunnel over the footprint of the RR tunnel to S. Station, it would get Phase III done for billions less time and money. Nowhere near as difficult to dig under well-packed soil on a wide railbed uninterrupted-active for 150 years and undisturbed by underground utility line spaghetti.

Build that and you can ride a trolley straight from downtown to S. Station and the Waterfront, and hop onto an airport bus from the same exact platform in the same exact subway anywhere from SS to the Convention Ctr. Maybe even continue to City Point or Southie--Andrew on a short streetcar jaunt while the Airport buses peel out into the Ted.


Re: subway under the B, BERy was thinking that way back in 1932 when Kenmore station and the B and C portals were built. The B platforms were built high-level with wood covering a hollow deep railbed (since filled in support the Type 7/8's weight) to allow future conversion to heavy rail. The C loop was designed to keep the C a surface trolley looping at Kenmore with cross-platform transfer to the heavy-rail trains. The subway would go to Packards, up Brighton Ave. on the A line route, and eventually angle over onto 2 of the pre-Pike Worcester line's 4 tracks en route out of town. Possibly with a short branch subway from Newton Corner to Watertown that then could go elsewhere cutting onto the Watertown Branch RR ROW. Surface B would've been abandoned from Packards to Chestnut Hill Ave. where it closely paralleled the A and C, and the C would've been extended via CH Ave. to BC.

Same deal when the Huntington Subway was built in '41. They saw it going to Brigham under the reservation, then eventually getting filled in to Brookline Village onto the eventual D line. Unfortunately they ran out of money, had to stop at Northeastern, and had to compromise with Copley Jct. instead of a proper flying junction.

The B or E ROW's are similar subway candidates for the same reason that the NEC has relatively underground-undisturbed existing trackbed to cover under with easyish-engineering and minimal surface disruption. But very short-gap street infills like the 1/3-mile Red-Blue connector and the 1/2-mile Brigham-BV leg are the only viable street-dig exceptions (both also have a less density and fewer engineering challenges than a Chinatown dig). Boston is never getting a 2nd Ave. Subway. Even NYC had to wait 7 decades, billions in funding, and a crisis where the Lexington Ave. line could no longer function without relief to get that megaproject underway. Under much wider, less tightly-abutted, straighter, less-landfilled Manhattan streets vs. Boston's.

Our only viable options for us are existing railbed buries like the B/E and special cases like the N-S Link and its under-railbed approach tunnels. I don't even think the south half of the Urban Ring through Longwood and Roxbury could ever be tunneled as proposed or grade-separated like the above-ground railbed north half. It would have to be streetcar at best, and each half would have to compromise by looping through the existing (perhaps B/E subwayed) Green Line in lieu of a complete circuit. But at least we have that much going for future options, and potential to bulk up with new east-west and (via the Link) north-south trunks.
 
Last edited:
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

F-Line to Dudley said:
the BRT lobby
Click to expand...

I've often wondered: who is this exactly?

F-Line to Dudley said:
Digging under streets is too hard for there to be any more downtown subways.
Click to expand...

I get the logic about connecting the GL to the SL via a bit of a roundabout route under the NEC. But unless I'm wrong, aren't the SL platforms at SS oriented with an Essex Street approach in mind? In any case, an Essex Street tunnel would be only a bit more than half a mile... I can readily see that you're far better informed than I am, but it certainly blows my mind that the cost of such a short tunnel could be so high - if that were the case, then London's Thameslink and Crossrail tunnels would be inconceivable... right?

Thanks as always for your thoughtful forward-looking posts.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Shepard said:
I've often wondered: who is this exactly?
Click to expand...

I would imagine along the lines of Boston Sand and Gravel and Wakefield Cement, for one. Look at the Waterfront tunnel, it's 100% cement throughout. Not only that but we got ripped; it is crumbling to hell, so whoever did the job can land a contract to repave it and patch it up, or do the whole thing over.


F-Line to Dudley said:
Re: subway under the B, BERy was thinking that way back in 1932 when Kenmore station and the B and C portals were built. The B platforms were built high-level with wood covering a hollow deep railbed (since filled in support the Type 7/8's weight) to allow future conversion to heavy rail. The C loop was designed to keep the C a surface trolley looping at Kenmore with cross-platform transfer to the heavy-rail trains. The subway would go to Packards, up Brighton Ave. on the A line route, and eventually angle over onto 2 of the pre-Pike Worcester line's 4 tracks en route out of town. Possibly with a short branch subway from Newton Corner to Watertown that then could go elsewhere cutting onto the Watertown Branch RR ROW. Surface B would've been abandoned from Packards to Chestnut Hill Ave. where it closely paralleled the A and C, and the C would've been extended via CH Ave. to BC.

Same deal when the Huntington Subway was built in '41. They saw it going to Brigham under the reservation, then eventually getting filled in to Brookline Village onto the eventual D line. Unfortunately they ran out of money, had to stop at Northeastern, and had to compromise with Copley Jct. instead of a proper flying junction.
Click to expand...

I wish BERy were here today. :( Minus the lack of money...

Also, from the sounds of it, the B-line subway was already dug out to Packards Corner? So basically they need to just lay rail and put in walls...? Can't believe that's now blown away.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Shepard said:
I've often wondered: who is this exactly?



I get the logic about connecting the GL to the SL via a bit of a roundabout route under the NEC. But unless I'm wrong, aren't the SL platforms at SS oriented with an Essex Street approach in mind? In any case, an Essex Street tunnel would be only a bit more than half a mile... I can readily see that you're far better informed than I am, but it certainly blows my mind that the cost of such a short tunnel could be so high - if that were the case, then London's Thameslink and Crossrail tunnels would be inconceivable... right?

Thanks as always for your thoughtful forward-looking posts.
Click to expand...

BRT's heavily funded by petroleum interests, and has backing of think tanks like the Heritage Foundation who'd rather see public transit aligned around petroleum interests when it has to be implemented. Gained traction during the Bush administration for Fed funding, which is why the T went ga-ga for it for a few years. Without getting too political about it, cities and states aligned themselves with BRT out of political triangulation to angle for funding. As always, it's about the pork. The air's seeped out of the enthusiasm for it as gas prices go up, BRT projects built in the last 15 years like the SL failed to track with expectations, and the political winds and gravy train swung more to rail.

All of the "model" BRT systems in the world cited as examples of it done right either are full-built with grade separation (Curitiba, Brazil...the one BRT proponents always flog as their case study) or have a full grade-separated center loop radially distributing mixed-traffic branches around a logical street grid (Ottawa Transitway). Do either of those describe Boston? Washington St. doesn't have hardly any room for a reservation, and there are few streets in town that can handle more than short stretches of painted bus lane (which are particularly ineffective at speeding through a nonsensically laid street grid). And we can't build bus tunnels with 40 MPH turning radii under these streets...we get the slow, claustrophobic SL Transitway at best, a no-build recommendation (SL III, Urban Ring tunnel) at worst.

It's all about right-sizing. BRT works better than light rail when you've got a certain mix of roadway geometry and service patterns. Light rail works better at certain service levels with the right mix of grade-separation, and can shove through manageably short mixed traffic stretches by being the undisputed traffic priority alpha dog on the road. In some places BOTH are the answer: Ottawa's building a new LRT system tied to the Transitway loop to add some grade-separated routes to the mix and relieve overloaded bus lines. All modes should be considered when you're transit planning...it would be tin-eared not to. They shouldn't have to compete with each other. But that's exactly what the T did...they backed themselves into a corner with a mode-vs.-mode turf war and wasted 10 years of unworkable designs and tortured public outreach trying to prove themselves right. And overspent for station amenities (see Washington St. shelters-that-don't-shelter) and putting it on the subway map to try to pass it off. Now we got nuthin' for the two biggest ridership, most transformative public transit projects on the table. With no practical hope for reviving them in the next 15 years. So, guys...did that stubborn pride prove you right?

There's nothing preventing a BRT/LRT mix here. Do LRT where there's existing rail ROW's or easy connections to the subway; the width dimensions aren't there to run acceptable-speed buses vs. fixed track. Do as many BRT elements as you can on those streets where you badly need a crosstown route but can't drag streetcars too far afield in mixed-running. And don't @#$% oversell it as true rapid-transit in the parts where it does have to compromise with mixed traffic (and, yes, I think that also means having to acknowledge some inconvenient truths about the B line and our Central "Subway's" current suitability to task).
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Re: tunnel construction. Nothing's engineering-impossible if you want and need it bad enough. NYC needs the 2nd Ave. Subway bad enough, and doesn't have practical alternatives. But there's right-sizing here, too. Tremont and Stuart are too sharp, narrow, and abutting structure-constrained to do a bus tunnel with tolerable speed. Or ANY tunnel without crippling cost, extreme disruption, and huge hidden challenges with all the undocumented utilities and crap under the surface. They don't have nearly that problem tunneling underneath existing surface rails or picking their battles on wider/lower-density streets where they're joining a couple pieces of existing infrastructure with just a few blocks of disruption.

If they've got to rip stuff up, why not opt for the faster and vastly less painful/expensive cut and cover under railroad tracks when it gets you the same place? It's actually not much more distance. The Essex St. alignment required 3000 ft. of mainline tunnel with a very tight loop under Boylston abutting the burial ground. Then there's the portals. The "short" one requires 1500 more feet, a hard right off the loop + hard left across Eliot Norton Park. The "long" one, which was also the "best" one because of fewest obstructions en route, requires 2100 feet, a hard right off the loop, 2 hard lefts and another hard rights, and destroying the old trolley tunnel. The "compromise" one they floated as a last-ditch makes the main tunnel a block longer, precariously abuts the entire length of the burial ground, builds an exact copy of the old trolley tunnel less than a block away, spits out at the Pike at almost the Tremont/Arlington intersection, and requires 3 blocks of surface back-tracking on Herald/Marginal and over the Pike to get onto Washington.

Is that really worth building 5000 ft. of mind-numbingly slow and convoluted bus tunnel when you can re-use 2000 ft. of existing trolley tunnel and build exactly the same length of new construction underneath 5 open RR tracks of no-man's land with only 1 tight curve at South Station that you can take on rails instead of tires? Boo-hoo, they build the intermediate transfer station at New England Medical center instead of Chinatown, and you have to walk down a concourse to the Orange Line lobby...half as long as the Berkeley St. one at Arlington. And leg it one whole block from Boylston station to go to Chinatown. The horror.


Really, this isn't even Crazy Transit Pitches thread fodder. What they were proposing as the real thing was the crazy.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

We can always have guided busways.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPhhbF0Ms7g

But, in a tunnel. Thus, we could get 40 MPH sub-bus.

Also, if a bus died in this, theoretically couldn't you just push it along until there's a point where it can be steered off or towed?
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

F-Line said:
They saw it going to Brigham under the reservation, then eventually getting filled in to Brookline Village onto the eventual D line. Unfortunately they ran out of money, had to stop at Northeastern, and had to compromise with Copley Jct. instead of a proper flying junction.
Click to expand...

Since this a major problem spot for the Green Line, can a flying junction be added some day
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

jass said:
Yes, those petroleum interests are raking in the cash with the electric SL waterfront and CNG washington lines.
Click to expand...

CNG...you better believe it. Natural gas is getting full-force lobbying as the Next Big Thing? we can drill out of the ground forever and ever...if you Feds would only give a big enough subsidy kiss to frack the hell out of the ground.

The Transitway? The T bankrupted its own dual-modes manufacturer trying to make a Frankenstein vehicle it could shoehorn into a tunnel it half-assed to rail dimensions instead of proper BRT. Their problem is they didn't listen to anyone and just assumed BRT = OMG its the universal solvent of mass transit! instead of actually paying attention to design requirements. The fossil fuel lobby wants to get cities to buy fossil fuel transit, and that means not self-defeating with such poor implementation that the line flops and the city abandons BRT expansion. This isn't the GM Streetcar conspiracy...the Bus Rapid Transit Policy Center think tank definitely has a self-interest in promoting successful implementations that actually get cities plunking down for more tricked-out, premium-price BRT vehicles. I doubt they're too happy with the job the T did on the SL.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

PaulC said:
Since this a major problem spot for the Green Line, can a flying junction be added some day
Click to expand...

Yes...but not at the existing junction because the Public Library's expanded footprint makes screwing around under that spot almost impossible vs. when the split was first built 70 years ago.

Easiest by far would be to relocate the E split through the old Tremont St. tunnel from Boylston , extending it 1-1/2 blocks from Eliot Norton Park to the Pike. And then taking a right under the NEC tracks (Worcester Line tracks to steer clear of the Orange Line portal), go to Back Bay, and turn onto Huntington at about the same spot before Prudential where the current tunnel's curve straightens out. Tremont St. tunnel is 4-track with its own flying junction midway, so E trains would use the old Lenox St. tracks and the City Point tracks could be saved for all that LRT Silver Line Phase III alternative construction. Both the Dudley streetcar and the "compromise" left turn under the NEC to South Station to avoid the billion-dollar Essex St. dig. About 2500 feet of total new tunneling from Eliot Norton Park to Huntington.

The station at Back Bay would be crucial and HUGE ridership, and solves the problem of having to walk from Copley to get there. It also peels a huge amount of traffic off the congested Boylston-Copley subway stretch and consolidates the E split onto the 4-track Park-Boylston portion where it would be fully traffic-separated from everything running to Kenmore. Very large capacity increase to the Central Subway, which is half the reason it's worthwhile. And wouldn't likely preclude keeping Copley Jct. as a limited-use alt routing.

I think if you commit to building that SL Phase III alt alignment using the NEC, then adding this other turn in the opposite direction to Huntington it becomes a much more attractive prospect to go for because you're maxing use of the Tremont tunnel with 2-3 new branches and getting max efficiency out of that new construction. If you don't do any of that SL replacement stuff, then it gets a bit harder to justify that much relocation work for just the E. Anyway, this provision is a third of your reason to not blow up the unused Tremont tunnel for some insane duplicate BRT tunnel on the same footprint.
 
Last edited:
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Tremendous amount of info here.

My very initial and scattered observations:

- Airport blue line stop still has 3x the usage as the SL terminal stops. Surprising?
- Although we consider them largely useless, each of the BU B line stops gets more usage than many heavy rail stops - certainly more than most surface stops aside from obvious high-usage ones like Coolidge Corner
- SL Dudley should probably have additional Dudley express service considering all the usage at Dudley compared to the other stops.
- Buses 1, 66 and 39 are still the highest ridership buses - but SL Dudley is right up there with them as well. SL waterfront/airport is small by comparison to these lines.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

F-Line to Dudley said:
Yes...but not at the existing junction because the Public Library's expanded footprint makes screwing around under that spot almost impossible vs. when the split was first built 70 years ago.

Easiest by far would be to relocate the E split through the old Tremont St. tunnel from Boylston , extending it 1-1/2 blocks from Eliot Norton Park to the Pike. And then taking a right under the NEC tracks (Worcester Line tracks to steer clear of the Orange Line portal), go to Back Bay, and turn onto Huntington at about the same spot before Prudential where the current tunnel's curve straightens out. Tremont St. tunnel is 4-track with its own flying junction midway, so E trains would use the old Lenox St. tracks and the City Point tracks could be saved for all that LRT Silver Line Phase III alternative construction. Both the Dudley streetcar and the "compromise" left turn under the NEC to South Station to avoid the billion-dollar Essex St. dig. About 2500 feet of total new tunneling from Eliot Norton Park to Huntington.

The station at Back Bay would be crucial and HUGE ridership, and solves the problem of having to walk from Copley to get there. It also peels a huge amount of traffic off the congested Boylston-Copley subway stretch and consolidates the E split onto the 4-track Park-Boylston portion where it would be fully traffic-separated from everything running to Kenmore. Very large capacity increase to the Central Subway, which is half the reason it's worthwhile. And wouldn't likely preclude keeping Copley Jct. as a limited-use alt routing.

I think if you commit to building that SL Phase III alt alignment using the NEC, then adding this other turn in the opposite direction to Huntington it becomes a much more attractive prospect to go for because you're maxing use of the Tremont tunnel with 2-3 new branches and getting max efficiency out of that new construction. If you don't do any of that SL replacement stuff, then it gets a bit harder to justify that much relocation work for just the E. Anyway, this provision is a third of your reason to not blow up the unused Tremont tunnel for some insane duplicate BRT tunnel on the same footprint.
Click to expand...

Take the old City Point tracks, and go deep bore tunnel from the old portal point under the Pike, NEC and Orange Line and re-emerge on Washington Street in the South End, and replace the Silver Line with LRT.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Shepard said:
Tremendous amount of info here.

My very initial and scattered observations:

- Airport blue line stop still has 3x the usage as the SL terminal stops. Surprising?
- Although we consider them largely useless, each of the BU B line stops gets more usage than many heavy rail stops - certainly more than most surface stops aside from obvious high-usage ones like Coolidge Corner
- SL Dudley should probably have additional Dudley express service considering all the usage at Dudley compared to the other stops.
- Buses 1, 66 and 39 are still the highest ridership buses - but SL Dudley is right up there with them as well. SL waterfront/airport is small by comparison to these lines.
Click to expand...

Remember to add up SL1, SL2 and SLWaterfront (the peak hour tunnel bus). All those SL2 riders arent going to design center, they're hitting the underground stations.

Then you get a number right up there with the top bus lines.

Of course, SL4 and SL5 should be added together as well.

For lines that are called failure so often here, they sure are popular.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

When you're talking about such a transit-dependent population (SL Washington), popularity doesn't seem like the best criterion of success.

And plus, airport passengers could also be considered transit-dependent...
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Shepard said:
- Airport blue line stop still has 3x the usage as the SL terminal stops. Surprising?
Click to expand...

I'm not surprised. The majority of Airport Station's passengers are using the East Boston neighborhood entrance (a local market the SL stops don't have access to). And for airport passengers not starting out on the Red Line, its still the easiest/fastest way to get to the terminals.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Does anyone know how much the SL has cost to date?
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

I prefer to take the SL to and from the airport because it drops you off/picks you up in front of the terminal you need. The Airport BL station is so far away from the actual airport that you have to take the shuttle. It's extremely inconvenient.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top