General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

whittle said:
We shouldn't be letting them get away with having people walk through crowded orange line platforms being called "connecting" the red and blue lines. And it's definitely not a big idea.
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They aren't saying it is. They're saying that it might be possible to implement earlier. The Red/Blue Connector is all over this document. It gets a whole page.
 
Superinteresting: Proposal for extending the E-line reservation to Heath St with room for the 39 and 66 busses.
 
curcuas said:
Superinteresting: Proposal for extending the E-line reservation to Heath St with room for the 39 and 66 busses.
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It's done in San Francisco on streets narrower than South Huntington...triple-use (trolley, trackless trolley, diesel bus) platforms on a street-running section with no permanent reservation. Elegant in its simplicity. Transit vehicles run in the left lane and in case of buses do not chew their own schedule time or clog other traffic making constant weaves to/from the curb; they reach the platform by staying square in their lane. Road lanes split around the platform, and cars pass to the right of the platform on space reclaimed from taken parking spaces at the corner. Crosswalk is positioned at the head of the platform, and makes for safer passage because of how it segments the road for pedestrians.

Market St., where this is done, is 45-50 ft. wide curb-to-curb in most places. South Huntington is slightly wider, at 50-55 ft. The only difference is in road layout. Market is contiguous 4 lanes with no parking except in curb juts (mainly for taxis and delivery vehicles) because it runs through the heart of the CBD. South Huntington is 2-lane with wall-to-wall parallel parking, but is in much less dense environs with fewer intersections and thus should easily be able to pass every stress test that Market St. transit v. traffic handles relatively well in-practice. I spent nearly half the day--while a Giants playoff home game was scheduled--walking up/down Market a few years ago when I was in San Fran killing a day at the end of a business trip, with keen interest in watching the nuts-and-bolts of this transit setup throughout the day. It's an extremely crowded corridor, and the transit vehicles are hardly operated with any state-of-art frills (bunch of generic 40-footer diesels and TT's, and single-car PCC's on the historic F trolley...regular traffic signals that may have been transit-prioritized but certainly weren't any "hi-tech" transit priority). Yet...things flowed ploddingly but faithfully, with fairly noticeable lack of vehicle bunching to these Boston-trained eyes who ALWAYS sees depressing gaps and gluts of yellow- or green-paint T vehicles on the streets.


While a San Fran/Market setup may pose some challenge for snow removal, it shouldn't be hard to implement given the relatively few number of stops where it would be needed. It's mainly about how many additional parking spaces you're willing to sacrifice for the setup, since platforms for 2-car Type 10's and the associated lane-split allowances for passing on the right are quite a bit longer @ 250-275 ft. than the pathetically cramped 70 ft. painted bus stops the 39 has to jam itself awkwardly into at the curb. If each of those inadequate-size bus stops is worth 4 parking spaces, is the City willing to donate another 8-10 spaces to give the stops full platforms? Neighborhood parking mob rule says no, although if it comes with a stop consolidation the corridor needn't lose that many parking spaces in the name of far speeder ADA-compliant transit.

For example, Fenwood and Back of the Hill are immediate deletions on the E due to extreme proximity to adjacent stops. So the San Fran-style platforms would only need to be done at Mission Hill and Riverway for the current route. For the Hyde Square extension you'd do that setup at Heath, VA, Bynner St., Perkins St., and Hyde Sq. If the 39/66 similarly consolidated stops on the co-running portion, the parking can remain *almost* in equilibrium on the corridor from the parking givebacks of deleted bus stops offsetting most of the extra parking taken at the multi-use platforms.

And, why yes, prove it works on a multi-modal and (hopefully) signal-prioritized corridor like the E/39 and it's ripe for application on other uni-modal corridors that just happen to host a whole lot of bus routes and get frequently clogged from all the curb turnouts and associated bunching (Mass Ave...I'm looking in your direction).



When the T was officially studying Arborway restoration it was stupidly doing curb-running trolley tracks, which was a defective-by-design layout guaranteed to get the trolleys blocked by double-parkers all-day/every-day. But that almost seemed to be the point of it all given how gleefully they were trying to bury the Arborway commitment. Conversely, a full median quasi-reservation like the Hyde Sq. consultant group proposed is probably too big an ask. And probably also dubious for snow removal on South Huntington. But the San Fran platforms pretty much conform to exactly those Hyde Sq. renders' median dimensions...only they're intermittent instead of continuous on the roadway. Functionally that's not really any different from SF, since the only noteworthy action is happening at the actual transit stops. Just say for argument's sake that snow removal doesn't play nice with a complete unbroken median on a street that narrow, and the first adjustment from there--deleting all median length where the platforms ain't--lands you exactly at the SF setup. We're pretty much there already at proof-of-concept for Boston streets if those consultant recs are carrying any sway with major decision-makers.
 
Equilibria said:
They aren't saying it is. They're saying that it might be possible to implement earlier. The Red/Blue Connector is all over this document. It gets a whole page.
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They twice say the pedestrian tunnels have "potential to connect the Red and Blue Lines" and the pedestrian tunnels are mentioned on 4 separate big idea pages. Also I don't trust MassDOT to not use this as another excuse to scrap a R-B connection the next time they need funds to add more lanes to some highway (remember MassDOT once had a court order to build a R-B connection).
 
whittle said:
We shouldn't be letting them get away with having people walk through crowded orange line platforms being called "connecting" the red and blue lines. And it's definitely not a big idea.
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vanshnookenraggen said:
Likes: OL extensions to Roslindale and Everett. SL to Everett, T under D, more bus lanes based on usage and not new BRT routes.

Dislikes: R-B connection via long ass pedestrian tunnels. This is how you discourage ridership!
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whittle said:
They twice say the pedestrian tunnels have "potential to connect the Red and Blue Lines" and the pedestrian tunnels are mentioned on 4 separate big idea pages. Also I don't trust MassDOT to not use this as another excuse to scrap a R-B connection the next time they need funds to add more lanes to some highway (remember MassDOT once had a court order to build a R-B connection).
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Sign our Red-Blue Connector petition: https://action.transitmatters.info/red_blue_connector
 
North-South Rail Link? Fuck that.

Blue Line to Newton via Park Street? Yeah put that in there why not.
 
Proposition Joe said:
North-South Rail Link? Fuck that.

Blue Line to Newton via Park Street? Yeah put that in there why not.
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That's the one that kind of threw me... like, how do you even route that? I've heard talk here about a westerly Blue Line extension under Storrow, but this is a new thing altogether.
 
whittle said:
They twice say the pedestrian tunnels have "potential to connect the Red and Blue Lines" and the pedestrian tunnels are mentioned on 4 separate big idea pages. Also I don't trust MassDOT to not use this as another excuse to scrap a R-B connection the next time they need funds to add more lanes to some highway (remember MassDOT once had a court order to build a R-B connection).
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Phase 1; walking sidewalk

Phase 2; Blue Line to Charles/MGH

Phase 3; Blue Line toward BU and beyond??
 
Proposition Joe said:
North-South Rail Link? Fuck that.

Blue Line to Newton via Park Street? Yeah put that in there why not.
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This has historical precedent. In the 1920s BERy, the predecessor to the MTA and then MBTA, looked at doing just this, albeit with a terminal in Brighton instead of connecting it to the Riverside Line. In a sense I see what they are trying to do but in reality this is probably just an outrageous idea to get some publicity.
 
Re: NSRL

It seems like the only rail projects included in the Focus 2040 report are the ones they'd like to do regardless of what happens with the ongoing Rail Vision study.
 
Whatever happened to making the CT routes a thing. They dont even have fancy wraps anymore
 
I'd like to submit a constructive comment to them about including the Urban Ring in the Focus40 'We're Imagining(Big Ideas)' sections. Frankly, I'm perplexed as to why there's no mention of it at all in their plan... I'm not sure there is a bigger idea than the Urban Ring, and the silver line is an initial phase of it IIRC.

Would anyone else like to work with me on writing something to MBTA? It sounds like they're still soliciting public feedback on the document, and I can't be the only person that wants that in there.
 
dshoost88 said:
I'd like to submit a constructive comment to them about including the Urban Ring in the Focus40 'We're Imagining(Big Ideas)' sections. Frankly, I'm perplexed as to why there's no mention of it at all in their plan... I'm not sure there is a bigger idea than the Urban Ring, and the silver line is an initial phase of it IIRC.

Would anyone else like to work with me on writing something to MBTA? It sounds like they're still soliciting public feedback on the document, and I can't be the only person that wants that in there.
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Well it have a reference to Silver Line to Sullivan which would be half the urban ring. Though even that is stuck in the post-2040 "big ideas"
 
Urban Ring is a strange oversight, I agree. But perhaps the most critical of oversights,a and the worst thing about this document in my mind, is the way it kicks the can on any improvements that make for better inner-core connectivity. They give lip service to this when discussing the "superstation" at various points. But this doesn't solve Seaport connectivity for example. What I've become blue in the face arguing to people is that it literally wouldn't make a difference if the SL were upgraded to an instant teleporter that brought you to any SL station. Tunnel under D, etc, are all just window dressing if we don't underscore the real issue: the dead-end at South Station completely restricts its usefulness. We need to tie the SL into the GL. That, to me, is the #1 critical component of inner-core connectivity that Boston needs as soon as possible. More, perhaps, than even Red-Blue.
 
Shepard said:
Urban Ring is a strange oversight, I agree. But perhaps the most critical of oversights,a and the worst thing about this document in my mind, is the way it kicks the can on any improvements that make for better inner-core connectivity. They give lip service to this when discussing the "superstation" at various points. But this doesn't solve Seaport connectivity for example. What I've become blue in the face arguing to people is that it literally wouldn't make a difference if the SL were upgraded to an instant teleporter that brought you to any SL station. Tunnel under D, etc, are all just window dressing if we don't underscore the real issue: the dead-end at South Station completely restricts its usefulness. We need to tie the SL into the GL. That, to me, is the #1 critical component of inner-core connectivity that Boston needs as soon as possible. More, perhaps, than even Red-Blue.
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+1
 
I think the issue is that connectivity upgrades just isn't sexy enough. Red-Blue fills a very big need in connecting Blue riders directly with Kendall and SS, and that's the only reason it's even being talked about.

Like Green->CT->SS would be rather useful. To me that would be more useful than connecting SL to Green.
 
Shepard said:
But this doesn't solve Seaport connectivity for example. What I've become blue in the face arguing to people is that it literally wouldn't make a difference if the SL were upgraded to an instant teleporter that brought you to any SL station. Tunnel under D, etc, are all just window dressing if we don't underscore the real issue: the dead-end at South Station completely restricts its usefulness. We need to tie the SL into the GL.
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If Congress St got bus lanes from Haymarket to Purchase St and Summer St got bus lanes from Fort Point Channel to Reserved Channel, would extending 92/93 along Congress St to South Station and then along Summer St and D St to Silver Line Way and Flynn Cruiseport, would that at least partially address what you're trying to accomplish?
 
Joel, I've posted this idea before, which is quite similar to what you're saying - substitute your downtown routing for the Greenway and they would serve a similar function. I routed things this way to envision Dewey Sq/South Station as a transportation hub and transfer node among the various routes.

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Still, this to me does far less than a GL Seaport branch would - if only because we have a great tunnel in the Seaport that currently serves such a backwards purpose.
 
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