Green Line Extension to Medford & Union Sq

stick n move said:
Its just the original model they were using on promotional materials when they first announced the type 10.

Heres an image and article from 2014.
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https://www.railwaygazette.com/caf-wins-boston-green-line-order/39518.article
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Here's what the newer Type 10's will look like now, assuming that these won't be redesigned from how they look now.
New type 10 trolleys for the mbta..png
 
www.cambridgeday.com

Green line extension didn’t meet expectations around small businesses' growth, owners say - Cambridge Day

Somerville small-business owners say they’ve been underwhelmed by customer and revenue growth resulting from new MBTA green line stations.
www.cambridgeday.com www.cambridgeday.com

“Not as many customers commute by trains as we think,” said Ivan Mejia, owner of the 25-year old restaurant Sound Bites in Ball Square. “They mainly commute by cars.”

Wichuda Thaion, a server for five years at Ebi Sushi in Union Square, where a station opened three minute’s walk away, agreed: The green line is “convenient but not reliable. Many customers still choose to drive” – to the degree that drivers still complain of a shortage of parking spaces in Union Square, where trains supposedly arrive and depart every six to 12 minutes.
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Teban54 said:
www.cambridgeday.com

Green line extension didn’t meet expectations around small businesses' growth, owners say - Cambridge Day

Somerville small-business owners say they’ve been underwhelmed by customer and revenue growth resulting from new MBTA green line stations.
www.cambridgeday.com www.cambridgeday.com
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Seems like a completely unscientific, purely anecdote-driven story? Car drivers are most likely to complain about lack of parking. People who take transit rarely announce to the owner that they took the T.

Would like to see an actual % breakdown of patronage, before/after revenue studies in the medium and long-term, etc. Otherwise, this just feels like another puff piece where small business owners who like to drive and park conveniently near or at their business complain about transit or bike lanes.
 
I use GLX 4-10x per week, because I live on it, so honestly I can't speak for others why it's not as "popular" (for the record, getting on at Ball Square, the second stop on the line, at 8AM means not finding a seat anymore), but I can take an uninformed guess.

These stations/neighborhoods are positioned in the system/region (like other branches of the green line and ends of other lines) where they would greatly benefit from strong cross-city/urban ring transit connections. The radial nature of the T, with all lines and branches leading downtown, really promotes only using the T to get into work or a night out downtown (...until ~1AM).

If someone from Allston is looking to get brunch in Union Square, the green line isn't an option when searching up directions from a random apartment in Allston, but bus trips up to 52 minutes long are suggested (26 minutes is the quickest transit route, which isn't bad at all, but relies upon having some luck or diligent planning to match up with the schedule due to frequencies). A car ride is 13 minutes. To get to Ball Square - most options are busses only (44 minutes being the shortest currently), but at least this time one option includes taking the green line for a total commute time of 76 minutes, vs. a 19 minute drive.

I suspect the bus network redesign will improve these options, but that relies upon to the T to a) hire hundreds of staff and b) increase promotion of taking the bus. I personally still have a hard time getting some friends to trust me that the bus is safe, reliable, and quick, when I've never really had a problem with them, apart from their frequencies and dropped trips. If the goal is to boost economic development in neighborhoods around Boston, the next set of expansion projects after Red-Blue and NSRL should focus on creating a less radial transit system.

Also, a nitpick here - if I were a small grocery store, as Ball Square Produce is, I wouldn't really expect an explosion of customers, until TOD around the station brings in more permanent residents. Not really sure how many people will take a trip out to Ball Square for some moderately-priced produce and nuts, when someone can likely find a similar shop closer to them...
 
stefal said:
I use GLX 4-10x per week, because I live on it, so honestly I can't speak for others why it's not as "popular" (for the record, getting on at Ball Square, the second stop on the line, at 8AM means not finding a seat anymore), but I can take an uninformed guess.

These stations/neighborhoods are positioned in the system/region (like other branches of the green line and ends of other lines) where they would greatly benefit from strong cross-city/urban ring transit connections. The radial nature of the T, with all lines and branches leading downtown, really promotes only using the T to get into work or a night out downtown (...until ~1AM).

If someone from Allston is looking to get brunch in Union Square, the green line isn't an option when searching up directions from a random apartment in Allston, but bus trips up to 52 minutes long are suggested (26 minutes is the quickest transit route, which isn't bad at all, but relies upon having some luck or diligent planning to match up with the schedule due to frequencies). A car ride is 13 minutes. To get to Ball Square - most options are busses only (44 minutes being the shortest currently), but at least this time one option includes taking the green line for a total commute time of 76 minutes, vs. a 19 minute drive.

I suspect the bus network redesign will improve these options, but that relies upon to the T to a) hire hundreds of staff and b) increase promotion of taking the bus. I personally still have a hard time getting some friends to trust me that the bus is safe, reliable, and quick, when I've never really had a problem with them, apart from their frequencies and dropped trips. If the goal is to boost economic development in neighborhoods around Boston, the next set of expansion projects after Red-Blue and NSRL should focus on creating a less radial transit system.

Also, a nitpick here - if I were a small grocery store, as Ball Square Produce is, I wouldn't really expect an explosion of customers, until TOD around the station brings in more permanent residents. Not really sure how many people will take a trip out to Ball Square for some moderately-priced produce and nuts, when someone can likely find a similar shop closer to them...
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For the specific example of Allston, it may fall outside of even what a circumferential Urban Ring service can cover, even if it's fully LRT. Most proposals by transit fans have an LRT branch to West Station and possibly Harvard, but that's not where most people live. Even those branches will at best get you to Lechmere via Grand Junction, so a transfer is still required.

If your origin is Union Square Allston, then it's a 3-seat ride by rail no matter what. Even proposals that include an A branch restoration typically have it as a radial route that feeds into the Central Subway, and understandably so.

Trips like these are where buses have much greater flexibility. Today, from Union Square Allston, you can get two-seat rides to Union Square Somerville (66-86) and Ball Square with some walking (66-96 to Powder House Square), though the Bus Network Redesign will break the Powder House Sq two-seat ride by diverting the 96 away from Harvard.

Circumferential routes still have important roles in the network, so that at least some riders will transfer to them and thus free up capacity downtown; but most of them will probably have a greater emphasis on commute (e.g. Kendall, LMA), as well as practical constraints such as ROWs.

In terms of time and flexibility, nothing can really beat driving for leisure trips like this. Such trips outside of rush hours may be an impossible problem to begin with, and I think the most realistic solutions are probably improvements in buses (and better promotion of them so that folks will actually take them), as well as disincentivizing driving.
 
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Back in the early aughts, I lived in Oak Square. It was annoying as hell to get north of the river on the T. The highest frequency option (the 57) really forced you into the core or, with an adequate connection, to Harvard. The 64 was good but lacked the frequency to be a go to choice. Everything else was subject to the whims of bus bunching to make the handful of connections.
 
Teban54 said:
In terms of time and flexibility, nothing can really beat driving for leisure trips like this. Such trips outside of rush hours may be an impossible problem to begin with, and I think the most realistic solutions are probably improvements in buses (and better promotion of them so that folks will actually take them), as well as disincentivizing driving.
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So, just looking quickly in Google, to either destination from Ashmont it's just about an hour with a single connection at Park St, which is pretty bad. If I bump that out even one stop on the Mattapan Line it jumps to an hour 10/15 minutes (throughout the day tomorrow, eyeballing the average time from 1-5 pm). Driving is about 30 minutes from 1-3 pm, then into rush hour it's 45 (3-6 pm), and after 6 pm it drops into about 25 minutes.

I can tell you what I would do if I wanted to go out for lunch or dinner in Cambridge, and it isn't spending over an hour on the T. Also, it shouldn't be that surprising, anecdotal or not, that businesses haven't seen the bump from the GLX as they expected given the vastly lowered ridership overall due to COVID, and, quite frankly the continuous dumpster fire and slowdowns you see across the system. It also probably doesn't help that the Union Square branch has seen shutdowns already having just opened, and I believe there is a pretty long-planned one coming up for a bridge replacement. Increasing travel times by 2-3x to take the train isn't competitive. Checking out from Oak Grove on the Orange it's even more stacked (about 16 minutes driving vs 40 minutes on the T). Forest Hill on the other end is interesting: before 7 pm it's a bit more competitive with the MBTA being an hour-hour and 10 minutes and driving around 50 minutes. However going past 7 pm, for say dinner, and driving drops to 30-minute territory and the train stays the same. Rozzie Square is about the same - with it maybe being even a bit better if it lines up with the Commuter Rail, although that does require a walking transfer at Copley.

So, yeah, just overall transit and connections into the GLX/Cambridge just need to be better and faster. Ideally, public transit should be able to blow away driving during the day/rush hours, and at least maintain a semi-competitive time outside of rush hours, but, the MBTA just isn't for a lot of connecting destinations across the city, and is far from it.
 
I think the notion that folks who aren't already living in, or otherwise frequenting, areas now covered by the GLX will suddently start arriving in droves *because of* the GLX is ridiculous.

There are plenty of excellent Chinese restaurants in Quincy, but who in Camberville or Boston proper gets on the Red Line expressly to travel to Quincy for some dumplings? Lots of great things to do and places to visit in JP, but just b/c it's on the Orange Line, doesn't mean I make the trek more often.

Ebi Sushi has a (large) clientelle. As one of them -- and one who now often gets to Union Square via the GLX -- I'm not necessarily a more frequent patron at Ebi; it's just that I get there in a different manner (ditto for Sound Bites and Kelly's and Taco Party and all the nonsense in Ball Square, as well as Daddy Jones, Magoun's Saloon, etc.).

I agree the article is both anecdotal and relatively meaningles (and, in typical Glob fashion, needlessly negative).

I'm on the GLX weekly, if not daily, and it continues to get more and more crowded -- even now in the summer months, with far fewer students about.

This article is bullshit.
 
Without something more rigorous, then all we have is anecdotes. But one business positive anecdote I can add is I'm a coordinator for an event to rolls to different bars every month. One of our criteria is the places we book has to be transit accessible. Else we'll lose a lot of people. So the opening of GLX opened the gates for us to book events that we usually wouldn't book before. Including an event in a bar in Union sq so that's +100 guests to a bar that wouldn't have if it was not for GLX's existance next month.

chrisbrat said:
There are plenty of excellent Chinese restaurants in Quincy, but who in Camberville or Boston proper gets on the Red Line expressly to travel to Quincy for some dumplings? Lots of great things to do and places to visit in JP, but just b/c it's on the Orange Line, doesn't mean I make the trek more often.
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My friends do. But recently the Red Line that the last time we raised up the idea, several balk after seeing how long it takes with the now slow zone Red Line. So instead we opted to go to a place in Watertown (with various transit modes, but still beats taking the Red Line). That is an example the state of the Red Line making people balk.
 
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Teban54 said:
“Not as many customers commute by trains as we think,” said Ivan Mejia, owner of the 25-year old restaurant Sound Bites in Ball Square. “They mainly commute by cars.”
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Off topic, but did Sound Bites change ownership? Last I knew it was still run by the famously irascible Yasser Mirza, of Ball Square Breakfast Wars fame.
 
ant8904 said:
My friends do. But recently the Red Line that the last time we raised up the idea, several balk after seeing how long it takes with the now slow zone Red Line. So instead we opted to go to a place in Watertown (with various transit modes, but still beats taking the Red Line). That is an example the state of the Red Line making people balk.
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Yeah, I mean I would just like I would take it in town to Chinatown. Really Quincy, Malden, and Chinatown is the main places to find various authentic Chinese places.

That said... on the Ashmont side, I'm looking at 40 minutes by the T, and 15 minutes driving right now which is a non starter for me to go ~2.5 miles. Mentally, I'd probably need that down to ~25 minutes to convince me to trade off driving.

JP I think is even worse just because most of what I go to over there is more Centre St centric, and orange line in the south west corridor isn't particularly convenient. That said, to Evergreen is 44 minutes requiring the 21 bus and Orange line from Forest hills, or, 49 minutes skipping the orange line and simply walking the mile. Car is 14 minutes, and biking is 31.
 
Such a weird collection of anecdotes in that article, and missing the point. Ebi Sushi just had 500 apartments open across the street BECAUSE THE T GOT BUILT, who will now be inviting friends to come visit on the T to their local sushi joint. Soundbites lost all of their car traffic during the broadway bridge closure so might have a sour taste remaining - but there's no way the opening didn't effect revenues since they make money on sit-down breakfast and now has a lot of morning foot traffic - that station has higher ridership than most. Each one of the squares is experiencing lots of development - Davis Square wasn't built in a day!

“But we recognize each small-business owner’s experience is unique and evolving,” Galligani said - He's more polite than I would be...
 
Vagabond said:
Ebi Sushi just had 500 apartments open across the street BECAUSE THE T GOT BUILT
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Not to sound hostile to the core point that GLX is bringing in new customers. But for the context of Ebi Sushi itself, they might disagree the 500 apartments that much of a good thing because the same plans brought in the 500 apartments also plans to boot out their spot for more development.

Granted, I have also heard Ebi Sushi will get a spot post development or something like that. However, the past mentions of Eminent Domain (which I do find it using it for underdeveloped areas for private development wrong) might have influenced the course of the planning even if it's officially voluntary with accommodations provided.

But all that said, my point in pointing out Ebi Sushi is benefiting via development is unfortunately colored by the possibility that same benefit may also become an existential threat (accommodations and space after does not count until it actually happens and it proven effective by their continuation post-development).
 
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They are light years better than the Type 8s on the line. It’s very easy to notice the lack of chattering and squealing from the trucks with a Type 9 or (to a lesser extent) the Type 7 car. Whatever the cause, it cannot be good for the track, which means there’s a higher maintenance burden.
 
bakgwailo said:
Yeah, I mean I would just like I would take it in town to Chinatown. Really Quincy, Malden, and Chinatown is the main places to find various authentic Chinese places.
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Dumpling Xuan is as legit as it gets, check that out but go with a big group so you can order a lot of dishes. I drive every time, because there is no reasonable way to get to East Cambridge from Roslindale.

Ditto N Quincy, and I can say if I did live in Cambridge (at least prior to slow zones) I would totally take the Red to get there. And same with many places. The reality is that there simply are many places that aren’t all that accessible via public transportation, unless you’re really die hard about it and/or don’t mind your trip literally taking three times or more longer than if you drove. This issue could be mitigated by better transportation planning but it won’t ever totally go away. Some points are just never gonna be easy to get between in a big city.

Overall, though, and I can only speak for myself here but I suspect this is the case for many people, the waiting for the train or the bus is the most intolerable factor. I tend to be much more willing to take a very long transit trip if I know that most of the actual time will be spent on the bus or train actually moving. If I have to wait 20 minutes for some uncertain bus to show up, that sucks. I think that’s where Boston really needs to improve, and doing so would not only attract more people to take transit, but it would reduce the areas that are hard to get to.
 
Companies that built the Green Line Extension sue the company whose flawed construction plans they say they were forced to fix
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“Four construction firms that teamed up to build the Green Line Extension say the company that designed key components of the new trolley line screwed up to the tune of more than $35 million in cost overruns, and they are demanding payment, in a suit filed today in Suffolk Superior Court.

Because the state signed a lump-sum contract with GLX Constructors for the $1.08-billion project in December, 2017, the construction consortium had to eat the overrun costs due to allegedly inadequate or simply wrong designs provided by STV, Inc. of New York. But while taxpayers didn't have to eat the costs, some of the issues might have further delayed the opening of the oft delayed line, since in some cases, the construction companies say, they had to dig up already completed parts of the system and re-do them.

In the complaint, GLX Constructors - Fluor Enterprises of Irving, TX, the Middlesex Corp. of Littleton, Herzog Contracting Corp. of St. Joseph, MO and Balfour Beatty Infrastructure of Atlanta - says it initially hired STV to help it figure out how to structure their bid for the work by providing plans and estimates for building all the new tracks, stations and associated facilities. And then, after the consortium won the bid, the four companies hired STV to provide ongoing design services.

But in its pre-bid specs, the suit alleges, STV seriously underestimated the amount and type of work required on everything from the length and materials needed for retaining walls along the tracks to the construction of components of the viaduct that would carry trolleys to Union Square. GLX Constructors said it did not learn about these until after it had won the state contract - sometimes years later - which meant it was too late to include the true costs in its bid….”

https://www.universalhub.com/2023/companies-built-green-line-extension-sue-company
 
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