Green Line Reconfiguration

[George_Apley]

^ On Oak Square; will the lack of yard access at H20 hinder its operations at all?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

^ I like this configuration if the E remains surface-running, but I'm less sold on it if the full-build Huntington Subway comes through. Seems like a pain to put a portal on Ruggles St and equally painful to tunnel on such a narrow block to the Southwest Corridor.

I don't like it either off a tunnel interface because the junction, even if it slices through the Wentworth athletic field, is going to be at a sharpish angle, and with the angle might have to be a fugly at-grade junction. Ruggles St., despite being 4-lane, is also 'harder' tunneling like the Brigham Circle-Riverway portion of Huntington. We need to keep that to a bare minimum outside of the superduper high-priority Prudential--BBY--SS load reliever connections and that last Huntington leg past Brigham, then stick to the easy digs all other places.


An alternative might be to bootstrap onto the Arborway backtrack off BV, then fork as streetcar down Heath St. to SW Corridor Park. Air rights cover-over more of the NEC and go to Roxbury Crossing. If you want to sever Cedar St. could even be full grade-separated from Heath Sq. to Rox Xing, reducing the street-running to a manageable 1-1/4 miles. Then turn down Malcolm X Blvd. 3 blocks to Dudley. Misses Ruggles, but the Dudley interface is a lot cleaner. And you can feed this from Kenmore or the Huntington subway via Brookline Village. Stops from BV at: Riverway, Heath St., Walden St. (I'd do that for the kiddies at Hennigan School), Heath Square, Roxbury Crossing, Dudley Square.

I thought of doing that one, but since the south-half Ring pretty much has to be all-streetcar with not enough grade separation to go around I just conceded it to BRT and making sure the traffic pumps from downtown were firing on all cylinders to Kenmore/BV, Dudley, and SL Way/SS to feed the tie-ins to each of the south quadrants. This SW quadrant might not be so tough, but I just don't see a SE quadrant streetcar that isn't a total shitshow once it gets off the Melnea Cass reservation and has to somehow find its way to Southie with all paths having a congested I-93 offramp set of signals to cross. And not being able to complete the circuit reduces the utility of the SW quadrant streetcar a smidge. But the BV-via-Heath routing is pretty easy with no tunneling required, and has a nice straight shot of grade separation over the NEC air rights.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

^ On Oak Square; will the lack of yard access at H20 hinder its operations at all?

A Heath-style double loop would be adequate since it's similarly short distance off the subway and wouldn't exactly see the tightest headways. There used to be a small Lake St.-style storage yard behind the YMCA, but we kinda blew that chance in the mid-90's.

 

[vanshnookenraggen]

Also, as far as a southern route for the Urban Ring, why not something like this?

This is the route I settled on for my fantasy map, and Van has recently been sounding something similar. Isn't Ruggles St potentially a good place to turn off Huntington? Surface on Melnea Cass and either turn off to Dudley at Washington, or keep going to Andrew (either via the Frontage Rd ROW or Southampton St).

The north side of Ruggles St is an MBTA transportation easement. This is why the north side through the Northeastern dorms is a line of trees. It's the most obvious path and one that can be extended further along Melnea Cass Blvd.

@Riverside: It actually works better if the Huntington Ave subway is extended. Surface running along a 3 lane congested road isn't going to work, that's why the MBTA placed an easement on the land in the first place because they knew they'd need it for any future ring style service.

The problem is that this ROW only works with UR service. If there is a Washington St GL service then it needs to run to Dudley. Having a random GL branch run this way won't work as well as a straight up Dudley branch.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

The north side of Ruggles St is an MBTA transportation easement. This is why the north side through the Northeastern dorms is a line of trees. It's the most obvious path and one that can be extended further along Melnea Cass Blvd.

@Riverside: It actually works better if the Huntington Ave subway is extended. Surface running along a 3 lane congested road isn't going to work, that's why the MBTA placed an easement on the land in the first place because they knew they'd need it for any future ring style service.

The problem is that this ROW only works with UR service. If there is a Washington St GL service then it needs to run to Dudley. Having a random GL branch run this way won't work as well as a straight up Dudley branch.

Think you probably also want some bi-directional access if you want this segment of the "47" streetcar. Because if the Huntington subway splits off the same place as the Dudley line after Tufts it's a bit of a redundancy.

My proposal up above for splitting off BV and following the 14 bus down Heath St. to the SW Corridor air rights grade separation gives you access from both the Central Subway and Huntington and traps more of the 66's ridership in addition to the 47 where it hits BU Bridge and Fenway stations (be it from a Kenmore boomerang or just cross-platform transfer). Little bit more diverse/unique catchment that justifies the existence of the SW quadrant Ring route more than just the semi-duplicate Tufts-->Huntington shot.

Only question with that one is whether Roxbury Crossing is good enough or if it's absolutely essential that Ruggles get hit (which is a lot more NEC air rights to cover over, and possible destruction of the tennis courts on the Prentiss-Ruggles block. Personally, if Dudley's reachable Ruggles diminishes greatly in overall importance to the system. Its very creation was the result of the end of rapid transit at Dudley, which is why the buses all do that traffic-clogged distended loop. That doesn't become nearly as necessary with Dudley back on the rapid transit map. Figure this:

-- The less-essential buses that don't directly cross Ruggles E-W will get culled at Dudley to spare the extra traffic lights en route to Ruggles.

-- Orange has a direct rapid transit transfer at Tufts for Dudley. Less-direct, but it's a legitimate fare-controlled transfer.

-- There'll be diminishing commuter rail trips stopping at Ruggles as the NEC gets more congested. South Coast Rail isn't going to stop there at all (probably not even if the mainline to Taunton were de-FAIL'ed and fully double-tracked) because it can't be making many stops en route to Canton Jct. and cover such a long schedule. Needham's gonna get booted one of these days to Orange when congestion squeezes it out and earn itself a direct Tufts transfer. Franklin's gonna get booted to Fairmount when Amtrak superduper 2040 HSR pumps the SW Corridor a lot fuller with intercity trains. That leaves...Providence? And Providence has enough skip-stop runs that it'll only be some Providence trains. Those CR platform(s) won't see very much service at all come 2030, which obviates some of the need for Ruggles as a super-node.


Given that so many buses making the distended Ruggles loop also hit Rox Xing, and given that the commuter rail boardings are pretty much going to peak at 2020 then precipitously decline as the NEC traffic vice grip starts booting branchlines elsewhere...does it really matter if the SW quadrant Ring shifts to Rox Xing? Or if the streetcar cuts across Malcolm X Blvd. from the 14's route and an air rights jog instead.

Probably not. The change in traffic profile at Ruggles pretty much makes it a neutral choice. Maybe slight advantage for Ruggles over RX, but emphasis on slight. Enough so there's not much to lose keeping your streetcar routings malleable and DEFINITELY cancel any plans to tunnel a fork down Ruggles St. off an underground junction. That is just not going to pay back its investment.

 

[George_Apley]

Why is Ruggles St such hard tunneling? Wasn't that area pretty well blasted when the NEC came to town?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Why is Ruggles St such hard tunneling? Wasn't that area pretty well blasted when the NEC came to town?

It's street/utility disruption like Huntington. Or, if you claim the trees on the MBTA easement, building foundation impacts. It's not a clean under-reservation dig that never had a service disruption in 100 years to lay pipes and other crap underneath anywhere except at crossing intersections.


But more importantly, it's low-priority tunneling compared to the other builds. This fork doesn't offer enough extra when Tufts is the westbound fork to Dudley. Is $500M worth it for hitting Dudley twice in the westbound direction out of downtown? Like Van said, this is a semi-redundancy if you aren't plowing straight across Brookline. And plowing straight across Brookline is pretty infeasible. So this is hazy on the exact audience.

The reason why I prefer the streetcar fork off Heath to RX is that it can serve up some different and unique points of origin more in line with the T's proposed Ring concept instead of just semi-duplicating the Tufts branch split further upstream. Routings from the Central Subway in addition to Huntington. Way more buses captured.

-- Huntington subway trajectory: CT2, CT3, 47, 8, 19 @ MFA (same as this Ruggles St. fork), but also...66, 65, 60 @ BV.
-- Central Subway trajectory: CT2, 47 @ Fenway (probably can also poke the CT3's loop move +1 blocks around the Park Dr./Riverway rotary to tie it in); 66, 65, 60 @ BV; 60, 65, 8, 19 @ Kenmore.

That's every single Ruggles St. route covered any which trajectory, plus the 66, 65, and 66 on both routings. One of the Ring's mission statements is to vacuum up the bus transfers. This is the superior fork for the SW quadrant Ring for doing just that. Again, if you aren't plowing straight across Longwood on the likely-infeasible routing there's a lot of utility lost bailing out earlier on Ruggles St. and spending through the nose on tunneling. The BV routing is at least a manageable streetcar that bootstraps a quarter of its total length on the Arborway trackage between BV and Heath. Like this:

-- Do the BV back-track like Arborway on-street.
-- Claim the gas station property and the blighted adjacent properties on S. Huntington up to the first apartment blocks. Use the space to spread the road bowlegged around a Brighton Ave.-style narrow median with the trolley tracks left of the yellow stripe traffic-separated. Transition into real mixed-traffic 1 block up right before the Colburn St. intersection. Gets the trolleys to a trolley signal-prioritized Huntington light without getting stuck behind a left-turning car queue.
-- 800 ft. to Heath St. Turn onto Heath, splitting from the Arborway line. Heath has pretty low traffic volumes and only 1 traffic light at Walden St.
-- Around the Heath Sq. rotary onto dead-end New Heath St. Deck the NEC, run on top of the air rights to RX and close the light-use Cedar St. overpass for total grade separation.
-- Traffic-calm Malcolm X Blvd. Neighborhood will freakin' hate it, but if you banned parking between Columbus and Dudley you've got space to do another Brighton Ave.-style narrow concrete median with trolley tracks traffic-separated left of the yellow stripe and all 4 lanes of roadway preserved. Double the size of the Willis Terrace parking lot a little bit west and meter it if there needs to be compensation for the on-street losses.

Stops after BV:
-- Riverway (yeah, you hit it twice--surface and subway--from the Huntington direction, but might as well take advantage of the longish light cycle and serve up a stop option from the Central Subway direction)
-- Heath St.
-- Walden St. (traffic light pause, and serves the after-school needs)
-- Heath Square
-- Roxbury Crossing
-- Dudley

Only 1-1/4 street-running miles with that total grade separation between Heath Sq. and RX, and RX-Dudley + S. Huntington at the light get a trolley-separated lane left of the yellow stripe to gain priority from the queues. 6 quick stops to the terminal. Also buys an extension of SW Corridor Park on the air rights flanking the trolley tracks, which the neighborhood will like a lot.

This takes...what, 8 or 10 minutes to cover? Cheap...no tunneling, maximizes the infrastructure investment. And while it's non- grade separated...it is helped by those left-of-the-yellow-stripe trolley lanes on MX Blvd. and the S. Huntington light. Roxbury Crossing has mostly duplicate bus routes on that distended loop, and the commuter rail station is going to get squeezed out to small niche which pretty much makes Ruggles and RX a near-match on transfer utility. You don't lose a whole lot.


I think you really gotta go for bang-for-buck here since we just can't be burning more tunnel footage on less-essential appendages. Just getting the BBY, Seaport, and Huntington trunks laid is a couple $B in ironclad traffic management necessities. All of the rest of it should stay as miserly as possible for sake of getting the most done. Note also my map punts the Harvard tunnel to later date for this same exact reason. Really, just ride up through the JFK School's front lawn upon touchdown on the Cambridge side of that JFK/N. Harvard bridge for the first 20 years of service if that's what it takes to digest all these uber-essential trunkline megaprojects first. Make Harvard choose a second rapid transit line into the Square over the ultimate frisbee games on the JFK lawn. Branch tunneling just isn't important enough a priority to the big picture if it isn't straight-up easy like the BU Bridge subway extension under the reservation. The tunneling resources have to go all-in on the Huntington-Seaport trunk. That's really the only place to spare no expense to get it done. Everywhere else needs some vigilance for cost control, which the mostly surface routings helpfully provide. If the pricey tunnels on the trunk are what make the whole shebang work on capacity, don't sweat pricey tunnels on the forks. It's not worth putting off key pieces of the network for somebody's idea of grade separation perfection when the right trunkline design integrates it all the fluidly same.




Now the SE quadrant...yuck, I still see that as a godawful shitshow on a trolley because of what traffic horrors lurk at the Melnea Cass/Mass Ave. intersection and all points across the I-93 wasteland. Maybe we have to draw the line at a three-quarters Ring-ish thing and just make the Dudley-Southie leg a Silver Line BRT branch into the Transitway.

 

[FK4]

Thing is, F-Line, Arborway is a no go. It's the part of your plan I never agree with. Centre St is absolutely choked with traffic and cramming in 2 and 3 car green line trains isnt gonna help matters. Also, transit justice wont allow for another JP line when we have one right down the hill. Moreover, whether you think the road is too packed or not, the ruling factions think so and will sink a streetcar through JP... that factor is not gonna change in the next 40 years.

The Ruggles tunnel, though expensive, connects OL riders to the LMA... that's the utility here. Even if you didnt run it all the way to Dudley, at least immediately, it gets you the north-south alternate link and takes enormous pressure off of multiple other transit options. The angle at the junction will be the biggest problem, and the city ought to be thinking about this before Wentworth gets going on that big new building on Huntington.

I think using Heath St would be a waste since the street itself is pretty much a wasteland - the back of the hill is far too out of the way to make the convenience of the ROW worth it.

What I would like to see at least considered is utilization of the lands on the west side of the SW Corridor between Ruggles and Rx Xing, in conjunction with the redevelopment of the housing projects on Ruggles - something creative here (streetcar ROW crossing Ruggles -> thru the projects along the SWC -> maybe up Ward St to the LMA; or, Ruggles -> SWC -> Tremont St -> Malcolm X -> Dudley).

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Thing is, F-Line, Arborway is a no go. It's the part of your plan I never agree with. Centre St is absolutely choked with traffic and cramming in 2 and 3 car green line trains isnt gonna help matters. Also, transit justice wont allow for another JP line when we have one right down the hill. Moreover, whether you think the road is too packed or not, the ruling factions think so and will sink a streetcar through JP... that factor is not gonna change in the next 40 years.

The Ruggles tunnel, though expensive, connects OL riders to the LMA... that's the utility here. Even if you didnt run it all the way to Dudley, at least immediately, it gets you the north-south alternate link and takes enormous pressure off of multiple other transit options. The angle at the junction will be the biggest problem, and the city ought to be thinking about this before Wentworth gets going on that big new building on Huntington.

I think using Heath St would be a waste since the street itself is pretty much a wasteland - the back of the hill is far too out of the way to make the convenience of the ROW worth it.

What I would like to see at least considered is utilization of the lands on the west side of the SW Corridor between Ruggles and Rx Xing, in conjunction with the redevelopment of the housing projects on Ruggles - something creative here (streetcar ROW crossing Ruggles -> thru the projects along the SWC -> maybe up Ward St to the LMA; or, Ruggles -> SWC -> Tremont St -> Malcolm X -> Dudley).

The Ruggles tunnel does not get you a one-seat from LMA to Ruggles without boondoggle construction. It'll cost billions to try to do that.

-- The junction at MFA has to curve east under the Wentworth athletic field at a decently stiff angle. But not too stiff...you're fine splitting to/from Northeastern. Westbound to/from the LMA direction...way different story. Much sharper turn in that direction and will clip the corner foundation of Wentworth Hall and blow up the firehouse. Likewise, having such a tight curve where you have to get on-alignment to the Huntington tunnel before the next set of big building foundations means that at least for the westbound direction you're most likely looking at an at-grade junction. The curvature's only a few degrees better than Copley Jct. where it swings from Exeter St. underneath the BPL expansion wing. You might need to go at-grade junction both directions if you still have aims on still having an MFA station, which is really going to reduce capacity on the Huntington trunk. Omitting MFA to carve out the footprint for a junction may mean you just have to separate Northeastern and LMA by a full half-mile.

-- With that hugely expensive junction--that you have to try like hell to make bi-directional if this tunnel is to accomplish the goals you want it to accomplish--you still have to tunnel half the length of the painful-tunneling Brigham Circle-Brookline Vill trunk to even get to the same block as Ruggles station. The tree-lined MBTA surface easement is not going to be available for this tunnel because it abuts all the tall building pilings. This build has to be centered on Ruggles St. Which means this is a utility gut job like the higher-pain Brigham-BV under-street tunneling and NOT like the Northeastern-Brigham reservation tunneling. And also more painful than along Marginal St. in the South End where side access through the Pike retaining walls allows for sidestepping some utilities. It may be urban renewal land, but you pay the going rate for regular old cut-and-cover and utility relocation. The only thing you save is a little off the cost bloat contingency by knowing more about where the utilities are buried. But that's bloat contingency...not base cost savings.

-- Single-widest portion of the Muddy River is 800 ft. away from Huntington at the would-be junction. You can waterproof the Huntington tunnel pretty well because it's shallow-depth under the reservation here and runs parallel to the river as a wall. Fork a tunnel off perpendicular to the river, especially one that's got to descend lower into the immediate water table for the under-street cut-and-cover, and there's more water intrusion risk in a 50-year flood event in the Fens (which will get more frequent with sea level rise limiting the Charles Dam's ability to quickly flush the Basin). It's not the extreme level of risk of trying to portal onto the D at Park Dr., but extra waterproofing cost...you bet. You're also not going to plow down Louis Prang St. and attempt to sneak down Fenway even closer to the river (LP St. also too narrow and flanked by tall building).

-- You must duck under the NEC and Ruggles station to interface with it. There's no room to portal-up in time to get on the Ruggles busway without razing the NU Health Sciences building. Takes about 400-500 ft. for the B and C to rocket up from their very shallowest subsurface points to ground level, and you only have 200 ft. from the corner of the Health Sciences building to get the hell up inches below the pavement to street level at full track speed before the NEC retaining wall hits. You also can't turn underground onto the busway and portal-up in the back without blowing up the Health Sciences Bldg.; it's a tighter turn there than Boylston curve. Zero options here but to dive deeper. Since your only feasible trajectory for continuing the tunnel and/or having a place to ever portal-up anywhere is by Melnea Cass...you must cross the ENTIRE Ruggles complex on a narrow angle for 1000 ft., put the lower-level station under there, and blow up the 10-story garage.

-- You also aren't reaching Dudley on full grade separation. Every trajectory off Melnea Cass is a hard-right turn on narrow streets to reach the Square requiring major building takings. You can portal-up on the side path before Washington and streetcar it the last couple blocks--your only hope of being able to connect to the Washington St. line. Or just miss Dudley altogether, and consign every single bus that today gets stuck in traffic making the Dudley-Ruggles-RX loop of pain to doing that forevermore. Which harms the buses you are spending a billion dollars to try to nab on grade separation.

-- But by the time you get in the Dudley vicinity on Melnea Cass you have now tunneled for a grand total 1500 ft. longer than the Brigham-BV load-bearing trunk that was originally our most painful bit of tunneling outside of the South End. You've laid waste to Ruggles station. Blown an extreme wad of money on a single junction that may be operationally compromised. And possibly had to throw in the towel on the WB leg...and the very LMA one-seat this monstrosity was supposed to justify.


$1.5 billion base build. Minimum. More if you run into building mitigation problems with the junction and Ruggles interface. And we don't even know if it does what it's supposed to. Keep in mind, Tufts... 8 stops earlier from probable Dudley via this route (if you make it that far), is the Washington St. line transfer point. Which is 8 surface stops (if Worcester Sq. gets eliminated) to Dudley. The Silver Line makes its current 9 surface stops from Tufts to Dudley in about 15 minutes on the morning peak schedule as a 100% surface bus. Is $1B extra worth the cost of maybe 5 minutes in savings? Tops?


Sorry...this is absolutely insane misuse of funding.


The only way you are reliably connecting LMA with Dudley on a one-seat is off the Brookline Village circuit. Whether you feel like building a streetcar all the way to Arborway or not, you're going to have to put a BV-Heath-RX-Dudley routing as one of the finalists (maybe not final choice, but a finalist) amongst very limited options. If you want something that accomplishes the goals you want to accomplish and doesn't shelve every other useful build on this Green network because of a tunnel that's the biggest per-rider capital cost sink on the whole network, must be flexible at surveying the options. All of them have pros/cons. There is no magic bullet here. Just like there wasn't between BU Bridge and Longwood.

Remember the ground rules here...the lion's share of the money has to get allocated to downtown capacity, and we need as many surface routes and easy-scoops of minimal pain as possible to string together the rest. It's not "if I were totalitarian dictator with a SimCity infinite money cheat code" Crazy Transit Pitches. We actually want a prioritization pecking order that--if not getting everything or even majority of the total route miles built--at least remakes Green to a point where it has the trunks to handle anything, serves the essentials, and could serve any of these add-ons.

Downtown CAN handle all the surface forks if that gets that lion's share of funding for load distribution. But it won't have that money if we're blowing billions on mid-upside mapmakers' perfectionism we can't peg with much confidence will even do what it's supposed to.


FWIW...the 14 does Heath Loop to Dudley in ~13 minutes doing a Heath Sq.--Jackson Sq.--Center St. path with more stops, and the 66 does the equivalent of the Brookline Village--Dudley via Brigham Circle and Rox Xing in 20 mins. on the A.M. rush. Both with way more stops. I remain convinced that 1-1/4 miles of streetcar with left-of-the-stripe trolley-only lane reconfigs on Malcolm X Blvd. and S. Huntington at the Huntington light, plus the NEC air rights full grade separation from Heath Sq. to RX, and no more than 6 stops...gets it done in 8-10 mins. at similar rush hour loads. Nothing in the local bus schedules offers up evidence to the contrary. And this would have a one-seat--from Kenmore OR Huntington--from LMA, and cost $1B+ less than the tunnel we're not quite sure can be engineered to serve LMA.


I'll concede that Arborway is a debate yet to be settled, but distaste for the idea of streetcars won't get the feeders on this network built. There's gonna be surface routes some places. Live with it. Embrace it. Limit it to a tolerable minimum if that's preferable. But it can't be off-the-table entirely because some stuff just isn't buildable with grade separation perfection and infinite money, and the only thing holding out for billion-dollar perfection brings is another 50 years of the same old slow bus.

 

[FK4]

The Ruggles tunnel does not get you a one-seat from LMA to Ruggles without boondoggle construction. It'll cost billions to try to do that.

-- The junction at MFA has to curve east under the Wentworth athletic field at a decently stiff angle. But not too stiff...you're fine splitting to/from Northeastern. Westbound to/from the LMA direction...way different story. Much sharper turn in that direction and will clip the corner foundation of Wentworth Hall and blow up the firehouse. Likewise, having such a tight curve where you have to get on-alignment to the Huntington tunnel before the next set of big building foundations means that at least for the westbound direction you're most likely looking at an at-grade junction. The curvature's only a few degrees better than Copley Jct. where it swings from Exeter St. underneath the BPL expansion wing. You might need to go at-grade junction both directions if you still have aims on still having an MFA station, which is really going to reduce capacity on the Huntington trunk. Omitting MFA to carve out the footprint for a junction may mean you just have to separate Northeastern and LMA by a full half-mile.

-- With that hugely expensive junction--that you have to try like hell to make bi-directional if this tunnel is to accomplish the goals you want it to accomplish--you still have to tunnel half the length of the painful-tunneling Brigham Circle-Brookline Vill trunk to even get to the same block as Ruggles station. The tree-lined MBTA surface easement is not going to be available for this tunnel because it abuts all the tall building pilings. This build has to be centered on Ruggles St. Which means this is a utility gut job like the higher-pain Brigham-BV under-street tunneling and NOT like the Northeastern-Brigham reservation tunneling. And also more painful than along Marginal St. in the South End where side access through the Pike retaining walls allows for sidestepping some utilities. It may be urban renewal land, but you pay the going rate for regular old cut-and-cover and utility relocation. The only thing you save is a little off the cost bloat contingency by knowing more about where the utilities are buried. But that's bloat contingency...not base cost savings.

-- Single-widest portion of the Muddy River is 800 ft. away from Huntington at the would-be junction. You can waterproof the Huntington tunnel pretty well because it's shallow-depth under the reservation here and runs parallel to the river as a wall. Fork a tunnel off perpendicular to the river, especially one that's got to descend lower into the immediate water table for the under-street cut-and-cover, and there's more water intrusion risk in a 50-year flood event in the Fens (which will get more frequent with sea level rise limiting the Charles Dam's ability to quickly flush the Basin). It's not the extreme level of risk of trying to portal onto the D at Park Dr., but extra waterproofing cost...you bet. You're also not going to plow down Louis Prang St. and attempt to sneak down Fenway even closer to the river (LP St. also too narrow and flanked by tall building).

-- You must duck under the NEC and Ruggles station to interface with it. There's no room to portal-up in time to get on the Ruggles busway without razing the NU Health Sciences building. Takes about 400-500 ft. for the B and C to rocket up from their very shallowest subsurface points to ground level, and you only have 200 ft. from the corner of the Health Sciences building to get the hell up inches below the pavement to street level at full track speed before the NEC retaining wall hits. You also can't turn underground onto the busway and portal-up in the back without blowing up the Health Sciences Bldg.; it's a tighter turn there than Boylston curve. Zero options here but to dive deeper. Since your only feasible trajectory for continuing the tunnel and/or having a place to ever portal-up anywhere is by Melnea Cass...you must cross the ENTIRE Ruggles complex on a narrow angle for 1000 ft., put the lower-level station under there, and blow up the 10-story garage.

-- You also aren't reaching Dudley on full grade separation. Every trajectory off Melnea Cass is a hard-right turn on narrow streets to reach the Square requiring major building takings. You can portal-up on the side path before Washington and streetcar it the last couple blocks--your only hope of being able to connect to the Washington St. line. Or just miss Dudley altogether, and consign every single bus that today gets stuck in traffic making the Dudley-Ruggles-RX loop of pain to doing that forevermore. Which harms the buses you are spending a billion dollars to try to nab on grade separation.

-- But by the time you get in the Dudley vicinity on Melnea Cass you have now tunneled for a grand total 1500 ft. longer than the Brigham-BV load-bearing trunk that was originally our most painful bit of tunneling outside of the South End. You've laid waste to Ruggles station. Blown an extreme wad of money on a single junction that may be operationally compromised. And possibly had to throw in the towel on the WB leg...and the very LMA one-seat this monstrosity was supposed to justify.


$1.5 billion base build. Minimum. More if you run into building mitigation problems with the junction and Ruggles interface. And we don't even know if it does what it's supposed to. Keep in mind, Tufts... 8 stops earlier from probable Dudley via this route (if you make it that far), is the Washington St. line transfer point. Which is 8 surface stops (if Worcester Sq. gets eliminated) to Dudley. The Silver Line makes its current 9 surface stops from Tufts to Dudley in about 15 minutes on the morning peak schedule as a 100% surface bus. Is $1B extra worth the cost of maybe 5 minutes in savings? Tops?


Sorry...this is absolutely insane misuse of funding.


The only way you are reliably connecting LMA with Dudley on a one-seat is off the Brookline Village circuit. Whether you feel like building a streetcar all the way to Arborway or not, you're going to have to put a BV-Heath-RX-Dudley routing as one of the finalists (maybe not final choice, but a finalist) amongst very limited options. If you want something that accomplishes the goals you want to accomplish and doesn't shelve every other useful build on this Green network because of a tunnel that's the biggest per-rider capital cost sink on the whole network, must be flexible at surveying the options. All of them have pros/cons. There is no magic bullet here. Just like there wasn't between BU Bridge and Longwood.

Remember the ground rules here...the lion's share of the money has to get allocated to downtown capacity, and we need as many surface routes and easy-scoops of minimal pain as possible to string together the rest. It's not "if I were totalitarian dictator with a SimCity infinite money cheat code" Crazy Transit Pitches. We actually want a prioritization pecking order that--if not getting everything or even majority of the total route miles built--at least remakes Green to a point where it has the trunks to handle anything, serves the essentials, and could serve any of these add-ons.

Downtown CAN handle all the surface forks if that gets that lion's share of funding for load distribution. But it won't have that money if we're blowing billions on mid-upside mapmakers' perfectionism we can't peg with much confidence will even do what it's supposed to.


FWIW...the 14 does Heath Loop to Dudley in ~13 minutes doing a Heath Sq.--Jackson Sq.--Center St. path with more stops, and the 66 does the equivalent of the Brookline Village--Dudley via Brigham Circle and Rox Xing in 20 mins. on the A.M. rush. Both with way more stops. I remain convinced that 1-1/4 miles of streetcar with left-of-the-stripe trolley-only lane reconfigs on Malcolm X Blvd. and S. Huntington at the Huntington light, plus the NEC air rights full grade separation from Heath Sq. to RX, and no more than 6 stops...gets it done in 8-10 mins. at similar rush hour loads. Nothing in the local bus schedules offers up evidence to the contrary. And this would have a one-seat--from Kenmore OR Huntington--from LMA, and cost $1B+ less than the tunnel we're not quite sure can be engineered to serve LMA.


I'll concede that Arborway is a debate yet to be settled, but distaste for the idea of streetcars won't get the feeders on this network built. There's gonna be surface routes some places. Live with it. Embrace it. Limit it to a tolerable minimum if that's preferable. But it can't be off-the-table entirely because some stuff just isn't buildable with grade separation perfection and infinite money, and the only thing holding out for billion-dollar perfection brings is another 50 years of the same old slow bus.

- thx for the analysis on the ruggles tunnel. if its infeasible, then so be it... to clarify, though, if it was done, i was thinking it would surface onto melnea cass... but again, sounds too expensive

- i agree with the brookline connexion... if ruggles tunnel worked, my thought was run the grand jctn->kenmore>Brookline>Huntington>Ruggles>END or >Dudley.

- im ok with surface routes, by all means. i just dont see the heath st route being very fruitful. why drag riders all the way out to the backwaters of mission hill only to loop back all the way around the hill to hit roxbury crossing? maybe BRT is just the answer here: eliminate parking on Tremont, run BRT lanes - Dudley Ruggles LMA on the reserved ROW on Ruggles St, or Dudley to LMA along Malcolm X/Tremont. Fine. *BUT* the whole area around Ruggles, despite having several large buildings, has many vacant lots and large housing projects that are all gonna get rebuilt sooner or later.. so the state should be seriously considering all of these as options for a future transit route somewhere, and be thinking outside the box, ie, OUTSIDE of the Ruggles St 1960s fetishistic obsession with that one route - which sounds like it will decidedly not accomodate a tunnel.

- the most important piece of this, i think you would agree, is getting the alternate trunk lines dug to take pressure off the central sub. that alone (new tunnels by pike, copley, huntington, comm ave, Brookline), plus seaport and GJ with long range plans to run another line to harvard are a shitload of projects by themselves... but it's funny, almost all of boston's inner urban core transit woes could be solved by massive green line expansion projects if done correctly...

 

[vanshnookenraggen]

This has been the best part of this thread, IMHO. The UR via Green Line was supposed to be a compromise that could build it out in segments but it seems to be the last steps, tying all the Green Line enhancements together, will be just as difficult and expensive as upgrading the Green Line itself, thus missing the point.

 

[Shepard]

Well, probably the real compromise - this has been said before - would be a north-side Green Line Grand Junction UR and a south side BRT UR from Kenmore to the Airport via Longwood, Dudley, Melnea Cass, and South Boston Bypass.

 

[George_Apley]

I'm confused about how the turn to/from LMA is sharper than a turn to/from Northeastern. The Ruggles and Huntington intersection would be way smoother than the Boylston curve. Why the need to cut across the Wentworth Hall block at all?

 

[davem]

Kind of just throwing ideas at the wall here, but for a ring:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=z5nSIU1nZ3tI.k_dwDAXnMSE4

For the "lower loop", digging under Park Drive and The Fenway (actually mostly Emmanuel's lawn) would be tough, but not impossible. As soon as you cross Huntington it would portal on an expanded Ruggles Street, using the MBTA Reservation next to the northeastern buildings. Reservation running on Melnea Cass and the Mass Ave Connector, then get across Widett and use the old Broadway trolley tunnel, then into the Silver Line tunnel next to South Station.

Alternatively, it could just turn on Washington and end there.

 

[cbrett]

This has been the best part of this thread, IMHO. The UR via Green Line was supposed to be a compromise that could build it out in segments but it seems to be the last steps, tying all the Green Line enhancements together, will be just as difficult and expensive as upgrading the Green Line itself, thus missing the point.

What do you mean by upgrading the Green Line itself? I'm not sure if you're referring to upgrading to HRT through the core or one of the Blue via Riverbank ideas, or something else entirely, but there is so much more value in expanding the Green Line than just spreading the load before it crushes the downtown core.

The Green Line was created to be a collector system of streetcar and light rail lines, where areas of the highest ridership and density in the core were served by high frequency subway service and those of lesser demand were served by less frequent outer branches either lacking their own ROW or a reservation. (The D is an outlier) When demand and inner core density increased, so did the length of the central subway. If considering just the history of expansion for the central subway and the needs of the core, then yes, it makes sense to repeat the past and rebuild the central subway as full fledged HRT or expand the blue line to meet the crush loads in the core. However, that would completely disregard the second half of the Green Line, the less dense branches traditionally thought of as feeding the central subway core while not providing the ridership justifiable for grade reservation and better service on their own. Rather, we should continue the trend of expanding grade separation and HRT-esque service outwards along the rapidly increasing pockets of density the Urban Ring and Green Line improvements would serve. Remodeling for HRT along the D or running blue to Kenmore does nothing to serve the traditional radiation of demand along the branches of the Green Line, if anything it will sever the current one seat ride currently appealing to so many riders traditionally traveling from the larger suburbs to the downtown core.

With high ridership and exploding demand at several stations just beyond the shared central subway (The BU stations shitshow, Brookline Village, Coolidge Corner, Longwood,Longwood Medical Area, Fenway, Northeastern, Prudential), the demand is apparent for improved service just beyond the traditional core subway, but the outer branch terminals still lack the ridership justifiable for full HRT or full expanded service like all 3 and 4 car trains. Building this piecemeal urban ring would provide a service hitting these major destinations all at once, opening the window for way more service than could be justified sending all the way to the terminus stations. You can start by making improvements like BU consolidation or further burying the E line, which continue the 100 year trend of radial expansion.

This isn't even considering the massive ridership gains of expanding the green into Cambridge, where the Red Line singlehandedly carries ridership already rivaling that of the inner core stations in areas slated for even greater growth. Constructing the urban ring wouldn't just provide some half assed light rail compromise because full blown HRT would be impractical given the cost and relative lack of demand at potential terminus stations. Constructing the Green Line urban ring would be our 21st century response to the same patterns which lead to the creation of the Central Subway 100 years ago, with the high ridership inner branch stations and heavy ridership projections of Cambridge connecting to form a dense core easily fed with the frequent service provided by more suburban branches.

With the GL urban ring there is little disruption to the existing demands for one seat service to the central core that would otherwise (rightfully) piss off hordes of GL outer branch commuters, plus it would offer their equally numerous Park Street bound and red transferring friends a direct path and one seat ride to Cambridge. More importantly, it would provide the significantly larger and more important urban hordes of Cambridge and inner branch based students and professionals with both connections outside the traditional 4 station "core" and direct service taking over for overcrowded busses and shuttles. Then, with the second core established, you can go crazy with adding feeder services through things like the Seaport, GLX and the southern "urban ring" BRT to Dudley and Mattapan. Moving most of the problematic Park St transfers outside of the core allows for greater capacity for the actual central subway itself, be it through continued one seat riders from existing lines or new slots made available to things like a Dudley or Seaport Branch.


So, for the price of several IMMEDIATELY NEEDED IMPROVEMENTS to the inner Green branches and the Grand Junction, you accomplish so much more than any expensive central subway HRT conversion would have done while allowing for continued one seat rides along the branches. Losing the GJ likely means that the Rail Link needs to go in first, but that doesn't mean we can't start assembling the pieces beforehand. Issues regarding Copley Junction cant really be fixed until the more expensive addition of Dudley and the Seaport, but it should be near the top of the T's expansion priorities anyways.

**Didn't realize this post turned into such a beast, I'm sure I regurgitated a lot of what has already been said and apologize if so. I debated just deleting it, but figured it would at least be a good point for discussion. **

 

[Shepard]

Davem, I saw this on your other map as well - why do you route Everett/Chelsea service over the Parkway as opposed to the Eastern Branch? I get that the Parkway routing stays closer to residential Everett, but even going along the rail tracks you can hit the circle at Broadway, then have TOD potential in industrial Everett (specifically the area north of the tracks and south of the Parkway, as well as Mystic Mall)

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

I'm confused about how the turn to/from LMA is sharper than a turn to/from Northeastern. The Ruggles and Huntington intersection would be way smoother than the Boylston curve. Why the need to cut across the Wentworth Hall block at all?

The Northeastern turn has the wide angle from the entire Parker St.-Huntington block that can split the Wentworth athletic field. Other side has a maybe 105-110 turn angle. I think doable without infringing on the Wentworth building now that I've rotated every Google 45-degree angle, but still probably requiring a Copley Jct. at-grade thing. Can't overspill the little triangle park because it has to miss the tall building abutting the sidewalk at Prang/Huntington and the tall building abutting sidewalk at Vancouver/Huntington. And that's where a grade separated junction gets impossible. And probably makes an MFA station impossible, which way way over-spaces Northeastern and LMA.


The fatal blockers are: 1) having to center it Ruggles St. and gut every utility line because of all the tall buildings abutting the tree reservation, 2) the destruction at Ruggles station and potential impacts to the new NU Health building, and 3) the extreme expense of a longer under-street tunneling than the Brigham-BV connector. It's still going to be >$1B for a surplus-to-bare-requirement. Except for the Seaport-BBY connector that we're pretty much in agreement is non-optional if we want the Green Line to have scalable capacity this Ruggles St. connector is the single most expensive individual leg. More expensive than Huntington-to-BV itself. I don't see how that's ever going to be justifiable. Especially when tolerable multi-user surface routings are available that accomplish LMA-Dudley almost as well-performing for one-tenth the cost and no structural impacts.

 

[davem]

I'd like to see 16 reconstructed entirely for better pedestrian access as well as automotive flow, its just a disaster now. It also doesn't hurt that it's closer to the existing residential area.

I don't like using the eastern route row because 1) I'd like to reserve space through there for an eventual rerouting of route 1 away from Chelsea and Charlestown and through the bus yards, connecting to 93 at Sullivan and 2) we need apace for industrial activities, and I think the area around the tracks will and should remain that way. Along 16 could support some TOD, though.

 

[George_Apley]

The Northeastern turn has the wide angle from the entire Parker St.-Huntington block that can split the Wentworth athletic field. Other side has a maybe 105-110 turn angle. I think doable without infringing on the Wentworth building now that I've rotated every Google 45-degree angle, but still probably requiring a Copley Jct. at-grade thing. Can't overspill the little triangle park because it has to miss the tall building abutting the sidewalk at Prang/Huntington and the tall building abutting sidewalk at Vancouver/Huntington. And that's where a grade separated junction gets impossible. And probably makes an MFA station impossible, which way way over-spaces Northeastern and LMA.


The fatal blockers are: 1) having to center it Ruggles St. and gut every utility line because of all the tall buildings abutting the tree reservation, 2) the destruction at Ruggles station and potential impacts to the new NU Health building, and 3) the extreme expense of a longer under-street tunneling than the Brigham-BV connector. It's still going to be >$1B for a surplus-to-bare-requirement. Except for the Seaport-BBY connector that we're pretty much in agreement is non-optional if we want the Green Line to have scalable capacity this Ruggles St. connector is the single most expensive individual leg. More expensive than Huntington-to-BV itself. I don't see how that's ever going to be justifiable. Especially when tolerable multi-user surface routings are available that accomplish LMA-Dudley almost as well-performing for one-tenth the cost and no structural impacts.

Okay, thanks for the detail. I see how there just isn't enough space for the outbound tracks to have a flying junction, and an at-grade solution makes just as problems as it solves.

So UR trains will have a few options out of Brookline Village. (1) Shoot up Huntington and either loop at TMC/Bay Village, or continue into one of the routings offered by the Bay Village station. (2) Stay on the Riverside line [to Reservoir and short-turn?]. (3) Loop down to Heath Street or Forest Hills.

So I guess the question is one you've brought up, and we've all been discussing. Is there any route to connect Dudley to the UR that's worth the cost? It seems like the routes here are also threefold. (1) Spend a lot of $$ trying to get down Ruggles St to connect UR to Orange, then portal-up on Melnea Cass and join the 'F-Line' to Dudley at the Wash intersection. (2) Lay a lot of street-running track down the length of Heath Street; deck the NEC and run GL above; Transfer for OL at Roxbury Crossing; street run down Malcolm X to loop at Dudley. (3) Build what rail conections we can; let Silver Line-style quasi BRT handle connections between key nodes on the south side.

I guess we can always revisit an UR southern leg if/when the acreage bound between Ruggles/Melnea Cass to the north, Tremont and Malcolm X to the south, Huntington to the west and Washington to the east is up for substantial redevelopment.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

This has been the best part of this thread, IMHO. The UR via Green Line was supposed to be a compromise that could build it out in segments but it seems to be the last steps, tying all the Green Line enhancements together, will be just as difficult and expensive as upgrading the Green Line itself, thus missing the point.

I agree...the downtown non-negotiables are pretty much swallowing a Silver Line Phase III-level expense (the original estimate, not the final). But we knew 20 years ago that whatever form it would take would hit that cost figure. So that's not a surprise for how much it blows the ceiling off downtown transit utility.

For the rest of the essentials...these are probably the most expensive connecting legs. And none of them hit $B's if we can keep the opulence of the stations under control.

-- Brigham-BV (because of the 'harder' tunneling). But because the length is similar to Red-Blue and the similar street width is there with few tall buildings. This is the justifiable "last (less-than) mile" for the utility of thru-routing the D. Similar overall cost to Red-Blue's base cost (not the ridiculous 40% bloat contingency the state used solely to justify killing the project). $250M. Limit it to 1 station (Riverway, Mission Park...wherever the siting best fits the name) and it's probably equivalent. Keep in mind as well...you are recycling the electrification trunk for the E.

-- Northeastern portal to Brigham. But only because of the 3-4 required subway stations and under-pavement disruption on the width of the subway stations. The end-to-end under-reservation dig should not be expensive because it can be a shallower tunnel with utility relocations limited to cross streets. Figure $75-85M per station if you're cost-vigilant, and $75M for the whole of the under-reservation tunneling length. Don't think there's any question this segment with proper NU and LMA subway stations funneled out of Back Bay with Seaport connectivity is a good value. Likewise...recycling the E's electrification.

-- Chelsea/Airport branch. 1 Mystic crossing (as mentioned, relocate commuter rail to the new southerly span because it'll whack the painful Eastern Route speed restriction...then use the Eastern Route bridge for LRT), 2 Wellington-style duck-unders at the BET freight wye and past Santilli circle for switching sides of the Eastern Route (these would be culverts, not subways), and longest end-to-end length of any critical connecting branch. I still think this can come in less than what the official BRT UR plan proposes because SL Gateway preps the eastern third and less-opulent station shelters would keep costs from sailing like SL Washington St. pointlessly did. Also...you are running streetcar tracks on the Chelsea lift bridge for 1 block with signal priority. There is absolutely no reason to build a parallel bridge over the river. Maybe $500M because it requires the Mystic crossing and an electrification trunk spanning between Orange Line + GLX carhouse feeds and the Blue Line feed, with likely +1 substations. But...Sullivan + Assembly + Everett Casino + Chelsea UR + Airport connectivity. And the Santilli Circle + Eastern Ave. stations trap some Everett and Chelsea residential density. That's a shitload of bang-for-buck.

-- Blandford portal-to-BU West tunnel extension. Way less than the other tunnels because it can be reasonably limited to 1 subway station at the extreme-widest part of Comm Ave., and the junction + portal splits have lots of cleanroom space at the BU Academy parking lot, BU Bridge hillside, and underneath the start of the Pike incline for slipping the BU West portal approach back on-alignment with no highway surface disruption. $85M for BU Central station because you may want a 4-tracker for the branch split, $50M for the under-reservation tunneling, $75M for the junction. Recycles B electrical feed. For what that does to the freakin' B alone I'll take that.

-- Grand Junction. The only structures you have to build are 1) the Fitchburg Line duck-under (i.e. culvert, not subway) to the Union Branch. And there's plenty of room under the McGrath overpass to flank each Union track with a merging track eastbound. And 2) the Mass Ave. grade separation. Cambridge St. grade separation is a nice-to-have, but you can add that later if you're that cost-constrained. Main not eliminable, Broadway probably not eliminable, Binney too low-traffic to bother with. Putting the trolleys on regular traffic signal coordination is the difference for keeping the traffic impacts minimal over today vs. a DMU where the RR has 100% priority at all times. Then keep the surface station costs reasonable. Only deviation off existing alignment is the short curve on the BU Bridge hillside into the portal. $350M if you keep the stations minimalist because of the electrification trunk spanning B, Red @ Kendall, and GLX. Most of that tied up in the Mass Ave. overpass + elevated station and the electric feed.

-- Washington St. LRT conversion. Treat the forking tunnel as part of the Seaport build since you'll have to notch a track split at Marginal/Pike regardless. I believe there's still an ex-El electric trunk under the street backstopping Orange, so you can glom off that. The original trackless trolley plan's costs seemed to be making that assumption. So it's just lay tracks and recycle the Silver stops and signal priority. I can't see this exceeding $150-200M if it's kept cost-controlled.

-- Substation upgrades writ-large. The electric trunks are all interconnected, and every HRT, LRT, Transitway, and trackless trolley wire uses the same voltage. So substation boosts can be distributed systemwide. They don't necessarily need to be located on this new-construction proper. A little fuzzy to figure costs because some might be tied to necessary future Orange/Red/Blue/Central Subway boosters where extra slack space compartments are made available at the substations for plugging in more equipment. Impossible to figure costs, but treat as an MBTA Rapid Transit-wide project.



EVERYTHING after this can be an independently funded addon.

-- BV to Dudley streetcar (if you're taking my routing). May want to do this first, but it's less-critical than the real load-bearing flanks. Recycles trolley tracks + electrification trunk between Huntington and Heath. Gloms off Orange electrification on the SW Corridor. *Maybe* even BV-to-Huntington if the D-to-E surface connection that's occasionally floated around gets built earlier. Assume that the S. Huntington light gets reconfigured earlier. They really should take that gas station and adjacent blighted properties to spread the street around a wide center yellow stripe for prioritized trolley turning. So the only costs involved are 1) Heath St. and MX Blvd. streetcar tracks, 2) SW Corridor air rights beams, 3) Rox Xing-Dudley electrification. Can't see this costing any more than that Hyde Sq. extension of the E + the cost of the air rights cover which can be shared with DCR for the linear park extension.

-- Union-Porter extension. But STEP is aggressively pursuing this so it might get done well earlier and be n/a in terms of "Green Line Reconfiguration".

-- Harvard Branch, which is going to require at least 1 overpass at Western Ave. (maybe not Cambridge St. if you recycle the old Romar freight siding underpass) and some Harvard cooperation. Especially if you want to keep that streetcar jog limited to the 1500 ft. between Ohiri Field and Memorial Dr. and use the JFK school's lawn for grade separation to Brattle. Don't even THINK about building the Charles crossing and subway connection for 20 years. That Soldiers Field Rd. bridge sucks, but you can live with that short a length on the startup headways this branch will serve and the TOTAL grade separation everywhere else.

-- All other. I'm gonna choose to disagree with FK4 on the need for Arborway, but that's just my preference. Oak Sq., Watertown, etc. etc. That's ALL later and independent.


This will obviously have to happen in an era of U.S. governance where funding sources for transit are radically different. Like...lower-case interstate highway different. And assuming that rapid transit development is going to get way more than the pittance of help it currently gets from the feds, even if that "Rail Interstate" initiative focuses 75% of its attention on the mainline rail network and not metro systems.

And definitely a sea change in Massachusetts transit funding and MassDOT attitudes asphalt expansion vs. rail expansion. But, shit, the system as we know it isn't going to survive without that kind of sea change so it's not like this is optional. Maybe when we're up to 5 or 6 consecutive House Speakers leaving office in a perp walk instead of the three-and-counting we're currently on we'll finally get a keeper of the purse strings less corrupt and dictatorial who actually gives a crap about the wellbeing of the state's long-term mobility.



We're thinking big, but not Crazy Transit Pitches unlimited big. If we're willing to take on a megaproject like the Seaport connector + Back Bay connector, I don't see what's so daunting about taking on the other core pieces of the UR load-bearing trunks and ROW's. It's mostly surface and reservation digs with other longstanding justifications.

Just keep the Crazy Transit Pitches addons like the Ruggles St. subway from mission-creeping this to death and beat the state into submission on overspending for stations. BERy used to do wonderfully functional stations within-budget. That's not a new or scary concept.