Green Line Reconfiguration

[The EGE]

Retaining walls, emergency exit walkways, electrical infrastructure, and the automatic gate system which keeps out cars.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Retaining walls, emergency exit walkways, electrical infrastructure, and the automatic gate system which keeps out cars.

Yes, this. The Silver portal has pretty thin retaining walls, but all of the other safety-reg requirements for a BRT tunnel entrance mean that the bare minimum portal/incline width is exactly what you see at D St. 50 ft.

On Ave de Lafayette this reduces the sidewalks on each side of the retaining wall to 2-1/2 feet. Narrower than the shoulders of a relatively large, stocky male human. Total violation of ADA law, total violation of fire code.

Again...no permit = Game Over. Every "Yeah, but. . ." squinting at possible remediation is a complete and utter waste of time that will never translate to the real world.

I would love to read about the reviewed and rejected portal options between South Station and the Common. I have found these options for portals after Boylston but nothing for before.

https://www.mbta.com/uploadedfiles/About_the_T/T_Projects/T_Projects_List/CH 2 -Final DEIS.pdf

I'm having trouble Googling it, because I think a lot of it is offline on Web Archive. Do a board search. At some point last year I linked to a PDF with several other proposed concepts that were rejected too quickly to get catalogued in the DEIS or any project updates. Some of them were just some politician or bureaucrat pitching "How about this?" hail-mary one day and the official response the next day being "How about NO?"

I am also interested in the 50 ft wide portal requirement. I see that the Chelsea Silver Line surface Busway is 30ft. What goes into the additional 20ft for a portal?

Explained above, per EGE. This eliminates any and all streets in Chinatown, because you won't find 50 ft. in width anywhere that doesn't cannibalize sidewalks and building access to flagrant violation of ADA and fire code. Same deal...no compliance = no permit = Game Over, start all over again.

If this portal were explored further the State may want to buy the two adjacent properties and then resell them with air rights over the former Ave De Lafayette right of way.

No, No, NO! That is high-rollin' development there. The state will get destroyed in a lawsuit, and the BRA and City Hall will loudly oppose it and probably join in said lawsuit because of the chilling precedent it sets for other high-rollin' developers they're trying to attract. Eminent domain will also cost middle-upper 8 figures, totally blowing out your project budget and contradicting the supposed cost savings of a half-build.

Desperate hacks like this are not rational thought. For the last time: this is not a Crazy Transit Pitch, it is something that was supposed to have been built 10 years ago.

The Building Code does give increases to the allowable floor area of a building based on street frontage length. The building in question is likely Type III construction (exterior is non combustible and interior is combustible). The street frontage loss would affect the buildings allowable area per floor. Doing a quick code analysis it looks like a fully sprinklered Type III A office building with no street frontage bonus could have 57,000 SF per floor. This is larger than the building in question.

This is all 1000% irrelevant, because the fire codes in question involve OUTSIDE access to building entrances. Sidewalks of 2-1/2 feet don't pass muster with the fire code. AND they violate the ADA. The most Jetsons-shit fire suppression inside the building has absolutely jack to do with the code violations outside the building.

No permit issued for construction that violates multiple laws. No permit = no build. No build = build somewhere else. No somewhere else in the neighborhood where the street grid is any wider for a portal = Shit Outta Luck on a mid-line portal. As the people who actually studied this thing conclusively ruled out. You can tunnel BRT--extremely expensively, with dicey mitigation--under these narrow streets, but you can't pop a portal on one.

There are no, nada, zero loopholes for a "Yeah, but..." Move on, please.

 

[Arlington]

So *close* a 55' wide street for half a block and pay some people to move their doors &/or internal circulation. And either leave an ADA-compliant 5' sidewalk next to a 50' portal or take the 2.5' on either side for foundation shoring and whatever foundation it takes to sell the air rights above to help offset the costs.

Boston has closed dozens of street segments over the centuries. Its a grid. It can withstand a few deleted segments, particularly for 1 that makes the whole Silver Line tunnel work.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

So *close* a 55' wide street for half a block and pay some people to move their doors &/or internal circulation. And either leave an ADA-compliant 5' sidewalk or simply make it all-portal, and sell the air rights above to help offset the costs.

Boston has closed dozens of street segments over the centuries. Its a grid. It can withstand a few deleted segments, particularly for 1 that makes the whole Silver Line tunnel work.

Street View it. It's not possible. 11 AdL's only street-level access is here. It is not connected to any other building on that block. The fire standpipe and utility room/basement emergency exit for the tower across the street is here. Two sidewalks required. Two sidewalks in only 5 feet = violation of ADA and fire codes = GAME OVER.


What is so hard to understand about this??? These posts sprout all sorts of utter periphery irrelevance that in no way addresses the actual problem at-hand: the remaining available surface width violating the fire code and the ADA. And no possible build can shrink narrower than 50 ft. to un-violate the fire code and ADA, or shift things from one side to the other without violating those codes even worse than before.

This isn't Klingon. Violate 2 unyielding laws, don't get a permit. No permit, can't build. No "Yeah, but's. . ." and double-downs about irrelevant periphery facts moves the needle any closer to getting the permit that allows a build, because none of it is relevant to what's violating the 2 unyielding laws for street-level access that prevents the permit from ever being issued.

 

[Arlington]

I didn't say you had to close any particular stretch, AdL or otherwise. [I was more responding to the despair at locating a 50' portal on 55' streets]

Still, holding several billion dollars of infrastructure hostage over standpipe and door locations seems silly. Somewhere[in Greater Chinatown], there's a building owner who will trade mods to his building in exchange for claiming the air rights over his adjacent street onto which he can expand his upper floors.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

I didn't say you had to close any particular stretch, AdL or otherwise.

Still, holding several billion dollars of infrastructure hostage over standpipe and door locations seems silly. Somewhere, there's a building owner who will trade mods to his building in exchange for claiming the air rights over his adjacent street onto which he can expand his upper floors.

No, you've got it completely backwards. Staking a billion dollars in infrastructure to defectiveness-by-design by is silly and unrealistic. Staking a billion dollars in infrastructure to pointless destruction of high-end revenue generating real estate is not only silly and unrealistic, but political poison that'll hurt working relationships for years when such unified opposition from the private sector and city institutions to state-level unilateral tactical nuclear strikes can't be prevailed over and unilateral eminent domain sacks the project budget to fatality. Staking a billion dollars in infrastructure to the intensity-of-belief in boundless altruism from private entities and local public institutions with a hefty profit motive is silly. Inventing clusterfucks of bad transit as an engineering challenge to find the most convoluted way possible to do a job for the bragging rights of saying anything is possible no matter how impractical...is silly. (In fact, didn't we just have this discussion in the CTP thread about pitches that are all-"Crazy" but forgot the "Transit Pitch"?)


We left the real world a whole page ago if this discussion has disintegrated into another "Yeah, but. . ." contest of fallaciously re-framing the impossible as somehow possible. Is anyone going to even attempt to address the fact that no construction permit will ever be issued when a portal at that location violates two building access laws? Calling the laws silly does not get you one step closer to a permit. That's fantasy, not problem-solving.

 

[Upstruk]

[/IMG]

This image is on page 20 of the attached.

https://www.mbta.com/uploadedfiles/About_the_T/T_Projects/T_Projects_List/Executive_Summary.pdf

The only portal width dimension I can find for Silver Line Phase III is for the Columbus Ave portal. It is listed at 34ft wide.

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3757547,-71.1188835,177m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3730409,-71.1220678,3a,60y,66.09h,89.19t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sE_h5Cfbiuj_D3WunPC2u2A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en

The Harvard Square bus portals also are less than 50ft. For what its worth the Silver Line Way portal at D street scales to about 45ft on Google Earth.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

This image is on page 20 of the attached.

https://www.mbta.com/uploadedfiles/About_the_T/T_Projects/T_Projects_List/Executive_Summary.pdf

The only portal width dimension I can find for Silver Line Phase III is for the Columbus Ave portal. It is listed at 34ft wide.

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3757547,-71.1188835,177m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.373...h5Cfbiuj_D3WunPC2u2A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en

The Harvard Square bus portals also are less than 50ft. For what its worth the Silver Line Way portal at D street scales to about 45ft on Google Earth.

It's 50 ft. But if you want to play scaling games on Google Earth you better be prepared for Ave de Lafayette to have a fudge factor that subtracts 5 feet too.


It is also...like a broken record...utterly irrelevant to feasibility. Once more, for emphasis:

Section 7.09 — Access for Fire Department Apparatus and Personnel
(b) Approved hard-surface, all-weather, access fire lanes, not less than 20 feet in width, for use of Fire Department apparatus, shall be provided to within 25 feet of any building or other structure at the site.

You can check Livablestreets for corroboration of the fire code, as they have a long write-up about the mechanics of doing bike-friendly and ped-friendly infrastructure in Boston that attains full design compatibility with the word-for-word above cited emergency response regs. That blurb of legalese quoted here is not some eye-of-beholder verbiage one can interpret any way they please. It is a very specific and well-enumerated part of the design for any building-street interface and any civilly engineered public infrastructure touches.

No portal location whatsoever allows for fire dept. access within 25 ft. of 11 Ave de Lafayette or the emergency egress on the tower within the maximum allowable 6% grades for a BRT incline. None.

No permit...game over.


ADA sidewalks must each be no less than 5 feet wide when they are placed 2 or more feet from a curb or barrier. (source: AASHTO and FHWA regs...multiple wikis online enumerating this with diagrams). ADA sidewalks directly abutting a curb or barrier must be no less than 6 feet wide.

As this will be an abutting-barrier situation with immovable building egresses on both sides of the street, you do not have 6 feet on both sides of the road to provide ADA-compliant building access.

No permit...game over.

----- ----- ----- ----- -----

Harvard bus portal was built as trolley tunnel in 1912, converted to dual-use busway in 1938, and reconfigured at the north portal in the late-70's with air rights cover-over at the south portal late-80's. Its width is grandfathered to 100 years ago, lacking the emergency tunnel egresses and car-blocking protections required today for the Silver Line. It is a completely irrelevant comparison.

Again...these portal safety specs were fully explained not 5 posts ago.

----- ----- ----- ----- -----

Columbus Ave. portal was rejected. It was the preferred alternative for neighborhood groups, but got thumbs-downed on engineering feasibility. Maximally steep grades combined with minimally narrow width required to fit it within that block induced a schedule-killing speed penalty. As this is exactly what you are facing on Ave de Lafayette to try to skirt the legal no-go's, 34 ft. wide @ 6% steep is not an aspirational reference or possible escape hatch for AdL. It's a great big flaming red flag that you're wasting your time with something that paid project engineers have already determined has project-wrecking infeasibility and makes for bad-performing transit.

"Charles Street Modified" with a portal at the Tremont/Marginal traffic island was the last candidate left standing at time of cancellation. The same alignment that's an arrow-straight shot from the covered-over Pleasant St. trolley portal via the widest, least-impactful street corner to tunnel to. Go figure.

----- ----- ----- ----- -----



Not one of these AdL rebuttals addresses the two very real and ironclad legal blockers to a construction permit. The design either solves those two issues head-on and in totality, or there is no build. No amount of fussing around the edges re-presenting the same plan of 0.0001% feasibility odds gussied up with slightly different periphery factoids gets any closer to earning that construction permit. It still whiffs on the permit by a mile.

Either there's a radical design/alignment change making a quantum leap into total legal compliance here, or continuing to septuple-down on Ave de Lafayette out of stubbornness just ends up proving the definition of insanity through repetition.

 

[Deetroyt]

Just a question about if the Greenline ever did run down Washington to Dudley, was it to be in a dedicated ROW, with the trains in the middle (where the car lanes currently are) and the car lanes shifted to the current bus lanes? Or would it have been street running the whole way to Dudley?

 

[citylover94]

I assumed it would just run in the Silver Line bus lanes the only changes would be adding tracks and wires for the trains.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

I assumed it would just run in the Silver Line bus lanes the only changes would be adding tracks and wires for the trains.

Pretty much. I believe the old El traction power feed still exists active below-street as a cross-system trunkline interconnection. Much like the A Line's power feed from Packards Corner to Watertown Carhouse is still very much active as a Green Line to 71 TT power interconnection, and is slated for an SGR repair project. Existence of nearby power source was one of the reasons that a lot of the embryonic proposals for SL-Washington--some dating to before the El was dismantled--specced a trackless trolley route. You'd have to do trunk feed and substation upgrades elsewhere on the system to load-balance things well enough before re-tapping that feed for local service, but there's plenty of places for that since it doesn't have to be location-specific.


Only other question is lane/stop configuration and whatnot, since ADA compliance for new construction mean middle-of-street drop-offs like South Huntington that can't level-board a low-floor car from a platform are no-go. Do they want side turnouts like the current buses and like the Arborway restoration plans that were prelim-designed before cancellation? Or do they want to do center-running with MUNI Market St.-style platforms that keep trolleys and buses consistently centered without changing lanes and bank cars to pass on the right when a transit vehicle is stopped?

I've ridden on Market a bunch of times, and it's an extremely elegant and well-functioning setup on a street MUCH narrower with denser intersection spacing than Washington. You could take a parking row at stops and have pretty full-sized platforms flanking opposite sides of an intersection, egress @ crosswalk...and still retain full auto lane capacity to the right. It would basically be the same as having a full B reservation-style platform...but only on facing sides of the intersection to keep the overall profile much narrower than a real reservation. And it's 100% usable by buses too, just like Market which has shitloads of TT's and diesel buses parading through those same platforms in between streetcar headways.


That's the way I'd do it for optimal performance. But I fear "Not Invented Here" syndrome is going to pooh-pooh that modernish West Coast installation from ever being given cursory study here.

 

[odurandina]

i've oft wondered if the Green Line could have had the stops spaced out 50% further apart on the b, c, and e... to do longer trains, and a third track to accommodate inbound and outbound peak/s in the core.... if that would have been 3~4X more effective, and if this can still be accomplished.

 

[The EGE]

Adding tracks to the tunnels? Absolutely no way. You're talking billions of dollars, massive impacts to dozens and dozens of buildings, completely redoing stations, etc.

The B is dropping two stations in BU in a couple years, and four stops were dropped a decade ago. That gets you to a pretty reasonable stop spacing - the only one left to do is combine Griggs, Allston, and Warren into one or two stops rather than three. The bigger issue is addressing the extremely substandard platforms on some stops and filling in the ADA gaps, though all stops will be 3-car length once the BU ones are done and BC finally gets moved to the median.

The C badly needs some attention. It's way behind the status of the other lines on ADA, has some terrifyingly narrow inbound platforms, and a lot of very short platforms (most stops would need to be lengthened to handle 3 cars, and some like Cleveland Circle would require grade crossing eliminations).

Every platform on the D is 3-car length, and wide enough that third cars actually were well-used (unlike the B). The priorities for the D are getting the power system able to handle triples, getting every stop ADA'd, and filling in a few missing entrances.

The stop spacing on the E is actually perfect up till Brigham Circle, and all the 2002-era-renovated stops are all at least 3 car length. Triples will almost certainly never operate past Brigham Circle in any case - they're unwieldy for street-running and they cannot use the Heath Street loop. Fenwood Road is an obvious drop (improve crosswalks to Brigham Circle in its stead) and BotH's utility to the section 8 housing could probably be replaced with better ped connections to Heath Street.

 

[The EGE]

To expand on my comments about the D: the three center-median lines tend to have pretty good walk-up access to the stations. Other than a few missing crosswalks (east crosswalks at Tappan Street and Washington Square, and a west crosswalk to the inbound platform at St Paul Street on the C, etc) and a few oddballs like moving the northbound 66 stop across Comm Ave, there's not a lot of access improvements that need made.

On the D, though, almost every station could benefit from better or rearranged entrances. Every station should be ADA'd because of the long stop spacing. To wit:

• Fenway: Badly needs an entrance on the west side of the Fenway. Getting between the station and the southbound 47 and CT2 is a nasty exercise with no close crosswalks. The ADA route between the platforms and the southbound bus stop is more than 1,000 feet long - for a shelter that is less than 20 feet from being physically above the platforms! An elevator + stairs directly to the street would be best, but even accces through the alley to Medfield Street would cut the distance in half.
• Longwood and Brookline Village: actually pretty darn good. BV definitely needs better crosswalks across Route 9, though.
• Brookline Hills: Needs ADA'd (real easy) and a south entrance through the commercial parking lot. Also needs better/safer crosswalks across 9 for access from the High Street Hill neighborhood.
• Beaconsfield: Needs ADA'd (pretty easy). Along with that, add a crosswalk for direct access from the Waldstein playground.
• Reservoir: First off, needs direct access from the outbound platform to the busway. It's a 500+ foot walk versus one flight of stairs. Second, they should give serious consideration to a pedestrian bridge from the busway over the carhouse and landing in the CVS parking lot. The current route from the residential and commercial density of Cleveland Circle is rather roundabout and involves an awkward angled crossing of the non-revenue tracks.
• Chestnut Hill: Needs ADA'd, otherwise okay.
• Newton Centre: Needs an accessible ramp from Braeland to the platforms.
• Newton Highlands: Needs ADA'd, and a proper connection to the Upper Falls bikeway.
• Eliot: Needs ADA's and better ramps/ped bridge across Route 9. The current setup is pretty unwieldy and doesn't do well as Newton Upper Fall's primary transit connection.
• Waban: Needs ADA'd, and needs a south/west entrance through the Union Church parking lot.
• Woodland: Needs an entrance from the Longfellow Road neighborhood. The route to Newton/Wellesley Hospital also needs cleaned up - there are some awkward curb cuts, and some gems like this utility pole blocking the sidewalk.
• Riverside: it's all about connections here. Finish the path to Lower Falls, improve sidewalks or even put a tunnel under the platforms for direct access from the Riverside Center development. Run a path along the connection to the Worcester Line to improve access from the west side of Auburndale. And for fuck's sake, get a high-frequency bus route pinging between Riverside and Waltham. That would be a vastly more reliable route to downtown than either the 70 or the 550s buses.

 

[odurandina]

i used the D Line to Eliot a few weeks ago.

Speeds between above ground stops were abysmal compared to the 1980s.

 

[millerm277]

The C badly needs some attention. It's way behind the status of the other lines on ADA, has some terrifyingly narrow inbound platforms, and a lot of very short platforms (most stops would need to be lengthened to handle 3 cars, and some like Cleveland Circle would require grade crossing eliminations).

What the C needs most is stop elimination/consolidation in my opinion.

For some rough spacing of platform end to platform end off Google Maps:

Cleveland Circle - Englewood Ave: 740ft
Englewood Ave - Dean Road (inbound): 615ft
Dean Road(outbound) - Tappan St - 595ft
Tappan St - Washington Square - 797ft
Washington Square - Fairbanks St (inbound) - 690ft
Fairbanks St (outbound) - Brandon Hall (outbound) - 410ft
Brandon Hall - Summit Ave - 615ft
Summit Ave - Coolidge Corner(inbound) - 870ft
Coolidge Corner - Saint Paul St - 950ft
St Paul St - Kent St - 630ft
Kent St (outbound) - Hawes St - 450ft
Hawes St to St Mary's St - 930ft

Add in some of those platform lengthenings you're talking about and you could wind up with stops literally a train length or two apart if you were running a 3-car train.

-------------


My personal opinions would be to eliminate one of Englewood/Dean, one of the Fairbanks/Brandon Hall combo and Hawes Street and then reassess.

The reasoning being they have a combination of shorter spacing, low ridership, and extremely small catchment areas. All 3 have very few people for whom that station is closer than another by any significant degree.

----------

Also, while I understand the narrow platforms aren't ideal, for the most part they aren't particularly problematic in practice in my experience. They're at low ridership stops and so don't have the BU problem of the platform being dangerously crowded. The train doesn't come into the station quickly when people are on the platform.

Certainly, that you could take two steps back and stumble into traffic on Beacon is....not good safety practice, but as something bothering people at present I don't think this is high on the list.

 

[The EGE]

Measuring platform end to platform end is a deceptive measurement, though, especially when some stations have split platforms. You can make the platforms on every station three times as long, but that doesn't change the actual distance between when the train stops.

More accurate measurements would be measuring, let's say, the location of the first door on an inbound train:
CC to Englewood: 950 feet
Englewood to Dean: 870 feet
Dean to Tappan: 1160 feet
Tappan to Washington: 1000 feet
Washington to Fairbanks: 930 feet
Fairbanks to Brandon Hall: 750 feet
Brandon Hall to Summit: 870 feet
Summit to Coolidge: 1110 feet
Coolidge to St Paul: 1160 feet
St Paul to Kent: 860 feet
Kent to Hawes: 960 feet
Hawes to St. Marys: 1180 feet

That's the real stop spacing on the C line, and it's surprisingly adequate. The neighborhoods surrounding Beacon Street were built with a trolley line with close stop spacing in mind; it's not like the B where stops are based of major cross streets, or the E where they're based on areas of concentrated density. There actually used to be more stops until the 80s when the still-extant asphalt platform were built - Strathmore definitely had one, possibly Carlton as well.

Because of the limited access routes (especially from the north side) Fairbanks and Brandon Hall could definitely be combined with platforms between their current locations. Hawes could be merged into Kent without a huge inconvenience, if you flipped the inbound platform east of Kent Street and added crosswalks at the east end of both platforms.

I'm biased, but Englewood and Dean aren't necessary to combine. They serve different catchments - Englewood gets the residential density around Strathmore Road and Englewood, while Dean gets a lot of walkups from Dean/Corey which is an important thoroughfare, as well as riders who spurn Beaconsfield because the D is often too full. Additionally, they're right by the end of the line, so much fewer riders are inconvenienced by the extra stop.

All-door boarding will reduce the dwell time penalty, and TSP will reduce the delays from traffic lights. That's where the real savings on the C comes in. Eliminating stops doesn't do as much good as the B, where the closeness of the stops is a real problem, and where the street grid often means that close stops have much more overlapping catchment areas than the C.

 

[Matthew]

BU East, BU Central and Blandford really should be cut down to no more than 2 stops. Possibly everything rearranged depending upon how development proceeds further west. Tough though since BU East and Central are relatively new. Blandford is still crap, though, not sure what its future will be.

 

[curcuas]

Feel like you need to axe BU east and keep the other two. BU Central is very close to it, but in a better place. Having Blandford cuts down on pedestrians cutting through to Kenmore and is in a useful spot.

 

[Arlington]

As EGE alludes, the BU stops are at 30% design and construction will be 2017-2018 as follows: