Re: Tremont Street Tunnel, the Silver Line, D-E and retiring Copley Junction
Alon, that assumes that restoring the A branch as it was is the best idea, which it isn't. Creating a new A branch that runs through Allston to Harvard would be a much better idea both in terms of ridership and contributing to the growth of Allston.
Of course it isn't! But I'm also not sold on the branch to Harvard. Allston-Cambridge service is circumferential, so it's better to just go the whole way on a circumferential line and build one, underground, all the way from Harvard (or Sullivan, even) to Dudley (or JFK-UMass, even). It railstitutes the 66 and the 1, and, if it goes to JFK-UMass, offers a rail-rail connection that can take some ridership off the 23. The point here is that travelers from Harvard to most points that your proposed A branch would serve would have a faster trip on the Red Line with a transfer at Park Street; the branch would be great at connecting Harvard with Allston, but there's also demand to the other stations intersecting the 66.
If there is ever a branch to Needham it might be safe to assume D branch headways would stay the same or be slightly increased and service to the terminals (Riverside and Needham) would be split. If need be one branch could use Boylston and another Huntington.
I really dislike that last idea. It creates a situation in which the inner segments have less frequency than the combined one between Brookline Village and Newton Highlands. If there's a D-E connection, pick one route to use, Boylston or Huntington, and reduce the other one to a frequent short-turn (not a shuttle - it should go all the way to Park Street). If the capacity relief is enough that it's possible to time the shuttle to meet trains at Brookline, then all the better.
Obviously tunneling through the Back Bay, under Stuart St or hugging the Pike, would be difficult and costly. But the alternative is what, the Blue Line?
The alternative is to do nothing - let the Worcester Line provide some extra capacity (remember, the trains are longer, so 15-minute service provides equivalent capacity to 5-minute Green Line service), and build new light rail capacity toward Dudley instead.
Let me preface this by saying- Alon- I'm sincerely glad you've started posting to AB. I've read a massive amount of your blog and your observations and transit proposals are very insightful. I look forward to your continued participation on forum topics as well as future blog posts. However, I disagree with your appraisal that the D-E connection in this proposal is not practical. Here are my reasons why:
Awww, thanks!
1. I’ve seen you post before that you think that a green line branch down Washington Street that utilized the Tremont Street tunnel should continue onward either to Forest Hills or to Mattapan Square. With regard to the former, I believe the only appropriate way to reach Forest Hills is with an E-line restoration. I think maintaining the historical transit pattern and utilizing the existing infrastructure (the trolley polls are still there and the electrical conduit is still in place) is the most sensible thing. Moreover, I think the neighborhood would be much more receptive to restoring rail service to these areas along this alignment.
Now a D-E connector facilitates that. If I recall I believe that F-line believed creating portals to tie in the E-line (restored to Forest Hills) to a newly created Huntington street tunnel would be needlessly expensive. While I acknowledge the cost implications I believe that if they are going to be tearing up that area they might as well include portals for the E-line. That is a way to justify street running from the portal at Huntington to Forest Hills.
I noticed that you mentioned that the E-line restoration to Forest Hills would need its own reservation. I disagree on this point. Once one acknowledges that a green line trolley can street run on this route (because it has before) then the argument for a reservation becomes one of ops and aesthetics. However, I think people’s attitudes are changing and therefore it is not unlikely that the E-line will be restored to Forest Hills as a street running route without any tunnel on Huntington. Add in the tunnel and this becomes a foregone conclusion.
What do you mean by reservation here? If you mean a grade-separated ROW, then it's unnecessary - in fact, the only point of subway-surface service is that it can run at-grade, on the street, outside city center.
However, dedicated
lanes for light rail are a must. Mixed-traffic streetcars are a terrible idea on so many levels: they get stuck behind stopped cars, and they are supposed to carry many more passengers than a car but don't even get priority. It's something that's come out of discussions on a few transit blogs, mainly Human Transit: streetcars do not actually provide an improvement over buses. There's rail bias, coming from factors like a smoother ride, but ultimately, a mixed-traffic streetcar is slower than the bus it replaces. When there are dedicated lanes, the situation changes completely: the streetcar can then maintain a higher speed at equivalent level of passenger comfort, and, in a subway-surface configuration, feed into a downtown tunnel that skips traffic.
Yes, historic streetcars in the US ran in mixed traffic. They worked only when car ownership was so low they didn't get stuck in traffic. Once they did get stuck in traffic, they were no longer usable. Good transit plans need to take into account the situation of 2015 and not attempt to replicate 1925; they should learn from modern-day projects in countries that get transit right (i.e. certainly not the US), and not from projects that are three generations past their sell-by date.
As for having the Washington Street green line run all the way down to Mattapan Square I will say that makes sense but might not be feasible from a cost standpoint.
I think it's penny-wise and pound-foolish to complain about the cost of a few kilometers of light rail but then propose several km of Huntington tunnel.
Some other comments about this proposal in general:
2. The Seaport area needs rail access. Everyone more or less recognizes that but they don’t know how to advocate for it. Unfortunately the only proposal is the stupid BCEC dinky. When an area is filling up with that much money and business interests it’s only a matter of time before some rail project is brought in to appease that constituency. One thing I love about this proposal is that a project brings rail access to one of the most tony areas of Boston (the Seaport) at the same time as addressing the needs of a lower income area of Boston (Dudley Square and the riders on the SL4 and 5).
Does it? It's not a huge destination. SL2 is not one of the busier buses in the system. The busy buses are neighborhood workhorses like the SL4/5 reverse-branch, the 39, the 28, and the 23, and the 66 and 1 circumferentials.
The Seaport itself is the type of neighborhood American cities love to overserve with core connectors. It's barely a kilometer from South Station along Summer Street. It's not between the CBD and anything else, unless you count SL1, also not a particularly busy bus, serving a globally overrated destination, i.e. the airport. It reminds me of discussions like Providence's Core Connector, which ignores what are by the busiest two buses in the region (the 11 on Broad, to South Providence, and the 99 on Main, to Pawtucket), and instead focuses on the East Side (=rich people) and the Jewelry District (=the new area the city wants to develop).
The only reasonable way to connect the Seaport to the CBD better is to make the walk more pleasant. This means developing the parking lots and reconfiguring the intersections between Summer Street and the Service Roads to be at-grade, so pedestrians can walk from the new waterfront developments to South Station. It would also help people visiting the Convention Center.
