I went on a Green Line adventure a couple of weeks ago, and have some assorted observations.
Longwood: I walked across Longwood on Longwood Ave going from Longwood station to Longwood Medical Area station. (My kingdom for some variation in names.) I wanted to compare it to a commute I used to do from South Station to the Old State House which, at 11 minutes, felt like a useful point of comparison as a walk that teeters on the edge of convenience; as a young able-bodied person, on a good day the walk across the Financial District was fine. If it was raining, or snowing, or hot & humid, or just really cold (those streets become goddamn wind tunnels), it was a real bummer.
(In theory, that commute should've been done by changing for the Orange Line at Back Bay. In the morning, the problem was that the Orange Line was often overcrowded and delayed. In the afternoon, I prioritized being able to get a good seat for the ride back to Providence, which was a lot harder at Back Bay.)
In any case, my personal reaction was that the "last mile" from the D's Longwood station was generally comparable to the Financial District one: a 10-12 minute walk itself is okay, and it increasingly sucks as the environmental conditions get worse. In this respect, the situation in Longwood is not ideal, but not unprecedented. That 10-12 minute walk would also get you to most of the major hospitals, including all of the Beth Israels as well as the Yawkey Center; Boston Children's teeters on the edge of that range. This brings me back to the Francis St ("Netherlands") infill concept: a new stop at Francis St would put Brigham & Women's within a <10 min walkshed of the D Line, which would cover the majority of the hospitals.
One thing that did really strike me: as we've discussed many times before, damn those streets are narrow. I don't know what the answer is, but funneling large numbers of people through small areas is what transit is good at, so...
And speaking of narrow: those E Line platforms, e.g. at Longwood Medical Area, are bracingly narrow. I know this is obvious to everyone who uses them, but I hadn't myself in a while, and it's really arresting to see firsthand.
Overall, these were all useful datapoints for me. I don't think my mind has particularly changed on any of the proposals in this thread (which I suppose is concerning, suggesting confirmation bias), though I think the narrow platforms are a good additional justification for building a proper subway.
The C Line: man, that train goes slowly. The crossing through Beacon Junction was taken at walking speed. At street level, my app measured in-motion speeds between 7 and 10 mph. The stop request system was in full-force (this was a Sunday), and the train glided through skipped stops at that same andante 7-10 mph. But the train also stopped and held at a bunch of traffic lights.
Both of these reflect the extremely porous nature of the surface branches with respect to their built environment. You really do get the sense that a pedestrian might suddenly appear, crossing the ROW, at any time. (The very narrow pre-renovation platforms also contribute to this.) The B & C represent the extreme of this, but all of it speaks to (in my opinion) the defining characteristic of light rail: how quickly can a train stop and how much damage will a collision cause.
On a more whimsical note, I was reminded just how gorgeous the C Line is. The canopy of trees along the ROW is really beautiful.
St Mary's St and Park Dr: we have periodically discussed the possibility of some kind of circumferential service running via Park Drive, with a walking transfer to the C Line at Audubon Circle (Beacon St & Park Dr). This has always been recognized as less than ideal. That being said, the conditions "on the ground" make me relatively unconcerned about the distance itself. There is clear line of sight between the station and the intersection -- it doesn't "feel" like it's that far away. Additionally, with some reconfiguration and reclamation of the street, it would probably be possible to build a sidewalk along the median, extending from the platform to the intersection, providing a direct route while still remaining in the "transit zone". (This sidewalk could also be covered to provide protection from the elements, reducing inconvenience further.)
I've previously suggested that a transitway along Park Dr could provide a minimally interrupted ROW from B to D, by reclaiming the western two lanes, and closing the Park & Medfield intersection and the western end of the Park & Buswell intersection. That would enable a single crossing at Beacon St (potentially plus a pair of on-request pedetrian crossings at the closed intersections) while providing an otherwise unimpeded ROW from Mountfort St to Riverway. I didn't see anything in particular that would cause a problem for such an alignment along Park Dr (although there were a lot of trees -- seemingly more than I see on the satellite right now -- along Park Dr, which would need to be relocated).
Mountfort St and crossing the Mass Pike: I didn't spend as long poking around here, but unfortunately I didn't see anything that made this particular problem any easier to solve. The intersection of St Mary's & Mountfort is elevated, with a modest incline to the west on Mountfort. BU's College of Engineering strikes an imposing figure on the other side of the Pike. Some sort of decked ROW over the Pike -- possibly intersecting the existing St Mary's St overpass at-grade -- could maybe work, but that's a fair amount of money to spend for a connection that still won't be ideal.
One dynamic that emerged more clearly is how surprisingly restricted this area is for north-south circulation, whether transit or traffic. For almost an entire mile, from Amory St to Kenmore Sq, there are essentially only two paths to travel south from the Pike. The first is at the Mountfort/Essex/BU Bridge expanded intersection, which feeds into Carlton St (as well as a more roundabout route you get funneled on to along Mountfort and then Park Dr). The second is St Mary's St. And... that's it. Essex St deadends at a playground before it can reach Beacon St, and Cummington, Hinsdale, and Blandford Malls are all truncated, producing a whole half-mile where Comm Ave is completely cut off. Combined with the River to the north, and it actually turns that part of Comm Ave into a bit of a "pedestrian peninsula", with very limited egress.
The set of stairs just south of the platform does push any potential new crossovers a bit further south. The other major barriers to new crossovers are the vertical beams holding the tunnel up, which run between the southbound tracks. However, there is a break in those beams for the existing crossover (with a new set of beams "picking up the slack" along that stretch, between the center two tracks), so my hope is that it would be easy enough to convert that from a merging crossover to an X crossover.
Longwood: I walked across Longwood on Longwood Ave going from Longwood station to Longwood Medical Area station. (My kingdom for some variation in names.) I wanted to compare it to a commute I used to do from South Station to the Old State House which, at 11 minutes, felt like a useful point of comparison as a walk that teeters on the edge of convenience; as a young able-bodied person, on a good day the walk across the Financial District was fine. If it was raining, or snowing, or hot & humid, or just really cold (those streets become goddamn wind tunnels), it was a real bummer.
(In theory, that commute should've been done by changing for the Orange Line at Back Bay. In the morning, the problem was that the Orange Line was often overcrowded and delayed. In the afternoon, I prioritized being able to get a good seat for the ride back to Providence, which was a lot harder at Back Bay.)
In any case, my personal reaction was that the "last mile" from the D's Longwood station was generally comparable to the Financial District one: a 10-12 minute walk itself is okay, and it increasingly sucks as the environmental conditions get worse. In this respect, the situation in Longwood is not ideal, but not unprecedented. That 10-12 minute walk would also get you to most of the major hospitals, including all of the Beth Israels as well as the Yawkey Center; Boston Children's teeters on the edge of that range. This brings me back to the Francis St ("Netherlands") infill concept: a new stop at Francis St would put Brigham & Women's within a <10 min walkshed of the D Line, which would cover the majority of the hospitals.
One thing that did really strike me: as we've discussed many times before, damn those streets are narrow. I don't know what the answer is, but funneling large numbers of people through small areas is what transit is good at, so...
And speaking of narrow: those E Line platforms, e.g. at Longwood Medical Area, are bracingly narrow. I know this is obvious to everyone who uses them, but I hadn't myself in a while, and it's really arresting to see firsthand.
Overall, these were all useful datapoints for me. I don't think my mind has particularly changed on any of the proposals in this thread (which I suppose is concerning, suggesting confirmation bias), though I think the narrow platforms are a good additional justification for building a proper subway.
The C Line: man, that train goes slowly. The crossing through Beacon Junction was taken at walking speed. At street level, my app measured in-motion speeds between 7 and 10 mph. The stop request system was in full-force (this was a Sunday), and the train glided through skipped stops at that same andante 7-10 mph. But the train also stopped and held at a bunch of traffic lights.
Both of these reflect the extremely porous nature of the surface branches with respect to their built environment. You really do get the sense that a pedestrian might suddenly appear, crossing the ROW, at any time. (The very narrow pre-renovation platforms also contribute to this.) The B & C represent the extreme of this, but all of it speaks to (in my opinion) the defining characteristic of light rail: how quickly can a train stop and how much damage will a collision cause.
On a more whimsical note, I was reminded just how gorgeous the C Line is. The canopy of trees along the ROW is really beautiful.
St Mary's St and Park Dr: we have periodically discussed the possibility of some kind of circumferential service running via Park Drive, with a walking transfer to the C Line at Audubon Circle (Beacon St & Park Dr). This has always been recognized as less than ideal. That being said, the conditions "on the ground" make me relatively unconcerned about the distance itself. There is clear line of sight between the station and the intersection -- it doesn't "feel" like it's that far away. Additionally, with some reconfiguration and reclamation of the street, it would probably be possible to build a sidewalk along the median, extending from the platform to the intersection, providing a direct route while still remaining in the "transit zone". (This sidewalk could also be covered to provide protection from the elements, reducing inconvenience further.)
I've previously suggested that a transitway along Park Dr could provide a minimally interrupted ROW from B to D, by reclaiming the western two lanes, and closing the Park & Medfield intersection and the western end of the Park & Buswell intersection. That would enable a single crossing at Beacon St (potentially plus a pair of on-request pedetrian crossings at the closed intersections) while providing an otherwise unimpeded ROW from Mountfort St to Riverway. I didn't see anything in particular that would cause a problem for such an alignment along Park Dr (although there were a lot of trees -- seemingly more than I see on the satellite right now -- along Park Dr, which would need to be relocated).
Mountfort St and crossing the Mass Pike: I didn't spend as long poking around here, but unfortunately I didn't see anything that made this particular problem any easier to solve. The intersection of St Mary's & Mountfort is elevated, with a modest incline to the west on Mountfort. BU's College of Engineering strikes an imposing figure on the other side of the Pike. Some sort of decked ROW over the Pike -- possibly intersecting the existing St Mary's St overpass at-grade -- could maybe work, but that's a fair amount of money to spend for a connection that still won't be ideal.
One dynamic that emerged more clearly is how surprisingly restricted this area is for north-south circulation, whether transit or traffic. For almost an entire mile, from Amory St to Kenmore Sq, there are essentially only two paths to travel south from the Pike. The first is at the Mountfort/Essex/BU Bridge expanded intersection, which feeds into Carlton St (as well as a more roundabout route you get funneled on to along Mountfort and then Park Dr). The second is St Mary's St. And... that's it. Essex St deadends at a playground before it can reach Beacon St, and Cummington, Hinsdale, and Blandford Malls are all truncated, producing a whole half-mile where Comm Ave is completely cut off. Combined with the River to the north, and it actually turns that part of Comm Ave into a bit of a "pedestrian peninsula", with very limited egress.
