I-695, Soutwst X-Way, Mystic Valley Prkway, S. End Bypass

[George_Apley]

I've got the original plans (with alternate routes) for the inner belt, I-93, the upgraded mystic river parkway, Route 3, SW X-way, and Route 2. I'll take some pictures and post them at some point. The highways were going to be below grade in a lot of places (not unlike the masspike), and if managed appropriately, would have been covered by development fairly quickly.

I'd love to see them, that sounds really cool! Although, looking at the Mass Pike air rights, I'm not confident that much of them would be covered up by development today.

 

[Kahta]

Kahta, my current studio project is occurring on Parcel 25. Any information you have about the SWX will be incredibly helpful, especially visual images.

Where is parcel 25 exactly?

 

[Kahta]

I'd love to see them, that sounds really cool! Although, looking at the Mass Pike air rights, I'm not confident that much of them would be covered up by development today.

The difference with the mass pike is that there was already a railroad ROW so many of the buildings in that area were already built based on a railroad-- the inner belt would have cut right through many neighborhoods as a below grade road and would have easily been covered up.

 

[datadyne007]

Where is parcel 25 exactly?

Directly across from Roxbury Crossing T. It includes air rights over the Orange Line too. The Southwest Corridor is a focus of my analysis.

 

[Matthew]

There has to be a point in the upgrades in capacity that all the additional people it attracts by those who used to drive earlier/later or pick alternative routes would dry out. My understanding of the paradox reads to me that it explains why sometimes shutting down a major artery can actually be a good thing as it motives human behavior to take actions that benefits everyone (seeking alternates routes that before were underutilized and picking different times).

The paradox is that opening a new highway can lead to worse congestion; the mechanism in this case is that the new highway seduces commuters away from public transportation (or alternate routes) and then that drop-off in patronage causes the transit agency to cut service or go out of business entirely. This puts even more drivers on the roads, causing gridlock.

The other observation is that there is a balance between highways, alternative routes, and public transportation. Individuals over time learn which way is the most efficient for their needs; altogether there is a feedback effect as each individual commuter makes the decision to use the roads or transit, and that affects everyone else subtly. The net result is that the door-to-door commute time on grade-separated public transit becomes roughly equal to the door-to-door time for driving. If there is ever an imbalance, then the feedback effects slowly fix it.

So, the meaning to take from the paradox is not CAT should have not been built as the paradox says it will never improve traffic, but trying to figure how to keep distribution as optimal as possible as in making sure the other paths don't just become underutilized (or somehow raise capacity so absurdly high that all the additional traffic it draws from alternative options still won't be enough to overwhelm the upgrade).

Well, the meaning I take from it is that "congestion" is not a problem that can be solved by building more highways. It cannot be solved by building more public transit, either. The only solution that seems to work at optimizing distribution is variable road pricing based on demand.

 

[HenryAlan]

I've got the original plans (with alternate routes) for the inner belt, I-93, the upgraded mystic river parkway, Route 3, SW X-way, and Route 2. I'll take some pictures and post them at some point. The highways were going to be below grade in a lot of places (not unlike the masspike), and if managed appropriately, would have been covered by development fairly quickly.

I'm not as convinced as some that the inner belt would have destroyed Cambridge, but do you think it's all that likely that air rights development would have happened quickly if at all? Just look to the Pike for an answer. So, not destroyed, but certainly scarred.

 

[ant8904]

Well, the meaning I take from it is that "congestion" is not a problem that can be solved by building more highways. It cannot be solved by building more public transit, either. The only solution that seems to work at optimizing distribution is variable road pricing based on demand.

The only solution is to add tolls to every road? You can't encourage better behavior any other way? I cannot agree with that. While tolls is the most visible way to manipulate transportation behavior, I think there's other ways to attack the problem without attacking the wallets of drivers.

I should address first that there is a point where one can "build" so much that the "seduction" from other paths would not overwhelm it. Traffic out there is not infinite. At the highest ceiling, it can attract the entire population at rush hour, which is obviously absurd, but there's has to be a point where the paradox breaks.

But we should view it more than a single road. It's a system. A network. Avoiding the paradox is not trying to rely on one super upgrade to one road or rail line. That's why the highway planners of the 1950's designed on paper a whole number of highways with the ring roads to better distribute them. That's also why the original plans for the MBTA was a plan of lines reaching out to every direction.

Building a single road or rail line will ignite the paradox. Building a network of roads and rails -with compliments to each other- would allow distribution between all the major arteries.

We also need to remember the concept of the bottleneck. The capacity of the entire system is how much can the weakest point handle. No matter how well engineer most of a system can be, if there's a single pipe that can only handle half versus the rest of the other pipes, then the entire system can only handle to the level of the one pipe.

My understanding is CAT is able to handle the traffic pretty reasonably even during rush hour. But the highways around it cannot. Thus the upgrade with the tunnel only upgraded that one area, but the network as a whole remains only marginally improved. Worse, is it didn't even made the traffic it seduced from that much better. The MBTA is not underutilized and I don't think the alternative roads are either. Thus, there is a capacity issue with the network as a whole rather than just the paradox issue. Better distribution only works when there's something underutilized that we can distribute to that. Correct me if you can know something in Boston that is actually underutilized (It's not like I have driven all the roads and rode all the rail lines during rush hour).

Therefore more work to build up the network with rail lines and roads needs to be done first before we can say we have a problem of the paradox which means a problem of distribution.

I should note one last thing to consider in this long post too. We need to take account of a 3rd solution of living closer. To paraphrase a line from an article, "not all people, maybe not even most people, but more people want to live in the city than there is room." Traffic can be greatly aided if places to live is closer to places of work. It would open out more modes. An attack to reduce demand rather than just increase capacity.

 

[Matthew]

The only solution is to add tolls to every road? You can't encourage better behavior any other way? I cannot agree with that. While tolls is the most visible way to manipulate transportation behavior, I think there's other ways to attack the problem without attacking the wallets of drivers.

Let me put it this way: either you pay with time, or you pay with money. And for many folks, time is money. Also note that this approach could mean reduced tolls for drivers, at times of low-demand. You don't question that people pay fares aboard mass transit, why is it so hard to conceive of paying fares for using valuable space and road infrastructure?

I'm open to alternatives, if you can think of one that actually works. We know that highway widening doesn't work. For the past 50 years, the only thing that does seem to work is road pricing.

Anthony Downs has written for decades on the matter, check it out:

http://www.amazon.com/Stuck-inTraffic-Anthony-Downs/dp/081571923X

http://www.amazon.com/Still-Stuck-Traffic-Peak-Hour-Congestion/dp/0815719299

I should address first that there is a point where one can "build" so much that the "seduction" from other paths would not overwhelm it. Traffic out there is not infinite. At the highest ceiling, it can attract the entire population at rush hour, which is obviously absurd, but there's has to be a point where the paradox breaks.

Suppose you did build a highway that was so large that it could carry the entire rush hour demand without congestion. Lanes can conduct approximately 1800 vehicles per hour safely (2 second headway). The Red Line carried 240,000 trips per working day in 2009. Let's suppose that translates to about 80,000 commuters. If people continued to travel in single-occupancy vehicles at the same rate as today, you would need over 20 highway lanes in the peak direction to handle the load over the course of 2 hours. As it is, eight-lane urban highways destroy neighborhoods. Can you imagine the devastation from a 40 lane highway?

Obviously absurd, so if the paradox breaks down at that point, so what? And people would start to carpool and use buses (and build rapid transit) instead of building highways that wide. But I hope it helps you understand the fundamental geometry problem involved here. Even if those 40+ lanes are spread out into a network, it is still an incredibly large amount of pavement to fit into a city. And that's just for Red Line riders!

And don't forget about the parking lots for all those cars, yikes. It would require a surface lot about two times the size of the North End.

For all the distribution you might do, if everyone's headed to one place, it's going to put a lot of strain on that one place. And cars need so much space for infrastructure it would just tear everything apart.

My understanding is CAT is able to handle the traffic pretty reasonably even during rush hour. But the highways around it cannot. Thus the upgrade with the tunnel only upgraded that one area, but the network as a whole remains only marginally improved. Worse, is it didn't even made the traffic it seduced from that much better.

That's what the Boston Globe found back in 2008, in an article they researched. It may have also made things worse by attracting more traffic from people who now thought it was going to be better. And as the MBTA service cuts take effect thanks to the Big Dig debt, that will add even more cars.

The MBTA is not underutilized and I don't think the alternative roads are either. Thus, there is a capacity issue with the network as a whole rather than just the paradox issue. Better distribution only works when there's something underutilized that we can distribute to that. Correct me if you can know something in Boston that is actually underutilized (It's not like I have driven all the roads and rode all the rail lines during rush hour).

I would claim that the MBTA does not operate their network very efficiently and therefore is underutilized when compared to best practices in the world. 132,000 trips per day on the commuter rail probably means approximately 65,000 riders use it. Heck, the Blue Line only gets 57,000 trips per day. There's other reasons for low ridership besides poor operation, such as geography and land use (the Blue Line loses half its catchment to the ocean). But there are 14 branches in the commuter rail system. The best, Providence, got about 11,000 riders (15,000 if including Stoughton). The next, Worcester, got about 8,000 riders. The others are all below 7,000 per weekday. That's terrible. A two track railroad should be able to easily exceed 25,000 - 35,000 riders per hour, with most getting seats. Now I'm aware that conditions are not ideal on many sections of track, and there's lots of single tracking too. But it's getting fixed, slowly. So there's plenty of capacity still left for the MBTA commuter rail to grow into, if they would be motivated to fix themselves.

I should note one last thing to consider in this long post too. We need to take account of a 3rd solution of living closer.

I agree, and there's a lot of demand for it. This is why land usage and transportation are inextricably intertwined. And it's why Euclid-style zoning is so pernicious.

 

[whighlander]

Suppose you did build a highway that was so large that it could carry the entire rush hour demand without congestion. Lanes can conduct approximately 1800 vehicles per hour safely (2 second headway). The Red Line carried 240,000 trips per working day in 2009. Let's suppose that translates to about 80,000 commuters. If people continued to travel in single-occupancy vehicles at the same rate as today, you would need over 20 highway lanes in the peak direction to handle the load over the course of 2 hours. As it is, eight-lane urban highways destroy neighborhoods. Can you imagine the devastation from a 40 lane highway?

Mathew -- you are making a very dangerous falacious assumption -- the figures you quote for the Red Line are the agregate of all boardings at all points per day -- the figures you quote for highways are per lane per hour -- as Mr. Spock would say "Sorry Captain, but that does not compute"

If you want to compare the Red Line aggregate capacity compare it to the agregate carrying capacity of the I-93/I-95 (Rt-128) Intersection in Woburn. That interchange -- subject to lots of careful analyis in support of a redesign being planned for the next few years is the busiest highway interchange in all of New England with 375,000 vehicles per day.

Better still compare that interchange with a single station or even a complex of T stations with intersecting lines --- there is no station on the Red Line where anything close to that number boards, disembarks or passes. However, the interconnected complex of Park (Red and Green) combined with DTX (Red and Orange) probably comes close.

The Subway stations take up less total area, but are far less flexible in terms of the types of vehicles, timing of the vehicles, destinations of the vehicles -- its a trade off.

To adequately support a vibrant and dynamic "Modern City State" such as Grater Boston -- we need both an effective and effecient highway network and an effective and effecient rail network In addition, these networks need to provide the interchanges and intercommunications wih Air and Seaborne transportation.

 

[Matthew]

Mathew -- you are making a very dangerous falacious assumption -- the figures you quote for the Red Line are the agregate of all boardings at all points per day -- the figures you quote for highways are per lane per hour -- as Mr. Spock would say "Sorry Captain, but that does not compute"

That's why I dropped the estimate to 80,000 instead of 120,000 (from 240,000 unlinked trips). It's not ideal, but I feel it's somewhat realistic, since the subway is capable of carrying that many people over the course of 2-3 hours. Especially since they're coming from two directions (Cambridge and Dorchester).

Also I used 2 hours as the span: 20 lanes handles 36,000 per hour, or 72,000 per 2 hours. The point wasn't the exact numbers, it's that building the infrastructure to move that many cars in 2 hours and park them is simply implausible in the city.

 

[BostonUrbEx]

If we do high speed tolling without toll takers, then what job can Patrick possibly give his 5th cousin or campaign canvasser???

 

[omaja]

Maybe something useful like construction work on transit expansion and catching up on all that deferred infrastructure maintenance? Oh who am I kidding, there clearly aren't enough MBTA inspectors so I'm sure they could find a nice place there.

 

[mass88]

If we do high speed tolling without toll takers, then what job can Patrick possibly give his 5th cousin or campaign canvasser???

It's laughable that so many states currently use it and yet Mass does not. It's also laughable that all of the traffic on a ride from Hartford to Boston comes due to tolls. You have to love when they have 4 cash lanes and only 1 is open. Why people don't get the free fast lane pass is beyond me.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

And don't forget about the parking lots for all those cars, yikes. It would require a surface lot about two times the size of the North End.

You're falling into a fallacy insofar as parking lots are concerned - nobody is going to build a parking lot even close to that big, because the same zoning laws you rail against prevent this as well as preventing a situation where the total number of parking lots is zero, and even if they didn't - why would you? The costs to maintain that much land would be immense, and far greater than the costs to maintain one building - even a downright palatial building such as, say, a 12 or 16 or even 20-story garage. (Ten levels up, ten levels down, doesn't sound like too much of a headache to park at either end now does it?)

You have a surface lot about twice the size of the North End, so divide it 20 times and stack all those pieces on top of each other - now it's just a tenth of the size of the North End. Let's take it a step further. Cut that building into quarters and bury each of them underground - now you've got four reasonably large buildings that can exist beneath the office towers, residential complexes, or what have you and take up no more space than what was already being used.

There's no need to get fixated on building out when you can just as easily build up or down.

It's laughable that so many states currently use it and yet Mass does not. It's also laughable that all of the traffic on a ride from Hartford to Boston comes due to tolls. You have to love when they have 4 cash lanes and only 1 is open. Why people don't get the free fast lane pass is beyond me.

Tinfoil hat wearers don't want THE MAN spying on them through the fast lane pass.

More reasonable people may not want the associated hassle with registering for the pass, especially if they use multiple cars since trying to authorize a second car on your pass is a nightmare.

Finally, reasonable people who don't regularly take the Pike or other toll roads may only have a need for the pass twice in their lifetimes and they will have already burned one of those times in the process of the trip to get the pass.

The fast lane pass is also not free to non-MA residents, who must get their EZPass from their state of origin - in my case, RI, which whacked me a cool $20 for the privilege. (To be fair, the RI pass also comes with an exclusive discount to state resident drivers only on the Pell bridge: I pay $0.83 instead of $4.)

My point is, there are plenty of reasons (good and bad) not to get a free Fast Lane pass.

 

[mass88]

Tinfoil hat wearers don't want THE MAN spying on them through the fast lane pass.

More reasonable people may not want the associated hassle with registering for the pass, especially if they use multiple cars since trying to authorize a second car on your pass is a nightmare.

Finally, reasonable people who don't regularly take the Pike or other toll roads may only have a need for the pass twice in their lifetimes and they will have already burned one of those times in the process of the trip to get the pass.

The fast lane pass is also not free to non-MA residents, who must get their EZPass from their state of origin - in my case, RI, which whacked me a cool $20 for the privilege. (To be fair, the RI pass also comes with an exclusive discount to state resident drivers only on the Pell bridge: I pay $0.83 instead of $4.)

My point is, there are plenty of reasons (good and bad) not to get a free Fast Lane pass.

I should have included I was talking about people in Mass.

 

[Matthew]

The point of the exercise was to show how absurd it was, not to suggest it as a realistic idea. I didn't bother going beyond "surface lot" because I didn't want to get too far into the woods. But if you will, at a going rate of approximately $50,000 / underground space, those underground parking garages would probably have a capital cost on the order of $4 billion.

 

[George_Apley]

Tinfoil hat wearers don't want THE MAN spying on them through the fast lane pass.

There are THAT many of those?

More reasonable people may not want the associated hassle with registering for the pass, especially if they use multiple cars since trying to authorize a second car on your pass is a nightmare.

Just get more than one... they're free in MA

Finally, reasonable people who don't regularly take the Pike or other toll roads may only have a need for the pass twice in their lifetimes and they will have already burned one of those times in the process of the trip to get the pass.

Trip to get one? They mail them to you..

The fast lane pass is also not free to non-MA residents, who must get their EZPass from their state of origin - in my case, RI, which whacked me a cool $20 for the privilege. (To be fair, the RI pass also comes with an exclusive discount to state resident drivers only on the Pell bridge: I pay $0.83 instead of $4.)

My point is, there are plenty of reasons (good and bad) not to get a free Fast Lane pass.

Other states should make them free too, especially those moving to open tolling.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

There are THAT many of those?

You'd be surprised.

Just get more than one... they're free in MA

Even after the first one?

Trip to get one? They mail them to you..

Did not know that. I drove to the EZ Pass facility and purchased mine on the spot. If you count the trip down the cash lane whereupon you are (supposed) to decide you'd rather get the Pass as one trip, it still works though.

Other states should make them free too, especially those moving to open tolling.

I'm not THAT bent out of shape over the $20 surcharge, five trips over the bridge and it paid for itself. I just raised it as a general fact point.

 

[George_Apley]

Even after the first one?

According to the DOT website you can have up to four transponders per account.

Did not know that. I drove to the EZ Pass facility and purchased mine on the spot. If you count the trip down the cash lane whereupon you are (supposed) to decide you'd rather get the Pass as one trip, it still works though.

I'm not sure how recently MA imposed the new acquisition system, but I bought mine a few months ago on the DOT website and it was one of the simplest things in the world. I was pleasantly surprised.

 

[whighlander]

That's why I dropped the estimate to 80,000 instead of 120,000 (from 240,000 unlinked trips). It's not ideal, but I feel it's somewhat realistic, since the subway is capable of carrying that many people over the course of 2-3 hours. Especially since they're coming from two directions (Cambridge and Dorchester).

Also I used 2 hours as the span: 20 lanes handles 36,000 per hour, or 72,000 per 2 hours. The point wasn't the exact numbers, it's that building the infrastructure to move that many cars in 2 hours and park them is simply implausible in the city.

Mathew--

Yet that is precisely what has been done and is in use on a daily basis

If you take just the Interstate Highways entering downtown Boston you have:
4 lanes of I-93 from the North and also including traffic from the Tobin Bridge
4 lanes of I-90 through the two tunnels from the NE
4 lanes of I-90 from the West
4 Lanes of I-93 from the South

In reality there are more lanes because of non-Interstates such as Rt-9 and Rt-2, Morrisey Blvd., JamaicaWay, etc.

Normally, and nominally the system works -- it ceases to work under bad weather or when there are more than a small number of simple accidents -- so there is minimal reserve capacity

By the way I question your estimates for Red Line capacity -- 80,000 people translates into about 80 full 6 car trains (about 150 people per car) -- in 2 hours that would be 1 train in each direction every 3 minutes (20 trains / hour in each direction for 2 hours = 80 trains total) That's more than double current train schedules on the Red Line. Also the two stations (Park St., DTX) may not be able to handle the volume of people