I-90 Interchange Improvement Project & West Station | Allston

[Aprehensive_Words]

Hopefully we can turn a lot more strip mall style grocery stores around the city into mixed use developments like this. The city target in fenway is another good example to follow imo.

The problem is the things more or less print money, they're low-risk for the landlord and leases typically guarantee a specific number of dedicated parking spaces for each store, so a lot of what looks like unused asphalt is actually very much being used.

You'd need some kind of major disruption to get redevelopment of a grocery-anchored retail plaza -- the anchor tenant moving elsewhere, or deterioration + the land underneath becoming just so valuable if it was redeveloped as something else.

 

[TheRatmeister]

they're low-risk for the landlord

Some grocery stores own both the store and the land though. Some relevant examples include:

• The Stop and Shop in Brookline
• Boylston St Star Market
• Not really a grocery store but Target owns a good chunk of the South Bay Center

 

[KCasiglio]

the land underneath becoming just so valuable if it was redeveloped as something else.

We could really be reaching that point for some of the more urban grocery stores. It looks like the Star Market plaza in Quincy Center is getting lined up. Star Market in Fenway recently got approved for redevelopment.

 

[Aprehensive_Words]

Some grocery stores own both the store and the land though. Some relevant examples include:

• The Stop and Shop in Brookline
• Boylston St Star Market
• Not really a grocery store but Target owns a good chunk of the South Bay Center

Add Market Basket to that list, too. They tend to not like leasing their stores, so the rumor is. In Stop & Shop's case in Allston, that was what unlocked the parcel -- they saw bigger value in redevelopment.

We could really be reaching that point for some of the more urban grocery stores. It looks like the Star Market plaza is Quincy Center is getting lined up. Star Market is Fenway recently got approved for redevelopment.

From your lips to God's ears. But color me skeptical that these are anything more than one-offs. I doubt you'll see a lot of these being redeveloped outside of development hot-spots.

 

[TheRatmeister]

Add Market Basket to that list, too. They tend to not like leasing their stores, so the rumor is.

This is 100% true, and it's a big part of how their prices are lower than everyone else. It's just that there's a grand total of 7 inside 128, (And of those 3 just barely make it, only 4 could be really considered to be in the Boston Urban Area), compared to ~25 Stop and Shop locations and another ~20 or so Star Markets, so it's not as relevant here.

 

[ritchiew]

The problem is the things more or less print money, they're low-risk for the landlord and leases typically guarantee a specific number of dedicated parking spaces for each store, so a lot of what looks like unused asphalt is actually very much being used.

You'd need some kind of major disruption to get redevelopment of a grocery-anchored retail plaza -- the anchor tenant moving elsewhere, or deterioration + the land underneath becoming just so valuable if it was redeveloped as something else.

True, but also it's countless government regulations and policies that led to strip malls being the most profitable use of this land. If we want these places to be redeveloped, it would help to just change those regulations and policies. Change zoning to allow more mixed-use and higher density; get rid of parking minimums; shift transportation funding from cars to anything else; a land-value tax to discourage surface parking lots; just to name a few. Any of those changes would let other land uses become relatively more profitable.

 

[Equilibria]

True, but also it's countless government regulations and policies that led to strip malls being the most profitable use of this land. If we want these places to be redeveloped, it would help to just change those regulations and policies. Change zoning to allow more mixed-use and higher density; get rid of parking minimums; shift transportation funding from cars to anything else; a land-value tax to discourage surface parking lots; just to name a few. Any of those changes would let other land uses become relatively more profitable.

Even if you did that, you'd still have the need for financing to construct anything. The strip mall is already there and already generating revenue.

Also, the CRE firms that specialize in strip malls tend to be specialized in that market segment, so a developer of dense mixed-use would need to buy the site first, adding more friction to the development.

 

[Koopzilla24]

And if the city can (they won't, but they could) encourage aggressive development all around West Station, something similar could happen here, too. Yes, most of this area is Harvard and BU, but 1) the city could push them to go taller and denser near the station and 2) there is still plenty of neighborhood adjacent to this that will have private development opportunities. The point is that something that seems like a detour now might not seem so with the right amount of development. The more Guest St / Boston Landing develops, the more it seems like a necessary node on any transit routing, even to the point of making older nodes feel like the detours, rather than the new one!

It'd be neat to see some Toronto area style residential high rise TOD around the West Station site. A new node of very high density could be well-supported by the existing amenities like restaurants, groceries, and entertainment, combined with the station.

There's currently a 6 story residential building going up at 1035 Comm Ave (next to the dollar store) with zero parking and only a bike garage. It only took slightly over a year from application to approval and construction beginning. Combined with the existing BU high rises there's a bit of a precedent set in the area for this kind of development.

 

[jklo]

Seems the area is in the 800+ FAA range too. No good excuse for Harvard to not go tall there.

 

[Teban54]

Not many, because so long as Malvern St. (with its virtually unusable intersection at Packards Corner) is the only spanning street to the south on the grid, you pretty much can't mount anything except a super-inconvenient loop-a-thon off Cambridge St. like the 64. BU cockblocking a Babcock connection absolutely cripples the crosstown connectivity. I'm not even sure how that LMA jitney in their plans is going to function at all given the fact that it has to bang a left at Brighton Ave. from that godawful intersection. And if the Cambridge St. loop-a-thon is so inconvenient and schedule-destroying that it's inappropriate for a frequent and load-bearing route like the T66, you're not going to get much in the way of high-frequency linkage from anywhere. The multimodal connections at this station are almost entirely dependent on a dedicated Urban Ring ROW coming through off the Grand Junction. Yes...fine!...do leave a future provision (not an overbuild, but a future provision) for that. But the hope-and-a-prayer GJ Purple Line dinky extra RR platform isn't that provision, either.

The only other thing that's been talked up in the official discussion to-date is more hope-and-prayers stuff that intercity coach buses will opt to pit-stop just a couple miles out from South Station at West...for reasons. And even that was not mentioned in the most recent meetings, so I think they know what the odds are and have become loathe to overplay it.

It's very hard to see where a busway overbuild will serve them in the future. The grid just...doesn't work...as presently envisioned for fashioning useful bus connections anywhere except for maybe the Harvard and MIT jitneys. You're either detouring and looping to schedule-destroying absurdity or going through street infrastructure not in the slightest set up to handle transit routes. Maybe if Babcock were put back into the plans you'd have a leg to stand on, but that ship seems to have thoroughly sailed. One hand doesn't seem to know what the other is doing with this project, as the overbuilt busways seem to be residue from an earlier era when there were more spanning streets planned to make the grid semi-functional. I'm all for provisioning, but this isn't provisioning smart. They literally can't explain how the buses are supposed to get there. Get there even with the paltry collection of routes they'll actually go on-record saying will use it. That's extremely wasteful planning that is going to further delay this station into oblivion when the already scary-high cost jumps several more times, and we shouldn't let 'fear' of some magic-bullet must-have future bus route that we can't possibly crayon on this grid drive the waste.

The whole works needs a serious reckoning. I want it built as badly as anyone, but not with this excuse for a process.

I was revisiting and researching some history of West Station designs, and now I think this bashing of West Station bus hub's location and potential utility may have omitted a key factor, one that may not have gotten any attention: Cambridge St Bypass, a proposed east-west street linking West Station and Cambridge St (circled in green below).

As I wrote on my website, this road seems to have been proposed in June 2022, and by the time of this slide in August 2023, it appears to have advanced to a permanent part of the plan. However, this entire process predates the most recent public-facing full region map, which has been the most widely circulated (and which is still on the Mass.gov fact sheet today, despite being outdated for 2 years). This may have created the false impression that there's no way to enter the station from the west.

With this in mind, there's a possible way to reduce route 64's detour significantly while still having it serve West Station: (May 2022 BNRD route in dark brown, my proposed route in gold)

This gets rid of most problems with Malvern St to the south, and only adds 1200 ft to the route's length. More generally, this opens a pathway for future bus routes (public or private) entering West Station from the west, instead of being limited to the north (and underwhelming access from the south).

(The road also cuts down the detour enough that mayyybe the 66 can be considered? But that's definitely a trickier one than the 64.)

I'll also note that interestingly, the project proposes a Malvern St Transitway. A short section north of Ashford St leading up to the railroad ROW will have 2 bus-only lanes, bike lanes and pedestrian paths. Of course, this doesn't help with Malvern St's issues through BU and its intersection with Brighton Ave, but at least it shows they're making whatever effort they can within the project area. (For a trajectory due south or SE, taking Ashford-Babcock one-way may also be an option.)

I have written a (largely documentary) page on my website with these tidbits and more regarding West Station from a transit viewpoint.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

(The road also cuts down the detour enough that mayyybe the 66 can be considered? But that's definitely a trickier one than the 64.)

They aren't considering the 66 as of the most recent presentation, and now would be the time to propose if it were feasible that given the BNRD's advancement. So that is a big red flag that the 64's detour is still projected to be a schedule-killer. As I said previously, the 64 already being detour-prone and schedule-stressed might just be the sunk-cost fallacy manifesting itself here.

EDIT: The most recent presentation has the 64 using Malvern St. Connector on a straight-up north-south orientation, which is a completely batshit detour.

Sorry...this thing is still hella hopeless at the basic-most conceptual level.

 

[Longfellow]

It’s like they are bending the existing service to fit what’s convenient to them rather than designing the plan around what makes sense.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

It’s like they are bending the existing service to fit what’s convenient to them rather than designing the plan around what makes sense.

Yeah...what is the 64's actual routing in this universe? Central Sq <==> Cambridge St. <==> Cambridge St. South <==> Malvern Connector <==> Malvern (or Alford St. ==> Babcock ==> Comm Ave. in one direction) <==> Brighton Ave. <==> N. Beacon??? That opens up a half-mile transit gap on Cambridge St. between Union Sq. and N. Harvard St. That's a rather radical reconfig that leaves some substantial ridership on the sidelines at the skipped stops while thoroughly wrecking the route's scheduling. They certainly didn't consult the BNRD, so it's just more hope-and-prayers.

 

[Teban54]

They aren't considering the 66 as of the most recent presentation, and now would be the time to propose if it were feasible that given the BNRD's advancement. So that is a big red flag that the 64's detour is still projected to be a schedule-killer. As I said previously, the 64 already being detour-prone and schedule-stressed might just be the sunk-cost fallacy manifesting itself here.

I was in the public meeting for BNRD's revised proposal, and happened to be in the breaking room where the 64 was included. They said they rolled back the 64's West Station detour because BNRD will likely be completed well before West Station is, not because of the detour itself or its impacts on the 64's schedule (and did not mention the exact alignment of the detour itself). I find that convincing enough of a reason.

Yeah...what is the 64's actual routing in this universe? Cambridge St. <==> Cambridge St. South <==> Malvern Connector <==> Malvern (or Alford St. ==> Babcock ==> Comm Ave. in one direction) <==> Brighton Ave. <==> N. Beacon??? That opens up a half-mile transit gap on Cambridge St. between Union Sq. and N. Harvard St. That's a rather radical reconfig that leaves some substantial ridership on the sidelines at the skipped stops while thoroughly wrecking the route's scheduling. They certainly didn't consult the BNRD, so it's just more hope-and-prayers.

That's exactly where the 66 goes, though?

(Not suggesting I support having the 64 go all the way south to Brighton Ave -- if not, I wouldn't have even suggested the shorter detour via Cambridge St Bypass in the first place.)

EDIT: The most recent presentation has the 64 using Malvern St. Connector on a straight-up north-south orientation, which is a completely batshit detour.

While that's true, it's also something that can be easily revised later (whether from the Allston project team itself or from MBTA/BNRD). The recent (Feb 2024) discussion probably just focused on the busway itself without considering the 64 in detail.

 

[Teban54]

Thinking about it again, I'm not sure if even a detour as far as Brighton Ave will be a shitshow in traffic and reliability, either:

Brighton Ave (dark brown) already has bus lanes in both directions for the 57, and I don't see much issues with the turn to Malvern, other than having to merge from the eastbound bus lane to the left-turn lane here.

In contrast, Cambridge St - which the 64 currently uses - has no bus lanes. The red section (west of Harvard Ave) is only 47 ft wide, meaning the only way to add bus lanes is to (1) remove all parking, and (2) remove existing bike lanes or making them shared bus/bike lanes (though that's not totally unrealistic as the same measure was proposed as an option for the 57 further south). Sections to the north are more feasible for bus lane implementation, but still, it takes political will - of which there is none yet. (One can speculate the need to improve transit priority here will arise in the future for the 66 bus, but no transit priority is there today.) All this apply even if the 64 does not serve West Station at all.

Route length is only one part of the puzzle; how fast buses travel on them is another. Given how delay-prone Cambridge St seems to be, I think the answer today is at least not clear.

 

[Longfellow]

it’s always struck me that the portion of Brighton Ave that the 66 uses isn’t exactly the cradle of civilization. You can go to Blanchards or TITS, not much really. If you’re trying to make a trip to BU or points East from there it’s faster to walk than wait 20 minutes for a 57 bus connection. If we had an A train of course this would be easier but alas.

 

[Teban54]

it’s always struck me that the portion of Brighton Ave that the 66 uses isn’t exactly the cradle of civilization. You can go to Blanchards or TITS, not much really. If you’re trying to make a trip to BU or points East from there it’s faster to walk than wait 20 minutes for a 57 bus connection. If we had an A train of course this would be easier but alas.

Ridership on the 66 does not necessarily agree, however:

Other than the stop right at the intersection of the two streets, the two stops on Brighton Ave see comparable ridership to the two on Cambridge St, if not slightly higher.

 

[TheRatmeister]

TITS

Sorry but this will never not be my favorite acronym.

 

[Longfellow]

Ridership on the 66 does not necessarily agree, however:
View attachment 49600

Other than the stop right at the intersection of the two streets, the two stops on Brighton Ave see comparable ridership to the two on Cambridge St, if not slightly higher.

What I mean is that you are basically forced to use those stops in order to get to service to points east or to the green line. So yes there’s tons of ridership. You’re not alighting with the goal of hanging out in that neighborhood. In a perfect world with a better street layout the bus would use an alignment closer to the Malvern area and jog up Comm Ave to Harvard Ave. The focus on tagging a couple bars and then going on seems specious.

Disclaimer that I could be wrong about it, but either way this is just another way we’ve made it a little ridiculous to get around over there.

 

[Longfellow]

Or maybe another way to put it would be, buses in mixed traffic leave pretty much nobody satisfied. Here we are zig zagging and arguing over adding bus lanes in places. (Also known as Uber eats parking lots). If we could just sprinkle on grade separated transit in some kind of direct routing, the pain goes away. But alas