I-90 Interchange Improvement Project & West Station | Allston

whighlander said:
cden -- not only is it obvious that you've never driven Storrow or the Pike at rush hour -- it's fairly obvious that you haven't even looked at the TV Traffic maps.

Under ideal circumstances the traffic flows slowly if acceptably. Add in any disruption and its essential to have a Plan B. One compromise would be keep the number of lanes but make one each way a breakdown lane [open for travel during rush hour].

The major improvement to the rebuilt Storrow and the Pike is in terms of auxillary structures in addition to the travel lanes. Both the Pike and Storrow were constructed in an era before universal breakdown lanes and similar auxiliaries to the travel lanes as well as inadequate arrangements for merging. I suspect that you could give up one full travel lane for breakdown and expanded merging. The footprint would not get any narrower than it is today -- but it might function more efficiently.

Ideally all the auxiliaries would be added to the existing four travel lanes and even more ideal -- more exits [W bound] and entrances [E bound] would be added where they were never included in the original layout.
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You seem to be completely ignoring what he said about this being entirely out of line with the stated goals of reducing single person auto trips by 50%
 
citylover94 said:
The federal gov't isn't allowing any new sections of breakdown lane travel and that is honestly worse imo than just not having a lane. Either way it would never be approved so that doesn't matter. I think taking it down by one lane in each direction would be okay and would in the long run encourage less people to drive into the city and instead take transit.
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Citylover -- it doesn't work that way
Narrowing the Pike without making any accommodations to improve the flow and merging just makes the Pike less efficient and makes rush hour that much longer and screws up the local environment with more stop and go emissions.

In the long term:
  1. some folks will move locally to minimize the commute,
  2. some will just chalk-it up to Government Screw-ups and complain more
  3. some may change jobs
  4. some may work from home more
  5. and some will beat the scene for someplace with better weather
  6. A few might try the T --
    1. perhaps some might give it a 2nd chance --
    2. perhaps they already have experience that lets them know that the T doesn't work for them
 
KCasiglio said:
You seem to be completely ignoring what he said about this being entirely out of line with the stated goals of reducing single person auto trips by 50%
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KCasiglio -- I'm not ignoring his repeating of the
City's GoBoston 2030 plan looks to reduce the percentage of people driving alone to work by 50% by 2030,
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That is just a political statement with no value what-so-ever. There is only one way that the goal could be achieved -- the same way Detroit did it -- empty the city out by killing the economy -- it has the same reality associated with it as the Red Sox promising to be in the World Series any given year between 1920 and about 1999
 
Might be a good time to just knock it all down and build the road on the ground. Get it done while people aren't on the roads. Half joking, just half.
 
tangent said:
Might be a good time to just knock it all down and build the road on the ground. Get it done while people aren't on the roads. Half joking, just half.
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Na not even joking they should. Definitely they should run double shifts, 24hrs a day, 7 days a week, 12 on 12 off like I did on deployments. Works great when necessary.

No one could have predicted this, but as bad as its going to be for everyone, if there is a way to use it to our advantage in some way we pretty much have no choice but to.
 
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stick n move said:
Na not even joking they should. Definitely they should run double shifts, 24hrs a day, 7 days a week, 12 on 12 off like I did on deployments. Works great when necessary.

No one could have predicted this, but as bad as its going to be for everyone, if there is a way to use it to our advantage in some way we pretty much have no choice but to.
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Stick -- that 's a good idea

I'd devote the next 2 months or so to building and connecting a temporary I-90 bypass so that when traffic picks-up the work on taking down the current viaduct could proceed with the traffic separated from the construction

Let the Gov's Emergency Declaration and if necessary the President's be used to skip or cut through the mammoth amounts of red tape, law suits, etc that would keep the temporary I-90 bypass from being expeditiously constructed -- might knock a couple of years off the timetable
 
The stimulus package just passed includes 25B for transit. I suspect more in the future.
 
From today's Globe: Huge Mass. Pike project in Allston is due for a crucial update Monday

Excerpts:
Adam Vaccaro said:
The biggest Boston highway project in a generation could veer in yet a new direction or even make a U-turn, after the latest plan to squeeze 12 lanes of traffic into a narrow strip of land along the Charles River in Allston has come under withering criticism.

[...]

While the state declined to comment on possible changes to the project, Pollack has previously acknowledged she was undertaking a close review of the current plan. Officials have indicated they are considering everything from minor tweaks to major changes after being taken aback by the high level of pushback to the current plan over the fall and winter.

[...]

[T]he initial support for her proposal has since collapsed, after neighborhood, environmental, and transportation groups objected to several aspects of the state’s construction plan as details unfolded in the following months. Some have complained that it is too highway-centric, putting cars before environmental considerations such as recreation along the river. A scheme to relocate Soldiers Field Road over the Charles River on a “temporary” basis during construction, they noted, could last for a decade, and the state has also refused to add a footbridge for easier pedestrian access to the waterfront.

Another pressing issue is that the construction schedule could lead to severe disruptions on the commuter rail for years.

[...]

Harry Mattison, an Allston resident who has been involved in the project for years, is also worried that Pollack will default to rebuilding the existing highway viaduct out of frustration and mounting costs.
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George_Apley said:
From today's Globe: Huge Mass. Pike project in Allston is due for a crucial update Monday
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Elevating SFR on a viaduct on top of the eastbound Mass Pike lanes (all of which would be on the surface) is the best option for maximizing park/trail space and quality of experience along the throat area, It pulls the elevated SFR viaduct away from the river and trail. and reduces the footprint of the roadways by 4 lanes, compared to the option of having SFR and Mass Pike both on the surface side-by-side.
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Slides may be available tomorrow, but the upshot is this:

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While the process will continue to consider the hybrid (which has no supporters today) and at-grade (which the community supports but would face heavy regulatory opposition because it fills the river), MassDOT clearly now has a preference for this solution, which has I-90 on a narrower viaduct than previous versions, is quicker to build, doesn't need to narrow or close the rail lines, doesn't need the temporary bridge, and can accommodate a ped/bike bridge at BU by threading it under the highway. They didn't say so, but I'm sure that it comes at a much higher construction and maintenance cost. It would also need visual and noise barriers.
 
George_Apley said:
So they've essentially decided to rebuilt the Pike viaduct.

Is there some reason why most of SFR can't go underneath the outbound side of the new viaduct?
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Yeah I'm confused. Isn't this the exact configuration that's there now??
 
George_Apley said:
So they've essentially decided to rebuilt the Pike viaduct.

Is there some reason why most of SFR can't go underneath the outbound side of the new viaduct?
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This is a cross-section at a particular point, so while it might look like it fits right here, it might not be able to get under there.

And to be clear: rebuilding everything more or less in place (viaduct, SFR, tracks, and paths) has always been an alternative. It's just more preferred now than it was. The starting point here was the need to rebuild the viaduct, so leaving the current one is not an option. There were perceived benefits to building the Interstate at-grade (both short and long-term cost being the top two, and today's presentation said nothing about that). MassDOT caved to activist pressure in moving the Interstate at-grade to begin with, then caved again in proposing the "hybrid", and now the activists hate that solution too. Pollack sounded a little pissed today.

The other new constraint (at least one I hadn't seen highlighted) was that the MBTA has now asked for a $300M southside CR maintenance facility for either of the at-grade options (since they require a 6-8 year closure of the GJ). I think prior documents had suggested that they'd use the Ayer runaround during that time. The question for me is: if $300M gets the MBTA free of non-revenue moves on the GJ, have they just put a down payment price on light rail conversion? Why does this new maintenance facility have to be temporary? Also, where does it go?

The MBTA issue had as much to do with the new love for a new viaduct as the river fill issues, since the GJ is completely untouched in that alternative.

Also, FWIW, West Station is now 4 tracks.
 
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From the looks of it the new viaduct would have to be cantilevered over SFR in such a way where it might be prohibitively expensive.
 
George_Apley said:
It's the same config compressed slightly, so there's a BIT more room for the bike path.
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Depends on what a "bit" means. Chop down a row of trees and you could move SFR at least 2 lane widths closer to the current Viaduct the whole way around the curve. This is not exactly space efficiency at its finest, but somehow we've been leaving slack on that side while squeezing the path on the river side for 5 decades now. There was never anything RR-related outside the Viaduct columns, and when the Grand Junction finally does pop out into daylight SFR is already starting to curve maintaining the grass buffer 1:1 between them.
 
Equilibria said:
The other new constraint (at least one I hadn't seen highlighted) was that the MBTA has now asked for a $300M southside CR maintenance facility for either of the at-grade options (since they require a 6-8 year closure of the GJ). I think prior documents had suggested that they'd use the Ayer runaround during that time. The question for me is: if $300M gets the MBTA free of non-revenue moves on the GJ, have they just put a down payment price on light rail conversion? Why does this new maintenance facility have to be temporary? Also, where does it go?
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There's separate engineering studies going on for southside maint facilities, but that's going to be a requirement of RUR anyway because Boston Engine Terminal simply can't absorb the fleet increases and you need somewhere to maintain the EMU's since the Grand Junction isn't in the first-wave electrifications. While not speccing sites, it's always been assumed the shops were going to be Readville's baby since they can expand all the way to Neponset riverbanks if the next-door recycling center easement were revoked. Mind you, that has nothing to do with the southside storage crunch, which is murkier than ever with this new Widett Circle buyer and BDPA's over-zeal to hand over the land sans a site plan. Beacon Park's shrinking easement was already too small to be a serious storage offset. Readville can max-expand out to kinda sorta handle the duties from lack of any other spaces, but they were really really hoping they wouldn't have to engage the 8 shitty miles of multi-time-daily deadheading to/from downtown. Evicting the recycling center for max expansion can fit both shops and storage on the Yard 2 slab. Had alternate downtown storage been acquired fully relieving Readville of those duties they simply would've converted the existing yard into shop land and not needed to go to the river.

It would make zero sense whatsoever to have any split shop facilities between Beacon Park and Readville. BET was built in the first place in '97 because of the cost savings it realized from consolidating a bunch of junky old separate buildings scattered around the Innerbelt. And shops are not so distance-intensive like storage is, so it would be way better to consolidate all maint functions in one place at Readville and--if anything--use the whole of what scraps are at BP for storage (if indeed Widett is gone forever, but who knows...). Same goes if it's strictly Maintenance of Way shop space like the Alewife shed that houses all of the hi-rail trucks and specialized track equipment. That too you'd get much more value out of lumping in at Readville rather than fragmenting partially at BP.

I don't think there's going to be any clarity on this particular issue until the ongoing maint facility siting study that just kicked off releases some prelim findings. It's entirely possible the Pike project managers are out-of-sync with the thrust of that ongoing Readville-leaning maint study, since there's been no published updates on prior siting studies in many years. The Pike team may simply be placeholding with old BP site info until the new study is complete. After all, they sure as hell ain't done troubleshooting West's layout or that incomprehensible street grid. Movement towards resolution on the 'throat' stalemate just means something might actually be able to get done before we're dead. I still have less-than-zero confidence that the land will be development-ready before it happens given the incoherence of the grid and continued crickets from Harvard about land usage. And West has not seen its last...much less second- or third-from-last...major design reboot and associated public comment primal screaming if it's still clinging to that pointlessly self-alienating inverted layout vs. the yard.
 
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