Okay,
this is basically what I'm envisioning / asking about. SFR tucks W of the Doubletree, merges in with the Pike in the new Beacon Park interchange (i.e., what is currently the Cambridge St Interchange), then merges out of the Pike into Storrow just W of the BU Bridge.
That was never an officially-considered alternative. I've never seen that before; was that
ever an officially-presented counterpoint, or is it just an individual's crayon-job? What's the context there? Too many of the key features on there like a "Super Pleasant St." required to make any of it work simply don't have extant opportunities in the real world. There was a dizzying
buttload of officially-considered Alts. throughout the project's history, and none of them resembled this one that's apparently date-stamped 6 years ago.
OK...right there the assumptions are way, way askew from what the
actual project is tackling. If these are the leading assumptions, of course it's going to get lost from there. That render isn't a starting point for addressing ANY of the issues we're talking about.
What I am envisioning/asking about does not touch the BU Bridge in any way. I reference the BU Bridge simply a landmark. Any interchange I'm asking about would be W of and below the BU Bridge, and would be between SFR/Storrow and the Pike. The BU Bridge would not be involved in any way. I apologize if this was unclear.
And thus it matters the world what it is you are "envisioning"...an actual counter-proposal from long ago that was vetted at least in quick passing by MassDOT, or an Internet crayon doodle? Where did it come from? We're way too far along in project comment to be debating eye-of-beholder crayon doodles or brand new never-before-seen by project staff outside submissions. Like it or not, the only path forward here is going to be a hashing out of the most recent 'official' Alts or some combination of them...not rebooting it from scratch. None of which feature anything remotely in function like the "Super Pleasant Street" that this render is wholly dependent on for doing its thing. This isn't relevant to the decision that has to be made
right now to get the project unstuck.
Re: "specificity matters,"perhaps some of the lack of clarity here is that, in my understanding, the road that runs along the Charles River from underneath the BU Bridge to Charlesgate is not Soldier's Field Road, it is Storrow Drive. So "the whole 1.75 miles of SFR from River St. to Charlesgate" doesn't make a lot of sense to me. In my view SFR ends around the BU Bridge and becomes Storrow Drive. So SFR never reaches Charlesgate. Call this semantics if you want, but I think the lack of common nomenclature makes this confusing.
Fair point. But in public vernacular the names are used interchangeably. MassHighway's
own signage uses it interchangeably. Various maps draw the demarcation point in different places because of conflicting public info on where the name change is. Yes, it's confusing. But lack of specificity
there is what we deal with.
That's not the same as lack of specificity about what Alts. are even under consideration. It is crystal clear on the MassDOT Alts. that River St.-Charlesgate--all of it--is still the load-bearing connector because there is no insertion of new or diverted access points anywhere in-between River and BU Bridge giving the corridor a different segmenting. This new non-official render you're linking to, on the other hand, makes a completely different set of assumptions.
Yes...you have to be specific that you're talking about an "off-board" Alt. Because that makes no sense in context of the current-events stalemate boiling down to breakdown in consensus over the MassDOT-supplied Alts. It's crystal-clear what basis we're trying to hash through to find something usable in the last State-circulated round of Alts. It's not clear at all where this new one you linked even came from.
That I am talking about "only half the length in question" is kind of the entire point of what I'm saying. What I'm envisioning leaves Storrow alone between where it passes under the BU Bridge and where it intersects Charlesgate.
See all above. Right now...the way this project is hung up...the debate is constrained to hashing out some solution by poring over the most-recent round(s) of MassDOT Alts., because we're already years late on shovel-ready and it's a crisis. The project is not at a stalemate because the barn door hasn't been reopened to anything-goes new crayon doodles or Alts. that may have been very briefly reviewed and rejected in excess of a half-decade ago. That's a fundamental misunderstanding of what the right-this-second action plan is. We're not trying to build a more-perfect 'throat' by resetting the canvas to blank. We're trying to get something, anything done out of the Alts. that have survived the gauntlet for public scrutiny this far.
If the lineage of your linked render does not trace to something VERY recent that was state-vetted, then it's not relevant. Put it in Crazy Transit Pitches instead, because that's not the decision State + People's Pike are trying to make today.
I'm also not asking about a "grid connection between BU and Beacon Park;" I envision no more connection between the grid and the Pike than exists now, or whatever is determined for the future. In what I am envisioning, SFR around Cambridge St would be routed onto the Pike in the same place where Cambridge St interchanges with the Pike now. And Storrow would interchange with the Pike just W of the BU Bridge, but this isn't really "grid."
Again, in my understanding the road from River St to under the BU Bridge is SFR, but the road from under the BU Bridge to Charlesgate is Storrow Drive. And in what I am envisioning, Storrow Drive remains untouched. All of the access points from Storrow Drive to "BU, Kenmore, and the Fenway" remain.
I have no stance on BU West Campus connectivity. What I am envisioning doesn't affect that.
See all above. You're envisioning something so many stages past the point of the actual project taking new/rehashed solicitations that it's irrelevant to current decision-making.
That's the point of confusion, in a nutshell.
I read it pretty carefully. And for all the reasons spelled out above, I still don't see how you're addressing my question. And the link at the top of this post is a prior graphic from ~6 years ago that I just found that's envisioning something very close to what I am.
And again...not reading carefully enough if all of this is predicated on an out-of-left-field set of assumptions that are not in any way/shape/form under evaluation today by the official parties for resolving the 'throat' stalemate. It could look 'totes awesomesauce on a 2D render, but the fact that it's nowhere near resembling any of the recent-consideration Alts. means it's completely irrelevant to resolving the stalemate. Nobody on aB made those rules; that's simply the decision we've got in real life for getting something done after so much time has now been wasted. We don't want this to sail straight into farce like Hartford's Aetna Viaduct where the structure has to light $$$ on fire for couple more rounds of 5-year patch repairs because we're incapable of making up our minds. We need to get this show on the road. That means the time for blank-canvas reconsideration has loooooooong since passed.