I-90 Interchange Improvement Project & West Station | Allston

[F-Line to Dudley]

Maybe they just don't care. From the map it looks like the BU area near the throat is just athletic fields and Agganis Arena. Past the throat is where most of the action is, and ped access across looks better.

This is more the reality than they're simply being very quiet about discussing. Whether there's a viaduct or not, it doesn't matter to them because it's only visible to the back loading dock of Agganis and the upper dorm floors whose primary view is still buffered by great big Nickerson. Why waste any bullets on pure aesthetics where they have LOTS to gripe about on the post-'throat' project decisions where the inverted placement of West Station vs. layover yard is arbitrarily access-alienating to their whole side and they only get one wholly inadequate cross-street connection in alley-sized Malvern (no explanation whatsoever why Babcock is omitted)? Plus all other absentee-Harvard centric gripes like the chunky street grid, carpocalypse demerits to Lower Allston access, and Harvard's own transparent land-parking of the slab in lieu of any sooner development worth visiting.


I *suspect* BU doesn't even care enough about that crap to be a reliable coalition partner at all, since you would think the shredded street grid and station placement arbitrarily taking so much ease-of-access off the table from their side would be instant dealbreakers right from Render #1. But they disappointingly haven't said much at all about any of that publicly. At least there's still plenty of time to evolve over there, as shovel-in-ground Pike work can proceed for a solid half-decade doing 'throat' and other essentials shifting things back and forth before bridge abutment placements for overlying street grid need to be locked in-design. But there is most definitely a "give a shit" difference in level of interest on the grid/slab/station vs. 'throat'. Nothing of theirs fronts the 'throat' access- or vistas-wise, so the tape measure of nearest property line isn't meaningful. Their whole existential upside as an institution is tied up in what they get for grid continuity over the slab, whether anything on that grid like transit makes the faintest attempt to invite access from their side, and whether the land-owner on the grid is going to build anything worth making a crossover trip to see with any upside to BU (Harvard land or integration with the Lower Allston side).

Put it this way: BU participation now could be argued as surplus-to-requirement at risk of slowing down a 'throat' debate that's already slowed to crisis. Hanging back on this one is probably their best tactical move period, in addition to being extremely low-leverage for their own interests. But if they don't start throwing their weight around in a massive way after the 'throat' is settled and it's time to troubleshoot the grid & slab...

. . .^this^ guy's going to be spawning its own tornado to boot.

 

[jass]

Multiple BU students have died in that area over the years because the party houses abut the rail line, and people wander. They really should care more.

 

[JeffDowntown]

Maybe they just don't care. From the map it looks like the BU area near the throat is just athletic fields and Agganis Arena. Past the throat is where most of the action is, and ped access across looks better.

That is only a partial characterization. There are also two huge dorms and the College of Fine Arts packed against the viaduct in West Campus, right at the throat.

 

[jklo]

That is only a partial characterization. There are also two huge dorms and the College of Fine Arts packed against the viaduct in West Campus, right at the throat.

That's at the end of it though. It wouldn't be too far of a walk to get across via the BU Bridge.

 

[ErnieAdams]

Let's gooooooo... (Via Commonwealth Mag)

STATE TRANSPORTATION Secretary Stephanie Pollack embraced a new all at-grade proposal for the so-called throat section of the I-90 Allston interchange that locates a bike and pedestrian path and a tiny portion of Soldiers Field Road in the Charles River.

....

There was an existing at-grade option, but Pollack upgraded it to include most of the elements sought by Boston and A Better City, including a 20-foot-wide path (22 feet with railings) out in the river incorporating separate bike and pedestrian lanes and a refurbished river bank with trees and shrubs. The new design accommodates those elements by reducing the shoulders on the Turnpike by a total of 4 feet, using 5 feet of land owned by BU, and putting about three feet of Soldiers Field Road in the realm of the river at the mean annual flood level.

With a quote at the end from Robert Brown committing BU to giving up whatever land they can spare to make this work. Would have been too much to ask to nail them to a higher West Station commitment, but this is a big deal all on its own.

 

[jklo]

Wow, I'm surprised they got the Feds to approve of this. Better fast track it before they change their mind.

 

[George_Apley]

Wow, I'm surprised they got the Feds to approve of this. Better fast track it before they change their mind.

They haven't. It's just been upgraded to one of the preferred alts. No permits have been pulled. But its inclusion suggests that Pollack thinks that the permits are not a moon shot.

 

[shmessy]

Whoops, there it is!!!!!!!!

BU offers more land in hopes of breaking logjam over Mass. Pike project in Allston - The Boston Globe

“In an area where feet, and perhaps inches, may be the difference between a workable and an unworkable solution, Boston University is committed to doing the utmost to accommodate these infrastructure improvements,” its resident wrote.

www.bostonglobe.com

"... But BU spokeswoman Rachel Lapal noted the state was already planning to take a strip of land seven feet wide, and school officials have previously told the state it could have more. The business-backed nonprofit A Better City, which has championed the idea of putting everything at-grade, says as much as 12 feet of land in the area may be available without impacting BU facilities......"

So basically, the Commonwealth was going to eminent domain 7 feet no matter what and BU decided to save face and be the good guy (for later horse trading on good will) by saying they can have up to 5 more.

Am I reading that right?

 

[cden4]

We should not be eminent domaining anything for a highway in 2020.

 

[Vagabond]

We should not be eminent domaining anything for a highway in 2020.

I have to disagree - this is a perfect use of eminent domain to enable all sorts of multimodal transportation options, and is solely traceable to the public good.
Highways still exist, and so does traffic. Original poor design shouldn't mean society is stuck with it forever.

 

[stick n move]

I have to disagree - this is a perfect use of eminent domain to enable all sorts of multimodal transportation options, and is solely traceable to the public good.
Highways still exist, and so does traffic. Original poor design shouldn't mean society is stuck with it forever.

.

 

[ccole]

A Better City presented their all-at-grade alternative yesterday morning - here's the slide deck: https://www.abettercity.org/assets/images/10.9.2020 ABCC I90.pdf. Really hope a lot of this makes it to the final design. Something I was particularly happy to hear during the presentation is that construction staging calls for creating the pedestrian/bicycle infrastructure first, rather than last as is the case for most large projects like this.

 

[Charlie_mta]

A Better City presented their all-at-grade alternative yesterday morning - here's the slide deck: https://www.abettercity.org/assets/images/10.9.2020 ABCC I90.pdf.

I would double-deck SFR to keep all roads completely out of the River, and also allow 12' lanes on the Mass Pike for safety:

 

[jklo]

At grade everything is the ideal solution if you can get away with filling the river. It's much easier to maintain long term.

 

[stick n move]

At grade is the far superior option.

 

[BostonTrainGuy]

Yes! I have been saying this for years. Put it all at grade. Replacing an ugly viaduct with another is stupid. The river is very wide here and a slight narrowing isn't going to matter much at all.

The only other thing I would like to see is the Pike lowered under the BU Bridge so a new northeast leg of a rail wye could be built over it to the Grand Junction. Then you could run trains north from South Station. A lot cheaper and quicker solution than the NS Rail Link.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Yes! I have been saying this for years. Put it all at grade. Replacing an ugly viaduct with another is stupid. The river is very wide here and a slight narrowing isn't going to matter much at all.

The only other thing I would like to see is the Pike lowered under the BU Bridge so a new northeast leg of a rail wye could be built over it to the Grand Junction. Then you could run trains north from South Station. A lot cheaper and quicker solution than the NS Rail Link.

Not going to happen. The injection angles are too extremely sharp for straight-ahead RR routing off a wye, as the Charles River crossing is baked into its trajectory. One of the biggest pluses the LRT conversion has going for it is that you can make the turning radius on trolley from BU to filet directions to Harvard or Kendall with a wye grafted onto the same exact Charles + Storrow-overpass ROW alignment in a way that's physically impossible with RR. It's a big enough difference by mode that you're beyond hope trying to kludge some equalizer out of a realignment.

Not to mention the whole "why?" question when RR-mode performance on the Grand Junction is so intrinsically weak through the grade crossings uneliminable on that mode and through the slow North Station terminal district at the Fitchburg mash-up that it's yet to be proven by study that the proposed 15-minute bi-directional shuttle can even make its advertised headway. It's a whole additional order-of-magnitude's impossibility to be considering adding additional service flavors when they're all zeroed out by-default on available extra slots, so the SS wye what-if serves no purpose except to beg a question that's already a service impossibility.

 

[George_Apley]

^ YES. I'm tired of the "run MBCR on Grand Junction" silliness. Give up and start planning for Urban Ring. GLX-Somerville/Medford will be done in a year. Time to start planning next steps. A successful commuter train on the Grand Junction is not one of them.

 

[ErnieAdams]

^ YES. I'm tired of the "run MBCR on Grand Junction" silliness. Give up and start planning for Urban Ring. GLX-Somerville/Medford will be done in a year. Time to start planning next steps. A successful commuter train on the Grand Junction is not one of them.

Well then someone needs to stuff Tim Murray back into the gym locker he escaped from in high school. Guy was still writing op-eds about it within the past few weeks. In lieu of providing a link or of actually having to read the whole thing, I'll just paraphrase what I imagine it said: "Connect our life sciences workers in Kendall Square directly with the WooSox games, and fully unlock the potential of the state's economy."

 

[Charlie_mta]

The only other thing I would like to see is the Pike lowered under the BU Bridge so a new northeast leg of a rail wye could be built over it to the Grand Junction. Then you could run trains north from South Station. A lot cheaper and quicker solution than the NS Rail Link.

Even if it's feasible to build an operable railroad radius at this location, a N-S connector route along this alignment would bypass all three major rail stations: North, South and (the proposed) West. Also, the NE Corridor line coming up through the South End would not be able to bang a left turn at the Back Bay Station to get to the Grand Junction RR.