If Boston had a Circulator

fattony said:
I have one major issue remaining - traffic. With the exception of Sundays, I can walk to the Fenway faster than the 1 bus will move me. Now, maybe that isn't the best counter example for a downtown circulator, but I also have driven downtown at 5pm and it isn't pretty especially near SS. Can you envision a route with bus/bike lanes or something that will guarantee the thing moves faster than a walk?
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Yes, just like the Silver Line has on Washington Street (and for all the same reasons), MBTA buses should already be running in Contraflow lanes on Boyleston Street and Essex Street, between Hynes and South Station, permitting routes with the triple win of street transit:
1) A straight shot (short, and easy to see your bus as it comes at you)
2) Two-way on the same route (you can see the bus you'll come back on too)
3) Uncongested / Uncontested (perhaps shared with bike...or not)

We should already have that, and moreso than going to Dudley (sorry, its true) it would be a natural place for tour, charter, MBTA, Employer Shuttle, Convention, and Circulator buses. I'd take it beyond South Station and all the way out Summer, past the BCEC and have it dogleg onto D Street, stop at Silver Line way and in loop at the end of D Street @ Silver Line Way (maybe even cutting across one of those parks to avoid some left turns)

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F-Line also likes to remind us that Red-Green connections (and dwell times and delays in the core of the rail system) are in danger of bogging down all the rail transit lines as things "back up"

South Station to Hynes is an obvious way of offloading a lot of people that today gum up the works by connecting at Park Street and Downtown Crossing when they'd be just as happy never going anywhere near.

That leaves the platforms at DTX and Park for people who actually have trips that start or end in the DTX-Park area...like all the new people coming to the Filene's site, and it frees up spaces on all trains for "through" trips (Quincy-Cambridge, Somerville-Pru, Melrose-Ruggles)
 
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bigeman312 said:
I don't get why it's called a circulator, though. Is it circular, like roads that are circulators?
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Because it "circulates" people within the downtown core, rather than moving them radially in-out to-from "home". Kind of the way a party host might urge its guests to "Mingle!", the city wants to urge its day population of suburbanites to "Circulate!" (and spend) before it lets them go home.

The problem with most "downtowns" is that they actually have multiple cores, which have different menus of city stuff:

Boston's are Med-Ken-Fen vs Prudential vs Financial District vs Seaport (east-west) (and GC/North Station kinda off by themselves)
DC's are Georgtown vs K Street vs Capitol Hill (east-west) (with L'Enfant off by itself)
Baltimore is Inner Harbor (south) vs Penn Station (north) (but the subway runs crosswise and out to the 'burbs)
Chicago's is Magnificent Mile vs Loop vs McCormick (C-shaped)

Each core tends to have its own "radial" lines and poor service between the cores. DC's L'Enfant is a perfect example: it sits atop the crossing of 4 metro lines but it is still hard to get from it to the north side of Capitol Hill (where Union Station is). But that it takes a 2-seat ride to get from South Station to Copley is also a good example.

Manhattan is easy (and doesn't need a circulator) because all its transit actually does run exactly on the axis along which its centers are lined up (Wall Street, 33rd St, 42nd St, 57th St)

Don't confuse it with "circumferential" (ring roads)

So the point is that the City government wants to have people stay "downtown" for longer more productive (spending more) visits. Boston should want you popping over to Best Buy (at Fenway) or Marshalls (on Boyleston) on your lunch, and to some other bar-a-friend-told-you-about after work.
 
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Gotcha. Thanks for the explanation. I still think it would be a good idea to avoid duplicating existing service, and focusing on introducing new service for flow throughout downtown where it is needed and under-served. I like the idea of Back Bay-SBW. I'm not so sure about the LMA-Back Bay portion of the trip, which is already served by the Green Line, as this seems like a waste of resources. What are your thoughts on a SBW-South Station-Aquarium-Faneuil Hall-North Station circulator?
 
Because it is targeted at your lunch hour, a circulator has to be:
1) Very close to your office (walking to properly-spaced heavy rail takes too long)
2) Very frequent (you can't afford to blow 20 minutes of your lunch hour waiting) Ideally, they'd be every 3 to 5 mins at lunch hour.

So it has to be closer than the heavy rail stop you might use every day as part of your commute. The D is on the wrong side of the Muddy River as far as "errand" trips from Longwood go, No matter how close you might be to the Red or Green or Orange, if you have to change trains mid-trip, forget it.

Basically, it is curbside and direct like a cab, and faster than walking (but near as cheap..or free for pass-holders).

That favors a swarm of buses on "the main street"
-Brooline Ave (not crossing the Muddy River to catch the D)
-Boyleston...but @ Fairfield because Hynes & Copley are too far apart for "errands"
-Essex...because DTX is too far away in the wrong direction
-Summer...because conventioneers expect curbside.
-D Street...curbside for "outer" Seaport
 
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Scalziand said:
WRTA's Route 80 bus functions as a free downtown circulator, going in a loop every 10-15 minutes. It covers a laughably small area, but is needed to link the old bus hub at Town Hall with the new one at Union Station.

http://www.telegram.com/article/20130805/NEWS/308059989/1020
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A good example.

It also points out how we got here: for most east coast cities "City Hall" or the "Federal Building" is where the "center" was in 1820 and in 1900 the "new" "Union Station" made a rival center. Then you add the mid-20th-Century "Hospital Center" and "Skycraper-in-a-plaza" and very often they're impossible to walk between. Throw in a revived seaport/harbor/waterfront, and a new stadium here and arena there, and, well, you need a circulator to connect them.
 
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