Let's assume that Boston has five "downtowns": Downtown/Financial District, Back Bay, Longwood Medical Area, Kendall, and the Seaport. (This is a somewhat arbitrary assumption, I grant.)
Let's further assume that there are five "BERY-style" bus transfer hubs, each located very roughly 2 miles away from the center of Downtown, at which commuters transfer from their local bus route to an express rapid transit OSR directly to Downtown: Nubian/Ruggles, Kenmore, Harvard, Sullivan, and Maverick.
Your challenge, should you choose to accept it: create transit paths that provide an OSR from each bus transfer hub to each of the five downtowns. (List to fill in copied in spoiler box below.)
Some additional notes:
Lines may curve and bend, within reason; making every path a dog leg would not be in the spirit of the challenge
Lines can run in parallel between downtown nodes
Lines may branch on the outside of the 2 mile circle, but may not branch within the circle; if you need to branch, you must build a second trunk in parallel
(4 track subways would be okay though)
The definitions of each downtown area are up for interpretation, within reason
Paths can serve the transfer hubs without actually serving the tranfer hub directly if you are able to intersect all bus routes feeding in to that hub at a reasonably close distance
For example, you could serve the Maverick hub using dual transfers at Airport station and (say) Meridian & Bennington
"Nubian/Ruggles" is nebulously defined for any number of reasons, so make of that what you will
Definitely an interesting challenge! To clarify: Are you suggesting additional lines and extensions based on the current rapid transit network, or an alternative universe in which there are no existing Red, Orange, Blue and Green lines and we start everything from scratch?
Definitely an interesting challenge! To clarify: Are you suggesting additional lines and extensions based on the current rapid transit network, or an alternative universe in which there are no existing Red, Orange, Blue and Green lines and we start everything from scratch?
Fair question! I think solutions using either framework will be interesting. So perhaps we’ll say that either approach is good, just clarify up front whether your solution is in a “stet” framework or “blank slate”.
(Also bear in mind that one could also do realignments — eg realign Red to have a brief diversion into the Seaport. Idk if we’d consider that stet vs blank slate, so I’d just say we should clarify our thought processes when we answer.)
Let's assume that Boston has five "downtowns": Downtown/Financial District, Back Bay, Longwood Medical Area, Kendall, and the Seaport. (This is a somewhat arbitrary assumption, I grant.)
Let's further assume that there are five "BERY-style" bus transfer hubs, each located very roughly 2 miles away from the center of Downtown, at which commuters transfer from their local bus route to an express rapid transit OSR directly to Downtown: Nubian/Ruggles, Kenmore, Harvard, Sullivan, and Maverick.
Your challenge, should you choose to accept it: create transit paths that provide an OSR from each bus transfer hub to each of the five downtowns. (List to fill in copied in spoiler box below.)
Some additional notes:
Lines may curve and bend, within reason; making every path a dog leg would not be in the spirit of the challenge
Lines can run in parallel between downtown nodes
Lines may branch on the outside of the 2 mile circle, but may not branch within the circle; if you need to branch, you must build a second trunk in parallel
(4 track subways would be okay though)
The definitions of each downtown area are up for interpretation, within reason
Paths can serve the transfer hubs without actually serving the tranfer hub directly if you are able to intersect all bus routes feeding in to that hub at a reasonably close distance
For example, you could serve the Maverick hub using dual transfers at Airport station and (say) Meridian & Bennington
"Nubian/Ruggles" is nebulously defined for any number of reasons, so make of that what you will
I mean the obvious solution would be a Chicago-style loop, ideally with flying junctions instead of flat ones to minimize headways. Assuming 1 clockwise tracks and 1 counter clockwise track and fully automatic operation you'd be looking at minimum headways of around 5 minutes on three branches and 3 minutes on two branches. (I'd pick Harvard and Sullivan for more frequent service.)
Let's assume that Boston has five "downtowns": Downtown/Financial District, Back Bay, Longwood Medical Area, Kendall, and the Seaport. (This is a somewhat arbitrary assumption, I grant.)
Let's further assume that there are five "BERY-style" bus transfer hubs, each located very roughly 2 miles away from the center of Downtown, at which commuters transfer from their local bus route to an express rapid transit OSR directly to Downtown: Nubian/Ruggles, Kenmore, Harvard, Sullivan, and Maverick.
Your challenge, should you choose to accept it: create transit paths that provide an OSR from each bus transfer hub to each of the five downtowns. (List to fill in copied in spoiler box below.)
Some additional notes:
Lines may curve and bend, within reason; making every path a dog leg would not be in the spirit of the challenge
Lines can run in parallel between downtown nodes
Lines may branch on the outside of the 2 mile circle, but may not branch within the circle; if you need to branch, you must build a second trunk in parallel
(4 track subways would be okay though)
The definitions of each downtown area are up for interpretation, within reason
Paths can serve the transfer hubs without actually serving the tranfer hub directly if you are able to intersect all bus routes feeding in to that hub at a reasonably close distance
For example, you could serve the Maverick hub using dual transfers at Airport station and (say) Meridian & Bennington
"Nubian/Ruggles" is nebulously defined for any number of reasons, so make of that what you will
Needed a map for clarity (also added in the Lechmere terminal).
A route from Kendall to LMA can easilly swoop in the Kenmore terminal, so Kenmore already has that advantage going for it. The route to Sullivan can be routed to Lechmere before cutting across the Inner Belt floodplain to get to Sullivan.
Arguably, I think it might make sense to combine Sullivan and Lechmere as one entity for this thought exercise (especially for those who interpret it as an alternative reality situation), similar to Ruggles/Nubian.
Even in the real world, the two pairs of bus hubs are each sufficiently close to one another, with one served by heavy rail and one by a mode with lower capacity (LRT or BRT). If BERy didn't build the short segment to Lechmere (and thus GLX was never built), the Lechmere buses would have most likely been extended to either Sullivan or Community College, similar to the fate of most Nubian buses.
(My thoughts on the actual challenge will come in a few days once I write them down in a more organized manner.)
With GLX active, Lechmere is no longer a bus hub anywhere near the importance of Sullivan et al. The only high-frequency route with BNRD will be the 101, which also serves Sullivan anyway.
Arguably, I think it might make sense to combine Sullivan and Lechmere as one entity for this thought exercise (especially for those who interpret it as an alternative reality situation), similar to Ruggles/Nubian.
Even in the real world, the two pairs of bus hubs are each sufficiently close to one another, with one served by heavy rail and one by a mode with lower capacity (LRT or BRT). If BERy didn't build the short segment to Lechmere (and thus GLX was never built), the Lechmere buses would have most likely been extended to either Sullivan or Community College, similar to the fate of most Nubian buses.
(My thoughts on the actual challenge will come in a few days once I write them down in a more organized manner.)
They wouldn't be extended to Community College I would think. The 80, 87, and 88 would all be extended to Sullivan via Washington St. The 69 would probably be leftover and get extended to Haymarket as the sole route to East Cambridge from downtown (Merrimack St. is plenty wide enough luckily). McGrath Hwy wouldn't have any bus service, rather with the southern end of being accessible from the 69 and the northen end from the buses on Washington St.
The area around Cambridge Crossing was, and still is, one of the most recent redevelopments in Boston's urban history, and was always historically a floodplain without any streetcar suburb development. It was a huge void separating Charlestown's Main St served by the 92, away from Cambridge's Cambridge St. served by the 69. Even when the OL was relocated to follow the RR ROWs, Community College Cambridge Crossing was never built with a busway in mind, so it wouldn't be a very helpful bus terminal; the same way that Porter and Union Sq lack infrastructure to be used as, or can't be used as bus terminals.
Yeah, I pretty intentionally excluded Lechmere from the set of hubs.
First, it's much much closer to Downtown than almost any of the others. Maverick is about as close (depending where in Downtown you measure from), but Boston Harbor artificially inflates that distance in practice (being significantly harder to cross than the Charles River), making it a special case rather than precedent.
Second, if you look at the role it played historically in the rapid transit system, I'd argue it's more akin to Boylston/Pleasant Street (or perhaps Copley) than to Kenmore. The predecessors to the 87 and 88 used to run into the Central Subway via Lechmere just like the predecessors to the 9 and 43 ran in via Pleasant St; those routes were eventually truncated once the distinction between dedicated ROW-running and street-running became prized. But I'd argue the truncation points were often more coincidental than anything else. The proto-versions of the 87, 88, the 9, the 55 (Ipswich Street Lines), and the 39 were all eventually truncated where they intersected a rapid transit line. But Boylston/Pleasant Street, Copley, Massachusetts (Hynes Convention Center) and Lechmere can't all be seen as being on equal footing (at least not for the purposes of this exercise).
Third, I agree with @Teban54 -- it's easy enough to imagine Lechmere's longer-distance routes (e.g. 87 and 88) being redirected to Sullivan, and its inner route (69) sent to City Square/Community College. (Worth pointing out as well that, IIRC, the predecessor to the 111 used to terminate at City Sq -- there's a je-ne-sais-quoi difference between bus transfer points like City, Massachusetts, Egleston, Pleasant Street, Broadway, etc, and the hubs I'm describing here.)
Mostly though, this is a distance thing. Measured from Post Office Square, Nubian, Kenmore, Harvard, and Sullivan are 2.5 miles, 2.1 miles, 3.4 miles, and 2.1 miles away respectively. (Harvard is unusually far, due to the way that Cambridge was stretched from its original settlement at Harvard Square eastward toward what is now the Longfellow Bridge; most of Cambridge had been built out long before Back Bay was filled in.) Lechmere isn't as far, and I argue it became a hub mostly due to the coincidence of where BERy's ability to build a dedicated ROW ran out.
That all being said: this exercise obviously is meant to be, you know, fun, so if peeps want to add Lechmere to the list of hubs (IMO making the challenge much harder), then by all means, go for it!
Another question that I can’t really decide where it fits, but since it could be relevant to the megalopolis discussion, I’ll stick it here:
Are there any studies (or information in general) about how important aesthetics are when considering elevated rail lines? For example, consider the Canton Viaduct. It’s a genuinely pretty piece of infrastructure and is appreciated as such. When designing elevated rail lines, is there consideration of making the viaducts similarly aesthetically pleasing? Any sort of architectural style would work just fine, as long as it’s something the locals would appreciate.
I know that elevated rail tends to be unpopular and unsightly in many situations, but they, generally, are pretty utilitarian in their design. I’m quite curious how much that plays a part.
Not about the aesthetics specifically, but this reminded me about something Ive noticed about viaducts in general. Many times when falling asleep Ill put on youtube videos of people just driving around in random cities around the world and something that Ive always kinda noticed is that 1. Asian cities with highways through them mostly build them on very tall concrete viaducts and 2. When highways are built on very tall concrete viaducts they allow much more light in around them allowing very lively neighborhoods to exist unlike in the US where we either trenched the highways or only built them just high enough for trucks to pass under.
Heres a random spot I picked directly under a highway viaduct in nagoya japan.
Now lining up under the viaduct in eastie by santarpios so the highway passes over at the same angle.
Which one is a more lively area? Having a single concrete pier and the viaduct very high off the ground makes a massive difference.
Rail viaducts dont take up as much room but the effect is still there.
Honolulu
Vs chicago
Unfortunately in the us there arent very many examples to go off of with highways or rail lines being built on really tall concrete single pier viaducts, so a lot of americans still see elevated lines as creaky loud leaky ugly ways of building transit lines. If modern viaducts can allow vibrant neighborhoods to exist under/alongside massive highways then they most definitely can allow vibrant neighborhoods to exist under much smaller rail viaducts.
Not about the aesthetics specifically, but this reminded me about something Ive noticed about viaducts in general. Many times when falling asleep Ill put on youtube videos of people just driving around in random cities around the world and something that Ive always kinda noticed is that 1. Asian cities with highways through them mostly build them on very tall concrete viaducts and 2. When highways are built on very tall concrete viaducts they allow much more light in around them allowing very lively neighborhoods to exist unlike in the US where we either trenched the highways or only built them just high enough for trucks to pass under.
Heres a random spot I picked directly under a highway viaduct in nagoya japan. View attachment 54482
Now lining up under the viaduct in eastie by santarpios so the highway passes over at the same angle. View attachment 54483
Which one is a more lively area? Having a single concrete pier and the viaduct very high off the ground makes a massive difference.
Rail viaducts dont take up as much room but the effect is still there.
Unfortunately in the us there arent very many examples to go off of with highways or rail lines being built on really tall concrete single pier viaducts, so a lot of americans still see elevated lines as creaky loud leaky ugly ways of building transit lines. If modern viaducts can allow vibrant neighborhoods to exist under/alongside massive highways then they most definitely can allow vibrant neighborhoods to exist under much smaller rail viaducts.
That last photo in Chicago is awesome, an absolutely beautiful structure. I love elevated lines if they're done right, which that one is, on its own right-of-way, not hovering above a narrow street, and very aesthetically pleasing. Elevated structures that are higher in elevation, and/or are routed on wide streets (or a totally separate right-of-way), are generally better for noise and shadow management. The prime example of a poorly placed elevated rail line was the Orange Line in Charlestown running between City Sq and Sullivan Sq along a very narrow street. It was great ride when I was a kid, me standing at the front door of the lead car, looking ahead as the train hurtled along just a few feet away from the tenement buildings all along Main Street. A great experience for the rider, but I'm sure a lousy one for the people who lived along and below the line.
So, that unfortunate elevated line is burned in the collective memory of Boston, but I hope that in the future some really well designed and well placed elevated lines can be built in and around the Boston metro area.
I also love the look of the old Chicago Els. But I can be pretty sure that a Green Line train passing there is unbearably loud. Like, feel-it-in-your-teeth loud. Interrupt-a-conversation-two-blocks-away kind of loud. I have a nostalgia for those trains, so I'm always surprised going back to visit friends and see just how unpleasant they often are. When they rebuild sections now, it's a lot more concrete. They lack some of the charm, but they are so much nicer to be around.
That last photo in Chicago is awesome, an absolutely beautiful structure. I love elevated lines if they're done right, which that one is, on its own right-of-way, not hovering above a narrow street, and very aesthetically pleasing. Elevated structures that are higher in elevation, and/or are routed on wide streets (or a totally separate right-of-way), are generally better for noise and shadow management. The prime example of a poorly placed elevated rail line was the Orange Line in Charlestown running between City Sq and Sullivan Sq along a very narrow street. It was great ride when I was a kid, me standing at the front door of the lead car, looking ahead as the train hurtled along just a few feet away from the tenement buildings all along Main Street. A great experience for the rider, but I'm sure a lousy one for the people who lived along and below the line.
So, that unfortunate elevated line is burned in the collective memory of Boston, but I hope that in the future some really well designed and well placed elevated lines can be built in and around the Boston metro area.
Exactly -- EL's through residential neighborhoods tend to blight the neighborhood. Happened in both Charlestown and Washington Street, South End in Boston.
If you have more space, or can afford quieter structures and vehicles, it might not be as bad. My experience in Japan is they tend to have more societal tolerance for obnoxious zoning decisions (like elevated highways and Els, as well as placement of industrial facilities) that we do here in the US.
This is more alternate history inspired by a Wikipedia dive into the Toronto streetcar system's history. The operating principal wasn't to design a "good" streetcar system for Boston, but trying to guess at what one would look like if we never got rid of ours, based on minimal shifts in our actual timeline.
Starting point: What if the wave of streetcar-to-trackless-trolley and streetcar-to-bus conversions in 1948 and early 1949 created some kind of revolt -- maybe the legislators for Dorchester (where these bustitutions were concentrated) somehow got up in arms and those for Watertown, Brookline, Hyde Park, Somerville, Medford, etc. got worried about losing transit access for their constituents as well, just enough to halt those plans. Maybe legislators in outlying towns come to see the streetcars as a better alternative to the flagging commuter service provided by the railroads.
In Massachusetts political history, things like this have historically sometimes been enough to kill radical change and leave the affected bureaucracy to muddle through. So let's say that happens -- a pause on paving over streetcar lines wholesale just long enough for the MTA to opt for a slower strategy, pruning the network over the next 20 years as its finances keep getting worse. This sees places like Somerville and Medford lose their streetcars in favor of buses, one by one, until the T can claim it's "not economical" to keep streetcar service in place north of Cambridge.
Where it goes next: The MTA's decision to convert the Highland branch to light rail in 1958 still goes forward (albeit after short-turning what became the A, B and C branches via the Kenmore loop and stopping what's now the E at Brigham Circle to prevent congesting the Central Subway), as does the Revere Beach & Lynn conversion. The latter means a lot of East Boston service gets taken out, with the #116 and #117 cars lingering until the 1973 Chelsea fire, when the T takes advantage of the chaos to bustitute them, too, and reallocates the now-aging PCC cars elsewhere in the system.
The freeway revolt and the Sargent/Dukakis transit expansions also happen. However, the Braintree branch of the Red Line doesn't go forward because the streetcars eat up too much of the operations and maintenance budget and reborn commuter rail service on the Old Colony lines is substituted instead.
The #77 car is converted to trackless trolleys early in the Red Line's northern expansion process to save costs before Arlington's opposition to the subway means no one is even willing to consider dusting off an idea from the late 1940s to convert the Lexington and West Cambridge tracks to light rail.
When the Orange Line is shifted to the Southwest Corridor, the existence of streetcars still serving then-Dudley Square and the Pleasant Street portal still in service to take the #23 (consolidated from several routes as part of the Orange Line's move) makes it possible to add the first new streetcar line in generations that gives a one-seat ride between Dudley and Lechmere. The #10, #47 and #76 routes survive (albeit consolidated into two that run Harvard<>Dudley and City Point<>Dudley) as a stopgap-turned-permanent to fulfill a need for circumferential service, as identified in Governor Sargent's 1972 Boston Transportation Planning Review that formed the foundation of the next 40 years of transit-building in the region.
Maybe the feds listen to reason and let us build the Silver Line as light rail that connects South Station to Southie via Summer Street, since a trolley barn would still exist at City Point in this universe.
By the year 2000, that leaves you with a system that looks like this, with most routes running in dedicated medians on major arteries. But does it make for a better system, or just one that's kind of SEPTA-like? I'm not sure.
Southern Division
Ashmont<>Mattapan
Mattapan<>Forest Hills
The Dedham Center<>Forest Hills (maybe folks who know that town's history better can say if this is realistic given attitudes at the time)
Hyde Park VA<>Forest Hills
Western Division
Waverly<>Harvard
Watertown<>Harvard
Watertown<>Central (via Western Ave.)
Watertown<>Kenmore (via Oak Square)
Boston College<>Kenmore
Reservoir<>Kenmore
Central Division
City Point<>Broadway (cut back from the Central Subway when the Pike and Southeast Expressway came through and the New York Streets were buldozed)
