Infill MBTA stations

Great to see so many people weighing in on this subject!

I guess the aspect most interesting to me is that of scalability. At what point would new developments justify a new T station? I think the Central/Kendall example is a good one because there is, basically, a lot of stuff there that wasn't around when the subway lines were planned. As belmont pointed out, Boston has plenty of stations where the ridership justifies it (e.g. downtown) - as other areas approach that density, do they also get more stops? If the rapid transit network fails to scale relative to increased population and employment density, it seems like the economy and growth would suffer.
 
I wonder if the solution for the red line in Cambridge is not more stations but increasing the red line trains from 6 to 8 cars. The platforms and new exits could be extended in the direction that needs more service. Obliviously this will result in changes on the whole red line, but it might be a change to combine park st and downtown crossing.
 
In my opinion it would be when development reached a point such that:

the number of passengers boarding at Alewife, Davis, Porter, Harvard and Central destined for Kendall or beyond, multiplied by 90 seconds (or however much time would be added to the trip by an intermediate station) is less than the number of passengers boarding at a new Central-Kendall intermediate station plus the number from points north alighting at the station multiplied by 4 minutes (assuming 8 minutes is the most time anyone would save walking to their destination).

My guess is that this would require a ton of new development. For starters, the two block deep housing project along Main Street b/w Windsor and Portland would need to be knocked down and replaced with mid- or high-rise development (since any intermediate station would likely be located at this block). Even under such a scenario, there are other more pressing needs (improve current access to LMA, future access to built out Seaport, rapid transit to underserved areas of Roxbury/Dorchester/Mattapan, Green Line to Union, etc) that would likely prevent such a station from being built.
 
Many of us remember the late-1980s project of extending the platforms from 4 cars to 6. That tore up Central and Kendall squares for years. You'd have to do it again in every single station before you could run longer trains.
 
Ron Newman said:
Not a good assumption. 3 miles per hour (20 minutes per mile) is a more normal walking speed.
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Why must you hate on the tall, quick, and sneakered? In anycase, using the more conservative 3 miles per hour walking speed, you're still only saving yourself 5 minutes by constructing intermediary stops along the red line from Kendall to Porter, and that's walking time from the most remote location to a station. I think we can all agree on the fact that it's nice to live right next to a t station, but that there's a difference between something that's nice and something that's a necesity.
 
How about between Porter and Alewife? There is good density there ... and could use the bus depot on Mass Ave as a stopping point?
 
There's already a stop between Porter and Alewife (at Davis).
 
Sorry, that's what I meant ...

Not sure if it's far enough between Alewife and Davis, since I've never taken the subway that far, but it seems logical.
 
JimboJones said:
Not sure if it's far enough between Alewife and Davis, since I've never taken the subway that far, but it seems logical.
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Definitely not far enough. Six minute walk to Davis at the most from there, and probably fewer than 200 houses are closer to the Red Line's intersection with Mass Ave than they already are to Davis or Alewife. That stretch of Mass Ave is slowly evolving into a more urban street, but a rapid transit station can't be justified.
 
You can walk from Davis to Alewife in 15 minutes. Upper Mass. Ave. is an easy walk from Davis.
 
Sorry for the longwinded (hopefully) non-rant:

There seems to be much discussion on this board about the need for an increase in the number of subway stations, whether they be part of line extensions further out from the city?s core, new lines or spurs serving urban areas left out of the current system, or infill stations on existing lines. Frequently the rationale is that additional stations will help foster increased development and density around the stations. In the US, I believe the DC Metro is the best example of this synergy between station and development (although I?m by no means totally won over by the type of redevelopment I?ve seen there).

A couple of questions I try to pose when people push for new stations are?why do we need to build new stations for this purpose, when plenty of the ones we already have are not fully developed, if at all? And, in the cases where stations not located at an historic node are suggested (such as Edgeworth, Assembly Square, etc), why have we had almost zero success transforming other non-nodal station locations into our own Clarendons and Bethesdas?

I undertook a quick analysis of the 39 non-central city (defined as all stations not located within Mass Ave on the Shawmut peninsula) subway stations, including only the two controlled-entry Green Line stations (Kenmore and Lechmere). I noted whether or not the stations were located at historic nodes. 23 of them were, ranging in importance from Beachmont and Wollaston to Harvard and Kenmore. The remaining 16 were located outside of traditional nodes (Shawmut, Stonybrook, Community College, etc).

I also looked at aerial photos to determine whether vacant lots or non-station oriented surface parking were present in large enough parcels for a moderately sized development within ? mile of each station. Only 5 of the 39 did not have sizable vacant parcels within a short walk (Ashmont, Shawmut, Green, Stonybrook, and Oak Grove).

Finally, I noted whether or not a station had seen some recent (10-15 years) sizable redevelopment of vacant land. 17 of the 39 stations did have some TOD redevelopment.

Findings: Of the 17 with recent TOD, 13 were stations located at historic nodes: Quincy Ctr, N Quincy, Ashmont, Broadway, Kendall through Davis, Malden, Revere Beach, Lechmere and Kenmore. Of the other 4, 2 of them probably have as much to owe to adjacent highway infrastructure as they do to subway access (Wellington and Alewife). Ruggles, while not a historic node, is probably the most urban location of the 16 non-nodal stations, and the redevelopment at Savin Hill is fairly modest.

Other than Ashmont, the 13 nodal stations where TOD has happened still have room to grow, because of the presence of underutilized parcels close to the station.

There are still 10 nodal subway stations where almost no vacant parcels have been filled in the past decade or more: Wollaston, Fields Corner, Andrew, Forest Hills, Jackson, Roxbury Crossing, Sullivan, Beachmont, Orient Heights, Maverick.

Conclusion: Even if there was conclusive evidence that the presence of a subway station in this metro area would attract the type of high density development we all like, isn?t it much more cost effective to do a little bit better with the dozens of opportunities we already have than to spend millions developing new stations. And in the absence of conclusive evidence, why do we keep convincing ourselves that redevelopment would be any more successful at new stations?
 
belmont square said:
Conclusion: Even if there was conclusive evidence that the presence of a subway station in this metro area would attract the type of high density development we all like, isn?t it much more cost effective to do a little bit better with the dozens of opportunities we already have than to spend millions developing new stations. And in the absence of conclusive evidence, why do we keep convincing ourselves that redevelopment would be any more successful at new stations?
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I think this is a logical conclusion.

Unfortunately, it is never as "sexy" to try to stimulate development around an existing station as it is to propose building a new one.
 
The effect, in the Boston area at least, appears to be more long-term, and results in the character of the neighborhood changing more often than it induces development. Davis Square has gentrified considerably, but that was a process that took 20 years, and new development has been a recent and veryh modest phenomenon. Porter's strip mall upgrade was also a long-term process, from what I recall.

Some other outer stations have only served to induce auto-oriented development, since they're essentially park-and-ride nodes - Alewife, for example. This trend has only been reversing fairly recently as town planning ordinances force high density development on suburban neighborhoods near T stops - there is a massive new condoplex at Woodside and one planned for Riverside as well. Chestnut Hill has been urbanizing conspicuously, though I'm not sure how much of this can be attributed to the Green Line.
 
The Rappaport Center published a study of Communter Rail stations where they found that building a new station had little to no effect on the land use around it.
 
There's still a lot of totally vacant land east of Alewife station and northwest of Russell Field. I do not understand why it remains undeveloped.
 
Is the issue of quantity of subway stations relative to urban density a well-studied matter? How would transit planners determine if there is enough development in a given area to justify adding a station to serve the new developments and allow for continued growth?

I ask because this is a little different from the topic that belmont and others are discussing above (a topic that I do also find interesting) - adding stations to spur growth in relatively undeveloped areas.
 
czsz said:
The effect, in the Boston area at least, appears to be more long-term, and results in the character of the neighborhood changing more often than it induces development. Davis Square has gentrified considerably, but that was a process that took 20 years, and new development has been a recent and veryh modest phenomenon.
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I'm fine with long-term, modest development around subway stations like Davis and do not think transforming a neighborhood like that into another Rosslyn or Bethesda would be a good thing (or even necessary given the other stations surrounded by underutilized land).
 
Ron Newman said:
There's still a lot of totally vacant land east of Alewife station and northwest of Russell Field. I do not understand why it remains undeveloped.
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I don't have a reference on hand, but I believe that this land is protected wetlands, contaminated from the W.R. Grace chemical company located just north of Russell Field, or both.

These circumstances were different or unknown at the time of Alewife's construction. At that point, they were anticipating development in this area, which explains the (seldom used) secondary entrance to Alewife station.
 
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