Leverett Circle Pedestrian Bridge

This is a stupid project... what a waste...especially as designed.
 
For that kind of money to improve the pedestrian experience near the West End I'd prefer to see Blossom or Lomasney reworked. For that kind of money to better connect a neighborhood to a State-managed river park I'd prefer to see some work done to Truman Parkway/Brush Hill Road. A young woman was killed trying to get from her neighborhood to the river because the state hasn't provisioned any way to cross.

I don't think that the Leverett bridge is a bad project in a world of infinite funds, it just seems like such a low priority for the state given the very small amounts of funding available for pedestrian projects.
 
Couple things:

- Architects love using long exposure shots to get cars streaking by in photos & renders. There's not necessarily a plot to make this look like a highway. It is certainly possible that they are using that tactic to emphasize speed, but it's not certain. It's also possible that they are just trying to be cool & trendy. I can speak to this personally knowing architects & architectural photographers that routinely take these trendy photos.

- This said, overall I feel like this project is just giving up on smart complete road design and building a bridge for pedestrians to hover above the clusterfuck going on at the surface instead of actually making road improvements. The bridge is a capitulation to the notion that the car is king and that the road needs to remain the same for cars, so we have to take pedestrians off the streetscape entirely.
 
datadyne007 said:
Couple things:

- This said, overall I feel like this project is just giving up on smart complete road design and building a bridge for pedestrians to hover above the clusterfuck going on at the surface instead of actually making road improvements. The bridge is a capitulation to the notion that the car is king and that the road needs to remain the same for cars, so we have to take pedestrians off the streetscape entirely.
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Data -- just sometimes step back from the abyss -- there is a path here regularly used by tens of thousands of young children and their parents who are using transit to visit the MOS

You should be in favor of those two points -- transit and visiting the MOS

One thing that you can learn about these kind of visitors is that its much better to separate their impatient young soft bodies from fast moving metal which might be trying to beat a light

There will be times when the traffic is heavy and dangerous -- why subject the innocent victim to either wait wait wait .. or let's just cross

PS: uo lost the argument between car and pedestrian the moment sometime early in 20th C when cars started moving faster than 20 MPH

It can be bad enough at certain times of the day mixing pedestrians and traffic even at the much more limited flow of the MOS driveway
 
Or just design roads so cars aren't going fast enough it is unsafe for pedestrians. Why put cars before people it is ridiculous to do that.
 
More like, Science Park..ing Lot!

It's a real shame that the Charles riverfront belongs to the cars. This area really deserves to do a lot better of a job for pedestrians considering that it's the intersection of a popular greenspace (Esplanade), a popular institution (Museum of Science), and a transit station (Science Park).

I suppose that we have to wait 30 years (optimistically) for Storrow Drive to get downgraded and the West End to get redeveloped for this area to get another look though.
 
whighlander said:
CSTH -- sometimes its worth accepting reality -- Leverett Circle is a state highway interchange with direct access to the Eisenhower Interstate Highway Network -- its is never going to be a "ordinary street"
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Same is true of Copley square. And Dewey square. And Haymarket. So what?

I get it, low expectations means never being disappointed.



(Also, btw Eisenhower called and told me to tell you to leave him the fuck out of this.)
 
CSTH said:
Same is true of Copley square. And Dewey square. And Haymarket. So what?
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It's not just I-93. Leverett Circle is the intersection point for the Artery, the Sumner and Callahan Tunnels, US-1/Tobin Bridge, and Storrow Drive, not to mention O'Brien Highway and by extension Cambridge St, McGrath, and Memorial Drive. That's a lot of high-capacity, high-value roadways.

Honestly, having just walked through the crossings in these renders, they look like a pretty big improvement to me. Connecting Science Park better to the West End (and MGH) is a plus that saves you three crosswalks/signals, and improving access to the MoS is another, smaller plus. And then there's the beautification.

It might not be the most efficient use of the funds, but let's not kid ourselves about the ceiling for this intersection.
 
Equilibria said:
It's not just I-93. Leverett Circle is the intersection point for the Artery, the Sumner and Callahan Tunnels, US-1/Tobin Bridge, and Storrow Drive, not to mention O'Brien Highway and by extension Cambridge St, McGrath, and Memorial Drive. That's a lot of high-capacity, high-value roadways.
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"He often used to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep and every path was its tributary"
 
Equilibria said:
Honestly, having just walked through the crossings in these renders, they look like a pretty big improvement to me. Connecting Science Park better to the West End (and MGH) is a plus that saves you three crosswalks/signals, and improving access to the MoS is another, smaller plus. And then there's the beautification.
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The crosswalks and their signals would still be there with the pedestrian overpass.
 
Equilibria said:
It's not just I-93. Leverett Circle is the intersection point for the Artery, the Sumner and Callahan Tunnels, US-1/Tobin Bridge, and Storrow Drive, not to mention O'Brien Highway and by extension Cambridge St, McGrath, and Memorial Drive. That's a lot of high-capacity, high-value roadways.
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This 1950's era "car is king" bullcrap gets tiring, especially in the center of a major city.
 
Charlie_mta said:
The crosswalks and their signals would still be there with the pedestrian overpass.
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Right. Also the crosswalk signals don't currently affect the headways of cars. Traffic is always moving in some direction when the crosswalk signals are in favor of pedestrians.
 
Charlie_mta said:
This 1950's era "car is king" bullcrap gets tiring, especially in the center of a major city.
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It's the intersection of a bunch of major highways and infrastructure in a city. That one block of the center of Boston looks like that doesn't strike me as some great disaster. Especially given that it's not one that is remotely practical to fix.

The interior area north of Leverett is never going to be some area integrated into the city fabric, as the Green Line tracks, Leverett Circle Connector Bridge/I-93 ramps, Jail, 125 Nashua, and MGH surface parking lot are not moving. Like it or not, this is never going to be a friendly city street.
 
Charlie_mta said:
This 1950's era "car is king" bullcrap gets tiring, especially in the center of a major city.
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It's not bullcrap if it's true. Are those not major roads? Do they not need to be accommodated? Does it not benefit pedestrians and cyclists to be able to access Science Park? What of these things is bullcrap to you?

BussesAin'tTrains said:
Right. Also the crosswalk signals don't currently affect the headways of cars. Traffic is always moving in some direction when the crosswalk signals are in favor of pedestrians.
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That's kind of my point, though. It's not meant to benefit the cars. The cars move fine. It's meant to benefit everyone else. You're all hating on it because investing money in helping pedestrians this way seems to also benefit auto traffic as a concept in a way you're not comfortable with.

This intersection is not changing in purpose - the cars aren't magically going to leave. If people need this bridge to use the Green Line stop in their neighborhood, then it's worth it. Period.
 
When they build this will there be fare gates on the upper (bridge) level?
 
Equilibria said:
It's not bullcrap if it's true. Are those not major roads? Do they not need to be accommodated? Does it not benefit pedestrians and cyclists to be able to access Science Park? What of these things is bullcrap to

This intersection is not changing in purpose - the cars aren't magically going to leave. If people need this bridge to use the Green Line stop in their neighborhood, then it's worth it. Period.
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The thing is, none of those conditions in real. Everyone can access the station today. The ped crossings do nothing to auto head ways because the congestion is all downstream anyway - every pm the ramps backup into the intersection already, and in the am the bottlenecks are there in the other direction.
And let's not forget that there's already a 4-lane underpass here for the highest volume car movements.

The ped bridge is functionally useless, it's ugly, and it validates the privileged treatments of cars in a location that has great potential for other modes. It's a bad project.
 
CSTH said:
The thing is, none of those conditions in real. Everyone can access the station today. The ped crossings do nothing to auto head ways because the congestion is all downstream anyway - every pm the ramps backup into the intersection already, and in the am the bottlenecks are there in the other direction.
And let's not forget that there's already a 4-lane underpass here for the highest volume car movements.

The ped bridge is functionally useless, it's ugly, and it validates the privileged treatments of cars in a location that has great potential for other modes. It's a bad project.
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Honest question: How do you know that? I'm not arguing that cars are impeded today, see my response above. Do you live in the West End? Do you commute using Science Park?

Also, "Great potential for other modes"? Bikes can go faster on the bridge. Pedestrians can access transit more easily using the bridge. How is this ruining the potential for other modes when it makes it easier to use all of them?
 
I commute through the intersection every day. Came through from the summer tunnel to the dam about 45 minutes ago, actually.

Also often bike through during my lunch break, at least when the weather is nice.

I guess I just don't see the bridge as actually helping pedestrians, especially given the highway-ization of the streets that is included in the proposal/renderings.

Traffic calming & street wall activation is what helps pedestrians.
 
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