MBTA Buses & Infrastructure

dwash59 said:
To Address Traffic Congestion, Allston Considers Designated Bus Lanes
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That's what, like a quarter or a half mile?

Extend the bus lane all the way to Kenmore.

Anyway, I wonder if the T could pave the green line tracks allow the 57 bus to use it. So basically like a street running T line but only buses and trains would be able to use it. That would be a more efficient use of space compared to putting the bus lane on another part of Comm Ave.

Plus maybe the T could even create fare gates for some dual bus/green line stops. That would speed up the bus and the train.

I wish F-Line were here though, to explain to me why my ideas are dumb :)
 
tysmith95 said:
That's what, like a quarter or a half mile?

Extend the bus lane all the way to Kenmore.

Anyway, I wonder if the T could pave the green line tracks allow the 57 bus to use it. So basically like a street running T line but only buses and trains would be able to use it. That would be a more efficient use of space compared to putting the bus lane on another part of Comm Ave.

Plus maybe the T could even create fare gates for some dual bus/green line stops. That would speed up the bus and the train.

I wish F-Line were here though, to explain to me why my ideas are dumb :)
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Ill explain, thats a horrible idea. The 57 always beats the B line in that section. Forcing the buses to wait behind the B as it stops for 2 minutes every 23 feet would be a disaster.
 
Maybe we need to speed up boarding on the B line then. It shouldn't take that long all door boarding should really be implemented tomorrow IMO.
 
tysmith95 said:
That's what, like a quarter or a half mile?

Extend the bus lane all the way to Kenmore.

Anyway, I wonder if the T could pave the green line tracks allow the 57 bus to use it. So basically like a street running T line but only buses and trains would be able to use it. That would be a more efficient use of space compared to putting the bus lane on another part of Comm Ave.

Plus maybe the T could even create fare gates for some dual bus/green line stops. That would speed up the bus and the train.

I wish F-Line were here though, to explain to me why my ideas are dumb :)
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Pretty heavy user of the 57 reporting:

It's exactly where it's needed.

Take a look at the delay in that stretch in this presentation: https://www.massdot.state.ma.us/Portals/49/Docs/BusLane20160513 .pdf

The rest of the the Comm Ave stretch of the 57 runs fine and doesn't really have delays justifying a bus lane in my opinion.

Although it doesn't show in that presentation, the other stretch I've found issues with is the hill leading up to Brighton Center going Eastbound, particularly in PM rush. I can regularly outwalk the bus from Lake St to Chestnut Hill Ave/Market St at that time.
 
millerm277 said:
Pretty heavy user of the 57 reporting:

It's exactly where it's needed.

Take a look at the delay in that stretch in this presentation: https://www.massdot.state.ma.us/Portals/49/Docs/BusLane20160513 .pdf

The rest of the the Comm Ave stretch of the 57 runs fine and doesn't really have delays justifying a bus lane in my opinion.

Although it doesn't show in that presentation, the other stretch I've found issues with is the hill leading up to Brighton Center going Eastbound, particularly in PM rush. I can regularly outwalk the bus from Lake St to Chestnut Hill Ave/Market St at that time.
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Also, to perhaps state the obvious, this is the section of the 57 route that is also used by the 66. So, there are two major bus routes benefiting from a dedicated lane for this admittedly short stretch of road.
 
Even cheaper than the bus lane - and revenue positive at the outset at least - would be committing two bodies down there to writing tickets to all the deliveries and double parkers on that stretch. Each part of the city has its worst places for that kind of nonsense, so I won't say this is the worst stretch in Boston, but it's the worst in Allston by far.
 
bus lanes for route 28

I'd not looked at this before today, but http://www.massdot.state.ma.us/portals/20/docs/28x_tiger_application_-_narrative.pdf has the 28X proposal that ended up not being implemented.

In looking at traffic on Google Maps (I focused on typical traffic for 8:00 AM and 4:00 PM Monday; feel free to point out other things that might be worth looking at), it appears that PM southbound on Warren St from about MLK Blvd to Grove Hall (the Warren St / Blue Hill Ave intersection) is the worst part, the part that is red and not merely orange.

While there is a short segment from MLK Blvd to Quincy / Townsend that is relatively wide, the rest of the problem area has the same cross section as Everett's upper Broadway: one travel lane in each direction, plus enough space that by default there's parking on both sides.

The 28X proposal has a map on page 5 that shows it does nothing about the Quincy / Townsend to Grove Hall segment. (Given that it was written several years ago, it might be the case that traffic congestion patterns have changed over the years, so we shouldn't be too quick to blame it for ignoring the most critical problem, although if we're looking to solve the most critical problem today, that proposal probably isn't really helpful.)

I think having no parking on the west side of Warren St from MLK Blvd to Grove Hall from 2:00 PM to 7:00 PM on weekdays would probably be the most effective first step that could be taken to reserve street space for the route 28 bus, although it might not be the easiest politically.

(Also, it looks like the 28X proposal was suggesting having 28X run in new dedicated bus lanes of Blue Hill Ave with a limited number of boarding islands for the express stops, and then local buses serving the local stops along Blue Hill Ave would still have been getting stuck in traffic. I think I prefer designs where all the buses can use the bus lanes. And on Warren St, the 28X proposal put the bus lane next to the parking lane, and I gather that bus riders aren't thrilled about how that works out for the SL5 that was using that configuration at the time the 28X proposal was written.)
 
Just as a reminder, 28X was killed by idiot politicians who were upset it wasn't their idea.
 
The 28X wasn't just killed by "idiot politicians". It was announced by the state at a press conference without even talking to local politicians or community groups. Very obviously just a grab for TIGER funding for the BRT bandwagon. Median lanes with limited stops, so no benefits for the 28 and other current buses. No plans to deal with parking loss for the businesses on the corridor that do still need parking. It was going to take away the median, which was a big deal for seniors crossing a very wide road.

Is BRT on BHA a good idea? Yes. Was the 28X proposal the wrong way to do it? Yes.
 
Blue Hill Ave Bus Lanes

I'd like to see the short term focus in planning Blue Hill Ave bus lanes be on the Talbot Ave to Grove Hall segment, all of which is used by 28 (and 29), but most of that is also used by 22, and there is a bit that is used by 19 and 23 (and 45 serves about half of the Talbot Ave to Grove Hall segment).

One might hope that traffic would thin out south of Talbot Ave making bus lanes less important (although I haven't seen real data as to whether that's really the case), and I've also seen a rumor somewhere that suggests the main opponents of the 28X proposal may have been south of Talbot Ave.

I'd like to see a protected cycle track incorporated into the design.

Since 19 and 23 make left turns off Blue Hill Ave in both directions, center bus lanes might make sense; on the other hand, since there's finite space in that area, maybe it would be worthwhile to try to design the roads and signals so that queues of private automobiles get stored outside the segment of Blue Hill Ave used by 23 so that the 500' long segment of Blue Hill Ave served by 23 can potentially stay relatively free flowing. 500' is also short enough that 19 and 23 don't necessarily need to have stops along Blue Hill Ave.
 
Streetsblog writes about the untapped potential of Boston busses. The article summarizes LivableStreets Alliance's findings to improve the system.

Most important: bus-only lanes (duh). Can you guess where they should go?
boston-brt-routes.png


As the article states:
The LivableStreets Alliance has identified seven miles of congested streets where buses carry 92,000 passengers on weekdays — about a fifth of all MBTA bus ridership. Converting general traffic lanes into bus lanes on these seven miles of streets would have a huge impact.
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The short segment on Brighton Ave was recently announced to be happening, and Washington Street should be coming back soon. Mass Ave is crucial though--from anecdotal experience and conversations with other Cambervillains, we'd make many more Back Bay/Fenway visits if there was a quicker connection across the river.
 
34f34f said:
Mass Ave is crucial though--from anecdotal experience and conversations with other Cambervillains, we'd make many more Back Bay/Fenway visits if there was a quicker connection across the river.
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http://amateurplanner.blogspot.com/2018/03/mass-ave-reimagined-charles-river-to.html has some thoughts on what could be done in Cambridge, and it looks way better than the status quo.

Looking carefully at those diagrams has made me think we might be better off with the Harvard bound bike lane approaching Central Sq not moving from the outside to the center until Douglas St or perhaps even Norfolk St, and perhaps Brookline St would be a better place for the Boston bound bike lane to transition from the center to the outside so that bikes can just cross the Brookline St intersection and not the Brookline-Douglas intersection.

Some of the bus stop placement might benefit from adjustment. For example, a 1 <-> CT2 transfer doesn't seem to have stops along Mass Ave for the 1 in the most convenient possible location in that proposal. There should probably be a southbound bus stop just south of Vassar, especially if there's a dedicated bus lane for it to stop in anyway, and even if it does end up being ``too close'' to the 84 Mass Ave (MIT Student Center) stop. The northbound Vassar stop should probably go just north of Vassar but south of the Grand Junction to the right of the automobiles but to the left of the protected bike lane.

If there ends up being a southbound stop just south of Vassar, and if the closest stop to the north were just north of Lansdowne St, that would be a little over 1000' apart, which the T would likely regard as acceptable spacing.

And perhaps the Lafayette Sq bus stops would be more comfortable to wait at if they were moved to be just to the west of the fire station.

I'm also not sure if the MIT crosswalk at 77/84 Mass Ave really needs to stay signalized if the transit shelter space can be used to provide refuge islands so that, crossing from the 77 Mass Ave side to the 84 Mass Ave side, one first crosses northbound bike and private automobile traffic, then gets to an island, then crosses the bus lanes and southbound private automobile lane to get to a second island, and then crosses the southbound bike lane.

And then there's the Harvard Bridge across the Charles.

The proposal seems to think that at the south end it is somehow going to make sense to have two general purpose automobile lanes plus a bus lane.

I have no clue why one would want two general purpose automobile lanes there, because I don't think Mass Ave is wide enough for that as traffic proceeds into Boston, and I also wasn't under the impression we wanted a turn lane for access to Storrow Drive / Charlesgate.

I'm also not exactly a huge fan of widening the bridge, especially if there isn't a really strong argument that we can't make a BU Bridge style configuration work. And if we have money for outside sidewalks for some bridge, the first one I'd like to see it spent on is putting a shared use bike / pedestrian path on the upstream side of the Newburyport / Rockport commuter rail bridge across the Mystic.

I haven't seen anyone formally figure out the correct dimensions for Mass Ave in Boston and post a streetmix proposal; my impression is that we probably have space for protected bike lanes, one automobile lane in each direction, and one bus lane in each direction, plus the sidewalks, but probably no space for parking / loading zones in that case. If we have to deal with those limitations, do we put the bus lanes on the outside and deal with the joys of letting Lyft and their competitors block the bus lane? Or do we put the bus lane in the center, let through traffic use the bus lanes to pass the Lyft vehicles blocking the private automobile through traffic lane, and struggle to find space for the floating bus stops? Or is someone going to find solid evidence that Mass Ave in Boston is wider than I suspect?
 
I haven't been to the Boston segment of Mass Ave in a while, but Google Maps has Street View images from July and August of 2017.

On the segment between about Back Street and Huntington Ave, it seems to be the case that the bike lane is consistently outside of the automobile lanes (except for bus stops using the bike lanes), and it's sometimes flex post protected on one side (or both in the case of the bridge above Commonwealth Ave) where that can be done without losing the four travel lanes (plus one parking lane in some sections).

Between Back St and Commonwealth Ave, it looks to me like there probably isn't space for boarding islands for center bus lanes, so I suspect the best approach to bus lanes is to use the existing lanes next to the bike lanes / parking for the buses so we can use the existing bus stops, and work on trying to convince Lyft and their competitors to pick up and drop off passengers on adjacent streets instead of directly on Mass Ave. Getting rid of the parking might also allow widening the buffer between the bike lane and potential bus lane enough that the buffer could serve as a boarding island for the bus.

Between Back St and Boylston St it's probably desirable to get rid of all the parking on Mass Ave so we can add flex post buffering on the second side of the street in the segments that currently have parking.

Between Newbury St and Boylston St, reconfiguration to end up with center bus stops would probably be possible, but we might still want interim bus only outside lanes there. (And if Mass Ave ends up with center boarding islands for center bus lanes at the Hynes Convention Center Green Line Station and there turns out to be no intermediate stop between there and Commonwealth Ave, putting the bus lanes in the center as far north as Commonwealth Ave might make sense.)

[Edit: from Huntington to Melnea Cass Blvd], the street gets wider, and I think there's a pretty good chance that there's enough space that some approximation of Ari's proposal for Mass Ave in North Cambridge would work.

From Boylston to Huntington, I suspect center bus lanes could work, but might somewhat limit flexibility for where the intermediate bus stops can go if the road turns out to be too narrow in some places.

If we end up with the sidewalk outside of the bike lanes outside of the bus lanes outside of the automobile lanes on Mass Ave just south of the Harvard Bridge, and if it turns out that the bridge tends to have longer queues toward Boston than Cambridge, it might make sense for the southern 2/3 of the bridge to be repainted with three 10' lanes in the middle, with the eastern lane for northbound buses plus private automobiles, the middle lane for southbound private automobiles, and the west lane for southbound buses. On the north 1/3 of the bridge, the west lane could then carry southbound buses plus private automobiles, and the center and eastern lanes could carry northbound traffic.
 
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Summer St, Congress St, SL1, and SL3

https://commonwealthmagazine.org/opinion/buses-not-gondolas-are-the-answer/ has some discussion of the potential for bus lanes on Summer St from about Fort Point Channel to Reserved Channel.

I'm skeptical that the allocation of street space proposed there is optimal. A single freeway lane often carries 1800 vehicles per hour; that claims Summer St only gets 1200 vehicles in the peak hour. Maybe an intersection with a busy cross street might push the capacity of a lane below 1200 vehicles per hour, but I suspect one general purpose travel lane in each direction would turn out to be adequate, and we shouldn't have a second travel lane per direction unless someone can make a strong case that we actually need it. Additionally, it isn't clear to me how the bus stops are expected to work if the bus lane is directly adjacent to the bike lane.

I think we should explore the possibility of adapting http://amateurplanner.blogspot.com/2016/02/a-complete-mass-ave-in-cambridge.html to Summer St from Fort Point Channel to Reserved Channel; since that part of Summer St seems to be 8' wider than that part of Mass Ave, if we want to cater to cars, rather than having an unnecessary travel lane, we ought to consider converting one side from parallel parking to back in angle parking.

If we end up with bus lanes on the relevant parts of Congress St and Summer St, I think we ought to consider replacing the current SL1 routing with a loop going through the airport terminals, then the Sumner Tunnel, then North Station, Haymarket, Congress St stops at State Street and Franklin St, Summer St stops at South Station, Melcher St, A St, World Trade Center Ave / Convention Center, and D St, and then a Pumphouse Rd stop and back to the airport terminal loop.

I think that entire airport loop might be somewhere around 7-8 miles, in which case an average speed of 16 MPH (including time stopped) would enable it to be completed in a half hour (3 vehicles for 10 minute headways), and if it could be done at an average speed of 21-24 MPH, it could be done in 20 minutes. Particularly if the whole loop could be done in 20 minutes, the time cost of going around the long way might be made up for in the improved headways from serving all of these locations with a single route, especially at off peak times.

The routing in the vicinity of North Station may be tricky, and a compromise of initially omitting North Station might make sense; while that would be unfortunate for Fitchburg Line, Lowell Line, and Haverhill Line riders, skipping North Station might make the route work better for everyone else, and if that's the difference between success and failure, having a success that we could later argue would demonstrate the value of dedicated street space to North Station might be better than having a failure that never gains any traction.

If 111 is generally a better way for Chelsea residents to get to the Orange Line and Green Line than extending SL3 past South Station would be, we might want SL3 after the Ted Williams Tunnel to take the Congress St exit, reallocate the right lane of Congress St as a bus lane from the I-90 exit to Fort Point Channel, and have a stop at the far side of the E Service Rd intersection, keep the existing A St stop, and maybe keep the Sleeper St stop. We might want another stop on Congress St between Dorchester Ave and Atlantic Ave, and a contraflow bus lane on Atlantic Ave to get the bus to South Station, after which it would continue to the Melcher, A St, WTC Ave / Convention, D St, and Pumphouse stops and back to the Ted Williams Tunnel.

The Summer St bus lanes should also include boarding islands at Drydock Ave for the 7.
 
I made a quick mock-up of how Summer Street could be restructured to fit one general travel lane in each direction, parking, bus lanes, bike lanes, and wide sidwalks. Here is my result.

Edit: Loop routes like the one you are describing are not very effective especially if they run in a one way circle. The reasons for this are that people don't want to have to ride three quarters of a loop to get from one point to another when a non-one way loop route would get them there faster and it also makes scheduling in breaks for drivers difficult because the route never ends but people have to be kicked off the bus at some point so the driver can have a break. I don't know if this would work well here, but my guess is there are other better options than a loop even a two way loop that is essentially just a random circulator for airport/Chelsea to downtown access that replicates service that already exists and can be improved.
 
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citylover94 said:
Loop routes like the one you are describing are not very effective especially if they run in a one way circle. The reasons for this are that people don't want to have to ride three quarters of a loop to get from one point to another when a non-one way loop route would get them there faster
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People also hate waiting more than they hate spending time traveling, and I think South Station has similar distances to the airport either way around the loop. People are already happy enough waiting 10 minutes for SL1 today, so if 3/4 around the loop is only 15 minutes of bus riding time with better headways than today, I don't think people will be any worse off. Also, the current routing between the South Station bus tunnel and I-90 is horribly slow.

it also makes scheduling in breaks for drivers difficult because the route never ends but people have to be kicked off the bus at some point so the driver can have a break.
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If there is a need to swap out a bus, the driver can just change the sign to ``out of service'' as the bus goes through the Ted Williams Tunnel and then another, empty bus can start around the airport loop to pick up passengers. It might also be possible to have a bus dwell at a stop for an extra minute while it changes drivers.

I don't know if this would work well here, but my guess is there are other better options than a loop even a two way loop that is essentially just a random circulator for airport/Chelsea to downtown access that replicates service that already exists and can be improved.
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A two way loop would have worse headways and would mean that if you're in the middle of the route it would be extra effort to figure out which stop to wait at for the fastest trip to the airport.
 
Re: Summer St, Congress St, SL1, and SL3

Joel N. Weber II said:
Additionally, it isn't clear to me how the bus stops are expected to work if the bus lane is directly adjacent to the bike lane.
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Presumably they would work the way they work in the post you link to in the paragraph after this sentence. You have floating bus stops...

Video is from the UK, so everything is on the left, but here's an example.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlyBu-GDpE4

or from the Netherlands

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Pvhkx0153k
 
ErnieAdams said:
Even cheaper than the bus lane - and revenue positive at the outset at least - would be committing two bodies down there to writing tickets to all the deliveries and double parkers on that stretch. Each part of the city has its worst places for that kind of nonsense, so I won't say this is the worst stretch in Boston, but it's the worst in Allston by far.
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Another smart idea is to take out St Paul Street and Babcock Street. That stretch of road only needs 3 stations (BU West, Pleasant Street, Packard's Corner) instead of 5.
 
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