HelloBostonHi
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Good news, the Silver Line buses have been successfully using "The Ramp" without much fanfare this week:
Good news, the Silver Line buses have been successfully using "The Ramp" without much fanfare this week:
Seems to me an easy way to make the merge easier for the Silver Line buses is to meter the HOV lane.
I know Bostonians don't understand metered ramps, but they work effectively in other parts of the country.
I was reminded how poorly we zipper merge, when driving in Montreal a few weeks ago. Even with bad construction related delays, the drivers were all courteously merging in a zipper fashion.It seems as if a large number of people in this area don't understand the concept of merging like a zipper, so a metered on ramp would not fly. Then again, the same could be said for places like New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, etc.
Eversource was doing work under the wires at the corner of Aberdeen and Mt. Auburn today. With the closure of the Harvard Bus Tunnel, trackless trolleys from North Cambridge use Huron and Aberdeen to get to Mt. Auburn and onward to Watertown (and maybe Bennett Street too, I'm not sure-- I've only seen them take the right on Mt. Auburn). The utility work made the route impassable by trackless trolley.
Just now at FMCB: 3-8 minute average time savings during the SL ramp test, 17 minutes max, compared to prior week. Test was a success. Recommending implementation at rush hour.
Will require messing with a retaining wall and striping changes at the State Police barracks.
Also a warning sign for the bus that would flash when a different vehicle is coming up.
Total schedule is 3 months, beginning today.
They also brought up plans to reduce the raise height of the Chelsea St bridge that can potentially save 5+ minutes on every raise/lower, reducing disruption to SL3. They've already got funding so that's a near term improvement. Also talk about working with coast guard on making scheduled lifts but that's a legislative issue so it's a long term goal. Also long term goal of getting TSP on the airport traffic lights that SL3 has to navigate.
Also unrelated to the FMCB meeting but I couldn't help but notice that the D St/SLW crossing is currently using some temporary traffic lights on the side of the road and the permanent overhead ones got taken down this weekend, saw them working on it... Not sure if that's just routine maintenance or some possible improvements there.
I hadn't even realized that they had to always raise it to its full height, and I can see the damn thing from my desk. That's truly mind-boggling.I'm gobsmacked that they don't already do that. The whole point of building a lift bridge there in the first place was the time savings that supposedly would come from variable-height raisings. This isn't like a firmware upgrade they have to add or something to unlock a feature; the capability has been bloody there from Day 1 of it replacing the old/slow single-leaf bascule. And there's no Coast Guard preemption I know of requiring a maximum raising here or on any other recent bascule-to-lift conversion like Fore River Bridge, the new Sarah Long Bridge in Portsmouth, and a few Amtrak bridges in Connecticut. Sarah Long and Thames River-Amtrak both variable-raising their way along while parked next to full-blown Navy Bases where the maritime restrictions are otherwise at their most severe.