“A bit of a hike” is what absolutely kills transit mode share, especially when the “hike” is one of the most unpleasant stretches of river in the country.
I really don't know what people are jumping on here. It's really obviously, demonstrably true that the further people are from a train station, the less likely they are to use it. Numbers will dwindle as distance grows, but a 1/2 mile walk is pretty common (if long) cutoff for what's considered "walkable." It's close, but I can't find a scenario where the stadium is less than a 1/2 mile walk from an orange line station. And people are less willing to do that walk if it is an unpleasant walk. I wouldn't agree that the river itself is unpleasant there, but crossing it on foot is pretty dismal. Having thousands of people trying to walk the narrow sidewalks of the Alford street bridge sounds unpleasant, especially alongside game-day traffic. The planned pedestrian bridge to Assembly would be better, but first of all, it doesn't exist yet. Second, IIRC the plans for it looked surprisingly narrow. Like, already too narrow to comfortably carry both bikes and pedestrians, and that's before adding thousands of people just getting out of a soccer game at the same time. (plus that's still a long walk). And I also agree that attitude of "It's just a bit of a hike..." is a disastrous attitude for public transit. A "hike" is a literal obstacle here, and that attitude just feels like telling people to "suck it up." That is a cheap but totally ineffective way to get people to take public transit. People with any means will drive instead. And the people who have to or choose to not drive are left with a long, crummy walk alongside all the car traffic just getting out of the game. That's a bad way to treat public transit riders.
This is an urban, transit-oriented stadium proposal.
Would a soccer stadium there in Everett be "transit oriented"? I think part of the problem with this conversation here is that is treated like a binary question, but my answer is no-ish? Partially, but not really? It's kinda far from rapid transit. The last plans I saw for a Rev's stadium said it would be a 20-25 thousand seat stadium. MBTA busses mostly hold around 50 people, so sending a few more busses or extending the silver line doesn't really cut it.
The obvious comparison is you could go look at the
transit plan for the White Stadium renovation. That's similarly far from orange line stations, has similar nearby bus connections, and holds only 11,000 people. There, transit access wasn't considered nearly adequate, and so they came up with pretty extensive game-day plans. Their plans involve keeping cars away entirely, all parking is done at satellite lots, and a fleet of shuttle busses would move people to/from parking, Orange Line, and Commuter trains. It seems workable because they're keeping cars away, and the shuttles would largely go down (relatively) low traffic streets. A possible Rev's stadium, by contrast, would need to handle twice as many people. You would need a lot more shuttle busses than the White Stadium plan, but that stretch to Sullivan is always really packed in my experience, even without a game going on. That hurts any shuttle plan. Also, I would support not allowing any parking whatsoever at the proposed Rev's stadium, but I think that's unlikely. So even if a small fraction of fans drive and park at the Rev's stadium, that a couple thousand more cars getting on that road at the same time, which is a traffic jam, and which also hurts any bus/shuttle plans. And if people are going be stuck in traffic even when they chose to take public transportation, then lots of people will opt to drive instead.... So generally, no, this site in Everett is not inherently set up for public transportation for stadium sized crowds. I don't know what transit mode share you would need to consider this stadium "transit oriented," but maybe you could hit whatever threshold you pick with massive game-day effort. What you would actually need to do to pull it off isn't obvious to me, nor are the chances of success.
