North Washington St Bridge

CSTH said:
Why would they plan on replacing those piers? They look pretty good to me, and I'd expect that just putting a new roadway on the existing piers would be a lot easier than planting new ones in the bottom of the harbor...
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That bridge is old, with over a century of salt water working on the piers from below and truck traffic vibrations working on them from above. I haven't seen any engineering reports so I'm not claiming to know. But if I went looking for such reports, I wouldn't expect anything before reading them, one way or the other. Maybe they're re-usable at a reasonable price compared to replacement, maybe not.
 
West said:
That bridge is old, with over a century of salt water working on the piers from below and truck traffic vibrations working on them from above. I haven't seen any engineering reports so I'm not claiming to know. But if I went looking for such reports, I wouldn't expect anything before reading them, one way or the other. Maybe they're re-usable at a reasonable price compared to replacement, maybe not.
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Also, I doubt if the original piers meet current seismic design requirements.
 
It looks like a bus lane is being included now:

LEm8R4R.png


(from the Rutherford Avenue presentation)
 
tysmith95 said:
Not sure what their plan is but they should add BRT lanes out through Everett and Chelsea. Maybe they could connect it to the Silver Line Extension being built from the seaport to Chelsea. Chesla and Everett both need improved transit options.
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Why? Sullivan has the Orange Line and is one of the biggest bus terminals on the system. Fighting traffic inbound to North Station as a +1 serves no purpose other than to maim headways on the circuit with tons of surplus-to-requirement schedule padding. This is why none of the official Urban Ring proposals make any attempt to duplicate Orange inbound from Sullivan. The singular pursuit of a one-seat ride ends up creating worse transit than just stopping at a major neighborhood transfer node.


Now...I could see bus lanes on the bridge being a substantial benefit to the 92, 93, and 111 that all have to push through traffic to City Square before bailing out into inner Charlestown or onto the Tobin. It's worth the pursuit of bridge bus lanes and the associated signal priority at the Causeway St. and Chelsea St. intersections for giving those load-bearing neighborhood routes a boost. But there's zero buses on Rutherford Ave. for a very good reason: the route duplication with adjacent Orange is pointless, Sullivan is the big bus terminal, and no elongated schedule is ever going to be a net-gain in transit utility because of what it would do to space out frequencies. If the true benefits looked as obvious as they do on a 2D map, it would've been done long ago. It hasn't been done because the frequency penalty is a net loss compared to just terminating outright at a mega- bus terminal w/ direct rapid transit.
 
I would do the bus lane on th Wash St bridge to purely better serve Charlestown / Navy Yatd / Constitution pier, and, Wynn Casino & HOVs (or an HOT toll lane).

For Charlestown I'd like to see a bus that just did Sullivan-Bunker Hill-Rehab-Constitution-North Station all day long at short headways[EDIT: I guess the slope of the hill prevents combining the 92&93 in this way :-(]
, and then shared its lane with tour/trolley/Duck/hotel/Casino/HOV2 stuff.
Rutherford Ave could get an all hours HOV lane to make Uber/taxi a much better short trip option
 
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Scipio said:
It looks like a bus lane is being included now:

LEm8R4R.png


(from the Rutherford Avenue presentation)
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I'm quoting the picture because I want everyone to notice that North is "down" in the picture, meaning that the N Wash bridge is on the left and Sullivan Sq is on the right in the picture above, with Ramp L-C being the loop that climbs up to 93's inbound deck

So the bus lane would work really well at allowing the 111 bus from the Tobin to beat traffic inbound, carrying it from its offramp (which is offscreen to the right) and in to Haymarket.

The presentation doesn't say so, but it looks like the bus lane will run only and exactly where it is useful for the 111 inbound (and can be used by the 92 &93 too, when they enter/exit via Chelsea St)
 
I'd imagine this must be the most uncontroversial BRT lane you could add in the city since the center lanes on the existing bridge have been closed for so long no one is expecting them back.
 
Ron Newman said:
Right now there's an on-ramp to the southbound Zakim in the place you mention, but no off-ramp from the northbound Zakim to Charlestown.
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The Northbound off-ramp to Charlestown is unusual in that it exits on the left hand side of the road (next to the fastest lane) of I-93.
 
No, I believe that exit only goes to the Tobin Bridge, not to Charlestown.

The exit from NB 93 to Charlestown is near Sullivan Square.
 
The bus lane is going to be useless without a bus lane on the Tobin ramp nor Tobin Bridge. The congestion for the 111, 426, and 428 is the traffic light at the end of the Rutherford Ave ramp and the traffic backed up onto the Tobin from the loop ramps and/or Rutherford Ave. There's really no need for a ramp on Rutherford Ave, however a queue jump lane at the Causeway St intersection would be helpful at least.
 
BostonUrbEx said:
The bus lane is going to be useless without a bus lane on the Tobin ramp nor Tobin Bridge. The congestion for the 111, 426, and 428 is the traffic light at the end of the Rutherford Ave ramp and the traffic backed up onto the Tobin from the loop ramps and/or Rutherford Ave. There's really no need for a ramp on Rutherford Ave, however a queue jump lane at the Causeway St intersection would be helpful at least.
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Thanks for pointing out that the 426 (Lynn) and the 428 (Saugus/Wakefield) also use the same stretch of Rutherford, not just the 111 from Everett.

Why cannot bus useful bus improvements happen 1 block at at time? It looks to me like there'd be between 4/10 and 1/2 mile of bus lanes from Charlestown to Lovejoy, that'd have a good psychological use (speeding the last half mile of a morning commute) and decent operational use (for the 92/93, where it is a greater % of their route being bus-lane-ified)

Yes, it'd be awesome if the Tobin got an HOV Lane, and its ramps to allow HOVs to queue jump, but I think any pushing out of buslanes should be celebrated, no matter how small.
 
My fear is it will be so useless that it will just become another traffic lane. Or there will be zero enforcement and it will be a defacto car lane to begin with.
 
^ I really like this, but the trees are stupid. They won't survive one winter when their roots freeze exposed like that.
 
cant wait!
inbound BRT is a huge plus!
actually being able to pass slow pedestrians walking 3 across will be great too. and of course an actual space for the bicyclists.

wish they were getting rid of the channelization in Keaney Sq from Commercial onto the bridge outbound.
 
JeffDowntown said:
^ I really like this, but the trees are stupid. They won't survive one winter when their roots freeze exposed like that.
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Seriously, they should skip right to something tree-like, like a tree sculpture, or a Porter Sq type wind sculpture, or something interesting friendly (which a row of dead trees and later, planters full of weeds, will not be)
 
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