Realigning the Orange Line

[nick]

How technically, operationally and politically feasible would it be to realign the Orange Line between its Charles River portal to Assembly? I'm imagining cut and cover subway in the middle of Rutherford Avenue.

There would be few, if any, real impacts to property in this scenario. Rutherford Avenue is slated to be reconstructed at some point anyway. No buildings would need to be torn down. The alignment would go under the two parking lots just north of the existing subway portal, then follow Rutherford Avenue, then under the two parking lots between Maffa Way and Main Street, and then duck under the CR tracks to meet back up with the existing alignment before Assembly. Build a new station at Austin Street and call it "Charlestown" instead of Community College. Build a new Sullivan Square Station just north of the rotary under the Maffa Way/Main Street parking lots to retain future CR connectivity.

It seems like this could have a lot of benefits. In terms of subway construction, I assume this would be lower cost since it's all under surface lots and a single roadway. Charlestown would be much better served. The community college has the exact same access to the OL, just on the other side of campus. The Rutherford Avenue corridor would become much more attractive to development. This also makes burying 93 much more feasible in the (far) future, and frees up space along the CR tracks to create a Sullivan CR station with connections to the OL and future urban ring connections.

North Point access to the OL would be slightly worse, but they are getting a new Lechmere station, so it's a wash. With a headhouse near Broadway the walk for East Somerville residents would be approximately the same.

 

[Shepard]

The Austin street station would be only one block closer in to Charlestown though. I realize that's a bad block for pedestrians. Wouldn't a better much cheaper solution be some sort of covered walkway over the bridge from Austin st to the existing station?

 

[Arlington]

The Austin street station would be only one block closer in to Charlestown though. I realize that's a bad block for pedestrians. Wouldn't a better much cheaper solution be some sort of covered walkway over the bridge from Austin st to the existing station?

^ Something like this. Cheaper to bury 4 lanes of 99 for an additional 2 blocks (one block on either side of Austin St). Better-connect Union St and School St to the station.

But then, calming 99 and bringing TOD to the empty parking lots bounded by Austin, 99, & 93 would probably give the greatest bang-for-buck of all. My gut is that Sullivan, too, will get a lot better when the station is no longer hidden behind acres of asphalt.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

It would make no sense. The Orange Line already takes the lowest-profile route between the portal and Sullivan: tucked underneath the I-93 decks. Why would anyone want to bury it when it's already de facto buried to within eyesight of Assembly? To spend a couple billion dollars to accomplish the same thing we've already had since 1975?


Community College station entrance is 1000 ft. from the old Thompson Square entrance on the El. The problem with Thompson vs. CC right now is cosmetic. The T station is accessible with full grade separation by the ped overpass, but the width of the road makes it look like it requires crossing the edge of the universe. Follow-through on compacting the roadway removes that psychological barrier. May even make taking the crosswalks faster than using the footbridge, but either/or crossing remains available.

The other fix is doing a private redevelopment of the overly car-centric 1970's-anachronism Bunker Hill Shopping Center so the Rutherford-Main block of Austin isn't spanned by that huge block-long windswept parking lot. For example:

• The plaza's small tenant spaces are too oddly-configured. They have entrances facing both Main St. and the parking lot, but the parking lot is where the primary entrances are and the Main side is the ugly, underutilized rear that's mostly windowless brick. Redo those as strictly Main-facing storefronts, and add 2 floors of height onto that side for offices.
• Build a second such street-facing plaza the whole length of the Austin block so the storefront density forms a corner "L" shape filling in the streetfront gap to Rutherford.
• Punch through to the now-hidden parking lot with couple more in the way of access walkways like this. Maybe one at the corner of Main/Austin, and one on Austin.
• Rebuild the Whole Foods--which needs ample parking because the hilly terrain of the neighborhood makes carrying groceries a problem--like the Central Square Swaw's or Western Ave. Whole Foods, as air rights over a parking level. That compensates for the lost parking capacity by stuffing it under/attached-to the footprint of the supermarket, and allows the now-taller supermarket to get tucked in back away from the street. The height of the building still keeps it visible, but it no longer needs to waste excessive streetfront space.

^This^ gets that psychological re-knitting the neighborhood at cost of couple dozen $M in MassDOT funding for that specific intersection's piece in the Rutherford rebuild pie...and then just the BRA maneuvering to spur the wholly private redev of the plaza and upgraded Whole Foods. It's 95% or more the effect you seek without dumping a billion-plus dollars into re-burying the Orange Line all of 400 ft. closer to where it's already de facto buried. Orange isn't the problem; Orange never moved away from Thompson Sq. The urban renewal anachronisms spanning Thompson and CC are the isolating agents. They'd be isolated EXACTLY the same with a Rutherford subway if that plaza stayed as-is. Fix the plaza with wholly private redev and there is no need--not even a Transit OCD need--for touching Orange.





As for Sullivan, that likewise isn't at all about Orange. As we've discussed in the casino thread, it's a major breakdown in communication between politician planners that's preventing any firm strategy for the square to get enacted. The Orange bunker's location isn't a problem; it's across the street from the old El station. The station's setup is also very efficient for lobby flow and bus transfers (except for the need to attach a back egress from the lobby to Perkins St.). It also must stay where it is to integrate grade separated Urban Ring Phase II, which will take the seldom-used pair of freight tracks on the Perkins side of the ROW and be easy as hell to graft onto the pre-existing lobby. The square's transportation master plan gets royally screwed up if you move the bunker.

The problem here is simply political will, and disagreement on how the Sullivan end of rebooted Rutherford is going to be configured. Some sort of renovation of the Orange station's front porch for aesthetics and minor-touch accessibility and efficiency improvements is part of the grand scheme. But it can't move as long as the stakeholders are all at an impasse with seemingly little motivation to resolve their differences.

Again...not an Orange problem in the slightest. Sullivan is about as simple and effective as it gets strictly as a transit facility. It just needs the neighborhood to get on with re-embracing it. That's a problem needing political mediation, not an army of engineers. Orange is irrelevant to the solve Sullivan needs.



The only place that lost some transit in 1975 and never gained it back is City Square. A defensible decision back then because CS was a depopulated hellscape of elevated highways and a dingy, about-to-close Navy Yard that everyone assumed would just sit as abandoned ruins for decades to come. City Square still doesn't have as many people living around it as it did pre- urban renewal, but taming Rutherford and building the much more ped-friendly new N. Washington St. Bridge puts it equidistant to North Station and CC on a vastly more pleasant walk than today. The bus coverage to Sullivan and NS/Haymarket with the 92 and 93 are very good. They always have been, because the Charlestown El had such crappy and over-wide station spacing that the ex- Green Line branches out of North Station that covered the 92/93 had to do heavy local-stop load bearing throughout the neighborhood...and ditto when those branches were bustituted. Anything they do to Rutherford to ease the backups and optimize traffic flow enhances the bus performance and covers the need for what City Square is today.

 

[George_Apley]

Yeah, I don't see the benefit of shifting the Orange Line a few hundred feet to the east.