Reasonable Transit Pitches

[Commuting Boston Student]

But there are no signals at Dudley Station. There are a few near the station, but those are controlled by the city. Are you suggesting it "makes a lot of sense" for the MBTA to sneak into the city's traffic operations center and take over the signal controls?

Yes, I'm literally suggesting that a crack team of the MBTA's finest led by GM Bev Scott herself stage a raid on MassDOT HQ and take the big board that controls all the signals hostage in the name of truth and justice and faster buses.

That's definitely how signal preemption works, yes sir.

Obviously he's not suggesting that the T "sneak in," but rather that the City and the T coordinate to have a specialized dispatcher for those signals whose goal is to prioritize MBTA busses in the traffic around Dudley Station. It makes sense to me. I guess I might start with an automated approach like they supposedly have on Washington Street for the Silver Line (they do have that, right?), but I could see how the traffic there is too complicated for that.

They don't, there's no signal preemption available for Silver Line buses.

This would be the pilot program to roll out preemption.

 

[davem]

Just a quick point on making the existing green line heavy rail: right at this moment you could run a blue line train through the entire network, and aside from the platforms being too low (and possibly a few light fixtures) they would have no problems clearance-wise.

The only thing they can't do is the park street loop, which with heavy rail would be unnecessary. The east boston tunnel was built to the same clearances as the tremont subway, hence why the BL cars are such weird little things.

Kenmore and I believe Hynes were both built with high level platforms, with the pit then filled in. That's why the B goes slightly up then back down again pulling into Kenmore: that middle track is already high-level.

The C would have looped at Kenmore, the B between Packard's Corner and Chestnut Hill Ave abandoned, and the A extended out to Riverside as heavy rail via the B&A.

This plan could still happen today, in three reasonable(ish) steps:

1) Build a proper flying junction between Copley and Arlington where the old incline was for the E to merge in.

2) Extend the Huntington Ave subway to Brookline Village to tie in with the D out to Riverside

3) Extend the Comm Ave subway... somewhere. Either through Union Square to Brighton Landing then the B&A, or under Beacon Park through Lower Allston to Harvard , using the remaining bit of the Brattle Square tunnel, and completing Harvard's dream for a cross-campus subway.

All this could be done with service continuing as is. The only closure that would be required would be to raise the platforms / lower the trackbed in existing stations. 4 car blue line style trains would have no problem running and platforming at all stations, except possibly Boylston.

You would then have 2 heavy rail lines:

(A) Allston/Harvard - West Medford
(B) Riverside - Somerville

The D from Kenmore to Brookline Village could probably be tied in to the E down South Huntington, allowing trolley service to continue to Longwood and Heath Street (or possible reactivation to the Arborway).

The B could also be truncated at Packards corner in a Kenmore-style loop, especially if the Harvard subway was the chosen path.

You would then have a total of 4 possible trolley lines:

(B) Boston College - Packard's Corner
(C) Cleveland Circle - Kenmore Square
(D) Arborway - Kenmore Square
(F) Dudley Square - Park Street
^That one would use the Park Street loop and the outside tracks between Boylston and Park. The only issue with this plan is that the trolleys would have to cross at grade in front of heavy rail trains to turn around.

The Riverbank subway was proposed before the Boylston subway was built. The commissioners reports from the Boston Transit Commission back in the late 1890s crunched the pros and cons and decided it was a stupid idea to build way back then, just as it is now. Half of its potential service area is the river, it doesn't hit any major attractions, and it goes through a residential area without much room for growth. Exact same conditions over 100 years later. All the reports are on google books; its a fascinating read.

Converting the core green line to heavy rail is the only improvement that is needed, not the construction of an entire new subway. It would exponentially increase capacity and speed.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Just a quick point on making the existing green line heavy rail: right at this moment you could run a blue line train through the entire network, and aside from the platforms being too low (and possibly a few light fixtures) they would have no problems clearance-wise.

The only thing they can't do is the park street loop, which with heavy rail would be unnecessary. The east boston tunnel was built to the same clearances as the tremont subway, hence why the BL cars are such weird little things.

Kenmore and I believe Hynes were both built with high level platforms, with the pit then filled in. That's why the B goes slightly up then back down again pulling into Kenmore: that middle track is already high-level.

The C would have looped at Kenmore, the B between Packard's Corner and Chestnut Hill Ave abandoned, and the A extended out to Riverside as heavy rail via the B&A.

This plan could still happen today, in three reasonable(ish) steps:

1) Build a proper flying junction between Copley and Arlington where the old incline was for the E to merge in.

2) Extend the Huntington Ave subway to Brookline Village to tie in with the D out to Riverside

3) Extend the Comm Ave subway... somewhere. Either through Union Square to Brighton Landing then the B&A, or under Beacon Park through Lower Allston to Harvard , using the remaining bit of the Brattle Square tunnel, and completing Harvard's dream for a cross-campus subway.

All this could be done with service continuing as is. The only closure that would be required would be to raise the platforms / lower the trackbed in existing stations. 4 car blue line style trains would have no problem running and platforming at all stations, except possibly Boylston.

You would then have 2 heavy rail lines:

(A) Allston/Harvard - West Medford
(B) Riverside - Somerville

The D from Kenmore to Brookline Village could probably be tied in to the E down South Huntington, allowing trolley service to continue to Longwood and Heath Street (or possible reactivation to the Arborway).

The B could also be truncated at Packards corner in a Kenmore-style loop, especially if the Harvard subway was the chosen path.

You would then have a total of 4 possible trolley lines:

(B) Boston College - Packard's Corner
(C) Cleveland Circle - Kenmore Square
(D) Arborway - Kenmore Square
(F) Dudley Square - Park Street
^That one would use the Park Street loop and the outside tracks between Boylston and Park. The only issue with this plan is that the trolleys would have to cross at grade in front of heavy rail trains to turn around.

The Riverbank subway was proposed before the Boylston subway was built. The commissioners reports from the Boston Transit Commission back in the late 1890s crunched the pros and cons and decided it was a stupid idea to build way back then, just as it is now. Half of its potential service area is the river, it doesn't hit any major attractions, and it goes through a residential area without much room for growth. Exact same conditions over 100 years later. All the reports are on google books; its a fascinating read.

Converting the core green line to heavy rail is the only improvement that is needed, not the construction of an entire new subway. It would exponentially increase capacity and speed.

Lechmere is the ruling curve on the Green Line, and that of course is going away very soon. Boylston curve isn't as tight as Bowdoin, but it obviously would need to be loosened up a few degrees or it would be a godawful speed kink for Blue Line cars.

Kenmore's the only one pre-designed for heavy rail conversion. Copley and Hynes were 1914 construction when the Riverbank subway was still a-go as the preferred heavy rail routing. Kenmore was a mini-extension in 1932 to grade-separate the trolleys through the Kenmore traffic lights. Only the B trackbed had the deep pit for changing the platforms to high. The C was expected to stay trolley and loop in the station like the ex-Maverick streetcar lines after the East Boston tunnel went heavy rail. Prudential and Symphony were built at trolley depth in 1942 because they were pinching pennies, and of course the original flying junction design for Copley got cut to at-grade because of funding woes.

Note the original 1945 BTC expansion plan had a decidedly rapid-transitish looking setup for the would-be Allston/Newton branch along the pre-Pike Worcester Line: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ottomatic77/3304445209/sizes/o/in/photostream/. Feeding through the Tremont Tunnel, right turn on the B&A ROW, stop at Back Bay/Trinity Place, then speed out to Riverside. Figure if City Hall Plaza had still been built as planned and eventually reconfigured the subway out there that they might've taken that opportunity to do thru outer and inner tracks (hell, it would've been an excuse for the urban renewal geniuses to blow up a whole extra block of Tremont) and run trolleys and heavy rail through the same tunnel GC-Boylston on fully grade-separated track.


Personally, I think the Riverbank is still the way to go if we really want heavy rail out there. The stop spacing in the Central Subway still isn't conducive to a fast trip and there's really no way to make Boylston curve flow well enough to not crimp capacity. If we want the D as heavy rail or want to bury the B out to the Urban Ring or out in Brighton...the connectivity will be a lot better through faster new infrastructure. Do Blue-Kenmore, then a Brighton subway with a now second-class B school bus still on the surface from the Central Subway feeding BC up the hill or using its freed-up capacity to branch out at Harvard Ave. on a "surface 66" streetcar ring. There's a good reason why BERy's and the MTA's planners never fully embraced the heavy railing idea for the westbound Central Subway...it's operationally mediocre.


BTW...Copley Jct. replacement shouldn't go anywhere past Park or require ripping up anything in the Back Bay. There's WAY WAY more capacity to tap by feeding it out of the 4-track portion downtown into the abandoned Tremont subway, then taking a right turn up Marginal Rd. where the tunnel can be carved sideways into the 1965-cleared Pike retaining wall. Then a Back Bay stop. Then rejoin the Huntington tunnel at the point where the curve straightens out before Prudential. That would not only be a HUGE ridership boost with BB, but orders of magnitude higher capacity and much faster without that tight Prudential curve. You could even keep Copley Jct. as a seldom-used alt routing where service patterns would call for it.

 

[davem]

Copley and Hynes were 1914 construction when the Riverbank subway was still a-go as the preferred heavy rail routing.

I could swear the BTC was debating the Riverbank before the Boylston subway was built, not after Copley and Hynes were already there. I could be mistaken, however, its been at least 4 years since I read the reports. Or perhaps the idea was dismissed and then brought back up?

BTW...Copley Jct. replacement shouldn't go anywhere past Park or require ripping up anything in the Back Bay. There's WAY WAY more capacity to tap by feeding it out of the 4-track portion downtown into the abandoned Tremont subway, then taking a right turn up Marginal Rd. where the tunnel can be carved sideways into the 1965-cleared Pike retaining wall. Then a Back Bay stop. Then rejoin the Huntington tunnel at the point where the curve straightens out before Prudential. That would not only be a HUGE ridership boost with BB, but orders of magnitude higher capacity and much faster without that tight Prudential curve. You could even keep Copley Jct. as a seldom-used alt routing where service patterns would call for it.

I never had considered Marginal Road for a subway route, but its an excellent idea. I had never liked using the Tremont tunnel for Huntington service because I was locked into the idea of the Stuart Street subway, which would require demolishing the junction and bellmouth, precluding a line to Dudley. Since its such a wide street cut-and cover would be relatively easy too. Great, now I have to redo my fantasy lines in google earth!

I still hate the Riverbank Subway though...

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

The Riverbank Subway would be Green Line under Beacon Street, correct?

 

[Kahta]

I thought that this was supposed to be reasonable transit pitches....

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

I could swear the BTC was debating the Riverbank before the Boylston subway was built, not after Copley and Hynes were already there. I could be mistaken, however, its been at least 4 years since I read the reports. Or perhaps the idea was dismissed and then brought back up?

The Riverbank plans predated the Boylston subway, but Boylston was quickly added to the mix. Then the rest of the subway builds kept knocking it back a peg on the priority list. But Riverbank lasted as the great white vaporware hope until almost 1920 when WWI finally got them throwing in the towel. It was like the Blue Line to Lynn of its day.

I never had considered Marginal Road for a subway route, but its an excellent idea. I had never liked using the Tremont tunnel for Huntington service because I was locked into the idea of the Stuart Street subway, which would require demolishing the junction and bellmouth, precluding a line to Dudley. Since its such a wide street cut-and cover would be relatively easy too. Great, now I have to redo my fantasy lines in google earth!

Even better, though...it's cut-and-cover without undocumented utilities. Have a look on Historic Aerials: http://www.historicaerials.com/aeri...3479953892935&lon=-71.0659736601561&year=1955. The Pleasant St. portal is visible at the triangle where Tremont and Oak converge. Then switch from the 1955 view to the 1969 view and watch the bomb that levels the neighborhood clean. And see Marginal appear where there used to be no road abutting the RR canyon. That's all-modern, neat and orderly street grid and utility infrastructure the entire distance from the covered-over portal to the Pike. Undocumented underground spaghetti utilities and god-knows-what buried historical artifacts are what drives inner-city tunneling costs to Big Dig levels. This is one of the few places in the entire city that is ready-serve for subway construction. And the Pike cut is deep enough that the subway can essentially be above the surface like it is near Hynes adjacent to the Pike.

Could probably even get cleanly into Back Bay from the side of the Pike. The on-ramp meets the Pike right about where Trinity Place meets Stuart, so if it ducked under there you could have station platforms offset a bit from the rest of the station, then get on-alignment to Stuart for the Dartmouth-Huntington block and rejoin the Huntington tunnel where it merges in somewhere between Exeter and Ring Rd. Wouldn't be overly difficult despite the tight confines here because, again...well-documented 1960's infrastructure underneath.

 

[omaja]

The Riverbank Subway would be Green Line under Beacon Street, correct?

No - it was proposed along the Esplanade where Storrow is today.

 

[omaja]

I still hate the Riverbank Subway though...

But it looks so good.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

No - it was proposed along the Esplanade where Storrow is today.

Well... why not Beacon Street? You 'lose' Esplanade Station and Charles/MGH, but pick up Park Street and the Public Garden/Boston Common Garage, Beacon Street Subway lets you have Green Line Heavy Rail without Blue Eats Green or disrupting existing Light Rail lines (PAINT IT SILVER!), Red-Blue can still happen as a separate project and you can keep your options open for Blue past Charles/MGH.

Going down Beacon Street also means the effective coverage of each new stop is double what it would've been on the Riverbank (where half your coverage area / 'walkable' radius ends up at the bottom of the Charles River), which is a huge plus.

 

[belmont square]

What's more "reasonable"? Undercover MBTA agents manipulating the city's signal controls in the name of pre-emption, or an agency buried in debt building a two mile subway tunnel under our wealthiest in-town neighborhoods for residents who aren't asking for it?

I guess people can't help themselves in this thread...

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

What's more "reasonable"? Undercover MBTA agents manipulating the city's signal controls in the name of pre-emption, or an agency buried in debt building a two mile subway tunnel under our wealthiest in-town neighborhoods for residents who aren't asking for it?

I guess people can't help themselves in this thread...

You, uh...

You don't "get" sarcasm, do you?

I was being facetious when I suggested that MBTA ninjas were going to raid MassDOT's HQ. See, when I said that was definitely how signal pre-emption worked, what I actually meant was 'that's not how it works at all,' and the idea that the MBTA would be able to get preemption anywhere without the cooperation of MassDOT is ridiculous.

Now you've gone and made me explain the joke.

 

[Matthew]

The idea of undercover MBTA agents is amusing.

Agent Type 007!

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

As you may know, New Haven went ahead and built themselves a second train station, i.e., New Haven State Street, about a half-mile up the NEC from their Union Station. Taking the train between the two is free.

Well, I decided that New Haven could maybe stand to build a few more stations and get a little Shuttle Line going. It shouldn't impact the Acelas/Regionals/Vermonter any, and it might cause the New Haven - Springfield Commuter Rail or the Shoreline East or the Metro-North to be slowed down some, but I think the benefits to cross-city movement (and the ability to ride the train under the barrier to Fair Haven that is I-91) makes the extra infills more than worth it.

Also, how can you say no to a station called "The Hill in New Haven?"

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

and it might cause the New Haven - Springfield Commuter Rail or the Shoreline East or the Metro-North to be slowed down some

And this is the killshot to that ever happening. Especially Metro North. They're the only RR on the entire NEC that dispatches its own track, and they don't play nice with SLE or Amtrak on schedule slots. State St. exists in part because MNRR was so pissy about granting SLE slots into Union. It lets them scoot in and out of the main station faster so they don't bogart layover minutes at the platform from New Haven Line trains. MNRR has conversely resisted extending more of its runs to State until somebody shows them the beef on where the ridership will be.

That's politics. The MTA and CTDOT have a "functionally dysfunctional" relationship with each other over Metro North. Always have, and they've made it work for them. But they've always been weird with each other like that. State St. is a good investment for SLE and NHHS services for load-spreading and will spare Union a capacity crunch when those services are cranking at max ridership. That'll make a difference because bi-directional terminating traffic on platforms set up for thru service means they need to giddayup and load punctually at Union without excessive platform dwell time to keep the works flowing smoothly. State provides a nice relief valve from the east for that and, as you said, doesn't screw with Amtrak. But despite whatever economic rationalizations were behind its opening...fact is State would not have been built so many years in advance of the anticipated traffic increases were it not for a healthy dose of Metro North vs. CTDOT passive aggression.


There doesn't need to be more stations there. I mean...go Street View through some of those neighborhoods you placemarked. Who's going to crawl out of the water or the adjacent industrial lots to board there? New Haven DOES very badly need a downtown circulator, but that's bus or streetcar along a street grid. The circulation isn't where the NEC, Springfield Line, and freight tracks all mash together.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

And this is the killshot to that ever happening. Especially Metro North. They're the only RR on the entire NEC that dispatches its own track, and they don't play nice with SLE or Amtrak on schedule slots. State St. exists in part because MNRR was so pissy about granting SLE slots into Union. It lets them scoot in and out of the main station faster so they don't bogart layover minutes at the platform from New Haven Line trains. MNRR has conversely resisted extending more of its runs to State until somebody shows them the beef on where the ridership will be.

That's politics. The MTA and CTDOT have a "functionally dysfunctional" relationship with each other over Metro North. Always have, and they've made it work for them. But they've always been weird with each other like that. State St. is a good investment for SLE and NHHS services for load-spreading and will spare Union a capacity crunch when those services are cranking at max ridership. That'll make a difference because bi-directional terminating traffic on platforms set up for thru service means they need to giddayup and load punctually at Union without excessive platform dwell time to keep the works flowing smoothly. State provides a nice relief valve from the east for that and, as you said, doesn't screw with Amtrak. But despite whatever economic rationalizations were behind its opening...fact is State would not have been built so many years in advance of the anticipated traffic increases were it not for a healthy dose of Metro North vs. CTDOT passive aggression.


There doesn't need to be more stations there. I mean...go Street View through some of those neighborhoods you placemarked. Who's going to crawl out of the water or the adjacent industrial lots to board there? New Haven DOES very badly need a downtown circulator, but that's bus or streetcar along a street grid. The circulation isn't where the NEC, Springfield Line, and freight tracks all mash together.

Eh... The Hill at New Haven would hopefully cause some kind of developmet around it and/or attract riders from the nearby residential streets. The other two were mostly placed for Fair Haven's benefit - two new infill stations reconnect that area to Downtown and East Rock Park for way way way less money than burying I-91, which is the alternative.

Of course, bad politics ruins everything.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Eh... The Hill at New Haven would hopefully cause some kind of developmet around it and/or attract riders from the nearby residential streets. The other two were mostly placed for Fair Haven's benefit - two new infill stations reconnect that area to Downtown and East Rock Park for way way way less money than burying I-91, which is the alternative.

Of course, bad politics ruins everything.

I'm not sure there's a lot of "reconnecting" to be done here. Especially where all the RR lines converge. The NEC, Springfield Line, Belle Dock Industrial Track, Cedar Hill freight yard leads, and the massive passenger train yards have been there in some form for 1-1/2 centuries. With scuzzy industrial land always surrounding it. The sides of that dead zone have always been separate...there's just not a lot of oomph to redevelop there at Mill River. And Fair Haven isn't going to be redeveloped with a lot of mixed use. They're talking sinking some resources into Belle Dock for a water+rail freight revival there. Economically, that's probably the most obvious and easiest-reach high return on investment, even if it doesn't exactly look sexy on a map.

East Rock site...maybe. That's got some potential if the area redevelopment were leading it instead of trailing it (I don't think it's a momentum-generator in a vacuum). If you plunked it at the NEC/Springfield Line junction at Ferry St., improved the road and ped connectivity substantially to Willow St. so overhead I-95 wasn't so daunting, and put turnout tracks so SLE and NHHS could use it with no impacts to thru traffic or the substantial amount of EB/WB freight turning in and out of Cedar Hill Yard all day long. That can be pretty inocuous for traffic impacts and it's beyond Metro North's reach.


The Hill simply doesn't have enough room to do in a way that isn't going to hose Metro North. West River bridge isn't widenable and the crossovers a few hundred feet away to Union and the Metro North shops would make juggling thru traffic from Hill-stopping traffic an unmitigated nightmare. NHHS and non-continuing SLE trains very badly need to turn in the shops yard past Union for the traffic to flow at all smoothly. They can't change ends further past at a platform without maiming Metro North headways, which in turn maim Amtrak headways with MNRR being the perpetually jealous dispatching alpha dog.



Now...downtown circulator, boy do they ever need that. The streetcar idea, while a nice long-term goal, is probably a too-soon thing. They need much more robust bus coverage to route-prime it, and need to flip a lot of the parking lot dead space into mixed-use density. But that's an acute need right now today and would make State St. and Union hella more important destinations if the surface transfers out of there actually covered the useful parts of town. Good god does the city bus coverage in Connecticut suck.

 

[bigeman312]

Maybe I'm splitting hairs here, but with all of the talk of the Riverbank Subway being under Storrow Drive, why not build it as a cut and cover under Back Street? I understand that with the financial climate of the T this, and any serious talk of new subway tunnels, belongs in crazy transit pitches, but I digress.

I feel as though a long term shut down of Storrow Drive would have serious negative traffic effects, especially on Memorial Drive, Beacon Street, Longfellow Bridge and on Beacon Hill. You could theoretically do a cut and cover extension of the Blue Line from Charles/MGH that would only shut down the inbound Storrow Drive Lanes from "28" (the East end of Back Street) to Charles/MGH. From there, going west, you could cut and cover under Back Street to Charlesgate, at what would seem to be a cheaper price with less severe traffic disruptions, have more manageable pedestrian connections, serving virtually the same area.

Maybe I'm splitting hairs on a far-fetched project to begin with. Oh well.

 

[Riverside]

I thought tunneling in the Back Bay was a non-starter...?

 

[bigeman312]

I thought tunneling in the Back Bay was a non-starter...?

Yes, except for through the deep-pack under Storrow Drive, I believe. What I am not sure about is if this deep-pack is also under Back Street. I wonder where exactly the retaining wall lies.