Just trying to think of things that could be done with the B-line in a reasonable fashion... (how do people make those fancy Google Maps?)
1) Close Blandford St. station. Ideally, I'd rather consolidate BU East and Central, but they've been reconstructed and Blandford hasn't, so... it seems like the most practical thing- three stations aren't really needed between the BU Bridge and Kenmore, I think.
Blandford's needed for Sox crowds management. Hang out in the neighborhood 90 minutes before and 90 minutes after the game and that'll be self-evident as hell. And the station spacing vs. Kenmore really isn't that bad compared to the other surface stops that are too close. The stop's high ridership is fairly legit. It would be one thing if the B were buried out to BU Bridge...then you of course go with subway stop spacing. But as a surface stop and transition zone its numbers 'work'.
It's also last stop by the storage track, and a less-awkward place to turn trains back in a service disruption than the outbound side of Kenmore-proper. So operationally it's smoother to go up the incline and turn at Blandford rather than having to reverse 'wrong-rail' out of Kenmore outbound to the nearest crossover, holding up the next train. Also an issue with Sox extras, because they do short-turn here in regular service for a few minutes before/after.
2) Close the Blandford St. / Silber Way crossing to automobiles. Since Blandford St. itself is no longer a public street, and there are crossings one block on either side of it. You'd probably need to keep one of the pedestrian crossings, especially if the station remains open, which reduces the benefits somewhat.
That crossing is used by more pedestrians than cars already. Even moreso now that Cummington St. is closed to vehicle traffic. Since there has to be a ped crossing there that waters down the gains a lot, because the traffic light cycles (already ped-driven) aren't going to shorten much at all.
3) Rebuild Pleasant St. station on either side of the Pleasant St./Agganis Way intersection as part of the Comm Ave reconstruction project. Use this to justify closing the St. Paul St. stop (just as Fordham was killed by expanding Harvard Ave.)
Dear God yes. Look at the Blue Book and how much the boardings crater after BU Central then perk back up at Babcock. Telltale sign of West/St. Paul/Pleasant being one stop too many and over-dividing the ridership pie. As much as West's placement sucks, unless Central gets moved to BU Bridge-proper that creates too big a gap...so St. Paul is the obvious cut being home to the shorter light cycle than Pleasant/Agganis.
4) Consolidate Babcock and Packard's Corner on the other side of the Brighton Ave intersction or as an inbound/outbound split. I'm not sure about this one, but Babcock and Pleasant St. seem rather close and trains often have to wait at the Brighton Ave intersection anyway, so it seems like a natural place.
Disagree. Babcock's at a major cross street and already the higher ridership of the two stops. And the Packards-Harvard stretch is already -1 intermediate stop after Fordham Rd. was eliminated. So moving Packards to the other side of the road split starts to create an outright service cavity here when you factor in extra time waiting for light cycles on the crosswalks. It's dense residential on that side of the corner vs. commercial + BU on the other side. Not quite as high a % of ped traffic crossing that intersection as you might think, so Packards and Babcock don't have as much audience overlap as you might think.
5) I don't think the Allston section really needs to be moved to the middle of the road, but if it is, then use that as an excuse to widen the platforms at places like Harvard Ave. (This is kind of obvious)
That's MassHighway's bag; the T is just along for the ride. The center relocation does serve up some nice wide platform space, which is badly needed at Harvard Ave. where people literally hang off the railings on those packed platforms. Where I do want the T to step in and not be a passive party (if MassHighway ever finds the funding to start) is to advocate for a Blandford-style turnback track between Harvard and Griggs. The B
badly needs to be able to short-turn here. This is the demarcation point in boardings between the packed inner half and somewhat sparser outer half of the B...and it's the inner half where the schedules get FUBAR'ed to hell. Every day at rush hour and every weekend night there needs to be load-balancing short-turns here as a schedule throttle.
6) Consolidate Griggs and Allston St. Unfortunately I'm not sure if you can really do this because of the curve- but I also suspect ADA'ing Warren St. will require it to be moved off the hill, which means that stop spacing will become pretty dense. Of course, this probably also requires (5) to get the necessary space.
This is a tough one because of the spacing. Allston St.'s a biggie because it's the most direct shot for reaching Union Sq. from the B, and the stop spacing gets really uneven if you whack Griggs but keep Allston and Warren. Messing with the Allston and Warren spacing is tricky because of the hill. I can't think of any rearrangement that definitively solves more problems than it would otherwise create.
7) Close the former Mt. Hood Road pedestrian crossing. This crossing confuses me, as there doesn't seem to actually be a way to get to the other side of Comm Ave without jaywalking anyway? Though if the stop sign isn't for the crossing, but is required because of the grade, I suppose there's less harm in keeping it.
I think the grade does have something to do with it. There needs to be a ped crossing somewhere on this segment because the road's a little steep to have to backtrack to Washington or Sutherland to cross and get to points in the middle. My default instinct is to stick with the arrangement that doesn't force old ladies to walk 2 blocks out of the way on a hillside that gets very slippery in winter. It doesn't affect the B schedule enough to mess with.
8) Realign the tracks at Sutherland Rd. to allow for wider platforms at the station on both sides. This will probably be pretty pricy and might require removing some trees- in the end this is probably necessary to ADA the station anyway, but probably isn't worth doing before then (there are certainly worse stations).
Shouldn't be. If they split each platform on opposite ends of the Colborne Rd. intersection that frees up enough space to realign the tracks a few inches and buy a couple feet's worth of platform width for each side. For what it's worth they ought to offset the Chiswick platforms on either side of the intersection too.
9) Like Chestnut Hill Ave.- but the median is much narrower here, too, so I'm not sure what can be done- something certainly needs to, though. Could the carriage lane be sacrificed west of Strathmore perhaps? But then we move into wider road reconstruction, which I'm not sure will reach this segment of the road before 2100. (And I'm not sure what can be done about South St.)
What they need to do with Chestnut Hill Ave. is flip the platforms to the opposite end of the intersection so this stop becomes an option for extending C runs from Cleveland Circle or D short-turns from Reservoir (hell...maybe even E's via the D-to-E connector at Brookline Village) to BC. Which I think is a potentially valuable service pattern to provision for if we're operating under the assumption that the B really badly needs a Harvard Ave. short-turn. Thin the headways up/down the hill where the ridership's a little more diffuse for the sake of beefing them up out to Harvard Ave., then supplement BC with a very limited number of Chestnut Hill C/D re-routes to re-balance the load at the terminal end.
It will be tight for platform space and may require a couple feet of road widening on the right-turn from Comm Ave. EB to Chestnut Hill Ave., but I think the service flexibility is well worth it.
As for South...South already doesn't work because it's too close to Chestnut Hill Ave. and it serves no unique ped traffic from either side of Comm Ave. that isn't already better-oriented to Chestnut Hill Ave. Flipping the Chestnut Hill platforms to the other side of the intersection makes it doubly redundant. Stop spacing would be a little long if there were no intermediates whatsoever, so Foster St. is the logical place. It's kind of weird they didn't think about combining Greycliff and South here the last time they consolidated stops, since Foster's the only thru street between BC and Chestnut Hill that connects to any place non-redundant.
10) The existing plan to move the terminal to the other side of Lake Street in the median. On the other hand, it's difficult to justify funding this for the relatively small benefits... (Much like (8) in that regard really, but the existing terminal is already ADA-compliant too)
I think this relocation plan is a loser. As noted, it's largely cosmetic and the only momentum behind it is driven by the compulsion to give BC some eye candy. But it's going to make the Lake St./BC campus intersection that much worse with all the students loitering around in the median. At least at existing Lake St. they are cordoned off to the side in more spacious environs. Yes, that's a lot of ped crossings...but they get across and stay there instead of loitering in the middle. So for the purely cosmetic benefit of making it
seem like a BC student has shorter walking distance...that intersection gets a lot more clogged and hazardous, and all traffic's slowed down by the loiterers around the crosswalks. Not to mention the penalty the B endures from having its turnback area separated by a traffic light and street crossing from its loading/unloading area...and the probability that this will be annoying enough a delay that they'll have to start outright reversing directions at the platform to keep schedule, which is stupidly more inefficient when the loop is right fucking there. Do any of the people advocating this realize that making it even 0.1% harder to shuttle in/out of Lake St. yard hampers the B's ability to stay on-time that much more?
They better @#$% be planning a Harvard Ave. short-turn if this is how they want to play it.
