Reasonable Transit Pitches

[George_Apley]

Of course, opinions will vary on this, and that's fine. For example, proposing restoration of "A" and "E" Arborway service is reasonable in the sense that both existed and operated successfully in the past. It's less reasonable these days because there isn't enough support to bring them back.

I thought that the JP community DID want the E line restored, but the MBTA won't do it because they want to get rid of all in-traffic rail (note that they tried to start phasing out E past Brigham during the funding crisis, but didn't get away with it). I don't think it's a matter of support, it's a matter of the T not wanted to deal with traffic-running trolleys. I'm not sure about Allston/Brighton's thoughts on the A Line, but I anecdotally know a lot of people who live around Oak Square and would rather have Green Line service than the 57 Bus. Street running is very annoying for drivers, I'm not fond of it myself and if this were crazy transit pitches, I'd say tunnel the whole damn thing. I'm not aware of any studies on A line restoration, but it's a big hole in the system.

 

[Matthew]

My impression of Oak Square is that it's a very automobile-centric neighborhood, as are the immediate surroundings. Maybe that happened because they lost the trolley.

Another difficulty with the "A" is that it requires a critical junction to be above-ground. The nearby Babcock switch freezes in the winter and the heater caught fire a couple years ago too. Then there's the issues with sharing the Comm Ave track between "A" and "B". I was told that "A" ran express in order to minimize the chance that an "A" would be waiting at Packard's Corner immediately followed by a "B". With the timing of the lights, that would force the "B" to wait two whole cycles to get through. Of course, that still could result in the weird situation of an "express" train running behind a "local".

The T hates street running, but I think there's more to it than that.

 

[Riverside]

Rivers --- That's the point of this thread -- reasonable discussion of prioritization, funding options and desireability of things which the community and / or the T has done some preliminaries and which unlike the N/S tunnel are potentially fundable in the next 20 years

I would certainly agree that because of the benefits to more than one entity that electrification of the Worcester route is a "Reasonable" and then depending on the rail usage the DMU options could be likewise

Cool. But I still don't understand why the 9 mile Fairmount DMU Line is reasonable, while the 10/11 mile Newton/Waltham DMU Lines are not because of the "distance", especially when the D line runs almost 12 miles.

I thought that the JP community DID want the E line restored, but the MBTA won't do it because they want to get rid of all in-traffic rail (note that they tried to start phasing out E past Brigham during the funding crisis, but didn't get away with it). I don't think it's a matter of support, it's a matter of the T not wanted to deal with traffic-running trolleys. I'm not sure about Allston/Brighton's thoughts on the A Line, but I anecdotally know a lot of people who live around Oak Square and would rather have Green Line service than the 57 Bus. Street running is very annoying for drivers, I'm not fond of it myself and if this were crazy transit pitches, I'd say tunnel the whole damn thing. I'm not aware of any studies on A line restoration, but it's a big hole in the system.

I have talked with a couple of people who live in JP and they were definitely not on-board (haha, a pun) with the restoration of the trolley. I can't quite remember their reasoning, but I think it was along the lines of, "If the trolley breaks down, you're screwed. If the bus breaks, you reroute," with the implication that they don't see a need for further development of the area. These people were not "old guard" JPers, so I wonder what the results would be if there was a poll taken in all of JP about the restoration of the E.

As for Allston/Brighton, I think, assuming the T could get funding for the creation of the maintenance facilities, DMU's along the Worcester Line, with infill stops at, say, Boston University, Cambridge Street, Market Street and Newton Corner, would be more likely to happen than a restoration of the A, even if only to Oak Square. The DMU solution still leaves the Oak Square area without much, but nothing really seems to be that likely to go there.

The only thing I can think of, purely from a routing perspective, would be to extend the B line up Lake Street, turn left on Washington Street and loop at Oak Square. The problems with this are obvious: Only serves a small part of Brighton, Lake Street is a very residential-looking street that is currently one-way, and, of course, the B line is in awful shape as is. The plus to this is that it would get service to Oak Square in the middle of a "transit desert" between the Newton Line and the B Line with only 1.1 miles of new track (as opposed to 2.3 with the traditional A Line routing).

 

[bbfen]

It doesn't really, except for a quieter ride. What it does do is give a sense of commitment to the community that a free range bus doesn't do. Once the wires are strung there's more of a sense that the service won't go away, and brings you half-way to light rail should there be a future conversion.

Air quality for residents of SE.

 

[bbfen]

My impression of Oak Square is that it's a very automobile-centric neighborhood, as are the immediate surroundings. Maybe that happened because they lost the trolley.

Another difficulty with the "A" is that it requires a critical junction to be above-ground. The nearby Babcock switch freezes in the winter and the heater caught fire a couple years ago too. Then there's the issues with sharing the Comm Ave track between "A" and "B". I was told that "A" ran express in order to minimize the chance that an "A" would be waiting at Packard's Corner immediately followed by a "B". With the timing of the lights, that would force the "B" to wait two whole cycles to get through. Of course, that still could result in the weird situation of an "express" train running behind a "local".

The T hates street running, but I think there's more to it than that.

There are thousands of above-ground junctions around the world. This is a procurement and maintenance issue.

Signal priority addresses the streelights. The MBTA willfully and actively punishes both its riders and vehicle users in refusing to adopt signal prioritization methods.

Compressing (eliminating) stops between Babcock and Blandford minimizes bunch-up.

 

[Matthew]

And street running is and has been operated successfully throughout the world. Lots of possibilities open up if we can assume the MBTA is competent.

 

[HenryAlan]

Air quality for residents of SE.

Well that's an argument for the entire system then. Many neighborhoods have more buses than the South End. That's a lot of wiring. As for the semi-permanence/infrastructure commitment others have mentioned, I think the fancy shelters and dedicated lanes achieve a similar result.

 

[davem]

Restoration of the A to Union Square in Allston, running full stops through BU. There is a median there so street running would not be required. The only new stops would be at Harvard Ave and Union Square.

Packard's Corner would be moved to the other side of the intersection in front of Shaws, and Babcock Street would be closed. I would almost argue for re-opening Fordham Road on the B or a new stop at Chester St on the A if this happened.

At Harvard Ave parking would have to be taken away to get in room for a platform. Between Harvard Ave and Union Square the right of way should be paved, allowing for the 66 and 57 to run with the trolleys and make stops at those platforms.

The relocated Packard's Corner (now a transfer point and distribution hub) would get underpasses to access it and fare-gates, as well as St Paul, which would get moved to the other side of the block and renamed Agganis Arena.

The B and 57 will then be expressed south of Packard's Corner, making only limited stops at BU Central and Agganis on event days.

 

[George_Apley]

Is the median wide enough for it? You'd probably have to get ride of street parking to keep Brighton Ave a 4 lane road with no traffic mixing.

 

[Matthew]

Or just go to 2 lanes of traffic. There's really no sane reason to have 4 lanes of traffic at Brighton and Harvard -- it just invites speeding and running people over at that intersection where lots of people are crossing at nearly every hour of the day.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

Or just go to 2 lanes of traffic. There's really no sane reason to have 4 lanes of traffic at Brighton and Harvard -- it just invites speeding and running people over at that intersection where lots of people are crossing at nearly every hour of the day.

There's no sane reason to have grade crossings for pedestrians on that road, considering the fact that it is otherwise known AS UNITED STATES HIGHWAY TWENTY!

I mean, I get it. It's necessary for people on one end of the street to get to the other sometimes. I still think that it's more reasonable to spare the expense for some kind of foot bridge or underpass than to say "here, cross this four lane highway. Yeah, it's rush hour. Good luck!"

That having been said, you're never going to get two lanes of traffic where there isn't already because of (IIRC) federal highway codes. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty certain that's a no-go.

And street running is and has been operated successfully throughout the world. Lots of possibilities open up if we can assume the MBTA is competent.

Hey, now. This is the reasonable transit pitches thread.

 

[cozzyd]

That would also allow routing of a Union Square to Union Square line.

 

[OneOrangeDoor]

The two-block busway between Harvard and Union Sq. could do a lot to relieve traffic on an absurdly congested stretch of road even without re-implementing train service.

Any other spots where medians could be turned into bus lanes to buy busses a short reprieve from traffic? S. Huntington between Perkins & Heath? Mass Ave West of Harvard Sq.? Hyde Park Ave.?

(not opposed the new A-line idea, but the bus lane seems doable right now, and thus, very reasonable...)

 

[Matthew]

There's no sane reason to have grade crossings for pedestrians on that road, considering the fact that it is otherwise known AS UNITED STATES HIGHWAY TWENTY!

I mean, I get it. It's necessary for people on one end of the street to get to the other sometimes. I still think that it's more reasonable to spare the expense for some kind of foot bridge or underpass than to say "here, cross this four lane highway. Yeah, it's rush hour. Good luck!"

That having been said, you're never going to get two lanes of traffic where there isn't already because of (IIRC) federal highway codes. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty certain that's a no-go.

Uh huh. It's not 1950 anymore. Brighton Avenue is a neighborhood business district street with lots and lots of people around, all the time. We don't build highways through those kinds of places anymore. And we focus on removing such highways. Pushing "federal highway codes" onto local streets is one of the biggest mistakes of the 20th century.

Grade-separated pedestrian ways are also a terrible idea. They ghettoize people on foot. They should not even be considered on normal city streets.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

My impression of Oak Square is that it's a very automobile-centric neighborhood, as are the immediate surroundings. Maybe that happened because they lost the trolley.

Another difficulty with the "A" is that it requires a critical junction to be above-ground. The nearby Babcock switch freezes in the winter and the heater caught fire a couple years ago too. Then there's the issues with sharing the Comm Ave track between "A" and "B". I was told that "A" ran express in order to minimize the chance that an "A" would be waiting at Packard's Corner immediately followed by a "B". With the timing of the lights, that would force the "B" to wait two whole cycles to get through. Of course, that still could result in the weird situation of an "express" train running behind a "local".

The T hates street running, but I think there's more to it than that.

The A was the busier of the two routes back in the day. Harvard Ave...Allston St...Warren/Gordon. All of those B stops got their prevailing ridership in the Brighton Ave./Union Sq. direction. Which is not surprising, as it's denser over there. The schedules actually worked better with the load-balancing effect. Harvard Ave. has the highest boardings on the B, about 1100 more than BU East and more than double anything after Central. Well...there used to be 2 Harvard Ave. stops and the other was more heavily patronized, so that B stop is not such a dwell-times-killing outlier doing 1750 boardings or something instead of 4000+. Warren also has a ridership spike...2nd highest between Harvard Ave. and BC after Washington Square. Shortest route to St. Elizabeth's or Union Sq. from the B. That's a big difference if you split it evenly past Packards and don't have so many boarding clogs on the outer half of the line stressing the inbound schedule to the point where it's hosed the second it gets in to West Campus, and have no smooth sailing to recover from the stress of the school bus stops to the point where Harvard Ave. breaks the BC schedule's back.

Granted, BU wasn't what it was today back then, but it was still there and it was still a student-heavy neighborhood. The problem is these two lines were built at the dawn of the electric streetcar age (the A being the very first in Boston) when Allston-Brighton was all farmland. The entire neighborhood grew up in symbiotic balance around these two branches, and then 75 years in when it was all built up suddenly one of the counterweights gets abruptly removed. Hell yeah the B's going to be screwed up by that, and any traffic increases are going to be amplified by it. The neighborhood's been dragging itself around on one working limb for 45 years. You can't do that and expect the travel patterns to be any kind of functional.


Oak Sq. definitely wanted it back. It was Newton that was not too keen on it. The T rebuilt the track out there in the mid-80's when it looked like the restoration lawsuit was going to go against it. Where the opposition in Brighton came from was on Brighton Ave between Packards and Harvard...i.e. the single location that lost ZERO walking distance to the nearest stop. Couple of politically connected shop owners in that corner storefront at Packards and whoever was the previous car/motorcycle dealer in the current Herb Chambers building fought it with all the money they had. Powerful friends at City Hall = they drowned out everyone else on the corridor. This was probably the single most anti-transit moment Menino had in his career, because he was monkeying in that as Council Prez., saw the end of the restoration suit in his first term, and then had the 1998 streetscaping of Brighton Ave. throw down that cumbersome granite/grass median that's too tall to cross so nothing transit could ever ever ever use that median again.

They can't even store dead trains there anymore. Those shop owners kept on screeching away at the 1-block pocket track that remained after the line was cut until they ripped that out too. Ideally what they should've done if they were so damn afraid of street-running is to just keep the Brighton Ave. tracks as a Union Sq. short-turn and remake the road so instead of the stupid too-tall useless planted median the tracks stayed on the same footprint lane-separated. That is, the tracks are to the left of the yellow stripe where vehicles can not cross, as a sort of in-pavement trolley reservation. Take more parking spots at the corners instead of having left-turn lanes. Then you get your load balancing on the B out to Harvard and Warren where it matters, and a turnback at the 64 and 66 stops. With the 1-3/4 miles to Oak being a fight for another day.

But, noooo...the backhoes came in 1998 to rip up perfectly good barely 13-year-old track to put in Menino's Spite Median. And then came back 7 years later to claim the last 50 feet so 1 disabled train makes every train a disabled train.

 

[Matthew]

The patterns of development that grew up around the "A" and the "B" are definitely interesting... But it's not like there's isn't transit at Brighton and Harvard. The 57 bus is very well patronized and usually beats the "B" to Kenmore Square from that point, thanks to the excessive number of stops on the train.

I knew about the shopowners at Packard's and the auto dealers. I get really annoyed when people fetishize the "auto mile". Those dealers wanted nothing more than to kill the trolley and force everyone to buy their cars. Getting rid of their obnoxious parking lots and slowly filling in the area with other uses has probably been one of the best changes for Comm Ave.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

Uh huh. It's not 1950 anymore. Brighton Avenue is a neighborhood business district street with lots and lots of people around, all the time. We don't build highways through those kinds of places anymore. And we focus on removing such highways. Pushing "federal highway codes" onto local streets is one of the biggest mistakes of the 20th century.

Grade-separated pedestrian ways are also a terrible idea. They ghettoize people on foot. They should not even be considered on normal city streets.

I'm not saying it wasn't a huge mistake to run US 20 through there, but it happened. And while rerouting and rebannering US 20 onto Storrow Drive via the Mass Pike is appealing, I don't see it going anywhere.

As it stands, I'd argue that grade-separated pedestrian crossings no more "ghettoize" pedestrians than bike lanes do 'cyclists,' and carry a hell of a lot more benefit than bike lanes for a lot less to do. I'm talking about a bridge over an intersection, not creating a pedestrian el.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Brighton Ave. & Harvard Ave. (looking inbound), 1967

And now...
http://g.co/maps/m4ccm


Seriously...eliminate the corner-to-corner parking and they had all the space they needed to keep the tracks to the left of the yellow paint and get their turn lanes.


(Same place, looking outbound)
Oh, but the Menino Spite Median! It's so pretty!

 

[omaja]

I'm not saying it wasn't a huge mistake to run US 20 through there, but it happened. And while rerouting and rebannering US 20 onto Storrow Drive via the Mass Pike is appealing, I don't see it going anywhere.

U.S. routes have never had to be four lanes. Interstate highways are the only route designations with very rigid guidelines for lane widths, shoulder widths, etc.

Eliminating a lane each way along Brighton Ave for a light rail right-of-way would certainly be doable if the political will and community support were there. It would do wonders for the Brighton Ave corridor -- perhaps even spurring apartments/condos built atop current shops?

A lot of Allston and Brighton has the ability to increase density very easily through infill. Make the B (and future A) run reliably and you'd instantly increase desirability here.

 

[bbfen]

Oak Sq. definitely wanted it back. It was Newton that was not too keen on it. The T rebuilt the track out there in the mid-80's when it looked like the restoration lawsuit was going to go against it. Where the opposition in Brighton came from was on Brighton Ave between Packards and Harvard...i.e. the single location that lost ZERO walking distance to the nearest stop. Couple of politically connected shop owners in that corner storefront at Packards and whoever was the previous car/motorcycle dealer in the current Herb Chambers building fought it with all the money they had. Powerful friends at City Hall = they drowned out everyone else on the corridor. This was probably the single most anti-transit moment Menino had in his career, because he was monkeying in that as Council Prez., saw the end of the restoration suit in his first term, and then had the 1998 streetscaping of Brighton Ave. throw down that cumbersome granite/grass median that's too tall to cross so nothing transit could ever ever ever use that median again.

Anyone know what Harold Brown's thought was on it? He owns a shitload of property out that way, including his office building. Seems that his tenants would benefit from public transit options meaning he could charge more for rent.

F-Line, the median actually encourages me. That's recoverableable. Someone had the foresight to not turn it over to more traffic lanes, which we all know transit would never get back.

I see it all over the place. Even taking a parking space or two away isn't an option in this town.