Rose Kennedy Greenway

Uh, the trucks delivering into the city use surface streets anyway. What's the difference if they can't take the expressway a couple blocks further from South Station? We're not talking about eliminating 93, just removing a section of it so that it's no longer a through road with negative effects on downtown Boston.

The rest of the trucks passing through the Boston area can go around 128.
 
Shepard said:
In my opinion, the CAT should have been purely an express tunnel, with exits only at South Station/I-90 and North Station/Leverett Circle/Storrow Drive. The distances are really too short to warrant the urban degradation that other on and off ramps create.

My real opinion is that there should not have been an (auto) tunnel to begin with. If the elevated artery came down and I-93 became discontinuous through Boston, I think our transportation planners would have been shocked at how many commuters would suddenly choose to drive only to their local CR station as opposed to downtown.
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Even if 50% of all traffic using the 93 tunnels terminates in Boston, that would still relegate 50% of all cars using 93 onto local city streets. It would have been worse than the traffic on the elevated expressway since that had neither cross streets nor traffic lights. It would be gridlock 'round the clock (unintentional rhyme)
 
^^And can imagine what would happen if they closed down I-695!
 
Even if 50% of all traffic using the 93 tunnels terminates in Boston, that would still relegate 50% of all cars using 93 onto local city streets. It would have been worse than the traffic on the elevated expressway since that had neither cross streets nor traffic lights. It would be gridlock 'round the clock (unintentional rhyme)
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You're assuming all that through traffic would still come in on 93, knowing it would have to move through the surface streets. More likely, the traffic you describe would deter those trips and prompts switches to commuter rail or through journeys that circumvent the city via 128.
 
Aquaman is right. There's alot of traffic that passes through Boston. And beyond that, at 5PM are you going to have all Gov't Center commuters that live south of the city drive down Congress St? What about people going to the Garden from South of the city? Are you putting them the Surface Artery? You can't funnel all those people into the city and not give them a means to get through.
 
San Francisco removed an equivalent elevated highway without replacing it, and seems to like the result.
 
czsz said:
Hahaha wtf...is that the Clover truck "activation" of the Greenway people are bragging about? For a minute I thought it was a semicircle formed for some corporate team-building exercise. Anyway, what a terrible place to park the truck, given there are already four unnecessary lanes of surface street next to this thing and numerous plazas for people to stand in.
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The truck is parked on a truck access road, not on a walkway. The road's primary purpose is to serve the trucks of the Dewey Square farmers' market.
 
But that's also ridiculous. How many roads are surrounding the plaza with the farmers market on it? And it needed a separate truck access road?
 
czsz said:
You're assuming all that through traffic would still come in on 93, knowing it would have to move through the surface streets. More likely, the traffic you describe would deter those trips and prompts switches to commuter rail or through journeys that circumvent the city via 128.
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You're assuming traffic would deter most driver's from driving and prompt them to take public transportation. This is an ideal scenario. However, real life is far from that. Even with traffic many people would still prefer to drive a car to work. There are many reasons for this:

1. You can leave whenever you want. There is no train to wait or to catch.
2. It's more private.
3. Some workers have to pick up their kids afterward.
4. Some workers have to travel between offices at different locations.
5. It's more convenient. You can go pretty much anywhere after work.
6. It's easier to carry equipment or baggage in a car than a train if your work place demands it.

There are probably many more reasons but these are the only ones I can think of as of now.
 
If folks have a problem with the suburbanization of the City, including the production of too many landscaped plazas and excessive open space and a seemingly arbitrary limit on the scale of development, it follows that we should expect a complete rejection of auto-centric projects (exit ramps, parking garages, spaces).

Goals:

1. Maximum development density in the "downtown" and vicinity, with a predominance of residential development, minimal support for visitor-oriented packaged destination attractions. Visitors are drawn to urban neighborhoods without having to package artificial destinations for them.
2. Minimum auto traffic supported. If there are traffic jams, that's fine -- a self regulating system.
3. Maximum public transportation (bus, train, water shuttle, taxi) both intercity and intracity.
4. Maximum support for alternate transportation (bike, possibly segway).

IMO, the BRA has been too supportive of auto traffic. Recent moves to add bike lanes are encouraging. MBTA management of transit is discouraging.
 
KentXie said:
You're assuming traffic would deter most driver's from driving and prompt them to take public transportation. This is an ideal scenario. However, real life is far from that. Even with traffic many people would still prefer to drive a car to work. There are many reasons for this:

1. You can leave whenever you want. There is no train to wait or to catch.
2. It's more private.
3. Some workers have to pick up their kids afterward.
4. Some workers have to travel between offices at different locations.
5. It's more convenient. You can go pretty much anywhere after work.
6. It's easier to carry equipment or baggage in a car than a train if your work place demands it.

There are probably many more reasons but these are the only ones I can think of as of now.
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And yet so many cities seem to have thriving economies without giving their CBD workers the most convenient way to do these things.

They're all still possible, but the people who want to go "pretty much anywhere after work" will have to pay the price of driving through a couple more surface streets. Boo hoo.
 
czsz said:
And yet so many cities seem to have thriving economies without giving their CBD workers the most convenient way to do these things.
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This doesn't really have anything to do with a thriving economy. When the central artery was still here and there were lots of traffic, Boston had thriving economy. When it's gone and more people use public transportation, Boston will still have a thriving economy. What I'm pointing out is just because there is more public transportation, doesn't give them all the incentive to switch over. Again, that's an idealistic scenario, but definitely not realistic.

They're all still possible, but the people who want to go "pretty much anywhere after work" will have to pay the price of driving through a couple more surface streets. Boo hoo.
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No they're not all still possible:

1. You can't leave whenever you want. Commuter rails don't come every five or so minutes. You also have to depend on catching one train, transferring, and catching another. One being late can cause a delay a great delay. Unless there's a gridlock, driving a car can avoid that.
2. Public transportation is definitely not private.
3. Some kids in after school programs are far away from where they work or they are not located near public transportation.
4. Some offices are between different city. Going to a meetings is easier with a car without worrying if you're going to miss a train and it is easier to carry all the paperwork without having to lug two suitcases.
5. No, you can't always. A train has a set path. Some buses doesn't even go to certain areas at certain time. Public transportation ends early in Boston meaning any late night activities requires a car.
6. My co-worker, an IT specialist, has to move computers around between offices. Try doing that in a train.

In addition, driving a car can:
7. Pick up people in different location so you don't have to worry about where to meet everyone.
8. It's safer (against muggings, robbery, etc. wise)
 
Your points are all valid, but, to clarify, this isn't a debate about commuter rail v. driving. It's about the consequences of not having the Central Artery existing between South and North Stations.
 
Ron Newman said:
San Francisco removed an equivalent elevated highway without replacing it, and seems to like the result.
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That's not really a good example. While the embarcadero superficially resembled the artery (elevate highway near the waterfront), it only served intra city trips, no through traffic. The existence or lack of that highway makes no impact on the vast majority of trips into or out of San Francisco, whereas the artery is fundamental to entering Boston.
 
^ Good point, most of the population spreads south of S.F. and on the east bay, both of which still have direct interstate access to downtown S.F. From the north, the golden gate dumps onto city streets, but not many people live directly north of S.F. I think Marin County has less than 250,000 residents.

Not sure if there is any truth to it, but I do remember some time back that Chinatown businesses were blaming the loss of the Embarcadaro highway for tough times as they alleged a resulting decline of business from the suburbs.
 
The Embarcadero Freeway was only a short dead-end stub connected to the main north-south I-80 James Lick Freeway. The Embarcadero Freeway served no purpose other than as an extended on and off ramp to the main freeway. It's loss did not affect traffic or access much at all. The only reason it existed was that it was originally planned to be extended westward through the North Beach area to connect the Golden Gate Bridge to the Bay Bridge. Since that never happened, it was just a useless appendage.

It cannot be compared in importance to Boston's Central Artery. The Central Artery is the ONLY north-south route through the city of any consequence. The only other routes are small surface streets like Commercial Street, Ruggles St., and the parkways along the Fenway and Charles River, off limits to trucks.
 
Yes, but now that we have Atlantic and Surface streets, those are North-South roads of consequence - even if they are crisscrossed and signalized. Perhaps that was all that was necessary, and the tunnel itself was a waste.

I would hope that within 25 years the tunnel will be retooled for transit use only (N-S link, subway line, etc). I realize the conversion wouldn't be necessarily easy... (why are we always fixing mistakes from the past in this city?)
 
Shepard said:
Yes, but now that we have Atlantic and Surface streets, those are North-South roads of consequence - even if they are crisscrossed and signalized. Perhaps that was all that was necessary, and the tunnel itself was a waste.

I would hope that within 25 years the tunnel will be retooled for transit use only (N-S link, subway line, etc). I realize the conversion wouldn't be necessarily easy... (why are we always fixing mistakes from the past in this city?)
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Wait a minute. Earlier people were complaining about how the surface road around the Greenway is dangerous because it's like a highway. Now you guys want to put all the traffic going through the tunnel onto the surface? Are you guys thinking straight?
 
"Like a highway" is a function of the type of road it is, not a function of the amount of vehicles it handles. There are busy, congested streets in Boston - Boylston Street comes to mind - that are not "like a highway."

What makes the surface streets "like a highway"? Mostly, the median strip and the entrance/exit ramps. So yes, it's not contradictory to say 1) More traffic should use surface streets if we can eliminate the ramps and 2) The streets themselves should be urbanized, i.e. median strip built up, enclosed, or otherwise vastly improved.
 
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