Rose Kennedy Greenway

Food truck festival!

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View from above:

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People using the green space!

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Hey,that large vent building wall and the lawn space in front of it would make a great outdoor movie theater in the summer months, drawing more people to the RKG.
 
^ If the siding wasn't broken up by doors and "artsy" designing maybe...
 
You know, I really don't hate the Greenway as much as some posters here. It's still pretty dead and bleak much of the time once you go south of Aquarium/Faneuil Hall but how much of that is because the Greenway sucks, versus the Financial District being dead after 5pm and on weekends? Obviously the city needs to do a lot of work to make the Greenway attractive, given that it is a glorified median strip, but the fact that there aren't any people in that area to draw on means that those parts of the Greenway will never take off. The successful parts of the Greenway are adjacent to busy areas of the city; North End, Haymarket, Faneuil, Long Warf. Improving the Greenway between say, India St and Dewey Square requires improving street life in the Financial District when it's not 9-5 Mon-Fri. The FiDi is almost totally dead at night and on the weekend. You have a few hot spots like Howl at the Moon, but leave there and the only people you see, are trying to figure out how to get to Faneuil Hall or Downtown Crossing. Almost all the eateries close on weekends. The few open restaurants around there feed off of the periphery of Faneuil. Add more housing amongst the captains of industry and life in the neighborhood will pick up, Greenway and all.
 
Charlie_mta said:
Hey,that large vent building wall and the lawn space in front of it would make a great outdoor movie theater in the summer months, drawing more people to the RKG.
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Could you hear a movie over the sound of traffic?

Would you really want to sit there and suck up those fumes for two hours?
 
The Dewey Square off-ramp could be closed when movies are showing. Hell, they have another off-ramp just two blocks north.
 
Is there an official reason for there being so many ramps to the tunnel? Surface/Atlantic seems to have enough capacity to handle traffic coming off the Govt Center exit heading towards Dewey Square. Why the redundancy?
 
BussesAin'tTrains said:
Is there an official reason for there being so many ramps to the tunnel? Surface/Atlantic seems to have enough capacity to handle traffic coming off the Govt Center exit heading towards Dewey Square. Why the redundancy?
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Buses -- there used to be a lot more ramps when the damn thing was the elevated Green Monster. They cut back the number of ramps to only 2 exits fromI-93 NB and 2 exits from I-93 SB between North End and Dewey Sq.
 
^ Right. Housing is the key to enlivening the Greenway, especially south of Faneuil.
 
Some of the ramps go to and from the Sumner/Callahan tunnels rather than to the submerged I-93. Those ramps used to dump out onto Cross Street in the North End.
 
BussesAin'tTrains said:
Is there an official reason for there being so many ramps to the tunnel? Surface/Atlantic seems to have enough capacity to handle traffic coming off the Govt Center exit heading towards Dewey Square. Why the redundancy?
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I've been saying just reduce the number of ramps substantially for years, and everyonehere has thought I'm crazy for wanting to dump fewer cars into Boston's medieval street pretzel.

There is zero good reason for more than two sets of ramps, along with the Sumner/Callahan connector.
 
czsz said:
I've been saying just reduce the number of ramps substantially for years, and everyonehere has thought I'm crazy for wanting to dump fewer cars into Boston's medieval street pretzel.

There is zero good reason for more than two sets of ramps, along with the Sumner/Callahan connector.
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CZ -- I think that the number of ramps is close to the mimimum now -- you certainly need to have an exit before Storrow Dr. when you are going North and the same with two exits going South from the ramp coming in from Leverett Circle

You also need some ramps taking traffic down to the Oneil tunnel in both directions - then whne you add the rampts to/from Sumner and Callahan you have the minimum set

Where are the excess ramps?
 
For example, Westie, southbound, do you need offramps at both Purchase Street and Dewey Square? I doubt it. Those are 3 blocks apart.
 
BussesAin'tTrains said:
You know, I really don't hate the Greenway as much as some posters here. It's still pretty dead and bleak much of the time once you go south of Aquarium/Faneuil Hall but how much of that is because the Greenway sucks, versus the Financial District being dead after 5pm and on weekends? Obviously the city needs to do a lot of work to make the Greenway attractive, given that it is a glorified median strip, but the fact that there aren't any people in that area to draw on means that those parts of the Greenway will never take off. The successful parts of the Greenway are adjacent to busy areas of the city; North End, Haymarket, Faneuil, Long Warf. Improving the Greenway between say, India St and Dewey Square requires improving street life in the Financial District when it's not 9-5 Mon-Fri. The FiDi is almost totally dead at night and on the weekend. You have a few hot spots like Howl at the Moon, but leave there and the only people you see, are trying to figure out how to get to Faneuil Hall or Downtown Crossing. Almost all the eateries close on weekends. The few open restaurants around there feed off of the periphery of Faneuil. Add more housing amongst the captains of industry and life in the neighborhood will pick up, Greenway and all.
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I think it was the hype of the Greenway by the Media and the local hacks that the Greenway was supposed to be this unbelievable park like NYC Central park. We will be lucky to see a comparison of NYC Bryant Park

We can all agree that the Greenway is better than the Green Expressway bridge running through the city.

Positives
#1 Better than the Green Monster Express Way running through the city
#2 North End to Aquarium Garage parcels (Definitely has serious potential to work overtime)
#3 Waterfountain and Merry-Go-Round seem to be okay to keep the kiddies contain for an 1 hour or two


Negatives
#1 Glorified Median Strip (name needs to be rebranded)
#2 Continuing never ending taxpayer costs keep going up
#3 Greenway Conservancy (A complete disregard to the public)
#4 BRA (Greenway Study) What did that actually accomplish?
#5 Harbor & Congress Garages (please do something)
#6 Rowes Wharf to Dewey Square Parcel (WTF?)
#7 Nothing will be built that was proposed by the Greenway Conservancy (no money left)
#8 To much Politics involve to get anything done for the greater good.
#9 Harbor Towers the area with the POOL (needs to be adjusted for better streetscape for the city of Boston public use)
#10 Trying to create a Greenway tax is just disgraceful.

Negatives outway the postives right now. The Greenway needs real solutions.
#2-#10 on the Negative list is pathetic

So the last 6 years what has the city, State or the Conservancy actually accomplish? Nothing in my opinion.
***We did have OWS sleep & hang out on the some of the parcels.

I think its time for the private sector to step in.


This blogger below might be Dead but this quote says it all back on 05-30-2006, 06:12 PM from the first page.......I think he knew something that everybody been saying for the last 6 years.

gravedigger4444 said:
I've said it before. I think the road should be put up the middle with the parks on either side.
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^ For all Rifle's alarmist rhetoric, I think this is a very reasonable and grounded analysis of pros versus cons.

Let me try to clarify and recategorize:

Positives
1) No more elevated artery
2) Successful new public spaces at the North End, Aquarium, Chinatown and (I would add) Dewey Square

Negatives trending positive
1) Slow trickle of activated frontage - still pretty bleak as could be expected from the artery days, but trending towards more openings (e.g. Trade, Grain Exchange, The Palm)
2) Auto-centric, tending towards multimodal - bike lanes and Hubway stations have, I've found, changed the character of the Greenway for the better; however the number of lanes, cross-streets, and ramps still make for a heavily autocentric environment
3) Stuck developments that might come unstuck - some great improvements along the Greenway could be made through the Aquarium and Government Center garages' redevelopment, as well as other empty or underused adjacent parcels. There's really been no progress at all, but with the pace of development quickening I don't find it unlikely that some big news could come within the next 1-2 years.

Negatives staying negative
1) Ramps the deaden potential uses of public space along certain stretches of the Greenway and impede pedestrians
2) Leadership and bureaucracy - let's include both the BRA and the Conservancy here, and admit that both bodies have failed in terms of both vision and execution. We're more likely to see maintenance of the status quo than of radical change to make things work (e.g. closing ramps or cross streets, Greenway trolley, etc)
3) Poor land use - the ramp parcel buildings granted to non-profits were a poor solution to a problem which didn't need to exist in the first place. We're likely left with an open-space gash where we needen't have one.
 
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