Rose Kennedy Greenway

cden4 said:
The main problem with the Greenway, in my opinion, is that there's too much traffic. There are three lanes in each direction with really no buffer in between. It's LOUD! The sounds of trucks reverberate off of the nearby buildings.
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Ban trucks. It's a parkway, like Memorial or Storrow Drive.
 
That would be difficult given that all of the deliveries to Haymarket and Faneuil Hall Marketplace probably have to pass through here.
 
^ Not to mention that International Place, 125 High and 99 High all have their service docks directly pouring out onto the Greenway.
 
Anyone need a job?

Actually Briv, would a "careers" page be something worth pursuing, or do you (and others) feel that sort of dialog is better suited to other venues?
 
I would also like to see trucks banned from the Greenway, but that's not possible. The Central Artery tunnel prohibits trucks hauling hazardous or explosive materials, so these trucks need to use the surface road instead of the tunnel.
 
Charlie_mta said:
I would also like to see trucks banned from the Greenway, but that's not possible. The Central Artery tunnel prohibits trucks hauling hazardous or explosive materials, so these trucks need to use the surface road instead of the tunnel.
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Well, that's not all trucks; in fact it's not even most trucks. Trucks hauling hazardous and explosive materials can be issued a sticker that allows them on the Greenway. That way all the trucks on the Greenway will be dangerous, but there won't be many of them.

It will be the Dangerous Truckway. :D
 
How many trucks hauling dangerous materials do there need to be routed through downtown Boston? Can't they be forced onto 128?
 
why is there so much chatter about a park? Even now when its 95% done.... who cares.
 
Lots of people do, since it's not yet finished, and it's one of the main results of the Big Dig.
 
Kind of like party chit chat about a surgery scar, I suppose.
 
I am sure over time this scar will get better. I think we all agree that the scar is a hell of a lot better then that gash! I think once it has development filled in around it and it has that canyon effect, it'll be alright.
 
Cojapo said:
I think we all agree that the scar is a hell of a lot better then that gash!
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Possibly. Some of us remember the times before Central Artery started doing its rendition of glacial flow.

Back then --when you could actually zip around on its roller-coaster surface-- it was an urban thrill ride without peer (well, maybe in Tokyo). Reason: that highway lurched intimately to touching distance of the buildings you hurtled by; you could see people standing at their desks in the blur. When I gave out-of-towners that whirlwind tour, they invariably went slack-jawed.

Beneath, of course, there were pigeon droppings.




(I would have liked a Tokyo-style, semi-continuous indoor shopping mall beneath that highway --like the nave of Quincy Market. After all, the structure was already there; all you had to do was build side-walls --preferably glass-- and nice surfaces. Would have cost way less than $15 bil --but they would have needed a stiff toll to reduce traffic volume to restore zipping speeds. Also, parts could have been parking garages with ground floor retail.)
 
^^^^ Good point. It was our own little bit of Fritz Lang.
 
tobyjug said:
It was our own little bit of Fritz Lang.
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We had others.

The Washington Street El was nowhere near as bad as people make out --even in Charlestown. Certainly it was better urban transport and planning than its comically misguided Orange Line replacement (put it where there's nobody, Harry!).

And Causeway Street --through years of elevated structure and building removal makes me yearn for when it actually made you feel like you were in a CITY, for gawd's sake. Nothing done there --O'Neill, parking lots, structure-removal-- compensates for the loss of that pungently Hopperesque cityscape. It was the West End Removal, Phase II.

And folks wonder where Boston's character is going to?! Why, it's disappearing into a hole labeled: "Bourgeois Suburban Improvement Projects."
 
Once the Seaport is completed, the balance in urban Boston between the city-verite of the North and South Ends and the office park New Look of Kendall Square and Longwood will have shifted decisively toward the latter.

The O'Neill Building belongs out on 128 and we need urban streetscapes to return to the West End more than we need them carved out of Westwood. Alas, in Boston it's all backwards.
 
ablarc said:
And Causeway Street --through years of elevated structure and building removal makes me yearn for when it actually made you feel like you were in a CITY, for gawd's sake. Nothing done there --O'Neill, parking lots, structure-removal-- compensates for the loss of that pungently Hopperesque cityscape. It was the West End Removal, Phase II.
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^^
My thoughts as well. In 1993, immediately after college, I moved to Boston. I was born and raised in Omaha, NE and what a thrill it was to move to Boston. The North Station/ Causeway Street has so drastically changed and not for the better IMO. I do miss the gritty urbaness the area formerly had. It feels so wide open and bland these days. The old neighborhood may have been shabby but it was alive, atmospheric and memorable.
 
What you have right now is a transitional phase between the removal of all those overhead structures and the filling in of the resulting empty lots. Give it a few more years.
 
What is missed are the things that cannot be planned: the chaos of a real urban space. Gritty, surprising, unexpected (sometimes a little scary) and original. The suburbanisation (is that a word?) of anything utlimately means bland and boring. Hopefully, Boston will oversome this trend.
 
...and it will take more than a few years to regain that sense of unplanned organicity. The old Causeway Street was decades, arguably centuries in the making.
 
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