Rutherford Avenue to go on a diet!

The surface plan certainly got mothballed with the rise of Wynn, but there's nothing on paper to replace it. I think Capuano is playing fast and loose here. The 50-50 divide of public opinion appears to be incorporating only two factors: what was actually created from all those community meetings (the surface option) and his personal preference.
 
When I drive from Medford to points in Boston, WAZE absolutely loves taking me off I-93 at Sullivan to zoom down Rutherford to Community College or Washington St.

This is probably the best empirical data I can think of to prove that
(1) the road is over built
(2) the road is used by cut-through traffic looking for higher-than-93 speeds (any time 93 gets cloggy/sticky), and not, actually, by locals.
(3) the main cut-through O/D points are beyond both Boston and even Somerville...the main beneficiaries of a wide Rutherford are people in Medford/Stoneham/Melrose/Woburn/Reading who benefit by dumping their trips onto Rutherford.

It should be a slam dunk political win for Boston and Somerville to "take back" their road for local trips (incl bike trips).

And yet, this feels *exactly* like Arlingtonians not wanting to put Mass Ave in Arlington from 2 lanes each way to 1-lane-with-complete-turn-lanes. It just is too counter-intuitive for most "local" car-owners to see that road diets are good for them (discouraging lots of cut-through traffic at a small price to local trips and creating great bike connections)
 
Same is true for Tobin traffic. And it all slams into either the Gilmore bridge or the Charlestown bridge. Just one giant induced demand bottleneck.
 
the road is used by cut-through traffic looking for higher-than-93 speeds (any time 93 gets cloggy/sticky), and not, actually, by locals.
Click to expand...

I'm local, and use it to get up to the Whole Foods, Home Depot, Target, etc. But still, it's basically deserted considering how many lanes there are. I wouldn't be surprised if a traffic study showed that the majority of traffic going through Sullivan doesn't go down Rutherford.
 
underground said:
I'm local, and use it to get up to the Whole Foods, Home Depot, Target, etc. But still, it's basically deserted considering how many lanes there are. I wouldn't be surprised if a traffic study showed that the majority of traffic going through Sullivan doesn't go down Rutherford.
Click to expand...

It's not conjecture. Volumes did decline on both Rutherford and McGrath after the Big Dig opened. Demolishing that old overpass didn't end up worsening anything because the post-CA/T traffic reapportionment self-corrected that loss.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
It's not conjecture. Volumes did decline on both Rutherford and McGrath after the Big Dig opened. Demolishing that old overpass didn't end up worsening anything because the post-CA/T traffic reapportionment self-corrected that loss.
Click to expand...

Yes but....it's like rt.2 in Arlington and Lexington ... Totally constrained by bottlenecks on both ends. I said it earlier but I'll say it again - the Gilmore and Charlestown bridges can get REAL ugly even if Rutherford itself is open in front of Hood or whatever
 
kjdonovan said:
The surface plan certainly got mothballed with the rise of Wynn, but there's nothing on paper to replace it.
Click to expand...

Sorry, what are you talking about here? When was there ever any formal change of the city's plan to shrink this roadway and open up Sullivan square for development? I never saw anything official and the only press I've found is capuanos remarks that I posted above...

?
 
FK4 said:
Sorry, what are you talking about here? When was there ever any formal change of the city's plan to shrink this roadway and open up Sullivan square for development? I never saw anything official and the only press I've found is capuanos remarks that I posted above...

?
Click to expand...

http://www.bostonredevelopmentauthority.org/planning/planning-initiatives/sullivan-square-disposition-study

December 2013 BRA study. Shows the surface option too. There had been community meetings before that. The main idea is to make Sullivan Station completely enclosed with his and transit access. Pull the head house away from the viaduct and have its massing frame and scale with the viaduct.
 
biosmoothie said:
http://www.bostonredevelopmentauthority.org/planning/planning-initiatives/sullivan-square-disposition-study

December 2013 BRA study. Shows the surface option too. There had been community meetings before that. The main idea is to make Sullivan Station completely enclosed with his and transit access. Pull the head house away from the viaduct and have its massing frame and scale with the viaduct.
Click to expand...

No. Not what I'm talking about. After community meetings city formally went with surface option but the poster above, as well as capuano, state that the casino has caused this plan to change. That isn't written down anywhere as far as I can tell.
 
I've said from the beginning with this Rutherford Ave/Sullivan Square plan, it's going to be very hard to nail down a design if they don't have money for construction soon. Because until shovels meet dirt (and even after: see GLX), everything will be up for negotiation, no matter how far along the design process they think they are. By the time they do start construction, I guarantee a whole bunch of people will come out of the woodwork and say "but I missed the planning process X years ago. don't I get a say?"
 
It's too bad they've completely abdicated the plan for a haul road on the Bunker Hill CC back driveway adjacent to the northerly pegs of the 93 decks. You could ban trucks from Rutherford that way and work in slip ramps from Gilmore Bridge and the 93/1 onramps off that haul road to sideline traffic piling up on the east end of Rutherford banging a turn onto the highways. Also helps the McGrath/O'Brien taming by encouraging straight shots off Memorial over Gilmore Bridge to reach the highways instead of racking up long left/right turn queues at the intersections.

West end pileups have an easier time being tamed by the state adding the missing legs of the Route 16 interchange. Would pull lots of traffic off of McGrath/Fellsway, weight the Wellington Circle lights more firmly in the E-W direction instead of the even split with N-S that snarls everybody, and pulls more traffic towards the Santilli rotary for reaching 99 and the casino rather than Mystic Ave. (with its very confusing U-turns on each side for reaching a 93 ramp) + Sullivan. The problems and confused distribution all feed off and reverberate off each other...but of the limited choices available 16's got the most capacity to absorb the traffic cleanly IF the signals can be weighted firmly in its direction with a cleanup of the N-S roads. Cleanup that can only happen by encouraging traffic to shape away from Sullivan, Mystic, and Rutherford.


It can be done. But there's a lot of moving parts beyond just making a pretty boulevard. And it's too hard to do when absolutely no one--not city, not MassDOT, not politicians, not neighborhoods--seems to be in sync on a coherent corridor plan. It's just not enough when the sources of traffic are still coming from the same messed-up stress points sprawling too much traffic around roads not all that well-equipped to distribute it cleanly. The fix is farther-flung and a lot more holistic than one square + one thoroughfare...which is all this provincial staring contest seems to be about.
 
You know what this project needs? More public process...

Cloy-aFWIAAQevt.jpg
 
Step 1: Announce Rutherford Design Project (1997)
Step 2: Community visioning for two years
Step 3: Complete "transportation" study (1999)
Step 4: NIMBY reaction
Step 5: No funding
Step 6: Wait nine years
Step 7: Announce Rutherford Design Project, take 2 (2008)
Step 8: Community visioning for five years
Step 9: Complete "disposition" study (2013)
Step 10: NIMBY reaction
Step 11: No funding
Step 12: Wait three years
Step 13: Announce Rutherford Design Project, take 3 (2016)
Step 14: Community visioning <------ WE ARE HERE
 
Basically, everything is up for negotiation until it's actually built. That's how politics works in Boston.
 
Slides: http://www.cityofboston.gov/images_documents/community-meeting-06-30-16_tcm3-53618.pdf

Coverage: http://charlestownbridge.com/2016/07/08/residents-give-input-at-meeting-on-rutherford-avenue-design/

I didn't follow the last round of public process so I'm not sure what if anything has changed in the draft designs they showed.

Vehicle volumes are up, and southbound traffic dwarfs northbound traffic. Northbound traffic could be accommodated with "a single lane", but the city is waiting to see if two-way tolling on the Tobin changes this disparity. There are some name drops of the state's separated bike lane design guide, and a design shows a southbound bus lane heading into the North Washington Street bridge.
 
The asymmetry of the Zakim bridge having the two extra northbound on ramp lanes might also be a factor.

Slide 33 of the 40 page PDF mentions Gilmore queues affecting southbound Rutherford flow. Would it make sense to build a Gilmore bridge southbound to Northpoint Blvd ramp to try to address that?
 
Are peak hour traffic counts in this area, post bidirectional Tobin tolls, publicly available?
 
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