SBWTC /South Boston Waterfront Transportation Center | Seaport

Re: SBWTC /South Boston Waterfront Transportation Center/Seaport/ S Boston

inglec62 said:
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I just don't understand why this thing isn't going to be surrounded by real buildings from day one.

If that strategy is good enough for Assembly Row and the Bullfinch triangle, then it should be good enough for the core block of the seaport district.

If the answer is "so we can all gaze at that stairway for the next two generations" .... then i give up...
 
Re: SBWTC /South Boston Waterfront Transportation Center/Seaport/ S Boston

The city/MBTA should NOT be building this. Instead they should relax parking maximums and let the free market determine if more spots are needed.
 
Re: SBWTC /South Boston Waterfront Transportation Center/Seaport/ S Boston

tysmith95 said:
The city/MBTA should NOT be building this. Instead they should relax parking maximums and let the free market determine if more spots are needed.
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Neither the city nor MBTA are building this. This is a Massport parcel.
 
Re: SBWTC /South Boston Waterfront Transportation Center/Seaport/ S Boston

BKNA said:
The issue is that 93 is a mess during the peaks (which was always expected). When you are on surface roads near 93 they suck too.
Do you want more lanes? it wouldnt help anyway.
Do you want this area to not be developed? The local traffic is the same now as when the area was covered with surface parking lots.

The difference is 93 is much worse now than after the Big Dig was first completed so the blame is being dumped on the developments because thats the new thing that people can see.
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I think you know as well as anyone that, if someone is smart enough to argue that a garage increases car traffic, he is probably also smart enough to know that more traffic lanes do the same. And if the commonwealth were to neither build this garage nor expand highway capacity, development would still occur in this area. I think most posters on here are not arguing for a simple change in how we are investing in car infrastructure-- they're looking for that investment to be made entirely in non-automotive transportation solutions.

Maybe I am misreading a sarcastic post.
 
Re: SBWTC /South Boston Waterfront Transportation Center/Seaport/ S Boston

looks like it's going to be quite an unattractive garage.
 
Re: SBWTC /South Boston Waterfront Transportation Center/Seaport/ S Boston

Honestly, given that 99% of my trips from Portland to the Seaport involve concerts at the Pavilion, my big question about this is, is it going to beat the rates the Seaport Hotel charges for after-5 PM parking?
 
Re: SBWTC /South Boston Waterfront Transportation Center/Seaport/ S Boston

JumboBuc said:
Remote airport parking is something you put in less congested, lower-land-value areas. It doesn't make any sense to put remote airport parking in a booming, new, expensive neighborhood right next to downtown.
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The rub is that in this town the airport itself is essentially in a booming, new, expensive neighborhood right next to downtown. e.g. Fan Pier is closer to terminal A (1.5 miles) than to Copley Square (1.6 mies).

Consider these prices for 24 hours of parking:

$38 - Post Office Square
$36 - South Station
$32 - Logan Central Parking
$28 - Harvard Square
$25 - CambridgeSide Galleria
$23 - Logan Economy
$22 - Museum of Science
$20 - Ipswich St (non-gameday)
$7 - Wellington
$7 - Alewife

The takeaway is that it MIGHT make sense to put remote airport parking in a booming, new, expensive neighborhood IF AND ONLY IF:

- you are a financially self-sustaining public authority which
- has a limited range of chartered revenue sources, of which parking is a major component
- parking on the airport side of the harbor is already at (actualy well above) its statutory cap
- you have minimal carrying cost for land and can borrow at better rates than your private sector peers
- you can offer a price point (~$25) dollars that is in the same range as your other airport garages AND in the same range as competing urban garages.

I know its meant to serve more than airport customers. But its important to keep in mind here that - at least in terms of their income statement - Massport is a parking operator that also runs an airport as a demand generator for its garages.

But it has neither the land nor the authority to build more parking in Eastie. And it has both of those things in Southie.

(Plus when they eventually add a 'Logan Express SBW/BCEC' bus, it can access the garage more or less directly from the pike, even if the SL still has to go around the block twice...)
 
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Re: SBWTC /South Boston Waterfront Transportation Center/Seaport/ S Boston

Eesh. That "expressive stair/ramp" atrocity. Dear architect, you are not Behnisch...
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Holy shit did they find an architect that has never seen a Boston winter before?!
 
Re: SBWTC /South Boston Waterfront Transportation Center/Seaport/ S Boston

Someone throw a binder full of pictures of assembly row at the architect and then run away while theres still a chance. Leave one under his windshield wiper, send some in the mail, have someone hold a sign in front of his office with assembly row on it. Were showing as we speak how this can be done right, right across town, no reason to let something slip by that hasn't even been built yet. The exposed garage wall can face the pike if need be-or condos, but on D st and WTC ave theres no reason there could not be condos and street level retail to give some attempt at life at those dead streets.
 
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Re: SBWTC /South Boston Waterfront Transportation Center/Seaport/ S Boston

There's no reason to have hideous open walls of a Parking Garage. Do it just like 1 Bromfield Street or put up something very slender, a la Marriot Moxy on 1 or 2 of the walls, and go up an extra floor. Dumb.
 
Re: SBWTC /South Boston Waterfront Transportation Center/Seaport/ S Boston

odurandina said:
There's no reason to have hideous open walls of a Parking Garage. Do it just like 1 Bromfield Street or put up something very slender, a la Marriot Moxy on 1 or 2 of the walls, and go up an extra floor. Dumb.
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If you enclose a parking garage, you have to fully sprinkler it.
 
Re: SBWTC /South Boston Waterfront Transportation Center/Seaport/ S Boston

jass said:
Who approved this garbage?
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No one. MassDot and MassPort legally don't need review by the city. So they can build completely inappropriate crap. It's a long way from the Federal Government building the amazing Customs House over city height restrictions--this is active ignoring of best practices for parking garages and traffic. Ugh.
 
Re: SBWTC /South Boston Waterfront Transportation Center/Seaport/ S Boston

If MassPort wanted more parking it should have been at Wonderland and not here.
 
Re: SBWTC /South Boston Waterfront Transportation Center/Seaport/ S Boston

tysmith95 said:
If MassPort wanted more parking it should have been at Wonderland and not here.
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TYSmith -- I don't think it has anything to do with Logan

Massport is in the advanced planning stages for 5,000 more spaces on the airport property

In case you didn't notice on Google Map Massport has an enormous Parking lot on Northern Ave which is a prime developable property
https://goo.gl/maps/tZqQgQJ2sdJ2
And quite close in the opposite direction from the main core of the Seaport District There are a number of venues where people might want to go and which don't today have very good transit access including:
  • the really booming Cruise Port Boston
  • the equally booming Boston Innovation Center / Boston Design Center / Reebok HQ complex,
  • Ray Flynn Business Park
  • numerous other developments in the pipeline in that direction including office space and hotels
Finally there will be more hotels associated with the BCEC


-- all of these [many on Massport property] are a medium walk or a short shuttle bus ride away from the site of the Massport garage
 
Re: SBWTC /South Boston Waterfront Transportation Center/Seaport/ S Boston

Beton Brut said:
Because fuck Revere, right?
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Beton Brut -- Revere's development or lack of Wonderland and Suffolk is not really part of Massport's purview

You can argue that perhaps the Commonwealth should reorganize its various alphabet soup of agencies, or at least make Massport the sovereign of all it can see from the top of the Control Tower -- but short of these....

However -- Massport does lease overflow parking space at Suffolk but as soon as the approx 5,000 new spaces are constructed at Logan -- the need for such should essentially vanish

As in many of these jurisdictional issues involving the Commonwealth and the cities and towns of Greater Boston -- the true solution is the creation of a modern version of the MDC -- essentially a Metro Boston County with elected leaders and typical midwestern / southern county jurisdiction of all the alphabet soup stuff inside about I-495

Then Massport, MBTA, BCEC, Massparking or whatever all would be MetroBost.... and there would be a MetroBos County Administration to coordinate among all without worrying about offending reps from Springfield or New New Bedford or Whatley
 
Re: SBWTC /South Boston Waterfront Transportation Center/Seaport/ S Boston

whighlander said:
Beton Brut -- Revere's development or lack of Wonderland and Suffolk is not really part of Massport's purview
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Agreed.

It should also be noted that the MBTA constructed a seven-level 1500-car garage at Wonderland Station just a few years ago.

whighlander said:
However -- Massport does lease overflow parking space at Suffolk
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I've always objected to this...

whighlander said:
...but as soon as the approx 5,000 new spaces are constructed at Logan -- the need for such should essentially vanish...
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And this is a shit idea as well.

whighlander said:
As in many of these jurisdictional issues involving the Commonwealth and the cities and towns of Greater Boston -- the true solution is the creation of a modern version of the MDC -- essentially a Metro Boston County with elected leaders and typical midwestern / southern county jurisdiction of all the alphabet soup stuff inside about I-495

Then Massport, MBTA, BCEC, Massparking or whatever all would be MetroBost.... and there would be a MetroBos County Administration to coordinate among all without worrying about offending reps from Springfield or New New Bedford or Whatley
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They'll be serving Jim Jones Kool-Aid on Beacon Hill before this ever happens. Where would the pols find respectable work for their slow-witted cousins and lazy brother-in-laws?
 
Re: SBWTC /South Boston Waterfront Transportation Center/Seaport/ S Boston

tysmith95 said:
If MassPort wanted more parking it should have been at Wonderland and not here.
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Those nice folks at the Harbor Towers are gonna need parking after they lose their Garage.
 
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