Seaport Neighborhood - Infill and Discussion

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

^^^^
It's all true. Been saying this since the beginning of this thread.
Seaport has evolved into a traffic nightmare and its only half built.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Just for fun, let's try a little experiment. Rifleman or anyone else - please name one commercial/business area of Boston that you wouldn't describe as a traffic nightmare. Downtown? Back Bay? Longwood? Kendall? Are any of those NOT traffic nightmares?

Does that do anything to reset your expectations for the Seaport? It was never NOT going to have traffic. Every single road connecting homes to businesses in a city has traffic. There are always enough people who want to drive to completely congest every road you build in an urban area.

People aren't driving to the Seaport because there isn't public transit. There IS public transit. People are driving to the Seaport because there are roads to drive on and spaces to park their cars in. No matter what size you make the roads or how much transit you provide, traffic will always expand to fill the roadways and parking available.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

^^^ So you are implying that the fact that some crazy people are always going to want to drive is a reason NOT to attempt to have good public transit? We're not saying we can eliminate traffic; we are saying we need to work to improve transit in parallel. Goal is not some # of cars or some # of transit riders; the goal is reasonable functionality of the overall commuting system (e.g., it doesn't take an average of 1.5 hrs to get to work) coupled with best uses of resources.

Look at what MIT is doing in Kendall (since you mentioned Kendall): since there are better uses of land as compared to building more/wider roads and more and more parking lots, they are redeveloping many of their parking lots to facilitate other uses. And as a result, they just announced they will now be offering 100% free T passes and MBTA commuter lot parking discounts to all of their employees. They are, in short, begging their employees not to drive. That is (guesstimating) 6,000+ employees in the Kendall area (and no, this is not including the students - they must still pay for their passes, albeit discounted).

If the seaport is going to become anything like Kendall, employers will need to rely more on a transit system, as the Kendall employers do. If it does not become like Kendall, then maybe the status quo will suffice.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Do you also realize not 100% of people work within the reach of public transit? Some people have to drive to work! Also, a LOT of South Boston millennials who work north of the city (i.e. 128 corridor - Burlington etc) get off at Purchase Street, cut through the Seaport as the most direct route back into Southie.

Not all people who drive in the Seaport are crazy, they are trying to get to or from work.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

bigpicture7 said:
Whigh,
When I spoke of stratification, I was not referring to real estate cost. Of course there will be vast differences there. Vertex, PWC, a few blocks from SS, right on the water - sure, let these be very pricey parcels. Sure, let the barely-solvent start-ups be in warehouses a few blocks deeper into the seaport. No complaints about basic economics.

I refer to what we are trying to do with this place: "innovation district," whereby district implies more than just a block and whereby innovation presumably refers to lots of new ideas sprouting up and becoming products or services. This requires lots of people, and in this case, it's spread over a not insubstantial area. So when I spoke of stratification, I meant connectivity to the basic transit infrastructure. Not niceness of office buildings or cost of leases.

You raise excellent points re: "freeing the silver line schedule from the influence of surface traffic." Yes, that would help. I don't care about rubber wheels versus metal wheels. Great transit infrastructure has sufficient capacity (as Jeff speaks to) and frequency (which smart stoplight control or off-street routing assist with). Reality is that the silver line is asked to do double-duty as a major conduit to the airport, which means it is filled with non-seaport workers during peak times.

Others may have more info, but IIRC no one is saying the Silver Line was ever optimized. Big Dig cost cuts, etc, made it what it is. I am not trying to start an argument; I am merely saying that since its not optimized, there's work to be done here to make it better. And if we're serious about making this area a substantial innovation hub for lots of employees, then we ought to do this.
Click to expand...

BigPicture -- the Innovation has and is spreading throughout a quite large swath of the core and nearby areas of the city

As to the Silver Line -- the D underpass combined with a new Silver Line Under lets the system operate all electric buses that just do the fast turn SS -- CH -- WT -- SLW -- WT -- CH -- SS

That special all-electric branch of the Silver Line can mix in the tunnel with the existing Silver Line buses -- going to Logan or to Black Falcon or some other future destination and which involve the motive power change-over and mix into surface traffic

Additional Silver Line branches could originate at Silver Line Way -- all Diesel without the need for the time consuming change-over

the model is Harvard Square where electric and diesel buses seem to coexist quite well
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

^^^

Whigh; I agree all of that sounds good re: SL improvements

falcon; I will rescind my use of the word "crazy"; I was admitting in that post that some automobile usage is inevitable and that transit improvements are a parallel endeavor, not a total replacement. I mentioned the Kendall initiative as one where they are trying to change the usage proportion to better handle the current (and forcasted) growth.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

My point is that you can add all the transit you want and the exact same number of cars are going to clog those roads. There is no solution to the TRAFFIC NIGHTMARE!!!1!!! other than removing parking so there is nowhere to drive to. Period. That is 20th/21st century human nature.

MIT is removing parking and offering their employees an alternative. That's great. That's an actual solution. Bitching about what material the wheels on the Silver Line are made out of is not constructive. We could have (actually do have) fleets of buses and shuttles moving people in and out of the Seaport all day long. If you want to de-congest the roads so that those buses can move, you have to cut parking.

If you want a trolley on rails for the Seaport... you are in for a world of disappointment. No one in the real world is even discussing it. SL PH3 is as dead as a doornail. No one is talking. No one is studying. No one has any money. It isn't happening. They are going to do surface BRT lanes sometime around when the district is fully built out. Then this discussion will be over because the commuter problem will have been solved. It won't be ideal, but it will be functional.

Maybe its my fault for caring what people online say. Maybe its my fault for engaging Rifleman and the others who can't help but call the Seaport an office park, despite having no such characteristics. The people who bitch about the traffic and have no clue what generates traffic and what alleviates it - I just find it all infuriating.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Uhh...this is just repeating actual enacted T proposals, not a brainstorm of possible solutions. Beware the whighpost that tries to pass itself off as original thought or original counterpoint through verbatim copypasta of obvious known-knowns covered extensively in other threads.


Next Silver fleet are hybrids that run inside the tunnel on batteries recharged full by the regenerative braking on the above-ground portion of the trip. With normal hybrid engine idling at station stops. They no longer have to be connected at all to the overhead power source except for charging stations when idling at layover. The overhead wire probably gets retired outright with the power feed laying in wait for the Green Line connection megaproject to bring the co-mingled trolleys in from downtown on re-strung pantograph wire while the hybrid buses wirelessly do their battery thing in between rapid transit slots. Known-known; the pilot vehicle is already on-order, with options for the full fleet replacement if they like what they see.

Silver Line Gateway to Chelsea is all-diesel branch #1 coming into the tunnel with a launch date 18 months away. Not news. We have an entire thread on that. City Point was a real no-foolin' diesel branch until low ridership and squishy agency commitment closed it in 2009. Been there, done that on the neighborhood branching thing. The Urban Ring southeast quadrant out of Dudley Square is going to use a bus reservation on Melnea Cass Blvd. and probably some length of Haul Road running to loop into the Transitway as another quasi-mainline grade branch, complementing SL1 which traces out the northeast quadrant. Not news; it's not only in the official scoping study, but can probably be partially implemented quicker and more cheaply than any of the other northern and western quadrants of the Ring requiring near-megaproject levels of new construction.


No new ground being broken here at all.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

fattony said:
My point is that you can add all the transit you want and the exact same number of cars are going to clog those roads. There is no solution to the TRAFFIC NIGHTMARE!!!1!!! other than removing parking so there is nowhere to drive to. Period. That is 20th/21st century human nature.

MIT is removing parking and offering their employees an alternative. That's great. That's an actual solution. Bitching about what material the wheels on the Silver Line are made out of is not constructive. We could have (actually do have) fleets of buses and shuttles moving people in and out of the Seaport all day long. If you want to de-congest the roads so that those buses can move, you have to cut parking.

If you want a trolley on rails for the Seaport... you are in for a world of disappointment. No one in the real world is even discussing it. SL PH3 is as dead as a doornail. No one is talking. No one is studying. No one has any money. It isn't happening. They are going to do surface BRT lanes sometime around when the district is fully built out. Then this discussion will be over because the commuter problem will have been solved. It won't be ideal, but it will be functional.

Maybe its my fault for caring what people online say. Maybe its my fault for engaging Rifleman and the others who can't help but call the Seaport an office park, despite having no such characteristics. The people who bitch about the traffic and have no clue what generates traffic and what alleviates it - I just find it all infuriating.
Click to expand...

Fattony -- you said in one of these posts that the demand expands to fill the capacity -- NO emphatically -- try Detroit -- they have so much excess capacity that they are bulldozing whole neighborhoods and tearing up roads

The Seaport is successful because it delivers something that developers and their customers find desirable and otherwise unavailable in Boston -- the ability to build without having to shoehorn into the existing city fabric -- its Boston's version of the Dockyards in London

By the way -- at Kendall some of the MIT Sea of parking is going underground so that they can build a park as part of the "Walk from Kendall to the Charles -- perpendicular to the extended 'Infinite Corridor"
 
Last edited:
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

AND MY POINT FATTONY IS WHY MAKE THE TRAFFIC SCENARIO WORSE WITHOUT AN ACTUAL PLAN FOR THE AREA.

This is common sense.
We have 3-4 Garages in the Downtown that need to be knocked down.
Harbor Garage
Wintrop Garage
Congress Garage
All easy transit access: Build HIGHER (Decrease traffic) In central located areas.
Why not focus on these development firsts then issue tax incentives & breaks to just build on open space to create more useless traffic around the city.

This is on the BRA for not planning.

It would be one thing if GE came and said it was going to develop all the Seaport but would be willing to pump money into the Infrastructure to make it a better area. These corporations looking for Handouts is out of control.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

fattony said:
My point is that you can add all the transit you want and the exact same number of cars are going to clog those roads. There is no solution to the TRAFFIC NIGHTMARE!!!1!!! other than removing parking so there is nowhere to drive to. Period. That is 20th/21st century human nature.

.
Click to expand...

This is NOT TRUE.
If you invest & Build a Transit that will get you from Point A to Point B faster than a driving. I'm assuming anyone with an IQ would take the TRAIN
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

whighlander said:
By the way -- at Kendall some of the MIT Sea of parking is going underground so that they can build a park as part of the "Walk from Kendall to the Charles -- perpendicular to the extended 'Infinite Corridor"
Click to expand...

Not some of the parking, all of it and more. Roughly 1,200 parking spaces in 6 levels of below grade parking under the SOMA footprint.

MIT is hardly the darling of urban design and getting cars off the road.
They are getting better though. They may be very smart, but it takes a long time to implement change of any kind.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

SeamusMcFly said:
Not some of the parking, all of it and more. Roughly 1,200 parking spaces in 6 levels of below grade parking under the SOMA footprint.
Click to expand...

Yes, but they are planning around net negative parking for the next several years during the construction; plus the new developments are shared-use which may drive additional demand. Point is that they are planning on their workforce relying less on cars for the next several years, and are putting their money where their mouth is. But no, they are not expecting employees to stop using cars.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

fattony said:
My point is that you can add all the transit you want and the exact same number of cars are going to clog those roads. There is no solution to the TRAFFIC NIGHTMARE!!!1!!! other than removing parking so there is nowhere to drive to.
Click to expand...

Dude, 'TRAFFIC NIGHTMARE ' is not the preferred nomenclature.

'FREEDOM NIGHTMARE!!!'; please...
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

These never ending debates always bring to mind some Flogging Molly lyrics "We're still screaming at the wailing wall!"

Baseless arguments in the face of fact after fact never cease.
Saying the Seaport is not served by any main lines is a fairly ridiculous statement.

It's 0.6 miles from South Station to PWC's new building. This is basically the heart of the new Seaport. https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Sou...c1057d!2m2!1d-71.0551042!2d42.3518776!1m0!3e2
It's 0.4 miles from Kendall/MIT to 700 Tech. Square (chosen because I work here and walk this walk everyday). I don't think anyone argues that Kendall is not well served by "main line" service or proximity.

Does 0.2 miles really make that much difference? It does, well lucky you, there is an actual subway running right to Courthouse that is 0.1 miles away.
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Cou...c92657557b!2m2!1d-71.04685!2d42.35245!1m0!3e2

Many of the above arguments above come from someone who has professed I nthe past to have never used the Silver Line. Yet, continually sh*ts all over something they have never used.

The Seaport as most of us know it is very much served by main line service.

A lot of the disconnect is, as people have mentioned before, mostly in your head. Not so much the channel as someone mentioned before. I find it hard to equate the channel with a highway. The channel is a pretty nice obstruction (except in the winter). I've often found the feeling that things are soo far away was because of the huge swaths of parking separating you from your destination. Walking from say Congress and Wharf Road to the WTC can seem like a quite long walk, when it really isn't. But, the WTC looks like it's right there, because nothing blocks your view (until very recently), so it takes "forever" to get to a very close destination, because nothing changes on that walk. Some proper streets, with people watching & window shopping along the way, and this is a much more pleasant walk. And, although the walk is now less direct, psychologically you enjoyed the walk much more, and feel like less time was wasted.

Of course, if you have an IQ.... you could be at WTC in 4 minutes if you jump on the silverline at SS.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

SeamusMcFly said:
These never ending debates always bring to mind some Flogging Molly lyrics "We're still screaming at the wailing wall!"

Baseless arguments in the face of fact after fact never cease.
Saying the Seaport is not served by any main lines is a fairly ridiculous statement.

.
Click to expand...


You call this question/comment a baseless argument.
Why didn't the BRA focus on the developments of the Garages in the core of the city located on hardrail transits which I listed above and start the planning for Rapid Transit flow in-out of the Seaport.
But instead issue 100's of millions of tax incentives for the Developers/Corporations to build and create more useless traffic in the Seaport area.
How is that a baseless argument. How does that help pay for the current services of the area after the buildout?
I'm calling out the PLANNING Board right now.
This is what was good for the PUBLIC focus on development with No Transit grid? --- but leave Garages that are centrally located in the city undeveloped.
Please enlighten me on that concept.

These planners are like the Scarecrow from the Wizard of OZ (if I only had brain) Talk about fucking up our city with endless/useless space concerning more traffic.
 
Last edited:
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

TheRifleman said:
You call this question/comment a baseless argument.
Why didn't the BRA focus on the developments of the Garages in the core of the city located on hardrail transits which I listed above and start the planning for Rapid Transit flow in-out of the Seaport.
But instead issue 100's of millions of tax incentives for the Developers/Corporations to build and create more useless traffic.
How is that a baseless argument. How does that help pay for the current services of the area?
I'm calling out the PLANNING Board right now.
This is what was good for the PUBLIC focus on development with No Transit grid? --- but leave Garages that are centrally located in the city undeveloped.

These planners are like the Scarecrow from the Wizard of OZ (if I only had brain) Talk about fucking up our city with endless traffic.
Click to expand...

All rails are hard. Some rails are light. Some rails are heavy.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

TheRifleman said:
This is why I said let Kraft build his Patriots Place/Fenway Park in the area and make it a Neighborhood for Boston Sports because the Seaport was going to be Corporate no matter what.
The only difference is the tax incentives to Menino's Boys to build out the area was disgraceful as they ignored the entire Transit scenario.
At least Kraft would have been forced to focus on the Transit tax incentives would have been limited to focus on transit.

That is my point.
I actually like Pier 4: Just not sure how traffic turns out concerning this build-out.
Click to expand...

As blasphemous as it might sound (especially on this board) because of the anti-NIMBY sentiment, can you just for one second put yourself in the shoes of the South Boston neighbors?

Let's just say that Fenway and Gillette were relocated to Southie (I don't see it as a matter of if, but rather, when. I say 2030, but that's just a stab in the dark). Imagine living in your home since the Kevin White administration. That's your family's triple-decker. Your ancestral home. Lots of good times. Your home has outlasted the foreclosure crisis, new development, gentrification and the construction of bio and nano tech headquarters in that part of the city. Yup, you're Boston Strong in the literal sense. All encompassing.

Now, let's throw in a median daily attendance of 40,000 drunk Red Sox fans, congregating (stumbling) to new Fenway (or...to use our imagination...and because companies love to buy the naming rights for sports venues...Narragansett Field). The Sox are atop the AL East and selling out 'Gansett Field. And who can blame them? It's like the AL's version of AT&T Park (San Francisco Giants). Fanboys in kayaks chasing after Hanley Jr's monster blast. Good times never seemed so good. Especially given the close proximity of the expanded South Station. Drunk people being responsible and taking the North-South Connector back to their destination of choice. Those federal funds man were certainly worth the taxpayer subsidies and feet dragging and greasing of palms.

But wait...

There's more. Football (I like to call it by it's proper name...gridiron) is still popular. More popular than ever. Never mind the CDC reports of concussions and even the now retired Tom Brady saying that his kids will never play football. It's still a boon to the region and the New England Patriots are still at the top of their game, at their relocated Gillette Stadium. Right next door to Fenway.

Coincidentally, the Sox and the Pats are playing on the same day (Sox can clinch the AL East that day. First pitch is 1:35 PM and the Pats are facing the dreaded Jets. It's a late afternoon start. Kickoff is @4:35).

So, you're the old guy living in the triple-decker in Southie. You like the Sox and Pats, but you know that in addition to the 40,000 at Fenway, there are over 60,000 drunk Pats fans ready to congregate into your neighborhood.



Wanna go the market to grab something? Good luck.


Meet up with family at your local coffee shop? Dream on.


Now, it's not over. It's just beginning. You've got drunk fans leaving the stadium and being loud all night long. Property damage, puke, and all these police details trying to direct traffic and you're a prisoner in your own triple-decker.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't have these things in a city, but I think the reason that the city rejected the proposals (In 1970 and again in 1996) was primarily due to the lack of community input and a traffic/transportation plan that would've benefited everyone in Boston.

If you go by history and second hand information, Kraft wasn't the most transparent with his proposal. Boston DID lose out. I'm sure that this was one of Menino's quiet regrets. Certainly can't speak for the dead, but if I were mayor, I would've approved of this. But I would've told Kraft to be smart about it. I certainly wouldn't put taxpayers on the hook like Kraft wanted to do at the time. One of the things about Obama that I was glad to see was when he closed the loophole that makes taxpayers pay for a bunch of drunk savages cheering on grown men running up and down a field.

The new Garden HAD to be built because of North Station. Unless Gillette can be built atop South Station, then as a sports fan, you might be getting a birthday gift...at eighty-five!

And eighty-five percent of the time, I'm infuriated by the NIMBY attitude in the city. But I also tend to take a deep breath before posting my emotions. Because it's the adult thing to do. To imagine what life would be like if you were forced to deal with something that you weren't all in is also what living in a centralize population is like. Boston isn't Sim City where you get to knock down buildings on a computer monitor. It's more complex than that.

Would you want a bio lab in your neighborhood? Think back to Breaking Bad, dude.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

That's a whole lot of assumption right there.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

That might be the most ridiculous post I've ever read. Throwing your two cents in about concussions. LOL
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top