Seaport Transportation

[Equilibria]

Re: Seaport Square (Formerly McCourt Seaport Parcels)

And how many of them are moving to the Seaport itself, not to mention DTX, Chinatown, Leather District, and Southie? You don't plan for how things are today, you plan for how things are going to be, right?

I thought the theory of the Seaport was to be a live/work/play district. You don't need to transport people in and out of the place where they already are.

Probably very few. Not many people like to live where they work, regardless of whether the residential areas there are in their price bracket. Also, I don't think walking a mile and a half from the Leather District or Chinatown in a suit is going to be a popular commuting option.

Besides, transit shouldn't be geared toward creating insular, walled-off neighborhoods. It kind of defeats the purpose...

 

[fattony]

Re: Seaport Square (Formerly McCourt Seaport Parcels)

Probably very few. Not many people like to live where they work, regardless of whether the residential areas there are in their price bracket. Also, I don't think walking a mile and a half from the Leather District or Chinatown in a suit is going to be a popular commuting option.

I happen to know easily a dozen lawyers who walk to Back Bay from the South End. My GF is a lawyer and it seems like everyone under the age of 40, and some over, at her firm lives in the South End. That is certainly anecdotal, but I think the long hours people are the ones who most highly value living near work. See the explosion of NY's FiDi and Hell's Kitchen.

Besides, transit shouldn't be geared toward creating insular, walled-off neighborhoods. It kind of defeats the purpose...

It's comments like this that make it hard to keep up my devil's advocacy. I can't disagree with you. However, the SL exists even if aB posters love to hate it. It's not like they are building a neighborhood with no transit or no transit connections. Sub-optimal perhaps, but the Seaport is not going to choke to death on lack of transit. It might not live up to its full potential, but there are 10 more neighborhoods in Boston that haven't been living up to their full potential for 50-60 years and yet this city is still a great one. It is unfortunate, but it isn't a disaster.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Re: Seaport Square (Formerly McCourt Seaport Parcels)

So the problem is more that the SL has no connections other than SS rather than the capacity of the SL itself? Now THAT is an argument I can understand on its face more so than "lawyers don't ride busses, even if they are underground" so we need to build a train. Lawyers ride the Green Line which in many ways is worst than the SL. They'll ride the Silver as well.

Yes. The doomsday scenario is not an overloaded or poorly-functioning Silver Line. The doomsday scenario is an overloaded Red Line that takes Green with it when no more line-transferring bodies can be crammed onto both levels of Park St. platforms at rush and no more seconds of loading time decay can be prevented from all the people who have to enter or exit at those 2-3 transfer stops. Then cascading failures radiating out from the transfer stops to the ends of the lines, crippling the entire system.

It is exactly the analogue of the Artery vs. Airport doomsday. Except we got through 110 years of subway service before the city grew enough for circulation to become a crisis vs. 20 years for the Artery. And now we're living our own transit analogue of the inside-128 highway construction moratorium where things are just stuck...stuck and unimprovable...for 2 more decades because we're back at square one on coping options with no political will. We can hope our leaders get shocked into pulling out all the stops like they did with the CA/T. But in the meantime you're looking at the impending transit equivalent of the bleak, bleak 1970's and 1980's when the road traffic problem in the city raged out of control, the leaders were lost at making any action-taking pivot, and circulation deteriorated to the point of doing economic harm to the city.

That's not hyperbole. If you have to ride transit to get to work, your travel to the CBD is going to be living hell every day when the subway hits the oversaturation tipping point. If you drive to work because transit is too unreliable to get you door-to-door, your day is going to be hell when induced demand reappears with a vengeance. It's getting bad already, and we still are better part of a decade away from the tipping point where things really start collapsing.

 

[fattony]

Re: Seaport Square (Formerly McCourt Seaport Parcels)

I think that private shuttle buses will be the future of Seaport "transit" once the parking lots disappear and all these businesses finally move in.

Why? Look at Longwood. The LMA has quite a dense transit network especially at the edges and indeed with buses, but lacks quick and easy connectivity to the Red Line, C Line, etc. The LMA shuttle fleet solves that for MASCO members (which is most of the main LMA employers).

Seaport is worse on two fronts: 1) Connectivity is far worse, with two transfers required for anywhere other than the Red Line and airport, and 2) A MASCO-like organization probably won't develop among the disparate businesses that occupy the Seaport.

I therefore think we'll see a fairly redundant fleet of private shuttles developing which connect to North Station, Kendall, Harvard, Back Bay, Coolidge Corner, and maybe some private park-and-rides further afield (MASCO for example runs a route to a Chestnut Hill synagogue pay-for-parking lot).

Not to derail, but as a side note - I often walk along the 1 bus route until the bus "catches up" with me. Often it never does. The other day I walked all the way from Central to the Pru without ever seeing a 1. I did however see 3 LMA shuttles.

 

[winstonoboogie]

Re: Seaport Square (Formerly McCourt Seaport Parcels)

The original 1987 public scoping for South Boston Fan Piers transitway is available:

https://archive.org/details/southbostonpiers00mass

and the 1993 final environmental impact report from 1993 is as well:
https://archive.org/details/southbostonpiers00usde

The 1993 EIR looked at alternatives of no build, expanding conventional bus service, surface light rail, and diverting the Red Line between Broadway and South Station.

The transitway is operating at the same speeds and travel times as when it opened in 2004. As the 1993 EIR shows, it was designed from the start to operate the way it does. The restrictive speeds are because of the lack of signals, and it was decided that signals were not required because the close stop spacing was not going to provide much opportunity to get up to any speed. They do get up to 20 in the short straightaway under the channel.

While the South Boston Transitway station platforms could accommodate light rail, they were designed/built at the present length to accommodate buses operating in platoons, with three loading/unloading simultaneously at each platform. They have not reached anywhere near that level of service yet.

The tunnel invert would need to have the top of the present slabs demolished and rebuilt in order to install rail, but the tunnel clearances can accommodate a larger rail vehicle.

Operating buses and light rail together at the same time would not be practical with the existing trolley bus technology. Overhead cantenary for pantograph-equipped light rail can be set up to cross two-wire trolley bus overhead with dead spots (San Francisco has this at multiple locations), but it cannot be set up for the two to share the same positive wire, the negative wire would short out the pantographs, and even if you raised the negative wire to be higher than the positive, that would not work at switches (the positive has to cross the negative, but the trolley shoes on the buses have to maintain contact with the wire). That is why Seattle, when light rail was introduced in their downtown transit tunnel, had to convert the buses using the transit tunnel from dual-modes with trolley poles to hybrid buses operating in hush mode. The ventilation system in the Seattle tunnel, which has portals at both ends, can handle the low emissions. The South Boston transitway tunnel is not design to handle any emissions from buses. The emergency fans are designed to clear a large amount of smoke quickly, but are not designed to refresh air flowing in two directions. Future potential battery buses, that could recharge between trips, might be a way to remove the overhead for buses and allow light rail to commingle with buses in the tunnel. Electric bus technology hasn't quite reached that point yet, but probably will if/when the day ever comes that light rail is introduced in the South Boston transitway.

 

[Shepard]

Re: Seaport Square (Formerly McCourt Seaport Parcels)

Great documents - thanks for sharing. Absolutely amazing to see that a Green Line branch was never considered - for reasons not very clear, all visions of the transitway tunnels ended at Boylston.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Re: Seaport Square (Formerly McCourt Seaport Parcels)




It's presently the year 1376 in the Burmese calendar, so technically this is not inaccurate.

 

[winstonoboogie]

Re: Seaport Square (Formerly McCourt Seaport Parcels)

Great documents - thanks for sharing. Absolutely amazing to see that a Green Line branch was never considered - for reasons not very clear, all visions of the transitway tunnels ended at Boylston.

Although a potential future upgrade of the tunnel to light rail is always mentioned

 

[Equilibria]

Re: Seaport Square (Formerly McCourt Seaport Parcels)

Great documents - thanks for sharing. Absolutely amazing to see that a Green Line branch was never considered - for reasons not very clear, all visions of the transitway tunnels ended at Boylston.

Well, I suspect there's a couple of reasons for that that don't make it into the EIR:

1) They wanted to link up with the Washington St. service, which they had already decided to do as a bus and screw over the South End.

2) Linking in to the existing Green Line at the Boylston curve would have been impossible on that alignment. The schemes we've been discussing all involve using the existing Tremont St. portal and making the turn back toward SS further south.

3) Though my cursory reading didn't reveal it in that document, they were already thinking about running the buses through the Ted.

If the planning effort had actually been what it claimed to be - transit for the SBW - a Green Line branch would have probably been an alternative, but you have to take it in the context of the other projects this was supposed to connect to.

The Silver Line, among its myriad flaws, was an attempt to shoehorn too many disparate needs into one project.

 

[George_Apley]

Re: Seaport Square (Formerly McCourt Seaport Parcels)

1) They wanted to link up with the Washington St. service, which they had already decided to do as a bus and screw over the South End.

Nitpick, but the South End preferred the bus. It screwed over Dudley.

And ouch... WAY off topic again... we should probably pick this up in Seaport Transportation...

 

[Next Stop Wonderland]

Re: Seaport Square (Formerly McCourt Seaport Parcels)

I therefore think we'll see a fairly redundant fleet of private shuttles developing which connect to North Station, Kendall, Harvard, Back Bay, Coolidge Corner, and maybe some private park-and-rides further afield (MASCO for example runs a route to a Chestnut Hill synagogue pay-for-parking lot).

Just wanted to add that there are ~4-5 private companies running these shuttles from South Station as well, including Vertex, State Street and Tower Point. I assume that PwC, Goodwin and any other major tenant that moves to the Seaport will do the same (in addition to North Station shuttles).

 

[HenryAlan]

Re: Seaport Square (Formerly McCourt Seaport Parcels)

I think that private shuttle buses will be the future of Seaport "transit" once the parking lots disappear and all these businesses finally move in.

Why? Look at Longwood. The LMA has quite a dense transit network especially at the edges and indeed with buses, but lacks quick and easy connectivity to the Red Line, C Line, etc. The LMA shuttle fleet solves that for MASCO members (which is most of the main LMA employers).

Seaport is worse on two fronts: 1) Connectivity is far worse, with two transfers required for anywhere other than the Red Line and airport, and 2) A MASCO-like organization probably won't develop among the disparate businesses that occupy the Seaport.

I therefore think we'll see a fairly redundant fleet of private shuttles developing which connect to North Station, Kendall, Harvard, Back Bay, Coolidge Corner, and maybe some private park-and-rides further afield (MASCO for example runs a route to a Chestnut Hill synagogue pay-for-parking lot).

I actually think this might be the right place for Bridj or something similar to step in. I'm not a fan, I much prefer a properly designed, networked public transit system. But if the employers won't band together ala LMA, then there is no reason why a private company can't provide some high frequency routes between the Seaport and key destinations. Not as good as an MBTA solution, but perhaps better than the redundant shuttles you envision.

 

[winstonoboogie]

Re: Seaport Square (Formerly McCourt Seaport Parcels)

Well, I suspect there's a couple of reasons for that that don't make it into the EIR:

1) They wanted to link up with the Washington St. service, which they had already decided to do as a bus and screw over the South End.

2) Linking in to the existing Green Line at the Boylston curve would have been impossible on that alignment. The schemes we've been discussing all involve using the existing Tremont St. portal and making the turn back toward SS further south.

3) Though my cursory reading didn't reveal it in that document, they were already thinking about running the buses through the Ted.

If the planning effort had actually been what it claimed to be - transit for the SBW - a Green Line branch would have probably been an alternative, but you have to take it in the context of the other projects this was supposed to connect to.

The Silver Line, among its myriad flaws, was an attempt to shoehorn too many disparate needs into one project.

In the 1993 EIR they mention the future possibility of the South Boston Transitway being connected to the Washington St. replacement service at Boylston, but the plan at the time was just a tunnel from Boylston to the South Boston Waterfront . And they were not ruling out a future light rail use of the tunnel and connection to the Green Line. This is the description of the project from page 2-3 in the 1993 EIR:

"Fort Point Channel Underground Transitway^: Automated subway cars, light rail vehicles, or buses operating subsurface between BMIP, South Station, and Boylston Station, with intermediate stops at the World Trade Center and Fan Pier/Pier 4. This attemative could be constructed incrementally, with an initial bus tunnel from South Station, under Atlantic Avenue above the depressed northbound Central Artery, and under Fort Point Channel to the vicinity of Fan Pier.
Bus technology permits a connection to Washington Street Replacement Transit Service using either trackless trolleys (electric buses) or dual mode (electric/diesel) buses. Light rail technology permits a connection to the Green Line Central Subway at Boylston Station. The use of either light
rail or bus technology would make surface operation in parts of the Piers area feasible in the longterm as well, particularty in the less densely developed area east of the Wortd Trade Center. People movers, because of their automated mode operation, cannot operate on the surface in mixed vehicular and pedestrian traffic."

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Re: Seaport Square (Formerly McCourt Seaport Parcels)

2) Linking in to the existing Green Line at the Boylston curve would have been impossible on that alignment. The schemes we've been discussing all involve using the existing Tremont St. portal and making the turn back toward SS further south.

https://archive.org/stream/replacementtrans1978mass#page/n175/mode/2up

Behold...the 1978 OL relocation + replacement feasibility study, page with the diagram of light rail hook-in options. Granted, the Transitway and Ted weren't even conceived yet so this was strictly for Washington St. replacement. And they studied a whole lot of kooky light rail options past Dudley, and Dudley via alternate routes, that no longer make sense. But look at the Option C that got picked as the preferred tunnel/portal alignment. Look familiar?

I can't find any evidence that there was a "Phase II" follow-up study examining the preferred alternatives ID'd here for further analysis. I think that '87 document was the Phase II study, and the reappearance of it as a shotgun marriage with the newly cooked-up Transitway and dropping of any LRT options was the public's promised second-look.


It's morbidly fascinating. Emphasis on morbid. It talks about the Urban Ring, Fairmount Line, Needham Line rapid transit feasibility study, the 28X, Key Bus Route Improvements. In 1978. On very, very yellowed photocopied paper from 1978. If this is the timetable we're looking at for not making decisions about not doing things, I hope your commute doesn't require you to Red/Green transfer at Park St. in the year 2050 if you're still dragging yourself to work as a sprightly senior citizen in your 60's, 70's, or perhaps 80's.

 

[Deetroyt]

This also highlights the poor planning decision to not include a 3rd tube for rail in the Ted. Where were the transit advocates when the 3rd tube for rail was chopped early on in the planning process? If this had been included in the tunnel to the airport, then light rail would have probably been the solution in SBW from the beginning. Hell, the northern half of the Urban Ring already had a dedicated ROW for light rail, and the connection to East Boston was a missing link in the chain. Without rail consideration from SBW to airport, the buses were an easy substitute in the Piers Transitway

 

[vanshnookenraggen]

I moved all the airport related posts to the Crazy Transit thread.

 

[paperless paul]

I had not seen mention of this before. A new Boston Harbor Cultural Connector Boat. It was free in July.

It is sponsored by the ICA. It only goes from ICA to Fort Point Channel to Central Wharf / Aquarium. I don't mean to be down on this boat but it feels a bit pointless. Who's going to pay $5 a person for a boat ride to replace a 5m or 10m walk.

I guess if you have the money it's not a bad way to get on the water. If it went to Charlestown or Lovejoy (future) and East Boston, I would think it would be a lot cooler. Of course I am sure it's not allowed to compete with the MBTA.

Here are some photos.

 

[Scipio]

I haven't seen that shuttle before, could be useful for the tourist crowd. Walking would be my preferred route, especially as the construction around Fan Pier wraps up.

In related water transportation news, Uber contracted with the water taxis to run Uber Boat as a promo a few weeks back, and they've released summaries of their boat data at http://blog.uber.com/uberboatrecap Downtown and the Seaport were the two biggest destinations, and the map embedded below shows that Downtown/Seaport was the most popular route people took. If any route is feasible to run as a for-profit scheduled ferry I guess it's the one the Cultural Connector is taking.

1) Downtown Boston and the Seaport District served as the most popular pickup and dropoff locations, in both directions. This was a unique change for the water taxis which had previously seen only modest volume from the Seaport.

2) Our average UberBOAT rider started using Uber a little over a year ago. The UberBOAT cohort was a more seasoned group of riders compared the average Uber Boston rider over this time period, and they found new ways to explore the city with UberBOAT.

3) UberBOAT exposed what we’ve already been hearing around Boston — Eastie is the new cool place to be! Water taxi rides on the Uber system to and from East Boston were frequent, aided by the short trip distance between East Boston and the other docks around the harbor.

4) About 70% of UberBOAT rides carried 2 or more passengers, significantly higher than our UberLAND counterparts. Looks like UberBOATers are down to party.

5) Traveling between districts was more popular than rides returning to the same district. This means Bostonians used UberBOAT to actually get somewhere on the water rather than just taking in the scenery.

7) Deja vu! Approximately 10% of our trips were repeat riders, and 5% were repeats in the same day, implying riders doubled up on UberBOAT to make their own round trip.

8) The average UberBOAT trip was almost 20% faster than the average typical district to district route via public transportation we benchmarked against. This makes sense given the shorter distance traveled (water routes are more direct than navigating a street grid…which becomes a gridlock in traffic).

9) UberBOAT served as a replacement for users’ normal activity on the Uber system a surprising amount of the time. How much? About 17.5% of UberBOAT trips were taken along a route that riders had taken before or have taken since with another Uber product.

10) As many of you probably noticed, water taxis are popular! In fact, demand was about 7x greater than supply and was consistent throughout the promotion duration. Boston likes being on the water!

Plus a little route demand map

 

[JohnAKeith]

Exciting news from the mouth of Bev Scott. At tonight's South Boston Waterfront Sustainable Transportation Plan meeting, she told me that the MBTA plans on putting the RFP for the Back Bay / Seaport DMU "on the street" by December - meaning, out for bid. She told me it would take a long time to get the project to completion. When I whined, "Oh, like two to three years??!" she responded, "Oh, no, like four."

Hooray!

 

[JohnAKeith]

Also at the meeting, Kairos Shen announced (or, confirmed?) that there will be a cycle track from South Station to the Convention Center along Summer Street and that they are also discussing having one the length of Seaport Boulevard.

Which is great, because losing a lane of traffic for buses so that a single lane of bikes can go through makes perfect sense.