I'm starting from the premise that the best urban transit bang-for-buck is priority bus service, ideally with an exclusive lane and signal pre-emption (or priority). The Seaport Transportation solution is going to be a mix of bus that use the tunnel(s) (Ted Williams and SL Piers) and some that just hit all the big transit hubs and Seaport demand. Every place there's an over-wide pedestrian mall, I'd seriously consider a busway down it.(eg, Broad/High, Rowe's Plaza and Northern-to-Boston Wharf)
One of these is not like the others. To make use of Northern in any way, shape, or form you have to contort the bus route to multiple turns. On a BRT 60-footer. Do you realize how much that's going to mangle the schedule on what you claim should be priority bus service? There's no streamlining that'll get rid of that constriction, unlike the signal priority that can smooth out flow kinks in the others.
I think putting a bi-directional stop curbside at Rowe's Wharf is worth it for making the Ferries more useful (rather than having to cross the greenway to go south) WHere would you put your Eastbound stop serving Rowes?
The Greenway is too hard to cross on foot? Well...I think that's Problem #1 you better tackle before the buses if it's that big an inhibitor to ferry terminal access. Ask the right questions first, because that has little to do with buses.
You won't get approval to do a hack as ugly as contraflow bus lanes skewed to one side of Atlantic. Will not.
- Both sides of Atlantic are even width and grade separated from each other. Why are you screwing up the symmetrical layout to make it incomprehensible to the uninitiated?
- Biiiiiiig safety issue for pedestrians crossing from the Greenway. On one side of Atlantic they only have to look one way before crossing. On the other side, with this contraflow hack, they have to look both ways. From Memorial Day on, UHub's going to have a betting pool on who's the first tourist to get smooshed by a bus because they didn't realize the rules were polar opposite on symmetrical sides of the Greenway. You said it yourself: Greenway is too hard to cross. How does this do anything other than make that problem much, much worse.
- Northbound side of Atlantic has fewer travel lanes for most of its length than southbound. So you are going to be tangling with the Greenway Conservancy over land-taking to do that contraflow setup. Are you prepared for what a shitshow that is going to be? Moreover, why would choose the shitshow that will delay implementation of these BRT lanes by years and years rather than a unidirectional striping that can get done immediately. This will be a multi-year project delayer and multi-$M cost-bloater full of senseless mission creep. Your justification for intentionally choosing the hardest means of doing this has to be airtight on cost/benefit for locking horns with the Conservancy...and ask the right questions. Greenway crossing is hard isn't relevant. Bully the Conservancy to improve that instead of wasting their time in a game of political spite over land-taking.
I wouldn't. It'd stay on Northern Ave and have a stop at Fan Pier until [Northern Ave naturally comes back into Seaport Ave]*. Sure, at some point it needs to connect with the SL Piers Transitway, but I don't see the hurry to do it at the current Courthouse stop.
You just un-did your initial argument about "hit all the big transit hubs and Seaport demand". Courthouse's 1283 Blue Book boardings are one hell of a demand catchment. That
is the Fan Pier demand. If crossing Seaport Blvd. and walking 200 ft. between TBD buildings on the parking lots is too much an ordeal, then Job #1 is asking why is Seaport Blvd. so hard to cross on-foot and address
that.
As with Greenway ped access...what question are you asking that such a convoluted routing answers? And why does the route have to gerrymander bass-ackwards around the deficiencies of
designed pedestrian access structures?
*Oops, forgot about the re-alignment. Ideally, I'd have it turn on to Harbor Sq (impossible in the picture below) and have it climb to Summer St and maybe not meet the SL until SL Way. Or maybe it is a one-way loop counterclockwise from International Place, South Station, BCEC, Harbor Sq, Northern Ave and back to the Greenway to North Station. Wherever I can grab space for a busway, I'd seriously consider taking it.
This makes sense on thru streets. But if you're going to loop...you have to justify why you're piling loops-upon-loops-upon-loops with the Northern Ave. detour and all the schedule penalties that entails. SL Way's already a little bit nasty for turns around the block, so making good time is reliant on minimizing unforced turns.
There's nothing in any of the above justifications that ask/answer the question "Why make otherwise unforced extra turns?" Again...if it's shitty pedestrian access from crosswalks and Greenways that are supposed to be designed for that, address the right questions because ped access will be just as big an inhibitor no matter what bus routes you draw up. Would you rather have shitty crosswalks and shitty Greenway crossings WITH a poorly-performing bus schedule contoured to needlessly complicated routing hacks? Or would you rather just fix the shitty ped access that has nothing whatsoever to do with the bus routes?
All of this is inventing overcomplicated force-fit scenarios because reasons. Do we want to get this done, or do we want to make an obstacle course's worth of mission hurdles delaying the rollout? Because that's all that doubling-down on ^this^ level of arbitrariness accomplishes: punting service starts calendar years down the road and gumming it up with external political manhandling.
