Silver Line - Phase III / BRT in Boston

The first time I road the SL in late '09, I got a headache and felt sick from all the bumps. Sometimes it still does that, but it's *always* annoying. Sometimes I can try to zone out with the help of my iPod but there's always really bad spots.
 
I'm admittedly not as sensitive to this sort of thing as some, but the last time I rode it (a few weeks ago), it seemed less bumpy than I anticipated. I ride it every few months, so it's hard to say, but overall it was a good, comfortable, and fast ride to the WTC. And it was heavily utilized, both lines.
 
My major complaint is that the route to the airport and back is a spirally, zigzaggy, power-changingly slow inefficient torture. May I repeat again that we should have an express bus from South Station to the airport through the TWT (a five minute journey!) and keep this Silver thing separate to serve the Seaport and beyond (preferably as light rail).
 
Eventually, it'll be replaced with an overhead wire-free tram. They have them in Europe. I will personally see to it that the system is in place at some point in the next 25 years. Don't ask me how, it just will.
 
Good read in the latest New York magazine on the future of mass transit investment in NYC (hint: no LRTs). MTA's focus going forward will, for better or worse, not feature the trolleys along the waterfront model so in vogue on this forum.

Article is here: http://nymag.com/news/features/67027/

The NYC subway advocates put it best in the article::

?If you think about how it costs $4.3 billion to build three stops on the Second Avenue subway line and $2 billion for a one-stop extension of the 7 train, buses are the only direction Walder can go in,? says Gene Russianoff, spokesman for the Straphangers Campaign, an organization mostly seen advocating for subway improvements. In fact, the city?s urban-planning activists are almost all singing buses. ?They?re the smartest possible transit investment there is right now,? says Noah Budnick, the deputy director of Transportation Alternatives.
 
^Thank you. Dedicated bus lanes are by far the most economical way (even when you price congestion, wait times, emissions, etc.) to build mass transit. I love listening to people chirp about new subway and lightrail lines.

Yes, buses have a stigma, but get over it. Everyone will if a BRT line delivers service.
 
Buses work better in cities built on a grid like New York and San Francisco. Buses in Boston zig zag and ramble around on nonsensical routes and stop every 2 feet. Fix that and buses won't have as much of a stigma.
 
gooseberry said:
Buses work better in cities built on a grid like New York and San Francisco. Buses in Boston zig zag and ramble around on nonsensical routes and stop every 2 feet. Fix that and buses won't have as much of a stigma.
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I'm enjoying watching NYC try to push cars to the side in favor of bus lanes and bike lanes. But it has the advantage of the grid. Boston, god bless it, just has fucked up roads.
 
I'm no huge bus fan but London has a great bus system despite crazy streets. Maybe Boston needs to go double-decker?
 
czsz said:
I'm no huge bus fan but London has a great bus system despite crazy streets. Maybe Boston needs to go double-decker?
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OMFG NOES!! TEH SHADOWWWZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!11!!!!!11!!!!!!!!!
 
Oops yeah forgot about that. And the FAA might have issues, too.
 
I wonder whether double-decker buses would encounter low-clearance problems in places where regular buses do just fine. (Harvard Square bus tunnel, for instance?)
 
Ron Newman said:
I wonder whether double-decker buses would encounter low-clearance problems in places where regular buses do just fine. (Harvard Square bus tunnel, for instance?)
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Buses usually run the same route ever day. It should not be an issue to find routes with high demand but with no capacity problem.

I think route 1 would be a good one, especially because it has a mix of local and distance riders.

People going from Hynes to Harvard (for example) would go on top, people going 5 stops, stay in the bottom.

Im sure when brought up, someone will say "OMG the crime!". Well, they work in vegas, and vegas has a much higher crime rate. It's also not the drivers job to deter crime, thats what transit police is for. In italy, bus drivers are behind a plexiglass door. Their job is not to enforce fare collection, deal with unruly passengers etc, their job is to drive safely and on schedule.
 
Are there any parts of Boston where busways can actually work?
 
What do you define as a busway? A bus-only road on its own ROW? If so, there's probably no place except for the dedicated Silver Line tunnel (maybe along the Grand Junction RR in Cambridge?)

Washington Street has a dedicated bus lane for the Silver Line, although it's of limited value because it isn't physically separated from taxis or double parkers. Not sure if it can be. Blue Hill Ave will end up with a similar treatment. Other wide streets through Dorchester could be candidates for this as well (Dot Ave?)

The Greenway is one place where BRT might be able to work in a physically separate lane, going from North to South Stations, although that would be far better as a trolley imo.
 
Blue Hill Avenue...and it almost happened too (grr...)
 
manrush said:
Are there any parts of Boston where busways can actually work?
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The Seaport, oddly enough. The Urban Ring would have put in bus lanes above the Silver Line tunnel. There's more than enough room on Congress St. to isolate a lane with a small median.

The useless, bland median installed to salt the earth against A Line restoration could be ripped out and replaced with bus lanes. Making the stops ADA compliant would require some creativity with regard to station positioning, but we don't really need SL1 style stop spacing where you feel like half of them could easily be removed.

The plans for Blue Hill Ave would have worked, but NIMBY community groups didn't like the fact the process had to be done quickly to qualify for stimulus funds. They wanted to be "consulted" over a protracted period and presumably get the special consideration of having little add-ons and project tweaks of their choosing rolled into the plans.

They ended up getting the buses for the new busway that just got pushed back from "September 2010" to "Never". At least one community group is complaining that they weren't consulted before the new buses began service along the corridor. *facepalm*
 
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