Silver Line - Phase III / BRT in Boston

Re: Silver Line Phase III

To be fair DC has PLENTY of problems expanding their Metro. Don't think it's only us who have problems.

The problem with digging a subway through the South End is land prices there are not high enough to justify the cost. Why do you think they built an elevated line in the first place? I read one report from the 1940s about replacing the old Washington St El with a subway to Dudley which would have cost $1 billion in 1940s dollars. I'm all for a subway but it just isn't practical today.
 
Re: Silver Line Phase III

I don't know...

I can't see something like this being insanely expensive. This shouldn't be nearly as expensive as Silver line phase II where they were tunnelling through landfill and had to sink a tunnel under Fort point channel. Washington street is solid earth. plus they could use cut & cover since it would follow the street. I couldn't see an orange line extension to Dudley costing more than $2b.

That's not to say I could ever see this getting built. I think we're going to see a lot more BRT in Boston unfortunately. :(
 
Re: Silver Line Phase III

I would probably be more than $2 billion. If it was an Orange Line extension they would have to dig up Chinatown to rebuilt the interchange between the two lines so they wouldn't cross tracks. The Green Line tunnels were built that way from the start because they were designed to handle traffic from the west and south. The Orange Line was never envisioned to have two branches at this point.
 
Re: Silver Line Phase III

Didn't the elevated orange line used to have a loop to the Atlantic Avenue El past the Chinatown Portal running to South Station?

A modern soaring 'skyrail' system running from North Station, along the Atlantic Avenue El Route to South Station, then onward through the South End to Dudley along the old orange line route would be quite lovely for 2 billion. Of course it would cast SHADOWS, just like TREES, so maybe we better just stick with super wide asphalt streets full of loud CNG busses, to keep citizens safe from the evils of shadows.
 
Re: Silver Line Phase III

The last thing I'd want in Boston is another El. I visited Chicago about a year ago for the first time, and I found it to be a claustrophobic and depressing experience walking under the El in the loop. It reminded me of life in Boston before the Big Dig, and made me realize that, in the end, despite all the cost and time overruns, depressing the artery was the thing to do.

Also, trees are life, metal is not, even if either one overhead results in shadows.
 
Re: Silver Line Phase III

CDubs said:
I visited Chicago about a year ago for the first time, and I found it to be a claustrophobic and depressing experience walking under the El in the loop. It reminded me of life in Boston before the Big Dig, and made me realize that, in the end, despite all the cost and time overruns, depressing the artery was the thing to do.

Also, trees are life, metal is not, even if either one overhead results in shadows.
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I'm not calling for overhead trains to criss cross Boston but I don't mind the El in Chicago and miss Causeway street with the the old green line. Felt like more of an urban outdoor space back then. I would rather take a walk under the EL in Chicago's loop over a stroll through the what may be the world most expensive median strip aka the Greenway. Then again I prefer the feel (some would say the claustrophobic feel) of Boston's financial district and Lower Manhattan over the wide open sun splashed streets of downtown Phoenix.
 
Re: Silver Line Phase III

commuter guy said:
I'm not calling for overhead trains to criss cross Boston but I don't mind the El in Chicago and miss Causeway street with the the old green line. Felt like more of an urban outdoor space back then. I would rather take a walk under the EL in Chicago's loop over a stroll through the what may be the world most expensive median strip aka the Greenway.
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I do like that urban claustrophobic feel sometimes, and when I think back on how Causeway street used to be - there was something to it that was pretty cool. Before I went to Chicago, part of me would have liked to have that elevated Green Line back. But the openness of that area now has completely overwhelmed me, and the idea of an elevated anything there, or along the Greenway, (save buildings) makes me retch.

commuter guy said:
Then again I prefer the feel (some would say the claustrophobic feel) of Boston's financial district and Lower Manhattan over the wide open sun splashed streets of downtown Phoenix.
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We're in total agreement here. While I like the occassional wide open space, it's not how I like an entire city to be.
 
Re: Silver Line Phase III

I don't understand why the T is "obligated" to build SLIII, but they can create a bogus organization to kill the Arborway restoration!
 
Re: Silver Line Phase III

http://www.mysouthend.com/index.php?ch=news&sc=&sc2=news&sc3=&id=81966

MBTA talks up Silver Line construction
by Rachel Kossman
MySouthEnd.com Contributor
Thursday Oct 16, 2008

In a strong effort to gain support for "Phase III" construction of the Silver Line, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority held yet another informational session for members of the media.

Andrew Brennan, director of Environmental Affairs for the MBTA, spoke to media members about the Phase III Silver Line Project, which would connect Phase I of the Silver Line, which currently runs down Washington Street, with Phase II, which runs from South Station to Boston Logan Airport and the water front. The proposal includes a mile long tunnel that would connect the Silver Line and new, handicap accessible stations underneath the Boylston and Chinatown T stops, in addition to bus only lanes on Marginal Road, which runs parallel to the 93.

While the meeting didn?t introduce very much new information, it spoke directly about the MBTA?s plan for community outreach. In a meeting covered by the South End News last month, the MBTA presented community members with an intensive look at the proposed construction and offered a question and answer opportunity for concerned community members (See "Silver Line Phase III presentation educates, causes outcry," Oct. 1). Among the concerned are those at Emerson University and the large number of businesses and residents in the area, who worry about the noise and disruption that the six-year project would bring to the area.

The project was estimated to cost about $1.2 billion two years ago, and Brennan estimates that with the rising cost of material and inflation, the project may cost as much as $1.5 billion or more. According to Brennan, the MBTA hopes to receive up to sixty percent of the funding from a federal fund entitled "New Starts," and the other forty percent from the MBTA budget. "New Starts" is a federal fund intended for public transportation construction across the United States. There is no guarantee that the city of Boston will receive money from the fund.

The current timetable for the project includes a number of informational sessions for affected neighborhoods throughout the next few weeks, which the MBTA hopes will help gain support for the project, which many are hesitant about.

Brennan estimates that if all goes to plan in terms of creating an environmental review by the end of this year and a preliminary engineering summary by the middle of 2009, construction would begin in late 2010. Although service would start in 2016 according to the current timeline, construction would continue for another full year after that.
 
Re: Silver Line Phase III

It seems like construction costs and lack of profit are the biggest obstacles to new projects on the T. If this is the case, then Boston should take a page out of Tokyo's book:

1) Heedless of debt, expand T service dramatically and improve the image of the system, while under government control.
2) Once the system is in excellent running order and expansions are complete, turn the system over to the private sector, ideally to a company whose business isn't solely trains.
3) Privatization could easily kill the T, but if the new parent company makes money from other means (perhaps a real estate company which could develop land around stations) they could actually keep the T running and slowly, over many years, pay off its enormous debt.

I'm very paranoid about privatization of government businesses in general, and if the T in its current state were sold off, it would collapse. However, Japan managed to privatize its entire national rail system, and the new companies now make a decent profit off of them. If done correctly, it can work. The most important thing to remember, whether federally or privately funded, is that a rail system rarely if ever makes a profit just by operating. A side business is needed, or else it will keep on draining money (not a bad thing...just unpopular).
 
Re: Silver Line Phase III

People need to remember that the early private transit companies made their money not from paying customers but by expanding service out to the suburbs and selling land out there. When the car came along it totally killed this business model though.

I think we could bring it back with some sort of development tax in places with expanded service, but even typing those words hurts since I am pro-development. Still, there has to be some way that the T, or any transit agency, can work with developers to make money. This, however, should not be the only way to go about it.
 
Re: Silver Line Phase III

Speaking of cost overruns at the T, I wonder why the state has not gone after pension and retirement plans of state employees. Don't these guys retire after 20 years with full benefits? That system has always boggled my mind. Why should the taxpayer subsidize civil servants outrageously early retirements?
 
Re: Silver Line Phase III

vanshnookenraggen said:
People need to remember that the early private transit companies made their money not from paying customers but by expanding service out to the suburbs and selling land out there. When the car came along it totally killed this business model though.

I think we could bring it back with some sort of development tax in places with expanded service, but even typing those words hurts since I am pro-development. Still, there has to be some way that the T, or any transit agency, can work with developers to make money. This, however, should not be the only way to go about it.
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Smaller private railways in Japan still do this: Odakyu, Keio, Keisei, Shintetsu, etc. all develop land near their stations. This ensures that they will have people using their trains, and in the meantime, they make a ton of money. Several of these companies also own major department stores (Odakyu and Keio, for instance) which they plop down on top of their stations, ensuring not only passengers but customers. One department store chain, Daimaru, does not own a railway company, but runs a store in almost every major train station in the country. It's incredible.
 
Re: Silver Line Phase III

Japan is a truly astonishing model for transit, from logistics, to maintenance, to planning, to finance. The level of efficiency, given the volume of passengers that are moved each day, is truly mind-blowing. And every station and vehicle that I set foot in was a clean and orderly as a a hotel lobby. Retail in the stations was dense but well defined, in that it didn't interfere with circulation.

I have hundreds of pix from my visit to Kyoto, Osaka, and Tokyo in April of 2006. Wanna see?
 
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Re: Silver Line Phase III

Will do -- I've gotta upgrade my Flickr account first. The main obstacle to getting all of this uploaded (I saved almost a thousand pix), aside from time, has been technology. My ten-year-old Mac is tired, and the pix reside on a pair of external drives connected to it. I just need to grab some winners and upload them with the new Macbook.

Aside from the T, there are object-lessons from Kyoto (Boston's sister city) and Osaka for Fort Point, DTX, and even our mostly wood-framed residential neighborhoods. Plenty of eye-candy as well.
 
Re: Silver Line Phase III

Use photobucket, it's free and accepts virtually unlimited photos up to 1024x768 (if you pay, you get more than 5GB and can resize photos to 4096x3276 or something like that).
 
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