Except. you're pretty wrong here.
I invite you to read the documents online on the DOT's website because you'll understand just about why I am telling you are wrong. Actually I invite anyone to do so to familiarize themselves with the project.
I'm also happy to meetup with anyone in person to discuss my knowledge of the project. I've been to all the meetings and have given a lot of input. I probably know more about this project than anyone I know, except for the folks at MassDOT I've met by taking part in meetings. This is not "my ego is bigger than yours", it is just simple "I've been there, so I know" post.
We don't have the dual-mode buses to run a third branch from the Waterfront Tunnel, and the project doesn't include buying any.
Yes you are right that the project does not include procurement of new buses this go around, however in the future procurement of SL buses, it will be included. And since many SL buses (the original ones) are end of life, new buses will be bought very shortly. (within the next 2 years, from my understanding)
You claim there's no dual mode buses.. you're incorrect. According to project manager, the MBTA has 8 dual mode buses at the garage on standby. These buses will be used for the new SL6 service.
Also because we are not purchasing any new buses, is what makes this project very cheaply done. Buses are expensive. And inflated costs on vehicle procurement would have made this project much more expensive than it actually is. So no procurement = stays within project criteria which is "low cost".
The busway goes where the Grand Junction ROW goes - not where the demand is. So you get Eastern Avenue station in a mostly industrial area a block from any housing, Box District station which has a decent catchment but is not well positioned to serve north of Crescent Avenue (but is ideal for the new upscale developments next door), Downtown Chelsea in a decent spot, and Mystic Mall which gets Market Basket but zero residential. There was an on-street alternative with minimal infrastructure cost that would have ran on Central Street and Broadway, but it was inexplicably dismissed.
While you are correct it doesn't go where the demand is, it wasn't dismissed by the MBTA. They gave us options of 'on street alternatives', which I am happy to post here, but the community didn't want them. We wanted faster service than on street buses could provide. We felt that Chelsea streets were already clogged enough with traffic that adding yet another bus route to surface streets was not in the best interests of the project and that the busway was good to go.
And this goes for me too, if a on-street alternative was given, I would have a stop about 50 feet from my front door on Central Ave. The planned and constructed path via a busway makes it almost a 1/3 of a mile from my front door. But I understand the issues with the current bus routes and city streets to understand that the busway at its current location was the way to go.
You bring up "developments" in this thread a few times. Do you even know what is happening behind the mall? Yeah a 300+ unit residential complex is going up where the Chelsea Clock building is now. Did you also know that DSM isn't finished with the mall, they plan on adding some mixed use to that shopping mall. Did you know the FBI building is going up, along with yet another hotel? West Chelsea is up and coming, and in a few years much of that industrial area will be gone and developed if city leaders have their way. Today, it may seem like Mystic Mall Station will be under underutilized, but in the near future it won't be. That's why a station is going there.. for the future planning.
I'll also add that the same Eastern Ave station. Today.. a wasteland of industrial areas. Tomorrow, lots of stuff can and will go here. But currently there's no transit here except the unreliable 112. Eastern Ave Station will provide better transit to this area to spur the growth city planners want to see. And it's already happening.. a hotel went up on Central @ Eastern. Something is going up on the old Enterprise car lot, and from the rumblings I hear at city hall, more is coming. Eastern Ave in the next 10 years will change a lot. The BRT station is just the beginning of that change.
During rush hour, it's often a half hour or more from SS to Logan. Evening traffic at the merge onto I-90 is murderous. Now you're adding a longer route with two additional mixed-traffic segments, a movable bridge, and a string of grade crossings in downtown Chelsea (that we already know are a major problem with N/R Line trains). It'll easily take an hour many evenings for a bus to fight its way from downtown to Mystic Mall.
This is incorrect also. It would be 10-20 minutes from Mystic Mall to South Station during rush hour. Please see the documents online for exact numbers on travel times.
What time is lost on roads where there is mixed traffic will be made up for in the new busway, the bypass road, and the South Boston Transitway.
You bring up 'at grade' crossings. Did you know that all of these crossings will be signalized to give the BRT line a priority over these intersections? This will solve this problem.
Now look at the #111 bus.
I do. I ride this bus at least twice a day, six days a week.
It travels up Broadway, Washington, Sagamore, Garfield - the dense residential and commercial spine of Chelsea. It's scheduled at 15 to 25 minutes Haymarket - Bellingham Square during rush, and while it's not great reliability it almost never takes an hour. It has five-minute headways at rush, some of the best midday headways on the system, and connects with the Orange and Green Lines.
You're forgetting about one thing, it's jammed packed. What good is a bus that runs every five minutes when each bus is so jammed half the passengers can't get on? Even at rush, we'll have 3,4,5 buses all arrive at the same time and it's still not enough. Some 111 Woodlawn's, and some 111C's.. it doesn't matter. It's just jammed all the time.
I will ride at 10-11pm at night and it's still like this. And it's even worse because head ways now run between 7-14 minutes. So many passengers, not enough buses.
Which goes to my point above, adding another bus route that uses existing streets and generally follows similar bus routes is not the answer anymore. We need a way to move people out of Chelsea faster that didn't involve existing bus routes or city streets.
(It'll actually be quicker to take 111-OL-RL-SL to the Seaport than the SL many days.)
Nope, you're wrong again. I often have to go to the Seaport Convention Center. It can take me upwards of an hour to get to the Seaport from Downtown Chelsea. And that is if you can get on a 111, or it's not delayed in some manner and make all your connections in a timely matter (and have no wait times at transfer points longer than 5 minutes)
And there's stuff in the docs online to support why you are wrong.
The #116 and 117 give Chelsea a fast, high-frequency connection to the Blue Line and the East Boston commercial centers.
"Fast" and "high frequency", you're funny. Do you even ride these routes?
yeah it's higher frequency than most MBTA bus routes, it's snarls to a snails pace. Much of it has to do with high ridership. The 116/117 will stop at just about every stop between Maverick and Chelsea Center to let people on or off. A normal 7 minute trip from Maverick to Chelsea Center (in zero stops and no traffic), can take up to 20 on very packed buses.
So I renew my question to you, how good is a jammed packed bus on high frequency when you can't even get on to ride, or a simple ride takes twice as long because it has to stop every 700 feet or so to let someone on or off.
This is an example of poor transit planning.
I really disagree with this statement. This is your opinion of the project, and isn't even close to mine. This is SMART transit planning.
The Silver Line extension was a gubernatorial fiat with no basis in demand analysis. There was not a "what will benefit Chelsea best" study; there was a SL-only alternatives analysis clearly weighted to produce what had already been decided - visible infrastructure at low cost, actual usefulness be damned.
Do you have anything to back up your claims? I have plenty to prove that you were wrong. Do I need to scan in my meeting notes and post them on here? However, the docs online do a fine job at debunking your comments.
This is what is best for Chelsea, as I said before, it's not like this was done in a vacuum. I sat thru enough of these community meetings to know better. The community wanted this, and wanted it done in this manner, plus it was met with very little opposition.
There was no analysis of an Airport-Mystic Mall or Airport-Wellington SL route, with only limited through-routing to South Station. (An Airport-Mystic Mall route, busway or no, could support very high frequencies and silver-quality service with a minimal number of any type of bus).
You're wrong again. Many of the original analysis was left over from the old Urban Ring project, where much of this analysis was done. They also polled many Chelsea residents, and we had those community meetings to discuss this. SO please, show me how you have come to the conclusion that no analysis was done.
There was no analysis of improving or silvering the #111 and/or the #116 and 117.
The 111 has been improved. Please see "Key Bus Routes" project for the improvements. There's not much more we can do these routes, and adding more buses is not the answer. Let's look at the 111C for an example, this was an improvement added a few years ago. Did it help? A little. BUT not nearly enough to fully meet the transit needs of the residents of Chelsea. And adding more buses just is not the answer for this route. As I said above, we can have 3,4,5 buses all arrive at the same time, and there's still not enough service for all the passengers. You can only add so many buses before they all log jam up (which happens very frequently on the 111).
But please, go ahead. If you have ideas on how to better improve these routes without taking city streets for bus lanes (which are useless), or adding more service, I'm all ears.
There was no analysis of increasing #112 frequencies to every 10 minutes or less for a reliable OL connection.
First off, this just out of the scope of the project. The only item that came up was re-routing the 112 to use the bypass road in East Boston to service Airport instead of Wood Island Station
Secondly, do you even ride the 112? I do and it sucks. Adding more buses to this route is not the answer also. The problem with the 112 is the route itself, it's just too long and back tracks too many times and any sort of delay on any of the streets it services will delay this bus (like it often does). But since it services Admiral's Hill and Quigley Hospital, it's unlike this is going to change any time soon unless they break the route up into two routes.
There wasn't even honest consideration of on-street routings in Chelsea.
Really? Were even you at the community meetings? I don't think you were, because we had a vote on the on street alternatives, and as I said above, we as a community decided the busway was the best thing for us. If I recall, each of the on street alternatives netting maybe two votes (out of a room full of 30 or so people), while the busway was the clear winner in votes.
What more honesty would you like to be done? I'm all ears.
No consideration of doing 24-hour service to give Eastie and Chelsea an affordable all-night connection to downtown (since it's not easily walkable or bikable).
Come on dude, who are you trying to fool? We can't even keep what existing 24 hour service we have running (and if baker had his way, it would have been gone already). It's always on the chopping block. And you want a small segment of the riders to get 24 hour service while the others get one? Right.
They're even building the busway with no radiused street crossings, thus preventing something like additional frequencies from the #111 route taking the busway to Airport instead of the Tobin.
Because routing the 111 bus over the busway isn't apart of the scope of the project. This is for NEW service, not moving existing service to a bus way. And besides, if you routed the 111 over the busway, how would you do that? And FWIW, it wouldn't be the 111 anymore, it would be what is being done now, the SL6. And for the sheer fact that if you look at the routing for the 111, it would add so much more travel time, riders would stick to the original 111 anyways, so what good is that?
This is $34 million being spent on a fundamentally flawed BRT scheme that offers only marginal benefit to Chelsea and actively hurts a major development site and the region's airport. It distracts from the fact that Everett, Chelsea, and Revere west of 60 need real transit solutions. It's politics trumping planning at its worst.
Really? please share your sources for believing such nonsense. How does it hurt a major development site? How does it hurt the regional airport? I'd like to know.
I probably am the best person who will criticize the state for bad planning, but even I feel that this isn't so. But I also speak as a Chelsea resident, and daily Chelsea bus rider. So I know far more and have strong feelings than most people do.
Look, I want a train. I do. I don't want to have to ride a bus anywhere, but looking at projects like the GLX and long forgotten projects like the Urban Ring, I can't help but think that we're really getting what we want in a very fast manner. I can't say that about GLX or any other project the T has done in recent years. And Chelsea needs better service NOW.. not 10-20 years like how long the GLX has taken to be built. We just can't wait for that to happen. We need it NOW.
