Silver Line to Chelsea

To what extent - and how - will Chelsea riders use this service? Connect to downtown via the Blue Line, for example? Is this more convenient for the majority of Chelsites than the existing bus service?
 
Shepard said:
To what extent - and how - will Chelsea riders use this service? Connect to downtown via the Blue Line, for example? Is this more convenient for the majority of Chelsites than the existing bus service?
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A thousand times yes. The existing bus routes are all overcapacity. Some will xfer at Airport to Blue, but the key is that this is now connects Chelsea to the Red Line/South Station area in addition to the new job center in the Seaport. Heck, it connects Chelsea to the Airport itself - a connection we never had previously requiring long circuitous routes on buses & the BL or walking great distances despite the airport being literally next to us.

The SLG projection estimates that 23% of Chelsea's *total population* will ride the service daily.
 
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Plus the Seaport is a growing jobs center. The silver line connects directly to the Seaport.
 
I feel like this has slipped under the radar, particularly when compared to the attention that the GLX gets. Though, I suppose thats a good thing. I'm ambivalent about the SL in general, but I must say the dedicated busway looks pretty sharp.
 
datadyne007 said:
Some will xfer at Airport to Blue, but the key is that this is now connects Chelsea to the Red Line/South Station area in addition to the new job center in the Seaport.
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Considering that transferring to the BL will be faster unless your traveling to the Seaport or RL from SS and further south (and that's assuming no congestion in TWT or the Seaport), I would argue, the blue line transfer is a bigger deal than the a red line transfer.

Heck, it connects Chelsea to the Airport itself - a connection we never had previously requiring long circuitous routes on buses & the BL or walking great distances despite the airport being literally next to us.
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SLG will not stop at the Airport itself, but rather the Airport BL station.
 
DominusNovus said:
I feel like this has slipped under the radar, particularly when compared to the attention that the GLX gets. Though, I suppose thats a good thing. I'm ambivalent about the SL in general, but I must say the dedicated busway looks pretty sharp.
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A bit. Now that it has a start of service date less than a year from now associated with the project that will give much more focus to the project.

Everyone in state and municipal government will be looking to chalk up a "win" on this one.
 
A single tube two lane dynamically tolled HOT tunnel would be an interesting option. Massporrt could probably pay partly with PFCs the way Dulles has paid for the DC Metro Silver Line
 
The problem is there's no space for it without expensive on/off ramps.

The East Boston side looks simple, just drop Chelsea St down and rework the frontage roads to move traffic further south. But the Chelsea side is more complicated. A simple tube would portal around Cottage St and this would dump all the traffic on residential side streets; not a promising offer. Traffic up Eastern wouldn't be too bad but going west you'd run into problems.

Besides if you are going to spend the money it would need to have space for cars and transit, i.e. 6 lanes. That seems to be asking too much. If anything just build it for transit/emergency vehicles instead. Making driving less easy would boost transit. A simple 2 lane tunnel with no fancy ramps wouldn't even be that costly.
 
What stops them from building a portal in the massive parking lot on the chelsea side?
 
A two lane transit tunnel is worth looking at if the line ever gets converted to light rail, but the obvious (and much cheaper) solution is to negotiate with the coast guard to set a schedule for openings, and not open the bridge fully every time. (Organization>Electronics>Tunnels)
 
Looks like there's plenty of room for a tunnel portal north of Bellingham Street along the east side of the new busway.
 
Somewhere in crazy transit pitches, I think it is, is F Lines extensive claims that tunnels here are a no go because it's all filled land. Not saying he's right but this has been debated there a lot already.
 
FK4 said:
Somewhere in crazy transit pitches, I think it is, is F Lines extensive claims that tunnels here are a no go because it's all filled land. Not saying he's right but this has been debated there a lot already.
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That seems like a pretty strange argument.

If we cannot tunnel through filled land, then I guess the Green Line in Back Bay; the Orange Line from Back Bay to Mass Ave and the Seaport Busway all don't exist?

And if the concern is using a TBM, modern TBM do bore through soft fill -- it has been demonstrated all over the world (including under Day Boulevard in South Boston just 5 years ago).
 
I think his claim is that it is too expensive because the groundwater levels require major pump/drainage systems when tunnels are in filled land, but for such a short tunnel it seems to me that shouldn't be a project killer.
 
Not to mention that a tunnel under water should have more trouble with water... under the water, rather than under landfill.
 
Ah, now's a great time for us to revisit the Chelsea Subway...

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