Storrow Drive tunnel replacement

Yeah, I can hear the conversation now:

Engineer 1: Wow, this Strorrow Drive situation is a mess.
Engineer 2: I know. If only we had a resource to guide us through this.
Engineer 1: Wait! Have we've checked with runningahospital.blogspot.com yet?
Engineer 2: Of course! Why didn't we think of that earlier?
 
To quote Arnold Schwarzenegger in Total Recall: "Come on.. don't bullshit me."

Everyone needs Storrow Drive
Everyone Depends on Storrow Drive
Without Storrow Drive ,the City wouldn't work
Without Storrow Drive the Mass Pike would be a parking lot

No matter what, you'd need a Conduit road on the edge of the river. It's unimaginable otherwise.

Bury it.
 
Closing Storrow Drive would have zero effect on the Pike. During rush hour, the Pike flows easily until the Allston Tolls. In fact, the main reason things slow down there is because of the large number of cars coming from one source, Storrow Drive. If Storrow Drive were closed, drivers would have to enter from other locations (I-93, Pru Ctr., Mass Ave.) thus spreading the traffic out and eliminating the bottle neck. I've driven from the North End out to Framingham a few times recently during rush hour, and although the traffic through the Tip is rough, as soon as you hit the Pike exit, you can fly until Allston with almost no traffic around you.

The real problem would be traffic heading in-bound on Storrow to get to I-93, rt. 1, and the McGrath. That traffic could eventually use the "slingshot," but it would take a lot of "training" to get people to take the counter-intuitive route. However, maybe a case could be made that creating a park on Storrow and putting an on ramp heading west on the Pike somewhere downtown is a cheap and politically acceptable alternative to destroying the Esplanade and all-night jackhammering?
 
If you could somehow turn the Back Bay/South End section of the Pike into this, wouldn't that eliminate the need for Storrow Drive entirely? Notice how many off- and on-ramps are efficiently crammed into a small amount of space, by the simple expedient of having all the on-ramps enter from the left.
 
But does that work in Chicago? I though that the biggest problem with that highway was too many ramps? I do think that if Storrow Dr was shut down the Pike would need a few more ramps, especially in the Fenway area, though.
 
If only we had the money that would be a great option, maybe a 6 lane tunnel under the Esplanade, expanding the park with the dirt dug for the tunnels. But I'm also sure that Boston is sick of highway tunnels and won't be building them for a while.
 
OK this is going back a bit but does anyone have the renderings of a new street cantilevered over Storrow Drive. The renderings were a vision for the Back Bay that I believe appeared in the Boston Globe Magazine about 3 years ago. The vision had two mid range towers at the End of Dartmouth Street, with the street terminating at a marina on the Charles. These renderings appeared in the Magazine at the same time that Mark Margulies's Big Bury renderings appeared over the South Bay Interchange. The Big Bury renderings are on the wiki and look like the could be credited to Goody Clancy. Ive checked both of these firms sites for pics, but I can't find any thing.
 
The Globe said:
Storrow Drive project delayed
Impact report deadline missed

By Noah Bierman and Matthew Viser, Globe Staff | November 4, 2007

The rebuilding of the Storrow Drive tunnel - a controversial project that threatens to disrupt life in one of Boston's most beloved riverside parks - is being postponed.

The commissioner of Conservation and Recreation, who controls the rebuilding of the 55-year-old decaying tunnel, has delayed filing a key environmental impact report that would move the project forward. And the lead engineering consultant on the project has told associates to "please hold off on doing any more work on the project unless we specifically ask for something," according to portions of a memo e-mailed to a Globe reporter.

The question for residents who use the Charles River Esplanade walkways and bike paths and the 100,000 commuters who travel the tunnel daily is: How long? Officials do not want to commit to a timetable, even as they acknowledge that the roadway will need millions of dollars in interim repairs.

Richard K. Sullivan Jr., commissioner of conservation and recreation, acknowledged in a telephone interview yesterday that his agency had missed a self-imposed Oct. 1 deadline to file what is known as a Draft Environmental Impact Report with the state. The report is a first step toward designing the reconstruction, and the project cannot go forward until the plan is submitted and reviewed.

"I've said before that I wasn't going to rush to a date to file a DEIR until we had as much information as we could have and we could gather public input," Sullivan said yesterday.

State Representative Martha M. Walz, a Democrat who represents the Back Bay neighborhood, said that "in prior postponements there was always a target date."

"Any significant delay in the project is a cause of concern," she said.

Previous timetables had pegged the start of construction as 2010 at the earliest, she said. But she now fears that delaying the environmental review process will push the project start until at least 2011, possibly later.

"It's unclear to me why we're going to spend millions of dollars in temporary repairs," Walz said. "A long delay just increases the safety risk, increases the need for temporary work, and just delays a decision."

Walz, like many of the residents in her district, opposes a leading construction plan that would place a temporary roadway directly on the Esplanade, paving a road in an area that is popular for strolling and dog-walking.

Walz agreed with Sullivan that the tunnel does not pose an immediate danger to cars or pedestrians.

Sullivan said "there's absolutely going to have to be movement." But he also suggested that intense public protest over the rebuilding plans has contributed to the delay.

"I think we're going to have to take a look at Storrow as it relates to the entire [Charles River] basin," he said, pointing out that aging roads and bridges in the area all need significant structural work. "This is not a project that can just be done in a vacuum.

"All the options have been placed out there . . . Nothing has been taken off the table."

In the meantime, the cost of temporary fixes on Storrow continues to rise. Last week, workers began $450,000 in drainage repairs, Sullivan said. Sullivan said that over the next several years, he is expecting to spend $6 million to $10 million on major interim structural work.

Long-term solutions are estimated to cost $40 million to $65 million.

"There will ultimately have to be a larger project - replacement or otherwise," he said.

The recent spate of delays were first reported in yesterday's Boston Courant.

An Oct. 23 memo from lead engineer Mike McCall said the "permanent rehabilitation project will be postponed indefinitely," and instructed members of the design team to "archive your incomplete work so you can pick up again if ever asked to do so."

Elliott Laffer, who chairs the Storrow Drive Transportation Advisory Committee, said he hopes the delays will not be extensive.

"We'd like them to figure out what they're going to do," he said.

Anna Badkhen of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
Click to expand...
LInk
 
The Back Bay Courant also has a story about this, but of course, their newspaper is not online.

Pity, that.
 
I'm hoping that this indefinite delay means that all options are back on the table, and that the state and the DCR will take the opportunity to really study the issues -- including (gasp!) the possibility of removing Storrow entirely.
 
I don't think Storrow Drive should be removed entirely, but it could be a surface boulevard at least at this one location. Putting in just two stop lights for surface intersections would avoid the need for tunnels. They could be one-phase signals, one signal located for traffic exiting from west-bound Storrow Drive onto Arlington St., and the other located for traffic from Berkeley St onto west-bound Storrow Drive.

A one-phase traffic signal would not back traffic up very much at all, except possibly rush hour when it's backed up anyway.
 
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In fact a traffic light would probably discourage some people from using it which would make traffic better. It certainly would make the park more humane.

Who wants to start a petition?
 
@ckb- I don't want to be Debby Downer, but i think you're asking a bit too much from the state and the DCR specifically. I spent 6 years working for the DCR (they were still DEM when i started) and while i have no experience elsewhere, i would have to presume (and hope) that it is one of the most poorly run departments in the state. Their budget has been cut year after year and is simply spread too thin (they have even turned down donated and inherited land due to lack of resources available to manage them) to accomplish anything worthwhile.

The bigger problem i see is that DCR has shifted their focus in the past few years from a concentration on urban parks to rural parks and forests. Again, the department is spread so thin that they essentially pick one or the other to work on. Right now, most of their money is being invested in to trying to bring our state forest system up to date (and a massive investment in long bike trails of all things).

That being said, I have to agree Charlie_mta and Vanshnookeraggen on this. A few traffic lights would turn some traffic away and make the area a bit more pedestrian friendly. I can't see getting rid of it completely. It could be a reasonable riverside boulevard if it was done correctly (which is a huge demand). There's potential here.

If traffic lights could potentially lower volume and reduce speeds, then I'd be all for it.
 
It shouldn't be that hard to do, just look across the river at Cambridge.
 
I would be very, very happy with no tunnels, all surface roads, replaced Fiedler bridge.

The issues they have with rebuilding/renovating/replacing have as much to do with pacifying the neighbors as it does with finding a logical solution.

I think the only reason they delayed making a decision is they felt they couldn't get the neighborhood to agree on one option (perhaps this is mentioned in the article, I didn't read it).

I think it only makes sense to re-route some of the traffic on to the Esplanade while renovating/rebuilding/replacing the tunnel.

Of course, some residents would end up dying of heart attacks, as a result.

Shame, that.
 
By doing this you'd just be making things more inconvenient for drivers without offering an alternative. I'd compare the way Storrow Drive is used to FDR in NYC and considering the current state of transportation in Boston, putting traffic lights on Storrow would be a nightmare. Before we can make it more inconvenient for people to drive in/around Boston (which I support) we have to provide an equal/better alternative. A commuter line addition here and there, and a green line extension just don't suffice.
 
I'd like to see the traffic counts and where people are coming from before I would want to decide. I think in the long run putting up traffic lights and spending the oney that would have gone into building the tunnel on improved bus and train service to the west would be best.
 
JimboJones said:
I think it only makes sense to re-route some of the traffic on to the Esplanade while renovating/rebuilding/replacing the tunnel.

Of course, some residents would end up dying of heart attacks, as a result.
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Or, this being Massachusetts, we could continue with the status quo (i.e. do nothing) until the tunnel falls in and kills some poor bastard on his way home from work. Will it be appropriate for the families of the deceased to take legal action against the gaggle of effete assholes and chardonnay socialists who stand in opposition to this project?

News flash: Storrow Drive isn't going to go away. Neither is Chicago's Lake Shore Drive or the FDR or West Side Highway in Manhattan.
 
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