Storrow Drive tunnel replacement

They're trying to summon up the chutzpah to ask for another $300 million to replace the tunnel. And trample all over the Esplanade for temporary roads.

The sensible thing to do would be to replace the sprawling ramps with an at-grade intersection. There's no reason for Storrow Drive to be a grade-separated highway. It consumes a lot of the Esplanade already. When it was built, the Mass Pike didn't exist. Now it does.
 
I think we'd be better off with a cut and cover tunnel for the whole thing. Cut and cover isn't that expensive and you could have more parkland or trails or whatever the trendy thing is these days on top of the tunnel. It'd be better for motorists and better for the Esplanade and the Hatch Shell.
 
Matthew said:
They're trying to summon up the chutzpah to ask for another $300 million to replace the tunnel. And trample all over the Esplanade for temporary roads.

The sensible thing to do would be to replace the sprawling ramps with an at-grade intersection. There's no reason for Storrow Drive to be a grade-separated highway. It consumes a lot of the Esplanade already. When it was built, the Mass Pike didn't exist. Now it does.
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Storrow serves the northern end of downtown, govt center, and the financial district. Those are the more critical portions. Cut and cover is probably the best idea-- temporary roads would go over the espanalde, yes, but in the long run it would be gone forever.
 
Kahta said:
Storrow serves the northern end of downtown, govt center, and the financial district. Those are the more critical portions. Cut and cover is probably the best idea-- temporary roads would go over the espanalde, yes, but in the long run it would be gone forever.
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I think when people argue for the removal of storrow they advocate the section between the Allston Tolls and Arlington Street. With the pike right there there is NO REASON for this section to exist, and the only reason it has any traffic is that people don't want to pay the $2 in Allston. That's it, the end.

To get rid of this demand:
1) Remove the Allston tolls, realign the pike along the train tracks, and construct a full interchange on the old CSX yard to Soilders Field Road. Possibly allow inbound traffic to get on/off at Pleasant St, Buick St and Agganis Way.
2) Reconfigure the University Road Storrow exit to be the outbound on-ramp for the pike.
3) Close the Mass Ave/Newbury on ramp, demolish the entire Charlesgate complex. Repurpose Newbury St's dead ends as on/off ramps. Rebuild the bridge over the pike only for inbound egress and access to Comm Ave. Even better would be to lower the pike in this section, allowing for the Muddy to run above it in a aqueduct and reconstruct Charlesgate as it was originality intended, but this would be far more $$$.
4) Build on/off ramps somewhere in Bay Village.

Overall volume shouldn't change, so there should be no problem repurposing Storrows major points of egress for the pike. The traffic would still be the same, just coming off a different highway.
 
davem said:
2) Reconfigure the University Road Storrow exit to be the outbound on-ramp for the pike.
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This would work for car-only traffic, no trucks or buses, due to the low clearance of the Grand Junction railroad bridge over Soldiers Field Road.
 
http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/...jor-artery-out-of-boston-to-be-closed-nights/

State transportation officials say a section of Storrow Drive outbound is scheduled to close from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. on weeknights starting Monday and continuing for several months so a crumbling tunnel can be repaired.
The westbound lanes will be closed from the Hatch Shell to Clarendon Street, while one eastbound lane may also require closure for a shorter period of time.

The repairs are estimated to cost $3.1 million
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Dam that is going to cost me. I take storrow west home every night at 2am.
 
The tunnel is for the eastbound side, so why is the westbound side the most affected?
 
BussesAin'tTrains said:
The tunnel is for the eastbound side, so why is the westbound side the most affected?
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They claim that the problem with the tunnels is the pavement above them is too heavy. So they're ripping up the pavement and replacing it with lighter pavement.

Does this sound dubious to anyone else?

They also mention replacing granite curbing. Maybe the Globe got it wrong and they're actually removing it. But if not that's pretty amazing, because it's f'ing dangerous. I said it before and I'll say it again: the DCR needs to be stripped of control of all its "parkways" before it gets more people killed.
 
It's indeed ridiculous that DCR still controls any "parkways."

It's also ridiculous that they are called "parkways" as if people are going for casual, recreational rides in the park. They are highways, plain and simple, may as well accept it and move on.
 
A highway alongside a park needs more attention to aesthetics than other highways do. It makes sense to trade off some modern highway standards in order to respect the park.

(What is so bad about granite as a curbing material, by the way?)
 
Storrow Drive is a limited access freeway. We know that because the legislature directed the MDC to build a limited access freeway in 1949. A parks agency has no business running a limited access freeway. If MassDOT owned it you could still advocate for aesthetics, but at least you'd have an agency that kept things in context rather than ignorantly elevating form above function and safety.

Traffic safety can be very counterintunitive. If you're a parks agency you don't have strong expertise, established procedures, or a strong culture in traffic safety. You don't have strong (or any) FHWA oversight. So it's easy for you to do things for "safety" or "aesthetics" that out of context seem like a good idea but that in context are horrible and dangerous. Just look at the preposterous and arbitrary DCR speed limits.

The problem is not that the curb is granite, it's that it's a curb. The green book prohibits curbs on freeways and other high-speed roadways, and with good reason. It has a destabilizing effect on vehicles that come into contact with it and often pulls vehicles out of the traversable way and into areas frequented by pedestrians.

Every sensible roadway design manual out there calls for no curb on high-speed roadways. If absolutely necessary for drainage purposes, it allows a maximum of four-inch traversable or mountable curb. The DCR's proprietary design manual calls for six to eight inch non-traversable barrier curbing. Their reasoning is that it will slow drivers down because they will see how dangerous it is. This is what happens when a parks agency designs highways. Roadways purposefully made more dangerous both for motorists and nearby pedestrians out of the well-intentioned belief that it will look pretty and slow cars down, and, well, slower's safer, right? Personally, I think cars traveling 60 mph and hitting a guard rail that absorbs the impact is better than cars traveling 40 mph and being vaulted into a park full of pedestrians.
 
Or maybe Storrow Drive should be right-sized into a proper, permeable boulevard which is appropriate to a park. We have the Pike nowadays for high speed commuting. What is the point of Storrow Drive being a limited access freeway? To provide cheapskate drivers a way to cheat the tolls on the Pike? Why should that be a goal of MassDOT or DCR?

And to spend $300 million to do the long term repairs on the tunnel so that people can cheat tolls on the Pike for the next 50 years? Why in the world is this even being considered?
 
Removing Storrow is a separate issue on which we're probably not going to agree. But I will say that Storrow Drive takes you to a totally different area of the city than the Pike.

Also, it is physically impossible to use Storrow to avoid paying any tolls. Ostensibly the way you'd use Storrow to avoid tolls would be to get off at Allston and take Storrow. But there are no tolls between the Allston barrier tolls and the Ted and at that point you've already paid the Allston tolls. The number of people who could actually save money is tiny and their potential benefit is very slim. Perhaps if you lived in Allston and worked at the Pru you could do this, but I'd bet that the real-world occurrences of this are in the single digits per day, probably negligible, and possibly zero.
 
Isn't the speed limit on Storrow Drive 35 mph? Or maybe 40? It's not a high-speed road, in any event.
 
Ron Newman said:
Isn't the speed limit on Storrow Drive 35 mph? Or maybe 40? It's not a high-speed road, in any event.
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A spade is a spade and a road is what it is, not what it is arbitrarily declared to be. The numbers on the signs say 40; that limit achieves zero to nine percent compliance rate depending on the area and has no empirical basis.

The 85th percentile is around 60 and the 50th percentile is in the low to mid fifties. Engineering and traffic safety principles dictate a proper limit of 55-60. Legislatively, it's a limited access freeway. Statutorily, it's an unposted prima facie 50 mph zone. Only administratively is it deemed a parkway with a 40 mph limit; that has been found arbitrary, capricious, and unenforceable by the Appellate Division of the District Court where it has been properly argued and briefed.
 
Storrow Drive should have stoplights. Lots and lots of stoplights. Get rid of all of the tunnels, over passes and pedestrian bridges and make it a street. Simplify the whole thing. Yes, it will move slower. That is the point.
 
A spade is a spade and a road is what it is, not what it is arbitrarily declared to be.
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Indeed, that is why the road should be narrower. One of the biggest mistakes made over the past century of street design has been to create them "extra wide" and then post low speed limits to make up for it. It's as if road engineers simply did not realize that making wide roads invites speeding. Many of them are still in denial, and continue to design local roads to interstate highway standards. The target speed limit must be reflected in the width and design of the road, or else people will simply ignore the signs.

Storrow Drive should have stoplights. Lots and lots of stoplights. Get rid of all of the tunnels, over passes and pedestrian bridges and make it a street.
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This is what we should do.
 
Typology study: Lake Shore Drive, Chicago.
 
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