Storrow Drive tunnel replacement

This is my understanding of the history of development in that area:

The buildings preceded the Esplanade. Pre-Esplanade, the Charles River was more of a smelly marsh to be avoided and the building were built to face away from the river. When the Esplanade was formed the new parkland likely went right up to the rear of the residential buildings thus precluding construction of another row of buildings facing the river. Storrow Dr. was subsequently constructed through the Esplanade parkland.
 
Quite strange then that when building the esplanade they didn't think to build another row of parkfront riverfront buildings. Even before Storrow Drive the way the nearest buildings faced away would have really kept the park from meeting it's potential as a great public space.
 
This was addressed in the book, actually. The residents of the buildings objected to anything blocking their views (sound familiar?) and they worked to keep anything from being built there.
 
Shepard said:
Quite strange then that when building the esplanade they didn't think to build another row of parkfront riverfront buildings. Even before Storrow Drive the way the nearest buildings faced away would have really kept the park from meeting it's potential as a great public space.
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I think it looks wonderful the way the picture presented. The grass acting as a giant common backyard for all those brownstone must have looked wonderful. If the NIMBY's objected and prevented another row of buildings and survived to today, I would have not find this as of one of the times the NIMBY's ruined something again.

That picture roughly put into picture of what, if Storrow can ever be buried or closed without issue (I don't advocate just closing it without something like the Turnpike set up to replace its role), I mean when said "River|Park|Brownstone."

A downsized Storrow is still major road. It still means River|Park|Road|Brownstone. It still mean none of the building's elegance can be intertwined with the river and the park. Thus, if Storrow is going to be modified, it should either be shutdown (with mitigation) or buried (as some planed proposed in the past).

As a third idea that take account of cost while still reaching the mission of seamless connection to the Back Bay with the River: partial decking (type of structures like a really wide pedestrian bridge than full burying). If done at strategic places like the BU Beach and Hatch Shell area, it would give that feel without the full cost the other approaches.
 
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ant8904 said:
That picture roughly put into picture of what, if Storrow can ever be buried or closed without issue (I don't advocate just closing it without something like the Turnpike set up to replace its role), I mean when said "River|Park|Brownstone."
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Politically, I'm sure that's the only way it would every be closed.

A downsized Storrow is still major road. It still means River|Park|Road|Brownstone. It still mean none of the building's elegance can be intertwined with the river and the park. Thus, if Storrow is going to be modified, it should either be shutdown (with mitigation) or buried (as some planed proposed in the past).
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I don't think burying it will work in the tidal land fill. It will either be downsized (West Side Highway'd) or done away with.

As a third idea that take account of cost while still reaching the mission of seamless connection to the Back Bay with the River: partial decking (type of structures like a really wide pedestrian bridge than full burying). If done at strategic places like the BU Beach and Hatch Shell area, it would give that feel without the full cost the other approaches.
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That's along the lines of the Esplanade Association's master plan.
 
If it's severely downgraded it wouldnt be so bad. Basically close Storrow wholesale and then upgrade Back St from an alley to an actual street.

River|Esplanade|Cycle Track|Parallel Parking|WB Lane|EB Lane|EB Lane*|Brownstones

*There are two EB and one WB lane because Beacon St+Bay State Road fill the same roll, and are well under capacity.

Storrow from Levrett Circle to Arlington will have to likely stay for ever, however it could be downgraded from six lanes to four if the rest is removed.
 
When Harvard helps add more at-grade ped crossings to Soldier's Field Road it will show that it is more than possible to do so on roads like that and Storrow.
 
What if you could bury storrow and then turn the alley into a one way street. So you have River | Park (complete with wide running and bikelanes | Brownstowns (mix of all residential and residential above restaurants).

This additional housing could go a long way to helping financing the actual cost of burial. State-City- private developer work together to finance and build. Sell all the condos for $2mil and you can make up a couple hundred million of new funds for the project right there.
 
I think Storrow's going to need a slow step-down in usage before people become comfortable with getting rid of it.

1. End Pike tolls for Allston-inbound and outbound-to-Allston travel. The is THE induced demand trap for Storrow: people ducking the Pike tolls to get downtown. It would de-clog the road considerably if those people were using the Pike's Copley ramps instead. This is a no-build fix, so of course they're not doing it. And don't appear to be doing it with the high-speed tolls either.

2. Blow up the Bowker. Big induced demand trap #2.

3. More Pike WB exits in downtown. Lighten the traffic flow on Storrow in the WB direction where the (free) Pike is by far the better alternative. If Storrow has to be load-bearing, at least limit it to EB where the Pike can't have more exits added.


Other than the Pike exits, you're not building anything here. It's just waiving tolls and doing a demo on that eyesore. If Charlesgate got smart-timed lights the Kenmore exit and Charlesgate ramps can just be left as-is for a few years until some later funding commitment allows for more useful re-sculpting. Do these 3 things NOW.


Then...start re-sculpting.

1. Compact the land-wasting Kenmore interchange. Storrow chews up almost 300 ft. of width around the ramps and forces the Esplanade path into a dank, ugly, tight squeeze next to zooming cars. Pack the WB carriageway next to the existing EB one instead of swinging it way out by the water, do lower-profile ramps to/from Kenmore and WB. Carve out the hillside median underneath the Mass Ave. bridge, move the WB carriageway there, move the WB Mass Ave. offramp to the right side of the road, and go with a shorter EB merge from Kenmore. This reclaims enough parkland to keep the Esplanade at constant width from the BU side to the Back Bay side without disappearing in the middle any longer.

2. Lane-drop the 6-lane portion of the road between Kenmore and Copley to 4 lanes + modest shoulder. The extra lanes are no longer needed after all the Kenmore weaving is straightened out, and the shrinkage adds a little bit of buffer to the walking path.

3. Shift the entire roadway near Beacon Park closer to the Pike Viaduct. There's 20-25 feet of dead space to the Pike side on the straightaway behind BU West Campus. Shift the carriageways over here to trade that space to the river side, buying a little more buffer for the bike path. Enough that you won't get soaked and covered in dirt kicked up by passing cars, and so less people will be afraid to use that path as means for getting to Harvard and Allston. More potential space around the Beacon Park curve if the Pike is straightened here and the western third of the Viaduct gets demolished. I would do a full EB breakdown lane here so the road doesn't have to shut down to back out a stuck truck from the bridge. Won't tame the squeeze around the Cambridge St. exit ramp, but if it's only that few hundred feet where it pinches it'll still be a massive improvement.

4. Compact the roadway near Charles Circle. This is another 300 ft. wide waste of land. Unite the two carriageways after they spread underneath the Longfellow by getting rid of the center MGH lots, easing out the curves, go with lower-profile WB ramps to Charles circle, and move the WB Charles Circle exit to the right-hand side. Adds more land to Ebersol Field and limits the squeeze in parkland to just the unmodifiable space under the Longfellow.


How many acres of parkland does this reclaim from the clutches of the zombie MDC? A hundred? More? It reconnects isolated segments of the Esplanade in Bowker-land and makes the ugliest, road-abutting path segments a little more tolerably buffered. And it's all non-scary construction that doesn't threaten anyone worried about losing the road.


Maybe 20 years after the induced demand gets stripped out and the parkland reclaimed people will get comfortable enough to downgrade it to a 2-lane park road west of Charles Circle and trade in one of the carriageways for a Riverbank subway or something. But I think it will take decades to acclimate people to the idea, so the easiest things they can do now are the no-builds and cost-savers (like demoing the Bowker so it doesn't need $5M in duct tape every 5 years). Then target the reshaping and parkland reclamations. Then get people used to that before getting serious about the full downgrade.
 
What's the argument against the whole road going into a tunnel box like some have proposed for a subway here?
 
Shepard said:
What's the argument against the whole road going into a tunnel box like some have proposed for a subway here?
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$$$$, and many other things. But let's start with $$$$. . .


Width: To put the Blue Line in a tunnel from Charles to Kenmore you would only need the width of the existing EB carriageway. 2 subway tracks are narrower than 2 traffic lanes, so the entire tunnel footprint walls and all could fit on what's now just the width of the road pavement and center guardrail.

To sink the whole roadway in a tunnel of that length it would have to be considerably wider than its current footprint to fit tunnel walls, 2 tunnel bores with center load-bearing divider, wider lane width than what the road currently has for vehicle safety in an enclosed space, and adequate disabled space for somebody to leave their car and walk along the wall to get out. And that's assuming MassHighway doesn't get carried away with adding capacity as if they can do Interstate design standards.


Height: ~12 ft. is the de facto standard clearance for new subway construction (Red Line/NYC Subway dimensions). 16 ft. is the standard clearance for new state highway construction. Taller tunnel = deeper dig + more concrete + more weight. Even if they went restricted-clearance, a road's going to have to be a hell of a lot taller than the existing Storrow tunnel.


Depth: How does one get underneath the Muddy River in a tunnel? In a subway they can take the descending roadbed cut around Mass Ave. and use that as the underground incline into a deep-bore tunnel with roof reinforcement for passing under water, then stay in that deep bore for deviating off the street grid and slipping under the corners of a few building foundations on alignment into Kenmore. Subway cars can do pretty steep underground grades. In an auto tunnel you are much more limited in steepness of mid-tunnel grades. So you either have to start descending way earlier, or this is as far as you're going with that tunnel segment and you must emerge on the surface to cross the river.


Ventilation: Don't have to ventilate a subway tunnel. Do have to ventilate any auto tunnel of sufficient length, including shallow ones like the Pike air rights. Ventilation equipment takes up a lot of space and requires a lot of equipment. Gotta put the blowers on the ceiling, gotta have surface exhaust stations (which the Beacon brownstone dwellers are gonna love!).


Waterproofing: The auto tunnel, being so much wider, is going to pass perilously close to the lagoons and require much more invasive waterproofing than a subway tunnel that only uses the EB carriageway hugging the Back St. wall. An auto tunnel dug several feet deeper than a subway tunnel hits more groundwater. An auto tunnel that has to maintain the integrity of several layers of pavement is going to have more complicated drainage than a subway tunnel where the porous ballast creates its own center drainage channel in the tunnel floor. As mentioned, auto tunnel is also a nightmare around the Muddy River outflow.


Recycling of infrastructure: A subway can recycle the existing auto tunnel verbatim. It's a 10 ft. clearance at the portals, but that's in the middle of an incline. 12 ft. subway height is achievable by scraping down the pavement layers. Then they can rehab the rest of the structure. Probably even space for an Esplanade station right by the current exit ramp. Any roadway build is going to require nuking this entire tunnel and starting from scratch. Subway can also recycle parts of the roadbed where it drops deeper into the cut around Mass Ave. as start of the incline that slips under the Muddy River and on trajectory to Kenmore.


Esplanade impacts: None with a subway, because it's only on the EB carriageway hugging the Back St. wall. Whereas building a wider-footprint auto tunnel with more complicated ventilation and drainage is going to require destroying several more feet of Esplanade in order to "save" it. That's a tough sacrifice even if temporary, because what gets sculpted back is not going to be the same as the old trees and structures it destroys. And the mitigation costs, especially to the lagoons, during construction are very high.




I don't think it's possible at all to bury the road. It can't be done for less than a couple billion. You'd almost be better off over-spending on a few Worcester Line duck-unders so Pike EB can get matching sets of downtown ramps.

The issue here isn't limited to an ugly road. It's also a very poorly-performing road with off-the-charts induced demand. How does this situation improve remaking it anew as a higher-capacity induced demand trap? Do we want more traffic so there has to be a brand new Bowker built off this tunnel? Do we want to asphyxiate Leverett Circle and Charles Circle even more with traffic that should be using the Pike instead? What is the transportation goal here? Yes...you get your parkland back, but what is the parkway's raison d'etre in that plan? It's murky enough what that is today in legitimate demand vs. induced demand. But how do you hang a Little Dig's price tag and remediation on this without answering that question?

Now, for what it's worth I think a Riverbank subway--on raw transit needs--is pretty damn low on the priorities list. It's useful but there's so many other things to do that I doubt enough of them will be built to land this in the Top 5 before we're all dead. Its existence as Storrow replacement is mainly a bartering tool: if trading off road capacity for a total or partial (2-lane slow drive between Charles and BU) removal, the ground rules are most likely going to be that lost capacity must offset with increased transit capacity. It's the only way all stakeholders can swallow this. But the goals in that trade are pretty clear-cut and coherent: net reduction in total MassDOT infrastructure clogging the Charles Basin, restoration of the Esplanade to something approaching its former glory, traffic reshaping to different corridors. Everybody gets something substantial in that compromise, which is how you justify both the build (subway) and the demolition (highway, or highway-turns-to-street) on cost and impacts.

I'm not sure what needs are served to float an auto tunnel replacing a road that may already be surplus to a requirement or at minimum needs a major-major rethinking of its function as badly as its form. The parks people are happy, but what's the transportation component...sustainance of a road that maybe doesn't deserve to exist on the merits as a highway? How does that sell the idea?
 
With all this newly thought of development happening, it's a wonder how people are able to get around!! :unsure:
 
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