Urban Ring

[Matthew]

Well maybe I'm operating with a different definition of RAD, but I see it as avoiding these issues of where the cars are stored by reassigning them every time they turn around. You don't need extra storage space because you send them right back out on which ever line needs it next. Of course that judgement has to be made based upon what's coming up next in the Central Subway.

I just think a little more flexibility would make these issues go away. And that means losing the adherence to a fixed schedule - in favor of pure headway driven operation.

For example just today I was on a "B" that got held up for "headway adjustment" to let a "D" pass it. Why couldn't that be worked out at Gov't Center, switching destinations if necessary?

 

[omaja]

Well the point of the article that Henry linked to is that Moscow's Circle is too small in diameter, and therefore non-competitive with the radial lines for significant distances. And I think the Urban Ring plans fall in the same boat. Unless your destination or origin happens to lie near the Ring.

Seems like that analysis really understates the usefulness of circle lines, though. For one, I'm not sure that it is accurate to state that Moscow's circle is uncompetitive with the radial lines because it serves a unique function. The value of a circle line is its ability to disperse transfer traffic outside of the congested central interchanges - in addition to linking key local traffic points that do not coincide with the radial routings.

Also, in some cases it may be faster or more pleasant (or both) to go a bit out of the way via the circle in a direct, one- or two-transfer routing than to traverse the saturated core stations. The total distance traveled is only part of the equation. Since the line doesn't have the same operational difficulties to overcome as a radial line, a circle can be more efficient and make up the distance differential quite easily.

 

[Shepard]

Here's an OL question, since the subject was brought up a few posts ago.

I understand the potentially devastating implications for Forest Hills/SW Corridor of branching the OL from Back Bay towards Allston and beyond. But couldn't we, for a not too great additional investment, create a new through line - OL equipment but probably colored a different designation - that essentially runs from Allston through Back Bay to South Station and through to the Seaport? This would share track with today's OL only between Back Bay and TMC and have no headway implications for either Forest Hills or Oak Grove.

Perhaps it's a moot point because this would be better as a DMU/EMU line, although I'm not sure how such an arrangement could continue through into the Seaport using current SL tunnel.

 

[Matthew]

Any sharing of track leads to headway implications. The merging trains have to fit into the slots between trains. That would at least double the minimum possible headway.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Well maybe I'm operating with a different definition of RAD, but I see it as avoiding these issues of where the cars are stored by reassigning them every time they turn around. You don't need extra storage space because you send them right back out on which ever line needs it next. Of course that judgement has to be made based upon what's coming up next in the Central Subway.

I just think a little more flexibility would make these issues go away. And that means losing the adherence to a fixed schedule - in favor of pure headway driven operation.

For example just today I was on a "B" that got held up for "headway adjustment" to let a "D" pass it. Why couldn't that be worked out at Gov't Center, switching destinations if necessary?

Well, that's why they should've at least studied a platform reconfiguration at GC to allow thru trains to cut across Park-style to the loop track. In combo with the new Park inbound crossovers that would give them 2 consecutive stations to sort out the trains and get everything spaced out on nice, smooth headways. There's more than enough room for it on the wedge if they can sort out how pedestrians would cross over to either side. Would be a lot better to assess feasibility of that BEFORE the station gets renovated instead of finding out in a decade-plus that they're going to need that anyway if they do any more expansion. If Park and GC had better control over spacing, throw on CBTC signaling in the subway, D, and GLX and signal priority on the surface and you could probably up the total capacity of the Green Line by 50%, add even more mixed streetcar or grade-separated branches, and have the whole works operate more smoothly than it does today.

 

[Matthew]

Do you know why the T cannot fix the scenario I described as things stand, however? If both trains are Gov't Center bound, then why hold up the "B" to let the "D" pass at Kenmore? Why not just switch destinations at Gov't Center? Is that simply inflexibility, or something more fundamental?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Do you know why the T cannot fix the scenario I described as things stand, however? If both trains are Gov't Center bound, then why hold up the "B" to let the "D" pass at Kenmore? Why not just switch destinations at Gov't Center? Is that simply inflexibility, or something more fundamental?

The D's more schedule-sensitive because of the distance it has to run and because virtually the entire GL's car supply is tethered to it. That's the post-1959 state of affairs in a nutshell. The other 3 branches have to play second fiddle for it to work (C somewhat less than the others because it's the only one with an attached carhouse and yards at both ends). This is why they're building the megabucks GLX yard and doing the crossovers at Park inbound so the inner track will be usable for thru trains. They will be able to segregate GC-turning trains and wave North Station/Lechmere-and-beyond trains ahead so they can get to the far end of the GC platform without having to wait behind a looping B unloading at the near end of the platform. This time close to downtown instead of doing that sorting at Kenmore where things usually come out-of-sync again over the next 5 stops. The crossover will make a really big difference. It's been fully-funded by a stimulus grant for over 3 years now, fully-designed, with construction supposed to happen this year. It's a little baffling that they've done absolutely bupkis so far with it, because there's nothing holding them back from getting to work.

 

[Matthew]

The "D" has to run further but it goes faster, so the overall trip time isn't much different from the sluggish and shorter "B".

I'm not sure I'm making my question understood here. I still don't see why the "B" had to wait for the "D" here, in principle. Both trains went to Gov't Center. I rode the "B" to Park St and it took the outer track. If they needed the "D" to leave before the "B" at Gov't Center, why didn't they just reassign the destination of the first train after it pulled around the loop? The "B" could become the "D" and the "D" become the "B".

The only objection I can think of is shift assignments, but surely that can be worked out.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Here's an OL question, since the subject was brought up a few posts ago.

I understand the potentially devastating implications for Forest Hills/SW Corridor of branching the OL from Back Bay towards Allston and beyond. But couldn't we, for a not too great additional investment, create a new through line - OL equipment but probably colored a different designation - that essentially runs from Allston through Back Bay to South Station and through to the Seaport? This would share track with today's OL only between Back Bay and TMC and have no headway implications for either Forest Hills or Oak Grove.

Perhaps it's a moot point because this would be better as a DMU/EMU line, although I'm not sure how such an arrangement could continue through into the Seaport using current SL tunnel.

Oh, you could definitely do it if you track-split at BB and went into the N-S Link, then merged back at North Station. That would literally restore the Atlantic Ave. El configuration and make all sorts of branching possible, just as they planned when the El was first built. I just think a bi-level Link approach tunnel from the NEC is better-suited for a SL Phase III branch off Green Line to South Station, where it's infinitely more buildable than through Chinatown and would have some economy-of-scale being tethered to the Link approach construction. I sort of prefer Red via JFK and the Cabot Yard leads to N-S Link instead because it wouldn't preclude a buildable Silver Line, and because there'd be no intermixing of ANY branches of the "Red X" because of how Columbia Jct. is grade-separated, which would really make every possible routing on that network a mega-capacity trunk.


Blue might have some either-end expansion potential. Definitely Lynn and South Salem on the north end (both are MPO-rated projects, and the ridership projections for Salem are INSANE), and Storrow trade-in + Kenmore + D. But it would be too many close-packed stops to go 128-to-128. For everything but evenings/weekends you would have to reinstate Maverick loop (still there, but untracked) to turn everything from the west, and Charles MGH to turn everything from the North Shore (the Red-Blue design has tail tracks spread-eagle around the Longfellow and Red Line el abutments, so it'd be pretty simple to make a wide loop under Charles Circle). Basically making it 2 routes with a max-density downtown overlap. But you know how dogmatic the T is about everyone's constitutional right to an end-to-end one-seater.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

Blue might have some either-end expansion potential. Definitely Lynn and South Salem on the north end (both are MPO-rated projects, and the ridership projections for Salem are INSANE), and Storrow trade-in + Kenmore + D. But it would be too many close-packed stops to go 128-to-128. For everything but evenings/weekends you would have to reinstate Maverick loop (still there, but untracked) to turn everything from the west, and Charles MGH to turn everything from the North Shore (the Red-Blue design has tail tracks spread-eagle around the Longfellow and Red Line el abutments, so it'd be pretty simple to make a wide loop under Charles Circle). Basically making it 2 routes with a max-density downtown overlap. But you know how dogmatic the T is about everyone's constitutional right to an end-to-end one-seater.

Except GLX, the Central Subway and the entire D branch (obviously) are all built, to my knowledge, with the potential for Green Line Heavy Rail conversion. If you're seriously talking about Blue eating the D branch then you're already 50~70% of the way to Green Line Heavy Rail on the D, which is to me far more valuable as a project than sending the Blue Line that way. Any west Blue extension should either stop at Kenmore or go over Storrow to Soldiers Field to Allston-Brighton-Watertown.

I don't think that restoring rapid transit to Watertown is anyone's idea of a priority job, however, and especially not when put up against Red-Blue or Blue to Lynn, or even Green Line Heavy Rail - wouldn't having heavy rail up and down the Central Subway go a long way towards fixing some of the problems down there?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Except GLX, the Central Subway and the entire D branch (obviously) are all built, to my knowledge, with the potential for Green Line Heavy Rail conversion. If you're seriously talking about Blue eating the D branch then you're already 50~70% of the way to Green Line Heavy Rail on the D, which is to me far more valuable as a project than sending the Blue Line that way. Any west Blue extension should either stop at Kenmore or go over Storrow to Soldiers Field to Allston-Brighton-Watertown.

I don't think that restoring rapid transit to Watertown is anyone's idea of a priority job, however, and especially not when put up against Red-Blue or Blue to Lynn, or even Green Line Heavy Rail - wouldn't having heavy rail up and down the Central Subway go a long way towards fixing some of the problems down there?

Well, except kiss the B and C goodbye if you do that (yes, even BERy's plan for an Allston subway up the A route had the B west of Packards getting abandoned). And prepare for BC's lawsuit. You're not taking a tunnel boring machine through the hills by Coolidge Corner and Allston and building Porter-like bunkers at the intermediate stops until the tunnel grades can catch up with the steepness of the hill. Forget any potential of light rail on Washington St., or through the Transitway on South End branches. Prepare to spend billions more burying the E, burying the B to Packards, building out under Brighton Ave. to at least Union Sq...all at once, just to get starter service. And prepare to build the whole frickin' Urban Ring billion(s)-dollar Brookline tunnel...or nothing at all, because it's a deal-breaker...because there's no way to tie a Grand Junction route with grade crossings into a heavy rail line. Prepare to not be able to manage nearly as many branches because heavy rail signal blocks for 6-car trains are a whole lot bigger than light rail blocks and can't pack trains as close. And prepare to have to build multiple routings like NYC or a Chicago Loop type system if you do want to have 4 branches or something.

I really don't think we want to give up the flexibility of a light rail subway. There's a reason why other cities are building more of these things for multi-branch downtown circulation and leaving rapid transit for straight-line feeders. It works. The Green Line can work just as well as it used to if they did some prudent, not-real-expensive modernizing to the dispatching.


Frankly, I don't think the D is quite heavily-utilized enough to bother heavy-railing. The highest-ridership stop (BV) is still lower than the lowest-ridership Red or Orange stop, and only negligible Blue stops like Wood Island, Beachmont, and Suffolk Downs are comparable to the average D stop. I don't think Waban, Eliot, Chestnut Hill, and Beaconsfield really have an explosive growth ceiling that only heavy rail can tap.

And, the ability to fork downtown trunks at Brookline Village and zigzag the UR through it is capacity they'll want to keep...because the billion(s)-dollar Brookline UR tunnel is one of the most unbuildable fantasies they've ever proposed. I'd rather see them get back to work on the 1945 plan for the other 3 lines (note: heavy-railing the GL is not part of that plan) and at most maybe trade off GLX-Medford to a heavy rail line (Orange or Blue easy, Red possible if the N-S Link it with the "Red X" setup) so Anderson/Woburn is achievable in the future, the Lowell Line gets cleared of all inside-128 stops for HSR and 100+ MPH express-to-495-and-NH commuter rail capacity, and light rail from Lechmere can get freed up to manage branches to Union/Porter, UR-Airport, and UR-Cambridge. The window of opportunity to reboot the Green Line was mid-20th century before the outer neighborhoods and inner 'burbs got totally built out. Too many other fish to fry now.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

I really don't think we want to give up the flexibility of a light rail subway. There's a reason why other cities are building more of these things for multi-branch downtown circulation and leaving rapid transit for straight-line feeders. It works. The Green Line can work just as well as it used to if they did some prudent, not-real-expensive modernizing to the dispatching.


Frankly, I don't think the D is quite heavily-utilized enough to bother heavy-railing. The highest-ridership stop (BV) is still lower than the lowest-ridership Red or Orange stop, and only negligible Blue stops like Wood Island, Beachmont, and Suffolk Downs are comparable to the average D stop. I don't think Waban, Eliot, Chestnut Hill, and Beaconsfield really have an explosive growth ceiling that only heavy rail can tap.

And, the ability to fork downtown trunks at Brookline Village and zigzag the UR through it is capacity they'll want to keep...because the billion(s)-dollar Brookline UR tunnel is one of the most unbuildable fantasies they've ever proposed. I'd rather see them get back to work on the 1945 plan for the other 3 lines (note: heavy-railing the GL is not part of that plan) and at most maybe trade off GLX-Medford to a heavy rail line (Orange or Blue easy, Red possible if the N-S Link it with the "Red X" setup) so Anderson/Woburn is achievable in the future, the Lowell Line gets cleared of all inside-128 stops for HSR and 100+ MPH express-to-495-and-NH commuter rail capacity, and light rail from Lechmere can get freed up to manage branches to Union/Porter, UR-Airport, and UR-Cambridge. The window of opportunity to reboot the Green Line was mid-20th century before the outer neighborhoods and inner 'burbs got totally built out. Too many other fish to fry now.

The D is entirely grade-separated and can be forked to Needham - as light rail now, or as heavy rail with grade crossing eliminations. I say convert the D not because the D is the best line to convert, but because it's the easiest - and, as I said, if you're in serious talks about something crazy like "Blue eats D," you're going to be a significant percentage of the way towards Heavy Rail anyway. Why not grab some Blue Line stock and paint it Green?

The B, C, and even E branches don't need to be converted or dropped. B-to-E and C-to-E trains could be turned at Kenmore with zero construction or Copley with minimal construction.

I say convert the D branch because it is the easiest to convert and creates the potential for Heavy Green Line to Needham, plus, as I said, any serious push for Blue-eats-D by nature comes with 70% of the work done anyway. Just paint some Blue stock Green and off you go.

The real benefit of heavy railing Green is getting a heavy rail Central Subway, and a heavy rail GLX with room to grow for Woburn. I agree with you that the D branch is comparatively minor - and I'd lose no sleep if it was left as light rail. In fact, I might push to utilize the four-tracking set up to have two heavy rail tracks, two light rail tracks, a D-branch light rail that turns to E-branch, a C-branch light rail that passes through Boylston and then turns down Washington Street, and a B-branch light rail that passes through Boylston to South Station and points east.

And I would call those light rail branches the Silver Line.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

The D is entirely grade-separated and can be forked to Needham - as light rail now, or as heavy rail with grade crossing eliminations. I say convert the D not because the D is the best line to convert, but because it's the easiest - and, as I said, if you're in serious talks about something crazy like "Blue eats D," you're going to be a significant percentage of the way towards Heavy Rail anyway. Why not grab some Blue Line stock and paint it Green?

The B, C, and even E branches don't need to be converted or dropped. B-to-E and C-to-E trains could be turned at Kenmore with zero construction or Copley with minimal construction.

I say convert the D branch because it is the easiest to convert and creates the potential for Heavy Green Line to Needham, plus, as I said, any serious push for Blue-eats-D by nature comes with 70% of the work done anyway. Just paint some Blue stock Green and off you go.

The real benefit of heavy railing Green is getting a heavy rail Central Subway, and a heavy rail GLX with room to grow for Woburn. I agree with you that the D branch is comparatively minor - and I'd lose no sleep if it was left as light rail. In fact, I might push to utilize the four-tracking set up to have two heavy rail tracks, two light rail tracks, a D-branch light rail that turns to E-branch, a C-branch light rail that passes through Boylston and then turns down Washington Street, and a B-branch light rail that passes through Boylston to South Station and points east.

And I would call those light rail branches the Silver Line.

The T is not going to change its one-seat to downtown philosophy. Ever. That's been the governing principle of every not- local bus line they've managed since their '64 founding. Changing that is asking the agency to BE something radically different from the only thing it's ever been. Good luck with that.

It's also not 1932, when Kenmore was designed for heavy rail conversion and the C was to stick around as a loop line. There were over 50 streetcar routes back then, and the Eastern Mass. Street Railway was still kicking around so BERy didn't even have a route monopoly. There was so much connecting trackage that they didn't need a subway to string together a very very robust network. How are you going to operate something like the E as a stub line? You aren't...it goes away. Are they going to bother keeping Reservoir carhouse for the B and C. No. The economy of scale disappears with such a limited network and per-trip operating costs skyrocket.

To do that they'd have to relocate the E to the Tremont subway. Which they should be doing anyway, but dropping close to a $B on a re-route off Copley Jct. doesn't wash when all that economy of scale for streetcars disappears. It does mostly wash if you've got a goal of gradually peeling the D off Kenmore and E off Copley to free up west end subway capacity for the UR. 4-tracking Park-GC may be physically impossible because of how narrow Tremont gets there, the burial ground, and the building foundations on the other side. How are you going to quad up the GL side of North Station? The Garden basement isn't set up for that. There was no trolley service whatsoever between Park and Scollay/GC when the El temporarily ran through there. Everything west of Boylston looped at Park. Everything east of Scollay (and there were many, many branches) looped at Scollay. Because they didn't think it was 4-trackable through the burying grounds in 1901 either.

It's not "significant percentage of the way" to convert the D. Making this all work while retaining some surface streetcar branches will cost more than building Urban Ring Phase II. For moderate improvements on one mode that preclude them from entirely from building something else they need by mid-century. How does that value proposition wash at all?


Priorities. Changing the mode on the Central Subway but trying to have cake and eat it too with surface branches is so far down the list of urgent transit needs and so much expense at the expense of other more-needed projects it ends up doing more harm than good. It misses forest for trees to micro-focus on that.

 

[Shepard]

Bringing this back to topic again: I think a Mass Ave subway (RL branch?) would achieve 80% of what the UR would in terms of relieving capacity downtown, but would avoid the inefficiencies of a circle.

As youve seen on my fantasy maps I do think a Mass Ave line would link nicely into a converted heavy rail Fairmount Line also, though I understand the trade off there.

 

[omaja]

The T is not going to change its one-seat to downtown philosophy. Ever. That's been the governing principle of every not- local bus line they've managed since their '64 founding. Changing that is asking the agency to BE something radically different from the only thing it's ever been. Good luck with that.

It's too bad that they can't come to terms with the fact that expanding and optimizing the network will mean that not every line will be able to - or, more importantly, need to - traverse the Downtown core. Transfers are a reality so I'm not sure why they insist on being so delusional all the time.

It's not "significant percentage of the way" to convert the D. Making this all work while retaining some surface streetcar branches will cost more than building Urban Ring Phase II. For moderate improvements on one mode that preclude them from entirely from building something else they need by mid-century. How does that value proposition wash at all?


Priorities. Changing the mode on the Central Subway but trying to have cake and eat it too with surface branches is so far down the list of urgent transit needs and so much expense at the expense of other more-needed projects it ends up doing more harm than good. It misses forest for trees to micro-focus on that.

I completely agree - converting the D to heavy rail and connecting to the Blue Line would only really work with a new tunnel under Beacon or Storrow. Eliminating or severely truncating the B, C or E lines is unfathomable considering they have been in service long before the D ever came into the picture. The Central Subway needs a parallel heavy rail routing to compliment the localized service provided by the Green Line fed by the various current and potential future branches.

Bringing this back to topic again: I think a Mass Ave subway (RL branch?) would achieve 80% of what the UR would in terms of relieving capacity downtown, but would avoid the inefficiencies of a circle.

As youve seen on my fantasy maps I do think a Mass Ave line would link nicely into a converted heavy rail Fairmount Line also, though I understand the trade off there.

While a Mass Ave line would definitely alleviate congestion Downtown, I am thinking it would serve an entirely distinct purpose compared to a circle: primarily it would provide an alternate inner north-south crosstown routing. The local demand between areas along a circle (Dorchester-Roxbury-Jamaica Plain-Brookline-Allston/Brighton-Cambridge-Somerville) would make it a heavily used line. I don't see many people using it to get from Dorchester to Cambridge or any similar variation, but the merit of connecting all of Boston's inner streetcar-era neighborhoods seems relatively high.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

I completely agree - converting the D to heavy rail and connecting to the Blue Line would only really work with a new tunnel under Beacon or Storrow. Eliminating or severely truncating the B, C or E lines is unfathomable considering they have been in service long before the D ever came into the picture. The Central Subway needs a parallel heavy rail routing to compliment the localized service provided by the Green Line fed by the various current and potential future branches.

Right, my argument came from the fact that I consider the idea of converting the D to Blue to be insanely stupid - and my 'significant percent of the way' comments come from the idea that any prep work done on the D up to Kenmore for a Blue conversion can just as easily be used for Green Line Heavy Rail instead - right down to the rolling stock.

Let me ask you about the parallel routing, though - could we dig out a heavy rail tunnel underneath the existing light rail trackage?

 

[omaja]

My guess is that would probably be a lot more complicated and expensive than a simple cut-and-cover along Storrow or even a deep burrow under Beacon.

I would also see there being a lot of value in the parallel route to distribute and serve existing traffic. For example, instead of everyone clogging Copley, passengers on the D-Blue combined line would just use a station between Exeter/Dartmouth or Dartmouth/Clarendon to reach the same area. Likewise, people in the Copley area would choose whether to use the current Green or new D-Blue station based on their final destination.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Right, my argument came from the fact that I consider the idea of converting the D to Blue to be insanely stupid - and my 'significant percent of the way' comments come from the idea that any prep work done on the D up to Kenmore for a Blue conversion can just as easily be used for Green Line Heavy Rail instead - right down to the rolling stock.

Let me ask you about the parallel routing, though - could we dig out a heavy rail tunnel underneath the existing light rail trackage?

Not in Back Bay landfill. The Central Subway has a breathtakingly complicated army of underground pumps keeping the groundwater out. The entire Back Bay is only capable of supporting big buildings because the entire neighborhood is pumped out 24/7/365/year-in-year-out by pumps. The water table there is still very much "tidal flat" even though the surface is dry. I can't imagine how much more complicated it would be to dig even lower into that saturated fill.

Parallel subways work if you do the Riverbank, which was studied to death a century ago. The digging isn't a problem even in the Charles basin if it's a Storrow trade-in. It wouldn't be 20 feet under the street with sewers and utilities on top like a normal under-street cut-and-cover. It would be a shallow box tunnel--almost air-rights style--like the Red Line from Fields Corner to Ashmont (which is literally just a concrete roof thrown on top of a pre-existing RR cut that used to be open-air). Literally recycle the lowest layer of the Storrow EB roadbed, box the tunnel up to the level of Back St., throw 3 ft. of dirt and grass on top, and re-landscape. Recycle the auto tunnel as a rail tunnel; the Copley ramp turnout is space for an Esplanade intermediate stop. The only serious digging is the short deep bore section from Charlesgate E to Beacon St.

That's not hard. A lot more expansive but not engineering-hard is burying the E under the reservation to Brigham Circle, then doing a moderate-hard dig under Huntington to Brookline Village, doing the Prudential-Back Bay-Marginal St.-Tremont re-route, and continuing south from there in an upper-level N-S Link approach bore to South Station, the Transitway, a rapid transit half of the Link, whatever their fancy. But I think that particular dig is waywaywaywaywayway better as light rail for unifying the UR, GL, and SL III into one super-network. If there's going to be any heavy rail bypass, Riverbank's the one that puts the least crimp in the other plans. And, yes, you could always terminate at Kenmore and figure out if the D is a next step later, if a 1:1 trade-in of Storrow becomes that important to the populace. I think that's an alright plan...Blue/Green/UR light rail at one superstation is good enough, and that wouldn't constrain the Blue at all from tapping the massive North Shore ridership to Salem. Converting the D gets dodgy because I think that BU Bridge-Kenmore as subway, then boomerang to Brookline Village is the only way they're getting the UR built...the billion-dollar Brookline BRT tunnel is Looney Tunes. Those are the same uber-rich historical property owners that killed the I-695 tunnel on the same footprint. Been there, FAIL that.

 

[omaja]

Converting the D gets dodgy because I think that BU Bridge-Kenmore as subway, then boomerang to Brookline Village is the only way they're getting the UR built...the billion-dollar Brookline BRT tunnel is Looney Tunes. Those are the same uber-rich historical property owners that killed the I-695 tunnel on the same footprint. Been there, FAIL that.

For me, "tunnel" and "BRT" are two things that should never be mentioned in the same sentence. Such a silly idea to spend that much money only to throw buses down it.

I wonder, though, if a Brookline Urban Ring tunnel would be more palatable if, say, that was the final piece needed to complete the ring. Perhaps the pressure from the surrounding areas would reach critical mass as the demand for network connectivity skyrockets with each piece that opens. A rapid transit tunnel is so very different from a freeway one, so what's there really to argue about (aside from inconveniences during construction)?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

For me, "tunnel" and "BRT" are two things that should never be mentioned in the same sentence. Such a silly idea to spend that much money only to throw buses down it.

I wonder, though, if a Brookline Urban Ring tunnel would be more palatable if, say, that was the final piece needed to complete the ring. Perhaps the pressure from the surrounding areas would reach critical mass as the demand for network connectivity skyrockets with each piece that opens. A rapid transit tunnel is so very different from a freeway one, so what's there really to argue about (aside from inconveniences during construction)?

Because some historical properties are going to be impacted any which way. It's a much shorter run-up from the Grand Junction portal to get into a 75-100 ft. deep-bore tunnel that won't screw up property lines than it is with the Red Line under Beacon Hill or from Porter to Davis. And the counterpoint the neighborhood will surely offer--why not bury the B and tie in to Kenmore?--costs so much less that blowing shit up in the neighborhood is a tough sell. The only way the T can keep that proposal from getting laughed out of the room is to arbitrarily make it a different mode: BRT or heavy rail, so it physically can't coexist with the Green Line. They're going to have a lot of trouble dodging that.

There's also more old money on those several blocks in Brookline than anywhere else the state has tried to build a transit project or highway before. I don't think those homeowners have to care about pressure from anyone. Their opposition is more like Cape Wind's, except the property impacts are real instead of imagined. All it takes is a few calls amongst old money and I doubt someone like John Kerry or (if elected to serve Brookline) Joe K. III are going to vote for an appropriation.


But mostly...they are going to have a devil of a time dodging that the path of least resistance is, by order of a $B or more, a Green Line hookup and under-reservation dig to Kenmore. Which BU would probably cheerlead the crap out of.