What would you rate as the single most critical project?

[BostonUrbEx]

Of all the transportation projects planned, proposed, kicked around, etc... what would you put up on a pedestal?

I'd have to go with heavy rail urban ring. From JFK to Central up Mass Ave. Up Prospect St to Union Sq. Down Washington St to Sullivan Sq, along the Newburyport Line to Chelsea, shoot down an abandoned Grand Junction ROW to Airport.

I mean, come on, how many birds can we kill with one stone? Especially if we this puts the seeds in the ground for an inner and outer ring, as well as extensions into airport terminals and completing a full loop under the harbor. Even with only what I just outlined in the previous paragraph, we releieve the pressure downtown, give another line to Cambridge (rather surprising it's only one, eh? I think so anyways...), give Somerville a well deserved heavy rail line, give rapid transit to Everett and Chelsea which have none at all, and give much more access and flow to the city. It kind of blows my mind that they were even considering BRT and then axed the thing completely.

I can't think of any other project being more important or cost effective. I believe ridership for heavy rail was estimated at 150-200k a day, and that the new fares generated may even cover the operations costs, meaning the line could theoretically pay itself off completely.



Okay, so what's everyone else's opinion? It could be one station, one line, one highway, one exit ramp, anything! Shoot it!

 

[KentXie]

I agree with you. One of the main reason people opt not to take public transportation is because they have to take a train into the city just to go back out.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

North-South Rail Link. Moreso even than the Urban Ring because the Link is the gateway to bigtime Fed investment in Boston transit and spurring the regional network with multi-state coattails. It's not limited to Boston...central Mass.--at least out to Springfield and DEFINITELY Worcester--, RI, NH (well, it'll slowly thaw their anti-rail stupidity), ME, CT, and NY all get benefits out of it. And Boston gets transformed. I don't think we're getting investment on the Urban Ring or anything else huge without this one starting to move forward and getting a sales pitch with gusto put on the public and Washington.

How many times does the CLF, MPO, and every other regional planning agency have to scream at the state to at least get an EIS started for this? It is the second-most critical piece of the Northeast HSR infrastructure puzzle after the second NYC tunnel project, NY and NJ are going all out for all the funding they can get and having success doing it, and MA is doing bupkis. We gotta build this thing while it can still be had for $5B if managed efficiently. It's a race against inflation if they wait 10 years to even make first pitch at it, and if we don't push for it the national rail plan is gonna move on to something else after the NYC transit megaprojects--2nd harbor tunnels, expanded Penn Station, 2nd Ave. subway, East Side Access tunnel--are done or underway enough to be beyond reproach.

I've outlined in other threads how this can be done without crippling the price tag, like trimming the extra portals to lines with no intercity potential (Old Colony, Fitchburg, Fairmount) and keeping it a simpler NEC/Worcester and NH Main/Western Route/Eastern Route single end-to-end, and eliminating the surplus-to-requirement Central Station at Aquarium that can't fit 8-car trains (making it moot for Providence or Worcester Line crush-load trains because those are already at 7 cars and growing). And the really transformative upside of running a rapid-transit line through 2 of the 4 tracks and ease of connecting it to the existing Red Line on existing yard track, converting the Green Line Medford extension to heavy-rail, and eventually converting the Fairmount Line over. And one of my dream transit maps kills the Silver Line Phase III and NEC portal birds with one far less expensive stone by building an light rail tunnel on top of the NEC Link portal tunnel in one build and hooking the Green Line up to the Silver Line Transitway on one end and the abandoned Tremont St. tunnel on the other end for something much more workable than the T's godawful unbuildable Phase III plan and the godawful slow/bumpy/disintegrating-pavement SL tunnel.


Huge one, huge one. If we want a gateway to build everything else, we gotta build the one that has Amtrak and the Transportation Secretary seeing stars. And get over our post-Big Dig trauma in the process because nothing will ever get done to improve the region if we continue acting gun-shy and ashamed as a state about taking on big things and reforming corruption. This isn't impossible. NYC is proving that; you can ride out the political bumps and still get nice things built. We just have to want it bad enough to reform ourselves and TRY.

 

[HenryAlan]

I'd like to see both of those ideas, but my pet peeve with MBTA expansion is all the not quite finished projects that could collectively make a big difference and would be easy to do. Extend the Orange and Blue Lines to complement the Green Line extension to Sommerville. In each case, you can glom on to an existing ROW and add a few more miles through dense/transit dependent communities. It would really speed access to downtown for people on the North Shore and Southwest Boston.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

I'd like to see both of those ideas, but my pet peeve with MBTA expansion is all the not quite finished projects that could collectively make a big difference and would be easy to do. Extend the Orange and Blue Lines to complement the Green Line extension to Sommerville. In each case, you can glom on to an existing ROW and add a few more miles through dense/transit dependent communities. It would really speed access to downtown for people on the North Shore and Southwest Boston.

I would agree, and if you look at the state MPO's project ratings some of the ridership projections are absolutely insane. None moreso than Blue Line to Lynn.

2030 Transportation Plan: http://www.ctps.org/bostonmpo/3_programs/1_transportation_plan/plan.html#
Archived 2003 Program for Mass Transportation: http://www.bostonmpo.org/bostonmpo/pmt-old/pmt.htm

Those show recommended projects and pretty much the whole universe of possible unstudied projects on the appendix pages. The '03 documents are a lot more expansive on per-project ridership and cost estimates. Pretty much your whole wildest-dreams transit system is contained somewhere in there.

 

[TheRifleman]

State tossing millions at ongoing Dig leak problems
By Hillary Chabot

E-mail Print (134) Comments Text size Share
State transportation workers are struggling to plug Big Dig tunnel leaks that gush as much as 1.4 million gallons of water a month, driving up repair costs in the notorious money pit known as the Central Artery by millions of dollars each year.

Despite what acting highway administrator Frank DePaola of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation called a ?vigilant? ongoing effort, the persistent leaks are at least partially to blame for the crumbling fireproofing, corroded lighting and concrete falling from tunnel walls and ceilings that have plagued the Central Artery?s tunnels, according to inspection reports.

?It?s no secret that we still have water saturating the tunnels,? said DePaola, who said state officials corrected a series of critical issues raised in reports almost immediately. ?Water is an issue that everyone with underground tunnels has to deal with. . . . We manage the water and we make sure it doesn?t cause immediate threats.?

Leaks have repeatedly been an issue over the past decade, with whistle-blowers and internal memos revealing concerns about shoddy material, while Big Dig managers made repairs and insisted the tunnels were safe. One federal engineering report endorsed a Central Artery prediction that all leaks would be sealed by September 2005.

The state has been spending $12 million a year to patch up the leaks for the past several years and doled out $13 million over the past three years to replace fireproofing in the tunnels ? much of which has been lost due to leaks, according to transportation officials and inspection reports. Last year?s total for leaks and fireproofing topped $16 million.

Officials pay for the pricey upkeep out of the $458 million Central Artery trust fund created after contractors who built the $15 billion system ? originally projected at less than $3 billion ? settled criminal and civil charges after a Jamaica Plain woman was crushed to death by a falling ceiling panel. At the current rate of repairs, that fund could be tapped out in less than 30 years, while the tunnels were meant to last 100 years.

?The cost of maintaining this will be horrific,? said Jack Lemley, an engineer and former Big Dig consultant who ?wasn?t a bit surprised? by the escalating cost of the leaks.

Lemley said that underground structures are supposed to be as watertight as possible, and the Big Dig construction work is ?substandard.?

?The leakage will over time wind up corroding all of the steel fixtures . . . lights falling off, fire protection damage, all that will continue on,? Lemley said.

The Big Dig tunnels have been plagued with fireproofing and light fixtures plunging onto the heavily trafficked roadways this year. A 110-pound light crashed onto the road of the Thomas P. O?Neill Jr. Tunnel in February, while a 2-by-2-foot section of fireproofing dropped from the I-90 tunnel in late April.

Lemley said the fund isn?t enough, meaning taxpayers will likely pick up the tab for the leaks.

?I calculated the maintenance costs, and that fund is about $200 million short,? Lemley said.

The inspection reports, all completed in the past year, detailed leak-related problems that include:

? A heavily corroded and rusted electricity box hanging by only a few wires over the I-93 southbound highway under Dewey Square. Inspectors quickly secured the box on April 12 last year, writing, ?these abandoned electrical boxes above the roadway should either be properly secured . . . or removed.?

? An April 5, 2010, inspection found a light in the I-93 southbound exit ramp to Purchase Street covered with ?a heavy buildup of salt encrustation? due to a leak directly above it. Stalactites from dripping water were found on another light nearby.

? A July 7, 2010, inspection flagged a ?hollow sounding? slab of concrete on the roof, which readily crumbled away using hand tools, as a ?critical hazard deficiency? that needed to be repaired immediately.

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/re...ould_cost_state_millions/srvc=home&position=0


What a scary thought driving down this 30 Billion dollar tunnel made of junk.

 

[jass]

Put up a toll to pay for this.

 

[BostonUrbEx]

"An April 5, 2010, inspection found a light in the I-93 southbound exit ramp to Purchase Street covered with ?a heavy buildup of salt encrustation? due to a leak directly above it. Stalactites from dripping water were found on another light nearby."


Cool. We have what is soon to be the world's largest and most expensive manmade cave.

 

[Charlie_mta]

They should have kept the elevated roadway. It could have been fixed up to be less ugly, even replaced. A tunnel was a waste of money.

 

[bbfen]

They should have kept the elevated roadway. It could have been fixed up to be less ugly, even replaced. A tunnel was a waste of money.

I don't think the problem was that it was ugly. It was that it was over capacity and a parking lot for several hours a day.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

I don't think the problem was that it was ugly. It was that it was over capacity and a parking lot for several hours a day.

It was a horrible design. Too many ramps, the ramps were substandard length and backed up onto the highway, there was no breakdown lane or turnouts to keep any disabled vehicle from blocking a traffic lane, and there were dangerous amounts of weaving. All of that unfixable on an elevated because it had maxed out its footprint. Tunnel was really the only way the traffic could be effectively managed, and the Big Dig has unquestionably succeeded at that. The backups are really small potatoes, and when they cite little difference before and after that's the drag effect from the Braintree split getting explosively more clogged and hosing the SE Expressway...not traffic flow through Boston. Also note how much the air quality in town has vastly improved now. The ventilation system does an excellent job distributing exhaust high into the air where the seabreeze dissapates it instead of trapping it in a canyon with no wind to unclog it. Boston has significantly fewer days of poor air quality than before the highway came down, even with more traffic than ever. Likewise, cars moving on the highway instead of engines running in park on the elevated for 8 hours a day significantly reduces the total emissions being dumped on the city. And keeps the buildings much cleaner instead of being permanently coated in carbon stains.

It's doing what it's supposed to do. It was just the most corruptly administered public works project in American history, and a number of state officials and contractors who knowingly lined their pockets further through dangerous substandard workmanship should be doing years of hard time in prison and be taken for all the billions they're worth whether it puts them out of business or not. That is the tragedy here. It is already an unprosecuted negligent homicide, and there will be more counts of it coming.

The use of unadorned slurry walls as tunnel walls was an engineering risk prone to causing leak problems. However, there are effective mitigation techniques for dealing with that which were not employed here because of the corruption. They had planned to have to do constant maintenance for the leaks. They had not planned for the entire length of the tunnel to be a sieve. In no way did it ever have to be this bad if there weren't a criminal enterprise doing the building.


BTW...the North-South Rail Link would not be prey to the same design flaw even being further underground. 4 tracks fit on a much smaller footprint than highway traffic lanes, so the slurry walls would get the regular second sealed inside wall poured on them like all standard tunnel construction and not have to be left bare to max the ROW width. Drainage channels would be built into the wall pour to isolate potential leak risks to a couple exit points instead of potential thousands occurring anywhere and everywhere like upstairs. As long as it's not constructed out of paper mache like the highway upstairs (subtle Simpsons reference there, when Fat Tony built the ADA ramps at Springfield Elementary), your absolute worst-case potential for leaky construction incompetence would be no more severe than the Porter station Red Line waterfall. Which isn't exactly a badge of honor given that 25 years of deferred maintenance not patching that one has turned it into its own life-and-limb risk, but note all the Red Line's problems are confined almost entirely to the Porter leak and another significant breach outside Alewife that corrode the trackbed with continuous drainage load it's not designed for. Those leaks are not a continuous systemic failure like the Big Dig walls, so building the rail tunnel underneath with standard wall construction is not going to be deja vu (well...maybe Red Line deja vu, but that's vastly less likely to kill someone on a regular basis).

 

[BostonUrbEx]

I don't think the problem was that it was ugly. It was that it was over capacity and a parking lot for several hours a day.

Spend even a fraction of what the Big Dig cost us, on MBTA projects -> remove volume from central artery.

 

[bbfen]

@ F Line Brilliant analysis of the big dig.

 

[omaja]

Spend even a fraction of what the Big Dig cost us, on MBTA projects -> remove volume from central artery.

Not even remotely close to removing enough volume. Those MBTA projects wouldn't be able to decrease cost of living in central Boston accessible by transit. Not to mention the commuting times from areas reachable via an expanded system would be substantially longer by train than by car given the MBTA's track record.

 

[BostonUrbEx]

Not even remotely close to removing enough volume. Those MBTA projects wouldn't be able to decrease cost of living in central Boston accessible by transit. Not to mention the commuting times from areas reachable via an expanded system would be substantially longer by train than by car given the MBTA's track record.

Come on, the Big Dig was 22 billion...

11 billion in mass transit? We could be talking serious ridership gains, and it would be coming off of park & rides.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Come on, the Big Dig was 22 billion...

11 billion in mass transit? We could be talking serious ridership gains, and it would be coming off of park & rides.

And, again, it's not taking volume off the Artery that's the problem...it's taking volume off the other unexpandable inner suburb roads that's going to make the biggest difference. Once the last couple ongoing chunks of 128 widening are done and the splits with 95 get their ramps realigned, that's it...there is literally nothing more they can do to that highway in the future. It's maxed out of space. The Braintree split is maxed out. The SE Expressway is maxed out. 93 north is maxed out. Doing the proposed add-a-lanes to 24 and 3 are foolish because they just slam headfirst into 128 and the Braintree split...most they can do there is just fix a bunch of deficient ramps. It's absolutely essential that they divert as many cars as possible off 128 and at the junctions with it because this is it...this is Boston's highway capacity for the next half-century, growth be damned.

You want one helpful transit addition that won't cost a billion dollars...

Why is it that the Fitchburg, Reading/Haverhill, and Needham lines all cross 128 and have no stops there? There are no park-and-ride options whatsoever on the whole quadrant between Riverside and Anderson RTC. Put an Anderson-like transit center at 128 & 20 on the Fitchburg NOW at that giant sand pit on the Waltham/Weston town line, accessible from the Exit 26 rotary and Route 117. That's a rated MPO proposal to replace 2 or all 3 of the tiny useless 5-parking-space Weston limited stops with a proper high-use stop. They've done jack squat to act upon it. Why isn't there a stop between Wakefield and Reading at Lake Quannapowitt? That area's getting very built up and has insanely easy access to the highway ramps. Why aren't they putting any priority whatsoever on the cheap Peabody/Danvers stub off the Eastern Route where the park-and-ride will be situated right at the 128/95 split? Why are they letting Highland Ave. in Needham choke to death when fixing up exactly 1/2 mile of freight track from Needham Heights can plunk down a nice-sized park-and-ride lot at TV Place/Exit 19 and take a load off the Riverside parking for people who need to go to South Station?

Eventually you are gonna want rapid-transit on all of these lines touching 128. But it's particularly maddening that the T won't even pursue CHEAP infill stations to fill in gaping coverage holes touching the state's 2nd busiest highway and engage in a little productive short-term route priming to really pump up the revenue the commuter rail's bringing in and amp up the service levels on the lines they've got.

 

[omaja]

Come on, the Big Dig was 22 billion...

11 billion in mass transit? We could be talking serious ridership gains, and it would be coming off of park & rides.

I'd like to see the MBTA work what it has more efficiently first. As the Big Dig proved quite well, throwing money at the problem does not a solution make. They can't even manage to refurbish a few simple stations on time and within budget, let alone undertake massive expansions to underserved areas; keeping with the status quo in terms of operations and that $11 billion spent in mass transportation would come up far, far short of producing meaningful results.

 

[NJBostonFan]

Of all the transportation projects planned, proposed, kicked around, etc... what would you put up on a pedestal?

I'd have to go with heavy rail urban ring. From JFK to Central up Mass Ave. Up Prospect St to Union Sq. Down Washington St to Sullivan Sq, along the Newburyport Line to Chelsea, shoot down an abandoned Grand Junction ROW to Airport.

I mean, come on, how many birds can we kill with one stone? Especially if we this puts the seeds in the ground for an inner and outer ring, as well as extensions into airport terminals and completing a full loop under the harbor. Even with only what I just outlined in the previous paragraph, we releieve the pressure downtown, give another line to Cambridge (rather surprising it's only one, eh? I think so anyways...), give Somerville a well deserved heavy rail line, give rapid transit to Everett and Chelsea which have none at all, and give much more access and flow to the city. It kind of blows my mind that they were even considering BRT and then axed the thing completely.

I can't think of any other project being more important or cost effective. I believe ridership for heavy rail was estimated at 150-200k a day, and that the new fares generated may even cover the operations costs, meaning the line could theoretically pay itself off completely.



Okay, so what's everyone else's opinion? It could be one station, one line, one highway, one exit ramp, anything! Shoot it!

Ditto!

 

[whighlander]

Best chance is to do joint projects with bordring states -- TF Green comuter rail and Downeast can be ued as models to work with Connecticut between Springfield & Worcester and New Hampshire from Lowel north to Nashua and eventually Manchester & another Boston releiver airport

Effort should be to connect as much of New England as possible with 1 hour (100 MPH average speed) service to Boston

 

[whighlander]

F-Line has identified part of the fundamental problem -- but missed the most important part -- the simple fact that while the T is radial -- a lot of Boston Area travel is circumferential

This can not be ameliorated by any amount of transit extensions -- if a lot of peiple come from Peobody or New Hampshire and their destination is Burlington or the area around the Cambridge Reservoir -- you can't fix it by building stations on Rt-128

Suppose that you identified a 15 to 20 work clusters along Rt-128 from Cape Anne to the near South Shore in Quincy / Briantree with most between Wakefield and Canton -- how would you serve that wtih any kind of train -- you can't!!!

No -- there has to be a realization that -- while the rail-based T is good at serving inbound commutes to the core ---that everything else must be provided by personal vehicles traveling on effecient highways with good access to local streets

Therefore the single most important project is not the Rail Tunnel under the Greenway despite its appeal --- but rather to convert the existing on-way + Turnpike into a true 2way limited access highway between supporting easy travel between Logan, the Innovation district (aka Seaport) and the Back Bay -- sorry fat-cat NIMBYs it has to be done and the Taxi-Uey is not a permanent solution