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Should state replace crumbling Forest Hills overpass or just tear it down altogether?

Why the overpass is so high: It had to go over elevated train tracksWhy the overpass is so high: It had to go over elevated train tracks. From the Library of Congress.

The state Department of Transportation holds a meeting on Wednesday, April 6 to discuss the beginnings of its planning to do something about the perpetually under-repairs Casey Overpass in Forest Hills. Among the options MassDOT is looking at: Building a new overpass or replacing it with an at-grade intersection where the Arborway, Washington Street and South Street come together.

The session on the overpass, built in 1952, starts at 6:30 p.m. at the Agassiz School Community Center,
20 Child St..

In 1929, only the train tracks were elevated in Forest Hills:

Forest Hills aerial viewForest Hills aerial view. From the BPL online photo collection.

Photo of the overpass under construction while a train passes beneath it.

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Comments

Tear down that wall.

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That intersection is crazy enough as it is, I have no idea how they're going to turn it into a surface road, let alone guess at how this further dooms E-line restoration and what they'll do with the 39 bus berth.

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I think the fight is already dead with or without Casey. On the blog, the latest judge have dismissed the repeal.

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I think any hope of restoring of the E line died when they ripped the trolley tracks up on Centre Street a couple years ago. Ain't no way they're getting right-of-way to run surface tracks parallel to it, or that they'll get the OK to tear up the street AGAIN to re-lay tracks they just took up.

But yeah, that intersection is awful, and I can't think of any solution that doesn't involve an overpass making it any better. The replacement doesn't need to be 40 feet high, though. It's a little frustrating, because there's a TON of space in the MBTA bus yard over on the far side of the intersection, which they could probably use some of to design an intersection that actually lets traffic through.

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Agreed that the E-Line trolley is never coming back for many reasons, not the least of which is that the businesses on Centre Street always hated it in the first place.

I think removing the elevated Arborway and replacing it with a grade level solution would be great provided, as I assume is the case, they are talking about a total re-planning of the Washington Street, South Street, Arborway etc. street plan and not just a removal of the elevated Arborway with off ramps to the existing nightmare. I can't imagine that they are just talking about removing the elevated Arborway, so I think this would be a huge benefit to that area.

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They could put the Arborway at grade, and have Washington Street / South Street pass under it, similar to where Comm Ave and Huntington pass under Mass Ave.

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how this further dooms E-line restoration

Why? Either re-route Washington to run along Hyde Park Av. (possibly messing up some of the station parking lot in the process, but this isn't a huge deal), or run the new and improved Arborway along New Washington. In either event, use traffic signals slaved to the trolley to clear room and stop traffic so that it can make it from South Street to the platform and back. (And to the Arborway Yard, which would need to be fixed up to handle trolleys once more)

It's not like either of these would be the craziest things done with Boston roads. And if we made further improvements to the T, we could get a lot of the traffic off of the roads as well.

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I'm generally a fan of returning elevated roads to the surface to unlock development potential and in some cases to actually improve traffic patterns. (death to McGrath Highway!)

In this case though, the new intersections would not improve the traffic pattern. Hyde Park Ave and Washington St are essentially the only roads inbound for a swath of neighborhoods. Buses trying to get to Forest Hills T stop bunch and get stuck during rush hour as is, especially when snow narrows the road to one lane. The Arborway also has few alternatives. Forcing these two sets of commuters into a worse bottleneck would be bad for both drivers and transit.

Unlocking development potential and linking Forest Hills to areas north would require much more than losing the elevated road. To some degree, the residential and industrial land uses to the north would preclude connections anyway.

I propose rebuilding the elevated but lower. That could enable the ramps up to begin much closer to Hyde Park Ave and Washington, removing elevated portions near the West Roxbury courthouse and other areas. That could bring some connectivity and potential development benefits without killing the area's transportation network.

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I'm generally a fan of returning elevated roads to the surface to unlock development potential and in some cases to actually improve traffic patterns. (death to McGrath Highway!)

I agree. Let's also get rid of the Tobin (the approaches to which are a blight on Charlestown and Chelsea). We could rename that stretch of Rte. 1 the Aquamile, since you'd basically need a duck boat or an amphicar to cross the river.

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It went between Chelsea st in Charlestown and Broadway in Chelsea. The Tobin bridge and highway certainly cause blight on the area. It's interesting how the highway snakes around within Chelsea instead of going straight, affecting more of it.

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Yes, I've seen pictures of the old bridge that was there. I suspect, though, that the current route was intended to avoid tearing down more of Chelsea; the northern approach bends a little from the axis of the bridge proper to fit into the street grid. It didn't have to, but diagonally cutting through all those blocks would've been bad. The twists probably then stem from not wanting to send the expressway up Broadway, and then having to wind around various hills. It would be interesting to know why they did it that way, but most of my research into highway planning of that era indicates that unbelievable stupidity is usually the culprit.

Or, since it's a Boston-area road that inexplicably winds along, perhaps it was the infamous cows.

Seriously, though, the better answer for the Tobin would probably be a tunnel under the Mystic, but after the Dig I doubt that anyone is willing to put up with more tunnel work.

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You're right though, given the current financial situation, that will never happen. For epic stupidity in highway planning, almost to the point of being evil, see the Sunset Park part of Brooklyn.

Instead of building the highway two blocks or so closer to the shore, it was built over 3rd ave, effectively destroying what was once a bustling commercial district.

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would include improvements to the intersection below- maybe a rotary or rotaries, from what i've heard.
The advantage to an at-grade solution is that it would make the area feel a lot more open and connected and human-scaled instead of having this awful lurking mass over the whole place.

That said, I think an improved bridge, that had sidewalks that you'd actually feel comfortable walking on would be a big improvement over the current mini-highway.

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I think we should eliminate the roads altogether and have a bunch of bike paths. Organic, free trade, gluten free, free range bike paths.

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A new Casey Overpass would gentrify the area.

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Having a broken bridge over JP makes the hipsters feel more gritty and urban. They will get lots of street cred with their less relevant suburban friends. We should leave it the way it is.

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First, the Overpass was built 60 years ago, and it's already been stripped and entirely rebuilt once. Why is no one asking why it 'needs' to be torn down now? Was the work done improperly, or was this expected. If it was expected - normal wear and tear - they why did they wait for two lanes to be shut down before starting the replacement process? Something stinks here.

Next, for those who want to take down the overpass and 'reconnect' the Arborway through Forest Hills: The Arborway through Forest Hills was always a mess. When the Arborway was laid out, it crossed two mass transit lines at Forest Hills - the railroad, which stopped at Forest Hills station, and the streetcar lines which came down Washington street from Roxbury and fed both Hyde Park ave and Washington street south. The idea to connect the Arboretum and Franklin Park was nice in theory, but always failed in practice.

Right after the Arborway was laid out, the grade level railroad tracks were raised overhead to avoid traffic, which added a stone bridge of five arches over the parkway. Very soon after, the elevated line was extended into Forest Hills, adding another bridge. So now you had two rail bridges carrying six tracks, plus the streetcars that came down Washington street. Thus, the Forest Hills section of the Arborway was chewed up - before automobile traffic became an issue.

Finally, while the Washington street streetcar line was removed, with the end of WW II, The Jamaica Plain streetcar line was extended down South street all the way to the Arborway car yards in Forest Hills. So one of the three roadways under the railroad bridge was dedicated to streetcars.

Now, add cars. With returning veterans coming home and buying cars, Forest Hills became a total clusterf*ck. Buses had replaced streetcars through Forest Hills station, so you had a transportation demolition derby going on. That is when the overpass was built.

http://rememberjamaicaplain.blogspot.com/2007/11/c...

Now, can you remove the overpass and return Arborway traffic to grade? Sure - you can do anything. But you will be returning to the congestion that caused the thing to be built in the first place. You still have to deal with both South and Washington streets, and you still have buses running north-south through Forest Hills. And please note that any time auto drivers have to so much as touch their brakes, they add to the CO2 in the atmosphere, and aggravate global warming. So if you love your planet, you really should be in favor of an overpass.

The fact is, it makes no sense to try to extend the parkway aspect of the Arborway to Franklin Park without interruption. Franklin Park is only a quarter mile from Washington street, and the roadway is squeezed between a courthouse and a bus yard. That section of the Arborway is a nice idea that history passed by.

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Removing elevated roads result in congestion?

Not always. Watch this lovely video.

http://www.streetfilms.org/mba-highway-removal/

Traffic finds a way to fill up new roads very quickly. Likewise, traffic finds a way to disappear (or remain the same) when roads are removed.

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Yeah - every time you pull down an elevated road, the cars that used to use it disappear. It's called magical thinking.

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They can generally be absorbed by other routes without causing traffic to get worse. In fact, by spreading traffic out more evenly, because there's no longer an express route that attracts drivers to it to the exclusion of all else, getting rid of certain roads can improve traffic.

There's even a Wikipedia entry about this: Braess's Paradox. And it's been tried in various places, and has been found to work.

Of course, we should also make drastic improvements to our mass transit system, and encourage greater urban density and mixed uses so as to also reduce the amount of traffic on the road.

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Congestion around Sullivan Sq, seems worse since the Rutherford Ave. overpass was torn down without repalcement.

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would remove a large amount of the bus traffic from Washington Street and Forest Hills station. Anything coming into there from the south could be terminated at Roslindale instead.

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Wasn't there a plan once to extend the Orange Line all the way to Dedham or Needham?

I'm sure both towns would just love to have Orange Line service - look at how Arlington welcomed the Red Line with open arms :-).

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That's where the bus routes down Washington Street start to divide up -- some to Dedham, some to West Roxbury, some to Mattapan or Hyde Park. This short rapid transit extension would eliminate a large number of daily bus miles. And once you've removed much of the bus traffic, you no longer have congestion at Forest Hills and can do without the overpass.

OBTW - congratulations on landing the Whole Foods banner ads ;-)

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The bus garage would still be at Arborway, so quite a lot of bus traffic would have to remain crosing the path of the overpass even if the Orange Line was extended to Roslindale Sq. Plus, those bus trips on Washington that aren't going to or from the garage, that are ending/beginning at the station, don't even cross under the path of the overpass or a theoretical ground-level replacement.

There are also quite a lot of people, especially students, that transfer between bus routes at Forest Hills (such as Route 36 to Route 39 or Route 34 to Route 16, etc). I suspect that even if the Orange Line went to Roslindale a lot of people would still desire direct bus service along Washington St. to Forest Hills to avoid a three transfer ride (much the way Route 77 continues to Harvard even though it intercepts the Red Line first at Porter).

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I think that would be physically unworkable without seriously widening the railbed - and the immediate dropoff along the southern edge for most of that stretch means you'd have to peel a big strip off of the Arboreteum. Something tells me that Harvard is never going to let that happen. I think the only improvement possible in that area (assuming that the magic competence fairy someday bequeaths clue and political will to the folks running the MBTA) would be to increase the commuter rail service along that line - at least put in some decent weekend service.

However, I've always wondered if Orange line service could somehow be extended along the tracks that currently carry the Franklin&Stoughton commuter rails. They run parallel to Hyde Park Ave, there's a very wide rail bed already in place, and there are large plots of land near both the Cummins Highway and Metropiltan Ave crossings.

I think:
Readville/Hyde Park/Metropilitan Ave/Cummins Hyw/Forest Hills/ad interius
would be a real boon to the southwestern section of the city.

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There are already two rail lines along most of the railbed between Forest Hills and Roslindale Village. It merges to one just before it leaves the arboretum. You certainly couldn't operate the orange line along the tracks unless there were two of them all the way into the station (which would have to be built).

The MBTA has been selling its right of way alongside the railbed to the abutters, and there might not be enough room without it... but there's always eminent domain. I don't think that seizing the land back and putting in a second line all the way through would be a big deal.

Building a new station... well, it'd have to have a lot more parking. You'd have to build a multi-story parking structure, reroute traffic for bus bypasses (it's not like more lines could just stop on the street like they currently do, and the buses have a hard time as it is stopping and then turning onto Corinth to get back down to Washington), change the intersections at South and Belgrade and Belgrade and Corinth... it'd all be doable, but it would cost millions of dollars and involve years of construction and delays.

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I have always thought that the increase in fare between hopping on the commuter line in Roslindale vs. Forest Hills is a great deterant to getting more people to use the line. From a social justice perspective, I would be in favor of increased commuter line options AND an update to the commuter line fare zones. It's never made sense to me that riding from Roslindale or Hyde Park costs the same as riding from Quincy or Newtonville.

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Bore a tunnel right under Washington Street all the way to Dedham Center. With stops at Roslindale Square, Grove Street and the mall (and one at Beech Street so I can have easy access).

Otherwise, yeah, follow the Amtrak line. And, yes, make sure to put a stop at Metropolitan Avenue, if only because there was a train station there a century ago (it's where William Fox, as in 20th Century Fox, used to get off to spend summers at his Roslindale retreat).

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When the Southwest Rail Corridor was developed in the mid-80s there were public hearings to consider extending the Orange Line parallel to Hyde Park Ave to Readville and possibly to Rt 128 Station. That idea was not popular and it failed all public hearings in Boston and effected suburban towns.

Then they considered running the Orange Line to Needham along the Needham rail branch, replacing the commuter trains. That also failed public hearings with all concerned parties.

No one wanted either.

Based on present configurations, it is impossible now to do either. Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) regulations require subway trains and "heavy rail" commuter trains to run on separate rights of way. That is why the Orange Line and MBTA/AMtrak trains are on separate sets of tracks.

You might be able to convert the Needham branch but some widening would be necessary and then there are multiple grade crossings to be factored in Needham. Also over time some buildings were built up against the single-track line. That results in land being taken by eminent domain. Then there is the argument of whether to run 3rd rail or overhead pantograph (like on the Blue Line), but the low clearance at State St Station already precludes that unless they raise the Blue Line (which passes over) or drop the Orange line deeper.

So as you can see, its not as easy as it sounds.

To stay on topic, remember that the pylons that hold up the Casey Overpass now are deep underground. After Forest Hills Station was relocated the level of the land was raised to allow easier passage over the depressed rail bed. The *real* level of that area is akin to what you find on Washington Street by the bus yard, or along the store fronts on the east side.

Next time you are on the Orange Line platform at Forest Hills, walk to the north end and you will see one of the pylons there, and guess what? That isn't even the old street level. Even the subway trench is a little higher, and those pylons go even deeper.

DMK
(One who remembers the earlier traffic nightmare called "Forest Hills. If you think it is bad now, you really have no clue what it was line in the 60s and 70s.)

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