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Whiny Bostonians are whiny
By adamg on Tue, 03/06/2012 - 6:42am
Karen Cord Taylor rolls up a newspaper and whacks Boston whiners with it for making a mess all over the proposed Ferris-Wheel-enhanced redo of the Esplanade:
You also might remember the initial proposal for burying the Central Artery. "It can't be done." "It's too expensive." "It's not needed.” Well, it was done. It was expensive. And our city was transformed from dreadful into something wondrous.
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Comments
The central artery is still
The central artery is still dreadful, just dreadful underground.
Something wondrous
"I wonder why we paid $22 billion to get this?"
Why? How about...
This:
and this:
and this:
Before/After
I still see a six lane arterial road in the 'after' picture. And that is the same road which I pictured originally. It gets quite nasty.
Which is probably why most of the time, the Green-scar looks like this:
But thank you for finding a picture of people actually enjoying it. I've yet to see such a scene personally.
Now Madrid just completed their own "Big Dig" and this is what they put on top of it:
Those Madrileños are clever. They actually buried the roads! Also they did nearly twice the amount of tunneling and the project ended up costing about $US 5 billion over 7 years.
One thing not discussed
When I first got to Boston, I walked down Milk St. because I heard the Aquarium was at the end of it. So, naturally, I took the Green Line down to Park Street and wandered my way over to Milk St and walked down it to get to the Aquarium. I worried I took a wrong turn when I got past the park at Post Office Square and ran into the highway.
It hadn't rained for days, but I recall something dripping on me as I wandered through barricades and detours to find my way to the rest of Milk St and the Aquarium.
A couple of years ago, I went to Long Pier to catch the boat over to the Harbor Islands. This time, being much wiser to the ways of the MBTA, I came up from the Blue Line at the Aquarium station. I turned to the west and couldn't figure out where I was. I could see all the way down State St and parts of buildings nobody had looked at for decades. It was completely different and when I go to the North End or the piers, it's striking every time.
The biggest improvement/failure isn't in any of these photos. Regardless of whether there's a big median/scar/park/artery running north-south, the removal of the raised highway has meant the east-west views actually *exist* again! Connecting downtown to its waterfront, the lifeblood of the historical city, was the most important reason for burying the road...and visually it's a success. You only need to stand at State and Atlantic and look west to see that. That's the comparison photo that's missing.
Thank you Kaz
Pictures are worth 1,000 words, but our dear Matthew is either too young or too new to have actually lived in both eras of this.
I'm betting too young, because anyone who has lived in or had close ties to a city that got rid of a freeway or moved it knows that it takes years before people "move in" to a space completely.
I'm really happy they removed it
Not sure where you got the impression that I'm not.
I think they should have stopped after removing the elevated highway and not spent $22 billion to put it underground.
But, seeing as that's done now, I would like to point out that nobody is going to move into the space as it exists currently.
The reason is quite apparent if you go down there and try to "enjoy" the park anytime in the morning, or in the late afternoon.
I would also like to point out that when I took those pictures, Christopher Columbus Park was fairly well populated, as was another park in the North End where I had been coming from.
Yet, "mysteriously" nobody wanted to be on the Green-scar.
It is not a park. It is a median strip, and people will treat it as such until those choking traffic lanes are stripped back and removed.
Relevant post
Whenever someone gripes about the traffic patterns, idiosyncracies and whatnot in Boston, this is all I can think of:
Not really relevant
That's a nice XKCD but traffic engineers in this country largely couldn't give a shit about pedestrians. All their modelling focuses on pushing the largest number of cars through an intersection possible.
Also it's not relevant to Boston since it assumes that someone might actually stop at a red light.
Furthermore ...
... this also assumes that Boston employs traffic engineers that actually do simulations and make an attempt at determining downstream consequences of light timings at a single intersection.
Unless something has changed in the last two years, I have it on good authority that they don't bother.
Worse yet, many communities have their selectpersons and their city council persons in charge of such things.
You read that right - politicians are in charge of signals, including determining light timings.
where's the cheese?
Who doesn't like a good whine? But really a ferris-wheel is not comparable to the Big Dig. One of those two things can be undone fairly inexpensively. And just because Boston-whiners whine about something doesn't necessarily give a project merit. There was a good amount of whining about the destruction of the West End and there are many people who would say they were right.
A Ferris-Wheel on the site of the Museum of Science parking garage sounds like a great idea. And if it turns out not to be, well, that's easily fixed. The larger plans regarding Storrow Drive and other transportation infrastrcuture-related changes along the Esplanade and surrounding area are far more complicated and irrevocable once implemented. Certainly lots of pluses, but also lots of impacts that need to be thought out. (My own preference would be for a roller coaster over ferris wheel...goes great with the bumper cars on the streets below.)
Funny.
I was talking to a National park ranger about this just the other day - we were both of the opinion that the reason for the ferris wheel proposal was to make the plan so absurd that their lesser wants would be more likely to be met.
That said, I still think a ferris wheel would be an awesome addition to the skyline. And on the note of the roller coaster, I had a dream a while ago that the MBTA had a roller coaster on it called the Rainbow Line that went in a ring, approximately where the inner belt highway would have been.
Rainbow Road
Seems like we're more likely to get Super Mario Kart's Rainbow Road than a functional Urban Ring.
I think I'll spend the next half hour daydreaming about leaving banana peels all over 128.
Just think!
How useful would a blue shell or two be on your morning commute?
Beware of Red Shells
http://nerdpuddle.com/game-on-2-0-at-omsi-july-2nd...
Scroll down to the video of the hipster on bike.
Boston was dreadful?
Boston was dreadful? Interesting take.
You want to see whiny?
Illuminate the ferris wheel at night and let the sponsors get some recognition and see how much whining you hear from the other side of the river suddenly.
Previously: Cambridge sign battle goes ballistic