Hey, there! Log in / Register
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
The Urban Ring
Dedicated surface busways - Good!
Bus lanes are cheaper, but you end up having to spend money and manpower to enforce them.
No mention of electric operation on dedicated surface busways. - Not Good.
Fuel prices are hurting the MBTA's bus fleet as it is, and more vehicle pollution is the last thing we need. Overhead catenary would be the proverbial two birds, one stone solution. The EOT/MBTA should ignore the inevitable flood of NIMBYs whining about overhead wires. They'll get over it. There was "community opposition" to stringing wires past Silver Line Way a few years back, despite the fact all of three people live and work in the area beyond it (yes, that is extreme hyperbole, but come on. It wouldn't have put a damper on the redevelopment projects. "Oh crap, we were going to build this high rise, but nobody wants to look out and see some wires. We're going to New York instead.") and this forced the T into ordering custom CNG/Electric 60' articulated kneeling buses. That ended up triggering a huge number of problems.
Lots of bus lanes. - Bad.
I realize a dedicated ROW is not always possible, but the map shows some rather notable problem points.
Kenmore Sq bus lanes? Might as well declare it mixed traffic. I'd really like to see how that could possibly work. In fact, the entire Fenway to BU segment looks like a disaster waiting to happen.
Bah. This really ought to be
Bah.
This really ought to be a subway, and it really ought to run from Sullivan Sq. directly to Harvard Sq. via Union Sq., and then down the various Harvard Streets to Brookline Village via Coolidge Corner, and then to the Longwood / Pasteur intersection. The ring is more useful the more it connects existing mass transit lines where they are already not connected. The B, C, and D lines connect at Kenmore, and effectively at Cleveland Circle. It's the area between there that the ring needs to serve.
Yeah, I talked to an urban
Yeah, I talked to an urban planner from elsewhere in the country who confirmed my belief that using buses for major arterial routes like this is just plain nutty, but I'm hoping we can at least learn from the mistakes of the Silver Line.
Namely:
- Bus lanes that are worth little more than the paint used to mark them. They don't really work well anywhere, especially in Boston where it's especially challenging to get drivers to follow the rules of the road.
- Tunnels that are so rough and uncomfortable that you really feel as though you're riding on a dirt road. I don't even know how the SL tunnel managed to end up so impossibly crap. Everything else in the city manages to get paved in a halfway decent manner, so why did the Silver Line tunnel tun out so badly?
- Tunnels that require buses to maintain speeds of no more than 25 mph -with vehicles usually traveling much more slowly. If it's going to be that slow going, why bother with a tunnel?
- Diesel / CNG should be the exception, not the rule.
- Shelters that don't shelter anybody from anything (South, Courthouse and World Trade Center stations excepted)
Yeah. I used to ride the bus
Yeah. I used to ride the bus in Seattle, where they dug a tunnel under their downtown, with fancy stations and everything. So naturally, they're building a trolley line which will run through the tunnel as an improvement.
Well, we have plenty of experience with buses and trolleys here, and I think that we all know that proper subways are the best way to go. How the MBTA can be dumber than a sack of hammers about this, I can't figure.
they can't drive their free
they can't drive their free suv's through the red line tunnel, now can they? Think about how quickly dan g. could respond to emergencies via the urban ring bus tunnel!
Not ringy enough
The problem with the "Urban Ring" as shown is that it's not ringy enough. It's not a ring at all. It's a weird blob with a tail.
What is that? A dead mouse? It's not a ring. It's a compromise between demographics, needs, and pull. It looks like some detours are purely or political reasons.
To make it more of a ring, it should be out a bit farther on the lines. Why not go through Forest Hills instead of jogging in to go to Ruggles, Fenway and Kenmore? It could reconnect to Heath and the trolleys on its way to Harvard, replacing that mouse-tail, and continuing on through Somerville instead of following Mem Drive.
Part of it looks like the CT2 Route
And anybody who has ever attempted a rush hour commute on the CT2 can tell you what a joke that is. Buses can run 20-30 minutes late at the Ruggles and Kendall Square ends, and are completely packed.
Lets not even get into that spur that is currently the route for the 666 - Bus of the Damned.
If they are going to do buses, they should beef up the route system and run on shorter segments between stations with transfers and high frequency service.
Forest Hills is too far
A ring that passes through Forest Hills is a ring that isn't all that useful (least not if it is a bus). Most trips from Forest Hills are to some destination within the ring boundary. The idea for the ring is to ease the commute for somebody going from Forest Hills to Kendal Square by avoiding a trip through downtown. Ideally this is quicker, but more importantly, it takes some pressure off the subway for the folks who do have a downtown destination. The central subway is nearing max capacity. If we want branch extensions in the outlying areas (GL to Sommerville, OL to West Roxbury, etc.), something needs to be done about capacity downtown. The ring provides a pressure relief.
By default
Forest Hills is the end of the line for the subway. By default, slmost all of the trips by subway from Forest Hills are to somewhere closer to downtown.
However, there are an awful lot of buses at Forest Hills to the outlying community and even cross-town. A lot of people live in the part of Boston that is beyond Forest Hills, and use the T to commute, just like a lot of people live in the parts of Dorchester that are not served by the subway.
Forest Hills is about five miles from the center of Boston. Kenmore is just above two. What is the ideal distance from the center for the urban ring? I guess I'm thinking more of a ring around the well-served urban center rather than a round-robin of the already well-served areas.
Interesting question Rozzy, Garth
Interesting question Rozzy, Garth
Forest Hills and Ruggles are transportation hubs for busses, subway, train. Either could serve the purpose as a stop on the ring.
Maybe it's be informative to look at population density map to determine the best routes to connect all the current hubs where two or three modes - bus, subway, train - intersect for transfers.
Bus Lines are Arterial
The bus lines at Forest Hills are mostly arterial, connecting to outlying neighborhoods (Hyde Park, Roslindale, West Roxbury). Most of the bus riders on those lines aren't helped by an urban ring stop at Forest Hills. What they need is an Orange line extension. I can't really evaluate the cross town buses are Forest Hills -- they don't run very frequently, which could mean that there isn't much demand, but that's hard to say, since there is a bit of a chicken and egg aspect to it.
If I had the money for it, I'd consider building a cross town rail line connecting Ashmont to Forest Hills, to Reservoir, to BC, to Watertown Square. I suspect that would indeed get a lot of use, but it's not the same problem that the ring is trying to address. Constrained resources and all that, I suppose.
I'm a Rozzyite who takes the bus to Forest Hills
It would help a lot when I want to go to the airport or Kendall Square.
It's true
Most of the sixteen bus lines from Forest Hills are outbound. Only six are crosstown, and only one is inbound.
In contrast, almost all of the bus lines at Ruggles are crosstown. One imagines that some of these lines would be replaced by the Urban Ring, if it ever exists as something other than a special bus route.
Most of the subway lines in Boston serve the primary purpose of bringing people in from outlying areas to the middle of the city to work during the day. There's some crosstown benefit too, near the middle, but the majority of riders are going to (mostly inbound) or coming from (mostly outbound) work. That's the peak volume: inbound in the morning, outbound in the afternoon.
Most of those sixteen bus routes going to Forest Hills feed in people to get on the end of the Orange Line and go inbound to work. If the Urban Ring goes to Ruggles, then they'll all still get on the Orange Line at the same place, but some will get off at Ruggles to go crosstown, because the Orange Line isn't the spoke they work on.
If the Urban Ring is at Forest Hills, those people heading to a different spoke won't get on the Orange Line at all. And those people from the Ruggles area heading to another spoke will go outbound at peak times instead of inbound, taking advantage of unused capacity. That's the rationale for placing it farther out than the Kenmore-Kendall axis. Keeping it farther in seems to make it much nicer for the students at the universities located there, but not quite so nice for the people coming in to work for them.
We need more data
I get what you are saying, but we (meaning you and I) don't have the ridership data to figure out where the highest demand is. Strictly from a speed and distance point of view, though, I'd argue that a more inner alignment makes more sense. Say that under your proposal, I want to go to Kenmore. I have the choice of going in to back bay, walking to Copley and heading back out (ie the current option), or hopping the ring to Cleveland Circle (just a guess here, but I'm assuming you'd locate transfers at all the closer in termini), then take a train from there into Kenmore. I don't think there is any time savings on that. But if, on the other hand, I can take the orange line to Ruggles, then the ring line directly to Kenmore, I will save quite a bit of time.
At any rate, as I've already said, I'd like to see in addition to the proposed inner ring, some outlying crosstown routes, but they would be for true cross town use, not for switching from one radial line to another.
Why Kenmore? Let me count the ways
Kenmore is the nexus of 3 surface green lines, the busiest station on the system before and particularly after a game at Fenway, and avoids going through or all the way around Longwood (trust me, there are no good roads near Longwood during rush hour).
Fenway Park!
Yep -- just thinking about a baseball game is clear evidence for the benefit. Right now, I drive to Brookline Hills, park on the street, then take the D-line in for a game. But a good transfer option at Ruggles with direct service to Kenmore would enable me to leave the car at home altogether. I know a lot of people who work in the LMA and commute in much the fashion I've described. They, too, would probably instead take the Orange line.
Red Sox Shuttle
Just curious, have you tried the shuttle bus that the Sox run between Ruggles and the ballpark? Sounds like a good idea, but you'd better get your butt on the bus the minute the game ends, or you'll be stuck in traffic for half an hour or more with all the other four-wheeled vehicles.
Which makes me even more
Which makes me even more curious as to how transit planners expect Urban Ring buses to function in mixed traffic during Sox season.
Short answer: Blame Passengers, Drivers, and Phase of the Moon
How to make an MBTA Bus Schedule:
1) drive route at 3am in a car, with no stops
2) pick a couple of points on the route as landmarks, at least one of which is arbitrary or meaningless to anybody who lives in the area
3) time drive between points, maybe on route, maybe not
4) print schedule based on this
5) blame "drivers" and "traffic" and "unforseen circumstances" and "crowds at rush hour" and "wheelchairs" for poor performance on route schedule, despite their predictability