Mr. Davey, tear down this bridge!

You CAN imagine how much better it would be with a traffic configuration that makes sense. DAMN THE MAN, DESTROY THE OVERPASS!!!

It's called a road diet. Actually worked in Central Square in Cambridge in the 1980s.

If you want improvements to bus service, only the at-grade option provides for expansion of the upper berth area of the T station. Also, there is a bus priority lane on Washington Street and provisions for bus queue jumping to turn the 39 around quickly. The berth expansion has the potential to bring buses like the 41 and the 38 that currently turn around at the JP Monument all the way back to Forest Hills, making some great connections.

The T station improvements and other changes along Washington St. are required in the at-grade plan for performance reasons, but are not part of the bridge option because they are not critical and they cost too much. Bridge supporters want to add those upgrades to the bridge plan, but they are already $20 million over the at-grade option.

As to your parking point, yes courthouse parking is in the plan. Building a bridge just so there's parking for the courthouse underneath it seems like just about one of the weakest arguments for the bridge option yet, but someone else is sure to come along and compete for that title.

Turns out that as I hear it there is no choice available for having a bicycle path on the bridge if we go with the bridge option. That was a decision made by many who voted strongly against a new bridge being any wider, and therefore casting any more of a shadow, than the current bridge. From what I understand, that decision is already made and done. So if cyclists even loved the bridge, it would be a very bad idea for them to use it.

This means pedestrians would have to cross 6 lanes of surface traffic instead of the current 4. How does that encourage people to walk?

Yay! A Copley inspired park! A tax payer subsidized space uesd only by skateboarders and the homeless.

Oh, the bow-ties, the bow-ties, the world is ending!

Those kinds bow-tie turns have worked great on Memorial drive ever since they were signalized ten years ago. There are ways to avoid them, but drivers don't, because they work.

> Say somebody coming from Franklin Park wants a pizza at Dogwood. That will require going the length of New Washington through both big box intersections, up the hill on the Arborway, the special U-Turn lane, down the hill, through one big box intersection the second time, and then a right turn at the second big box intersection. Is anybody really going to want to do that?

That "somebody" should learn that if you're actually going to eat at Dogwood, you'd never drive that way anyway, since there's only short-term parking next to the T. You always come around Ukraine Way so you can park in front of the restaurant.

If you do the sensible thing, the routes and times are pretty close to the same.

Even if you did follow the route you describe, the trip times are also close enough the the same. Who cares how many intersections you pass through if the light is green, which is the way the timing has to work?

You can check the delays for yourself using a tool that I learned about at the last Casey meeting:

http://casey.jpma.us/travel-times/

Will the bike lanes be separated from the main traffic, like in New York? Or will Boston continue to make glorified shoulders and dub them "bike lanes"?

It also looks like the Shea Circle will be removed. Can't say I thought that rotary was a problem.

Reading the letter in your link I see that Jeff Ferris wrote;

"...replacing the bridge with seven or eight lanes of traffic on the ground is a new barrier"

It seems universally acknowledged that MassDot is proposing a 6 lane replacement road. Jeff's on the advisory committtee so he must know that. So maybe you can explain how his statement is truthful?

For that matter, where are these "eleven lanes" you say will need to be crossed? And "another Storrow Drive?" I'm guessing Storrow carries 70,000+ cars a day. So you're telling us that an additional 35,000 cars will mysteriously appear in Forest Hills?

These kinds of obvious exaggerations diminish the credibility of bridge advocates generally. Fearmongering looks like desperation, not honest advocacy.

Keep those damn Rotarians out of this! They never allow themselves to get cornered in a debate!

I wouldn't be surprised if this was a rotary originally. It would probably keep the traffic flowing better than the proposed solution, especially when people stop in the middle of the intersections to turn left.

The six lanes may be necessary for queuing. The goal of the plan was to support the same number of cars as now, for better or worse.

The crossing distance of New Washington St. will be about the same as crossing Mass. Ave at Washington St., depending on the final width of the median. Crosswalks will be 20 feet wide.

A feature of the at-grade plan is that if the extra capacity isn't required, you can re-purpose it: adding parking off-peak initially, then possibly removing the extra lane capacity someday. The street can be designed now with that possibility in mind (location of utilities, etc.) It's much easier to remove a lane than get rid of the overpass later.

Anyway, while six lanes is more than four to cross, it's not like it's a greater distance to walk.

Thank you. If you live here, you know how beautiful the adjacent green space is. The Casey is a daily slap in the face of humanity. We deserve better.

From what I heard, some people started making noise that the state was letting the overpass go without maintenance because it would make a bridge seem less appealing and the replacement more urgent.

So taxpayers spend more money to fix a bridge that will be torn down soon, while a small group bangs the loudest gong they can find to demand a delay in the selection process.

Bridge, no bridge, whatever. Just decide already.