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Imagine if the T expanded like subway systems in world-class cities
By adamg on Tue, 03/27/2018 - 2:59pm
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Comments
World Class
Boston has about 100 years before the word World Class can be used in the same sentence, we still have Police who forge time sheets for personal gain, and we still arrest people in certain sections of town for small amounts of LEGAL marijuana. While other folks get to buy, sell, & shoot up heroin in public and face no repercussions because there considered world class citizens. "get it"
I didn't know homeless drug
I didn't know homeless drug addicts on the Boston
Common were comsidered world class... tell
me more!
Maybe we'll be "world class"...
...when randos commenting on message boards understand the difference between "they're", "their", and "there".
Oxford comma atcha,
While you're talking down your nose......
Don't forget to put your commas inside the quotation marks,
Meanwhile In Reality. A forest is being cut down by DOT for GLX
MassDOT revealed by mistake. They will have to cut down dozens, possibly hundreds, of trees to make room for the Green Line Extension. Sorta defeats the purpose of the "green" transit extension.
Oh, hey, welcome back
Hope you haven't been ill.
But please, tell us about the forest that occupied part of an existing rail right of way that is being clear cut.
The GLX requires a brand new two track corridor
Meaning all of the trees on each side of the existing 2 track corridor will have to be removed to make way for 4 future tracks (2 for commuter rail and Amtrak. 2 for the GLX)
Funny
I don’t remember any land taking for the corridor, as opposed to the Southwest Corridor, where enough room for a highway and at least 4 tracks was needed at first.
Also, didn’t you claim elsewhere that the corridor was at least 3 tracks wide before all of this?
Boy, you really stretch in your opposition to this.
It might help to visit the Green Line X corridor
Much like when you meet your childhood idol only to be disappointed. Some reality is a good thing. If you go. Take in one of the housing lotteries. It will break your heart
I should get up there
I'm a big fan of forests, and apparently there's a big forest right by the right of way.
Bill Wood's Ghost?
Is that you?
The slated tree removal has been a shock to many
I have seen hardcore GLX lovers switch in a matter of days. They were under the assumption that the trolleys would run on the existing tracks. Nope
Revealed months ago. The whole SHS Forest could be cut down
When the city was negotiating with the state about the HS, the state slipped in the right to take down the entire forest. They claimed they needed it as a GLX staging ground. Over 150 trees could be cut down on one block
Have you ever seen a forest?
Of are 150 trees by the property line of a high school Somerville’s version of a forest.
Also, any links to news coverage of this.
No Orange Line to Roslindale!
This entire concept has been invalidated and quite frankly is outrageous.
why?
why?
Outrageous!
Imagine, tens of thousands of people within the city limits asking to be able to ride to the city's core business district in just one seat. What an outrage! Why, accommodating those people might inconvenience dozens of homeowners!
Er, what
You do know that tens of thousands of Boston residents live in Roslindale, right? No?
Also why would increasing access to more neighborhoods be a bad thing? More people on trains, less cars on roads, less pollution, more public support for the T, etc...
I think...
...the post you're responding to was sarcasm.
SMH
No expanded service south of Forest Hills and barely changed service in Mattapan and Dorchester? Even in idealistic visions of future MBTA service particular sections of Boston are excluded or underserved while others see constant development, including in smaller neighboring cities. Like we pay different taxes. Typical segregationist/racist/classist nonsense.
Watertown Restored!
I'll take it.
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
There's so much there
And so much of it is wrong.
First, why are the authors basically ignoring the southern third of the City of Boston?
Second, isn't this plan basically going back to what the T had for service in 1948, adding in some of the Recess Committee ideas (but not all) and other extensions already done, and keeping the Elevated up (which would make the people of the South End oh so happy?)
Lastly, I hope that the authors realize that there were some expansion proposals in London that were summarily axed. Namely, the Northern Line was supposed to go, well, further north.
JP
I'm just glad to see that JP gets two more lines of service and nothing improves for Roslindale or West Roxbury. Seems about right.
Or HP
Though I don’t live there. But ya, this overlooks a lot of the city.
but why would we want to
but why would we want to improve things when instead we can just cut taxes and skate by on old shit until something catastrophic happens? makes sense to me
IMAGINE
If the MBTA could achieve three simple goals safe,reliable and clean.
Red Line
Where’s the Red Line out to Lexington?
We don't talk about that.
_Those_ people, you know.
Does it...
Start with N and end with Y and have IMB in the middle?
You're 1/3 right.
It does start with an 'NI'. (If Arlington wanted to keep out 'the undesirables', can you imagine what Lexington would have had to say?)
OH...
NITBY, not NIMBY...I see. Or maybe NIOBY?
For those who don't get it...
You all know what NIMBY means, NITBY and NIOBY are simply substituting "Their" or "Our" for the "My". An example of NITBY was the Dudley Street El coming down and being replaced by the Silver Lie.
wasnt it proposed to
wasnt it proposed to burlington?
Bedford
That line goes all the way to Bedford.
Aka "the Minuteman Bikeway".
Gonna have to re-name that
Gonna have to re-name that Yawkey Station.
These expansions are all great and will serve businesses well, but it's already too expensive for many people to live at the outer stops. Most MBTA modernization proposals I see include Orange Line extensions to Roslindale and beyond to the south, and up to Reading or Wakefield in the North.. as well as Blue Line to Lynn, Red Line into Arlington, and others as well.
Wouldn't it be great if there were some Alewife-style outer stations that met 128 and other highways, with huge parking garages that were free or low-cost, to further encourage people to take the T?
Well, there's always Riverside
But recall that the original plans for extending the Red Line past Harvard had it going to 128 and Lexington, but the good burghers of Arlington knew that would bring the criminal element right into their living rooms and so managed to stop that.
I recently saw an interesting proposal (that will go nowhere, of course) to free up some capacity at South Station and better serve points south of Forest Hills by ditching the Needham Line and extending the Orange Line to West Roxbury and the Green Line to Needham (via a right of way that already exists).
Yup
The BERy plans also had the Orange going to 128 in Dedham on one side and out to Reading/128 on the other, too. Plus the Blue to Lynne, and the Green out to Woburn (128) on one end and a line out to Needham Junction on the other (128 again) - pretty much all lines terminating around the inner loop (other than Ashmont/Mattapan Lines).
Vanshnookenraggen's Proposal
I believe this is the post you were looking for, Adam:
http://www.vanshnookenraggen.com/_index/2018/03/the-future-of-the-green-...
Some great ideas in there that are too sensible to ever come to fruition.
That does seem like
a good idea and yes the ROW does exist, but good luck getting the project approved.
Thank goodness...
Riverside Park way out by Springfield (Agawam to be precise) was renamed Six Flags New England a long time ago. That alleviates any confusion visitors might have had, thinking the Green Line went all the way out there. I know I thought that when I was little, but I learned better quickly. As for actual service of some kind out to there, that's a pipe dream, NTM a whole lot more expensive of a fare than Providence. I think I head about a plan for that type of service, though, and it might be cool, but am not sure. If anyone knows about that, please tell me. Just curious.
Free or Low Cost?
Only if the entire system is free or low cost.
Why should we be subsidizing people who have large pieces of private property to store at the station at the expense of those who don't carry around giant blocks of metal?
I would love for the T to
I would love for the T to focus on getting people around and not just getting people to work in downtown, which is really has happened. I would love to get from say, Quincy to say Hyde Park in a reasonable time and not by car. It is not there now. I advocate for this.
agreed
this map alludes to the concept of ring transportation but it's not really there.
A line that runs roughly along 128 from Alewife to Quincy and then something which runs roughly like the 66 bus from Harvard Sq to Dudley but then out to Dorchester would really be a game changer.
I'd imagine the network effects of linking the various office parks in Burlington, Waltham, Weston, Needham, Canton, etc... would great also.
London has so many good ideas
London has so many good ideas and features when it comes to transportation. Twenty Four hour subway service. Congestion charges for drivers entering the city. Banning vehicles that have huge blind spots. A pedestrian bridge over the river. Good bike infrastructure. We have none of that. Instead we give the vast majority of our resources to drivers and the result is death, pollution and endless traffic.
After the empire...
Once the British Empire disintegrated and the UK had to re-imagine itself as just another country, that humility---forced or not---allowed them to spend money on sensible things that could be used by everyone, not just corporations, the military and the rich. As long as we have to be Number One and spend most of our budget on defense spending and are content to increase poverty while rewarding the already rich, we'll never have a transportation system like London's. I hate the destructive myth of American exceptionalism, and I long for the day when this country can be a kind, generous, humane country, just like other countries, without worrying about whether it's Number One or not. But of course that makes me an America Hater.
Because they already have all
Because they already have all their existing trains running on time.
My plan is at least as reasonable as theirs: jet packs for everybody!
Boring automation
Everyone agrees that this is a pipe dream until this state can get project costs under control, and that probably won't happen until we mostly remove human labor from the equation.
Boston could really use a subway line that parallels the route of the 66 bus, connecting Harvard with Allston, Brookline, JP, Longwood, and Lower Roxbury. Perhaps Elon Musk might be the man to build it.
People it's art.
People it's art.
So you'll put your money
So you'll put your money where your mouth is and donate all proceeds from the poster to the T or a transit advocacy group of your choice ? Or was it just publicity for your design firm after all ?
If We're Imagining Anything We Want...
... I'd like to see an elevated trolley in Southie.
I see it running from Broadway Station, up West Broadway to a D Street stop, then on to Dorchester Street, where it will cut over to East First, a stop at L Street, then Faragut, Castle Island, back via the Horseshoe to Day Boulevard (great views; we'll work out the freezing tracks in winter somehow), and then maybe East Sixth to H Street, then a stop somewhere near Columbia Park, and a straight shot back up Dot Ave to Broadway.
It will decimate property values AND relieve parking, so it should satisfy the oldtimers easily. Like Mexico paying for Trump's Wall, it will be funded by the yuppies. I expect we can get it built for $30,000,000,000. Shouldn't take more than ten years. The city will have to go all eminent domain on a few people, but fuck them.
Oh, and I want it to run PCC trolleys, like the Mattapan-Ashmont line. And we'll build an elevated bikepath alongside; what the hell. In winter, it will be a cross-country ski trail.
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
While I love the concept and
While I love the concept and idea - will it really destroy property values, though? Seems like in NYC where they kept their elevated lines values are booming.
Imagine
Imagine the T not catching on fire every day.
LOL
Let's not get ahead of ourselves now!
Imagine a T with sound spending
No golden $100K bathrooms. No vanity $4 billion streetcars. No GE exec / transportation leaders.
Numbers
Population:
London ~ 9 million
Boston (including students) < 1 million
Try more like 3 1/2 million
Yes, still smaller than London, but it's really only a historical quirk that Boston is as small as it is - unlike in a lot of other places, Massachusetts cities and towns have to give their approval to being annexed. Brookline pretty much put an end to Boston's expansion through annexation when it voted against it in the 1870s (save for Hyde Park, and that was in 1912). That's why the MBTA district includes so many places that are not named Boston - a functioning metropolitan area requires it.
Full stats from Wikipedia
Population (2010)
• State capital 617,594
• Estimate (2017) 687,584
• Density 13,903/sq mi (5,368/km2)
• Urban 4,180,000 (US: 10th)
• Metro 4,628,910 (US: 10th)
• CSA 8,041,303 (US: 6th)
Nah
Not impressed. No one wants the A line back. This map reflects the current mindset, which is too oriented toward the existing system.
The A (and the E from VA to
The A (and the E from VA to Forest Hills) should not have been abandoned.
They should have been restored from suspension.
The long wait helped build objections to restoration ("practicality" with respect to car traffic and street parking, and complicated the legitimate issues of modern ADA compliance)
They then ripped most of the infrastructure out, adding huge costs that changed any prospect of rail restoration from "slim" or "fleeting" to "infinitesimal"
The best compromise along those routes would be to set them up for Electic Trolley Bus.
And don't get people started about
the "temporary" 49 bus route that was originally supposed to be replaced by a new Green Line route. They got the Silver Lie instead.
Just to say everyone on the 39, 57 and SL5 know exactly what "temporary" really means.
"A" Line
Well, I want the "A" Line back. As a matter of fact, I want a stop right in front of my house. I'll drive it, if the T wants a real bargain (and they're not too concerned with liability issues.)
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
I agree with Suldog
Although actually making the connection between the 57 (or A) and 71 easier would be better too. Currently people have to cross a dangerous intersection to make the connection.
be careful what you wish for
A crappy unreliable T is the only thing keeping housing prices near T stops from skyrocketing even further. If the T actually ever improves, developers will knock down anything even remotely considered affordable within a T stop 1/2 mile radius thus displacing everyone but air B n B investors and trustfund kids going to BU.
How about the Red Line to Woods Hole?
This was an old reliable joke at the Boston Comedy Connection, and just as valid as anything else on this wish list.
Yep
After all, they left room for it in the Cape Cod Canal Tunnel.