I-695, Soutwst X-Way, Mystic Valley Prkway, S. End Bypass

[bosma]

Its funny to think that the third harbor tunnel was proposed back then.

I stumbled upon these maps I thought they were interesting:

http://www.mapjunction.com/places/Boston_BRA/main.pl?xstart=1662&ystart=725&zstart=1024&layered=false&showlinks=false&complevel=8&layer0=2003+BWSC+Orthophoto&state0=0&u_state0=0&vis0=false&alpha0=100&u_alpha0=100&color0=0&u_color0=0&layer1=Inner+Belt+Wide+Overview+P1&state1=0&u_state1=0&vis1=true&alpha1=100&u_alpha1=100&color1=0&u_color1=0&layer2=Major+Thoroughfares&state2=0&u_state2=0&vis2=false&alpha2=100&u_alpha2=100&color2=0&u_color2=0&layer3=Open+Space&state3=2&u_state3=0&vis3=false&alpha3=100&u_alpha3=100&color3=0&u_color3=0&layer4=Street+Names&state4=2&u_state4=0&vis4=false&alpha4=100&u_alpha4=100&color4=3&u_color4=0&expand=false&ht=768

http://www.mapjunction.com/places/Boston_BRA/cgi-view/rest.pl?t=13323&p=6439



http://www.mapjunction.com/places/Boston_BRA/cgi-view/rest.pl?t=13323&p=6631[url]

[bosma]

sorry, links work now

[Charlie_mta]

The last plan around 1969 for the Inner Belt through Cambridge would have crossed the Charles River in a tunnel next to the BU Bridge, and been a depressed roadway through Cambridge, allowing air rights development over the highway.

Given that design, it may have been a good thing for the area. the Inner Belt would have provided a close-in bypass to the downtown Central Artery. I'm thinking that had the Inner Belt been built, the Central Artery between the Callahan Tunnel and the Ted Williams Tunnel/Mass Pike interchange could have been downgraded to a surface boulevard, as the Inner Belt would have served as the primary north-south expressway through Boston.

Thus, the Inner Belt could have avoided the need for the Big Dig through downtown Boston.

[ablarc]

I'm thinking that had the Inner Belt been built, the Central Artery between the Callahan Tunnel and the Ted Williams Tunnel/Mass Pike interchange could have been downgraded to a surface boulevard, as the Inner Belt would have served as the primary north-south expressway through Boston.

Thus, the Inner Belt could have avoided the need for the Big Dig through downtown Boston.
Provocative thought; never considered that. It would have damaged both Cambridge and Boston, however.

[Ron Newman]

It would have ruined Central Square, Inman Square, and Union Square, either by plowing through them, or by placing a wall of traffic at their edge. No thanks.

[lexicon506]

iven that design, it may have been a good thing for the area. the Inner Belt would have provided a close-in bypass to the downtown Central Artery. I'm thinking that had the Inner Belt been built, the Central Artery between the Callahan Tunnel and the Ted Williams Tunnel/Mass Pike interchange could have been downgraded to a surface boulevard, as the Inner Belt would have served as the primary north-south expressway through Boston.

So basically you're saying that we would have a highway partially covered with ugly development through some of the livliest places in the area and we would still have a hulking, ugly highway through downtown Boston. It would have made the city overrun by cars (why use transit when you can have a nice smooth commute) and increased sprawl. Sure it probably would've helped the economy, but I'd rather have today's Boston over some super economy, highway choked Atlantaesque city anyday. Your points are true, but no matter how you put it I will always see this project as something that could've destroyed Boston as we know it.

[JimboJones]

Unbuilt Boston: The Ghost Cloverleaf of Canton
Wade Roush

In the spirit of ?Little Lanes,? I thought I?d tell you about another strange and mostly-forgotten piece of Boston?s past: the half-abandoned cloverleaf where I-95 meets I-93, on the western edge of the Blue Hills reservation between Canton, MA, and Milton, MA. I stumbled across this forlorn, fascinating place last fall at the end of a hike around the reservation. And while highway construction may sound like an odd subject for a column that?s supposed to be about technology and the Web, I see the Canton cloverleaf as an important technological artifact in its own right. It?s a telling symbol of our own occasional indecision about what we value more: technological conveniences (automobiles, in this case) or coherent, livable communities.

The ghost cloverleaf, which connects to the reservation?s trail system, is an odd sight indeed: a network of curving ramps and a disused six-lane expressway that suddenly dead-ends in a dense, marshy forest. It?s fully outfitted with curbs, drains, and lane markings, but is used today mainly as a refuse dump and long-term parking lot for construction equipment owned by the Massachusetts Highway Department. As you walk along the empty pavement, the main sounds are the chirping of crickets and the distant roar of cars on I-93. (The photo here conveys a bit of the spot?s strange, lonely atmosphere.)

Continues ...The Ghost Cloverleaf of Canton (http://www.xconomy.com/2008/05/02/unbuilt-boston-the-ghost-cloverleaf-of-canton/)

[JohnAKeith]

I guess I never paid much attention to the talk about I-695 because I thought it was just an idea, not something actually planned. A lot of you are already familiar with it.

After hearing Governor Dukakis mention it the other night, I had to know more.

He talked about how the new highway would branch off the Southeast Expressway where the Albany off-ramp is today, head up (approximately) where Melnea Cass Boulevard is today (although I think originally more to the left/west of where they ended up building it), across the railroad tracks, to the left of the Museum of Fine Arts (within three feet of it, he said, and he was only slightly exaggerating), across the Fens (next to the Gardner Museum), in front of the Landmark Center, across Beacon, across the Mass Turnpike, over the Charles (or under) where the BU Bridge is now, across Memorial Drive, up Brookline Street through Cambridgeport to Central Square, across, up through Inman Square, into Union Square and then meet with I-93.

The idea had its concept in 1948 and was still seen as a viable plan in 1965, when this book was published:

Preliminary relocation survey: Roxbury district of the city of Boston (http://openlibrary.org/books/OL23326849M/Preliminary_relocation_survey_Roxbury_district_of_ the_city_of_Boston.)

...a study of the relocation efforts that will be needed when land taking begins for the proposed innerbelt (Southwest Expressway) in Boston's Roxbury and Fenway neighborhoods; includes a socioeconomic study of the area, welfare statistics, public school data, crime statistics, photos of "typical" buildings and discusses the availability of affordable housing; also includes name and occupation of residents that will be affected for Columbuus Avenue, Sterling Street, Vernon Place-Court, Bills Court, Albany, Weston, Carlow, Hunneman, and Newbern Streets, Harrison Avenue, Washington, Ruggles, Tremont and Field Streets, Tavern Road and Shawmut Avenue; owners of the buildings to be taken are also given together with description and use of the structure and it's assessment; aerial photos showing the path of the highway are included; copies of this item were in the BRA collection...

I found it by way of this guy's site:

http://billwarner.posterous.com/bostons-inner-belt-the-highway-that-was-stopp

The plan was far enough along that estimates of how much they would have to pay property owners were figured.

As everyone knows, the project was canceled in 1970-1971.

Here are some renderings from that book showing where the new highway would go.

A map showing the neighborhood prior to construction. That's Madison Park in the middle, and the highway would have gone right over it, according to the other images. This is to the west of where Melnea Cass Blvd is, today.

http://i369.photobucket.com/albums/oo139/JohnAKeith/Random/map.png

The path of the highway from the Southeast Expressway up to I-93.

http://i369.photobucket.com/albums/oo139/JohnAKeith/Random/i-695.jpg

Lower left on this is Annunciation Road and the Greek Orthodox Cathedral at the corners of Parker and Ruggles Streets heading up across Huntington Ave to the left of the MFA at Museum Road, across the Fens past the Gardner Museum.

http://i369.photobucket.com/albums/oo139/JohnAKeith/Random/695-4.jpg

This part of the Fens actually has a name but I don't remember what the Governor called it. He walks this every day going to work at NeU.

http://i369.photobucket.com/albums/oo139/JohnAKeith/Random/695-5.jpg

A map of the neighborhood. That's Washington Street at the bottom, Tremont Street at the top - notice the density!

http://i369.photobucket.com/albums/oo139/JohnAKeith/Random/695-6.jpg

The off-ramp at Albany Street. Notice the Fort Point Channel to the right of the off-ramp. Buried, today!

http://i369.photobucket.com/albums/oo139/JohnAKeith/Random/695-1.jpg

The off-ramp at Albany Street up toward Melnea Cass Blvd. Notice the round building at the bottom - this is now a hotel. Again, the Channel still exists.

http://i369.photobucket.com/albums/oo139/JohnAKeith/Random/695-2.jpg

The elevated on Washington Street at the bottom of the photo, right through Madison Park, and northwest.

http://i369.photobucket.com/albums/oo139/JohnAKeith/Random/695-3.jpg

[vanshnookenraggen]

Holy crap that's a great find. Somewhere else on the Mapjunction site there is a BRA planning map of Lower Roxbury showing the completed Southwest Expressway/I-695 interchange along with the relocated Orange Line and other urban renewal projects.

[Charlie_mta]

There was also to be an 8-lane Northwest Expressway (Route 2), which would have paralleled the Fitchburg Division railroad line from the Alewife area to a junction with the Inner Belt east of Union Square.

A part of me wishes these highways had been built. As a kid in the 50's and a teenager in the 60's I watched with excitement the heroic plans for massive freeways and interchanges sweeping across the congested byways of Boston, Cambridge and Somerville. It was to be a new age, a new time of mobility and prosperity, of prying the medieval towns away from their moribund past, of launching the Boston metro area into the future. That seemed to be the same thinking behind the large scale clearing of Boston for urban renewal development.

But somehow in the mid-sixties, people saw the incredible upheaval all of this was creating, and began to call for a stop. The freeways, all but I-93, were cancelled in 1970, and a few subway extensions/relocations took their place. Additional transit line expansions were discussed but never came to pass.

[Ron Newman]

Hard to imagine Porter, Union, Inman, or Central squares being desirable neighborhoods today if these freeways had been built.

[jass]

It would be see easy to drive there. And then you could park. And then wonder why you were there, it's just empty lots, and go to Burlington Mall.

[F-Line to Dudley]

Thank God that never got built. Yeah, the traffic would flow nicely with the Artery not so overloaded but the Boston renaissance would've never happened with so much of the city and Cambridge getting bombed to smithereens like a giant linear West End. Some of the revised tunnel plans might've worked, but there's still the matter of what ugliness would get built on top of them after everything got leveled for construction. There would've still needed to be the third harbor tunnel for it to work, and the Big Dig would've had to happen regardless because the Artery still was still far substandard interstate design that wouldn't last 50 years.

We'd never have high-speed rail north of New York if any of this got built. The NEC was going to be completely bulldozed from Readville inbound and re-routed over the 2-track Fairmount Line, Back Bay would become a dinky little Worcester Line only station and probably bulldozed into some Yawkey-like platform, and there'd be nothing but 2 tracks of Orange Line next to the highway with shitty Newton Worcester Line-like stations hitting bombed-out Roxbury and taking over the Needham Line to 128. It'd be a functional transit system, but we'd have thrown away all the future capacity for real intercity service even up to today's levels.


Only highway they feasibly could've completed without destroying the city was Route 1 to the 128/95 interchange. That would've made 93 through Somerville and Medford much nicer and less invasive of the surrounding areas. But 1 was only achievable if they made an exception on the moratorium for it and got it done before 1980...never today. Maybe also an east belt from South Bay interchange, third harbor tunnel, 1A, to 1 in Chelsea that bypassed the worst of the Artery at expense of clobbering the SE Expressway (they probably still could grade separate 1A to 16 as expressway today with little opposition through the industrial wasteland, but then there's nowhere to put that traffic when it hits residential/commercial density past 16). I don't think they could've even got 2 built to 93 with it destroying the Mystic River reservation and Medford Sq. and decaying adjoining West Cambridge, East Arlington, and West Somerville to very not-nice places. All the other plans were worse than death.

[mass88]

Does anyone know if they are going to redesign the 95-93 split interchange in Canton?

[whighlander]

It would be see easy to drive there. And then you could park. And then wonder why you were there, it's just empty lots, and go to Burlington Mall.

Ah and Tip could have died a Billionaire not just a mere Millionare -- not bad for someone who grew up in projects, lived in a rental when he was elected and never held a real job except for politician

[F-Line to Dudley]

Does anyone know if they are going to redesign the 95-93 split interchange in Canton?

Bam: http://www.mhd.state.ma.us/cantoninterchange/

128 widening has to be done-done-done before they touch this, but it's on the docket.

[Ron Newman]

Why bother? What's wrong with the interchange as it is?

[statler]

It's slightly difficult for suburbanites driving into the city to navigate, so it must be fixed immediately.

[F-Line to Dudley]

Why bother? What's wrong with the interchange as it is?

Awful traffic flow. Full-cloverleaf turning radii aren't designed for mainline thru traffic, they're designed for exits where only a minority of vehicles passing through the interchange are exiting. Every vehicle on 95N has to mash to one lane and go on a sharp curve meriting one of those truck rollover warning signs. Meaning you have trucks slowing every car to 25 MPH, then trying to fully accelerate onto 128N in time for the weaving at the next half-cloverleaf to University Ave. An accident on a ramp like that being pressed into mainline duty means all 95N traffic stops dead with no detour, and traffic heading around the curve to 128N backs up and hoses traffic heading for the 93N exit (3 lanes, center lane divides at the split). It's an interchange design that only could've worked on those volumes had 95 continued straight into Boston.

95S isn't that bad because the 93S-to-95S curve acts as it was originally intended...an exit for a minority of traffic. While 128S-to-95S is the wide-angle side and has less disruptive lane drops. The new flyover ramps in the design are at the same wide high-speed angle and have no lane drops. And it's combined at the same spot with the University Ave. exit to eliminate the mainline weaving and that partial cloverleaf. Can see on Google overhead that they already left a widened shoulder on reconstructed 128 so there'll be no lane drops whatsoever off the new flyover for close to a mile, in time for max acceleration and traffic sorting before the Dedham Corporate Ctr. exit.


Cloverleafs are rare builds today because so many 1960's traffic planners blew it on the traffic count estimates. It's all T interchanges like these designs when one highway ends at another, and stacks or turbines when one major highway crosses another. Higher margin for error on those designs when projecting loads.


MA had a cloverleaf fetish back in the day. Look at all the 128 exits being redone now and every exit down 24 to Taunton. They've got a couple other dysfunctional half-built ones like this to eliminate, such as 295/95 in Attleboro. And others built as intended that need modification because they're far exceeding design load (93/128 Woburn).

[HenryAlan]

Why bother? What's wrong with the interchange as it is?

Have you ever driven through it on 95 North? The answer is self-evident once you've done that.

[Shepard]

It's slightly difficult for suburbanites driving into the city to navigate, so it must be fixed immediately.

I agree with the sentiment, but this interchange is very important regionally - not just for car commuters, but also for park-and-ride rail commuters (CR/Acela/Amtrak at the Route 128 stop), not to mention shipping. I think a fix is more than justified here.

Edit: For map enthusiasts, this interchange also contains one of the area's strangest Bridge to Nowhere, the Green Lodge Street overpass.

[Ron Newman]

If dropping to one lane is a problem, why not just widen the cloverleaf ramp to two lanes and be done with it?

[HenryAlan]

I think the problem is more the sharpness of the curve. You have to drop from 65 mph down to about 20. It's also hard to see at night. I think there are some intermediate options, such as widening, better lights, etc., but the fundamental issue is that it's a sharp right hook requiring too significant a decrease in speed. Even with two lanes, it would likely cause back-ups just from slowing vehicles.

[F-Line to Dudley]

I think the problem is more the sharpness of the curve. You have to drop from 65 mph down to about 20. It's also hard to see at night. I think there are some intermediate options, such as widening, better lights, etc., but the fundamental issue is that it's a sharp right hook requiring too significant a decrease in speed. Even with two lanes, it would likely cause back-ups just from slowing vehicles.

That's exactly what happens. It backs up past the 93N exit and then the whole highway is hosed back into Sharon. 95's the busiest trucking route in the nation. It's the trucks that slow to 20 on the curve making everyone slow to 20. The problematic inner loop of the cloverleaf to 128N is constrained by the less problematic outer loop from 93S. You'd have to massively widen the 93 off-ramp and weave it on the existing overpass with an S-curve to open the breathing room to widen the 128N onramp modestly. Medium northbound relief with tradeoff that southbound gets worse and has more weaving. By this point addressing those problems prices it same as fixing it right by starting over with a clean high-speed T-interchange, because those overpasses are also at end of structural life and need a full redecking if you keep them.

[Ron Newman]

I was thinking the opposite -- reduce the radius of the loop even further by widening the loop to two lanes. Leave the other ramps alone. Trucks can slow down to 20 mph in the new tighter inner lane while the rest of the traffic passes at 45 mph in the outer (existing) lane.

This would be a lot less expensive than entirely rebuilding the interchange.

[omaja]

And a whole lot less helpful. While I don't have exact numbers off hand, I'd guess 93 and 95 handle somewhere near 200K vehicles per day in the area of that interchange. The current set up only functions properly with approximately a fourth of the volumes it is handling.

[whighlander]

That's exactly what happens. It backs up past the 93N exit and then the whole highway is hosed back into Sharon. 95's the busiest trucking route in the nation. It's the trucks that slow to 20 on the curve making everyone slow to 20. The problematic inner loop of the cloverleaf to 128N is constrained by the less problematic outer loop from 93S. You'd have to massively widen the 93 off-ramp and weave it on the existing overpass with an S-curve to open the breathing room to widen the 128N onramp modestly. Medium northbound relief with tradeoff that southbound gets worse and has more weaving. By this point addressing those problems prices it same as fixing it right by starting over with a clean high-speed T-interchange, because those overpasses are also at end of structural life and need a full redecking if you keep them.

F-Line -- as usual a very thorough posting on transportation issues
Omaja -- yes its 200k range and as pointed out -- everyone headed north is either heading NW on I-95 N or NE (although some might then head S on 3) on I-93 (never can figure out if its north or south)

There are some who really are headed to RT-128 T and Amtrak station and the new development -- the will be getting a private ramp as part of the rebuild of the interchange

The other two with much of the same problems are:
I-93 / I-95 in Woburn and
I-93 / Rt-3 in Braintree

Both are planned to be fixed the next 20 years along with the I-95 N T interchange -- rebuilding from scratch using modern traffic interchange designs

[Ron Newman]

But I-93/MA 3 in Braintree is not a cloverleaf, so why does it need any rebuilding?

[vanshnookenraggen]

It is a cloverleaf, albeit a half built one. Actually it is a trumpet hacked out of a half built cloverleaf.

http://g.co/maps/g7w9g

You can clearly see the old ramps never completed.

[mass88]

But I-93/MA 3 in Braintree is not a cloverleaf, so why does it need any rebuilding?

The entire interchange is terrible. Going north on 95 and getting onto 93 needs to be redone. There will be a backup, even though there isn't any traffic. I would have a dedicated lane added onto that stretch of 93 where only those merging on would have access initially then open it up and it be an exit only lane for the first exit.

The split by the Plaza is a lot smoother than the one in Canton.

[F-Line to Dudley]

But I-93/MA 3 in Braintree is not a cloverleaf, so why does it need any rebuilding?

That one's not going to get a full rebuilding. The rock formations they blasted through to make it won't allow it so the two highways are locked in to the current configuration. It's the close-spaced exits all feeding right into the Split that are getting fixes to eliminate a lot of weaving. They're going to push back the Route 37 exit with longer deceleration/acceleration lanes and make a frontage road that ties it in to the whole Washington St. ramp complex on the entrance side. Spaces out all the mainline merges and gives better public transit access for 37 and the Mall without needing to interact with the Split. Also includes short acceleration lane additions at the 3/18 exit and 93/Furnace Brook Parkway exit to ease the post-split weaving and enable better access to the HOV lane, and some changes to the Burgin Parkway interchange.

Goal is simply to get all those auxiliary ramps pushed further away from the main interchange so the 93/3 mainline traffic has more breathing room to sort and weave itself before all these side ramps come zooming in. Interchange will always have natural constraints and capacity problems, but this fixes the worst parts of the design.


Separate project also considers modifying the 24/93 T-interchange to eliminate the left exit/merge on 93S with a flyover and too-close spacing with the 28 and Ponkapoag interchanges. That one's not as big a deal, though, because they're thinking of it as a 3-phase--short, medium, and long-term--that first does some cosmetic improvements to collection/distribution on the 28/Ponkapoag exits for weave elimination. Then adding travel lanes a ways back on 24 and 93 to eliminate lane drops. Then an optional finish at some point modifying the ramps to eliminate the left lane merges, but skipping that one if it's excessive.

Exit spacing truly is a little nutty between 1/95/24/28, then at ground zero of the Split. All that collection/distribution improvement is half the battle.

[Ron Newman]

It is a cloverleaf, albeit a half built one. Actually it is a trumpet hacked out of a half built cloverleaf.

http://g.co/maps/g7w9g

You can clearly see the old ramps never completed.

This is not the I-93/MA 3 interchange in Braintree.

[Ron Newman]

The entire interchange is terrible. Going north on 95 and getting onto 93 needs to be redone.

But what does that have to do with the I-93/MA 3 interchange in Braintree?

[BostonUrbEx]

If the 95/128 interchange can't handle the volume, add ramps and a bigger garage at the Amtrak/MBTA station. Run DMUs from SS to 128 via Fairmount.

[omaja]

Traffic is multi-directional. Adding commuter rail service doesn't do anything for the majority of traffic whose destination is elsewhere in the region.

[Equilibria]

If the 95/128 interchange can't handle the volume, add ramps and a bigger garage at the Amtrak/MBTA station. Run DMUs from SS to 128 via Fairmount.

That assumes that most of that volume is going to Downtown Boston. That is a huge, and IMO incorrect assumption...

[whighlander]

That assumes that most of that volume is going to Downtown Boston. That is a huge, and IMO incorrect assumption...


Equilib -- just watch the morning TV traffic graphics and video cameras--- most traffic on the major radials (I-93, Rt-2, I-90, Rt-1) heading in-bound just inside of Rt-128 is destined for Boston Financial District, Back Bay, Longwood area, or Kendall Sq. in Cambridge now, and perhaps also the SPID in a decade or so

However, if you look at the flow inbound from I-495 a along radials such as i-93 and Rt-2 a substantial fraction exits the radial at Rt-128 and goes circumferential to some suburban park -- not much flows as some might expect to another radial

Even futher out -- a lot of the ex-urbs flowing in on radials to I-495 never goes beyond the I-495 region -- but moves circumferentially to generally large clusters on / near I-495 such as Intel, IBM,Cisco

This comple pattern makes it very difficult for the T to do much more than what it currently does -- move people in/out from the Hub of the HUB

I used to thinkthat it would be viable to take the old 1968 radial T extension map and link the ends together using a line runing along RT-128 -- I no longer believe that this would be viable on Rt-128 as there are two many small to medium clumps of employment which are not close enough to interconnect except by car

On I-495 the clumps are bigger -- but the distances are larger so that the conclusion is the same

[F-Line to Dudley]

Equilib -- just watch the morning TV traffic graphics and video cameras--- most traffic on the major radials (I-93, Rt-2, I-90, Rt-1) heading in-bound just inside of Rt-128 is destined for Boston Financial District, Back Bay, Longwood area, or Kendall Sq. in Cambridge now, and perhaps also the SPID in a decade or so

However, if you look at the flow inbound from I-495 a along radials such as i-93 and Rt-2 a substantial fraction exits the radial at Rt-128 and goes circumferential to some suburban park -- not much flows as some might expect to another radial

Even futher out -- a lot of the ex-urbs flowing in on radials to I-495 never goes beyond the I-495 region -- but moves circumferentially to generally large clusters on / near I-495 such as Intel, IBM,Cisco

This comple pattern makes it very difficult for the T to do much more than what it currently does -- move people in/out from the Hub of the HUB

I used to thinkthat it would be viable to take the old 1968 radial T extension map and link the ends together using a line runing along RT-128 -- I no longer believe that this would be viable on Rt-128 as there are two many small to medium clumps of employment which are not close enough to interconnect except by car

On I-495 the clumps are bigger -- but the distances are larger so that the conclusion is the same

Getting more people taking commuter rail on the 3 corridor would help a lot. Unfortunately the Old Colony lines are choked by that 1-track segment in Dorchester next to 93 that would take a billion to fix. I think they can help it a bit by getting second platforms at Quincy Center when it's renovated soon and at JFK so train meets can be eliminated at platform sidings. That'll allow a handful more trains to be added to the schedule. Kingston and Middleboro are outperforming their ridership projections by a lot and would swallow up any more trains they got. It's the spoiled brats on the Greenbush line who are the ones needing to get with the sustainability program here.

The only place I think South Coast Fail is going to make a real positive difference is north of Taunton with 24, the other roadway that clobbers the Split. Easton, Raynham, and downtown Taunton stations help that a lot. So would a terminating park-and-ride station at 24/140/Silver City Galleria if they tacked that on as a short Phase 1⅓ after downtown Taunton. That would be like a second Middleboro in terms of park-and-ride utilization, and would be the ideal place for the New Bedford and Fall River buses that should be running instead of this asinine money pit. Problem is that should really be considered its own independent CR project on its own merits with the Fail portion south of there killed with a stake through the heart like the blood-sucking vampire it is. It's much more useful terminating at the east-west Middleboro Branch, because then your next step can be sending the cavalry to M'boro to double-up that park-and-ride at 495 and go to Buzzards Bay to siphon off the Cape end of the 3 traffic with better headways than the Old Colony chokepoint could deliver. The insanity of FR/NB is that that should really be step three in a multi-decade buildout, not the one we light all our money on fire to do first.

I'm pretty confident Fairmount Line will be running to 128 in 5 years. We may see a few mil's grant as early as next year to tri-track Readville-Canton for congestion relief because that's a trivial one requiring no station work (Westwood/128 outbound's already built as an island for the 3rd track) and they can do it track-only and add the Amtrak wire later. When the other Fairmount upgrades are done they want to tack on an island platform at Readville center of the ROW so headways aren't constrained by the 1-track platform and they can run more Franklin schedules through the existing platform without interference. New one would be angled on the seldom-used 2 tracks connecting to the NEC, not the Franklin flyover. That's the dead giveaway that Fairmount to 128's a bona fide short-term goal. They might get some funding to do that extra platform when they raise the Readville platforms and fix the 1-track Franklin bottleneck per Amtrak's requirements for level-boarding upgrades in commuter rail territory. The 3-track setup at 128 will handle turns there for a little while until SCR is built. But then there's space under the 128 bridge and on the other side of the station for a whole new platform and 2 more tracks splitting off right before the underpass. That platform would ultimately be Fairmount's exclusive domain for turns.

I think we are getting that within 5 years of the current Fairmount project wrapping. 128 is very low-hanging fruit co-mingled with a whole bunch of minor area Amtrak improvements already in the pipeline. They can claim for an expedited funding appropriation that it's serving the Westwood Station real estate development even though it's really the park-and-riders from 95/1/128 who are going to be packing it full every day.

[whighlander]

Getting more people taking commuter rail on the 3 corridor would help a lot. Unfortunately the Old Colony lines are choked by that 1-track segment in Dorchester next to 93 that would take a billion to fix. I think they can help it a bit by getting second platforms at Quincy Center when it's renovated soon and at JFK so train meets can be eliminated at platform sidings. That'll allow a handful more trains to be added to the schedule. Kingston and Middleboro are outperforming their ridership projections by a lot and would swallow up any more trains they got. It's the spoiled brats on the Greenbush line who are the ones needing to get with the sustainability program here.

The only place I think South Coast Fail is going to make a real positive difference is north of Taunton with 24, the other roadway that clobbers the Split. Easton, Raynham, and downtown Taunton stations help that a lot. So would a terminating park-and-ride station at 24/140/Silver City Galleria if they tacked that on as a short Phase 1⅓ after downtown Taunton. That would be like a second Middleboro in terms of park-and-ride utilization, and would be the ideal place for the New Bedford and Fall River buses that should be running instead of this asinine money pit. Problem is that should really be considered its own independent CR project on its own merits with the Fail portion south of there killed with a stake through the heart like the blood-sucking vampire it is. It's much more useful terminating at the east-west Middleboro Branch, because then your next step can be sending the cavalry to M'boro to double-up that park-and-ride at 495 and go to Buzzards Bay to siphon off the Cape end of the 3 traffic with better headways than the Old Colony chokepoint could deliver. The insanity of FR/NB is that that should really be step three in a multi-decade buildout, not the one we light all our money on fire to do first.

I'm pretty confident Fairmount Line will be running to 128 in 5 years. We may see a few mil's grant as early as next year to tri-track Readville-Canton for congestion relief because that's a trivial one requiring no station work (Westwood/128 outbound's already built as an island for the 3rd track) and they can do it track-only and add the Amtrak wire later. When the other Fairmount upgrades are done they want to tack on an island platform at Readville center of the ROW so headways aren't constrained by the 1-track platform and they can run more Franklin schedules through the existing platform without interference. New one would be angled on the seldom-used 2 tracks connecting to the NEC, not the Franklin flyover. That's the dead giveaway that Fairmount to 128's a bona fide short-term goal. They might get some funding to do that extra platform when they raise the Readville platforms and fix the 1-track Franklin bottleneck per Amtrak's requirements for level-boarding upgrades in commuter rail territory. The 3-track setup at 128 will handle turns there for a little while until SCR is built. But then there's space under the 128 bridge and on the other side of the station for a whole new platform and 2 more tracks splitting off right before the underpass. That platform would ultimately be Fairmount's exclusive domain for turns.

I think we are getting that within 5 years of the current Fairmount project wrapping. 128 is very low-hanging fruit co-mingled with a whole bunch of minor area Amtrak improvements already in the pipeline. They can claim for an expedited funding appropriation that it's serving the Westwood Station real estate development even though it's really the park-and-riders from 95/1/128 who are going to be packing it full every day.

F-Line thoughful analysis

However i think you missed a couple of issuses:

1) Plymouth (very large area open or growth) is developing into a regiional sub-core similar to Waltham and Framingham -- this could happen to South Weymouth too if the full build-out of old Naval Air Station occurs

The net is that Plymouth at least will eventually be a destinaion as well as a source of commuters and possibly a local transfer hub -- people coming north from the Cape and the SE Cranberry Bog area

2) Foxboro has huge immedaite potential as a commuter park and ride using the stadium lot -- what is needed is gerbil tube and moving walkway from a new bettter station location to the parking lot and the stadium as well as other developable land

in the long term -- Foxboro also could generate detination traffic as well as being a source for commuters -- the time to invest to develop a train culture at / through Foxboro is now -- because of TOD potential -- Patriots should be willing to invest

3) Electrification along the coast toward the Cape and SE inland S down to Foxboro is something to be considered to enable high frequency of departure single car "Electric Buddlliners"

[F-Line to Dudley]

F-Line thoughful analysis

However i think you missed a couple of issuses:

1) Plymouth (very large area open or growth) is developing into a regiional sub-core similar to Waltham and Framingham -- this could happen to South Weymouth too if the full build-out of old Naval Air Station occurs

The net is that Plymouth at least will eventually be a destinaion as well as a source of commuters and possibly a local transfer hub -- people coming north from the Cape and the SE Cranberry Bog area

2) Foxboro has huge immedaite potential as a commuter park and ride using the stadium lot -- what is needed is gerbil tube and moving walkway from a new bettter station location to the parking lot and the stadium as well as other developable land

in the long term -- Foxboro also could generate detination traffic as well as being a source for commuters -- the time to invest to develop a train culture at / through Foxboro is now -- because of TOD potential -- Patriots should be willing to invest

3) Electrification along the coast toward the Cape and SE inland S down to Foxboro is something to be considered to enable high frequency of departure single car "Electric Buddlliners"

F'boro's commuter rail study is a nice read. That is REAL low-hanging fruit. I think it's got excellent chance of happening fast and sudden. The only build required is double-tracking the Franklin from Norwood Central to Windsor Gardens, rehab and signalization of 5 miles of track on the Framingham Secondary, installation of a crossover at Franklin layover to eliminate all schedule conflicts with Franklin trains, and a layover yard at Foxboro. $63M total via last year's projections. About half of that for the layover yard...the track rehab is only like $20M. Would run via Fairmount, 79 MPH to Walpole, 60 MPH to Foxboro. Foxboro-Mansfield would be signalized in the package so Providence Line trains could be diverted via Walpole at any time in a service emergency, but the track there would only get bumped to the 40 MPH needed for freight.

Only further items left to work out are how exactly do they handle commuter parking at same time as Gillette weekday games, and what are commuters' comfort level at not getting a one-seat to Back Bay because of the Fairmount routing. Otherwise this is looking so good and cheap the funding could materialize on short notice without needing to go on any long-range plan first.

Foxboro's proposing a limited test service that could begin next year if $1M were appropriated just for CSX to fix up the track from the 25 MPH deferred maintenance it's currently at to the 40 MPH it was originally rated. Needs to be done regardless only for freight so CSX isn't weight-restricted to Attleboro, so would merely push up the schedule on something that's planned regardless. They'd run 2 or so slow trains per rush hour with not a single penny's other improvements, see how people like it, and then fast-track the full build if it looks bullish. Excellent strategy doing some road-tests and priming the route before they do it. Why can't they try this with New Bedford via Middleboro and Fall River via Attleboro by just running 2 per day via the Middleboro Secondary to bare platforms at the terminals and seeing if anyone gives a crap? That freight track's being upgraded right this second and is supposed to get the same immediate-term 40 MPH maint backlog fix for the freights.

[whighlander]

F-Line -- now you are posting stuff which is not only feasible -- its nearly imperative

These kinds of "out of the box" ideas need to percolate through to the people who ae atually planning for stuff for the Mass DOT

Try it -- if if works then figure out how to do it better
Ii it doesn't work --- you'll know soon enough and wont have a huge investment

[JohnAKeith]

Argh. How did I miss this symposia?

If you would like to learn more about the Inner Belt, you can attend one or more of our programs on the history and Legacy of the Inner Belt (April 4, 19, and 25, 2012). These programs have been made possible by the support of Irving House and other contributors. For more information: Inner Belt Symposia (http://www.cambridgehistory.org/content/inner-belt-symposia)

Image below from an Atlantic Cities (http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2012/05/bostons-highway-went-nowhere-look-back-inner-belt-fight-40-years-later/1884) blog entry by Anthony Flint talking about the symposia.

http://cdn.theatlanticcities.com/img/upload/2012/04/30/highway.jpg

The approximate location, today:
http://i369.photobucket.com/albums/oo139/JohnAKeith/Random/i695.png

[Matthew]

Damn, I would have liked to go too.

[czsz]

Looking at those two images I have to wonder if there's any damage the SW Expressway didn't do that it would have had it actually been built (of course the Inner Belt would have done a lot).

Also, interesting how the rendering makes central Boston look hyperdense. All the more reason it needed to be "relieved" with new expressways, of course.

[Commuting Boston Student]

Looking at those two images I have to wonder if there's any damage the SW Expressway didn't do that it would have had it actually been built (of course the Inner Belt would have done a lot).

Near as I can tell the Expressway still would have had to plow through/by Curry College and wreak havoc on the Fairmount and Readville lines - and possibly Mattapan too.

And then you figure, the expressway had to end somewhere, and none of the options for where it ends look good to me - merge it into the Mass Pike? Slam the Central Artery even more with two highways worth of traffic? Send it over Storrow and the Tobin to the NE Expressway?

None of those options sound thrilling to me, except possibly the Tobin one.

[JonFrum]

The problem with the Southwest Expressway and Inner Belt wasn't that they weren't good transportation policy.The problem was that there was no room for such a system. The Southeast Expressway did cut through Savin Hill, but much of its route had the harbor on one side, or cut through old South Bay, so not a lot of damage was done. The Southwest version cut right through neighborhoods that had been built out for decades. Sometimes we ask people to suffer for the common good, but in this case there was just too much suffering to justify the costs.

[czsz]

Again, at least w/r/t the Southwest Expwy., the cutting was already done and was the cost. I don't get why we act like this was such a great victory. The death swath has been there for years and decades of heavy rail transit being laid down there have not brought new development to stitch these areas back together.

[HenryAlan]

Again, at least w/r/t the Southwest Expwy., the cutting was already done and was the cost. I don't get why we act like this was such a great victory. The death swath has been there for years and decades of heavy rail transit being laid down there have not brought new development to stitch these areas back together.

I think it's coming along actually. I've been riding my bike through there for years, and there is definitely a noticeable increase in density through both infill and conversion of decaying industrial buildings.

[czsz]

I'm glad that's the case, but there's still a long way to go, and a legacy of decades of highway result boosterism that's pretty unwarranted given the result would have been the same had the highway been built and torn down in, say, 2008.

[HenryAlan]

I'm glad that's the case, but there's still a long way to go, and a legacy of decades of highway result boosterism that's pretty unwarranted given the result would have been the same had the highway been built and torn down in, say, 2008.

There is a long way to go, but no, the result would not be the same. The Southwest Corridor park is a tremendous recreational resource for people in Roxbury, JP, and Roslindale. My son's little league baseball team plays games on a beautiful field around the corner from Green Street. It was a real pleasure and convenience for me last night to take the Orange Line to the game after work. The bike path would not be there with the highway, nor would all the basketball courts, tennis courts, joggers and walkers. The neighborhoods on both sides of the park are still dense and well populated, and there is more and more reason for people to cross from one side to the other.

If the highway were there, the neighborhoods would be separated, and the recreational facilities would never have been built.

[vanshnookenraggen]

If you want to go with the argument that they had already cleared the land so why not?, then just look at Medford and Somerville with I93. That was the only highway to still be finished after the moratorium. You can't argue that it is harmless.

I also think development would have taken off sooner had they covered the rail with a boulevard. You'd still have the space for parks and the road would fulfill at least part of the function of the highway. A boulevard, Comm Ave style, would have anchored the development and knitted the area together better than just the parks and subway.

[czsz]

If you want to go with the argument that they had already cleared the land so why not?, then just look at Medford and Somerville with I93. That was the only highway to still be finished after the moratorium. You can't argue that it is harmless.

I'm not arguing a highway would have been harmless. It would have sucked massively to live next to the thing. But in terms of urban development, has this corridor taken advantage of the fact that it lacked the highway sitting on top of it until fairly recently? No. It's been a mostly wasted opportunity. If the highway had been built and come down a few years ago, would you have noticed the difference, unless you lived adjacent to the corridor and/or would have used its baseball diamonds?

I also think development would have taken off sooner had they covered the rail with a boulevard. You'd still have the space for parks and the road would fulfill at least part of the function of the highway. A boulevard, Comm Ave style, would have anchored the development and knitted the area together better than just the parks and subway.

I hear you on this but I find it ironic that we're often arguing the opposite with regard to the Greenway (that the road detracts significantly from the corridor). I guess it's a matter of attracting development vs. providing an inviting public space, but if we admit the public space requires less traffic, it's problematic to plop a boulevard there in the first place.

[Ron Newman]

The parts of the Southwest Corridor that are dominated by a 'boulevard' (from Ruggles down to Jackson Square) are the least inviting parts, and the parts that are still most damaged. From Jackson down to Forest Hills, it's lovely on both sides of the park, and the park is a great asset to that part of JP.

[Matthew]

I'm with Ron. Roxbury is already criss-crossed by so many ridiculously large and dangerous roads. Especially Roxbury Crossing. There's enormous empty lots just sitting there next to the station, why aren't they getting developed?

http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5328/7078115133_ec40de42ca.jpg

[Ron Newman]

Does that sign mean the lot is being used as a farm? Sure doesn't look very well cultivated.

[Matthew]

It's transit-oriented agriculture.

[F-Line to Dudley]

It's transit-oriented agriculture.

Brownspace.

[HenryAlan]

I'm not arguing a highway would have been harmless. It would have sucked massively to live next to the thing. But in terms of urban development, has this corridor taken advantage of the fact that it lacked the highway sitting on top of it until fairly recently? No. It's been a mostly wasted opportunity. If the highway had been built and come down a few years ago, would you have noticed the difference, unless you lived adjacent to the corridor and/or would have used its baseball diamonds?


I think your thesis is flawed, because it assumes that the park could arrive at it's current state within only a few years time. Thinking about the section Ron refers to as "lovely" (and I agree), it was not always so. 15 years ago, it was probably not too different from the section between Ruggles and Jackson Square. If the highway had been there all along, and come down five years ago, we wouldn't have 25 years of organic development around these parcels. And I suspect that the intervening presence of a highway would have so damaged the surrounding neighborhoods, that 25 years would not even be adequate to get to what is there now.

That is to say, if a highway had been built and later torn down, we might very well be looking at a still damaged neighborhood in the year 2030. That would be 50+ years of harm, compared to the 15 or so that the area actually suffered.

[vanshnookenraggen]

The parts of the Southwest Corridor that are dominated by a 'boulevard' (from Ruggles down to Jackson Square) are the least inviting parts, and the parts that are still most damaged. From Jackson down to Forest Hills, it's lovely on both sides of the park, and the park is a great asset to that part of JP.

Yes but Columbus Ave was never designed as a boulevard. It was always an artery with no redeeming qualities. I'm saying if the corridor had been designed more like the Riverway or Comm Ave it would have filled both functions.

[Lurker]

Nothing is stopping Columbus Avenue from being downsized and reconfigured into a Commonwealth Avenue style roadway or roadway other than a lack of imaginative public officials. It's as overbuilt as the roads bordering the Greenway and cutting through the Seaport District and could easily be slimmed down at the edges or have the median widened and planted.

[vanshnookenraggen]

Nothing is starting it either.

[gyro]

Near as I can tell the Expressway still would have had to plow through/by Curry College and wreak havoc on the Fairmount and Readville lines - and possibly Mattapan too.

And then you figure, the expressway had to end somewhere, and none of the options for where it ends look good to me - merge it into the Mass Pike? Slam the Central Artery even more with two highways worth of traffic? Send it over Storrow and the Tobin to the NE Expressway?

None of those options sound thrilling to me, except possibly the Tobin one.

It wouldnt have gotten that close to Curry College. The right of way actually still exists in parts. It would have routed through fowl meadow and then crossed neponset valley parkway west of Truman Parkway the passed behind stop and shop and run parallel to Hyde Park Avenue.

At the end it would have merged with the pike as an extension but it was an alternate to just end at the inner belt I believe.

[mass88]

It's unfortunate there are not more nice interchanges in Boston area highways like the one depicted in these photos.

[czsz]

I think your thesis is flawed, because it assumes that the park could arrive at it's current state within only a few years time. Thinking about the section Ron refers to as "lovely" (and I agree), it was not always so. 15 years ago, it was probably not too different from the section between Ruggles and Jackson Square. If the highway had been there all along, and come down five years ago, we wouldn't have 25 years of organic development around these parcels. And I suspect that the intervening presence of a highway would have so damaged the surrounding neighborhoods, that 25 years would not even be adequate to get to what is there now.

That is to say, if a highway had been built and later torn down, we might very well be looking at a still damaged neighborhood in the year 2030. That would be 50+ years of harm, compared to the 15 or so that the area actually suffered.

I'm not quite sure what organic development you're talking about. And I'm not sure how terribly the highway would have left these neighborhoods. They're still among the more socioeconomically deprived and underdeveloped parts of Boston. The scar already left by the pre-highway demolition has to account for some of this, and I'm not sure a highway being there would have made it much worse.

As for the parks, you're all exaggerating their worth. We're not talking about the Emerald Necklace here. They're also just as much an impediment to these neighborhoods' ability to have been stitched back together.

[underground]

They're still among the more socioeconomically deprived and underdeveloped parts of Boston.

The majority of it goes through neighborhoods that are either already ritzy (the South End), or are rapidly gentrifying (Eastern edge of JP, Mission Hill, Fort Hill). The only parts that are socioeconomically deprived are the old projects along the way, and that's hardly the park's fault.

[HenryAlan]

The organic development I reference is things like re-purposing the Brewery complex. And as underground points out, it isn't exactly going through the poorest neighborhoods anymore.

[JonFrum]

I'm not quite sure what organic development you're talking about. And I'm not sure how terribly the highway would have left these neighborhoods. They're still among the more socioeconomically deprived and underdeveloped parts of Boston. The scar already left by the pre-highway demolition has to account for some of this, and I'm not sure a highway being there would have made it much worse.




I assume you never get beyond Melnea Cass blvd. Go down to Lamartine st and think about an eight lane highway within spitting distance. Not much worse? And interstate cloverleaf at Forest Hills? As to socioeconomically disadvantaged - try buying a house between Stony Brook station and Forest Hills. Let's see... here's a two condo 1870s-era house on Lamartine st - assessed value $1 million. You think an interstate wouldnt matter?

[Digital_Islandboy]

Provocative thought; never considered that. It would have damaged both Cambridge and Boston, however.

It probably would have meant the municipality of Cambridge would have been dissolved and added to Boston (proper). As high-density neighborhoods, when you contemplate the amount of land the city currently has choked up by Harvard, MIT, and Lesley College, Cambridge doesn't have much area as it is to earn from. With the highway included, Cambridge's days may have been numbered next to its City of Boston behemoth.

Somerville would have gotten a big hit too since Union Square was also to bear the brunt of Route 2 traffic coming through from Northwest of Boston along the path of the Fitchburg Line.

[Ron Newman]

Before there was a Southwest Corridor park, before there was land clearance for a never-built highway, this was a railroad right-of-way. A pretty disruptive one, too, crossable in only a few places. The Jamaica Plain neighborhoods on either side were always divided from each other by it, as they postdated the railroad. What's there now is a great improvement over any previous condition.

[czsz]

I assume you never get beyond Melnea Cass blvd. Go down to Lamartine st and think about an eight lane highway within spitting distance. Not much worse? And interstate cloverleaf at Forest Hills? As to socioeconomically disadvantaged - try buying a house between Stony Brook station and Forest Hills. Let's see... here's a two condo 1870s-era house on Lamartine st - assessed value $1 million. You think an interstate wouldnt matter?

I think that house might still be that highly assessed today had the highway just been torn down a few years ago in favor of parks. It might even be more highly assessed because it could build off the buzz of an area enjoying liberation from the shadows of the interstate.

BTW, what Forest Hills cloverleaf? There were only plans for an interchange with the Inner Belt...near where the MFA is (see below map). Not to mention that Forest Hills has been marred for years by its roadway configuration, highway or not.

http://www.brorson.com/maps/BostonHighwayPlan_1965_Detail/BostonHPDetailLevel1.jpg

[BostonUrbEx]

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7245/7154191886_c0a5a34690_o.png


Well?

[Matthew]

Neither.

[BostonUrbEx]

Neither.

Lets say your a 1960s planner and you're told one or the other. You wouldn't even dream of saying neither.

[czsz]

Are we deciding on whether we would have built CAT or the Inner Belt, with the 93 having already been built? Or whether we'd build the elevated 93 or the Inner Belt, then replace the elevated 93 with CAT later as in real life?

I'm going to assume you meant the former, since it's a more interesting hypo. Tough one, too. If the Inner Belt had been built instead of either the Pike or 93, Boston would be a lot more like Paris, with a cohesive inner core and a serious barrier between it and outer neighborhoods. Less of Boston's better architectural stock would have been destroyed (no contest between Haymarket Sq. and Cambridgeport). Arguably, Boston would have retained a lot more attractiveness vs. Cambridge, where Central Square would have probably suffered from blight into the present day. There probably wouldn't have been as much of a different effect due to the southern part of the Inner Belt, since Melena Cass already forms a formidable barrier there anyway. Hard to tell whether Longwood would have suffered or benefitted from increased highway proximity; it would have probably been a much more autocentric place, though. The Newmarket area / South Bay, on the other hand, would have been much more attractive and developable than today, and gentrification/development in Southie probably would have begun much earlier and had been more advanced by now.

Honestly, I think it might be a draw.

[BostonUrbEx]

Yes, thinking about it from a time where no highways exist yet, but you know they will be coming.

I think Boston would be a better place today if that happened.

[cden4]

If it were up to me, I would have never built any highways inside of Route 128. A network of boulevards and city streets would distribute traffic within the urban core. This is how the interstate highway system was originally intended to be built (around cities, not through them.) I also would have extended all the rapid transit lines to Route 128.

[Shepard]

Under any circumstance, Inner Belt was a bad idea. You know how Assembly Square/Wellington looks thanks to 93 proximity? That's what much of Cambridge, Brookline, Longwood, Roxbury, and beyond would have ended up becoming.

As it was, and I say this a bit regretfully, the Central Artery (yes I mean the elevated one) wasn't actually placed in that much of a destructive route, all told. Yes, buildings and squares were destroyed. But overall, Atlantic Ave had already had a rail El, there were surface freight tracks, and besides, the waterfront back then wasn't something that was seen as particularly special or worth knitting into the Financial District (dirty, industrial, ugly). The separation of the North End was probably the worst impact... but that's mittens compared to what would have happened in terms of the separation of Cambridge, Brookline, Roxbury, JP, etc under the Inner Belt scenario.

[czsz]

I don't think a highway necessarily gives an area a forlorn, Assembly Square feel. The Masspike extension certainly didn't accomplish that in Fenway. Most of the destruction that would be carried out for the Inner Belt already took place and produced the Melena Cass wasteland; the main difference we're really talking about would be the vivisection of Cambridge.

[Shepard]

Fenway had already developed along a rail chasm before the Pike extension. I wasn't Melena Cassed.

[underground]

We're talking about putting a highway through medium density areas vs high density areas. The current alignment doesn't kill off Fenway because the area's dense enough to survive it. Assembly Sq can't handle 93 because the density's lower. Build the inner belt and you're going through more Assembly Sq's than Fenway's (Cambridgeport and Somerville, not the Fenway section, obviously).

[czsz]

The Pike extension also slices through several villages of Newton that aren't faring too poorly. Wasn't Assembly Sq already a sort of marginal and mostly industrial area before the highway arrived? Highways rarely cause socioeconomic problems, they just exacerbate issues that are already present -- and because most highways were built in poor or marginal areas, we tend to assume they had such deletarious effects.

None of this is to say highways aren't evil, just that they're not really so evil in this way.

[underground]

Yeah, some areas are going to be more effected than others. So why would you want an inner loop that wanders through a bunch of vulnerable neighborhoods as opposed to the current alignment that at least minimizes contact area in those types of spots?

[whighlander]

Are we deciding on whether we would have built CAT or the Inner Belt, with the 93 having already been built? Or whether we'd build the elevated 93 or the Inner Belt, then replace the elevated 93 with CAT later as in real life?

I'm going to assume you meant the former, since it's a more interesting hypo. Tough one, too. If the Inner Belt had been built instead of either the Pike or 93, Boston would be a lot more like Paris, with a cohesive inner core and a serious barrier between it and outer neighborhoods. Less of Boston's better architectural stock would have been destroyed (no contest between Haymarket Sq. and Cambridgeport). Arguably, Boston would have retained a lot more attractiveness vs. Cambridge, where Central Square would have probably suffered from blight into the present day. There probably wouldn't have been as much of a different effect due to the southern part of the Inner Belt, since Melena Cass already forms a formidable barrier there anyway. Hard to tell whether Longwood would have suffered or benefitted from increased highway proximity; it would have probably been a much more autocentric place, though. The Newmarket area / South Bay, on the other hand, would have been much more attractive and developable than today, and gentrification/development in Southie probably would have begun much earlier and had been more advanced by now.

Honestly, I think it might be a draw.

CZ -- the Pike was always coming along with or without the Inner Belt -- there already was the great wasteland of rails that cut the Back Bay off from the South End -- the vast majority of the Pike was built on already existing rail ROW

Similarly the Southeast Expressway had been in the plans from almost the time that planning began on Rt-128 (beginingin the 1920's and 30's as a numbered route and completed as limited access even before President Eisenhower launched the Interstates)

The anti-highway caucus on the Forum are living in some "Revisionist History Fantasyland" - Massachusetts was always one of the leading states in highway planning and construction -- and much of it began when South Station was still the busiest rail venue in the World and trolleys ran in streets all over

For example the Tobin Bridge and the Calahan Tunel were designed and then built to connect to the Fitzgerald Expresway aka the Central Artery through the middle of downtown Boston [from Wiki articles]:

Tobin Bridge:
"The Maurice J. Tobin Memorial Bridge (formerly and still sometimes referred to as the Mystic River Bridge... the largest in New England... was erected between 1948 and 1950 and opened to traffic on February 2, 1950 ... $27 million in bonds used to finance the bridge's construction were retired in 1978..... In 1967, renamed in honor of Maurice J. Tobin, former Boston mayor and Massachusetts governor. During his term in office (1945–1947), Tobin created Massport and ordered the construction of the Mystic River Bridge...."

Callahan Tunnel:
"The Callahan Tunnel, officially the Lieutenant William F. Callahan Tunnel is one of four tunnels....carries motor vehicles from the North End to Logan International Airport and Route 1A in East Boston....opened in 1961. It was named for the son of Turnpike chairman William F. Callahan, who was killed in Italy just days before the end of World War II...."

Fitzgerald Expressway:
"The John F. Fitzgerald Expressway, known locally as the Central Artery, is a section of freeway in downtown Boston, Massachusetts, designated as Interstate 93, U.S. Route 1 and Route 3. It was initially constructed in the 1950s as a partly elevated and partly tunneled divided highway.... runs from the Massachusetts Avenue Connector just beyond Andrew Square in South Boston north to the split with U.S. Route 1 in Charlestown.... was planned as early as the 1920s.....

The above-ground Artery was built in two sections. First was the part north of High Street and Broad Street, to the Tobin Bridge built between 1951 and 1954. Immediately, residents began to hate the new highway and the way it towered over and separated neighborhoods. Due to this opposition, the southern end of the Central Artery through the South Station area was built underground, through what became known as the Dewey Square Tunnel....The final section through the Dewey Square Tunnel and on to the Southeast Expressway at Massachusetts Avenue opened in 1959....

The highway gradually became more and more congested as other highway projects meant to complement the Artery were canceled. These included the Inner Belt project, which would have taken through traffic off the Artery and the Massachusetts Turnpike Extension coming in from the west. The Southwest Expressway which would have tied into the Inner Belt and served as the route of Interstate 95...."

MassPike:
" Plans for the Turnpike date back to at least 1948, when the Western Expressway was being planned. The original section would have connected Boston's Inner Belt to Newton with connections with US 20 and Route 30 for traffic continuing west. Later extensions would take the road to and beyond Worcester. From the beginning, the corridor was included in federal plans for the Interstate Highway System, stretching west to the New York state line and beyond to Albany....

The Massachusetts Turnpike Authority was created in 1952 by a special act of the Massachusetts General Court (legislature) upon the recommendation of Governor Dever and his Commissioner of Public Works, William F. Callahan. (1952 Acts and Resolves chapter 354; 1952 Senate Doc. 1.) The enabling act was modeled upon that of the Mystic River Bridge Authority (1946 Acts and Resolves chapter 562), but several changes were made that would prove of great importance fifty years later. Callahan served as chairman of the Authority until his death in April 1964....

Construction began in 1955, and the whole four-lane road from Route 102 at the state line to Route 128 in Weston opened on May 15, 1957....After political and legal battles related to the Boston Extension inside Route 128, construction began on March 5, 1962, with the chosen alignment running next to the Boston and Albany Railroad and reducing that line to two tracks. In September 1964 the part from Route 128 east to exit 18 (Allston) opened, and the rest was finished on February 18, 1965, taking it to the Central Artery. "

Rt-128:
"Route 128 was assigned by 1927 along local roads, running from Route 138 in Milton around the west side of Boston to Route 107 (Essex Street or Bridge Street) in Salem.....By 1928, it had been extended east to Quincy from its south end along the following streets, ending at the intersection of Route 3 and Route 3A (now Route 3A and Route 53)....The first section of the new Circumferential Highway, in no way the freeway that it is now, was the piece from Route 9 in Wellesley around the south side of Boston to Route 3 (now Route 53) in Hingham. Parts of this were built as new roads, but most of it was along existing roads that were improved to handle the traffic. In 1931, the Massachusetts Department of Public Works acquired a right-of-way from Route 138 in Canton through Westwood, Dedham and Needham to Route 9 in Wellesley. This was mostly 80 feet (24 m) wide, only shrinking to 70 feet (21 m) in Needham, in the area of Great Plain Avenue and the Needham Line. Much of this was along new alignment... The rest of the new highway, from Route 37 east to Route 3 (now Route 53), through Braintree, Weymouth and Hingham, was taken over by the state in 1929. This was all along existing roads, except possibly the part of Park Avenue west of Route 18 in Weymouth....By 1933, the whole Circumferential Highway had been completed, and, except for the piece from Route 9 in Wellesley south to Highland Avenue in Needham, was designated as Route 128. Former Route 128 along Highland Avenue into Needham center was left unnumbered (as was the Circumferential Highway north of Highland Avenue), but the rest of former Route 128, from Needham center east to Quincy, became part of Route 135.....

The route 128 number dates from the origin of the Massachusetts highway system in the 1920s. By the 1950s, it ran from Nantasket Beach in Hull to Gloucester. The first, 27-mile (43 km), section of the current limited-access highway from Braintree to Gloucester was opened in 1951. It was the first limited-access circumferential highway in the United States. "

from the following website:
http://www.bostonroads.com/roads/MA-128/

"As early as 1912, the commonwealth of Massachusetts planned a circumferential arterial road stretching out from a 20-mile radius of downtown Boston, some five miles beyond the 15-mile radius formed by the existing Route 128. Beginning in Gloucester... ending in Cohasset. Serving as a bypass for metropolitan Boston, the route was to connect to radial routes through the inner suburbs to Boston....While a high-speed arterial was never constructed, the Massachusetts Department of Public Works (MassDPW) designated a series of local streets as "Route 128" during the 1920's and early 1930's. Through each community, MA 128 went through the following local streets to form a circumferential route from Hull on the South Shore to Gloucester on the North Shore....

In 1934, newly appointed MassDPW commissioner William F. Callahan unveiled plans for the "Circumferential Highway," a controlled-access highway that would connect radial routes while serving as a beltway around Boston. The beltway concept was not new: five years earlier, the Regional Plan Association (RPA) proposed a limited-access highway around the New York-New Jersey metropolitan area, the precursor to today's I-287. However, the Boston beltway was the first one to move from the concept stage to construction....

From 1936 to 1941, the MassDPW constructed two stretches of the new four-lane MA 128: one southwest of Boston in the Dedham-Westwood area, the other northeast of Boston in the Lynnfield-Peabody-Danvers area. Only partial access was obtained on these early sections: grade-separated cloverleaf interchanges were constructed at important crossroads, but several minor roads were allowed to cross at grade....

The Circumferential Highway was one of many highway projects overseen by Callahan that put thousands of people to work in eastern Massachusetts. Funding for the Circumferential Highway came through the Federal Works Progress Administration (WPA)....

... Work on Route 128 halted altogether with the onset of World War II....

1948, when newly elected Governor Paul Dever reappointed Callahan to his MassDPW post, that work on the Circumferential Highway - now re-christened the "Yankee Division Highway" - had resumed. The Master Highway Plan for the Boston Metropolitan Area released that year stated that the circumferential route would connect the radial expressways then being proposed to run into the Boston urban core.

...Under the Federal Highway Act of 1944, the Federal government paid for half the cost of the new MA 128, while state and local governments paid the remaining funds....


To expedite the completion of the expressway, Callahan selected a route through farms and wetlands, and by doing so, steered clear of town centers. This philosophy, while avoiding the "not in my backyard" ("NIMBY") syndrome that doomed future projects, was derided by business leaders, realtors and even the New England chapter of the American Automobile Association (AAA), which called the road a "highway to nowhere." Proponents of the highway cited that the new Route 128 would aid in defense mobilization efforts, and bring the recreation areas of the North Shore and South Shore within easy reach of urban areas....

In its original design, Route 128 was to have four 12-foot-wide lanes (two in each direction), with opposing lanes of traffic separated by a 24-foot-wide grassed median. Callahan desired a six-lane design, but the Federal Bureau of Public Roads (BPR) denied Callahan's plan after engineers determined that a four-lane design would handle traffic adequately for 20 years. They estimated that an average section of MA 128 would handle 15,000 vehicles per day (AADT) by 1970, but by 1955, the average section was already handling 30,000 vehicles per day.

Overpasses and bridges, which were designed with steel girders and stone-faced abutments, were constructed with sidewalks not to accommodate pedestrians, but to allow the construction of an additional lane in each direction. Landscaped areas were to separate the highway from the communities through which it passed.

Construction progressed on the Yankee Division Highway in the following sequence:

1951: The MassDPW completed a 22.5-mile-long stretch of MA 128 from EXIT 20 (MA 9) in Wellesley north to EXIT 44 (US 1 and MA 129) in Lynnfield. ..the new section connected to the previously completed Lynnfield-to-Danvers section to the north and east. Because it was built through the farmland and rolling hills of what was then Boston's outer suburbs, construction time was limited to 18 months...

1953: The route was extended north from Danvers to the rotary at EXIT 11 (MA 127 / Washington Street) in Gloucester.....

1955: The existing four-lane MA 128 was reconstructed as a modern six-lane freeway from EXIT 20 (MA 9) in Wellesley south to EXIT 14 (US 1) in Dedham. The southbound lanes were built on new right-of-way, while the northbound lanes were built over the existing four-lane highway. South of US 1 in Dedham, the six-lane highway was extended on new right-of-way to the current I-93 EXIT 2 (MA 138) in Canton. No provisions were made for a future interchange with I-95 (this did not come until the mid-1960's).

1958: The route was extended south from Canton to the "Braintree Split," a "Y-interchange" with the Southeast Expressway (I-93, US 1 and MA 3) and the Pilgrims Highway (MA 3). Another "Y-interchange" was built to connect MA 128 with the Fall River Expressway (MA 24). Construction of this section began in late 1953, but its construction through the Blue Hills Reservation generated controversy.

1959: The route was extended slightly through Gloucester from to its terminus at EXIT 9 (MA 127A / Main Street). This section contains a rotary at EXIT 10 (Rockport Road), which still exists today.

By the time of its completion in 1959, the Yankee Division Highway was estimated to cost $63 million in construction and right-of-way expenses.

For the convenience of motorists, service areas offering automotive and restaurant services were constructed along MA 128 in Wellesley (southbound only), Lexington (northbound only) and Beverly (northbound only). Since these areas where completed before the construction of the Interstate highway system, they were permitted to continue operation, and remain open to this day.

Original design plans also called for the construction of a mass transit line running along the median of MA 128, and bicycle paths and hiking trails along the landscaped areas bordering the expressway. These plans never were implemented."

[czsz]

I think the point of this exercise was to live in a Revisionist Highway Wonderland and think "what if" to various scenarios of highways not appearing in Boston in the way that they did.

[Kahta]

If you want to go with the argument that they had already cleared the land so why not?, then just look at Medford and Somerville with I93. That was the only highway to still be finished after the moratorium. You can't argue that it is harmless.

I also think development would have taken off sooner had they covered the rail with a boulevard. You'd still have the space for parks and the road would fulfill at least part of the function of the highway. A boulevard, Comm Ave style, would have anchored the development and knitted the area together better than just the parks and subway.

There was a proposal to route I-93 along the Mystic River in the area around the Sullivan Square exit by Home Depot, but the cost was about 40% higher.

There was a similar proposal to build a central artery bypass with an 8-lane double deck roadway along the waterfront once the Inner Belt was running into trouble with cost and local opposition.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7245/7154191886_c0a5a34690_o.png


Well?

The demand for traffic is in the areas that the Inner Belt runs through not to mention there aren't ramps in key locations in what was built.

[Matthew]

The demand for traffic is in the areas that the Inner Belt runs through

I know, shame they didn't bulldoze it all to build a highway. That would have cleared things out.

[omaja]

CAT versus Inner Belt: six of one, half a dozen of the other, really.

[Charlie_mta]

CAT versus Inner Belt:

The Inner Belt alone would have wiped out a sizeable piece of Cambridge, reducing that already small city area into severed balkanized chunks. When you add to that the proposed SW X-Way (I-95) and the NW X-Way (Route 2), you have extremely dense areas massively leveled, much like the carpet bombed Dresden in WW-II.

At least the CAT confined the road work to existing rights-of-way and underutilized old industrial areas and railroad yards.

[whighlander]

CAT versus Inner Belt:

The Inner Belt alone would have wiped out a sizeable piece of Cambridge, reducing that already small city area into severed balkanized chunks. When you add to that the proposed SW X-Way (I-95) and the NW X-Way (Route 2), you have extremely dense areas massively leveled, much like the carpet bombed Dresden in WW-II.

At least the CAT confined the road work to existing rights-of-way and underutilized old industrial areas and railroad yards.

Charlie -- that's a bit over the top -- no highway project no matter how poorly planned could ever be compared to the destruction of a city by bombing

To begin with -- the swath of destruction of something such as the SW coridor was about as bad as it could get -- its not pleasant -- but nobody died, nobody lost their life's possessions -- the property owners even were paid for the land

2nd most of the proposed ROW was already in use as roads or rail so the amount of actual takings would have been limited to say 1 row of houses on either side of Fresh Pond Parkway

Cambridge would have survived as most of the takings would be far outside of the core of Cambridge

The analogy with WWII or Armegadon is highly excessive

Not saying it would have been an unmitigated benefit -- but by stopping the entire complex of Interstates Sargeant did quite a bit of damage to the economic redevelopment of the inner Hub.

Indeed had there not had been a fortuitious accident which closed the Tobin Bridge -- even I-93 from Medford to North Station would never have opened. By today, traffic through the cities and towns north of Boston would have gotten so bad by now that I suspect that people would be pining for the Innerbelt

[Matthew]

No, I think he's right to compare it to bombing.
http://www.cyburbia.org/gallery/data/6518/34.jpg

And the Inner Belt would have destroyed Central and Inman for sure. Those aren't "outside" the core. Those are the core.

And second, we did build the Central Artery, and we did build the Big Dig. And people are still complaining about traffic. Fundamentally, it doesn't matter how many highways you build. There's always going to be congestion. It's a feedback effect -- if there is no congestion, then more people start driving until there is congestion. If there's too much congestion, then some people give up driving until it balances out.

If we didn't build I-93 to North Station then it is likely that more people would be riding the commuter rail and subways instead of driving. Also we'd probably see improvements to those, so they'd be much nicer than we currently have. The number of commuters going by public transit would balance out with the congestion on the roads, just at different levels.

See the Downs-Thomson Paradox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs-Thomson_paradox).

[Charlie_mta]

This is the mimimum that Cambridge would have been decimated by the cancelled expressways:

http://i499.photobucket.com/albums/rr354/Charliemta/cambridgex-way.jpg

[BostonUrbEx]

What if you ran it along the Grand Junction? I mean, that was merely an industrial wasteland and now it's a high tech wasteland.

Uh oh, I'm starting to think like a highway planner.

[cozzyd]

The necessary Mass Ave exit ramps would probably have run into MIT...

[F-Line to Dudley]

What if you ran it along the Grand Junction? I mean, that was merely an industrial wasteland and now it's a high tech wasteland.

Uh oh, I'm starting to think like a highway planner.

It was an active industrial wasteland in the 60's, though. MIT was nestled among still-belching smokestacks at the time. Things didn't really start going totally dry there until the 70's. The economic hit would've been hard to justify.

Blowing up entire neighborhoods...just dandy! (Remember, we're talking postwar urban planners here.)

[ant8904]

Looking at the map, I think it is safe to claim that the Inner Belt would have totally destroyed Cambridge. I have grave doubts that Cambridge would have developed to become the prosperous and wealth city that is today. There would be no Inman or Central Squares. It would have separated MIT and Harvard and change the mindscape of the residents. The effects of the highway won't just be isolated to what's near the highway, the ripple effects of crappier development would have trickle down to Harvard Squares and Cambridge as a whole. At best, it would be working class Somerville with a few gems but a lot of parts that are trying to bring life. At worst, an automotive-styled Lynn hell with widespread parking lots with its low property value with a few oasis generated by Harvard and MIT campuses - but the campuses would probably be much more insular.

If it went through Grand Junction instead, I would have to still wonder if the tech industry would have develop as it did. And if didn't, Cambridge would be even more devastated as much of what made Cambridge to be Cambridge stems from that industry and the associated people.


Boston's core might be much happier, but Cambridge would be screwed.


if there is no congestion, then more people start driving until there is congestion. If there's too much congestion, then some people give up driving until it balances out.

There has to be a point in the upgrades in capacity that all the additional people it attracts by those who used to drive earlier/later or pick alternative routes would dry out. My understanding of the paradox reads to me that it explains why sometimes shutting down a major artery can actually be a good thing as it motives human behavior to take actions that benefits everyone (seeking alternates routes that before were underutilized and picking different times).

On the other hand, the paradox does mean the solution to traffic is to remove all the highways. If one just blows up the Central Artery today, it wouldn't improve traffic as a surface level understanding of the paradox might suggest. There has to be enough alternative routes via public transportation and alternative roads that were previously underutilized. If there isn't, all it would create is the overwhelming of 128, 99, subway system, and the commuter rail system. If there is, then things are better as everything is better distributed. The key word is distribution.

So, the meaning to take from the paradox is not CAT should have not been built as the paradox says it will never improve traffic, but trying to figure how to keep distribution as optimal as possible as in making sure the other paths don't just become underutilized (or somehow raise capacity so absurdly high that all the additional traffic it draws from alternative options still won't be enough to overwhelm the upgrade).

[Ron Newman]

MIT objected to a route along the railroad tracks. The neighborhood objected to a route along Brookline and Elm Streets. The resulting disagreement lasted long enough that eventually the whole thing got killed.

[whighlander]

It was an active industrial wasteland in the 60's, though. MIT was nestled among still-belching smokestacks at the time. Things didn't really start going totally dry there until the 70's. The economic hit would've been hard to justify.

Blowing up entire neighborhoods...just dandy! (Remember, we're talking postwar urban planners here.)

F-Line -- by 1970 -- there was very little of the traditional Kendall / East Cambridge heavy industrial area typified by American Built-Right Rubber and Boston Woven Rubber Hose. the major exception was that some of the old Confectionary Companies such as NECCO were still arround and making product in quantity.

Much of the rest of the area had been cleared for the NASA Electronics Research campus. Anticipating more of this and taking advantage of the new highways most of the rest of the companies closed the plants and moved out to the suburbs (e.g. Kendall Company) leaving empty buildings behind. Some of the buildings had been leveled for parking and some for the first generation of new office development such as Badger's building on 3rd and Broadway.

Here and there particularly on the fringes there were a smattering of newer post-WWII companies such as Polaroid and United-Carr Fasteners. Draper was spread among a number of old buildings and there were some small shops like Atomic Welding. All of these thrived because the old buildings were essentially free -- rents were very low -- AI alley was yet to be declared.

[whighlander]

Looking at the map, I think it is safe to claim that the Inner Belt would have totally destroyed Cambridge. I have grave doubts that Cambridge would have developed to become the prosperous and wealth city that is today. There would be no Inman or Central Squares. It would have separated MIT and Harvard and change the mindscape of the residents. The effects of the highway won't just be isolated to what's near the highway, the ripple effects of crappier development would have trickle down to Harvard Squares and Cambridge as a whole. At best, it would be working class Somerville with a few gems but a lot of parts that are trying to bring life. At worst, an automotive-styled Lynn hell with widespread parking lots with its low property value with a few oasis generated by Harvard and MIT campuses - but the campuses would probably be much more insular.

If it went through Grand Junction instead, I would have to still wonder if the tech industry would have develop as it did. And if didn't, Cambridge would be even more devastated as much of what made Cambridge to be Cambridge stems from that industry and the associated people.


Boston's core might be much happier, but Cambridge would be screwed.




There has to be a point in the upgrades in capacity that all the additional people it attracts by those who used to drive earlier/later or pick alternative routes would dry out. My understanding of the paradox reads to me that it explains why sometimes shutting down a major artery can actually be a good thing as it motives human behavior to take actions that benefits everyone (seeking alternates routes that before were underutilized and picking different times).

On the other hand, the paradox does mean the solution to traffic is to remove all the highways. If one just blows up the Central Artery today, it wouldn't improve traffic as a surface level understanding of the paradox might suggest. There has to be enough alternative routes via public transportation and alternative roads that were previously underutilized. If there isn't, all it would create is the overwhelming of 128, 99, subway system, and the commuter rail system. If there is, then things are better as everything is better distributed. The key word is distribution.

So, the meaning to take from the paradox is not CAT should have not been built as the paradox says it will never improve traffic, but trying to figure how to keep distribution as optimal as possible as in making sure the other paths don't just become underutilized (or somehow raise capacity so absurdly high that all the additional traffic it draws from alternative options still won't be enough to overwhelm the upgrade).

Ant -- you are on to a fundamental point -- successful management of economic development involves providing alternatives for the entrepreneurs, their enterprises and their employees --some desire and benefit from:

1) cheap, old urban buildings and an urban-hip lifestyles
2) fancy, high-priced offices -- the FID
3) lower-priced, typically older back offices
4) wide open spaces, big floor plates and lots of parking for suburbanites
5) highly specialized lab / manufacturing with significant power / water and custom facilities
6) access to rail or highways to ship/receive large volumes or large single objects
7) proximity to universities, government, cultural facilities
8) easy access to world markets through local airports or harbors

A diversified, successful economy such as Greater Boston requires a mixture of all of the above -- there is no one-size fits all solution

[Kahta]

I've got the original plans (with alternate routes) for the inner belt, I-93, the upgraded mystic river parkway, Route 3, SW X-way, and Route 2. I'll take some pictures and post them at some point. The highways were going to be below grade in a lot of places (not unlike the masspike), and if managed appropriately, would have been covered by development fairly quickly.

[datadyne007]

I've got the original plans (with alternate routes) for the inner belt, I-93, the upgraded mystic river parkway, Route 3, SW X-way, and Route 2. I'll take some pictures and post them at some point. The highways were going to be below grade in a lot of places (not unlike the masspike), and if managed appropriately, would have been covered by development fairly quickly.

Kahta, my current studio project is occurring on Parcel 25. Any information you have about the SWX will be incredibly helpful, especially visual images.

[BussesAin'tTrains]

I've got the original plans (with alternate routes) for the inner belt, I-93, the upgraded mystic river parkway, Route 3, SW X-way, and Route 2. I'll take some pictures and post them at some point. The highways were going to be below grade in a lot of places (not unlike the masspike), and if managed appropriately, would have been covered by development fairly quickly.

I'd love to see them, that sounds really cool! Although, looking at the Mass Pike air rights, I'm not confident that much of them would be covered up by development today.

[Kahta]

Kahta, my current studio project is occurring on Parcel 25. Any information you have about the SWX will be incredibly helpful, especially visual images.

Where is parcel 25 exactly?

[Kahta]

I'd love to see them, that sounds really cool! Although, looking at the Mass Pike air rights, I'm not confident that much of them would be covered up by development today.

The difference with the mass pike is that there was already a railroad ROW so many of the buildings in that area were already built based on a railroad-- the inner belt would have cut right through many neighborhoods as a below grade road and would have easily been covered up.

[datadyne007]

Where is parcel 25 exactly?

Directly across from Roxbury Crossing T. It includes air rights over the Orange Line too. The Southwest Corridor is a focus of my analysis.

[Matthew]

There has to be a point in the upgrades in capacity that all the additional people it attracts by those who used to drive earlier/later or pick alternative routes would dry out. My understanding of the paradox reads to me that it explains why sometimes shutting down a major artery can actually be a good thing as it motives human behavior to take actions that benefits everyone (seeking alternates routes that before were underutilized and picking different times).


The paradox is that opening a new highway can lead to worse congestion; the mechanism in this case is that the new highway seduces commuters away from public transportation (or alternate routes) and then that drop-off in patronage causes the transit agency to cut service or go out of business entirely. This puts even more drivers on the roads, causing gridlock.

The other observation is that there is a balance between highways, alternative routes, and public transportation. Individuals over time learn which way is the most efficient for their needs; altogether there is a feedback effect as each individual commuter makes the decision to use the roads or transit, and that affects everyone else subtly. The net result is that the door-to-door commute time on grade-separated public transit becomes roughly equal to the door-to-door time for driving. If there is ever an imbalance, then the feedback effects slowly fix it.


So, the meaning to take from the paradox is not CAT should have not been built as the paradox says it will never improve traffic, but trying to figure how to keep distribution as optimal as possible as in making sure the other paths don't just become underutilized (or somehow raise capacity so absurdly high that all the additional traffic it draws from alternative options still won't be enough to overwhelm the upgrade).

Well, the meaning I take from it is that "congestion" is not a problem that can be solved by building more highways. It cannot be solved by building more public transit, either. The only solution that seems to work at optimizing distribution is variable road pricing based on demand.

[HenryAlan]

I've got the original plans (with alternate routes) for the inner belt, I-93, the upgraded mystic river parkway, Route 3, SW X-way, and Route 2. I'll take some pictures and post them at some point. The highways were going to be below grade in a lot of places (not unlike the masspike), and if managed appropriately, would have been covered by development fairly quickly.

I'm not as convinced as some that the inner belt would have destroyed Cambridge, but do you think it's all that likely that air rights development would have happened quickly if at all? Just look to the Pike for an answer. So, not destroyed, but certainly scarred.

[ant8904]

Well, the meaning I take from it is that "congestion" is not a problem that can be solved by building more highways. It cannot be solved by building more public transit, either. The only solution that seems to work at optimizing distribution is variable road pricing based on demand.

The only solution is to add tolls to every road? You can't encourage better behavior any other way? I cannot agree with that. While tolls is the most visible way to manipulate transportation behavior, I think there's other ways to attack the problem without attacking the wallets of drivers.

I should address first that there is a point where one can "build" so much that the "seduction" from other paths would not overwhelm it. Traffic out there is not infinite. At the highest ceiling, it can attract the entire population at rush hour, which is obviously absurd, but there's has to be a point where the paradox breaks.

But we should view it more than a single road. It's a system. A network. Avoiding the paradox is not trying to rely on one super upgrade to one road or rail line. That's why the highway planners of the 1950's designed on paper a whole number of highways with the ring roads to better distribute them. That's also why the original plans for the MBTA was a plan of lines reaching out to every direction.

Building a single road or rail line will ignite the paradox. Building a network of roads and rails -with compliments to each other- would allow distribution between all the major arteries.

We also need to remember the concept of the bottleneck. The capacity of the entire system is how much can the weakest point handle. No matter how well engineer most of a system can be, if there's a single pipe that can only handle half versus the rest of the other pipes, then the entire system can only handle to the level of the one pipe.

My understanding is CAT is able to handle the traffic pretty reasonably even during rush hour. But the highways around it cannot. Thus the upgrade with the tunnel only upgraded that one area, but the network as a whole remains only marginally improved. Worse, is it didn't even made the traffic it seduced from that much better. The MBTA is not underutilized and I don't think the alternative roads are either. Thus, there is a capacity issue with the network as a whole rather than just the paradox issue. Better distribution only works when there's something underutilized that we can distribute to that. Correct me if you can know something in Boston that is actually underutilized (It's not like I have driven all the roads and rode all the rail lines during rush hour).

Therefore more work to build up the network with rail lines and roads needs to be done first before we can say we have a problem of the paradox which means a problem of distribution.

I should note one last thing to consider in this long post too. We need to take account of a 3rd solution of living closer. To paraphrase a line from an article, "not all people, maybe not even most people, but more people want to live in the city than there is room." Traffic can be greatly aided if places to live is closer to places of work. It would open out more modes. An attack to reduce demand rather than just increase capacity.

[Matthew]

The only solution is to add tolls to every road? You can't encourage better behavior any other way? I cannot agree with that. While tolls is the most visible way to manipulate transportation behavior, I think there's other ways to attack the problem without attacking the wallets of drivers.


Let me put it this way: either you pay with time, or you pay with money. And for many folks, time is money. Also note that this approach could mean reduced tolls for drivers, at times of low-demand. You don't question that people pay fares aboard mass transit, why is it so hard to conceive of paying fares for using valuable space and road infrastructure?

I'm open to alternatives, if you can think of one that actually works. We know that highway widening doesn't work. For the past 50 years, the only thing that does seem to work is road pricing.

Anthony Downs has written for decades on the matter, check it out:

http://www.amazon.com/Stuck-inTraffic-Anthony-Downs/dp/081571923X

http://www.amazon.com/Still-Stuck-Traffic-Peak-Hour-Congestion/dp/0815719299


I should address first that there is a point where one can "build" so much that the "seduction" from other paths would not overwhelm it. Traffic out there is not infinite. At the highest ceiling, it can attract the entire population at rush hour, which is obviously absurd, but there's has to be a point where the paradox breaks.


Suppose you did build a highway that was so large that it could carry the entire rush hour demand without congestion. Lanes can conduct approximately 1800 vehicles per hour safely (2 second headway). The Red Line carried 240,000 trips per working day in 2009. Let's suppose that translates to about 80,000 commuters. If people continued to travel in single-occupancy vehicles at the same rate as today, you would need over 20 highway lanes in the peak direction to handle the load over the course of 2 hours. As it is, eight-lane urban highways destroy neighborhoods. Can you imagine the devastation from a 40 lane highway?

Obviously absurd, so if the paradox breaks down at that point, so what? And people would start to carpool and use buses (and build rapid transit) instead of building highways that wide. But I hope it helps you understand the fundamental geometry problem involved here. Even if those 40+ lanes are spread out into a network, it is still an incredibly large amount of pavement to fit into a city. And that's just for Red Line riders!

And don't forget about the parking lots for all those cars, yikes. It would require a surface lot about two times the size of the North End.

For all the distribution you might do, if everyone's headed to one place, it's going to put a lot of strain on that one place. And cars need so much space for infrastructure it would just tear everything apart.


My understanding is CAT is able to handle the traffic pretty reasonably even during rush hour. But the highways around it cannot. Thus the upgrade with the tunnel only upgraded that one area, but the network as a whole remains only marginally improved. Worse, is it didn't even made the traffic it seduced from that much better.


That's what the Boston Globe found back in 2008, in an article they researched. It may have also made things worse by attracting more traffic from people who now thought it was going to be better. And as the MBTA service cuts take effect thanks to the Big Dig debt, that will add even more cars.


The MBTA is not underutilized and I don't think the alternative roads are either. Thus, there is a capacity issue with the network as a whole rather than just the paradox issue. Better distribution only works when there's something underutilized that we can distribute to that. Correct me if you can know something in Boston that is actually underutilized (It's not like I have driven all the roads and rode all the rail lines during rush hour).


I would claim that the MBTA does not operate their network very efficiently and therefore is underutilized when compared to best practices in the world. 132,000 trips per day on the commuter rail probably means approximately 65,000 riders use it. Heck, the Blue Line only gets 57,000 trips per day. There's other reasons for low ridership besides poor operation, such as geography and land use (the Blue Line loses half its catchment to the ocean). But there are 14 branches in the commuter rail system. The best, Providence, got about 11,000 riders (15,000 if including Stoughton). The next, Worcester, got about 8,000 riders. The others are all below 7,000 per weekday. That's terrible. A two track railroad should be able to easily exceed 25,000 - 35,000 riders per hour, with most getting seats. Now I'm aware that conditions are not ideal on many sections of track, and there's lots of single tracking too. But it's getting fixed, slowly. So there's plenty of capacity still left for the MBTA commuter rail to grow into, if they would be motivated to fix themselves.


I should note one last thing to consider in this long post too. We need to take account of a 3rd solution of living closer.

I agree, and there's a lot of demand for it. This is why land usage and transportation are inextricably intertwined. And it's why Euclid-style zoning is so pernicious.

[whighlander]

Suppose you did build a highway that was so large that it could carry the entire rush hour demand without congestion. Lanes can conduct approximately 1800 vehicles per hour safely (2 second headway). The Red Line carried 240,000 trips per working day in 2009. Let's suppose that translates to about 80,000 commuters. If people continued to travel in single-occupancy vehicles at the same rate as today, you would need over 20 highway lanes in the peak direction to handle the load over the course of 2 hours. As it is, eight-lane urban highways destroy neighborhoods. Can you imagine the devastation from a 40 lane highway?



Mathew -- you are making a very dangerous falacious assumption -- the figures you quote for the Red Line are the agregate of all boardings at all points per day -- the figures you quote for highways are per lane per hour -- as Mr. Spock would say "Sorry Captain, but that does not compute"

If you want to compare the Red Line aggregate capacity compare it to the agregate carrying capacity of the I-93/I-95 (Rt-128) Intersection in Woburn. That interchange -- subject to lots of careful analyis in support of a redesign being planned for the next few years is the busiest highway interchange in all of New England with 375,000 vehicles per day.

Better still compare that interchange with a single station or even a complex of T stations with intersecting lines --- there is no station on the Red Line where anything close to that number boards, disembarks or passes. However, the interconnected complex of Park (Red and Green) combined with DTX (Red and Orange) probably comes close.

The Subway stations take up less total area, but are far less flexible in terms of the types of vehicles, timing of the vehicles, destinations of the vehicles -- its a trade off.

To adequately support a vibrant and dynamic "Modern City State" such as Grater Boston -- we need both an effective and effecient highway network and an effective and effecient rail network In addition, these networks need to provide the interchanges and intercommunications wih Air and Seaborne transportation.

[Matthew]

Mathew -- you are making a very dangerous falacious assumption -- the figures you quote for the Red Line are the agregate of all boardings at all points per day -- the figures you quote for highways are per lane per hour -- as Mr. Spock would say "Sorry Captain, but that does not compute"


That's why I dropped the estimate to 80,000 instead of 120,000 (from 240,000 unlinked trips). It's not ideal, but I feel it's somewhat realistic, since the subway is capable of carrying that many people over the course of 2-3 hours. Especially since they're coming from two directions (Cambridge and Dorchester).

Also I used 2 hours as the span: 20 lanes handles 36,000 per hour, or 72,000 per 2 hours. The point wasn't the exact numbers, it's that building the infrastructure to move that many cars in 2 hours and park them is simply implausible in the city.

[BostonUrbEx]

If we do high speed tolling without toll takers, then what job can Patrick possibly give his 5th cousin or campaign canvasser???

[omaja]

Maybe something useful like construction work on transit expansion and catching up on all that deferred infrastructure maintenance? ;) Oh who am I kidding, there clearly aren't enough MBTA inspectors so I'm sure they could find a nice place there.

[mass88]

If we do high speed tolling without toll takers, then what job can Patrick possibly give his 5th cousin or campaign canvasser???

It's laughable that so many states currently use it and yet Mass does not. It's also laughable that all of the traffic on a ride from Hartford to Boston comes due to tolls. You have to love when they have 4 cash lanes and only 1 is open. Why people don't get the free fast lane pass is beyond me.

[Commuting Boston Student]

And don't forget about the parking lots for all those cars, yikes. It would require a surface lot about two times the size of the North End.

You're falling into a fallacy insofar as parking lots are concerned - nobody is going to build a parking lot even close to that big, because the same zoning laws you rail against prevent this as well as preventing a situation where the total number of parking lots is zero, and even if they didn't - why would you? The costs to maintain that much land would be immense, and far greater than the costs to maintain one building - even a downright palatial building such as, say, a 12 or 16 or even 20-story garage. (Ten levels up, ten levels down, doesn't sound like too much of a headache to park at either end now does it?)

You have a surface lot about twice the size of the North End, so divide it 20 times and stack all those pieces on top of each other - now it's just a tenth of the size of the North End. Let's take it a step further. Cut that building into quarters and bury each of them underground - now you've got four reasonably large buildings that can exist beneath the office towers, residential complexes, or what have you and take up no more space than what was already being used.

There's no need to get fixated on building out when you can just as easily build up or down.

It's laughable that so many states currently use it and yet Mass does not. It's also laughable that all of the traffic on a ride from Hartford to Boston comes due to tolls. You have to love when they have 4 cash lanes and only 1 is open. Why people don't get the free fast lane pass is beyond me.

Tinfoil hat wearers don't want THE MAN spying on them through the fast lane pass.

More reasonable people may not want the associated hassle with registering for the pass, especially if they use multiple cars since trying to authorize a second car on your pass is a nightmare.

Finally, reasonable people who don't regularly take the Pike or other toll roads may only have a need for the pass twice in their lifetimes and they will have already burned one of those times in the process of the trip to get the pass.

The fast lane pass is also not free to non-MA residents, who must get their EZPass from their state of origin - in my case, RI, which whacked me a cool $20 for the privilege. (To be fair, the RI pass also comes with an exclusive discount to state resident drivers only on the Pell bridge: I pay $0.83 instead of $4.)

My point is, there are plenty of reasons (good and bad) not to get a free Fast Lane pass.

[mass88]

Tinfoil hat wearers don't want THE MAN spying on them through the fast lane pass.

More reasonable people may not want the associated hassle with registering for the pass, especially if they use multiple cars since trying to authorize a second car on your pass is a nightmare.

Finally, reasonable people who don't regularly take the Pike or other toll roads may only have a need for the pass twice in their lifetimes and they will have already burned one of those times in the process of the trip to get the pass.

The fast lane pass is also not free to non-MA residents, who must get their EZPass from their state of origin - in my case, RI, which whacked me a cool $20 for the privilege. (To be fair, the RI pass also comes with an exclusive discount to state resident drivers only on the Pell bridge: I pay $0.83 instead of $4.)

My point is, there are plenty of reasons (good and bad) not to get a free Fast Lane pass.


I should have included I was talking about people in Mass.

[Matthew]

The point of the exercise was to show how absurd it was, not to suggest it as a realistic idea. I didn't bother going beyond "surface lot" because I didn't want to get too far into the woods. But if you will, at a going rate of approximately $50,000 / underground space, those underground parking garages would probably have a capital cost on the order of $4 billion.

[BussesAin'tTrains]

Tinfoil hat wearers don't want THE MAN spying on them through the fast lane pass.

There are THAT many of those?

More reasonable people may not want the associated hassle with registering for the pass, especially if they use multiple cars since trying to authorize a second car on your pass is a nightmare.


Just get more than one... they're free in MA


Finally, reasonable people who don't regularly take the Pike or other toll roads may only have a need for the pass twice in their lifetimes and they will have already burned one of those times in the process of the trip to get the pass.


Trip to get one? They mail them to you..

The fast lane pass is also not free to non-MA residents, who must get their EZPass from their state of origin - in my case, RI, which whacked me a cool $20 for the privilege. (To be fair, the RI pass also comes with an exclusive discount to state resident drivers only on the Pell bridge: I pay $0.83 instead of $4.)

My point is, there are plenty of reasons (good and bad) not to get a free Fast Lane pass.

Other states should make them free too, especially those moving to open tolling.

[Commuting Boston Student]

There are THAT many of those?

You'd be surprised.

Just get more than one... they're free in MA

Even after the first one?

Trip to get one? They mail them to you..

Did not know that. I drove to the EZ Pass facility and purchased mine on the spot. If you count the trip down the cash lane whereupon you are (supposed) to decide you'd rather get the Pass as one trip, it still works though.

Other states should make them free too, especially those moving to open tolling.

I'm not THAT bent out of shape over the $20 surcharge, five trips over the bridge and it paid for itself. I just raised it as a general fact point.

[BussesAin'tTrains]

Even after the first one?

According to the DOT website (https://app1.mtafastlane.com/(S(rzofyphdf3km5eyucgs14qiy))/signup.aspx) you can have up to four transponders per account.



Did not know that. I drove to the EZ Pass facility and purchased mine on the spot. If you count the trip down the cash lane whereupon you are (supposed) to decide you'd rather get the Pass as one trip, it still works though.


I'm not sure how recently MA imposed the new acquisition system, but I bought mine a few months ago on the DOT website and it was one of the simplest things in the world. I was pleasantly surprised.

[whighlander]

That's why I dropped the estimate to 80,000 instead of 120,000 (from 240,000 unlinked trips). It's not ideal, but I feel it's somewhat realistic, since the subway is capable of carrying that many people over the course of 2-3 hours. Especially since they're coming from two directions (Cambridge and Dorchester).

Also I used 2 hours as the span: 20 lanes handles 36,000 per hour, or 72,000 per 2 hours. The point wasn't the exact numbers, it's that building the infrastructure to move that many cars in 2 hours and park them is simply implausible in the city.

Mathew--

Yet that is precisely what has been done and is in use on a daily basis

If you take just the Interstate Highways entering downtown Boston you have:
4 lanes of I-93 from the North and also including traffic from the Tobin Bridge
4 lanes of I-90 through the two tunnels from the NE
4 lanes of I-90 from the West
4 Lanes of I-93 from the South

In reality there are more lanes because of non-Interstates such as Rt-9 and Rt-2, Morrisey Blvd., JamaicaWay, etc.

Normally, and nominally the system works -- it ceases to work under bad weather or when there are more than a small number of simple accidents -- so there is minimal reserve capacity

By the way I question your estimates for Red Line capacity -- 80,000 people translates into about 80 full 6 car trains (about 150 people per car) -- in 2 hours that would be 1 train in each direction every 3 minutes (20 trains / hour in each direction for 2 hours = 80 trains total) That's more than double current train schedules on the Red Line. Also the two stations (Park St., DTX) may not be able to handle the volume of people

[Matthew]

Yes, there are many highway lanes already going into Boston. You would have to add onto that the additional 20 lanes to handle the riders from the Red Line.

The current Red Line rush hour schedule is 9 minute headways per branch. That combines for an effective 4.5 minute headway on the trunk from Alewife to Columbia. I was also estimating a crush load on the Red Line of 250 people per car. The MBTA Blue Book lists all Red Line cars as having crush loads over 260, actually.

250 * 6 * 120 / 4.5 = 40,000 people per direction

So 80,000 combined is reasonable I think.

[Digital_Islandboy]

I-695 overlaid on top of a current Google Maps image. (takes a while to load.)

Also shows where Southeast Xpressway (from the south and Route 2 from the north where it was supposed to go along current Fitchburg line.

http://www.google.com/maps/ms?f=q&hl=en&q=boston,+ma&layer=&ie=UTF8&om=1&msid=202387015704919664399.00000111d8c10d821a3b2&msa=0&ll=42.356134,-71.092358&spn=0.076365,0.181789&z=13

[czsz]

Wow, would have made quite a mess of the Ruggles area and the Fens parks in addition to Cambridge...

[Commuting Boston Student]

I-695 overlaid on top of a current Google Maps image. (takes a while to load.)

Also shows where Southeast Xpressway (from the south and Route 2 from the north where it was supposed to go along current Fitchburg line.

http://www.google.com/maps/ms?f=q&hl=en&q=boston,+ma&layer=&ie=UTF8&om=1&msid=202387015704919664399.00000111d8c10d821a3b2&msa=0&ll=42.356134,-71.092358&spn=0.076365,0.181789&z=13

I don't understand how 95 was supposed to be routed between the cancelled SW and NE expressways. Via the Central Artery?

It couldn't have used the Inner Belt, that would have violated numbering conventions.

[datadyne007]

I-695 overlaid on top of a current Google Maps image. (takes a while to load.)

Also shows where Southeast Xpressway (from the south and Route 2 from the north where it was supposed to go along current Fitchburg line.

http://www.google.com/maps/ms?f=q&hl=en&q=boston,+ma&layer=&ie=UTF8&om=1&msid=202387015704919664399.00000111d8c10d821a3b2&msa=0&ll=42.356134,-71.092358&spn=0.076365,0.181789&z=13

Oh my dear god. It would have run right past the MFA?!

[Ron Newman]

I-95 would have come up from Canton on the Southwest Expressway, than east along the Inner Belt to what's now the Roxbury/Mass Ave interchange of the Southeast Expressway, then up the Central Artery, then over the Tobin Bridge, through Revere, Lynn, Saugus to 128 where the current I-95 resumes.

I-93 would have ended at the junction with the Tobin Bridge in City Square, Charlestown. It would not have continued onto the Southeast Expressway -- that would have just remained MA 3.

[Charlie_mta]

I-695 overlaid on top of a current Google Maps image. (takes a while to load.)

Also shows where Southeast Xpressway (from the south and Route 2 from the north where it was supposed to go along current Fitchburg line.

http://www.google.com/maps/ms?f=q&hl=en&q=boston,+ma&layer=&ie=UTF8&om=1&msid=202387015704919664399.00000111d8c10d821a3b2&msa=0&ll=42.356134,-71.092358&spn=0.076365,0.181789&z=13

The location of the NW Expressway you show at the Concord Turnpike isn't correct. The proposed NW Expressway route would have actually gone through where the current Alewife Red Line station is located, and joined the Concord Turnpike about a hundred feet west of the Route 16 (Alewife Brook Parkway) intersection. I grew up in North Cambridge, a teenager in the 1960's, and followed all the design proposals for the NW Expressway at the time.

[Commuting Boston Student]

I-95 would have come up from Canton on the Southwest Expressway, than east along the Inner Belt to what's now the Roxbury/Mass Ave interchange of the Southeast Expressway, then up the Central Artery, then over the Tobin Bridge, through Revere, Lynn, Saugus to 128 where the current I-95 resumes.

I-93 would have ended at the junction with the Tobin Bridge in City Square, Charlestown. It would not have continued onto the Southeast Expressway -- that would have just remained MA 3.

Okay, so if I'm following this right, then not all of the Inner Belt was actually to become 695. 695 would have ended at an interchange with 95 but the Inner Belt would have extended further east to connect 95, 93 and 3...

Wow, I do not want to even imagine what kind of spaghetti nightmare that junction would have been.

What would the current stretch of 93 between MA 3 and 128 have been? A 128 extension?

[Ron Newman]

What would the current stretch of 93 between MA 3 and 128 have been? A 128 extension?

Before it was re-designated as 93, it was always 128. Route 128 circled the city, and for a while even continued southeast along Route 3 and ran north along what's now Route 228 to Hull.

[Kahta]

Okay, so if I'm following this right, then not all of the Inner Belt was actually to become 695. 695 would have ended at an interchange with 95 but the Inner Belt would have extended further east to connect 95, 93 and 3...

Wow, I do not want to even imagine what kind of spaghetti nightmare that junction would have been.

What would the current stretch of 93 between MA 3 and 128 have been? A 128 extension?

There were dual naming conventions on several of the highways.

[Kahta]

Here are the different alignments explored for the inner belt...

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-HOb-gk-KoT8/T6yEuILFbrI/AAAAAAAAAYc/mm0HwbTimHs/s720/2012-05-10_22-11-27_330.jpg

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-CIqkNBll3E0/T7APwLOLn4I/AAAAAAAAAak/-Cw3APN4PLM/s720/2012-05-13_14-43-41_74.jpg

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-vgRSbYDYpRs/T7APqhFY97I/AAAAAAAAAag/dxBZbT1aaJA/s720/2012-05-13_14-43-49_785.jpg

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-04Mg-cUQEnY/T7APj6DdrtI/AAAAAAAAAac/jVaaQA71t1Q/s720/2012-05-13_14-43-54_100.jpg

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-Gpm2S75ZJtU/T6yFhMjh5BI/AAAAAAAAAbA/eRpui28IM_k/s720/2012-05-10_22-09-46_590.jpg

The solid red line is the recommended location

Southwest Expressway
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-ABLSNbnGA8U/T6yEgI8zodI/AAAAAAAAAZ0/cQPnd7-uICE/s720/2012-05-10_22-12-44_392.jpg

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-g0WfFnQiBQU/T6yEnfoOEuI/AAAAAAAAAZ8/j6Y2BMDHjjI/s720/2012-05-10_22-12-39_385.jpg

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-z31xrgPhIdI/T6yE0br0eWI/AAAAAAAAAaI/31hjVGU62mQ/s720/2012-05-10_22-11-05_992.jpg

Cost of inner belt--- relocate about 4,000 people, have a functional highway system for a region of 6 million.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Au-ZZwuFdwY/T7APeumARII/AAAAAAAAAaY/xcW2y-2Qqpw/s720/2012-05-13_14-44-11_346.jpg

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-LAaP6eBSO1o/T7APY7BKBjI/AAAAAAAAAaQ/625u2ufOD9Q/s720/2012-05-13_14-44-18_866.jpg

[Kahta]

Directly across from Roxbury Crossing T. It includes air rights over the Orange Line too. The Southwest Corridor is a focus of my analysis.

This the recommended plan. I can take some photos of the alternate plan if you are interested.

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-nNfz2ZBBPQI/T7ATbupS2pI/AAAAAAAAAbE/Fk4kDreAW1A/s576/2012-05-13_15-02-35_906.jpg

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-i92K-vAYhS8/T7ATg9bgWPI/AAAAAAAAAbM/AmRePiOs_js/s576/2012-05-13_15-02-31_914.jpg

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-249s82Whik4/T7ATnme3kLI/AAAAAAAAAbU/jIsnjoJa5Js/s576/2012-05-13_15-02-28_910.jpg

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-vapAEuJE5l8/T7ATvYd3QmI/AAAAAAAAAbc/8JjZ24Xs7c0/s576/2012-05-13_15-02-18_694.jpg

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-o6d-Re_HsvE/T7AT1Q_bR9I/AAAAAAAAAbk/QkSh62pLiJA/s576/2012-05-13_15-02-15_826.jpg

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-jqANYOWo8ZE/T7AT7kCyyDI/AAAAAAAAAbs/8Wpomycbffw/s576/2012-05-13_15-02-10_960.jpg

[Digital_Islandboy]

I don't understand how 95 was supposed to be routed between the cancelled SW and NE expressways. Via the Central Artery?

It couldn't have used the Inner Belt, that would have violated numbering conventions.

On that Google Map, zoom out to see NE/SW expressway's better. The southern end of the SW Expressway would have roughly tied into that Canton interchange that was being discussed last week.

[Digital_Islandboy]

Wow, would have made quite a mess of the Ruggles area and the Fens parks in addition to Cambridge...

Alewife Reservation as well! So much for all those migratory birds in the ponds behind Alewife Station.

[Digital_Islandboy]

This is the mimimum that Cambridge would have been decimated by the cancelled expressways:

http://i499.photobucket.com/albums/rr354/Charliemta/cambridgex-way.jpg

The western end might have faced problems.
1) Alewife Brook Parkway and Mystic Valley Parkway would have been Middlesex County's roads. Counties were still powerful at that time.

2)
The portion of connecto at the far northwest end is using the rail line of the Watertown Branch Railroad. That was one end of the Fitchburg Line's connections to the Watertown Armory. I'm uncertain the U.S. Department of Defense would have allowed it to severed from the national railroad network on the eastern end.

[Digital_Islandboy]

Wow, would have made quite a mess of the Ruggles area and the Fens parks in addition to Cambridge...

Ruggles was pretty flattened. Orange Line was still down Washington Street to Dudley at the time. The trench that was dug for SW Expressway became the Orange Line in 1988. Northeastern University recently put up a high-rise dorm next to the train-station on a parcel of land that was cleared out for a long time. Melena Cass Blvd. still has large parkland and places turned into parking areas on either side of the road. (minus some areas which have become developed in the last 10-20 years.)

[Charlie_mta]

The western end might have faced problems.
1) Alewife Brook Parkway and Mystic Valley Parkway would have been Middlesex County's roads. Counties were still powerful at that time.

2)
The portion of connecto at the far northwest end is using the rail line of the Watertown Branch Railroad. That was one end of the Fitchburg Line's connections to the Watertown Armory. I'm uncertain the U.S. Department of Defense would have allowed it to severed from the national railroad network on the eastern end.

The Parkways at the time were under the control of the MDC (Metropolitan District Commission), and the MDC was okay with the proposed connections to the NW Expressway.

The NW X-Way would have left the railroad lines in the area undisturbed. If you stand at the intersection of Rindge Ave and Alewife Brook Parkway today, the NW X-Way would have passed over the intersection on a massive overpass. I lived a few blocks east of there in the 1960's, and knew exactly the layout of the proposed roadway.

The following is approximately the last design before the highway was cancelled by Gov. Sargeant. The blue lines are the NW Expressway and ramps, and the red line is Alewife Brook Parkway:


http://i499.photobucket.com/albums/rr354/Charliemta/nwxway.jpg

[F-Line to Dudley]

The Parkways at the time were under the control of the MDC (Metropolitan District Commission), and the MDC was okay with the proposed connections to the NW Expressway.

The NW X-Way would have left the railroad lines in the area undisturbed. If you stand at the intersection of Rindge Ave and Alewife Brook Parkway today, the NW X-Way would have passed over the intersection on a massive overpass. I lived a few blocks east of there in the 1960's, and knew exactly the layout of the proposed roadway.

The following is approximately the last design before the highway was cancelled by Gov. Sargeant. The blue lines are the NW Expressway and ramps, and the red line is Alewife Brook Parkway:


http://i499.photobucket.com/albums/rr354/Charliemta/nwxway.jpg

Egad...there goes my neighborhood. :-(

Danehy was still the city dump at that point. But I'm guessing it never would've become a park at all if this had been done. And none of the newer housing units along Rindge either. Can you say Fresh Pond Mall retail parking lot wasteland x5 at the Route 16/Parkway exits? Goes real nice with the Somerville Ave. Automile.

[ant8904]

Let me put it this way: either you pay with time, or you pay with money. And for many folks, time is money. Also note that this approach could mean reduced tolls for drivers, at times of low-demand. You don't question that people pay fares aboard mass transit, why is it so hard to conceive of paying fares for using valuable space and road infrastructure?


Because taxes goes to roads already. Our taxes also goes to the subway system, but at a lesser priority. Right now, you are suggesting tolling not for maintenance but to manipulate people to drive at lower congestion times. If you are arguing that the tolls are for maintenance, that's the same argument unaware driver grip that subway riders should pay for full price.


More importantly, my point of my post is not that we should build a 20-lane highway or a system that adds up to 20 lanes or to any other number of highways until the paradox breaks down. My post included public transportation like "the original plans for the MBTA" and "network of roads and rails."

Roads by itself, unless your numbers are wrong, can't be built enough to make the paradox breakdown. But I what about rails and roads? You did claim the Red Line itself holds 80,000 commuters. Taking the entire system both rails and roads, is the congestion a problem of the paradox? Or the network near capacity? If it a problem of the paradox, then tolls is the only solution to make traffic better by mostly forcing commuters to take underutilized routes or go at different times. If the problem is the capacity of the network as a whole, then we need to keep working on that problem.

At the moment, we have a highway system that bottlenecks around the CAT (per 2008 Boston Globe article and my a couple of experiences leaving the tunnel during at rush hour). We have a rail system that break down in the most spectacular ways including a Red Line that can't make closer headways because of failed upgrade, Orange Line cars in their fifth decade, everyone knows about the Green Line.

I think many of the congestion problems can be improved as I believe that much of the congestion is less that the paradox makes it physically impossible, but we have bottlenecks and low capacity.

Sure, you mentioned that the MBTA is actually running at less then their potential. But potential is not capacity. They aren't running without passengers and they aren't in a position to really take more. Yet, with good upgrades, it can help with congestion without concluding that our congestion issues is a "virtually" infinite number of commuters that only grows unless we can raise capacity to an absurd level as you argued. However, there's more than one way to add capacity. And we can also find ways to reduce demand.

[Matthew]

Because taxes goes to roads already. Our taxes also goes to the subway system, but at a lesser priority. Right now, you are suggesting tolling not for maintenance but to manipulate people to drive at lower congestion times. If you are arguing that the tolls are for maintenance, that's the same argument unaware driver grip that subway riders should pay for full price.


Right now roads are funded by several different kinds of taxes, particularly property taxes. I would propose to cut those taxes and shift the burden of maintenance costs onto demand-based tolls. Also I would set the fees in accordance with vehicle axle-weight. This would achieve several goals: reducing tax burden, connecting payment with usage, and inspiring more efficient ways to carry goods and people. Right now, you pay the same regardless of how much you use the roads. That's like opening up an all-you-can-eat buffet and telling people they can bring buckets and take it home. No wonder there would be shortages.

This could result in reduced costs at times; for example, when the Mass Pike is underutilized, the tolls could be reduced to encourage more traffic to divert to it. Also, I'd want modern toll systems which can operate at high-speeds and don't require massive amounts of land for booths. Zero inconvenience.

Mass transit can be run profitably if built and operated correctly. Asian cities have shown this. There's two conflicting goals: running a transportation business, and running a social service. The MBTA, like most American agencies, conflates the two. The result is that neither side is satisfied. But even if profitability isn't considered important, it also becomes a question of effective resource management. Are they getting the most out of what they have?


Roads by itself, unless your numbers are wrong, can't be built enough to make the paradox breakdown. But I what about rails and roads? You did claim the Red Line itself holds 80,000 commuters. Taking the entire system both rails and roads, is the congestion a problem of the paradox? Or the network near capacity? If it a problem of the paradox, then tolls is the only solution to make traffic better by mostly forcing commuters to take underutilized routes or go at different times. If the problem is the capacity of the network as a whole, then we need to keep working on that problem.


The lesson I take from it is that congestion is fundamental and can only be controlled through demand-pricing. Like in the buffet example above, you cannot fix that mess by making your buffet bigger. More people will show up and pack more in their bucket. The only way to fix this is to charge by weight. People will either pay by how much they use, or they will pay by waiting on line for scraps.

There's always going to be another bottleneck, the moment you eliminate one, others spring up. Building more grade separated public transportation won't help congestion either (this is an important point that often gets forgotten). But it will help add capacity despite congestion. Many agencies also add "peak" surcharges as a crude form of demand pricing.


Sure, you mentioned that the MBTA is actually running at less then their potential. But potential is not capacity. They aren't running without passengers and they aren't in a position to really take more. Yet, with good upgrades, it can help with congestion without concluding that our congestion issues is a "virtually" infinite number of commuters that only grows unless we can raise capacity to an absurd level as you argued. However, there's more than one way to add capacity. And we can also find ways to reduce demand.

The main argument for demand-pricing is that it causes people to re-evaluate their travel and then try to choose a more efficient time or mode. You still need to provide or find the capacity in some fashion. The argument for public transportation on grade separated right-of-ways is that it is the most effective form of adding capacity to your system: it carries the most people with the smallest footprint and the least negative impact on the city.

So whether people choose to drive, work at home, change their hours, take the bus or the train, or anything else, the important question is: are we setting up a relatively free market system where people are free to make decisions about their life, and then pay the costs accordingly? Or are we forcing them into one choice or another through bad policy?

Maybe it's the case that most people would prefer to drive a single-occupancy vehicle to work and park it there. But the infrastructure needed for that is so massive, imposing and destructive that a whole other set of citizens is forced to endure terrible costs, while the drivers pay almost nothing. That's not a fair, free market outcome at all.

With all the resources being poured into highways and mitigating the disasters they cause, there's little left for the folks who don't want to (or can't) drive to work. In the worst case, they get forced into cars against their will and also add to the congestion problem.

[Equilibria]

The lesson I take from it is that congestion is fundamental and can only be controlled through demand-pricing. Like in the buffet example above, you cannot fix that mess by making your buffet bigger. More people will show up and pack more in their bucket. The only way to fix this is to charge by weight. People will either pay by how much they use, or they will pay by waiting on line for scraps.

You mention the conflict between transportation as a business and transportation as a social service with the implicit assumption that things would be better if focus was placed on the former. I have to disagree.

The fundamental flaw with the concept of large-scale congestion pricing is that societal expectations are the primary reason why large cities have peaks in the first place. Sure, if this were Hyannis and the roads clogged up on nice beach days in the summer, people are moving according to their own desires, but it isn't. Commute peaks at 6-9am and 4-7pm aren't done by choice - they're demanded by employers.

The people you say would be "waiting on line for scraps" wouldn't be economically-minded consumers with a low value of time, they would be people with low wages who would be priced out of a $10 toll each way on the Turnpike just because their shift goes from 9-5.

This is why the Interstate system banned tolls for a long time. The system isn't designed as a business. It's designed as a critical piece of infrastructure for defense and commerce. It has to be accessible to all Americans at all times.

[Matthew]

You mention the conflict between transportation as a business and transportation as a social service with the implicit assumption that things would be better if focus was placed on the former. I have to disagree.

The fundamental flaw with the concept of large-scale congestion pricing is that societal expectations are the primary reason why large cities have peaks in the first place. Sure, if this were Hyannis and the roads clogged up on nice beach days in the summer, people are moving according to their own desires, but it isn't. Commute peaks at 6-9am and 4-7pm aren't done by choice - they're demanded by employers.

The people you say would be "waiting on line for scraps" wouldn't be economically-minded consumers with a low value of time, they would be people with low wages who would be priced out of a $10 toll each way on the Turnpike just because their shift goes from 9-5.

This is why the Interstate system banned tolls for a long time. The system isn't designed as a business. It's designed as a critical piece of infrastructure for defense and commerce. It has to be accessible to all Americans at all times.

I don't think transit as a social service should be abandoned. I think that it should be made explicit, is all.

I think you misinterpreted my metaphor. "People waiting on line for scraps" is intended to be the analogy to the current situation of being stuck in heavy traffic congestion. There is no relation to economic status intended. Everyone, rich or poor, gets stuck in the same traffic.

Being "accessible to all Americans at all times" is physically impossible. That's why we have traffic congestion. What you're saying is like saying that "bread should be free and available to Americans at all times." The result will be long bread lines, as demonstrated by the former Soviet Union. You either pay with money, or you pay with time.

[Equilibria]

I don't think transit as a social service should be abandoned. I think that it should be made explicit, is all.

I think you misinterpreted my metaphor. "People waiting on line for scraps" is intended to be the analogy to the current situation of being stuck in heavy traffic congestion. There is no relation to economic status intended. Everyone, rich or poor, gets stuck in the same traffic.

Being "accessible to all Americans at all times" is physically impossible. That's why we have traffic congestion. What you're saying is like saying that "bread should be free and available to Americans at all times." The result will be long bread lines, as demonstrated by the former Soviet Union. You either pay with money, or you pay with time.

You've also misinterpreted what I meant :). By accessible at all times, I meant that everyone has the same access to the system, not that that access is free-flowing.

At a certain level, transportation can be a capital good. Air travel, for instance, is priced according to demand. For a few decades, people wishing to get from London to New York in 3 hours had a luxury option to do so.

On the other hand, public roads are public for a reason. I'm worried about the trend toward transportation being a good at every level, with privately-financed tollways for the rich springing up all over the country. I'm a planner, so I get all the arguments about people paying the true cost of driving, but this is a country designed for driving. You typically can't get to work without it unless you pay a steep premium to live near downtown or transit. Until that changes, I don't think it's justifiable to punitively charge drivers for driving at times they're forced to drive (and in this economy, don't think you're getting an additional benefit from employers to cover it).

[Matthew]

Then people will continue to build subsidized highway sprawl as long as they don't have to pay the true cost of it. I don't see the tollways as being only for the rich, any more than I see any other products as being "only for the rich" just because they happen to cost money.

Also remember there would be a reduced tax burden. And credits can be given out on a need basis, just like any other basic necessity.

[Commuting Boston Student]

Ultimately, highway sprawl is going to continue to happen no matter what you do. As rail technology gets better, rail sprawl should start to happen as well, following a demand that is already naturally being generated.

Infrastructure shouldn't be run like a business. I value infrastructure in a limited subset of goods and services (alongside first responders among other things) where running things like a business is ultimately detrimental to the community and to the country.

Not all taxes are inherently bad taxes, and not all spending is evil and needs to be curtailed. I agree that trying to run it as a business and a social service satisfies neither demand, but (and I never thought I would ever say these words about anything) this is not something that should be run like a business.

[Matthew]

Rail sprawl happened in the 19th century. We call them "streetcar suburbs" and railroad towns. Nowadays, in comparison to automobile sprawl, rail sprawl looks positively urban.

Everything we need out of railroad technology for commuters has been around for a century. It's a matter of correctly applying well established and understood techniques. Unfortunately for us, even this seems to be beyond the capabilities of the MBTA.

In terms of running transportation like a business, it's not a matter of making profit: it's a matter of being effective. As Jarrett Walker puts it, as an agency, do you put your dollars towards generating ridership, or spreading coverage?

Actually, I'll defer to him on the rest of that discussion. If you're interested in that question: http://www.humantransit.org/2011/09/should-transit-agencies-retrench-to-become-profitable.html

[whighlander]

Rail sprawl happened in the 19th century. We call them "streetcar suburbs" and railroad towns. Nowadays, in comparison to automobile sprawl, rail sprawl looks positively urban.

Everything we need out of railroad technology for commuters has been around for a century. It's a matter of correctly applying well established and understood techniques. Unfortunately for us, even this seems to be beyond the capabilities of the MBTA.



Mathew -- actually you happened upon something fundamental which the advocates of rail at any cost seemed to have missed

Raid came into existence in the 19th Century for one funamental reason - Steam and sprawed everywhere for a second reason Steel

Everything including high speed rail follows as inexorable from that as the next 14 billion years follows the Big Bang -- like the Big Bang the decisions made in the 19th Century are still guiding our modern railroads of various kinds:
1) pull from the front because of the weight of the steam boiler and the difficulty of transmitting the steam
1a) slightly modified by the introduction of electric traction allowing each car in a train to be powered
2) essentially stop everywhere along the path from start to finish
3) correlary vehicles are big to accomodate a lot of people who get on and off
4) spend an inordinate amount of time stopped and accelerating / decellerating
5) stations need to be large to accomodate large vehicles
6) take no real interest in the other vehicles except for safety reasons
7) need superfluous things such as tickets and conductors

We have a second model which makes a whole lot more sense and which through the combination of making a car or train car into a computer on wheels can simplify and vastly improve our non human-powered ground transportation

The model to be followed is the packet switched data network which today carries everything from simple commerce, to gossip and fine multmedia including live performing art and sports

How -- by defining the start and finish of the journey and routing the packets by the best available means which cirucumstances allow at the instant of arrival at the junction point in question:
1) vehicles go point to point -- mostly non-stop
2) vehicles are small and self propelled
3) stations can be more frequent and smaller -- closer to the destinations
4) wheels and rails or wheels and concrete -- it doesn't really matter
5) everything is electric -- either centrally powered or also on-vehicle energy storage technologies
5a) certain special cases -- electricity is generated on-vehicle
6) no need for tickets, conductors, etc.

[Matthew]

Some steam locomotives are able to run in push-pull configuration, it was invented for them. Modern EMUs should only lose about 2 minutes per station stop, if operated correctly. And there's no need for conductors, just fare inspectors.

I too am very interested in self-driving cars and what opportunities they will offer. But to sort of bring this back on-topic, there's a problem that self-driving cars can't really solve either: single-occupancy vehicles take up approximately 20 times more space than a single person. Computer controlled cars can probably pack themselves together better than human drivers can tolerate, but it will still be a significant amount of extra space.

So if everyone insists on going to work in their self-driving SOV, then you are going to end up with gridlocked highways at some point. It's just a matter of geometry.

[F-Line to Dudley]

I too am very interested in self-driving cars and what opportunities they will offer. But to sort of bring this back on-topic, there's a problem that self-driving cars can't really solve either: single-occupancy vehicles take up approximately 20 times more space than a single person. Computer controlled cars can probably pack themselves together better than human drivers can tolerate, but it will still be a significant amount of extra space.

So if everyone insists on going to work in their self-driving SOV, then you are going to end up with gridlocked highways at some point. It's just a matter of geometry.

And energy. Self-driving cars are still not going to hack it in peak oil when large segments of the population get priced out of personalized transit. Any form of it. At a time when resources are stretched and will be more location-stretched such that more people living out of the density will have to drive into the density to find work (i.e. end of the sprawl office parks, equilibrium-level return to concentrated employment centers even if they include much more a mix of the 128 clusters or capital-"S" type suburb centers than traditional downtown urban destinations). There's no panacea for the energy dependence and sprawl nooses, and self-driving electric cars don't solve the problem more than tidying it up a bit and kicking the can a few more decades down the road.

It's gotta be a distributed solution. It always does. Unimodality doesn't work and never has once the gimmick runs out. As true in the RR and interurban speculation-and-bust days of the 19th century and early 20th as it is now with sprawl's and cheap energy's pending expiration date. Getting sidetracked into mode vs. mode contests where one has to win while the other loses always misses that point. Imbalance doesn't work. Never has, never will. Balance and integration not only work, but they're a prerequisite for survival. Boom and decay frequently breaks along those lines.

[F-Line to Dudley]

Some steam locomotives are able to run in push-pull configuration, it was invented for them. Modern EMUs should only lose about 2 minutes per station stop, if operated correctly. And there's no need for conductors, just fare inspectors.

http://www.eot.state.ma.us/downloads/DMU_Fairmount.pdf

p.10 of the Fairmount DMU scoping study...acceleration comparison between an avg. push-pull loco and a DMU. And that's still on inferior diesel...EMU's are even better. European EMU's that don't have the FRA's stupid (fake) buff strength requirements can do 0-60 in about 30 seconds (an avg. sedan on the expressway: 10 secs.). I don't know what a Metro North M8 is by comparison, but the weight penalty on them wouldn't be any more than +12 secs or so slower than its Euro counterparts.

Yes...fixed regional mass transit can be auto-competitive on accel/decel, and definitely beat the living piss out of a bus for nimbleness vs. passenger capacity. It already does most parts of the developed world beyond "...but we've always done it this way." U.S. of A. Even Amtrak passed up the opportunity to put EMU's on the NE Regionals by dropping close to $1B on a new generation of push-pull locos and coach tincans. Because living in the past is the American way.

[Matthew]

Checking out Metro North's New Haven schedule, with all the different stopping patterns, it seems like they figure 1-2 minutes for each additional station stop. For example, 1503 takes 54 minutes to travel from New Haven to Stamford, while 1507 takes 1 hour with 4 additional stops. So that's 6 minutes to make 4 extra stops.

Regarding self-driving cars, I was thinking they might become somewhat like trackless trolleys when under guidance on "electrified roadways", if usage of the internal combustion engine becomes prohibitively expensive.

[F-Line to Dudley]

Checking out Metro North's New Haven schedule, with all the different stopping patterns, it seems like they figure 1-2 minutes for each additional station stop. For example, 1503 takes 54 minutes to travel from New Haven to Stamford, while 1507 takes 1 hour with 4 additional stops. So that's 6 minutes to make 4 extra stops.

And that's a slower schedule than usual because at any given time 1 track on the New Haven Line is out-of-service at any station stop because of the multi-year overhead wire replacement project. When I last rode it the platform-side tracks were the ones being worked on and they had bridge-plate walkways spanning the OOS track from the platform, matched up with every single door on the train. At each stop with this setup a conductor had to get out and motion the engineer to move up or back up X inches to get the bridge plates aligning exactly. Efficient process, but it's like 2-3 extra minutes per stop before the doors open.

And then when center express tracks are worked on there's some built-in dwells in the schedule to let an Amtrak pass. So that schedule will be a bit faster when this major-major construction project is done. Enough to handle the 2-3 more stations they either are building or are considering building on the line.

New Haven Line really is closer to a long-distance rapid transit line than a commuter rail line speed vs. density. There's no comparison with the MBTA commuter rail. Except, boy if we had those EMU's the performance difference would make Providence feel 30 miles closer to Boston and make some people swear off 95 forever.

[Matthew]

It usually takes about 35 minutes 1-stop from PVD to BBY in my experience on Amtrak NE Regional, vs 70-80 minutes for the MBTA commuter rail making more stops. Could probably cut that down by over 25 minutes using EMUs. Maybe they should rent an M8 and try it out for some runs, whet the public's appetite for electrification. :)

I've just realized that Amtrak's monthly pass is $360 for BOS-PVD and the new MBTA Zone 8 pass will be $314. I guess that also includes subway though. Still, I wonder if there are any folks who might consider it. There's only one morning departure from PVD, but there's two Regionals (6:10, 8:15) from BOS that might be attractive for reverse-commuters. And only two MBTA (6:20, 7:20) trains from BOS, so that's not much attraction.

[Commuting Boston Student]

I've just realized that Amtrak's monthly pass is $360 for BOS-PVD and the new MBTA Zone 8 pass will be $314. I guess that also includes subway though. Still, I wonder if there are any folks who might consider it. There's only one morning departure from PVD, but there's two Regionals (6:10, 8:15) from BOS that might be attractive for reverse-commuters. And only two MBTA (6:20, 7:20) trains from BOS, so that's not much attraction.

You couldn't pay me any amount of money to voluntarily relocate to Providence, monthly train pass or otherwise.

Also, there's a lot more than two trains out of PVD to BOS... are you discounting the trains coming up from Wickford now?

[Matthew]

Other way around, I was talking about the reverse commute from Boston to Providence. Maybe someone who lives in Back Bay and works in PVD. Odd, but it happens.

[whighlander]

And energy. Self-driving cars are still not going to hack it in peak oil when large segments of the population get priced out of personalized transit. Any form of it. At a time when resources are stretched and will be more location-stretched such that more people living out of the density will have to drive into the density to find work (i.e. end of the sprawl office parks, equilibrium-level return to concentrated employment centers even if they include much more a mix of the 128 clusters or capital-"S" type suburb centers than traditional downtown urban destinations). There's no panacea for the energy dependence and sprawl nooses, and self-driving electric cars don't solve the problem more than tidying it up a bit and kicking the can a few more decades down the road.

It's gotta be a distributed solution. It always does. Unimodality doesn't work and never has once the gimmick runs out. As true in the RR and interurban speculation-and-bust days of the 19th century and early 20th as it is now with sprawl's and cheap energy's pending expiration date. Getting sidetracked into mode vs. mode contests where one has to win while the other loses always misses that point. Imbalance doesn't work. Never has, never will. Balance and integration not only work, but they're a prerequisite for survival. Boom and decay frequently breaks along those lines.

F-line, Mathew -- Note:

1) I never said anything about internal combustion engines
These postulated self driving cars could be:
a) all electric with local contact pick-ups, or magnetic coupling;
b) driven by linear induction motors in the guideway;
c) battery powered;
d) fuel cells or even internal combustion engines with hybrid propulsion

2) Peak Oil is a myth -- the recent discoveries in Baaken, Green River, etc -- hundreds of years of oil, hundreds of years of natural gas

3) headways can be 0 -- vehicles can be in contact as long as they are compatible -- as they can load and unload off the "line" there are 0 delays for acceleration and deceleration and minimal for merging and de-merging

4) they can be 1 person or more -- just as long as everyone is coming and going together to/from the same locations -- thus there could be a bus for a dozen leaving every 15 minutes running non-stop in a protected ROW from Harvard Yard to Harvard Alston Campus or Hanscom to Kendall or Kendall to SPID

[F-Line to Dudley]

2) Peak Oil is a myth -- the recent discoveries in Baaken, Green River, etc -- hundreds of years of oil, hundreds of years of natural gas

Oh come on, whigh. That's almost as blatant a copy/paste of political talking points as the austerity meme.

These boundless new reserves are all hard to extract, expensive and energy-intensive as fuck to extract, and eleventy times as fracking environmentally devastating to extract. The gas, too...nobody seriously projects the current unprecedented cheapness to be more than an immediate-term condition this decade or at-most next. Peak oil is not about the center of the earth being sucked dry, it's about all the cheap-and-easy stuff being tapped out.

Fuel is not going to be scarce when we have to have it, it's going to be priced to unavailability for whole tracts of society who used to have equal top-to-bottom access to it.

[Matthew]

I too see eventual rising fuel prices tipping the balance in favor of electric propulsion with trolley feed. Especially if we really do get vehicles that can dynamically and automatically fit themselves into guideways.

Carpools and van sharing do alleviate the geometry problem. Perhaps somebody will come up with a computer-based "sharing" system that allows coordination of multiple people and one vehicle. Much like van shares today, but without the labor costs of a driver. Such vehicles can provide a convenient "middle road" between entirely private and public transit. They will still be too unwieldy to handle large volumes of people going to the same location though. So, public transportation on a fixed route will still be the most effective and efficient way of moving large groups of people along a predefined route.

[underground]

But lady in the oil company commercial said everything would be okay!

[whighlander]

Oh come on, whigh. That's almost as blatant a copy/paste of political talking points as the austerity meme.

These boundless new reserves are all hard to extract, expensive and energy-intensive as fuck to extract, and eleventy times as fracking environmentally devastating to extract. The gas, too...nobody seriously projects the current unprecedented cheapness to be more than an immediate-term condition this decade or at-most next. Peak oil is not about the center of the earth being sucked dry, it's about all the cheap-and-easy stuff being tapped out.

Fuel is not going to be scarce when we have to have it, it's going to be priced to unavailability for whole tracts of society who used to have equal top-to-bottom access to it.

F-line -- I wrote what I wrote from a basic and fundamental understanding derrived from many years of interest in:

1) petroleum geophysics and engineering
2) energy economics
3) the oil bidness
4) the Baaken formation and the Green River and Powder River geology

as well as some 10 years living in Austin TX and a semester course called "Introduction to the Economics of Energy Systems" taught in-part by Prof. Wiliam Fisher, Ph.D., the then director of the UT Bureau of Economic Geology" and former Ast. Sectretary of the Dept. of Interior

where did your Leftwing talking points originate?

[whighlander]

I too see eventual rising fuel prices tipping the balance in favor of electric propulsion with trolley feed. Especially if we really do get vehicles that can dynamically and automatically fit themselves into guideways.

Carpools and van sharing do alleviate the geometry problem. Perhaps somebody will come up with a computer-based "sharing" system that allows coordination of multiple people and one vehicle. Much like van shares today, but without the labor costs of a driver. Such vehicles can provide a convenient "middle road" between entirely private and public transit. They will still be too unwieldy to handle large volumes of people going to the same location though. So, public transportation on a fixed route will still be the most effective and efficient way of moving large groups of people along a predefined route.

Mathew -- consider Alewife -- 2700 parking spaces -- perhaps 5,000 people arriving and parking (I'm being generous) out of 10,657 people (arriving by bus, bike, foot, kiss&ride and parking their car) and leaving Alewife for ???? each day

If they all went to say the SPID -- you'd need to provide 2700 parking spaces there -- but they are distributed some go to:

1) Logan
2) Government Center
3) FID
4) Fenwway Park
5) Longwood
6) Kendall
7) BU
8) MFA
9) MGH
10) DTX
11) North Station
12) South Station
13) MOS
14) Pru

to name a few possible and reasonably probable locations

distribute them evenly and you need parking for about 200 cars per venue

[datadyne007]

Part of my research yesterday...

Basic Design Report Southwest Expressway - Interstate Route 95, Route 128, Canton, to Jackson Square, Boston
Brown Professional Engineers, Inc (Book - 1966)

http://bostonpl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/2463456042_basic_design_report_southwest_expresswa y_-_interstate_route_95,_route_128,_canton,_to_jackso n_square,_boston

http://i46.tinypic.com/34pc9sg.jpg

http://i45.tinypic.com/9quqm0.jpg
^^Holy. Shit. !!!^^

http://i47.tinypic.com/4vpegz.jpg

[czsz]

Wow, didn't realize the SWEx would be so wide or still have the Orange Line running down the middle. I guess it would have been Boston's version of Chicago's Dan Ryan expressway:

http://achicagosojourn.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/img_0685a.jpg

[Ron Newman]

And now, realize that the big green space on the left side of the Forest Hills picture is the Arnold Arboretum. How pleasant a place that would be next to a huge highway.

[F-Line to Dudley]

F-line -- I wrote what I wrote from a basic and fundamental understanding derrived from many years of interest in:

1) petroleum geophysics and engineering
2) energy economics
3) the oil bidness
4) the Baaken formation and the Green River and Powder River geology

as well as some 10 years living in Austin TX and a semester course called "Introduction to the Economics of Energy Systems" taught in-part by Prof. Wiliam Fisher, Ph.D., the then director of the UT Bureau of Economic Geology" and former Ast. Sectretary of the Dept. of Interior

Sorry...I don't have my curriculum vita handy. But...vita is not the same as presenting factual point/counterpoint, is it?

where did your Leftwing talking points originate?

Well, as long as we're being crystal clear this whole line of argument is rooted in ideological talking points, I've got no problem with that. It's a waste of the thread's time to clog it up with some immovable "Wabbit Season!...Duck Season!" volleys when minds are made up. But, like the austerity thing...let's be crystal clear here what's informing that view.

[Lurker]

I'd rather see dynamic parking pricing and an actual sane limit and pricing scheme for residential sticker parking in Boston before implementing city specific congestion charges. Privatizing or leasing the operation of highways (to treat them like railroads once were) and moving that maintenance burden off the public books would be another big move in my playbook.

[F-Line to Dudley]

Wow, didn't realize the SWEx would be so wide or still have the Orange Line running down the middle. I guess it would have been Boston's version of Chicago's Dan Ryan expressway:

http://achicagosojourn.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/img_0685a.jpg

My God...we almost became Indianapolis.

I assume that's the future zipper lane running in the center there. And that this a noontime Saturday shot, because there's no breakdown lane travel.

[vanshnookenraggen]

moooree.....

http://img840.imageshack.us/img840/3306/randymarshjizzf.jpg

[datadyne007]

Note: I posted the BPL link/call# for anyone who wants to go to the library and look at the study. It's in "government documents," but you have to request it from Social Sciences because the BPL has closed the gov't docs desk. Both are in Bates Hall.

There are plenty of renders, plans, sections, elevations, MBTA integration, etc.

[Commuting Boston Student]

As long as we're talking oil...

Why hasn't anyone yet tried to produce synthetic/artificial oil? Relying on a supply of something we need to pull from the ground until it's gone seems like a bad idea in general.

Why can't we figure out how to make fake oil?

[ant8904]

As long as we're talking oil...

Why hasn't anyone yet tried to produce synthetic/artificial oil? Relying on a supply of something we need to pull from the ground until it's gone seems like a bad idea in general.

Why can't we figure out how to make fake oil?

I thought ethanol is kinda like fake oil.

[mass88]

Wow, the SW Xway looks like what the Southeast expressway should look like. 4 full travel lanes in each direction, along with full breakdown lanes and adequate lighting.

[choo]

I particularly like the train stations in the middle of the highway that has no bridge going over it or any other visible pedestrian access. I imagine future arguments would have been that public transport can't exist without subsidies and that we should just make it six lanes in both directions.

[datadyne007]

I particularly like the train stations in the middle of the highway that has no bridge going over it or any other visible pedestrian access. I imagine future arguments would have been that public transport can't exist without subsidies and that we should just make it six lanes in both directions.

Connections are all made underground. Crossing above a highway is much more unpleasant than crossing below it.

[Charlie_mta]

Except when you get mugged in the pedestrian tunnels.

[Matthew]

Muggings can happen in pedestrian overpasses too. It's not like anyone on the highway below is going to help you.

[choo]

Fact: The drugs are always better underground than above it.

[BostonUrbEx]

2) Peak Oil is a myth

You heard here first, folks! Oil is unlimited! Rejoice and top off your tank!

[whighlander]

As long as we're talking oil...

Why hasn't anyone yet tried to produce synthetic/artificial oil? Relying on a supply of something we need to pull from the ground until it's gone seems like a bad idea in general.

Why can't we figure out how to make fake oil?

Commute -- they were working on this in Deutschland while it still had pretentions to be über alles but the Alles (err Alies) had cut off access to oil

Later for much of the same reason the project was resurected in South Africa

The process is a complex system of chemical reactions generally grouped under Fischer–Tropsch synthesis

Depending on the feed materials and end products it can be called Synfuel or "liquid coal" -- basically you need to add a lot of hydrogen to the carbon -- where pray tell do you get hydrogen -- why from:

1) reacting the coal with and air water at high temperatures -- that makes a very toxic gas mixture (H2, CO, CO2, CH4 and even some HCN) which you can reform into a liquid
2) from Natural gas -- why not just use the natural gas -- either as CNG or made into a liquid

The US has piddled about with it for about 40 years -- no one thinks its worthwhile now because of the long-term glut of natural gas -- and so the focus is on Clean coal for stationary power plants and synthetic liquid fuels from natural gas for transportation

PS: you can even gassify wood and then generate "liquid wood" fuel by using a variant of the #1 process with wood, sawdust, pulp or charcoal

[whighlander]

Except when you get mugged in the pedestrian tunnels.

Charlie -- I think that was the reason that the "subway" underneath the Green Line at Arlington connecting the two platforms was bricked-up (rediscovered a couple of years ago during the station renovation)

Meanwhile you can take a "subway" walk under the Thames at Greenwich

[Commuting Boston Student]

The US has piddled about with it for about 40 years -- no one thinks its worthwhile now because of the long-term glut of natural gas -- and so the focus is on Clean coal for stationary power plants and synthetic liquid fuels from natural gas for transportation

Why put off until tomorrow what you can accomplish today?

If we perfect this synthesis now then we won't have everyone freaking out 10, 20, 40, 50 years down the road... "we don't have time to develop this technology before the oil runs out... EVERYONE PANIC!"

Wouldn't it be better to have this on hand so that years down the line "fortunately, because we decided not to keep kicking the can, we have a replacement product ready to go. It's cool guys, don't panic."

[datadyne007]

I get that oil is related to highways and all, but can we try to keep this about the SWX please...

[whighlander]

You heard here first, folks! Oil is unlimited! Rejoice and top off your tank!

Urb -- No -- But "Peak Oil" as a sudden collapse of the supply of oil and consequently modern "western" civilization is a myth

Oil like all scarce materials is produced based on the balance of the costs to produce and price which the consumer is willing to pay for it. Even in the presence of cartels and other attempts to control the market -- the Law of Supply and Demand will inexorably win out.

Like all scarce materials the producers will produce more at an increasing cost of production (i.e. find and extract harder to extract sources) as the demand drives up the price. Some can easily do this such as the Saudis whose costs of production right now is substantially less than 10$ / barrel. Others' production is very closely tied to the market price such as the exotic means of extraction of residual oil from old fields in Texas. They wlll just shut down if the price was to drop much because of their high cost of production.

Meanwhile consumers will consume less (the amount they decrease their consumption as the price rises) is known as price elasticity of consumption -- some will consume the same amount irrespective of price (e.g. Police Departments, DOD), others are exquisitely sensive to the cost and will find an alternative (e.g. retired people riding about the country in motor homes).

Overall as the easier to extact oil is depleted -- the price will rise -- but as it does more oil will come to the market and more consumers will find alternative -- the system will be dynamically in balance as it has been since oil was discovered. The primary use then was to take the less volatile material (kerosene) and burn it as a replacement for whale oil. The volatile fraction (gasoline) was dumped until the internal combustion engine offered a use for it. Similarly, for much of the history of the oil bidness, natural gas separated from the oil at the wellhead was flared as it was explosive and there were no pipelines.

Today, secondary recovery of untapped petroleum in old fields by solvent extraction combined with directional drilling and yes hydraulic fracturing of the rock ("fracking") enabling recovery from previously uneconomic deposits has regenerated old oil producing regions of Texas and even Pennsyvania. In addition, vast deposits previously unknown or inaccessible in places such as the Baaken formation have completely altered the known reserves in North America.

Texas today probably can extract as much more oil from the existing discoveries as has ben produced to date. If Alaska's huge untapped reserves prove to be as large as they may be -- the US would be back at #1 in global production with producible reserves at current prices (not even counting shale-oil) in excess of any country in the world.

Ergo Peak Oil is a Myth and not even a very instructive one

[F-Line to Dudley]

That is polyanna almost to the point of delirium.

[whighlander]

That is polyanna almost to the point of delirium.

F-Line -- No its the new reality

Once the new Congress and President are in office -- you will see an energy boom -- based on petroleum (oil and natural gas) which will approach the immediate post WWII if not even an earlier period.

Why -- money!! -- the revenues to the Federal Treaury based on extracting a Trillion Barrels at $100 per barrel from Federal lands -- that by itslelf could wipe away the long term debt in just about 25 years

The US has vast reserves which are now extractable through new technologies including: sophisticated resevoir modeling, 3D seizmic profiling, and GPS-guided directional drilling. Indeed official views are being expressed that US combined with Canadian reserves make the Middle East potentially an irrelvancy for our consumption and potentially the US could return to being an oil exporter.

The revalations of this abundance -- Finally on the Public Record -- is the reason that the militant anti-hydrocarbon activists are desparately trying to enact rules through the EPA limiting the development on private and state lands the same way that they've crushed the near off-shore operations and essentially banned all petroleum drilling in the on-shore Federal Lands. This process started under Jimmy the Peanut and accelerated during the Al Gore period. But it is over and the next step is to "Drill, Drill and Drill Some More!!"

[F-Line to Dudley]

Wow. Whatever you're smoking there, please do share with the rest of the class. That is a more pie-in-sky optimistic take than the most optimistic-ever spin to come from the fossil fuel lobby itself or its most hardcore messaging parrotheads. By a lot.


We're gonna need separate Crazy Energy Pitches and Reasonable Energy Pitches threads to house this one.

[datadyne007]

Wow. Whatever you're smoking there, please do share with the rest of the class. That is a more pie-in-sky optimistic take than the most optimistic-ever spin to come from the fossil fuel lobby itself or its most hardcore messaging parrotheads. By a lot.


We're gonna need separate Crazy Energy Pitches and Reasonable Energy Pitches threads to house this one.

"Delirium" doesn't seem so far off anymore, eh?

[Ron Newman]

Could we stay on the subject of the cancelled highways please?

[BostonUrbEx]

Could we stay on the subject of the cancelled highways please?

The Saugus Alternative Energy Committee plans on using the abandoned I-95 roadbed in Rumney Marsh for 1-3 wind turbines, a slew of solar panels, and a linear park.

</abandoned highway discussion>

[datadyne007]

The WIT Architecture Dept has THE map of ALL maps that my professor discovered today. It's a BRA map in color from 1968 of Roxbury Xing to the Fenway showing the SWX and Inner Belt. The Inner Belt was actually going to go under the Fenway.

I need it for studio, so I'm working on getting it large-format scanned hopefully with the help of my previous co-op employer. Look for it to be posted soon!

[Lurker]

http://www.mapjunction.com/places/Open_BRA/cgi-view/rest.pl?t=15478&p=24794

[datadyne007]

http://www.mapjunction.com/places/Open_BRA/cgi-view/rest.pl?t=15478&p=24794

That would be it. Awesome. Hopefully I can get it scanned as a nice flat image. That skew is annoying.

[Lurker]

The newer viewer at mapjunction I believe has the urban renewal plans scanned properly. Though I don't have any idea how to link from that version.

[vanshnookenraggen]

You used to be able to download those at full scale. I have the set of the urban renewal maps but my Government Center is at a smaller scale :( I totally want to print these out.

[datadyne007]

I bring you... the Fenway Redevelopment Plan! (Showing the SWX<>Inner Belt Connector)

http://i47.tinypic.com/otdkw2.jpg
Fenway Urban Renewal Plan, BRA, 1968

A PDF (300DPI) is available here: http://www.sendspace.com/file/porib1

[Ron Newman]

Add Audubon Circle to the list of neighborhoods that would have been destroyed, or at least seriously damaged.

I guess they figured that since Sears had already paved over the Fenway-Riverway connection for a parking lot, they could just compound the damage by turning the parking lot into a depressed freeway trench.

[czsz]

"And now let's check in with the WBZ copter for an update from the MFA overpass..."

Wow, that would've been terrible. And look at the way Longwood is gutted by towers in the park, which would have ruined its potential.

On the plus side, Boylston and Mass Ave. actually has air rights development over it, so there's that.

[datadyne007]

"And now let's check in with the WBZ copter for an update from the MFA overpass..."

Wow, that would've been terrible. And look at the way Longwood is gutted by towers in the park, which would have ruined its potential.

On the plus side, Boylston and Mass Ave. actually has air rights development over it, so there's that.
Not just the towers in a park, but look at all the brick plazas! Plazas to nowhere! Everything about this map is a terrible, terrible, idea.

[metasyntactic]

Wow, a good portion of the Northeastern campus would have been a highway.

[Kahta]

If this had been built, it's highly likely that the big dig would have entailed tearing down the central artery and simply replacing it with a boulevard a good 15 years sooner than it happened in real life. There still would have been functional highways reaching downtown, but they simply would have ended at the location of the tunnel reaching the surface and the current location of the Zakim bridge.

Then the big dig would have buried the inner belt, leaving the area as a whole with much better transportation access-- it wouldn't take me 45 minutes to get from cleveland circle to Tufts on a saturday afternoon

[datadyne007]

If this had been built, it's highly likely that the big dig would have entailed tearing down the central artery and simply replacing it with a boulevard a good 15 years sooner than it happened in real life. There still would have been functional highways reaching downtown, but they simply would have ended at the location of the tunnel reaching the surface and the current location of the Zakim bridge.

Then the big dig would have buried the inner belt, leaving the area as a whole with much better transportation access-- it wouldn't take me 45 minutes to get from cleveland circle to Tufts on a saturday afternoon

The idea of burying the already aging CA was indeed present in a lot of the plans for the highway improvements I looked through.

[Kahta]

The idea of burying the already aging CA was indeed present in a lot of the plans for the highway improvements I looked through.

True-- but given how high the costs would have been if all the proposed projects were built, it's hard to believe that the big dig would have been nearly as big for financial reasons.

[BostonUrbEx]

Can someone identify this mysterious proposed highway cutting through Revere?

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7141/6386990839_78ca0eb9ec_b.jpg


It seems to parallel 107 to some extent, so perhaps it was a proposed upgrading of 107 into Chelsea.

[datadyne007]

That might be the East Boston Expressway, an auxiliary route for the proposed Northeast Expressway (I-95). It could also be the actual Northeast Expressway.

I have diagrams of all these from the morning that I spent at the Transportation Library (probably one of the coolest mornings ever). I have to scan them all in though.

[vanshnookenraggen]

They were going to upgrade 1A, weren't they? This is probably it.

[Digital_Islandboy]

As long as we're talking oil...

Why hasn't anyone yet tried to produce synthetic/artificial oil? Relying on a supply of something we need to pull from the ground until it's gone seems like a bad idea in general.

Why can't we figure out how to make fake oil?

There was a movie about ten years ago. I can't think of the name of it though. This movie had scientists who figured out you could take water, put it at a tank and use an underwater speaker omitting a certain tone that was tuned to the correct level of resonance frequency to split the molecules of hydrogen and oxygen. Each element would then be collected separately. The hydrogen would be flammable (using the oxygen to burn.) But there was a problem the major energy companies didn't want this secret to get out because all of the countries of the world could buy this system and use sea water to produce their own electricity cheaply. So these scientists were hunted down because their invention was too powerful and should never be allowed to see the light of day.

[Kahta]

Can someone identify this mysterious proposed highway cutting through Revere?

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7141/6386990839_78ca0eb9ec_b.jpg


It seems to parallel 107 to some extent, so perhaps it was a proposed upgrading of 107 into Chelsea.

I believe it was an extension of the East Boston expressway-- yet another project that had it given north shore communities improved highway access, may have prevented such large declines.

There was a movie about ten years ago. I can't think of the name of it though. This movie had scientists who figured out you could take water, put it at a tank and use an underwater speaker omitting a certain tone that was tuned to the correct level of resonance frequency to split the molecules of hydrogen and oxygen. Each element would then be collected separately. The hydrogen would be flammable (using the oxygen to burn.) But there was a problem the major energy companies didn't want this secret to get out because all of the countries of the world could buy this system and use sea water to produce their own electricity cheaply. So these scientists were hunted down because their invention was too powerful and should never be allowed to see the light of day.

Is this a joke?

[BostonUrbEx]

improved highway access, may have prevented such large declines.

Yeah, because Salem's stellar highway access is why it's so popular these days.

Assuming the "large decline" means Lynn, let's just ignore the fact that it's perhaps rampant with corruption, was ravaged by great conflagrations, and never found a new industry after the loss of its shoe industry.

[Charlie_mta]

The large marsh that is along Route 107 between Revere, Saugus and Lynn would have been destroyed by the three proposed expresssways bisecting it in the map. Interstate 95 and the East Boston X-way extension both would have sliced it north to south, and the Revere Connector would have sliced it east to west. Add the interchanges needed between the three expressways, and all that would have been left of the swamp would be isolated pockets full of fetid water, trash and probably gradually filled in for strip malls and warehouses.

[Kahta]

The large marsh that is along Route 107 between Revere, Saugus and Lynn would have been destroyed by the three proposed expresssways bisecting it in the map. Interstate 95 and the East Boston X-way extension both would have sliced it north to south, and the Revere Connector would have sliced it east to west. Add the interchanges needed between the three expressways, and all that would have been left of the swamp would be isolated pockets full of fetid water, trash and probably gradually filled in for strip malls and warehouses.

It's already bisected three times by a rail line, 107, and the fill for I-95. The rest could be accomplished with minimal additional fill beyond what is already there.

Yeah, because Salem's stellar highway access is why it's so popular these days.

Assuming the "large decline" means Lynn, let's just ignore the fact that it's perhaps rampant with corruption, was ravaged by great conflagrations, and never found a new industry after the loss of its shoe industry.

I know a number of people that live in that area and it takes them a long time to get out of the north shore in the morning. Mass transit doesn't bring them to the jobs they have, so they end up spending a ton of time commuting.

[Charlie_mta]

It's already bisected three times by a rail line, 107, and the fill for I-95. The rest could be accomplished with minimal additional fill beyond what is already there.

The blue shape is the existing fill placed for the cancelled I-95 Expressway.

The red areas would be additional fill that would be needed to build the Revere Connector and the East Boston Expressway extension. These fill areas are pretty substantial.

There would need to be numerous breaches in the fill spanned by bridges for all three expressways to allow circulation of water between the isolated pieces of marsh that would remain.

http://i499.photobucket.com/albums/rr354/Charliemta/rumneymarsh.jpg

[Kahta]

The blue shape is the existing fill placed for the cancelled I-95 Expressway.

The red areas would be additional fill that would be needed to build the Revere Connector and the East Boston Expressway extension. These fill areas are pretty substantial.

There would need to be numerous breaches in the fill spanned by bridges for all three expressways to allow circulation of water between the isolated pieces of marsh that would remain.

http://i499.photobucket.com/albums/rr354/Charliemta/rumneymarsh.jpg

Why not use 107 to connect the two?

You're exaggerating the footprint of the highway-- the road bed in place is wide enough for the proposed I-95

[vanshnookenraggen]

It's not the road bed but the embankment that would do the most damage. Look at that area in satellite and you'll see how accurate his estimations are.

[whighlander]

Is this a joke?

referring to

[/quote]There was a movie about ten years ago. I can't think of the name of it though. This movie had scientists who figured out you could take water, put it at a tank and use an underwater speaker omitting a certain tone that was tuned to the correct level of resonance frequency to split the molecules of hydrogen and oxygen. Each element would then be collected separately. The hydrogen would be flammable (using the oxygen to burn.) But there was a problem the major energy companies didn't want this secret to get out because all of the countries of the world could buy this system and use sea water to produce their own electricity cheaply. So these scientists were hunted down because their invention was too powerful and should never be allowed to see the light of day.

[/quote]

Kaht -- are you serious?

Of course its either a joke or fiction -- though not science fiction

water is water because of the binding energy linking the 2 Hydrogens to the Oxygen -- breaking those bonds requires the same amount of energy as you get when you make the bonds -- that's why the Hydrogen economy is a myth which is busted

the only way you can make a hydrogen economy is to make like a leaf -- use the energy from the sunlight to break the H-O bonds and get yourself some chemical energy in the form of H2 or more like a plant as sugar

So far we haven't gotten anything in the way of an effecient H2 direct from sunlight process -- the best that's been done is using algae to capture the solar energy and then use the algae to make a feed-stock for diesel fuel

[BostonObserver]

water is water because of the binding energy linking the 2 Hydrogens to the Oxygen -- breaking those bonds requires the same amount of energy as you get when you make the bonds

Dam, I'm never gonna drink that crap again.

[datadyne007]

This month's ArchitectureBoston (http://www.architects.org/architectureboston/turn-signal) is all about these projects.

The Roads Not Taken
How one powerful choice made all the difference.

http://www.architects.org/sites/default/files/roads-not-taken-lrg.jpg?1351794733

http://www.architects.org/architectureboston/articles/roads-not-taken

Lots of great images and info.


On the Wrong Side of a Right-Of-Way
Excerpt by Alan Lupo / Winter - 2012: Turn Signal (Volume 15 n4)

http://www.architects.org/sites/default/files/Winter12-NotTaken-large.jpg?1352748413

http://www.architects.org/architectureboston/articles/wrong-side-right-way


Ripple Effects
By Alan Altshuler, Anthony Flint, Ann Hershfang, Fred Salvucci, David Lee FAIA , and Ken Kruckemeyer AIA / Winter - 2012: Turn Signal (Volume 15 n4)

http://www.architects.org/sites/default/files/ripple-effects-lrg.jpg?1351799223

Few policy decisions have had as much effect on placemaking as the transportation rethink of the early 1970s in Boston. But the highway moratorium’s influence is still being felt far beyond Route 128. We asked six planners, designers, and activists to trace the echoes.

http://www.architects.org/architectureboston/articles/ripple-effects

[Ron Newman]

I'm struggling to recognize the location of the first photo. The accompanying article says Lamartine Street, but is it really?

[Roxxma]

I'm struggling to recognize the location of the first photo. The accompanying article says Lamartine Street, but is it really?

No it isn't. That's looking north from Lower Roxbury, probably just above Washington St at Ramsay Park. The Northeastern campus is on the upper right, the large white building is on the even side of Tremont St between Hammond St and Melnea Cass Blvd. Melnea Cass would probably take up much of the park in the foreground (Madison Square maybe?).

[Ron Newman]

Is that the Washington Street El running left-to-right about 1/3 of the way down the photo? What is the modern white landscraper building just below it, on the right?

[BostonUrbEx]

I can't help but wonder if city life would have been better if the Pike went via 695's proposed routing to Melnea Cass ROW and then 93. Whittle down the B&A railroad to 2 tracks + 2 track spaces for heavy rail, and it would have been much, much easier to deck over do to slim width -- like it wouldn't even phase people's minds at all. The Pike through Ruggles and Roxbury and also be easier to deck over, as it would have been without tracks alongside. The spaghetti bowl interchange with 93 would have not overwhelmed the Leather District, but rather could have been on top of the Southampton train yards and train loop.

But alas, my preferred option would still be superior to all others: no build.

[belmont square]

Is that the Washington Street El running left-to-right about 1/3 of the way down the photo? What is the modern white landscraper building just below it, on the right?

Washington Street is out of the picture in the foreground. The building in the bottom right corner fronts Shawmut Ave (just out of view). The big landscraper is still there--its the long building across Tremont Street from Cunard and Coventry streets.

[Ron Newman]

Thanks. Is it an office building, or a Northeastern dorm?

[Charlie_mta]

I can't help but wonder if city life would have been better if the Pike went via 695's proposed routing to Melnea Cass ROW and then 93.

That is an intruiging idea. However, the big downside is the Fenway between Jamiacaway and the Museum of Fine Arts would have been trenched for the highway, then decked over and turned into something ugly like the Rose Kennedy Greenway. There also would have been an interchange with the Jamaicaway completely paving over the Fenway between Brookline Ave and the Riverside Green Line. Not a good thing. It would be like Bowker overpass, except 10 times more impactive.

[JohnAKeith]

Ron, it's a government-subsidized housing development, ROXSE Housing.

The design of the building today looks different from then, but I believe it's the same building.

Approximately 1050 Tremont Street, Boston, MA 02118

[CSTH]

That is an intruiging idea. However, the big downside is the Fenway between Jamiacaway and the Museum of Fine Arts would have been trenched for the highway, then decked over and turned into something ugly like the Rose Kennedy Greenway. There also would have been an interchange with the Jamaicaway completely paving over the Fenway between Brookline Ave and the Riverside Green Line. Not a good thing. It would be like Bowker overpass, except <del> 10 times more impactive</del>.except with enough space for a proper pike interchange, reducing the need for a riverside freeway distributary and thereby allowing storrow to be downgraded to a boulevard or a bike path....


there, fixed it...

[Matthew]

A long feature on the highway revolts of the early 70s.

http://www.architects.org/architectureboston/turn-signal

To fully grasp the significance of a 40-year-old decision to stop highway expansion through Greater Boston, it helps to engage in a bit of alternative history. So let us imagine: What if that ensnaring spider web of new highways had been built?

Thirty-eight-hundred homes would have been demolished. Frederick Law Olmsted’s Back Bay Fens would have been sliced in half, between the Museum of Fine Arts and the Gardner Museum. Huge swaths of Central Square and Cambridgeport — the nightclubs, bookstores, and coffeehouses — would have been razed.

In their place would have been an eight-lane interstate beltway some 7.3 miles long, according to most plans, with 13 new interchanges; 12-foot emergency shoulders on both sides; and all the noise, grime, and pollution that comes with 55,000 car trips per day.

This is not to mention the long finger of I-95 that would have extended from Dedham north through the city, or the extension of Route 2 into Cambridge. Does anyone think the South End would be one of the most desirable addresses on the East Coast today with a six-lane highway running through it? Or that Kendall Square would be a teeming catalyst for innovation had the Red Line not been extended?

[datadyne007]

^ I posted about this a month ago on the previous page, lol.

See post 216 and on.

[Matthew]

Whoops, guess I missed it.

[Arlington]

Cloverleafs are rare builds today because so many 1960's traffic planners blew it on the traffic count estimates. It's all T interchanges like these designs when one highway ends at another, and stacks or turbines when one major highway crosses another. Higher margin for error on those designs when projecting loads.

MA had a cloverleaf fetish back in the day. Look at all the 128 exits being redone now and every exit down 24 to Taunton. They've got a couple other dysfunctional half-built ones like this to eliminate, such as 295/95 in Attleboro. And others built as intended that need modification because they're far exceeding design load (93/128 Woburn).
Great analysis! 'Though "fetish" is a little unfair: As the rest of your analysis admits its more like "blindspot" --they had no way of seeing how the suburbs and car-ownership would overwhelm their system (e.g. there are 2x the number of cars on the road today as there were in 1970), nor could they see how the loads from unbuilt segments would overwhelm what they were building (as exactly here, that "95" traffic is loaded onto 128 at both intersections with 93)

[Ron Newman]

The main problem I see with cloverleaves is that they produce a very hostile and difficult environment for pedestrians (and, to a lesser extent, cyclists) on the non-freeway road.

[Charlie_mta]

Given the harsh winter cold and snow of New England, it made sense here to build cloverleafs rather than LA-style stacks and fly-overs. Cloverleafs minimized bridge lengths (bridge mtc. is expensive in icy, cold climates), avoided curved bridges (less safe in frosty pavement conditions), and provided plenty of storage for snow removal.

Climate considerations are why the old LA freeway interchanges were laid out so differently than the old New England ones. More curved bridges, longer bridges and fly-overs on the California freeways, which works when you have virtually no snow, frost or rust to worry about.

[jass]

Given the harsh winter cold and snow of New England, it made sense here to build cloverleafs rather than LA-style stacks and fly-overs. Cloverleafs minimized bridge lengths (bridge mtc. is expensive in icy, cold climates), avoided curved bridges (less safe in frosty pavement conditions), and provided plenty of storage for snow removal.

Climate considerations are why the old LA freeway interchanges were laid out so differently than the old New England ones. More curved bridges, longer bridges and fly-overs on the California freeways, which works when you have virtually no snow, frost or rust to worry about.

Snow in LA you say?

The California Highway Patrol has shut down Interstate 5 through the Grapevine because of snow as Southern California was hit by a cold front.

The announcement came at 4 p.m., with the CHP saying the northbound lanes were closed at Parker Road. The southbound lanes were closed at Grapevine Road.

The Grapevine was closed earlier this morning because of snow and ice.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2013/01/grapevine-closed-by-snow-ice-cold-front-hits-southern-california.html

[Matthew]

The Grapevine is a mountain pass.

[jass]

The Grapevine is a mountain pass.

Whats the Hollywood sign perched on?

[Ron Newman]

the Hollywood Hills, which are much shorter than the Tehachapi mountains where the Grapevine pass is.

[HenryAlan]

The grapevine is often closed for snow, but snow is very rare in the lower elevations directly surrounding Los Angeles, and almost unheard of in the basin itself.