Reasonable Transit Pitches

[Commuting Boston Student]

Originally Posted by bigeman312

BRT running from Wonderland to Wellington down Route 16, through Chelsea and Everett. Route 16 is wide enough in most places along this stretch for true BRT. Busway, barrier, two lanes of traffic, barrier, two lanes of traffic, barrier, busway. This appears possible along most of that stretch.

No, BRT is never reasonable - especially not when you're talking about sinking investment into separating out the bus traffic.

Improve bus service, sure. Calm the road, sure. But the minute you start talking about "true BRT" you've gone off the deep end.

If the money's there, and the corridor justifies it, we should be talking light rail. Otherwise, improve the bus service. Stop drinking the BRT kool-aid.

[bigeman312]

Originally Posted by Commuting Boston Student

No, BRT is never reasonable - especially not when you're talking about sinking investment into separating out the bus traffic.

Improve bus service, sure. Calm the road, sure. But the minute you start talking about "true BRT" you've gone off the deep end.

If the money's there, and the corridor justifies it, we should be talking light rail. Otherwise, improve the bus service. Stop drinking the BRT kool-aid.

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d01984.pdf

Average cost per mile of LRT: $34.79m. Average cost per mile of busways: $13.49m.

You say "if the money's there" as if the money is equal, and wage some BS war against any bus investment. That's silly.

[Matthew]

No, there are cases where BRT is reasonable. Just not as many as BRT-fanatics would like.

Basically, BRT is better when you can reuse existing infrastructure. If you can take space on roads and bridges that already exist, it's a cheaper way to get started. The other main use case of BRT is so-called "Open BRT", where there is a main trunk of BRT lines which then fan out over a wider area. Much like the trolleys of yesteryear but again, reusing existing road infrastructure for the lower-trafficked portions. The Lincoln Tunnel eXclusive Bus Lane does this very well, though they could use more of it, both in time and space.

The other places where BRT does well have low labor costs, so hiring additional drivers is not as big a deal as it is here.

Constructing and grading a new right-of-way for BRT isn't going to save you much money, if any at all, and you are right, in the long run you're better off with light rail. I think the same goes for reconstructing old railroad rights-of-way, although there may be exceptions.

[F-Line to Dudley]

Yuck. 16 is not only congested as hell all the way between 28 and 1A, but also one of the pedestrian-scariest parkways in the entire region. Who would cross the street to get to a bus stop there? There is a very good reason why it's devoid of bus stops and that all routes that use it for even short stretches turn out at the first chance they get and have all their stops on side streets. I'm not even sure how you'd improve it enough to ensure adequate safety. It might look like a corridor on a map, but in reality it's got to be written off as a de facto expressway.

Eastern Route Urban Ring is the permanent transit solution for Chelsea. I know folks want to try to shoehorn stuff that swings closer to downtown, but there just isn't space for any dedicated ROW or bus lanes. Only the usual slate of bus-friendlier streetscaping, signal priority, etc...basic Key Bus Route Improvements type frills that grease the skids a little bit on the existing routes. Even the SL-Chelsea proposal is little more than a rebranded version of a Crosstown bus.

If the goal is getting there fast, the Ring route gets you there fast and the plethora of local bus transfers take you the last half-mile to anywhere you need to go. That's how a real transit line is supposed to work. Boston's kind of gotten its head screwed on wrong in the MBTA era that the only transit worth having is the one that gets you a one-seat to downtown. That's not how this metro area organically works. It's square-to-square travel patterns intersecting the one-seat trunklines, with efficient transfers making it all work. So it really doesn't matter if Ring LRT or (ugh) BRT goes through industrial nothingness. If it hits the transfers super-efficiently and anywhere in Chelsea and Everett is accessible from a transfer stop in under 10 minutes via a well-coordinated bus schedule...it's infinitely more useful than trying to fight a losing cause on a killzone like 16 just because it looks on an overhead map like it's passing through more density.

[Commuting Boston Student]

Originally Posted by bigeman312

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d01984.pdf

Average cost per mile of LRT: $34.79m. Average cost per mile of busways: $13.49m.

You say "if the money's there" as if the money is equal, and wage some BS war against any bus investment. That's silly.

"Average" is the key word here. The average, in this case, is just the total cost per mile of all busways studied (and the inclusion of the Silver Line means at least 1/2 of one of the busways studied consists of paint on the street, most likely more) divided by the number of busways studied. The actual cost of anything is almost never even close to the "average" cost.

"But wait," you say! "Doesn't that mean that the actual cost could potentially be lower than $13.49m/mile? That's even better!" Well, yes, you're right, but that works both ways. The average cost per mile of LRT is also potentially much lower than $34.79mile, and the cost to operate is also often lower than the equivalent cost of operating buses, further offsetting the "larger" initial investment. The money is, ultimately, equal. It comes down to how many frills and payoffs you have to staple onto the project and how want to slice the investment up in the budget over X period of time.

Furthermore, I'll have you know that I am not waging war against bus investment - I, in fact, encouraged it in the very post you quoted. What I am waging war against is BRT, especially "True BRT," because "True BRT" is the kind of shit that gets CTFastrak and the Silver Line bought and paid for. We need less "True BRT." Full stop.

[Matthew]

So if you look at Appendix III and IV you can see the numbers they added up to get the capital cost comparison averages. It's not terribly impressive. They do separate BRT systems into different classes, at least: dedicated lanes, HOV lanes, and mixed traffic. But that's not enough.

For example, Pittsburgh's entire LRT subway is tossed into there. 25.2 miles at (US 2000) $30.95 million/mile. That includes a cut-and-cover mid-80s era subway which zigs and zags from one side of downtown Pittsburgh to the other and four large stations, and then a varied pair of tendrils which reach out into the southern suburbs along old streetcar routes and also some brand new dedicated ROW.

They compare it against things like the 1973 El Monte busway ($11 million/mile) or the 1977 Pittsburgh South busway ($14.73 million/mile). Both of those are fairly effective, but neither of them is a subway.

Side note, in another appendix they also mention the Hartford-New Britain Busway (CTFastTrak) which it projects to cost $100 million for 9 miles, and to be completed in 2003. Fun. It is now projected to cost $569 million for those 9 miles, and may open sometime next year. Sigh.

[BostonUrbEx]

What happened to the line which used to run from Middleboro to Myrics Junction (where the FR and NB branches split)? The current line from Middleboro to the FR/NB line meets the line halfway between Myrics and Taunton. The missing line would have made alot more sense for South Coast Rail had it apparently not been obliterated. It would have been a hell of alot cheaper, as well. But then Taunton is left cold.

[F-Line to Dudley]

Originally Posted by BostonUrbEx

What happened to the line which used to run from Middleboro to Myrics Junction (where the FR and NB branches split)? The current line from Middleboro to the FR/NB line meets the line halfway between Myrics and Taunton. The missing line would have made alot more sense for South Coast Rail had it apparently not been obliterated. It would have been a hell of alot cheaper, as well. But then Taunton is left cold.

That was part of the original FR mainline...then was busted down to the Lakeville Branch when the freight got re-routed over the straighter, much better grade-separated M'boro-Taunton jaunt. Been gone since the 30's. And not needed because the Middleboro Secondary is so very quick and straight.

The Old Colony had an utterly insane amount of route redundancy:



Greenbush wrapped around to Kingston. Randolph Branch hit Stoughton as an NEC alternative. Stoughton Branch had TWO forks in Taunton. TWO Fall River branches, one through Freetown one through Somerset. TWO Plymouth Line-to-OC main connections in W. Bridgewater and Bridgewater...plus a later Plymouth-Middleboro one. TWO Dorchester branches (today's Red Line) connecting in a loop through Milton. And yet...they left that half-mile gap in downtown Fall River preventing a direct to New Bedford, and didn't bridge between NB and Fairhaven preventing an E-W direct to the Cape.

Not a very well-run RR. It flopped and had to get absorbed by the NYNH&H because it oversaturated itself. And then ended up being the black sheep division of the NH while they spent 50 years trying to trim all that redundancy.

Unfortunately the more useful of these generally superfluous interconnections were all gone and chewed up decades before the state got its hands on the property to landbank anything. Just an oddball assortment of stub mileage is under any public control now...mostly just to string power lines. Nothing anywhere near complete enough to do anything with save for the Stoughton main. Couple of them like the Framingham Secondary-to-Taunton/NB mainline gap over a few city blocks of Mansfield and the Randolph Branch are probably ones they'd have liked to have back for keeping traffic off the NEC. But the Mansfield leg either requires a Hingham-like tunnel or a re-route hugging 140/495 and the airport to fill that frustratingly small gap. And the Randolph branch is simply gone in 2 crucial spots where housing got build on the ROW. Plus that extra Greenbush flank to Marshfield, Duxbury, and the Plymouth Line is so gone it's not even traceable on a map after crossing the marsh south of Greenbush.

At least all the Cape lines are all 100% intact and fully unencroached. Although Chatham Branch and the mainline to Orleans pre-date landbanking and would be brutally difficult to bring back as 'all-new' construction.