Crazy Highway Pitches

Sometimes I wonder if a highway busway or HOV conversion would satisfy some of the upper middle class northwestern burbs. I know that the folks further up Route 2 seem to constantly say they want highway "BRT".
The problem with highway-based BRT is that the ridership and usefulness will almost always be higher running on smaller roads through commercial centers. The MBTA's redesign isn't placing any bus routes on McGrath Highway, for instance.
 
The problem with highway-based BRT is that the ridership and usefulness will almost always be higher running on smaller roads through commercial centers. The MBTA's redesign isn't placing any bus routes on McGrath Highway, for instance.
Sure and for what it's worth any time I've heard politicians say that this would be a good corridor, I keep on wanting to give them a Fitchburg line timetable.

Highway brt works fairly ok in other regions where there's a decent network of park n rides, and the only significant park n rides are at commuter rail stations. Maybe it's calling out for GO transit like service with mixed coach bus and commuter rail service until we get the Rail vision.

I don't know if the electeds think the T will run a route 2 highway BRT. They seem to be leaning in on regional equity concerns rather than actual good service. That being said, re doing a highway to make space for highway BRT seems like the kind of thing that could get a project to happen.
 
How difficult would it be to deck over Rte 2? Even just with a park or, where the locals don't mind, some nice mixed used medium density development.

(in all fairness, my solution to all our highways is: deck them over or trench them, and then build enough that would make Robert Moses blush... but also underground)
 
How difficult would it be to deck over Rte 2? Even just with a park or, where the locals don't mind, some nice mixed used medium density development.

(in all fairness, my solution to all our highways is: deck them over or trench them, and then build enough that would make Robert Moses blush... but also underground)
Pretty damn impractical given that it's already elevated through East Arlington and Belmont, with the cut section in the middle occurring on a steep grade. And deck-over for what? It's all single-family residential on half-acre plots as far as the eye can see. Trying for "density" in the middle would be totally incongruent with the surroundings and a great big dud on the market.
 
A Alewife garage which has ample parking + easier access to Rte 2 towards/from I 95 (It can be difficult to get from the garage to Rte 2 W) would remove any need to extend Red line to I95 IMHO. Once you are in a car on I-95 around Rte 2, driving to Alewife is the fastest way to get there. That stretch of Rte 2 is no where near capacity. The only issues are that Alewife parking gets full, and it is difficult to get out of it in the evenings.
 
Thought exercise prompted by a walk near Alewife Brook: What would be necessary to normalize downgauging or deleting roads as a tool in the transportation toolbox?

In the US, adding lanes/roads/exits is considered normal and get boosted by various parties. However, removing infrastructure is nearly impossible, even if it is causing more problems than it’s solving.
 
Thought exercise prompted by a walk near Alewife Brook: What would be necessary to normalize downgauging or deleting roads as a tool in the transportation toolbox?

In the US, adding lanes/roads/exits is considered normal and get boosted by various parties. However, removing infrastructure is nearly impossible, even if it is causing more problems than it’s solving.
Outright deletion, at least on the scale l think you are referring to, is rare for multiple (and IMO legitimate) reasons, but at least in MA, it is not uncommon for projects to explicitly remove capacity. By far the biggest and best example is the Rt 79 project down in Fall River where DOT is removing 1.25 miles of a near-interstate standard, fully grade separated urban freeway to be replaced by a surface boulevard and developable land. I have *thoughts* about the execution, but undeniably, vehicular capacity and LOS in the commonwealth is already not the sacred cow it used to be.
 
Thought exercise prompted by a walk near Alewife Brook: What would be necessary to normalize downgauging or deleting roads as a tool in the transportation toolbox?

In the US, adding lanes/roads/exits is considered normal and get boosted by various parties. However, removing infrastructure is nearly impossible, even if it is causing more problems than it’s solving.
The road diet being proposed for Rutherford Avenue in Charlestown is an example of this. And it is really hard to make happen.
 
The road diet being proposed for Rutherford Avenue in Charlestown is an example of this. And it is really hard to make happen.
I was a road design engineer for decades, and I saw how deeply the car-centric culture is embedded in the US psyche. It's damn near politically impossible to remove overpasses and underpasses, reduce lanes, and convert an expressway into a "complete street" type boulevard. Look at how intractable it is to remove the decayed and intrusive Bowker Overpass in Boston, how many years have gone by to even get to a 20% design to "ground" the McGrath Highway overpass, how preserving the underpasses along Rutherford Ave seems to keep popping up as an option in the endless iterations of plans for the project, how much opposition there is to bike lanes and bus lanes on certain existing major streets, and how hard it is to eliminate any on-street parking along those streets.

Extracting the auto-centric virus from the project development process takes a huge dose of political courage and leadership, as well as amped-up and inclusive public education and involvement. I really, really hope that the latest plan to eliminate the underpasses at Sullivan Square and Austin Street are not wiped out in the next planning iteration for the ever-elusive Rutherford Ave project.
 
Thought exercise prompted by a walk near Alewife Brook: What would be necessary to normalize downgauging or deleting roads as a tool in the transportation toolbox?

In the US, adding lanes/roads/exits is considered normal and get boosted by various parties. However, removing infrastructure is nearly impossible, even if it is causing more problems than it’s solving.
Maybe this is at a smaller scale than you're thinking, but Cambridge is repurposing a lot of car space for other uses. Mostly this is taking away on-street parking to make way for bike lanes, but also cafe space, especially around Central Square. You can see this along Mass Ave, Hampshire, Garden, Mt. Auburn, etc., with more streets planned for this spring. It almost seems normalized at this point that Cambridge will take away a lane of parked cars to use for other purposes. This is increasingly true in other cities around here, too.

Maybe also fitting your question, you could throw in all the new-ish dedicated bus lanes. They take away car lanes. They're happening so slowly it's hard to say they're really "normalized," but the bus-only lanes are getting more common.

I agree with the other comments here, though. Car-culture is really entrenched. Changing that is difficult, especially when it comes to touching highways or arterials. But taking back street space from cars is proving to be possible.
 
Cambridge CSO work is probably the most visible example of the smaller scale approach. However the quick build nature of the program means that the lanes are still there, and some drivers willfully ignore the paint or flex posts.

Larger scale, I would like to see modeling of the transportation network and proper funding for optimization across all modes. (Cue the SimCity comparisons)
 
It's damn near politically impossible to remove overpasses and underpasses, reduce lanes, and convert an expressway into a "complete street" type boulevard.
110%, but it is now at least happening even if its at a rate well below where it should. 10 years ago l would have been laughed out of the room if l predicted DOT would wholesale remove an urban freeway without a building a functional replacement at least nearby. Progress is still way too slow (Rutherford Ave is probably the best poster child on that front), but l am optimistic because at least progress is happening and it is trending more and more in the right direction every day, even on major urban arterials.

Particularly in this overall climate of pessimism, it is important to acknowledge the positive change that has already occurred, if for no other reason to have the courage to advocate for the 90% of the work that still remains.
Vehicular capacity still unfortunately reigns as king, but if nothing else, at least it is no longer the sole design criterion as it was not so long ago.
 
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Maybe this is at a smaller scale than you're thinking, but Cambridge is repurposing a lot of car space for other uses. Mostly this is taking away on-street parking to make way for bike lanes, but also cafe space, especially around Central Square. You can see this along Mass Ave, Hampshire, Garden, Mt. Auburn, etc., with more streets planned for this spring. It almost seems normalized at this point that Cambridge will take away a lane of parked cars to use for other purposes. This is increasingly true in other cities around here, too.

Maybe also fitting your question, you could throw in all the new-ish dedicated bus lanes. They take away car lanes. They're happening so slowly it's hard to say they're really "normalized," but the bus-only lanes are getting more common.

I agree with the other comments here, though. Car-culture is really entrenched. Changing that is difficult, especially when it comes to touching highways or arterials. But taking back street space from cars is proving to be possible.
Cambridge seems a bit more advanced than Boston in eliminating on-street parking for bike and/or bus lanes. Gotta brag a bit on my hometown!
 
Storrow and Soldiers Field Rd are the two that would be interesting to game out, especially in the context of the I-90 throat. Having the conversation include options that remove raw capacity, but work better in the context of the whole might lead to better options.

Does the FHWA even permit contemplation of dropping lanes in an Interstate project that gets federal funds?
 
Storrow and Soldiers Field Rd are the two that would be interesting to game out, especially in the context of the I-90 throat. Having the conversation include options that remove raw capacity, but work better in the context of the whole might lead to better options.

Does the FHWA even permit contemplation of dropping lanes in an Interstate project that gets federal funds?
Narrowing SFR to one lane each way won't buy much narrowing, as you'd still need a breakdown lane in addition to the one travel lane to get around disabled vehicles, adding up to pretty much the same width as two travel lanes. So, the only opportunity for narrowing the roadway footprint in the Throat area is to reduce the Mass Pike from 4 lanes to 3 lanes each way, but MassDOT seems to be against doing this.
 
Crazy highway pitches territory.

IMG_9193.jpeg


Remove magazine beach
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And stick it on the other side of the river.
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With beacon yards theres a huge amount of land available and probably enough room to put a few streets down and block the highway with new buildings. If you built up the area in green high enough the highway/storrow/gj would be in a trench that could be capped in the future and have cross streets connecting it to bu/allston.
IMG_0116.jpeg
 
Crazy highway pitches territory.

View attachment 48978

Remove magazine beach
View attachment 48979

And stick it on the other side of the river.
View attachment 48981

With beacon yards theres a huge amount of land available and probably enough room to put a few streets down and block the highway with new buildings. If you built up the area in green high enough the highway/storrow/gj would be in a trench that could be capped in the future and have cross streets connecting it to bu/allston.
View attachment 48982
Now THIS is the quality content that I come here for.
 
Crazy highway pitches territory.

View attachment 48978

Remove magazine beach
View attachment 48979

And stick it on the other side of the river.
View attachment 48981

With beacon yards theres a huge amount of land available and probably enough room to put a few streets down and block the highway with new buildings. If you built up the area in green high enough the highway/storrow/gj would be in a trench that could be capped in the future and have cross streets connecting it to bu/allston.
View attachment 48982
Filling in the throat shoreline just a few feet is a major lift (per the current preferred Mass Pike/SFR alternative) so I don't see how extensive filling there would ever be allowed politically. Certain powerful groups in Cambridge would be very unhappy with this. Even back in the early 1960s, filling in the Charles River enough to allow the Mass Pike to be built on the surface - instead of on the viaduct - was scuttled by Cambridge. I was there and remember it. And more recently the surface option for the Mass Pike through the throat area had to be cinched up as tight as possible to keep filling in the River to an absolute minimum.
 
This is more of a 'crazy arterial' pitch rather than a crazy highway pitch. Could we just ban left turns along most of Mass Ave? I was thinking about my last visit to Europe and I recalled seeing a lot of intersections where the signals are simple because they don't allow left turns and require you to make "semi direct" (right before, then left, and left) or "indirect" turns (multiple rights) to make the desired left turn. A lot of Mass Ave seems like a place to try this -- they already do a lot of this in Cambridge around Central Square and MIT. In Boston, at least Back Bay and South End seem like places that should be trying this and even between Porter and Arlington in Cambridge.
 
This is more of a 'crazy arterial' pitch rather than a crazy highway pitch. Could we just ban left turns along most of Mass Ave? I was thinking about my last visit to Europe and I recalled seeing a lot of intersections where the signals are simple because they don't allow left turns and require you to make "semi direct" (right before, then left, and left) or "indirect" turns (multiple rights) to make the desired left turn. A lot of Mass Ave seems like a place to try this -- they already do a lot of this in Cambridge around Central Square and MIT. In Boston, at least Back Bay and South End seem like places that should be trying this and even between Porter and Arlington in Cambridge.
I imagine that restricting lefts on the parts of Comm, Beacon, and Huntington with trolley reservations could speed up the B, C and E lines, respectively.
 

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