About fifteen years or so ago the voters of Berkley California shot down a local funding increase to add another lane to the Bay State Freeway and put the monies towards rapid transit improvements. In Santa Cruz California the voters rejected funding to increase Highway One to 3 lanes in favor of Bike lanes on the rural supporting roads. More recently and to the point some waterfront town (can’t remember the city but think it was Seattle, it was a News Hour piece recently) is removing their Bay Shore artery rather than replacing it (as it is the cheaper solution) in favor of creation of a down town esplanade type drive
The question I ask in light of Global Warming and decaying pubic infrastructure for roads is when do we stop making care of Car habitat the goal? That 200 mil to replace the Storrow Drive tunnel could go along way towards helping to fund many transit projects like the double track of the MBTA Fitchburg rail line from Ayer to Acton (only a projected 60 mil to do) would allow more express trains and more service out to that part of the state as many commuters drive down route 2 and then use Storrow drive to get to work due to the lack of transit service.
Instead of jumping on the Casino band wagon as the panacea for solving all our ills how about reordering our thinking.
You do know that there is a huge T(Alewife) station at the terminus of the superhighway portion of route 2 right. Just asking.
Also exactly how do you propose that residents of South Boston and East Boston, and the North End get to the Back Bay? I suppose they can use the U turn on the Pike right, oh wait that's only for Taxis.
Your pie in the sky hope is going nowhere.
Unless one person per car is that important for inner city transport. Also try and get a parking space at Alewife after 9:00 am.
…this proposal is absolutely beyond the absurd. Storrow drive is a major artery into Boston, much as Memorial Drive is into Cambridge.
But you know when it all shook out it worked in these places. Once again if we are serious about Global Warming reduction then it needs to be more than changing a light bulb or recycled plastic bottles to make the runway carpet at the Emmys and car habitat is the major problem. Also the reason we in the rest of the state are dealing with crumbling road infrastructure is the billions spent on one of the other major arteries in and out of Boston, the Big Dig.
…if Storrow Drive is going to be shut down, what are you going to replace it with in the meantime? Bicycles?
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I have not been totally forthcoming regarding the MunicH S-Bahn. The S-Bahn Netz was largely along old federal rail lines (although, not exactly), which actually made it fairly easy for them to integrate the lines into the S-Bahn network. They are extending the network, also along the old federal rail lines. That isn’t the case with the U-Bahn (subway) lines, though; those were mostly recent)
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Of course, Boston has no similar rail lines.
It is a Clichéd comment but “if you build it, they will come” in terms of endlessly keeping it easy to be addicted to cars then your right. I don't get it and I hope I never will.
…One, there is no likelihood of expanded public transportation in the Boston area, and that is a fact that I have been beating on here at BMG for months. For gawd’s sake, they can’t even agree on an extension of the Green Line to Somerville, much less a decent–what they jokingly refer to as–“commuter rail” service.
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I have over the last few months touted the Munich public transit system, but primarily for the reason that it is a different mode of solution to a difficult problem. I’m sure that I have turned some people off here by consistently referencing the Munich system, but that is the system that I know best and, if others are not informed about other solutions, they will not be able to fabricate other ideas for Boston’s really rather severe transit problem.
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Two. Car-pooling. That’s fine for when people work in shifts (although not exactly). I’ll give you a little story. Consider two persons who car-pool, Person X and Person Y, both salaried (no overtime) and who car-pool. Person X finishes his 8-hour day and is ready to go home. Person Y has a lot of extra work to do and has to stay for–what? another two hours? So does Person X. And that is why people don’t want to car-pool.
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I wrote “although not exactly” because more than a few companies require their hourly employees to clock out and continue working off the time clock. (My spouse was subjected to that by McDonalds in the 1970s) It’s illegal of course, but you don’t really believe that the wage&hour division in any level of government is going to enforce the law, do you?
What exactly are you complaining about regarding the commuter rail?
What exactly are you complaining about regarding the commuter rail?
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The schedule. It is virtually worthless.
Are you just complaining that there aren’t enough trains on the Natick line? Do you have evidence that there is sufficient demand to warrant more frequent trains? I find that there are very few people on the non-rush-hour trains on the Needham line and there are also correspondingly few people on the buses at the same times. I would love for there to be more trains, but there has to be a demand to justify it.
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There are an awful lot of people who commute to Boston every day via commuter rail so I would think that calling it “virtually worthless” is more than a little bit of an exaggeration. Perhaps it is “worthless” to you, but why should anyone else care?
…I have been going over this issue over and over again, comparing and contrasting the Boston metro version of commuter rail with the Munich version of extended rail service, and I’m simply not going to do it yet again.
If you aren’t willing to back up your comments by at least linking to whatever old comments you are referring to, then don’t expect anyone to take your opinion seriously when you make blanket comments stating that public transportation in Boston is “worthless” or “virtually non-existent”.
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You don’t appear to have any diaries on the subject and I don’t have time to go through all of your comments to figure what you are talking about.
…to comment on or how to comment. I have been going over this very issue for a number of months, and I am not going to again formulate a response just for you. I told you in short order what the problem was with Boston’s laughable public transit system called commuter rail–the scheduling.
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If you aren’t interested in following up by investigating my previous comments, it really is no skin off my nose. I do not save everything on the three computers that I use.
What specifically is wrong with the schedule? Is it the frequency or just that it does not run at some particular time you are interested in?
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Unfortunately, this site’s primitive search interface does not make it feasible to search your comments for this topic so without some references don’t expect too many people to grovel through the many hundreds of comments you have made.
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I remember a comment in which you complained that you cannot walk to the train from your house in Wellesley and that you have to pay to park near the station. I also remember you saying how much you like the system in Munich.
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Now I don’t doubt that Munich has a nice system. But is it really the case that every house within a 15-mile radius of downtown Munich is within walking distance of a subway or train line? Do trains run frequently there on off hours?
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Anyway, it seems that writing off an entire transportation system as “worthless” because it is not convenient for you personally is not a meaningful commentary.
…that is what I had done to your previous complaint. I have been comparing and contrasting the Boston system and the Munich system here for months. If you have not been paying attention, that is not my fault, and I’m not going to reproduce the work for you. It’s all on the web site here.
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Verstehest du?
To be dismissed at whim? I think not.
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And are all my questions actually answered by your previous posts. I think not.
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You certainly don’t have to answer me, but if you want the last word, you are going to have to do better than that. I find it kind of amusing that you are so obsessed with getting the last word in that you are willing to spend time posting non-answers to questions that you could easily have answered in a fraction of the time. Amazing.
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I have read several of your comments comparing Munich and Boston, but I don’t know if I have seen all of them. However, most of them seemed to be more about your personal experience than a genuine comparison of the general aspects of the two systems.
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You made one comment implying that one of the reasons that Munich’s system is better is because they were able to start from scratch after the city was mostly destroyed in WWII. That’s a fair point, especially with regard to Boston’s oldest-in-the-country subway system, but doesn’t seem at all relevant when talking about the frequency of train schedules, and the (in)convenience of the train station to your house, which appears to be your main issues.
You simply have not thought this through. Where is the traffic going to go? Have you seen what happens to downtown traffic when Storrow is closed? It is not pretty. And please don’t tell me that everyone is going to switch to riding their bikes and taking the T.
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The Alaskan Way Viaduct project in Seattle you appear to be referring to does not eliminate the road. The voters there rejected a Big Dig style tunnel project and an all-elevated plan as well. They are now working on a compromise solution, but the road is not going away.
If people are stuck in traffic gridlock due to the closure of Storrow Drive, then they won’t have any time to go fritter away their money at the new casinos. 🙂
“is removing their Bay Shore artery rather than replacing it (as it is the cheaper solution) in favor of creation of a down town esplanade type drive”
So in Seattle they are getting rid of the super highway and changing to a much more user friendly road (as I recall the master planning) but the important thing I recall from the news hour report (and the other examples) was when left to the voter they were wiling to sacrifice the super highway artery improvements in favor of the monies going to rapid transit and lower impact roadways. Please tell me if you really enjoy the NASCAR training ground that Storrow drive has become ( due to over use of cars with one person in them) as opposed to a more esplanade type boulevard ( slower and less traffic or perhaps bus and taxis and even bicycles only) alternative with improvements to Transit oriented development elsewhere.
the AK Way Viaduct is in no was a “super highway”. It is a major artery, yes, but not a super highway. You do your argument no favors by exaggerating.
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To understand the result of the recent viaduct vote, you need to understand that people were generally ticked off because the various proposals were being backed by specific pols and the ballot was not well thought out. So the results have generally been interpreted as a protest vote against the ballot itself. And holding the vote at that time was itself seen as a power play by certain office holders. Also, the mayor’s proposal was apparently written by a shady used car salesman; it would have saddled the taxpayers with any and all “unexpected” overruns the construction company faced. DOn’t we already have an Iraq war to fill that niche?
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The viaduct and it’s replacement is a very complex issue. It really can’t be distilled down to a “they rejected the superhighway” type statement.
… issue is still when do we see an end to endless car habitat up grades, Especially the most expensive kind. The Storrow tunnel repair would fix around 200 rural bridges judging by the cost of the Taylor Road bridge rebuild out on route 2 past 495 (that those of us who drove under it watched as year after year the concrete kept peeling away as the big dig kept digging further into our pockets).
As I recall the News hour reports interest in the Seattle started out as the out of control cost of improving inner city infrastructure failings using the big dig debacle (speaking of engineering gone bad with the leeks) and moved to the Seattle debate which had the unique component of strong indication that the citizens willingness to forgo the “Highway” in favor of doing something about what an aesthetic and noisy eyesore having all that traffic through their down town is.
It looks as though interested politicians (who influenced the lousy election language in Seattle) had an agenda that that the voters did not buy into.
Seattle is indeed facing a major problem with the decrepit eyesore & earsore known as the ALaska Way Viaduct, which is expected to fall during the next earthquake. However, absolutely no decision has been made to remove it. Rather, all options are still on the table:
…the bridge that was built in the American Northwest in the late 1940s-early 1950s, that, because of the lousy engineering (not construction–engineering) collapsed because the engineers failed to take into account harmonic effects due to wind patterns?
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It was literally amazing to watch the film. When I first saw it, I would never have believed that a concrete structure could be swayed like that.
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I have seen the film of that many times, but I do not recall the name of the bridge or where it was located. Do you?
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This is partially off-topic, of course.
I think that is what you mean. Sometimes it’s called “Galloping Gertie”. Here’s a video.
As it explains the proposals the voters rejected in Seattlehttp://www.wsdot.wa….
From Wickepedia
http://en.wikipedia….
Good over view of the whole issue but this quote is of particular interest to my overall point
Remove the viaduct
This option is strongly backed by King County Executive Ron Sims, and by the People's Waterfront Coalition. This option was not on the March 13th ballot, but a rejection of the other two proposals could have indicated support for this alternative. Given our experience with the big Dig I think we know what will happen to the cost estimates given if the tunnel or elevated proposal proceeds and as I recall the point of the News Hour report was people in Seattle did not just buy into the “replace it” scenario as noted above which is why it is being studied due to strong opinions about the reality of what they would have to pay and a willing ness to just make it go away to improve quality of life.
I agree with you there that the ballot outcome could line up with an endorsement for a Simms-type proposal. The problem is taht the ballot was not designed to provide such basic and useful information. Therefore, we just don’t know. Very sad to waste so much money on a ballot that provides nothing useful!
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If you want to get into the meat of the matter, I suggest you do a search for related articles in the Seattle papers. The dailies are Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer. There are also weeklys that may have interesting takes: The Stranger and Seattle Weekly.
Okay, a few things:
1. Alewife is full by 8 am, latest. Not 9 am as stated.2. The 103,000 autos that use Storrow daily carry who knows how many people. There needs to be some way for them to get to/from their destinations while work is being done. Clearly Alewife will not suffice (see #1 above.)3. I agree with the overall sentiment that we need to focus more on transit than roads, but we cannot allow existing infrastructure, whether road, bridge or rail, to fall into disrepair as we currently have.
Perhaps the state should consider implementing emergency alternative transit opportunities (increased buses, Alewife satellite lots, increased busing to Alewife and other stations, increased Red Line schedule to carry more passengers, build double-track so people from west can take red line from Porter Sq., etc.) BEFORE doing the Storrow work? If that funcitons at all like other “emergency” situations in this state (tolls on Pike, etc.) they will never go away.
Transit folks (like me) get what we want and we do all we can to reduce gridlock during construction.