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The most dramatic rendering of a garage you'll ever see
By adamg on Sun, 09/12/2010 - 9:12pm
The MBTA forwards this rendering of the planned new garage at Wonderland on the Blue Line. At night. Under a full moon. With Saturn rising.
Federal, state, and local officials gather at the current Wonderland station at 9:30 a.m. on Monday to formally break ground on a new seven-story, 1,465-car parking garage that will become part of a new mixed-use development planned for the area around the station.
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Comments
I dont think the MBTA
I dont think the MBTA understands transit oriented development.
Putting a few buildings around a station is TOD.
Putting a few buildings around a garage that happens to be near a station, is not.
I'm all for termini having large garages, but wonderland shouldnt be the terminus.
I absolutely agree. Truth be
I absolutely agree. Truth be told, I don't think the whole state and most other people at MassDOT don't understand TOD and its benefits to the local and state economies and the neighbourhood. At the same time, these projects usually make their way under the radar or don't seem to require public feedback.
This particular project will just make the local area more miserable. My first trip to Wonderland just to see what was out there was a huge disappointment...it's all auto-centric, super-depressing suburbia that will just be exacerbated by the introduction of more auto-centric infrastructure. Rich Davey himself knows this, but he's wedged between a bunch of people looking to increase ridership for the T and people stuck in their ways with the same transportation funding model that's been used for the past 50 years.
The additional stop scheduled to be built at Assembly Square in Somerville on the Orange Line is going to be even more of a boondoggle. It's going to be a small cluster of a community touted as TOD, surrounded by auto-centric commercial development and hemmed in by wide boulevards...whenever it's finally built...
It's ironic, as so much of
It's ironic, as so much of the older developed areas in and around Boston are perfect examples of TOD. Of course, back then the term was "street car suburbs," but most of the examples of good pedestrian/transit neighborhoods around here were driven by the same idea now being embraced in word but not deed. We have some of the best TOD in the country, but it was built 100 years ago.
Exactly
We now have a bus that runs very limited hours where a streetcar used to run.
There are also very few buses down The Fellsway in Medford, which now has a ginormous grassy median with few cut throughs where the streetcars used to run. Meanwhile, there is very densly populated neighborhood along this route and just up the hill that cannot be served by anything but a short bus and then only sporadically.
There are arguments that can
There are arguments that can be made pro and con for bustitution, but that wasn't really my point. There was a time when transit stations drove development, but now the expectation is that they drive traffic. Hence the idea that a transit station in an undeveloped area needs a parking garage, rather than a local population base.
Garage is just the start
The $47-millon project is supposed to bolster Revere's Waterfront Square Development, "a smart-growth, transit-oriented development."
The garage is going to
The garage is going to replace the large amounts of surface parking, and allow those surface parking lots to be built on. I don't think there is going to be an actual increase in commuter parking, especially if the commuter lot at the (now former) dog track is included in the counts of existing parking spaces.
1980 Thinking
Yep - the idea is that people drive to the station. Once people are in their cars within ten miles of Boston City Hall, however, they often stay in them. What we need is much more intensive transit into the areas where people actually live, and efficiently connecting people to places where people actually work. Building more outlying garages to bring outer-ring suburbanites into the downtown area doesn't cut it.
snore
snore
Alice is so totally fake
A real girl from Revere has her frizzy hair held up with banana clips. That Alice actor is totally fake.
Instead of a megaproject,
Instead of a megaproject, they should plot a closely-spaced street grid and small, separate building lots, and sell them individually. They should be zoned to allow small apartment buildings, with retail on the first floor on wider streets and at corners.
That's how functioning walkable neighborhoods get built. Allowing one developer to build a megaproject is how we get places like Kendall Square and Alewife.
I agree, but this idea
I agree, but this idea requires a leap of faith by our political establishment, one they are likely unable/willing to make. It relies on the if you build it they will come principle, and a typical politician will say, "when I spend the tax payers money on roads that then never have anything built alongside, I'm out of a job. The safe bet that gets me votes is a big building I can point to, never mind whether it is occupied."
Working the Wonderland corner
Frankly, I can't imagine anyone choosing to live in that benighted corner of Revere. The "mall" across the street is isolated and sterile; the southbound 1A approach to Bell Circle is all dilapidated buildings with weird driveways and parking lots.
You'd be disdained by the rest of the town as living at the bottom of the barnyard. If you lived here, you'd be a Wonderland Girl.