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Forest Hills lot closes forever in a month; commuters told to drive to Fenway to park
By adamg on Mon, 12/25/2017 - 9:48pm
The sign went up last week: The large parking lot across from the Forest Hills T stop closes for good on Jan. 24 as workers begin preparing the site for construction of a 250-unit apartment complex.
In small print at the bottom of the sign, motorists are told they can find alternate parking at a parking lot and a garage - all the way in the Fenway.
Parts of the lot will be shut even before Jan. 24 - drivers are also being told to get to the lot no later than 7:30 a.m. to get a space.
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Comments
This is going to suck for so many people
I started taking the bus to and from the station when I heard the lot closing was inevitable. My experience with the morning buses (#31) has been fine BUT the afternoon/evening buses are terribly unreliable. I really feel bad for folks doing childcare drop off and pick up.
Not necessarily
That many fewer cars driving into Forest Hills (provided these people use public transportation or something other than single occupancy cars) should actually ease traffic and improve the trip for everyone else.
Why?
A couple hundred solo commuters != "so many people"
I started taking the bus to
So you were incentivized to use public transit to reach a public transit station - exactly what should be happening.
The sky will not fall and no one will notice this parking lot is gone.
And like so many transit
And like so many transit advocates, you had to leave out this part in order to make it sound like an improvement:
Maybe before trying to
incentivizeforce people to use transit, you should focus on trying to make it usable. But forcing people to stop doing something you don't want is so much easier than encouraging them to do something you do want, isn't it?No one is forcing anyone to
No one is forcing anyone to do anything. Slow down there. If you want to sit in traffic or circle endlessly for parking, no one is stopping you. Have a drink. Happy New Year.
the dedicated bus lane will
the dedicated bus lane will fix that . They should have one on Washington and Hyde Park Ave
Won't help stonian
As his (or her) bus doesn't go on Washington Street and barely goes on Hyde Park Avenue.
Now if they can only do something about the traffic on Morton Street, there may be hope yet.
Do you mean the 21?
The 31 will be vastly improved by the short part of its route on Hyde Park
Ave.
The 21 and 31 have the same route on Hyde Park Ave
Although, the more I think about, I believe that Hyde Park Ave technically becomes Washington Street before the exit of the busway. Either way, I think you're confusing the 31 with the 32, which traverses almost all of Hyde Park Avenue.
sorry
for some reason I though that the 31 came to forests hills via Walk Hill Ave.
And you know
It would be a great route if it did. I griped a year or so ago about how the proposed development at Walk Hill and American Legion was not in a transit friendly location. Running the 31 up that way would take care of that.
Limits on grade
MBTA buses cannot go up steep inclines. In Medford, they use a special smaller bus that is chartered by the MBTA to run a route into North Medford.
I've biked up Walk Hill and remember that at least part of it is quite steep in the same way that Fulton in North Medford is steep. That may be the reason that there are no buses on it.
Bah
It’s no steeper than Metropolitan Ave or Cummins Highway, yet buses ply those routes, at least when there’s no snow or ice.
When the ice is down, take a run
Walk Hill is considerably steeper than Cummins or Metropolitan.
Where?
Where?
I’ve done Hyde Park to American Legion on foot
And driven the rest of the way. It’s not that bad. Perhaps buses would need a snow route, but in June it wouldn’t be tough. It might be too narrow, but not too steep.
I would love that
but, I think the beginning of Walk Hill is too tight for a regular bus route. And that hill is pretty steep.
Which beginning?
It doesn't seem too narrow to me.
The area by the BTU school
is a very narrow space for a bus or possibly two buses passing each other.
What should happen is the
What should happen is the buses should run on their posted schedules. And because that never happens people drive and park so they are not forced to rely on a unreliable public transportation.
The sky will not fall for me because I have the flexibility to stand at FH for 25-40 minutes, waiting for a bus that is supposed to run every 6 minutes. But for folks with smaller windows of time for travel, this is a real problem.
Chicken meet egg
More people drive, buses get delayed, more people drive, buses get more delayed.
Some of us choose to opt out entirely - and stop making more traffic.
Does this mean there is now
Does this mean there is now no parking lot at all at Forest Hills?
There's still the smaller lot right at the station
Which will get a bit bigger if they ever finish the upper-busway project.
Not for anyone who arrives after 6:45 AM
The smaller lot is only an option if you get there by the crack of dawn.
Yes
And?
This is different from Wellington and Alewife ... how?
Alewife doesn't fill up at 6
Alewife doesn't fill up at 6:45 am. Most days it doesn't fill up at all.
Alewife is fine to 8:30 to 9am
Wellington can fill at 7:30 to 8:00 am ... maybe later now that the Partners garage is open in Assembly.
Alewife absolutely fills up - sometimes as early as 8:30. Not at 6:45 if the Commuter Rail is running properly. I asked a former coworker who usually parks there so that I would know what my time limits were.
I got to Alewife at 7:15 one morning last week and I got parking on the third level. Made it very easy to blow out of work a couple hours early and launch toward Amherst in the mid afternoon.
Another reason why the bus
Another reason why the bus lane to forest hills needs to be permanent. People > parking
Who do you think is parking -
Who do you think is parking - dogs?
Yes, dogs.
A handful of dogs. A very small number of dogs compared to the number of dogs who could get to the transit station on dog buses.
Available parking in Fenway?
Ignoring the potential mess IF all these folks did start driving all the way down there, I’m not sure what these sadits are talking about, because no combination of parking lots in Fenway could accommodate that lot’s worth of cars. Sucks big time for all these commuters.
Look at all the unused
Look at all the unused parking spaces in the bus lot next door.
Private Lot
That's why they recommend their own lots - this is a private business advertising.
This is not an MBTA lot.
They may also have grabbed a MSWord file with a similar announcement and altered it, but didn't change the "nearby lots" to actual nearby lots.