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East Boston tunnel traffic growing faster than state thought
By adamg on Fri, 03/01/2019 - 9:02am
The East Boston Times-Free Press reports on the most recent community meeting about the traffic that has consumed the neighborhood for the past two years. MassDOT said, oh, yeah, you're right, there is a lot of traffic! The neighborhood's state legislators said they're introducing bills to try congestion pricing for the tunnel - it would cost more to cross under the harbor at rush hour - and to levy a fee on Uber and Lyft cars leaving Logan without a passenger.
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Comments
Condos
Does it have anything to do with all the new buildings being put up in Eastie? I think so...
The problem with developing for density is that we need to develop transportation infrastructure for that density at the same time.
I bet not
I would think those people are boosting the Blue line ridership.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/11/28/mbta-subway-ridership-dropp...
"The Blue Line has bucked the trend with a rush-hour ridership spike of about 18 percent since 2014, officials said this week. Even off-peak ridership, where the T has seen most of its losses, is up by more than 10 percent on the Blue Line."
Tunnel is full of people from points farther north like Lynn, Charlie Baker's quaint seaside village, etc...
Governor Baker’s appointee to
Governor Baker’s appointee to MassDOT and the engineers that they have hired are the fuck up’s to blame.. uber and Lyft are not causing this traffic.
Uber and Lyft don't cause traffic? How does that work?
Traffic all around town is jammed with limitless gypsy cabs endlessly circling the block, trying to make a $1.25 before expenses. Do you drive for one of them or do you just think they are wicked cool?
Everyone knows traffic was
Everyone knows traffic was never at a stand still before the toll booths went down at the mouth of the sumner tunnel .
( that was 2 years ago)
Governor Baker decides to save money by eliminating toll takers (because they make $30 an hour )and taking the toll booths down and be replaced by an electronic automated toll system ( well 2 years have gone by , how much money is the state saving now, or wasting I might add)
Agreed and this is also the
Agreed and this is also the general Consensus around Eastie
The tunnel is full of ride share cars
I'm not out that way during rush hour too much, but last fall I took a cab home from the airport at 4 in the afternoon. The Ted Williams Tunnel was packed, so we took the Sumner. The cab driver noted that Uber and Lyft drivers were pushing the traffic. Since the number of cabs is capped, I saw the point. I mean, who is commuting in to Boston in the afternoon.
The state has tried to help out with bus service from the airport galore, and the new(-ish) parking garage at Wonderland is probably encouraging Route 1A drivers to take those last few miles on the subway. It has to be ride share vehicles.
bus service galore
yeah, ass-to-ass packed buses that crawl through street traffic in the seaport instead of taking a 30 second ramp turn, that you can't even count on getting onto because the whole line is overburdened, that won't get you to the airport in time for the first two flights out, with poor setup for any luggage more cumbersome than a backpack and a briefcase, is "service galore"
Buses done in by tunnel traffic, yes
But specifically, I was talking about these Massport buses.
If it weren't for the TWT backups, Logan to Back Bay would be a quick trip on the bus. But yes, in addition to the buses to and from the Back Bay, Braintree, Framingham, Woburn, and Peabody, the MBTA also has a bus that goes from South Station to the airport. Private buses also give the option of one seat Logan service, to boot.
Blame the State Police
for the SL1 (and SL3) not being allowed to use the Silver Line Way on-ramp for the Silver Line.
Free the Ramp!
In addition to the State
In addition to the State Police making the Silver Line worse (not that it would be that good to begin with), I also blame Massport for royally screwing up the Blue Line shuttle. The new stop at the Rental Car Center is a major waste of time for transit riders, especially since the bus lays over at the Blue Line and *again* at the RCC even after people are done boarding.
They really need to run separate routes.
here's a thought
... It's both.
It probably has to do with
It probably has to do with more Uber and Lyft drivers waiting to catch a fare at Logan. The city has been inundated with Uber/Lyft drivers, many of them from out of state. The South Bay parking lot is full of them waiting for ride requests and thousands more roam the streets waiting. On my street there are at least 2-3 Uber pick ups every morning taking neighbors to work at the same time when I head out. The city really should've focused on the ride share problem before trying to tackle Airbnb. (I'd say 95% of all condo rules already limit short term rentals, so condo owners could simply enforce their own rules and solve a good portion of it.)
Rideshare from out of state
Require a Massachusetts professional limo license for all drivers.
Gets rid of that nonsense.
I wish I could blue shell all the out of state idiots parked in bike lanes to pick up their fares, or the twits who try to force their cars through swarms of pedestrians because they don't want to stop at red lights. Bunch of morons who should not be in the city at all.
That & Poor MassDOT Leadership
Baker should show Pollack the door. Too many screw ups.
It absolutely does. It’s
It absolutely does. It’s horrible. I am 46 and have lived here my whole life and I have never seen anything like the past year or two in all the time I have lived here. Bad choices they have made for this city!
Well golly gee I can't imagine how that happened
This isn't even a rounding error or a minor difference, 45 percent more than they predicted.
But isn't this the same state agency that doesn't believe we should build West Station ASAP, despite the numbers showing greater demand than anticipated for the Boston Landing station? Or the same agency thats taken over 2 years to build protected bike lanes on Comm Ave.?
Do nothing, attack the straw man
It is easier to blame ride-sharing than to provide the appropriate level of mass transit to a city of this size. Example: 175,000 City of Boston residents in Hyde Park, Mattapan, Dorchester, and Roxbury are under served by neglect and because of capacity issues at South Station
WAY more than that
120k Dorchester
50k. Roxbury
30k. Mattapan
35k. Hyde Park
More like 235k people.
Yes
The areas not served by the Red or Orange Line
Public Transportation
As others have said, the Blue Line has seen growth and they've added more services via the busses. They can still do better but at least the demand is concentrated at Logan as opposed to all over the city as in the outer neighborhoods.
Rideshare companies have greatly increased traffic in almost all cities. Lots of evidence to back this up. Ride share has made it cheaper to get a lift but the tradeoff is higher traffic and more poorly trained drivers in areas they don't know well. There's got to be a compromise.
They should impose a $2-4 per trip fee on any Uber/Lyft trips and give the money to the T to lower fares.
I lived there for 8 years
It is absolutely RICH those responsible for creating the traffic delays in the first place would now benefit monetarily from it.
When I first moved there in 2010, the toll booth was annoying but residents went to the far right to go through the EZPass lane and got into the tunnel quickly. As someone who worked multiple jobs to afford to live in Eastie I used the tunnel daily and there were not any transportation issues or delays other than normal rush hour. After the toll booths were removed, the engineers responsible for updating the traffic pattern put in multiple stoplights and lane shifts and closures to the point that it could take up to 30 minutes to get from Jeffries Point to the physical entrance of the tunnel, a distance of .5 miles.
And FWIW, cab drivers force Eastie residents to illegally pay the tolls or often times would refuse to even drive into Eastie. Lyft and Uber were reliable forms of transportation especially when the T was down or closed.
How quickly we forget. The
How quickly we forget. The article didn't say a single thing about the massive new traffic jam caused by the removal of the toll booth and the resulting lane restriping: https://www.universalhub.com/2018/neighborhood-gridlock-sumner-tunnel-ch...
The toll booth used to meter the traffic, and allowed a smooth zipper merge from the local entrance. The metering effect went away when they went cashless, so they had to give a dedicated lane to the local entrance. This screwed things up for 1A traffic, which people tried to bypass using local streets. So they took away the dedicated lane, which caused a massive jam on local streets. They went back and forth a few times reconfiguring it, but still haven't solved the problem.
Yep
Exactly!
Taxes and fees
Raise taxes and fees! What a great idea! Don't deal with the real causes, just make life more expensive and miserable for customers, drivers and passengers. The T is atrocious, don't fix that. The city and state are issuing building permits to create apartments as fast as possible but don't address the infrastructure. Just raise taxes and fees.
So your solution
stop building. Let's pretend no more units are built in East Boston starting tomorrow.
Traffic all set on Monday or not so much.
How about we figure out how to grow the city instead of sitting on our hands sulking?
The public transportation system around here is quite antiquated
and seriously in need of a huge, systemic overhaul, in order to keep up with other development. Otherwise, what good is additional development when our present public transportation fails to keep up with it?
"Levy a fee on Uber/Lyft"
Or...and it's a good one...you could require that they get a medallion to be a taxi. You know, like the law says.
Uber and Lyft are car
Uber and Lyft are car services, since you "call" them rather than flag them down on the street. They should have to get whatever licenses and insurance a car service has.
Maybe additional driver skill/knowledge testing, background checks, or a limit on numbers for all car services would be a good idea, but that would require a state law change.
Technicality
On-demand car service....is a taxi. Just because your arm is digital and a mile long in order to flag down the cab by app instead of waving on the curb is a meaningless difference. Car services don't send out excess drivers hoping to get a phone call for an immediate appointment.
Low tolls
There's a lot of room for tolls to go up. Boston tunnels are $1.50. People in the right zipcodes pay only 20 cents. Meanwhile, the one-way tunnel toll between NYC and NJ is $15.00.
So then only wealthy folks
So then only wealthy folks can drive into the city or ?
"wealthy" as a perjorative
There are people living along i-495 who are not wealthy, and pay $2.45 toll to drive into the city on i-90, which doesn't include any expensive undersea tunnels.
Okay
So do they have to pay a substantial toll to get their voter registration sorted out or do other in person business with their own city?
Logan's growth
Has Logan had more growth in terms of passengers than expected, which would generate all those cars? Many direct flights to foreign cities have been added over the last few years.
Increased Logan traffic
I have a registered livery service located in the Springfield area.
In the last several years, since the new Boeing 787 DreamLiner (AirBus has a similar airplane) came on-line, I have had many fewer rides to JFK and Newark Airports from Western Massachusetts.
These newer lighter and more fuel efficient airplanes make it possible for them to take off from Logan's shorter runways.
Air passengers can now fly 'non-stop' to Asia and other distant cities from Boston.