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Will state tear down Fenway/Back Bay eyesore - or turn it into a turnpike onramp?
By adamg on Tue, 06/12/2012 - 1:24pm
Plans probably don't include restoring Charlesgate to its early 20th-century state.
State officials hold a meeting tonight to discuss options for the turnpike through the Back Bay and the Bowker Overpass - the decaying hulk that now speeds cars across the fetid remains of the Muddy River between Fenway and Storrow Drive.
At the session, which begins at 6 p.m. in the mezzanine conference room at the BPL in Copley Square, state transportation officials will discuss various options for improving the Back Bay for people encased in metal shells, including extending the overpass to the turnpike for people heading to the airport or just tearing it down altogether and replacing it with a simple surface road. Another possibility is a new offramp to Brookline Avenue.
State officials recently announced plans to tear down the equally decrepit Casey Overpass in Jamaica Plain and replace it with surface roads and parkland.
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Comments
Beautiful photo. I wish they
Beautiful photo. I wish they would plant more trees in Boston, however unfortunately many people do not equate trees with quality of life, only with beautification and sidewalk obstruction which is of course moronic.
The good thing about overpasses is that they elevate vehicular pollution up and away from people walking and/or residing at street level. Particularly in the summer time when the air is hot, humid and stagnant, it's not easy to breathe in toxic fumes of cars, trucks and buses while walking along streets backed up with stop and go traffic.
Have you ever walked under
Have you ever walked under the Bowker overpass?
It's no walk in the park. It's a walk under a dank, stinky overpass.
And there's cars all around you anyway. Technically, it's not legal to cross Charlesgate West on foot. All traffic light phases direct green arrows or signals across that path. There is no pedestrian signal.
My impression after glancing at the materials posted on the website is that this is going to be another McCarthy. MassDOT is going to come and insist that the need to allow cars to bypass the Mass Pike for free is more important than the people who live and work in the area.
Dank and stinky is your
Dank and stinky is your opinion.
http://goo.gl/maps/VWcO looks green and airy to me.
I would like to see them narrow the surface roads, since the 4-lane roadway is no fun to cross. But if they tear down the overpass, it would mean *wider* surface roads.
The clearance signs on the overpass are a nice touch. Who needs to spend money on a sign of standard design when you can make one yourself with plywood, a sharpie, and some orange spray paint?
Your definition
Of "green and airy" is perverse. Walk there, don't streetview it. Keep in mind that middle median section is not accessible on foot (at least, not safely).
There is no reason that the surface road has to be wider. Don't get suckered in like the Casey folks did. MassDOT offered them a bad choice there. They should have thrown it back at the Massholes at MassDOT and insisted on the 4-lane solution at-grade.
Like the other anon, I have
Like the other anon, I have walked there many times.
I provided the street view to add some actual facts into the discussion.
It's not hard to get to the middle section safely. It's exactly the same as crossing any of the other roadways at the signalized intersections.
If all the north-south through traffic were on the surface, it would be significantly harder to cross anywhere.
Yes I have. Many, many times.
Yes I have. Many, many times. It's not Disney fairy princess pretty, but I don't find it stinky or dank either. You probably don't live nearby because if you did and you had to walk that area frequently, you wouldn't want a large volume of traffic rerouted to street level.
I lived there for four years in the 1970s
and walked or biked under it nearly every day, to get from where I lived (Bay State Road) to MIT.
It was a blight then. It's a blight now.
Bringing the Charlesgate traffic down to street level would be no worse than having another Commonwealth Avenue at street level -- and most folks are just fine walking across that.
With the Turnpike there now, we can't completely go back to Olmsted's original plan, but we should try to approximate it as closely as possible. (Even Olmsted needed a bridge over what was then just a railroad right-of-way.)
Bringing down to street
level should also afford the ability to make the overpass over the pike pedestrian and bike friendly.
As is now there's no legal or safe way to get to the park / Boylston from this area. It be one of the best things to come of tearing it down.
The ramps over the Pike do have sidewalks
They're too narrow, but they do exist. People walk on them all the time.
Photo source
Library of Congress.
Tear down that wall
The cost to reconfigure this whole mess seems to make any serious project impossible.
It would be wonderful if we could get traffic to use only the Mass Pike instead of the surface (pleasure) roads.
An added thought: can we depress Storrow inbound like the outbound is, around Clarendon Street? That would make the area between Arlington to Dartmouth a lot more scenic, and an easier route of access for people going to the Esplanade and Hatch Shell.
Added speed
One argument I heard against depressing Storrow is that it tends to increase traffic speeds. Apparently drivers see a tunnel as an opportunity to speed up - step on the gas!
Agreed.
We can't keep spending these insane amounts of money on infrastructure that makes the city worth less to its inhabitants and workers.
Answer - almost definitely no
First problem is the water level - if you depress roads they will be below the water table and you will constantly have to pump water. They do that now for the smallish existing tunnel - you'd be expanding this by doubling the underground tunnel space plus in order to create that interchange you have to have one road crossing the other so you can get access from cityside to the outbound waterside - so you'd have to completely submerge one of the tunnels which could be very expensive and potentially a real mess - a little dig of sorts.
I was on a state panel a few years back and we looked at all kinds of different scenarios to accomplish this and at the end we just tipped our hats to the 1950's era highway engineers for a very creative solution. The only other alternatives would be to a) remove access to the outbound side from Clarendon and put a huge burden on the grid system or b) put in a traffic light and grade level or even slightly submerged intersection just to hide/shelter it from the esplanade. That didn't go over too well with the suburban Cambridge/Watertown crowd that likes free fast access to their communities as long as Boston gets all the traffic and pollution for those trying to skirt the tolls on the pike.
Probably the best solution I saw involved rerouting the express traffic over the Charles to Mem Drive in Cambridge near the West End and bringing it back over to Boston just past BU. You get the express traffic you need/want, but don't butt any of it up and through the esplanade or residential areas. However, the Cambridge people didn't want any part of that and it would just cost too much money. Looked good on paper though! :-)
The right option
Is to stand up to the "suburban Cambridge/Watertown" crowd that feels it is entitled to free state-subsidized bypasses and tell them that they do not trump the folks who have to live with their car pollution and road blight. Especially since it's going to cost half a billion dollars to fix Storrow. Once you realize how shoddy that tunnel is, I think you'll have less respect for the "50s engineers."
Build prettier bridges
There always seems to be some suburban crowd standing in your way or taking what is yours. Go to Watertown and look at those people -- they're just like you! That's you in 5 years.
I'm no fan of these overpasses. Want to see what goes in instead, go look at the McGrath highway.
How about building better looking bridges?
Seriously?
You are not going to fight Cambridge on Beacon Hill unless you are Don Quixote. Hey I agree with you - but I also know it's a losing battle. Watertown is not as powerful, but they get the dividends and many other western suburbs are just as happy to use that as a freeway. Politics are what they is and you are not going to shut down Storrow without an alternative and Mem Drive - even part of it - is not an alternative. Even if you could convince the world that was the best solution, then you have to get over the environmental issues of digging in the Charles River silt.
I worked on the project - I know exactly how shoddy the tunnel is. Trust me and about 40 other people who sat through two years of interminable meetings - short of a bypass or a traffic light that's probably the best solution for that interchange. The other option is to shut it down westbound and see what that does to the traffic in the grid - Bowker will probably be a nightmare and given the safety concerns for safety reasons.
Bottom line - a road doesn't belong there, but it's there and nobody is willing to make the tradeoffs to either get rid of it or even limit the traffic flow.
We'll definitely lose
If we don't try.
I Have an Idea
I have an idea: Instead of full tunneling that isn't possible as it is below the water table. Let's ask why do we need to bury? Let's just cover the highway with a cement box and hide with with dirt. On the outside, it would just look like a flood wall - a nice green grass hilly wall. It's like a super wide pedestrian bridge that is buried with soil and grass.
Note: Just to make sure, this is response to the Storrow Drive idea, not the overpass.
I think that's a good idea
This was discussed at the meetings in general a good idea - only two shortcomings - the main drawback was the cost. Also, as you point out you can really only cover it in grass - bushes, trees etc. need more of a root system and burying it that deep is not practical.
The final solution was to repair the tunnel to get another 10 years out of it (it was VERY cost effective). We will have to revisit this in 5-10 years and we'll see what happens.
Short of the two new bridges across the Charles (or an even more radical solution of putting a tunnel from BU to the Leverett Circle), personally I like the traffic light solution as a reasonable compromise, but I will have to say after sitting through these meetings there are a lot of valid points about a lot of issues and this is far more complicated than most people can imagine - traffic patterns, tolls, burden on the grid, delay series at traffic lights and intersection rating systems, the sheer volume of people who need to get in and out of the city (event he pike couldn't handle all the traffic if we shut off Storrow drive - so getting rid of it is not a practical solution). The list goes on. It was very interesting - but I got a headache every time I went to one of those meetings! :-)
Amen!
And doesn't the MBTA/State own the old TSX yard right next to old connection to soldiers field?
My dream:
Build better on and off ramps over the old yard to 90 from soldiers field road section.
Make Storrow to the BU/Harvard bridge single lane, but uninterrupted
From BU to MGH make it into a surface road grid / park to reconnect the esplanade with the back bay. Take down the Bowker Overpass, and fill in the damn tunnels that are going to ruin the lower esplanade for any cost effective fix that keeps them.
That way traffic is filtered down reasonably, and through traffic is routed to 90/93, where it should be in the first place. Otherwise, traffic patterns return to those like we see in the back bay.
CSX
It's CSX and actually Harvard owns Beacon Yard and sadly the rail yard is in the process of being slowly phased out over the course of 2012 - leaving Boston with no direct rail freight connection anymore. The set of mainline tracks that pass by/through the yard will be deeded to the MBTA for the commuter rail But that's just a narrow corridor passing by the land in question. Because of Harvard's money and construction/expansion problems the thought is that the land will likely remain fallow.
http://www.universalhub.com/node/27799
Why so few eastbound options?
I suppose the train on the eastbound side limits the options, but it appears there is no real need for another Westbound entrance. Probably from a traffic study point of view, but I don't see the overall gain. Anything to clear
the 93 bound traffic off of Storrow is welcomed.
That's actually probably the best solution
But difficult. The train line is almost the entire problem. You could depress the train line -but a) trains can only go up/down about 1-2 feet for every hundred feet. So to accomplish this you need probably 3/4 mile to a full mile of track grade.
That said - it's the best solution - just might not be practical from a cost or MBTA operations standpoint - might take years to complete and you probably couldn't operate that line on one track safely. That means busing people from South Station/Back Bay to Newton
Mother Brook?
I always thought that the body of water below the Bowker was the Muddy River. Did it used to be called Mother Brook? Is it still? Is there any relation to the Mother Brook down by the Dedham/Boston line?
On a different note, could you imagine the traffic implications of a westbound off ramp to Brookline Avenue on the 80+ days per year the Red Sox play at home? The backup from the exit ramp would extend all the way back into downtown (including the Central Artery in both directions) and back to the Airport. Throw in a a couple of ambulances trying to get down to the Medical Area, and now we're really having fun. That option is a miserable idea.
Arrgh, where's my copy desk?
Yes, it's the Muddy River, not the Mother Brook, which connects the Charles to the Neponset. My name is mud(dy), I guess.
Mother's Rest?
Mother's Rest playground is just up the way at Boylston x Fenway. Maybe that's what you were thinking of.
That traffic implication
That traffic implication already occurs on Storrow Drive thanks to this overpass. What's worse, having the backup occur in a highway trench, or along parkland bordered by residential buildings? I'd rather let the RedSox fans too good to take public transit to games sit in a trench full of traffic than force residents and park users to have to suffer along with them.
Wrap the bridge to look like trees.
There is always this option. It doesn’t address any traffic but it does make the overpass less demoralizing and more visualy fun. It would be at a fraction of the cost of what is being proposed.
http://uglyboston.blogspot.com/p/esplanade-storrow...
That's like putting a smiley
That's like putting a smiley face band-aid on a severed limb and saying "hey look everything's A-Okay!"
Question regarding Storrow
Question regarding Storrow that is not entirely related ... why did they keep the interchange with 93 on the surface, with traffic lights?
I think they decided it would
I think they decided it would be too hard to fit any more grade-separated ramps in Leverett Circle.
They did add the new eastbound underpass. But it only goes to 93 north and the Tobin, not 93 south or the Callahan. And the part that really bugs me: you can't get to it from Charles Circle (unless you go the wrong way through Beacon Hill first).
I'm not paying $1.25 to drive from Boston to Boston
So those of you who want Storrow gone can pay my toll for me or STFU. I demand and expect a 40 MPH road to get to and from Brighton from downtown/Back Bay/Fenway.
As for the commenter who referred to Sox fans as "too good for public transit," since when does demanding quality and efficiency (neither of which the MBTA delivers) make one a snob?
Demanding another residential
Demanding another residential neighborhood's quality of life and environment be subjugated to highway infrastructure for the 'quality and efficiency' of your commute makes you a snob.
How would you feel if nonresidents wanted your neighborhood parkland to be paved to put up parking lots and roadways?
Then don't
There's plenty of roads in Boston proper that lead towards the city center.
As well as public transit options.
You want to take an express way, pay the damn toll. Get used to it. With the hatred of government and taxes use fees and congestion fees are the next big thing.
I would actually endorse more tolls
In place of any tax dollars used for roads. But as long as we're paying for free Storrow Drive, I expect it to be there.
You know what else would mitigate traffic? Employers not mandating that employees come into work at 9 AM and then all leave at 5 PM every day. I still refuse to believe that every single person who drives to work has a job that can't be done in part or entirely over the Internet.
Agree
with you there. Old habits die hard.
A lot of financial jobs could easily be done in a home office, saving companies millions in officel eases. If not just making office hours part time.
As for Storrow, I think the point is your tax dollars have not been going to it. Which is why it's going to take millions if not a billion to repair / rebuild.
You can tank Mr. Romney for the first 10 years of neglect, and the bad economy under Deval for the rest.
Romney didn't neglect roads.
Romney didn't neglect roads. The legislature did. You're also forgetting the wonderful gubernatorial leadership demonstrated by Misses Swift and Perfect Paul. No governor since the Duke cared about transportation infrastructure as priority.
The legislature has continued to demonstrate a lack of concern for any infrastructure project which isn't a patronage project. They are really to blame for our crumbling infrastructure more than anyone which has held executive office. Our dollars haven't been efficiently used for maintenance for a very long time, just an endless stream of make work projects to no productive avail.
Financial jobs
You're 100% correct. I have a friend who communted from Northboro to a Fidelity office in New Hampshire. His job was to take calls from customers who sought to check their pension fund balances. That's it. Absolutely no reason for him to drive to work every day.
I mean, it would be nice for him to make face time in the office, but we as a society just can't accept him and everybody else like him tying up the roads at the same time of day five times a week. I'm not big on handing out tax breaks like lollipops, but offering companies an incentive to not demand that non-essential employees come to the office daily would be a wise use of them.
10 years?
Look, I love to blame stuff on Mitt, but he was only governor for 4 years. Blaming him for a decade of neglect is a bit rich even for me.
No no no no no no no no.
No tolls.
Tax cars off the road, not the ones on the road. Double registration fees if you have to, but please don't add tolls in crazy places. Or at least require fastlane on every car.
Fast Lane
I have a laywer friend who tells me that somebody's Fast Lane itinerary was introduced as evidence in divorce proceedings. It's nobody's (expletive) business where and when I drive. Period.
Thats just logistics.
The state is already able to track you with the fastlane cameras anyway regardless of whether or not you have a transponder.
Thats the problem
There's no reason for gate tolls when the state has the technology to send you a damn bill in the mail for the toll + $1.00 processing/billing fee.
So, you can tear down tollbooths that tend to backup traffic for miles and just tag people going through and send a bill. You end up getting a cheaper toll for getting a transponder.
Technology has made toll skipping an antiquated practice, but the state doesn't seem to want to get rid of those juicy fines.
I'm sure that the credit card receipts
from Cuddle and Bubble or wherever would have been plenty.
Seriously--good luck with that whole not-wanting-anyone-to-know-where-you-are thing. Your credit card company knows, every security camera in Boston knows, your phone and computer know. Get over it, unless you want to go live in a cave.
Bad news, Will.
I've got bad news for you, Will. Forget about the Fastlane (now EZpass!) cameras Pete mentioned, which certainly can grab your tag - every time you drive on a limited access highway in greater Boston, your vehicle is recorded multiple times by scores of traffic cameras. While some of those (older ones) probably don't have the resolution to get your tag, many of them (particularly the newer PTZ cameras in the tunnel network, but also in other locales) definitely do.
The solution is an easy one, however. The legislature needs to pass a law prohibiting those images from being used for anything other than for specific purposes, e.g., law enforcement (and NOT civil matters that do not involve the state as plaintiff or defendant).
Free, you say?
You just described the thrust of the problem. It's not free, it requires tax dollars to maintain Storrow, and since our government is unable to collect the amount of taxes to fully fund these "free" infrastructure elements, they are falling apart. If we want a road like Storrow, we have to pay for it. The problem is that too many people like you expect it to be there yet refuse to pay for the society you demand.
[/end rant]
Your idea about staggering the work day is good, and something that has proven again and again elsewhere to be very effective for managing traffic.
I would love to see it look
I would love to see it look like this again: http://www.flickr.com/photos/boston_public_library...
It would pair nicely with the Muddy River resurfacing project in front of Landmark Center.
On the other hand, while
On the other hand, while http://www.flickr.com/photos/boston_public_library... and http://www.flickr.com/photos/boston_public_library... aren't unpleasant, I think the Esplanade is prettier today.
(Look at that -- there was a road there even in the Model T era.)
I don't think a road is the problem
just the type of road. Going back to a two lane surface street with crosswalks to the river every block would be great.
Don't forget, a lot of the open space up river is no longer open space either. When storrow went in buildings were built right up to the edge of the road.
Where? I see very few
Where?
I see very few post-war buildings along Storrow. Just a few that fill in the asphalt backyards along Back Street, plus one or two on the BU campus.
MassDOT's answer seems to be "more highways"
A report from the MassDOT meeting.
I was at the meeting last night
And the crowd was very focused on the Bowker, not the pike ramps, and very vocal in support of pulling the Bowker down completely to be replaced by surface roads.
A couple of interesting points:
One of the major reasons to do the studies was to model if they would alleviate traffic on Storrow. Interestingly, the Mass DOT guy said that none of them did, according to the model.
(so why would we spend all this money and effort to build them?
The Bowker was named (according to Fred Salvucci) for the state legislator who was the tie-breaking vote to approve overriding James Storrow's will to allow the installation of a roadway in the parkland. Not sure of the verity of that story, but there was a Phillip Bowker who was a state senator from Brookline and later a MDC commissioner.
The Bowker carries 52,000 cars a day, which was shocking to me.
Several of the proposed options have a big effect on Newbury street extension and dump a lot of traffic into already substandard Kenmore Sq. Which would be .... interesting.
The vast majority of traffic
The vast majority of traffic on Storrow is only people using it to cut to 93N/S quickly (outside of sox game days).
I don't think so
The studies I saw when we were looking at Storrow tunnel options indicated that the vast majority of traffic was between Leverett and Bowker - people were either going to the medical district from the North shore or to downtown from Metro West - relatively little went west past Bowker or actually cut all the way through to 93. the feeling was that the Metro West traffic did it to avoid the tolls and the North Shore traffic didn't have an option to use the pike (thus the search for westbound off ramps near the medical area). There is definitely some of of the full bypass traffic, but it's not actually that big.
My impression too
Living in Brighton means using Storrow frequently for lots of reasons. I have 2 big ones though, getting downtown without taking Comm Ave and getting to 93N/1 for any given reason.
I'd also say that Bowker is probably not the western most cut-off of the heavy use. Cambridge St probably is because it lets you get into Cambridgeport as well as Allston/Brighton. The westbound Storrow exit ramp there can be quite heavy many times of the week. Eastbound, Cambridge St is the entrance point from anyone getting off at the Allston-Brighton tolls on the Pike and there are quite a few that do that in the morning particularly.
One thing I don't understand from your reasoning about MetroWest is an avoidance of tolls. How are they getting to Storrow in the first place from MetroWest? Most people are going to take the Pike to the A-B tolls and get on from there...at which point, they've paid all the tolls. The only other way would be to get off at the Watertown/Brighton exit and drive through to the start near Nonantum...but I just don't know that there's that many people doing that just to avoid $1.25. In the evening there are quite a few that use that as a way home though. It's not like Storrow exactly caters to MetroWest on the western end of the road...it sorta peters out around Brighton Circle and becomes much more local well short of 128 and away from 9, 30, and even 20 is too much of a nightmare through Waltham to make it part of anyone's regular commute just to save a few quarters.
Some, but maybe not a lot
You get all the traffic from route 2 - which instead of getting on at A/B to get downtown just goes down storrow. Then you get all the Watertown/Newton people who won't bother getting on the pike either - using Storrow to bypass A/B. and then as you point out you get some who take the pike to Newton, get off at exit 17 (?) and jump onto Storrow from Watertown/Soldier's field road. Those that work downtown may just pay the $1.25, but I could see those in the medical district just jumping off to save a few bucks because it doesn't buy them much to continue on to A/B. Maybe not a ton - but add that to everything else from Watertown and route 2 and you get a lot of toll bypassers. Saves you $400-500 a year. Pays for a lot of gas.
yeah I find that hard to believe
I am one of the people that frequently only use Storrow to get 93N and my car is always in the vast minority.
Only north, not south
The Pike is far quicker to get to the SE Expressway and won't require you to go all the way through the entire Big Dig just to come out on the other side of the city again.
If you're coming from anywhere west of Beacon Hill, I'd use Storrow to get to 93N, but the Pike to get to 93S. The only hiccup being the dead zone around Fenway for getting on the eastbound Pike to get to 93S. Driving through Allston to get to the A-B entrance ramp sucks and nobody gets on at the Pru to use that turn-around they installed at the A-B tolls.
By the way, this would be less of a dead zone if they'd actually pushed that highway through where Melnea Cass/Park Drive are like they had planned long ago (of course, it would have been horribly ugly and disruptive to surface streets, but at least you could get Fenway/Longwood to the SE Expressway without needing the Bowker/Storrow or the A-B tolls.
Most of the Bowker overpass should be demolished asap
The only part of the overpass that is needed is the part that bridges over the Mass Pike. The rest of it is entirely redundant with the existing one-way pair of Charlesgate East and Charlesgate West, which connect to Storrow Drive just fine.
Yes, but...
If the number given somewhere else in the comments of 52,000 cars per day using the Bowker overpass is accurate, that's 52,000 cars that then have to stop at 2-3 traffic cycles and share the surface roads with Comm Ave drivers trying to go east/west locally. With the way the overpass can get blocked up at times, I hesitate to imagine Kenmore and the Fenway (and possibly even Mass Ave at Boylston) if you were suddenly to clog one or more of those intersections at rush hour.
On the other hand
Each of those 52,000 cars has a driver who is capable of responding to the change by not taking this route anymore. And many will do just that.
When was the study done BTW?
If you're doing it during red sox season, the numbers are vastly higher. Late fall, winter or early spring, no so much.
Was it a year long averaging?
You can't assume 52,000
Traffic flow isn't like a river. It isn't a bunch of molecules tumbling down a stream. It's a bunch of people making conscious decisions based on learned information and reacting to present conditions.
People will change their travel habits or decide to use public transit based upon the new configuration of the road.
Poking around the MassDOT traffic count map, I can't find a sensor for Bowker itself. The closest is the intersection with Boylston, which counts between 35,000-40,000 depending which data you use.
By comparison, Mass Ave near the Orange line sees 32,000-35,000 volume. Comm Ave at Mass Ave counts are 37,000-40,000. Comm Ave at St Paul St is 36,000-38,000.
I've always liked the Bowker
Not all roads or highways are inherently evil. The Bowker keeps 52,000 cars away from crossing Beacon, Marlborough, and Comm. Ave., and up above the pedestrians. The view as you cross is also pretty cool, and one of the best places for viewing the city from a car.
The problem isn't the bridge, it's the lack of ground level features. What we need is a repaired/replaced bridge that is above a series of buildings filling in the underpass sections. Store fronts under the bridge would eliminate trolls from under said bridge.
f*ck the view
^^
"The view as you cross is also pretty cool, and one of the best places for viewing the city from a car."
This is true but is a lousy reason to put up another overpass. I enjoy the view when I drive on the Bowker from Storrow, but should local residents compromise their neighborhood so I get a brief glimpse of lovely rooftops as I cut through en route to JP and Hyde Park?
I don't think so. There may be more substantive reasons for keeping it (though I hope it's not necessary) but drive-by views for commuters like me should not factor at all into this decision.
Nice view from McGrath Highway overpass, too
Doesn't mean we should keep it around.
I wasn't saying keep it for the view
I only meant to point out that the aesthetic argument is not 100% that it is ugly and a blemish on the area. There are pluses and minuses, and while I agree that the Commonwealth Ave. underpass is a big minus, I disagree with the notion that there is nothing visually appealing about the bridge.
No, the decision should not be made on this basis, it should be made on what works best for the city (which includes not just the folks living next to the bridge). But a lot of the appeals to tear it down toss out the "it's ugly" rationale early in their argument, so it's worth rebutting.
This is getting ridiculous
The state has the $ to waste on this needless project? I'm impressed. And people do realize the traffic that uses the Bowker will just basically be re-routed to surrounding surface roads which are already heavily used? Basically, street traffic is just going to get worse, times for getting from point A to point B will worsen, and there are going to be more p*ssed off people. Frankly, one of Boston's major problems is it doesn't have enough decent expressways, let alone by-pass roads, over heads, under passes, etc. to keep heavy traffic on relative narrow surface streets [and of course a lack of a grid] moving. I use the Charles St red line stop all the time; who's brilliant idea was it to remove the pedestrian over-pass? If anything, AN ADDITIONAL OVERPASS should have been constructed. The traffic and getting through it at the intersection by the bridge and T stop is ridiculous, I'm surprised no tourist of old person hasn't been killed yet. No doubt NIMBYs complained about the 'ugly' pedestrian overpass. This city is getting ridiculous.
As for the Casey in J.P: Again, it will make car traffic and congestion WORSE if it's torn down, and it will make life for pedestrians and bike riders WORSE, not better. Besides, it's not 'decrepit' and has plenty of life left in it.
The proposed I-695 where the southwest corridor orange line now sits should have been built. It was a mistake not to have built it. It would have been easy to have constructed a new orange line along the roadway same as it exists north through Charlestown and Malden.
We have far too many NIMBYs and people who want time to stand still in this city and places like Cambridge, etc. These are the people who fight anything above 10 stories in height for example, or who get a skyscraper cut down from say 45 stories to 30, where it usually ends up being stubby and casting an even worse shadow than a tall slender building would. Boston and it's surrounding cities is very densely built up with limited real estate and high demand especially for stuff like affordable housing. It's logical to build UP, like Vancouver or Miami. We are already still dealing with a 19th and 20th century infrastructure, and most of the real estate; and for us to not stagnate now and in the future, we must make some major choices that the NIMBYs aren't going to like.
Building anti-urban highways
Building anti-urban highways is good for urbanity? Really? Don't you get it that these overbuilt structures are primarily intended for suburbanites to move quickly through the city and are a hearty "SCREW YOU!" to local residents?
The city spent half a century making things TOO EASY for cars to dominate all other modes of travel and now pedestrians have to suffer (and sometimes die) for it. Now drivers are throwing tantrums that they aren't being given preferential treatment anymore
Not to mention
all those suburbanites bitching about their tax dollars going to waste.
Well, here's a chance to put their mouth where their money is going. Tearing it down and building a cheap surface road is much more cost effective and will require less of their money.
It's a win for the neighborhood, and a win for the boohoo anti-tax crowd.
A new bridge is not only gong to be very expensive to put up, it's going to be more expensive to keep up with regular repairs.
And it's not needed!