The Amateur Planner fulminates a bit on how the 34E bus between Forest Hills and Walpole has to go on a lengthy expedition through the driving morass that is the Dedham Mall; wonders why it doesn't just drop off/pick up passengers on Washington Street at the mall entrance:
The loop-the-loop to access the mall unnecessarily lengthens the route, costs the T money, costs passengers time, and subsidizes private development, all to service the front door of an auto-centered development.
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I think that's the reason for
By chaosjake
Tue, 01/06/2015 - 10:57am
I think that's the reason for the equivalence made above (Dedham Mall = Watertown Mall = Walpole Mall). They are all at some point in the transition from 1980s style indoor mall to outdoor mall/big box plaza. In Dedham, the transition is complete, with no indoor connectors between the stores now arrayed as a strip mall. The Watertown Mall still has that one little hallway connecting Target and Best Buy to the RMV, and in Waltham, the transition is in an earlier phase, with more big retailers anchoring a mall that is now largely closed storefronts inside.
We're just opposites
By Waquiot
Tue, 01/06/2015 - 12:33pm
Leaving the Watertown Mall parking lot last week, I turned to Mrs. Waquiot and commented on the pending redevelopment of the Arsenal Mall.
There are a few shops inside. We got some pants for Waquiot Jr. at Carters. There's this store called "Tobacco Shed" that sells tobacco products, soft drinks, and the like (including hookahs) next to Moda, which has children's backpacks on the wall. There is no wall between the stores. So, if you are looking for a water pipe and some back to school items, bingo!
In short, not the liveliest malls, but surviving.
Arsenal Mall is across the
By chaosjake
Tue, 01/06/2015 - 3:04pm
Arsenal Mall is across the street from Watertown Mall.
Yes
By Waquiot
Tue, 01/06/2015 - 3:46pm
Hence, we were staring at it while leaving the Watertown Mall, leading to the conversation.
My point is that Arsenal is being redeveloped while Watertown is still doing its thing.
The Arse Mall is what keeps
By gotdatwmd
Wed, 01/07/2015 - 11:00am
The Arse Mall is what keeps the 70 bus from being useful and timely in any way. In addition to stopping to let on average of 15 people on at once, they come in with gigantic shopping bags to take up space on the already overcrowded bus.
Or maybe ridership from that
By anon
Fri, 01/09/2015 - 2:05pm
Or maybe ridership from that mall allows the T to run the very frequent weekend schedule that the 70 enjoys. Not too many T bus routes that go 7+ miles out into the suburbs run every 10 minutes on Saturdays.
if anyone's reading this mall bus thread a week later...
By anon
Tue, 01/13/2015 - 12:42pm
On Saturday afternoon I rode the 70, and measured the delays on Arsenal Street.
3:47 red lights
0:27 passenger boarding/exiting
The problem isn't the crowds boarding at the mall stops. It's Watertown's inability to program their traffic lights properly. (Though faster fareboxes wouldn't hurt.)
If you register
By Waquiot
Tue, 01/13/2015 - 4:00pm
and comment on a thread, you can keep on following the discussion.
This not to get on you "anon (not verified)", unlike those other things you have written. However, registration has its privileges.
Thanks for the info. The 34E does have a much worse jag than the 70. Imagine having to go into the parking lot of the Arsenal Mall and the Watertown Mall on a Saturday afternoon.
I have no trouble keeping up
By anon
Wed, 01/14/2015 - 6:10pm
I have no trouble keeping up with old threads I'm interested in.
My concern is when *I* post in an old thread, will anyone else notice?
Mall Style
By dmk
Tue, 01/06/2015 - 8:11pm
The current layout of the mall is a hodge-podge because that is not what the original Dedham Mall looked like.
The original mall built back in the 60s was a series of stores that connected through a central open-air courtyard. Some of the stores had entrances on the back side (now the fronts of the stores we see today), but many did not.
At a later date the Dedham mall was enclosed but the central courtyard remained for a long time, later being boxed in to create another store. The enclosed mall also had many smaller courtyard shops and carts along connecting pedestrian ways. (Think of it as a clone of the Cambridge Galeria on a smaller scale and all on one level).
After the mall was sold to new owners they started to close stores and do-away with the inside courtyard and move all of the entrances to the exterior outside walls.
Sears main entrance was where it is now where you enter on the RT 1 side where the appliances are. The "back door" entered into the interior mall courtyard and pedestrian walkway. During the rebuild, Sears took over footage that was the former interior pedestrian walkway and a segment of what was FW Woolworths resulting in the entrance next to Old Navy as it is today.
So to fault the design of today is misplaced unless you know the history of the many changes - most not approved by the people who shopped there. What you have there is the result of over 50-years of changes.
In those days, the 60s through the 80s, the Dedham Mall was a destination where you shopped, ate (Friendlys, Woolworths, a couple of pizza places, Brighams, etc), shopped some more, saw the dentist, got your hair done, and hung around.
If you were really "back in the day" at Friday noon the organist at the Wurlitzer store would demonstrate the big 4-keyboard instrument and it would echo throughout the whole mall. Talk about drawing a crowd!
dmk, your old-time memories....
By Michael Kerpan
Tue, 01/06/2015 - 8:20pm
... are wonderful. Thanks for sharing them!
DMK has the knowledge
By Waquiot
Wed, 01/07/2015 - 12:11am
On another thread, we were going on about a proposed development that we saw perhaps differently. At the community meeting, he started talking about ice skating in what was at the time of the meeting an overgrown, wooded, lot, so a long time ago. He knew more about the geology than the people who drew up the plans did.
In short, the dude is a font of knowledge on the Roslindale area.
Well......
By HeadInAToiletGirl
Mon, 01/05/2015 - 2:07pm
That why I ride a unicycle! Phhhhh!
How do you carry groceries?
By anon
Mon, 01/05/2015 - 4:58pm
A bike with panniers would work much better.
In the abstract, which would
By anon
Mon, 01/05/2015 - 3:43pm
In the abstract, which would y'all prefer, a bus system which follows the trolley lines as they were in 1926, or one that serves today's employment centers and shopping destinations?
I vote for the latter, but the T for the most part does a very bad job of it. In general, if an area didn't have bus service in 1960, it doesn't have it today, even if thousands of people live or work there.
Just look at the bus systems in places like Seattle and San Francisco: excellent coverage anywhere there's development, and express buses all over the place, including plenty of suburb-to-suburb routes.
Looking at this particular example, I think it's important for the 34E to serve the northern (Stop-n-Shop) and main sections of the mall. It's too bad the mall's road system doesn't make this quicker.
A few weeks ago down by Legacy Place, I saw a small horde of people walking through a rain storm down Elm Street. It took me a minute to figure out why: they had just gotten off the bus at the nearest stop on Washington. I felt terrible for these people, that the T hadn't bothered to serve what's the biggest trip generator in the local area.
Considering the 350: the vast majority of ridership north of Winchester, especially in the reverse-peak, is to the mall. Second to that is Lahey Clinic and the office parks along the way. Hardly anyone rides all the way up to North Burlington -- the bus is empty up there most trips. Yet 20 to 30 minutes of every round trip are spent on the segment north of the mall. And in the PM rush, all outbound trips skip the mall, which means employees have to walk more than a mile from the nearest stop.
My proposed solution: in exchange for planning permission to build a big mall, towns should require that developers work with the MBTA to design a road system that works for buses. And the T shouldn't be afraid to add and reroute service where it's needed, even if that means cutting service to places that currently have it.
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