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Imagine that: Roslindale Square to Forest Hills in just six minutes
By adamg on Tue, 12/12/2017 - 9:21am
The T and the city coned off all the parking spaces from Roslindale Square to Forest Hills on Washington Street this morning to test out the logistics of having a dedicated bus and bike lane on the road that serves as a congested funnel for numerous bus routes serving Roslindale, West Roxbury and Dedham.
T workers in yellow vests stood at each intersection to keep cars out - aided by T police, who patrolled the route.
Bus riders were loving it, especially after months of delays at Ukraine Way due to the Arborway project that had gotten so bad many people had taken to getting off at Tollgate Way and walking to the Orange Line. Scotteric reports/a>:
Our 34e is at capacity so we didn’t stop to pick up anyone. Just arrived at the bus station. That was pretty amazing! Let’s do this all the time! 6 minutes, fastest ride from the square to forest hills I’ve ever had.
Tucc06, whose bus did make stops, reports the ride from the square to the station took all of 8 minutes.
Bicyclists also seemed to approve - they had a much wider lane in which to not worry about motorists. As I stood at South Street taking photos, one woman gliding by yelled out: "Best! Thing! Ever!"
Local activists Steve Gag and Alan Wright, who were walking the route handing out fliers explaining the test, said the one problem seemed to be at Archdale Road, because of the large number of motorists turning there. Moving the bus stop to the Forest Hills side of the route might fix that, they said.
There will be a similar test next Tuesday. . The T and BTD are planning a more formal three-week pilot this spring.
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Comments
Yes, I understand buses stop.
Yes, I understand buses stop. I was discussing the merits of a shared bike/bus lane from a cyclist's perspective, and the inevitability of buses having to stop is a major drawback of having bikes share the bus lane. I would be really nervous about having an impatient bus driver tailgating me, and having to wait behind a bus while it is stopped is always unpleasant because it's hard to avoid the exhaust.
Maybe!
I commute from Lower Allston to downtown Boston (about 6 miles) 3 days a week, and I'd say I bike 2/3 of the time and take the bus + T the rest. Takes 30–45 minutes either way.
I definitely feel better on the days I bicycle, and it's the only way I get exercise, so I'm not sure I'd want to cut back too much -- but if there were a bus route that could do it reliably in 15–20 minutes, I might be tempted.
Public transit has a problem that cars and bicycles don't have, which is that it doesn't always go where you need to go. Let's say I want to stop by the grocery store on the way home, or run some errand. I'd definitely bike on those days.
Agree that it's great when to
Agree that it's great when to and from work are the only times to be able to fit in exercise.
The traffic congestion caused
The traffic congestion caused by the dedicated bus / bike lane study is causing a lot of extra pollution for the local neighbors who live on this street.
See the above comments. This
See the above comments. This bus lane trial did not take away any travel lanes.
Congestion?
It is creating less congestion by adding a travel lane for buses.
Take some sudafed - it will remove some of your congestion.
Only if it's
in laxative form
Interesting
The bus I rode to Forest Hills took a bit over 30 minutes to get from Metropolitan and Poplar to Forest Hills (arrived at our corner around 7:35).
What was the time yesterday?
For comparison with a non bus lane commute.
Dedicated bus lanes are only
Dedicated bus lanes are only a start. Signal prioritization and reducing/eliminating cash on board will make bus commutes even faster.
Both are planned
This and subsequent tests are baby steps, but the eventual full implementation will include signal priority, all door boarding, and some stop consolidation. They have a fairly comprehensive set of options that would make a huge difference on bus efficiency.
Just one question
So where are all of the people who live on Washington Street in all those triple-decker's and condos down towards Forest Hills Station supposed to park? I am quite thankful to work in the other direction and not have to take the bus to Forest Hills very often.
Just one answer
Across the street.
Great
Until the PM rush.
And ...
If you really "need a car and have to use it every day", as you like to say whenever you defend the use of public property as free private street parking, then it really shouldn't be a problem for a car to either be gone by the time the lane opens or across the street and not there during PM rush hour.
There are a lot of places in Boston and environs where the parking lane is a travel lane at rush hour. I remember many occasions before I merged households with the Mr. where I spent the night in his neighborhood and I needed to leave before 7 am because of such restrictions.
It is a minor inconvenience, but you get what you pay for.
AAARRRGGGHHH
FFS, I knew someone was going to say something like this, but man, you look like an idiot with some of what you wrote. I actually think that the bus lanes are GOOD. Look at the countless comments I have written about this, even with this very article.
The reality is that there is a large group of people in Boston who exist between the “I need my car” crowd and the “cars are evil” crowd. You’d be surprised to know that there are people in Boston who only used their cars a few days of the week. And unlike you suburbanites who have the luxury of driveways and garages, the people who live in the triple deckers in question have to park their cars on the street. Someone asked what they should do if, say, they weren’t going to drive their cars on a particular day. Someone else gave the simple answer that they can just park on the other side of the street. I merely noted that the answer didn’t take into account that another part of the plan is to ban parking during the afternoon rush on that side of the street. You decided to go on about how bad people are who park their cars on public streets, a problem you suburbanites don’t have.
Yes, there are a lot of streets where parking is banned during rush hours, but they all have meters on them. Think about that before you cast aspersions on the people who live on Washington Street.
If someone lives on a major
If someone lives on a major street but only needs their car occasionally and doesn't want to purchase off street parking, they should really be parking it on a side street. Whether it's parking turnover to allow for customers of nearby businesses to park, or for a bus lane for part of the day, the curbside space on major streets is far too valuable to simply be long term resident parking.
It’s a residential area
So people parking on this stretch don’t affect businesses.
Also, no one in Roslindale pays for parking.
You should get out this way some time.
No body pays for parking?
Then you do get what you pay for. The space 20 hours a day, and having to move your car. That's life in the city with a car.
Correction: It's a residential area AND a transit corridor
So people parking on this stretch do affect transportation.
You're missing my point
Which is that there is a negative effect on those who live along the corridor, own cars, and park them on the street. It's not a simple proposition of just parking on the other side of the street, as the anon said way back in this thread.
That the positives outweigh the negatives is a point I won't debate, but at least I have some sympathy for those who have to figure out what to do when this new regime is implemented. There isn't necessarily a disconnect between supporting this initiative and understanding the opposition.
Pay for parking where?
This is a weird section of town in that there is a narrow band of dense housing between the Arbs and the HP rail line heading south out of of Forrest Hills. There is very little off street or on street parking nor is there really any easy (walkable) overflow areas to park in.
I think that we can both acknowledge that eliminating parking from Washington is a benefit to the people who use it to commute from farther out while also accepting that this negatively impacts the people who actually live on Washington Street. And maybe that's all we can say but the optics are bad through given that this is a poor neighborhood for Roslindale.
People who have an off-street
People who have an off-street parking space that they don't need will often rent it out to someone who does. That's what I'm referring to by paying for off-street parking.
In Roslindale?
Sorry, never heard of anything like that out here.
The neighborhood is not lacking for places to park, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be impacts from this project.
Come to Forrest Hills and then go to Roslindale
I understand what you are saying but you don't seem to have any actual grasp on the geography here. From Firth Rd to Forrest Hills there are very few, very densely populated streets with minimal off-street or on-street parking spots and limited access to areas where there is surplus parking. It's not even a question of will but rather feasibility.
You are all forgetting something here
There is another side to the street to park on.
Just move your car. No problem.
Problem? Rent a space, walk a couple of blocks, move somewhere with a driveway, or get rid of your car if you don't use it that much.
Once again, except
The other side of the street will have no parking in the afternoon, probably from 3 to 6 PM.
Why don't people get this idea that they need to deal with traffic both in the morning AND in the afternoon? Well, perhaps it's people who are commenting from afar, but from my viewing of things, the PM traffic is worse than the AM traffic.
Very nicely said, Waquiot.
Unfortunately, Swirls casts too often before she thinks.
The city owes you nothing
Want to store your large pollution generating device? Private land.
Can't afford that? Don't move where you can't store your pollution generator.
Why is that so hard to understand? Oh, because WHYADUCK IS SPECIAL.
Autonarcissm, indeed.
She thinks just fine
You are the one who isn't thinking because you think you are too special to pay for your polluting hobby.
One quibble
You have clearly never been to Medford if you think that street parking isn't a problem here. I could show you plenty of posts from local FB groups or you could just look at a map sometime. Most of Medford, Malden, Watertown, etc. are more densely populated than West Roxbury, and as densely populated as Roslindale.
Did you see the pilot project in Everett? That's about the same distance from the financial district and the back bay as this lane is. Historically, the development patterns of local communities are really a function of distance from the core of Boston - not of being in Boston. Arbitrarily referring to anything Boston as urban and anything outside of Boston as suburban and low density by default isn't even a useful fiction.
Duplicate
Sorry. The second version is a tiny bit better, though.
Enough with you distance argument
Most of Brookline is a lot closer to the core of Boston, but even those parts are practically sylvan (as was the idea of the developers.) As far as parking problems in Medford, I could see it around Tufts and by downtown, but most parts are not as dense as the area in question. Fort Lee, NJ is closer to midtown New York than Jamaica Queens, but the latter deals with more of the problems of living in the city.
As far as Everett goes, again it's distance from my city's center is irrelevant, since again it is another city. That said, their busway is goes through a commercial area, so you are talking about different issues altogether.
Brookline is an excpetion
Look at a map. Triple deckers cover wide swaths of Somerville, Medford, Watertown, Everett, Lynn ... and lesser swaths of Arlington and Waltham.
All the cities sport higher densities than Roslindale and West Roxbury.
It isn't hard to verify this - you just avoid to do any work that proves you wrong because you live in a bubble that you never leave.
The exception proves my point
Which was that when Swirly, who does not live in Boston, begins her pontification on how Boston should do things with "I live closer to downtown Boston than the people of Roslindale, so...," she's ignoring the idea of local governance. At the end of the day, they are not Boston. Nor is Somerville, Medford, Watertown, Everett, Lynn, Arlington, Waltham, Brockton, Longmeadow, and of the other 350 Municipalities of Massachusetts outside of Boston.
The realities are that some municipalities outside of Boston ban overnight street parking, while others (say, Everett, Lynn, Somerville as examples) don't, and those bans were put in place when automobile parking was becoming an issue, not recently. Only one other municipality in the Boston area has dedicated bus lanes, and at that it is one lane in a commercial area. At the end of the day the reason we have municipal government is for local concerns to be handled locally. Everett did it that way. Boston will figure this out (for their second set of bus lanes, btw) hopefully in consultation with those who will be affected by the changes. Residents of Medford will not be affected.
Broadway in Everett
Google street view is your friend - try it sometime. It isn't any more of a business district than Washington St.
Better yet, check it out in person. Or does your ankle bracelet go off if you leave the area?
I dunno, Davey
But this view, and the beginning of the video that shows the route I saw, does make it look like it's not that residential. I mean, in addition to the reporting in the Globe that notes that the bike lanes are in a commercial area, too. But hey, we all know the internet is full of lies, right?
Enough with your cocksure ignorance
This area of Everett has businesses, but it also has a lot of housing. I happen to live in some. We do have a few more side streets than you do, which helps.
Why don't you come out here and visit. You can buy a beer at Night Shift or Bone Up or a drink at Short Path (if you like gin or rum)? Those are in an industrial district, but they have houses there, too - real old school land use. Or go to Malden to visit Idle Hands, which is a very short walk off of the Orange Line. We aren't scary. We won't hurt you. We just want you to have good beer and get out sometime. See how the Oak Grove half lives.
I live on this stretch of Washington St
And park there too. My partner works in the city and takes the T and I work in central Mass and take the car. I'm definitely worried about the parking situation if this does take effect because the street cleaning schedule on Washington and the side streets is intense and lasts the entire year. Just imaging the coordination of where to park went sounds like it'll be hell. Hoping if this goes into effect that they make it resident only parking to at least free up some space. Lots of people saying "rent a parking spot" but if you live in this neighborhood, you know there are few driveways and the ones that do exist are full.
YADA YADA YADA....And how
YADA YADA YADA....And how many of you people that think this is a great idea live on Washington, or on the streets abutting? Sounds like the people in the neighborhood are not supposed to own automobiles, so that our friends on bicycles can pedal their little hearts out....
Huh?
Bicycles? There is already a bike lane there, parking or no.
This is a story about a rush hour bus lane.
How much of this story did you read?
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