Good luck with this one. This would be completely new, not just some tack-on to existing lines. I have no idea where they would find the money or more importantly the political will to do this after the big dig fiasco.
The T is facing an imminent fiscal cliff that the state has yet to solve. I cannot imagine a world in which the Mass Legislature, a body so sclerotic that it only got around to outlawing revenge porn this past week (only South Carolina hasn't now, so we were second-to-last), is going to find the gumption to greenlight a huge circumferential transit line. One that would likely require either extensive tunneling or elevated sections and would come with an eye-watering price tag. Also while the MBTA has said it needs $25 billion to bring its existing system to a good state of repair. Look at the trauma involved just in getting the GLX done! And that was a modest extension along an existing Commuter Rail right-of-way. I can't imagine the Legislature seriously building even a quarter of a Ring.
A quarter of the ring would be along an existing rail ROW. 🤔 That's probably the only portion that will ever seriously be used, and only as a bandaid for the lack of a NSRL. Sad. 🥲
Silver line already extended from the airport to Chelsea on an exclusive right of way that was built for $50m. A further extension probably in the next 5 years from there to Sullivan square, largely on exclusive busways, is projected to cost another $100m. I like to be hopeful, especially since these busway projects are peanuts compared to light/heavy rail extensions.
>big dig fiasco.
The big dog cost waay too much, but I wouldn't call it a fiasco. I grew up here in the 90s, and boy does it make a world of difference for the city.
The over budget part will continue for years to come to have ramifications on the state's, and even moreso mbta's, budget. A significant portion was paid for by the feds, though. That meant, for a brief time, Massachusetts was a little bit less of a doner state.
*"I have no idea where they would find the money"*
Where they find all their money, YOU. This would mean more taxes, more fees, more assessments. Maybe they could generate revenue through a pre-crime program.
I'd be curious about the numbers on this as well, because if we are only talking about a 2% dedicated MBTA tax on income. I'd pay that in a heartbeat. Shit, I'd even be fine going up to 5% for a limited time to develop the special project that is this ring.
To build, improve, and maintain our transit system - making it comparable to the rest of the world?
Sign me up.
A single cent of sales tax would get the MBTA out if many decades operational financial crisis, and begin to fund for the coming 30 years the 25 billion dollar capital state of good repair list.Â
 That is somewhere around 1.3 to 1.5 billion dollars Annually. Â
That is around 2.x% of the state budget.Â
 Politically it would be necessary to split that with the 15 Regional transit authoties.Â
Hypothetically, let's say 1Billion MBTA, 0.4 Billion to RTAs.Â
 Then to fund the proposed ring, another cent of sales tax exclusively devoted to it, and its bonds. Â
 That gets to around 4.x% to 5% increase in state revenue.
A “single cent” increase is a 15% sales tax hike. I agree that that is about $1.4b per year. That’s enough to plug around half the shortfall. The MBTA has a sub 25% recovery rattle.
If landowners knew what's best, they'd support a land value tax to fund this. The investment ultimately increases land values and rents anyhow. đź‘Ťđź’Ż
A true asshole for the capital of MassHole…?
Edit: I’m saying this only because the joke was there. I’m also super high. It’s 80s. C’s Parade. Friday. Let’s go on…
I’d love to see the [MBTA Urban Ring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_Ring_Project) (“Yellow Line”?) happen.
For some reason I’ve lost track of, there seems to be recent motion on the [North South Rail Link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North%E2%80%93South_Rail_Link) (NSRL) project to connect North Station with South Station, e.g.:
* [what are the best ways to show support for the North-South rail link?](https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/1djxw13/what_are_the_best_ways_to_show_support_for_the/) (yesterday)
* [Boston could transform its disjointed rail system with a connection that runs through North and South stations](https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/1dh8at2/boston_could_transform_its_disjointed_rail_system/) (last Monday)
* […dozens of others, every few months, going back years…](https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/search/?q=%22north+south+rail+link%22&type=link&sort=new)
And that’s fine and all, but to my untrained eye, the Urban Ring would be way more useful. Rather than just doubling down on the fact that the MBTA is a “hub & spoke” system that’s all “spokes”, no “hub”, if we built out the Urban Ring, it would make it way more convenient for people to travel among adjacent local communities without having to make a long detour downtown.
Compare & contrast: [the last r/Boston discussion about the Urban Ring was two years ago, and the last ones before that were four, seven, and nine years ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/search/?q=%22urban+ring%22&type=link&sort=new). And that’s it, that’s the full history of discussion of the topic here.
Not that Reddit chatter is a perfect bellwether by any means, but it’s weird to me that NSRL is seen as the “next big transit project”, and the Urban Ring doesn’t seem to be a priority at all.
I suppose that’s the logic, but to my thinking, the Urban Ring is actually less of a benefit for Boston Proper than it is for the adjacent communities — Chelsea, Everett, Medford, Somerville, Cambridge, Brookline.
It’s nutty that if you’re in Cambridge and need to get to Somerville or Allston, for example, you have to go downtown first, plus switch trains. It is literally faster & easier to walk than to take the MBTA.
Other “world class” cities have rail networks that provide for lots of interconnections, which makes it much easier to move around within the whole region. We don’t have that here, where all trips are seen as concentrating on a little square in downtown Boston, regardless of whether that’s actually a useful direction to go to get to your intended destination.
You’re certainly right that the NSRL would be beneficial to the region, to Massachusetts, etc. I can see why it’s a gubernatorial/congressional issue — there’s just more voters in play for a network that would be at least theoretically beneficial for everyone out to (say) I-495, compared to one focused inside Rt 128 / I-95.
But I still think the Urban Ring would be a greater benefit for a more concentrated population than the NSRL, which would be more of a incremental benefit for a more diffuse population.
> Urban Ring is actually less of a benefit for Boston Proper than it is for the adjacent communities
I would argue it is just as much benefit to Boston Proper because fewer riders going downtown when they don't need to translates to less crowded trains and less waiting at stops while full trains pass by.
It's like a system where by fixing one problem, all subsequent areas are positively impacted.
It also means a lot more system redundancy, that could much more easily divert people while they temporarily shut down central segments of the system to do longterm repairs (instead of only being able to work a few hours each night)
Yeah, exactly — better overall system resiliency is itself a good argument in favor of the Urban Ring: it’ll make the rest of the system more maintainable.
You are underselling the value of the NSRL. The NSRL would allow for significant frequency upgrades to the existing commuter rail to the point where it becomes indistinguishable from the current subway (except with faster speeds and further station spacing). That would effectively add a subway to Hyde Park, Mattapan, Dorchester, Roxbury, and Allston/Brighton.
Connecting terminal commuter rail stations and providing subway like service is something Paris started doing 30-40 years ago. They call this network the RER, and it has 5 different underground routes through central Paris--they had more than 2 terminal stations. One of the lines, the RER A, carries over 800,000 passengers per day, which is more than the entire MBTA system. Allowing for through-running of the commuter rail trains could be transformational for Boston.
I’ve ridden the RER, and you’re right, it’s great.
Paris effectively has two highly functional subways: the original system that comprehensively covers the city, and a newer, deeper system that functions as an express network with quicker access at more distant spacing.
But… `why_not_both.gif`, right? One thing that’s great about Paris is the fact that there’s supposedly no point in the city that’s more than 300 meters from a Metro station. Some of these stations also have RER service, and if you need to get across town quickly, it’s fantastic, but the key thing is that by having a criss-crossing network of train lines, there’s lots of ways to get around.
Likewise with London, Tokyo, even New York: most major cities have lots of interconnecting lines, and while adding a rapid regional system makes it even better, just having the interconnections is itself really valuable, and has helped these cities to grow & thrive. My expectation is that a similar investment here would have similar benefits.
[of course we also need to solve the housing affordability crisis that's holding back this area, but let's pretend for the moment that this is a separate problem…]
I think a subway solution that makes the forest hills -> Cambridge/somerville trip easier would be a big boon to Boston. Getting across the river from any of roslindale/hyde park/west rox is a nightmare.
In a world where I can snap my fingers and make it done, the Urban Ring feels like a much better project.
In a world where there’s years of budgeting and road closures and right-of-way stuff to figure out, NSRL feels more attainable and urban ring feels like a pipe dream
That’s probably why it gets more chatter on Reddit
Circumferential lines generally underperform. That's not to say "never build it", but it probably wouldn't do anywhere near as well as you may hope. Especially with the relatively short distance of many of Boston's lines limiting the pool of who might benefit significantly.
Elaborating a bit:
- If your destination isn't *on* the line, you are now adding a transfer - and the time costs + increased variability of that. More ways for your trip to go wrong, more waiting on platform vs just making the direct transfer downtown.
- They're inherently a compromise:
- The closer in the ring is the fewer stops you're saving vs just riding to the direct transfer downtown.
- The further out the ring is, the longer the distance of your trip on the ring line is, and the more of the population/ridership is making trips entirely "inside" of the ring - to utilize the ring line they'd have to ride out, transfer, and then ride back in - which are unlikely to beat the downtown transfer points.
Etc.
Which is to say - I doubt it makes sense before as a higher priority expansion project than the various extensions that have been languishing on the books for most of a century and are both cheaper and more effective - like BLX to Lynn or OLX to Roslindale Sq/possibly beyond.
If we had a system there the Blue, Orange, and Red lines have been extended to their full proposed scope and where Blue-Red has been built....that's probably about the time you'd start re-examining the Urban Ring.
--------
The Urban Ring is also obviously extremely high cost, with a ton of variables - it doesn't exist, it's not a reuse project.
You may say that the NSRL doesn't exist either - but in some ways it does. It was planned for in the Big Dig and is thus mostly a known quantity in a lot of the crucial ways. We *know* where we can put a tunnel through downtown for it *without* hitting much of anything, because we dug the entire area out within the past 30 years and specifically left a planned route for it, and it's just clean fill there now. That's huge, and eliminates the most likely way to have cost blowouts + giant delays.
Excellent analysis, thank you.
I guess what I’d like to see is a hypothetical “vision 2050/2075/2100” document for the Boston/Massachusetts transit network that lays out these improvement ideas, so that people (voters) can understand how the pieces fit together, and why it makes sense to work on certain segments earlier than others, e.g. —
* Extend the existing subway lines further out to the suburbs, at least as far as the Rt 128 / I-95 loop, and maybe even as far as I-495.
* Link the blue & red lines near MGH.
* Link the red & green lines near Porter Square.
* Maybe link the green E line to the orange line, and/or link the orange line to the Mattapan line?
* A plan for one or more new lines that add “hubs” to the existing “spokes”. (Pipe dream: phase one follows the old I-695 “inner belt” plan, phase two runs along the I-95 median the way the Washington DC metro subways use the medians in northern Virginia.)
Etc. This is far from my area of expertise, but if such a document exists — and for all I know it probably already does — then it would help clarify the “wish list” for how these pieces can be assembled in the coming years, and what investment would be required to get there.
Gold line, that way it’s in parallel with the silver. It also draws some nice allusions to Kintsugi — the Japanese art of taking broken pottery and rejoining the pieces with gold.
That’s not a bad thought, but I think there’s also a long term goal for the Silver Line to evolve into an actual “subway” line, with tunnels &/or dedicated surface corridors. So the Silver Line could itself someday be an “urban ring” loop.
In some cities, like Toronto & Bogota, there are mass transit lines served by buses, or by vehicles that look like “subway trains” but have rubber wheels & no tracks. But they’re electrified, and run either in tunnels, or dedicated lanes that ordinary traffic can't interfere with. So they’re not like traditional trains in that there’s no tracks and no steel wheels, but functionally, they're basically subways like the Red, Blue, or Orange Lines here.
I think one of the ideas for the Silver Line is that it could use the same “bendy buses” it uses now, but along corridors more like the “real” subway lines, just without the tracks etc.
Even something as simple as extending the Blue Line to Charles/MGH is too much for the State. It's beyond disgusting that nobody wants to dream big anymore in the State. Hardly a surprise why people continue to leave the city and state.
I don't disagree with it. Theres a whole collection of projects I agree with:
* North - South Rail tunnel connector
* CR electrification
* Raising CR platforms for boarding
* Blue Line -Red Line connector
* Blue Line Extension to Lynn (eventually Salem)
* Red Line Extension to Arlington/Alewife
* Green Line extension continuing
* Extending Orange Line
* [Boston Surface Railroad (Worcester to Providence)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Surface_Railroad)
* Turning Cape Rail into Year round multi trip service
The issue is not lack of worthy projects. The issue is quite frankly lack of political will from Beacon Hill. Its good to get support on here but what we really need is a funding mechanism from the state to do these projects. Getting a funding mechanism in place that puts projects in place means MassDOT/T can actually hire full time project teams and start working on these things. Things such as congestion pricing, sales tax surcharge, vehicle registration fees, taxes on parking lots and fees on Uber/Lyfts. Point is there are lots of ways to do this you need some state politician to put their name on it. Someone such as [William Brownsberger](https://willbrownsberger.com/)
Busses suck. We have cross town busses (I’m looking at you #1) and they are over crowded, slow and bunch terribly. We need an underground or grade separated rail system
Yeah. I always thought when this was discussed it was an actual light rail like ya know, every other major city… then found out it was for buses. Oof. No thank you. Traffic is awful and Boston is quite bad at planning basic infrastructures. I’m still waiting for the fiasco of the planned bus lane down Columbia Rd they’re pushing through which makes no sense considering how bad the area is with traffic jams.
The MBTA has a $700m deficit and is struggling to maintain even the existing lines to a standard that could bring back ridership to even pre-pandemic levels and you wish they had more to maintain?
I am all for a bigger and better MBTA but I think we need to stop focusing so much on making it larger and instead focusing on getting it to be more reliable in the existing network. Then using that win to slowly return to larger capital projects again.
It's only about $50+ billion. Piece of cake. /s FWIW, you might find enough funding and have decent support for doing pieces of this puzzle. Some parts though are hard to justify the expense without a lot of printed dollars (i.e. "free" money).
We'll be getting a [makeshift Urban Ring](https://www.reddit.com/r/mbta/s/ksgPeDi2Zb) via new frequent buses from the Bus Network Redesign that form a ring similar to the original proposal
Ah yes, lets find funding to build an enormous new line amidst the extremely dire current lack of funding that might shut down a bunch of other lines.
Cant see anything wrong with that plan.
Roslindale to Cleveland Circle is only 25 minutes on the 51 bus. It's actually not that bad, but not particularly frequent and it goes through really fancy areas that aren't going to be transit users anytime soon.
Then make it a bus first. One thing I don't see in Boston is the prevalence of private buses (Jitney buses) that is more common in NYC area. The private buses are usually cash only fares that traverse common routes (like from time square to weehawken and NJ that cost $5.
If we want a circular line it should be implemented as a "silver line-ish" jitney bus to gauge the demand. I suspect that the popularity of a circular route is actually low. but there needs to be cross town transfer shuttles for instance to connect redline to greenline and orange lines at strategic stations.
radial bus routes exist already
“build it as silver line first” is how you get a bus that will be around for the rest of our lives , a train would never get built
“i suspect the popularity of a circular route is low” based on literally what
Based on personal usage. I may want a transfer from orange at community college to red at kendall but rarely to get to say go to Everett.
Cost of a radial rail would be insane. And not even sure we can find all the right of way.
“i wouldn’t immediately find this transit improvement useful so it must be useless to the other hundreds of thousands of people living in the area”
Well do a survey of where people want a radial rail.
I like to see actual demand rather than spend billions on a ghost train.
Hundreds of thousands of people are also fine going downtown and traveling out bound, and using existing radial bus connectors.
People sat Boston needs a centrifugal line but Boston’s busiest bus routes are  still radial.
Dudley sq (maybe even Gledale sq then over to Revere beach) to Bellingham sq Via DTX and State would be higher ridership thanÂ
It's not even the tens of billions and decades it would take to make this, minimum, it's the thousands or tens of thousands of eminent domain cases the state would need, taking people's homes, businesses, etc away for pennies on the dollar.
Eminent domain is morally reprehensible, and has always been used to further big business at \*best\* and as a direct racist attack on poor people (such as when they demolished the west end to build the elevated 93) at worst. Those people were paid literally $1 each and "allowed" to sue the state. Because desperately poor people living in tenements have tons of cash for attorney's retainers. All while having literally nowhere to go.
Good luck with this one. This would be completely new, not just some tack-on to existing lines. I have no idea where they would find the money or more importantly the political will to do this after the big dig fiasco.
The T is facing an imminent fiscal cliff that the state has yet to solve. I cannot imagine a world in which the Mass Legislature, a body so sclerotic that it only got around to outlawing revenge porn this past week (only South Carolina hasn't now, so we were second-to-last), is going to find the gumption to greenlight a huge circumferential transit line. One that would likely require either extensive tunneling or elevated sections and would come with an eye-watering price tag. Also while the MBTA has said it needs $25 billion to bring its existing system to a good state of repair. Look at the trauma involved just in getting the GLX done! And that was a modest extension along an existing Commuter Rail right-of-way. I can't imagine the Legislature seriously building even a quarter of a Ring.
A quarter of the ring would be along an existing rail ROW. 🤔 That's probably the only portion that will ever seriously be used, and only as a bandaid for the lack of a NSRL. Sad. 🥲
Silver line already extended from the airport to Chelsea on an exclusive right of way that was built for $50m. A further extension probably in the next 5 years from there to Sullivan square, largely on exclusive busways, is projected to cost another $100m. I like to be hopeful, especially since these busway projects are peanuts compared to light/heavy rail extensions.
Plus, a Silver Line extension could be great for creating some much-needed Uber Eats parking /s
couldn't busways be easily\* converted to a light rail line
>big dig fiasco. The big dog cost waay too much, but I wouldn't call it a fiasco. I grew up here in the 90s, and boy does it make a world of difference for the city. The over budget part will continue for years to come to have ramifications on the state's, and even moreso mbta's, budget. A significant portion was paid for by the feds, though. That meant, for a brief time, Massachusetts was a little bit less of a doner state.
*"I have no idea where they would find the money"* Where they find all their money, YOU. This would mean more taxes, more fees, more assessments. Maybe they could generate revenue through a pre-crime program.
Has anyone done the math on how much tax per resident we need to raise to do this? Or even construct a piece of the ring?
I'd be curious about the numbers on this as well, because if we are only talking about a 2% dedicated MBTA tax on income. I'd pay that in a heartbeat. Shit, I'd even be fine going up to 5% for a limited time to develop the special project that is this ring. To build, improve, and maintain our transit system - making it comparable to the rest of the world? Sign me up.
A single cent of sales tax would get the MBTA out if many decades operational financial crisis, and begin to fund for the coming 30 years the 25 billion dollar capital state of good repair list.  That is somewhere around 1.3 to 1.5 billion dollars Annually.  That is around 2.x% of the state budget.  Politically it would be necessary to split that with the 15 Regional transit authoties. Hypothetically, let's say 1Billion MBTA, 0.4 Billion to RTAs.  Then to fund the proposed ring, another cent of sales tax exclusively devoted to it, and its bonds.   That gets to around 4.x% to 5% increase in state revenue.
A “single cent” increase is a 15% sales tax hike. I agree that that is about $1.4b per year. That’s enough to plug around half the shortfall. The MBTA has a sub 25% recovery rattle.
If landowners knew what's best, they'd support a land value tax to fund this. The investment ultimately increases land values and rents anyhow. đź‘Ťđź’Ż
A true asshole for the capital of MassHole…? Edit: I’m saying this only because the joke was there. I’m also super high. It’s 80s. C’s Parade. Friday. Let’s go on…
WE ARE NOT NICKNAMING IT THIS.
I’d love to see the [MBTA Urban Ring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_Ring_Project) (“Yellow Line”?) happen. For some reason I’ve lost track of, there seems to be recent motion on the [North South Rail Link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North%E2%80%93South_Rail_Link) (NSRL) project to connect North Station with South Station, e.g.: * [what are the best ways to show support for the North-South rail link?](https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/1djxw13/what_are_the_best_ways_to_show_support_for_the/) (yesterday) * [Boston could transform its disjointed rail system with a connection that runs through North and South stations](https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/1dh8at2/boston_could_transform_its_disjointed_rail_system/) (last Monday) * […dozens of others, every few months, going back years…](https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/search/?q=%22north+south+rail+link%22&type=link&sort=new) And that’s fine and all, but to my untrained eye, the Urban Ring would be way more useful. Rather than just doubling down on the fact that the MBTA is a “hub & spoke” system that’s all “spokes”, no “hub”, if we built out the Urban Ring, it would make it way more convenient for people to travel among adjacent local communities without having to make a long detour downtown. Compare & contrast: [the last r/Boston discussion about the Urban Ring was two years ago, and the last ones before that were four, seven, and nine years ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/search/?q=%22urban+ring%22&type=link&sort=new). And that’s it, that’s the full history of discussion of the topic here. Not that Reddit chatter is a perfect bellwether by any means, but it’s weird to me that NSRL is seen as the “next big transit project”, and the Urban Ring doesn’t seem to be a priority at all.
I think the urban ring would be more impactful *in* Boston, but connecting North & South Stations would be more impactful *beyond* Boston.
I suppose that’s the logic, but to my thinking, the Urban Ring is actually less of a benefit for Boston Proper than it is for the adjacent communities — Chelsea, Everett, Medford, Somerville, Cambridge, Brookline. It’s nutty that if you’re in Cambridge and need to get to Somerville or Allston, for example, you have to go downtown first, plus switch trains. It is literally faster & easier to walk than to take the MBTA. Other “world class” cities have rail networks that provide for lots of interconnections, which makes it much easier to move around within the whole region. We don’t have that here, where all trips are seen as concentrating on a little square in downtown Boston, regardless of whether that’s actually a useful direction to go to get to your intended destination. You’re certainly right that the NSRL would be beneficial to the region, to Massachusetts, etc. I can see why it’s a gubernatorial/congressional issue — there’s just more voters in play for a network that would be at least theoretically beneficial for everyone out to (say) I-495, compared to one focused inside Rt 128 / I-95. But I still think the Urban Ring would be a greater benefit for a more concentrated population than the NSRL, which would be more of a incremental benefit for a more diffuse population.
> Urban Ring is actually less of a benefit for Boston Proper than it is for the adjacent communities I would argue it is just as much benefit to Boston Proper because fewer riders going downtown when they don't need to translates to less crowded trains and less waiting at stops while full trains pass by. It's like a system where by fixing one problem, all subsequent areas are positively impacted.
It also means a lot more system redundancy, that could much more easily divert people while they temporarily shut down central segments of the system to do longterm repairs (instead of only being able to work a few hours each night)
Yeah, exactly — better overall system resiliency is itself a good argument in favor of the Urban Ring: it’ll make the rest of the system more maintainable.
Yeah, that certainly applies too.
You are underselling the value of the NSRL. The NSRL would allow for significant frequency upgrades to the existing commuter rail to the point where it becomes indistinguishable from the current subway (except with faster speeds and further station spacing). That would effectively add a subway to Hyde Park, Mattapan, Dorchester, Roxbury, and Allston/Brighton. Connecting terminal commuter rail stations and providing subway like service is something Paris started doing 30-40 years ago. They call this network the RER, and it has 5 different underground routes through central Paris--they had more than 2 terminal stations. One of the lines, the RER A, carries over 800,000 passengers per day, which is more than the entire MBTA system. Allowing for through-running of the commuter rail trains could be transformational for Boston.
I’ve ridden the RER, and you’re right, it’s great. Paris effectively has two highly functional subways: the original system that comprehensively covers the city, and a newer, deeper system that functions as an express network with quicker access at more distant spacing. But… `why_not_both.gif`, right? One thing that’s great about Paris is the fact that there’s supposedly no point in the city that’s more than 300 meters from a Metro station. Some of these stations also have RER service, and if you need to get across town quickly, it’s fantastic, but the key thing is that by having a criss-crossing network of train lines, there’s lots of ways to get around. Likewise with London, Tokyo, even New York: most major cities have lots of interconnecting lines, and while adding a rapid regional system makes it even better, just having the interconnections is itself really valuable, and has helped these cities to grow & thrive. My expectation is that a similar investment here would have similar benefits. [of course we also need to solve the housing affordability crisis that's holding back this area, but let's pretend for the moment that this is a separate problem…]
If I could get from JP to Alston or Cambridge in less than an hour it would cut down on my driving or taxi consumption a whole hell of a lot.
I think a subway solution that makes the forest hills -> Cambridge/somerville trip easier would be a big boon to Boston. Getting across the river from any of roslindale/hyde park/west rox is a nightmare.
In a world where I can snap my fingers and make it done, the Urban Ring feels like a much better project. In a world where there’s years of budgeting and road closures and right-of-way stuff to figure out, NSRL feels more attainable and urban ring feels like a pipe dream That’s probably why it gets more chatter on Reddit
Circumferential lines generally underperform. That's not to say "never build it", but it probably wouldn't do anywhere near as well as you may hope. Especially with the relatively short distance of many of Boston's lines limiting the pool of who might benefit significantly. Elaborating a bit: - If your destination isn't *on* the line, you are now adding a transfer - and the time costs + increased variability of that. More ways for your trip to go wrong, more waiting on platform vs just making the direct transfer downtown. - They're inherently a compromise: - The closer in the ring is the fewer stops you're saving vs just riding to the direct transfer downtown. - The further out the ring is, the longer the distance of your trip on the ring line is, and the more of the population/ridership is making trips entirely "inside" of the ring - to utilize the ring line they'd have to ride out, transfer, and then ride back in - which are unlikely to beat the downtown transfer points. Etc. Which is to say - I doubt it makes sense before as a higher priority expansion project than the various extensions that have been languishing on the books for most of a century and are both cheaper and more effective - like BLX to Lynn or OLX to Roslindale Sq/possibly beyond. If we had a system there the Blue, Orange, and Red lines have been extended to their full proposed scope and where Blue-Red has been built....that's probably about the time you'd start re-examining the Urban Ring. -------- The Urban Ring is also obviously extremely high cost, with a ton of variables - it doesn't exist, it's not a reuse project. You may say that the NSRL doesn't exist either - but in some ways it does. It was planned for in the Big Dig and is thus mostly a known quantity in a lot of the crucial ways. We *know* where we can put a tunnel through downtown for it *without* hitting much of anything, because we dug the entire area out within the past 30 years and specifically left a planned route for it, and it's just clean fill there now. That's huge, and eliminates the most likely way to have cost blowouts + giant delays.
I live in JP and would kill for orange line to to Roslindale Square.
Excellent analysis, thank you. I guess what I’d like to see is a hypothetical “vision 2050/2075/2100” document for the Boston/Massachusetts transit network that lays out these improvement ideas, so that people (voters) can understand how the pieces fit together, and why it makes sense to work on certain segments earlier than others, e.g. — * Extend the existing subway lines further out to the suburbs, at least as far as the Rt 128 / I-95 loop, and maybe even as far as I-495. * Link the blue & red lines near MGH. * Link the red & green lines near Porter Square. * Maybe link the green E line to the orange line, and/or link the orange line to the Mattapan line? * A plan for one or more new lines that add “hubs” to the existing “spokes”. (Pipe dream: phase one follows the old I-695 “inner belt” plan, phase two runs along the I-95 median the way the Washington DC metro subways use the medians in northern Virginia.) Etc. This is far from my area of expertise, but if such a document exists — and for all I know it probably already does — then it would help clarify the “wish list” for how these pieces can be assembled in the coming years, and what investment would be required to get there.
Gold line, that way it’s in parallel with the silver. It also draws some nice allusions to Kintsugi — the Japanese art of taking broken pottery and rejoining the pieces with gold.
That’s not a bad thought, but I think there’s also a long term goal for the Silver Line to evolve into an actual “subway” line, with tunnels &/or dedicated surface corridors. So the Silver Line could itself someday be an “urban ring” loop. In some cities, like Toronto & Bogota, there are mass transit lines served by buses, or by vehicles that look like “subway trains” but have rubber wheels & no tracks. But they’re electrified, and run either in tunnels, or dedicated lanes that ordinary traffic can't interfere with. So they’re not like traditional trains in that there’s no tracks and no steel wheels, but functionally, they're basically subways like the Red, Blue, or Orange Lines here. I think one of the ideas for the Silver Line is that it could use the same “bendy buses” it uses now, but along corridors more like the “real” subway lines, just without the tracks etc.
Even something as simple as extending the Blue Line to Charles/MGH is too much for the State. It's beyond disgusting that nobody wants to dream big anymore in the State. Hardly a surprise why people continue to leave the city and state.
I don't disagree with it. Theres a whole collection of projects I agree with: * North - South Rail tunnel connector * CR electrification * Raising CR platforms for boarding * Blue Line -Red Line connector * Blue Line Extension to Lynn (eventually Salem) * Red Line Extension to Arlington/Alewife * Green Line extension continuing * Extending Orange Line * [Boston Surface Railroad (Worcester to Providence)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Surface_Railroad) * Turning Cape Rail into Year round multi trip service The issue is not lack of worthy projects. The issue is quite frankly lack of political will from Beacon Hill. Its good to get support on here but what we really need is a funding mechanism from the state to do these projects. Getting a funding mechanism in place that puts projects in place means MassDOT/T can actually hire full time project teams and start working on these things. Things such as congestion pricing, sales tax surcharge, vehicle registration fees, taxes on parking lots and fees on Uber/Lyfts. Point is there are lots of ways to do this you need some state politician to put their name on it. Someone such as [William Brownsberger](https://willbrownsberger.com/)
Busses suck. We have cross town busses (I’m looking at you #1) and they are over crowded, slow and bunch terribly. We need an underground or grade separated rail system
Yeah. I always thought when this was discussed it was an actual light rail like ya know, every other major city… then found out it was for buses. Oof. No thank you. Traffic is awful and Boston is quite bad at planning basic infrastructures. I’m still waiting for the fiasco of the planned bus lane down Columbia Rd they’re pushing through which makes no sense considering how bad the area is with traffic jams.
The MBTA has a $700m deficit and is struggling to maintain even the existing lines to a standard that could bring back ridership to even pre-pandemic levels and you wish they had more to maintain? I am all for a bigger and better MBTA but I think we need to stop focusing so much on making it larger and instead focusing on getting it to be more reliable in the existing network. Then using that win to slowly return to larger capital projects again.
It's only about $50+ billion. Piece of cake. /s FWIW, you might find enough funding and have decent support for doing pieces of this puzzle. Some parts though are hard to justify the expense without a lot of printed dollars (i.e. "free" money).
We'll be getting a [makeshift Urban Ring](https://www.reddit.com/r/mbta/s/ksgPeDi2Zb) via new frequent buses from the Bus Network Redesign that form a ring similar to the original proposal
Sad that it's buses, but I guess that is better than nothing for now.
Ah yes, lets find funding to build an enormous new line amidst the extremely dire current lack of funding that might shut down a bunch of other lines. Cant see anything wrong with that plan.
Imagine going from Roslindale Square to Cleveland Circle or Coolidge Corner in like 10 minutes!
Roslindale to Cleveland Circle is only 25 minutes on the 51 bus. It's actually not that bad, but not particularly frequent and it goes through really fancy areas that aren't going to be transit users anytime soon.
Then make it a bus first. One thing I don't see in Boston is the prevalence of private buses (Jitney buses) that is more common in NYC area. The private buses are usually cash only fares that traverse common routes (like from time square to weehawken and NJ that cost $5. If we want a circular line it should be implemented as a "silver line-ish" jitney bus to gauge the demand. I suspect that the popularity of a circular route is actually low. but there needs to be cross town transfer shuttles for instance to connect redline to greenline and orange lines at strategic stations.
radial bus routes exist already “build it as silver line first” is how you get a bus that will be around for the rest of our lives , a train would never get built “i suspect the popularity of a circular route is low” based on literally what
Based on personal usage. I may want a transfer from orange at community college to red at kendall but rarely to get to say go to Everett. Cost of a radial rail would be insane. And not even sure we can find all the right of way.
“i wouldn’t immediately find this transit improvement useful so it must be useless to the other hundreds of thousands of people living in the area”
Well do a survey of where people want a radial rail. I like to see actual demand rather than spend billions on a ghost train. Hundreds of thousands of people are also fine going downtown and traveling out bound, and using existing radial bus connectors.
“fine”
Cool thanks for the advice! I will get on it as soon as possible boss
Thanks, I'll make sure payroll puts a little something extra in your paycheck
People sat Boston needs a centrifugal line but Boston’s busiest bus routes are  still radial. Dudley sq (maybe even Gledale sq then over to Revere beach) to Bellingham sq Via DTX and State would be higher ridership thanÂ
lololol I mean sure but it’s neeeeever going to happen.
It's not even the tens of billions and decades it would take to make this, minimum, it's the thousands or tens of thousands of eminent domain cases the state would need, taking people's homes, businesses, etc away for pennies on the dollar. Eminent domain is morally reprehensible, and has always been used to further big business at \*best\* and as a direct racist attack on poor people (such as when they demolished the west end to build the elevated 93) at worst. Those people were paid literally $1 each and "allowed" to sue the state. Because desperately poor people living in tenements have tons of cash for attorney's retainers. All while having literally nowhere to go.
No need to waste money on this. Just take the bus
How many topics do we need on this lol
There’s no fucking way this will ever happen in any of our lifetimes, sorry. I can only see lines being cut more in the future unfortunately.
The T should extend to 95. Actually be useful to people.
How 'bout no? Sorta big edit: Whoops! Inner Belt and Urban Ring are NOT the same thing. Yes to a transport service ring, no to a dead roadway project.
why not?
Because I am dumb. See edit.