Master_Dogs t1_j0749zq wrote on December 14, 2022 at 3:36 PM

Reply to comment by meis66 in Our First Look at Boston’s Plans to Extend Columbus Ave. Bus Lanes by senatorium

Light rail is pretty expensive, so I don't see us actually doing that any time soon. GLX took decades to get the State to commit to and that had a preexisting ROW. And it goes through fairly wealthy parts of Greater Boston and hits Tufts. It only just opened on the Medford Branch this past week, after years of construction and decades of debate.

BRT seems much more likely. It doesn't require much more than some bus lanes, stations, and fairly frequent (for a bus) service. Plus the T and other transit agencies in the US love to just slap BRT branding on "half decent bus service" to get people to think its something special when really it's just a frequent bus and not reaaaaally BRT if you look at international examples of that.

KangarooInAZoo t1_j0898k0 wrote on December 14, 2022 at 7:57 PM

Light rail on the street is way cheaper. The MBTA proposed extending the E branch to Hyde Square (0.75 miles) and it only cost $40M. Right of way makes it more expensive even if it’s a better transit option.

Master_Dogs t1_j08lm24 wrote on December 14, 2022 at 9:14 PM

Cheaper compared to a GLX style project I imagine, where we made dedicated stations and a community path extension and such.

Still more expensive than standard buses or fake BRT though. You could buy a couple of buses for like $5M and slap BRT branding on that service once you've got a couple of cheapo shelters and some paint on the road. That's the problem unfortunately, we're not going to spend $40M on transit like that. Even if light rail is better.

Would be nice if we could drop like $1B on extending the Green Line across the area with street level rail. Maybe cut off some streets from regular traffic to basically give it a dedicated ROW. One day anyway.