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Urban planning is horribly subjective, and I don’t really expect most people to agree with most of my own personal opinions on what I find to be good, and not so good design.

I do believe that in most arguments, there is some kind of neutral ground to be found. With that in mind, can we agree that building a new development in the urban core of Boston with 6,500 new parking spaces is not really the best thing for the city?

Pollution, congestion, buildings that are meant to be driven to…all-in-all a pedestrian hostile neighborhood..

I’m continually amazed at how Boston is trying to abandon the best aspects of its history, and revert to some kind of car-centric nightmare that other cities are desperately trying to get away from.

Other cities are thinking about how they can redevelop, reshape and reinvent themselves to cast off the less sustainable growth patterns that suck the life from urban areas and make them into unhealthy, unwelcoming places.

- No real mass transit to speak of.
- Extremely wide streets featuring lanes and lanes of asphalt separating widely-spaced buildings.
- Mediocre architecture. Building exteriors that use the same rehashed precast, prefab materials and motifs. Structures that meet the street, and “greet” pedestrians with endless, blank walls. (see the above link)

Let’s hope the median-strip landscaping style of the nearby Greenway is abandoned for this new Seaport Square. Gotta have something to look at when you come up out of the parking garage.

I saw people working on Arlington station the other night. Blew my mind. Absolutely shattered my psyche for the next few minutes. I could barely contain my surprise. I coped by accepting the baseless rationale that they were probably doing maintenance on the wooden barricades keeping passengers away from the work site construction area.

If they were around today, I never saw them. There was a guy in a hardhat sitting in the customer service booth, but that’s about it. The number of people likely to be surprised by this? My unscientific estimate puts it at approximately zero.

But back to those barricades. They exist to keep people away from the open pits where workers have been thinking about building elevators for the better part of two years now, not to mention the stairs leading up to the Arlington St. mezzanine. I’m not sure what one would find if they took a stroll up there, but given the time they’ve had, and the exclusive access to the space (no blaming Sox fans this time) I’m rightfully expecting diamond-encrusted fare gates and gold inlay along walls of solid mahogany paneling.

Hypothetically, one could walk through the plywood door marked “EMERGENCY EXIT” and with minimal difficulty and eventually find their way to the surface again. Today someone tried just that. It’s pretty easy to do when:

A: You are blind

B: The “door” to decrepit platform beyond is left open. Allowing free access to whatever fun obstacles happen to be waiting there.

A businessman type stood by and watched our misguided passenger venture into the The Zone. I ran in and politely suggested he might not want to be there. He told me that he was just trying to find his way to the stairs. I gave him directions, and made sure he found his bearings on the platform wall, and not the tracks to his right. The yellow caution strips designed to keep the visually impaired from entering the track area don’t exist at Arlington. Someday, we’re promised. Someday.

Here’s my suggestion: Have workers GO TO ARLINGTON. DO WORK. LEAVE. GO BACK TO ARLINGTON. DO MORE WORK. LEAVE. Rinse, repeat until the project is done and the station is safe again.

Abandon all hope of effective transit, or saving over half a billion tax dollars

The boring is to facilitate the construction of bus tunnels that will replace the existing, useable rail tunnels that are big enough for the Green Line but not big enough for the Silver Line buses that will eventually traverse them.

A slower, more expensive, claustrophobic and bumpier ride than light rail for only $600 more than light rail? Sign me right up!

Oh wait, the EOT and city already did!

It’s letter writing time.

On my way out this afternoon, I stopped at the foot of my apartment building’s steps and did a quick re-inventory of all of the crap I was hauling downtown to use on a project. Peered inside bags and boxes, fiddled with my iPod for a second, and went on. I usually have this all setup before I leave, but today was different. Turns out my lack of planning was rather beneficial to my own well-being.

I meandered through the streets for a while, closing in on Green St. station. I was the only person around. Despite the nice weather, the sidewalks were empty and the roads were dead silent. That peace would be short-lived.

A few steps short of Elm St. where Seaverns becomes Gordon, there was the sound of a fast approaching car ahead. In one short moment a blur of metal appeared in the middle of the intersection.

My cynicism quickly asserted itself. “Oh yay, another Masshole blowing through a stop sign. In a residential neighborhood with lots of kids - a few feet away from a daycare for toddlers no less.”

I assumed the Masshole in question would just keep on keeping on as most do. Putting other people in danger until they ended up hurting or killing someone else. Oh, but the universe had other plans today. The momentary pause in my travels a few minutes earlier probably saved my life. My pessimism died however.

Like a mirage rising up from the deserted street, appeared a white and blue object over my right shoulder. “No…it couldn’t be!” I thought. Oh, but it was.

After spending a few years living in Memphis, I’m used to watching people blow through red lights and stop signs at 30 or 40mph in front of cops, without consequence. I have more faith in the BPD, but it wavered for just a few seconds today. The police cruiser coming down Seaverns rolled to a stop next to me. For a moment I assumed that perhaps the officer in question was either uninterested in pursuing the neighborhood Masshole, or was focused on something else when the other car flew through the intersection.

Turns out, the cop was just setting a good example.

Their foot suddenly met the accelerator with force. The wheel turned sharply to the right, the lights came to life, and a quick chirp of the horn rang out. It was over.

On an otherwise dead street, three people happened to be in the right place, at the right time. Everything timed perfectly. The universe in sync.

It wasn’t much, and those of you reading this might be wondering what the big deal is, but all I know is that it was enough to leave me in a chipper mood for the rest of the afternoon.

Marathon season tends to annoy the hell out of me. Huge swaths of the city get shut down, there are more crowds than usual, and not a single tourist can walk three feet unaided by “stop in the middle of the sidewalk and have a family meeting session”. I try to be understanding of the fact they’re probably from someplace where you drive from building to building, and walking is discouraged or downright impossible. Going from place to place on foot new to them. Soon they’ll have the South Boston Waterfront to visit, and they’ll feel more at home.

I think we often take it for granted that many visitors to Boston have never experienced mass transit before. The T is literally the first taste (smell?) they get. I know as a kid I loved the idea of riding the Green Line from the western suburbs, through to the central subway and out onto the North Station > Lechmere El. It made quite an impression on me, and the thrill of riding the trains almost surpassed that of our regular family trips to the Museum of Science.

Now that I’m much older I see things a bit differently. I’m more cynical and critical, and when I try to imagine what it must be like to have the modern day T as a first-time user it saddens me. Sure, kids love the T. It seems just as exciting to them as it did to me way back when. I’m not so sure about the adults.

But can you blame them?

If you visited Boston for the last marathon and were returning for the current one, I can’t imagine you wouldn’t leave the T without feeling as though it was falling victim to utter neglect. Copley looks almost identical to the state it was in back in December of 2006, much less mid-April 2007. In early spring of last year they ripped up the pavement where the new elevator shaft will be on the inbound side. Workers paved it over almost immediately. I assumed this was to clear up the site for the marathon and that once it was over, work would resume.

Yeah, about that. In 18 months, construction crews have managed to string up some temporary-looking overhead lights on the platforms, and install some more permanent-looking fixtures on top of the decades of flaking paint on each ceiling. The exclusion zone behind the outbound headhouse has slowly grown, but nothing actually seems to happen there. That’s it. Oh…wait…I almost forgot, someone found the time to bolt an empty conduit bracket on the ceiling of the outbound platform.

Arlington isn’t much better. That station was due to have half of its renovations complete 19 days ago. They managed to get some of the work done for the new elevator leading to the street, but the shaft leading down from the mezzanine to the outbound platform has remained an empty concrete shell since late last year. There is no shaft of any sort leading down to the inbound side. Nor have the platforms been raised, their walls redone, etc.

Kenmore is just a catastrophe, but at least it’s a reliable disappointment (to borrow a phrase from Harvey Pekar). They tore down one of the ubiquitous, long-standing wooden barricades in the lobby only to reveal that workers had installed tile within the barricade that didn’t match what they had installed on the other side. I suppose they could always play it off as some kind of “hip”, post-modern random blending of materials. The bus shelter they began assembling almost a year ago has yet to shelter anyone from anything, to my knowledge.

The fact remains that the station is falling victim to the same construction problems as the other two. Mainly, shit just ain’t getting done. I don’t know what sort of pace you would have to work at to complete so little in so much time. What is complete will probably start to crumble to dust by the time the project finishes. A date, I might add, is closely linked to that of the development of fusion power generation or an HIV vaccine. Always just “a few years away” with the periodic “breakthrough” event that ultimately amounts to nothing.

When it come to MBTA station renovations, things come together rapidly, and you stand back amazed at how they’ve managed to take shape so fast, only to see what looked like a nearly-finished part sit seemingly ignored for an eternity.

Living here, we have to live with the slow march of progress every day. I can’t imagine how I’d feel coming back to Boston after a year or more and finding the Green Line in almost the exact same state it was in when I left. It’s something that I’ve had to explain away to a number of out-of-towners.

Maybe after this marathon they’ll finally start accomplishing something. But then we’ll hear how things can’t get done because it’s Sox season, school is in session, foliage-seeking tourists are in town, followed by the influx of visitors for Christmas or Hanukkah.

Maybe after the marathon after this one. We can hope.

We can also hope that visitors don’t come away with a feeling that we just don’t care about our city, and are happy to let it crumble away beneath our feet. No amount of tourism advertising or “Coming in the Spring of ‘09″ banners can counter the reality that people see with their own eyes.

This entry on your stereotypical young Masshole on the T getting his comeuppance made me want to share this little anecdote from last week.

I was standing waiting for the good old #39 bus in JP when a car pulled up into the bus stop at Seaverns and Centre. This is where people often park when they want to grab takeout from one of the many restaurants nearby, but find the idea of walking to be a strange activity totally not in sync with their drive - get something - drive more - get something else - drive a bit further - get the next thing mentality.

This is slightly annoying for people like me who have to walk out in the middle of the street to catch a bus (really only when the street is partially flooded), other drivers who can’t get around the bus, and profoundly crap thing for those who absolutely, positively need a bus to pull up to the very edge of the curb so they can get on board. (something #39 drivers have been getting a hell of a lot better at recently - thanks guys!)

But Massholes don’t care about this sort of thing. They only care about their own convenience, and because we often portray their behavior as something “cute” and worthy of excusing and coddling, they continue on, and worse…multiply.

Enter a quadriplegic man stage right. I spot him coming down the street and take a step back so he can get by. He is about to continue on his way when he suddenly spins around and heads my way again. Rolls right up to the woman parked at the very spot where the front door of the bus will meet the curb and stops. Spits out the device he uses to move himself about, stares right at her, summons up every bit of energy he can muster and yells at her to move.

She promptly floors it out of there.

I’m not sure if I can really convey how utterly random and amazing this was. Usually the elderly and disabled are forced to hobble off of curbs and up onto buses, or simply wait for the next one and hope the Masshole moves their car before then.

What really got to me was that maybe, just maybe the shame stuck around long enough for her to convince herself to never do that again.

From the “2+2=5″ department:

Today I once again made the mistake of believing the MBTA Photo Policy to have some kernel of truth to it. Despite the fact it was issued by the Transit Police, and a call to the State Transportation Building will confirm you can no longer get your hands on one of the bright yellow permits for non-commercial photography, it is still highly likely that anyone attempting to take pictures on the T will be told it doesn’t exist. Or - and this is a new one - that it is a complete fabrication. I was informed today that it “is a lie” and “they’re trying to figure out why it’s up there [on the MBTA Transit Police’s site].” For the sake of the employee in question, I won’t say who it was, or where this took place, but that they assured me the non-existent policy I linked to above was not enforced one of the last times someone took a picture in their presence.

I was also informed that I would have my camera confiscated and face arrest if I continued to take pictures. If I didn’t have other obligations, I might just risk it. Let them arrest me, and then place a call to a civil liberties lawyer. Drag the T to court, and settle it once and for all. Challenge punishment for breaking a policy that doesn’t exist despite the fact someone at the MBTA took the time to write it, convert it to PDF and host it on the police’s site.

Even though it’s pointless, I’ve tried to rationalize with T employees.

Lines of reasoning like: “Is there a measurable difference between taking a picture of the platform and looking at the platform?” don’t work. I’m of the opinion that if something is in plain sight to anyone, then there really isn’t any danger in permanently preserving a record of what I could walk past every day for a year without ever being questioned.

Ultimately, we end up apologizing to each other because neither one of us can do a damn thing.

There are two possible solutions to this. Someone with some pull at the T will finally lay down the law and tells employees to follow the policy, or someone will get arrested or their equipment confiscated and takes the T to court over it.

Sadly, I think it will probably be the latter.

I took a teeth-chattering ride on the Silver Line last night to make my first visit to the ICA. (Thursday nights are free 5 to 9pm) It wasn’t my first trip to the Waterfront, but it was by far the longest. I spent a few hours walking around and around, taking in the area. I’d like to say I didn’t go in with a confirmation bias, but that’s probably not entirely true. However I did go with the idea that I may have allowed my negativity about it to grow to unchecked.

Beginning at Boston Marine Industrial Park, I walked northwest, then east again. Past the Boston Design Center, a bank, the local police station, nearish to the courthouse, then over the highway and into the World Trade Center / Institute for Contemporary Art area.

And the verdict? Worse than I thought. The South Boston Waterfront represents every major negative trend in urban design and architecture. It’s not a particularly pleasant place to travel to, and I suppose I should elaborate on exactly why.

The Silver Line

I’ve written much about it, but the more I ride the waterfront line, the less I believe that it will ever really function as a viable transit link for the area. A tiny handful of people on the absolutely gigantic Silver Line platforms easily fills up a bus to standing room only levels. Unlike on let’s say, any other transit line in the city, this means a single-file line of riders going all the way to the back. The buses just cannot hold that many people. So they’ve got to run more of them, which means the whole system is liable to back up with ease. Especially when you consider the platform length at South Station which is considerably shorter than any other place on the line. The other stations are stunning, and are future-proofed, with enough room to deal with extremely large crowds. It’s unfortunate that the vehicles used are not.

Rule #1 of running any line is “get people where they want to go and do it as quickly as possible”. The Silver Line doesn’t really do that. The trip through the tunnels is a 20mph crawl along uneven concrete. The low limit is imposed due to the unguided nature of the vehicles - it’s too narrow to allow them to travel any faster.

After World Trade Center station (and the hilarious five minute traffic light) the bus leaves Silver Line Way, starts up the diesel engine and begins driving around in tight circles. Around and around it goes, but at least there isn’t any traffic to deal with yet. It doesn’t appear as if you actually go anywhere. You see the same buildings and street corners over and over again, the clock ticks away, but you’re suddenly back where you were two minutes earlier.

I can’t believe this is considered the future of transportation in Boston, and the EOT/MBTA want to pay an extra 600 million to make sure the next phase of the Silver Line is a bus, not a train.

Street Presence - Or The Lack Thereof

“Street Presence” is one of those urban design terms that is kinda hard to pin down. You know a building with good Street Presence when you see one. Quincy Market - good. Newbury St. - very good. City Hall - bad. Anything in the Waterfront District - just terrible.

It can best be described as how a building meets the street (or rather, sidewalk) and the way it opens itself up to, or turns away from (and turns away) pedestrians. It’s entirely subjective, so either I have an incredibly misguided view of what makes good street presence, or the Waterfront fails at it.

As I walked around yesterday, something clicked. The Silver Line may just be the perfect transit system for this area because the area is not designed with pedestrians in mind. Why bother with a real transit link when every building is seemingly designed to be driven to and from? Buildings are seperated by large swaths of concrete and asphalt, isolated on their own little lots, and either retreat back from the sidewalks with grass and saplings, or offer up something like this:

Look at that lovely, almost-endless blank exterior. Concrete prefab and green-tinted glass. It’s the Kendall Sq. motif transplanted across the river!

But you just keep on seeing it:

This is probably intended to be a warm, inviting space:

The message these buildings is sending can be best summed up as “Go away” or rather, “Please enter via our parking garage”.

This is a common sight. Blank wall, blank door with an “interesting” light to give it “flair” (I’m just guessing on that one)

Even the ICA turns its back on the city:

There’s no impulse to walk, to explore, to see what’s around the next corner. You just want to get inside, get what you need to do done, and leave.

Putting On A Bad Face

The exteriors are not just blank, but repetitive. Extremely so.

First, what I usually refer to as “White Plasticky Crap”. I’m sure there is a better name in a building design catalog, but after winning the lottery, my first move would be to buy the patent, and never again let it be used to harm city skylines. It looks cheap. I’m talking really, really cheap. Even the best architect in the world would look like they’re not really trying at all when they use this crap.

But you see it everywhere

And let’s not forget beige/off-white concrete prefab paneling!

The fact so many buildings use the same windows doesn’t help.

Even the ICA isn’t really that nice of a building. Sure it’s “different”, but I find it comes off as cold, antiseptic and has all of the charm one might expect to find in a hospital burn unit. There is even a display that sits there spouting off about how wonderful the building is, and why you should be in love with it. If you make the mistake of not driving directly there, it might take you a few minutes of wandering around the blank walls and looming cantilevered floors to find your way in. The prevailing opinion seems to be “But it has glass! Lots of it! That somehow makes it amazing!”

I just don’t see it.

To me, it’s a change in materials, but not mentality from certain other buildings located elsewhere in the city. Let’s face it. If you added some concrete to the exterior, you would have a mini City Hall.

Speaking of which…an afternoon in the Waterfront has convinced me of one thing. Menino is obsessed with moving City Hall out here for the view, and the view alone. There is nothing to suggest anything built out here will ever be attractive or welcoming. The same mistakes repeated over and over again. The same mistakes made with the Government Center complex. It’s “Urban Renewal” that is hostile to urbanism itself.

But oh yeah…there’s lots of glass.

Today The JP Gazette had an excellent article discussing a meeting that was held to discuss #39 bus improvements.

First off, it’s worth taking another look at the major arguments in favor of keeping the #39 bus, and abandoning the idea of restoring Green Line service:

• The trolleys are too large for the cramped quarters of Centre and S. Huntington. They cannot simply pull over and get out of the way of other traffic. Every station stop (six in all between the VA Hospital and Forest Hills) would bring both streets to a halt.
• The ADA-compliant stops that would need to be constructed would jut out into the street. Each of the train’s doors would need to meet up with a “bump-out” that would consume a parking spot. (The areas between the bump-outs would be free for cars to park in.)
• Trolley stops would limit the space available for delivery trucks to idle.

So let’s look at the EOT’s ideas for the #39:

The EOT proposes building bump-outs several feet wide and 60 feet long. Buses could pull up to them without pulling over at all, quickly and easily getting flush with a curb of the right height. The wider sidewalks would also provide room for bus shelters.

Officials said they are not recommending specific stops for bump-outs at this point, though they indicated they want some on Centre/South. One would be built as a pilot project to test the idea.

Bump-outs would be shorter than the 80 to 100 feet currently needed for the buses to pull over. Along with stop consolidation/removal, the proposal could result in a net gain of on-street parking spaces for private cars in the corridor, which EOT officials indicated is another goal of the project.

This seems…oddly familiar. Hopefully they don’t mean Silver Line style shelters which despite a reported cost of $250,000, seem incapable of sheltering anyone from anything.

But let’s read on:

Public transit issues in the corridor are regularly debated as bus-versus-trolley. But as EOT officials explained the Route 39 proposal, it appears that in practice, the 60-foot buses have similar problems to those critics worried that trolleys would create: blocking traffic; trouble getting through traffic; “bunching” of vehicles; consuming large stretches of the street for stops.

I can’t remember the last time I saw a bus on the route able to pull over to the point where a lane wasn’t obstructed. When a fire truck or ambulance comes through, any large vehicle is more or less forced to just sit there. It’s a problem that cannot be fixed, but the alternative is to ban trucks and eliminate all forms mass transit along Centre and South streets. Another impossibility.

And if you haven’t noticed it yet, the Gazette is more than happy to point it out:

And EOT’s proposed solutions are similar to those once proposed for trolley restoration. They may also trigger similar controversies.

Forced by another lawsuit to begin trolley restoration planning several years ago, the MBTA convened a community advisory committee. Its first—and, as it turned out, only—work was planning consolidation of stops, construction of bump-out sidewalks and placement of shelters and other street furniture.

Everything the EOT is proposing is what anti-trolley activists viewed as downright apocalyptic a few years ago, and they acknowledge that the #39 has the same traffic-obstructing effect as the Green Line.

So given the choice between an option that offers roughly three times the capacity of a bus per run, a more comfortable ride, a single-seat ride into downtown, travels in a private reservation along half its route and doesn’t pollute, the state prefers the only other alternative. An alternative that is cramped, permanently overcrowded (yet faces plummeting ridership the T forecast if trolley service was discontinued), lets you feel every bump along the road, is stuck in mixed traffic the entire way to Back Bay Station, and pumps fumes in the air for all but five hours a day.

But wait, there’s more! Better Transit Without Trolleys suggests making downtown even less accessible, by cutting the route back from the area around those pesky Green Line stations the community used to be able to access.

Another issue is the so-called Belvedere Loop—a dogleg in the route where, instead of running straight to Back Bay Station, it circles around the Prudential Center and Copley Square. Schimek suggested that removing the loop alone could speed the trip time by 4 minutes.

Other ideas included: running some express buses; creating bus-only lanes on Huntington Avenue; putting the route on the main MBTA system map to publicize it; publishing a schedule that is honest about today’s slower trips; and removing cobblestones and old trolley tracks from the 39 stop at the Forest Hills T Station.

People did bring up trolley restoration, but the EOT responded by launching into doublespeak:

Trolley advocate Alan Smith asked EOT officials whether they interpreted the agreement as describing a bus-only discussion. Stern twice answered, “Yes.”

“There is no specific direction that mandated we look at anything else,” Stern said.

[State Sen. Dianne] Wilkerson, who is also a lawyer, disagreed. “If it isn’t specific, it means everything is on the table,” she said, suggesting that what EOT really means is, “‘That’s our decision and we’re sticking to it.’”

EOT attorney Dan Collins introduced a new angle—that EOT can’t discuss trolleys because of the pending trolley restoration lawsuit. But pressed by Wilkerson, he clarified that he only meant for that specific public meeting, not the entire public process.

“I’m not saying at the moment [the process is] exclusively talking about bus service,” Collins said.

Most people would probably agree that setting a specific date for the completion of any MBTA project is a great way to ensure disappointment down the line.

The long-closed eastern half of Arlington station was supposed to reopen today, but it shouldn’t come as a shock that it didn’t. The workers have yet to complete elevators down into the station and to the outbound platform, while the inbound platform elevator remains an empty pit of crumbling concrete and flaking paint. Not even the beginnings of a shaft are visible.

The stairs leading down to the platforms are still the same old ones riders left behind a nearly a year and a half ago, while the platforms themselves look about the same as they did a week after they closed in November 2006.

While I haven’t gone into the closed mezzanine (nor do I plan to), I’m not inclined to assume that it is a pristine, renovated space once again ready for commuters.

Maybe next year?