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And how would you build a path from the Greenway to the Esplanade?
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do it
Ideally we'll eventually ban cars from large portions of downtown, Prague-style, but projects like this are a step in that direction.
"The way they do it elsewhere"
That's fine if you want Boston to look like Prague. Why do people always do that? One always sees comments here about "the way they do it in Amsterdam", "the way it's done in Paris". Too many people try to remake Boston in the image of these other places they are fond of. Not to mention the people who relocate here from other states, get high level positions, and then try to reimagine Boston in the manner of where they came from in Oregon and various points midwest. "More open space", "spaces knitted together", etc. Boston has lost much of it's uniqueness and character as a result of years of this generic reimagining.
Thank You.
I love people who say "It should be more like Paris". The irony being that most of Paris looks the way it is owing to an urban renewal project that made the destruction of the West End look like you tore down a garage behind a 1920's house on a side street in Roxbury.
Sure, but
if we can replicate the good parts of the finished product without that level of destruction (and we can!) why shouldn't we do so?
Did you mention another city not built for cars?
A city that absolutely sucked for cyclists except for that one day of the Tour de France when I visited in 2012?
A city that has been reclaiming car wastelands for *gasp* PEOPLE?
Paris is a great example of how progress can be made in an older city that has been infested by carbrain for way too long.
Uniqueness isn't value. Admiring others isn't self-contempt.
Uniquely bad transportation problems aren't an attractive quirk of Boston. The "uniqueness and character" of this city are not a result of automobile traffic downtown.
Examples of positive conditions in other cities are not an indictment of Boston's image or culture, but serve as proof that these conditions are possible there and therefore possible here.
They're great cities, but I don't want to be in Paris or Amsterdam. I want to be in Boston, I just don't want to be in my car in traffic the whole time I'm here. People in other cities get to walk to work, bike to the grocery, take a train to the movies and to sports games. I want that. And they have that in those places.
You Can Do All Those Things Here...
All you have to do is walk, bike, take the train, and go to the movies.
There is an f'ton of car traffic in Paris too. Trust me. It just isn't in the places where the well off live.
Too bad we didn't keep the elevated green line
I'm not exactly serious, but it's fun to image that the link was already three-quarters there, just like the NYC High Line.
Too late now
But had the elevated Green Line tracks around North Station been kept suspended and turned into a park like the high line in NYC, that would have been very cool. Oh well.
Given the cost of the Big Dig and GLX, I don't see Massachusetts investing in an elevated park/path even if it would be great to have.
NYC Did It!
I am sick of people going "New York did it, let's do it too".
NYC cops run down protesters with their SUV's. I don't want BPD doing that too.
Perhaps a pavement shrunken Blossom Street with a tree lined path down the middle, and then the same thing down Merrimack Street? JFC - A 15 foot tall elevated path? Get bent.
I was once in a community meeting in the South End where a transplant suggested knocking some buildings for more parks. I asked him "Did you grow up in a suburb?" He said yes. 'Nuf said.
Copy what works
Why shouldn't Boston emulate successful projects in other cities, particularly when the circumstances are the same?
Anyway, as I note it's too late for the elevated T tracks and there's no way anyone will approve the $250M or so it would take to recreate.
bUtt BoStOn Is DiFfErEnT!
bUtt BoStOn Is DiFfErEnT!
Haul Your Tush
Back to that trailer park in Oregon anytime you want.
A mini high line?
So we should have kept the Central Artery?
now imagine that
Now imagine that as a 'highline'. in some sections if you remove the median and like.. uh have a rock concert or a soccer game. It was that big.
However, many of the pillars that held it up had to be moved or removed for the tunnel project below, so it wouldnt be very pretty. Add the land under it wasn't very useful... and was mostly parking. (yuck)
Almost not worth it.
Magoo sez
That’s how they do it in Magoo-ville. Magoo.
Reduce Merrimack Street to two lanes
and convert the other half of it to a walking and biking linear path.
From there, Thoreau Path already leads to a bridge over Storrow Drive to the Esplanade.
Thoreau Path
What is this? I've seen the name, but never figured out just what it might be.
It is in the apartment area
It is in the apartment area of Charles River Park.
Sacrifice the North Washington St Bridge
It won't ever be completed anyway.
I wouldn't.
The "Emerald Necklace" was a project for a different time and has been fractured for the entire lifetime of just about everyone I know. Leave what we have left alone!!! Stop trying to add new parts to it. It's gone.
Would love something like NYC's High Line.
It's very fun and cool, a combination public park / retail and restaurant mall in the heart of a much denser city, enjoyed by millions (like, 8M per year) of tourists and locals alike.
But it was a reclamation project, a repurposing of existing infrastructure that was obsolete. Seems like it would be very expensive to imitate here. Budget it at a billion, and it would end up costing us seven billion. That's just how we do with public projects here.
I can maybe see the long-term ROI here, vs. idiotic boondoggles like building facilities for the Olympics, but it would be a tough nut to fund up front. Has anyone hazarded an actual business case for it with credible numbers?