Howard/Stein-Hudson Associates, Inc.
CREATIVE SOLUTIONS • EFFECTIVE PARTNERING ®
MEMORANDUM
June 8, 2012
To:
Steve McLaughlin
Project Manager - Accelerated Bridge Program
MassDOT
Through:
Andrea D’Amato
HNTB
Project Manager
From:
Nathaniel Curtis
Howard/Stein-Hudson
Public Involvement Specialist
RE:
Design Advisory Group (DAG) Traffic Primer Meeting
Meeting Notes of May 24, 2012
Overview & Executive Summary
On May 24, 2012, the Design Advisory Group (DAG) met for a special session known as the Traffic Primer.
The goal of this meeting was threefold: to provide committee members with a retrospective look at the traffic
analysis performed during the planning process (the Working Advisory Group process), to detail what further
traffic analysis has taken place since then, and to outline the traffic work that will take place during the
remainder of the 25% design phase.
The DAG is composed of a combination of new members and participants in the previous Working Advisory
Group. The name change is indicative of the group’s more focused role now that a roadway design has
been selected to replace the current Casey Overpass. In the current 25% design process, the DAG will
address specific topic areas such as construction management, urban design, traffic, parking, and remaining
elements from the planning study including Washington Street west of Forest Hills Station and the design of
Shea Circle. The local knowledge provided by DAG members will guide the design team’s efforts and inform
the 25% design. Over the next several months, the DAG will meet regularly to ensure that the 25% design
process can be completed in a timely manner to allow the Casey Overpass to be replaced with a new
boulevard by the end of the Accelerated Bridge Program (ABP) in 2016. In addition to DAG meetings, the
project team is willing to hold additional sessions to reach out to the Jamaica Plain business community or
particular community institutions or neighborhood groups. Pauses of several weeks are being built in
between DAG meetings to allow these briefings to take place. Residents, business owners and other
stakeholders are encouraged to reach out to the DOT or their representative DAG member to request such a
briefing.
The Traffic Primer was a lengthy, free-flowing conversation between members of the DAG and members of
the project team that covered topics and concerns such as:
 MBTA bus operations;
 Vehicle pick-up/drop-off activity around the Forest Hills Station, particularly with regard to taxis and
school buses; and,
 Neighborhood cut-through traffic during construction and perhaps beyond.
A major point of concern raised by some DAG members is that traffic simulations have not been done for
existing conditions in the Casey area, which some believe causes the future projections to appear overly
optimistic. The Group also briefly discussed the proposed westbound bus-turning lane at
Arborway/Washington Street.
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Detailed Meeting Minutes
C: Kate Fichter (KF): Good evening everyone, thank you for coming. Let me just start with a few
housekeeping details. There was a misprint on your agenda: the next two DAG meetings are June 18th
and July 18th, both starting at 6:00 p.m. Thank you all for coming to this special meeting. This meeting
is to resolve old questions regarding the planning process traffic study. We’ve gotten questions in
meetings and by email and this session is to deal with them. We’re not showing anything new tonight,
just materials developed in the past. Tonight we are going to do a PowerPoint because there’s a lot to
communicate. It’s dense and technical so please let Gary speak so we don’t lose the thread. We’ll do
the bulk of the discussion after he finishes. Community observers either hold your questions to the end
or write them down and slide them to your representing DAG member. Please remember to hold down
the side conversations and keep your questions focused. I’ll try to call on everyone at least once. I also
want to welcome Paul Romary, the head of the Shattuck Hospital who is joining us tonight.
C: Gary McNaughton (GM): Good evening everyone, I’m Gary McNaughton with McMahon Associates.
Those of you who have been involved in the WAG process have seen a lot of me. Tonight, I’m going to
walk through the traffic information. Maureen Chlebek who you have also seen is joining me in a little
while with copies of the presentation.
First, here’s today’s agenda. Here’s a list of issues we’ve heard about through various forms: emails,
letters, comments at meetings and so forth. In the first few slides, I’ll identify the things we’ll address
tonight and then outline what will be covered in DAG 3, DAG 4 and even later in the process. There are
some traffic concerns we know will go on through construction and DAG 4 is all about that (construction
impacts). DAG 4 isn’t the last time we’ll address traffic impacts anticipated for the period of
construction. We’ll definitely stay in touch about that. We want to walk through the previous analysis.
The new DAG members’ welcome meeting, held on May 15, 2012, overviewed some of the traffic, but
this meeting will give you greater detail. We also want to give you an update on what’s been done in
terms of traffic since October and November of last year. We will touch on signal coordination, parking
supply, transit service, but that’s by way of keeping you abreast of developments since those things will
continue to evolve. A lot of those things will be addressed in DAG 3 and beyond.
So, here are the topics we’ve heard you want clarified:
 The key assumptions behind the traffic model
 Methods of traffic calming
 Reviewing Level of Service (LOS) and traffic operations(Remember, LOS is just a quick and easy
way of summarizing traffic operations)
 Right-turn treatments
 Pedestrian treatments
 Public transit accommodations
 Emergency response
 Alternate routes/cut-through traffic.
Let me delve into the specifics of the agenda a little deeper:
 Queue lengths at key intersections.
 Slip lanes and pork chops1 (these didn’t impact the bridge or no-bridge decision, so the design is
still quite flexible).
 Signal timing for pedestrians and how much crossing time they get. We have a different set of
assumptions that we use in planning and then in design, and we plan to now increase
pedestrian crossing times in this phase of the project.
 How we can calm traffic using a wide median? That’s a design detail and we’ll be dealing with
that in DAG 3.
1
‘Pork chop’ is a traffic term for an island which serves to channelize a travel line, most often creating a turning
lane.
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Tonight we will discuss LOS and what was done previously. Remember, the design will continue
to evolve. Expect that we will change roadway cross-sections which will impact LOS and we’ll
continue to update you on it. We have been asked about LOS with two lanes in each direction;
lots of people asked us if we could make this work with a narrower cross-section. It’s great that
we got something that works for 2035, that was a crucial test for the at-grade solution to pass
and it did, but is there a time between 2016 and 2035 where we have a narrower cross-section?
We’ll discuss that at DAG 3.
The location of pedestrian and bicycle paths came up at the last meeting. Where should the
bicycles and pedestrians be and how should they relate to each other? That’s partially for DAG
3, but tonight we’ll talk about the bicycle and pedestrian LOS and the corridor experience for
bicyclists and pedestrians.
There was a comment about north/south and east/west traffic flows. We weren’t 100% clear on
what that meant so we’re asking you for clarification tonight.
We were asked about alternate routes, specifically relating to Walk Hill Street.
The loss of off-street parking came up. We’ve spent a lot of time discussing on-street parking,
but we want to discuss off-street too.
Emergency response times during construction will come up during DAG 4.
The last thing on our agenda is the review of 24-hour traffic volumes. Is there anything else you
want covered? We’ll either get you an answer tonight or get back to you.2
Q: Sarah Kurpiel (SK): Can you touch on pedestrian crossings? Will they be concurrent or exclusive?
Q: Allan Ihrer (AI): Can we get into the Synchro materials?
A: GM: In terms of Synchro we will get into all of the planning process modeling tonight, yes.
C: David Wean (DW): I have a concern about the midblock crossing in New Washington Street.
C: Michael Reiskind: I was thinking more about Washington Street.
A: GM: O.K. that’s for discussion during DAG 3.
C: George Zoulalian (GZ): I think the idea of east/west and north/south is very important. Here’s what I
think it is. I think a lot of us would like to take a car, in our minds, and go east to the first traffic light
and have you tell us how many lanes are there and what moves we can make. If you’re going west how
far do you have to go before you can get onto South Street? That’s what we mean by flow. If you’re on
South Street going to Roslindale, what will that be like? Once we know where each intersection is, then
we can think about pork chops and so forth.
A: GM: O.K. that’s helpful.
C: Jessica Mink (JM): I disagree with that. What I’m worried about is that looking at the drawings it seems
like the Arborway is optimized, but the north/south connections are not. Washington Street and Hyde
Park Avenue those motions get backed up and I don’t want them backed up any worse than they already
are given that there will be longer light cycles.
C: Paula Okunieff (PO): I want to add that I want to see the travel times to get from South Street down to
Hyde Park. A lot of families go to Pagel Field or from Roslindale to work in Jamaica Plain or to drop
someone off at the station. I want to know about the new pullouts and the optimization of flow to get
people to the station. In the Synchro, it looks like north/south connections get short shrift versus the
east/west connections.
2
Here, Kate Fichter paused to recognize Representative Russell Holmes.
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C: Michael Halle (MH): One specific area is Ukraine Way and how it functions. I think it would be good for
people to understand how it works in relation to the bowties.
A: GM: During the planning phase, the WAG didn’t bring up Hyde Park Avenue very much and both
alternatives were really the same in relation to it. We do know those intersections back up and we’re
now integrating them into the selected alternative.
C: MH: I think it’s good from an introductory point of view because Ukraine Way is an alternative rout to
the bowties. Another introductory point is the potential for off-hour left turns that might not be forced to
use the bowties.
A: GM: We’ll touch a little on off-peak versus peak tonight, but we’ll really hit that in DAG 3.
Q: AI: How fine grained will you be getting? We’ve had lots of discussion of overall intersection
performance. I want to get to certain directions and movements. We received Synchro materials which I
passed out and I highlighted areas where I think there’s lower performance than we were given to
believe given overall intersection performance.
A: GM: To try to recapture everything from last fall’s two traffic presentations will easily have us here until
midnight, but if you have specific concerns we can talk about them.
C: Vineet Gupta (VG): It might be useful to point out relative to LOS if there are intersections that are not
standing up to traffic volumes, intersections that are failing.
A: GM: We will discuss overall operations and be here for Q&A on specifics.
C: AI: For those of us who’ve seen this for six months, looking at fine grained detail of what’s happening is
essential to seeing where things might need to be adjusted.
A: GM: And we certainly expect a lot of fine-tuning to come. Tonight is about looking back at the WAG
process. DAG 3 is about looking forward.
C: AI: So if we don’t get into that level of detail, can we have a meeting that goes there? We’re getting our
traffic meeting six months after we asked for and we’ve already been through months and months and a
FOIA request and we go the remaining materials and it throws a whole different light on this and its of
significant import to some stakeholders, the neighborhoods, and Russell Holmes’ constituents.
A: Representative Russell Holmes (RH): I keep telling you, Allan, that I represent Jamaica Plain too. This is
what I said two meetings ago. That’s the point of this meeting. The point is to get to the nitty-gritty to
build confidence that you (MassDOT) can handle the traffic. I don’t want Allan standing up at DAG 3
and saying we can’t handle the traffic.
C: Todd Consentino (TC): I’d like to know how bicycles are supposed to legally and safely cross intersections
from path segment to path segment. Technically, bicycles are not supposed to ride in crosswalks.
C: JM: I want to clarify another thing I brought up. I live near Walk Hill Street and there is already a
problem with cut-through traffic from Blue Hill Avenue to the Arborway. It’s clear to me that when I
follow the vehicular traffic that people are using it as a cut-through. Cars make this very specific pattern
with Ukraine Way and I’m worried that during construction it will be used heavily and that after
construction people will have gotten into a habit that will be very hard to break. The flow is fairly steady
because the light cycles are not that long. There’s a new No Turn on Red sign that went up last week
and that may have an impact, but I think that the Walk Hill cut-through was left out of the WAG process
because the area wasn’t well represented (on the DAG).
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C: MH: I think the old hands here are looking for more information, but this is the DAG traffic primer and
many new members have never seen this. It’s better to have the group start at a base level of
information and understanding so it’s not new people versus old and I hope we’ll come out of tonight
with that. If we need another meeting for even more detail we can have it, but I would say we need this.
C: Liz O’Connor (LO): I still want to get information about the existing conditions and be briefed on it.
When I looking at existing travel times I think they are too rosy. That in turn makes the improvements
look better. Most of my travel times seem set to increase. I want to get on board with this; I’m not
advocating reopening the bridge discussion, but I want to be confident in the travel times which I can’t
be right now because the existing times seem too rosy.
A: KF: So, let Gary get started and we’ll watch the level of detail to make sure it is appropriate to the needs
of the group. We do have new folks who, as Michael correctly points out, really do need a basic tutorial
to get up to speed. And for Allan and his requests for a more in-depth discussion, we’ll go where we
need to go with that.
C: GM: We spent a lot of time on traffic in the WAG process and posted a lot of the information on the
website. I want to remind you that the website is a great repository of information. There were several
presentations given to the WAG and to the general public, there were animations made for the
alternatives; there were technical memos with all the Syncrho information. All of the queue lengths and
LOS information are in the technical memos and come in a big, long table with all the movements for
each alternative. It would take us several nights to recap all of what we did. Tonight is about an
overview, we’re available for specific questions, but the heavy detail is on the website. A guide to the
website is in the back of your presentation.
C: RH: There’s the problem right there. You’re comfortable with the data, but the group isn’t. It wasn’t
enough detail for them. As a group, we still don’t have the confidence you have. To say ‘go to the
website’ – that’s not going to take a novice and make them feel comfortable. Make the group feel
comfortable now. The group is telling you they are not comfortable yet. Hear that part.
A: GM: We will try to get through more of it tonight, but I’m also trying to point this out for the new folks.
C: RH: But the way you present it makes it feel like the old WAG had plenty of information and we never
got that deep dive into the simulations. I don’t want the impression going out that we had an in-depth
discussion that got everyone feeling comfortable.
C: GM: What I’m trying to say is that we’ve made the information available even if it has been in a variety
of different formats.
Early in the project the WAG told us that whatever solution we chose, we needed to fix the existing
problems with the at-grade traffic network. Remember, when this project got started it was a deck
replacement. The bridge’s deck would be replaced and everything would stay the same. When it
became clear the bridge had to come out completely, we were told fix the surface streets, that they
would need to be changed even with a new bridge and so that’s how we’ve approached the project.
The WAG also gave us our top areas of concern: South Street/New Washington Street, New Washington
Street itself, Shea Circle which was added into this project as a direct result of WAG input, Hyde Park
Avenue/New Washington Street, and Asticou Road/Washington Street.
For 2035 traffic projections, we looked at all modes, this wasn’t just about cars. We wanted to improve
things for pedestrians, bicycles, and public transit while continuing to process vehicles effectively. We
didn’t want to make new congestion, but we did want to make it better for non-cars. Another goal was
effectively accommodating local and regional traffic and creating a network that could handle traffic of
all modes generated by the new land developments planned for Forest Hills. To build our 2035
projections, we looked at the Central Transportation Planning Staff (CTPS) regional model. Scott
Peterson from CTPS is here to go over that with you in some more detail tonight. We took the CTPS
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regional projections and met with the BRA and Transit Realty Associates3 to go over the development
plans for the area and that’s what gives us our future volumes for all modes. When you look at those
numbers, the regional traffic grows by 5%, local travel grows by 12%, pedestrian and bicycle traffic
grows by 13%, and public transit usage grows 10% for the cordon zone around Forest Hills.4 All of that is
factored into the model for 2035. We had a base year of 2010 and a forecast year of 2035. CTPS
performed regional analysis on overall volumes, travel times, and air quality. All of that information was
factored into the project team’s local analysis.
With regard to traffic calming, the design of the roadway is ongoing and we’ll deal with a lot of traffic
calming issues and options in DAG 3. Some of the livability ideas that you’ve discussed can serve to
calm traffic. Landscaping is a traffic calming tool that can make the road feel narrower, which slows
drivers down. We can make pedestrians more prominent for vehicle and there’s also signal spacing and
timing. We’re continuing to think about where the signals are located in the corridor, especially near the
upper bus-way and where to best position the eastern U-turn on the Arborway. All of those things will
come up in DAG 3.
Let me now talk a little bit about LOS and queue analysis. Today, most of your intersections in the Casey
area operate at a low LOS with some movements at F. When we looked at the bridge and at-grade
alternatives, we didn’t run them with existing volumes, we wanted to make sure they would work with
future volumes – those are the 2035 projections I just explained. Generally, we can get C’s, D’s and E’s
with the new design. The LOS is a shorthand way of conveying traffic operations. It’s not my favorite
way of doing it, but it is a commonly accepted shorthand way to talk about vehicular delay. It ranges AF with E, but there’s a big difference from school in that D and E are quite acceptable.
Q: KF: In urban environments, I understand that F is not atypical?
A: GM: It is quite common, but we want to improve on that. A reason that LOS is not my favorite
shorthand is because there are a lot of factors that go traffic performance (and LOS simplifies them to a
single metric). A LOS of C or D may not capture queue lengths or volume-to-capacity (V/C) ratio on
short blocks.
Q: Paul Romary (PR): Is all of that in here?
A: GM: Explanation of LOS is not in that particular document you’re holding. I’m responding here to a
request for clarification.5
Q: Kevin Wolfson (KW): So is that LOS F for the whole day?
A: GM: The operations for at-grade and the bridge, everything was done for the peak hour of the morning
and afternoon in 2035. Something we want to address in DAG 3 in June is looking outside those peak
hours (to see how the traffic performs in non-peak periods). The peaks are important tests but there are
ways we can configure for outside peak hours.
C: PO: You said peak ‘hour,’ but the Synchro was run for 15 minutes.
A: GM: Right, the Syncho doesn’t look at the whole hour because traffic fluctuates even during the peak.
The program analyzes the worst 15 minutes of the peak hour and extrapolates from it.
3
The real estate development arm of the MBTA, responsible for trying to develop MBTA-owned parcels in the
Forest Hills area
4
The red circle on Slide 23 of the PDF of the May 24, 2012 PowerPoint presentation available at
http://www.massdot.state.ma.us/caseyarborway/Meetings.aspx
5
See http://www.massdot.state.ma.us/Portals/24/docs/Casey_Traffic2_092211.pdf for a full explanation.
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Q: MR: To explain: E does not stand for excellent. It’s worse than D, but better than F. So when you say
mostly E, it’s worse than D and the queue is the line of traffic waiting for the traffic light?
A: GM: Yes. You got it.
Q: GZ: The LOS is very important. Do you have LOS for pedestrians, bicycles, and public transit? And
could an intersection that’s at F for vehicles be at A for pedestrians? If LOS is just for autos, why are we
looking at it?
A: GM: We actually did an urban facilities analysis for pedestrians, bicycles, and public transit which does
produce an LOS grade for those modes. All of the modes are factored into the analysis and yes, an
intersection could be an F for cars and an A for pedestrians.
A: LO: That was discussed in the meeting minutes as well.
Q: KW: Is there a cut-off between LOS D and E?
A: GM: That’s a reason why I don’t love LOS. Say that LOS F at a signalized intersection is 80 seconds of
delay. If you have a 120-second cycle length and you’re waiting at a minor approach. You’ll be at LOS
E by default because of how long you wait, but that’s not always a bad thing. In Andrew Square there
are minor approaches that come out as LOS F, but the queue clears every time.
C: PO: So then to George, with respect for your question, for pedestrians it’s important to know if
pedestrians have preemption or priority or if they are concurrent because it impacts their wait time. The
LOS doesn’t necessarily have that, but you can see if you’re crossing the street with traffic, you’ll have
the same LOS as traffic.
C: GZ: If you’re crossing six lanes as a pedestrian, it’s harder to cross than four lanes. You can make it
wider for cars and get more of them through and get a great LOS, but that’s worse for pedestrians.
Q: AI: As far as figuring LOS and the V/C (Volume to Capacity) ratio, is there a point where you say that a
certain level of traffic unacceptable and is it appropriate that we just accept that we’re designing for LOS
F or do we say we want to see a D or better?
A: VG: These are generalizations as has been pointed out because the LOS letter is an indication, but in
general, if the vehicles are getting LOS E and F, it means the pedestrians are not doing badly; because
of that, most city intersections during the peak hour are at LOS D and E. We don’t like to get to F and
have wasted cycles. If it’s a 90-second cycle, we want the queue clearing out each time. Those are the
rules of thumb we follow, but as Gary rightly points out, you can have a minor street at LOS E, but
clearing out every time.
C: GM: Clearing that queue is really the most important thing for us.
A: VG: And I want to mention that our engineering team at BTD reviewed all of this in the planning stage
and will continue to do a detailed analysis in the 25% design phase.
C: GM: So, to pick up where we left off, under current conditions we have intersections operating at LOS E
and F and more importantly, the queues are exceeding their storage volume. That’s what gets you into
gridlock today and that’s what we’re looking avoid. As the queues spill back, folks go in and block the
box. In 2035, if nothing changes, then you can see everything get worse. Queues always exceed
storage space and there are lots intersections at LOS F. In 2035, with both the bridge and at-grade
solutions, we get LOS D or better. Queue lengths are managed in both the east/west and north/south
directions. Pedestrians and bicycles have an overall corridor-wide LOS C. That’s in a large part because
the surface streets are reorganized into conventional 4-way intersections with through movements that
are actually straight through.
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The regional analysis was done by CTPS, which did model runs for both the at-grade and bridge
solutions. Scott Peterson can answer questions on their model, but generally speaking the model looks
at the amount of time it takes vehicles to get through the area in 2035. What the CTPS analysts
discovered is that in 2035, with either solution, there would be no change in traffic patterns. Vehicle
Miles Traveled (VMT) and Vehicle Hours Traveled (VHT) and air quality don’t change. There is no
regional diversion which means both solutions deal equally well with the projected regional volumes.
Both build scenarios [e.g. the bridge and roadway designs] allow the same magnitude of traffic through
the area; patterns aren’t changing and travel times aren’t changing, regardless of specific design.
Q: DW: My question is on the slide prior to the CTPS information. I know that pedestrian and bicycle
operations are at LOS C corridor-wide. LOS C is about 25-30 seconds of delay at a signalized
intersection. Does that mean 25-30 seconds of delay at each intersection?
A: Maureen Chlebeck (MC): The pedestrian and bicycle LOS is calculated a little differently from the
vehicular LOS. It looks at the whole facility and breaks it up by crosswalk and length of crossing and
then you combine it for a corridor-wide score. If you combine it across the corridor, the delays from
point A to point B, it gets rated on A-F and cumulatively the corridor gets a C. Your experience of having
a nice wide sidewalk and green space to buffer you from cars is factored in there as well.
Q: DW: So the automobile LOS deals with specific intersections and motions whereas the LOS C for
pedestrians and bicycles is an aggregate of the whole corridor.
A: MC: Yes, although we can break it down to individual crosswalks for you.
C: DW: I guess it makes it sound better than it might actually be. Some intersections will always have a bad
LOS, 90 seconds or 60 seconds of delay and that will invite jay-walking. I was comforted by the LOS E
and F for cars and thinking that would mean a great LOS for pedestrians, but that’s not quite what it
says.
A: MC: We are still working on crosswalk geometry; we’ll be getting into that.
A: GM: At the mobility meeting, we’ll break it out by intersection.
Q: DW: Can we view this as a pedestrian-, bicycle-, and transit-oriented process, and then integrate the
cars into it?
A: GM: Really, we’ve worked to do it that way. The way pedestrians work with signals, if you have a 120second cycle, the crossing time is dictated by the width of the area to be crossed. The pedestrians get a
slot within the 120-second cycle and they get to cross. Eventually, it will cycle back to their turn. That’s
how it works, unless it’s a pedestrian-only signal, of course.
C: RH: I want to note that as Gary was doing the slides on CTPS, this community asked for an existing
depiction of what happens today and that was never done. That would have helped us build a baseline.
The reason I feel there’s been a common thread about existing conditions is that you showed us this rosy
future without depicting the existing conditions. I want to note that with regard to the animations. We
had animations for 2035, but not for today. Without showing existing conditions to the community, you
won’t get the confidence you need. I think that was a bad decision.
A: GM: In defense of Scott and CTPS, their information went into our animations. That wasn’t Scott who
did that, that was us. In terms of creating depictions of today’s conditions, I’ll repeat what I said during
the WAG process: this area has such strange geometries that it really defies computer modeling. Our
models really don’t know what to do with an intersection where the through movement is actually a left
and then a right.
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Q: PO: Is the red circle on the slide your study area? 6
A: Scott Peterson (SP): Our model covers all of eastern Massachusetts, but to understand what the model is
telling us about a particular area (such as the Forest Hills area), we have to set up a cordon. That’s what
the red circle represents.
C: PO: Because I would say the cordon should be out beyond those two parks.
A: SP: And our model did cover that (it just wasn’t included in the official cordon).
Q: PO: Did you analyze the routes around the parks and cemeteries?
A: SP: There’s a lot of congestion during the peak period and during the peak, about 50% of the trips using
the bridge are from outside this area.
C: PO: That’s just my point.
A: SP: I understand. The competing routes are just as congested as this one and so when we analyze the
at-grade and bridge solutions, we looked at through-put to see if the solutions could carry the amount of
traffic for the travel time experienced, because the competing routes were congested enough that it
didn’t make sense for a driver to divert.
C: MH: Back to LOS. There is no federal standard for pedestrians and bicycles as there is with cars.
C: DW: There’s no chart for pedestrians.
A: MH: That’s right. There’s no formal standard definition. The team had to pull one together themselves.
C: KF: It’s very contextual and the wait times are normal for urban areas. You need to think about where
the place is.
A: GM: And in many DOT projects, you never see A’s 25 years out. You usually see F’s looking out 10 or
15 years. While we’re not trying to get A’s in this corridor, that would require way more pavement than
you want, this is one project where we’re actually doing better (than what exists today).
C: MH: And in previous meetings, people have talked a lot about what happens if people use more or less
public transit in the future.
A: SP: Right, it’s a multimodal model and this area has lots of transit service currently and the bus service is
assumed not to change in the future. That was an underlying assumption so the desirability of that
service didn’t change and the throughput of traffic is comparable between the two options, so in some
cases travel time got better. The model also includes pedestrians and bicycles.
Q: DW: So transit ridership going up 10% doesn’t get us more buses, it just makes them fuller?
A: SP: That 10% is for all modes of transit. There are certain transit improvements assumed for the future;
there are not many new projects planned for this area.
Q: PO: So they were not specific to the growth of buildings in the area?
A: SP: Our regional model assumed land-use growth based on long-range regional growth.
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Slide 23 of the PDF of the May 24, 2012 PowerPoint presentation available at
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Q: KW: One of the inputs into CTPS is the 12% growth in traffic. That one is an assumption?
A: SP: That’s actually an output, not an assumption.
Q: KW: So I understand that since before 2008, VMT has been going down and I’m wondering if historical
numbers are against the 12% growth.
A: SP: Given the nature of our roadway system, there’s some room for growth, but not much. We assume
in our model more growth around transit nodes and having that access, residents there need shopping
and jobs and they may use transit, walk or drive, it depends on what the land use is.
A: GM: To get to your point Kevin, Scott’s model came up with a 5% increase in volume over 20 years.
That’s pretty slow. The 12% we’re showing is driven by local development parcels that went in on top of
Scott’s regional growth. We wanted to make sure all of those future projects were accommodated (and
that the proposed future transportation network at Forest Hills could handle the traffic, of all modes,
anticipated to be generated by them).
A: SP: That 12% figure is within the study area and not all of eastern Massachusetts. The local
developments are within that ring. We wanted to look at a more congested condition to get a fuller
impact.
Q: AI: Regarding say pedestrian and bicycle growth for the east/west direction. I don’t suspect we’ll see
much growth realistically because there’s such a distance between Dorchester and Mattapan and jobs in
the west. How’s that played in for accounting in for the growth of pedestrians and bicycles and given
that there’s no real transit that goes west beyond Forest Hills?
A: SP: We assumed what’s currently out there for transit. Those connections are there in the future. I’d be
happy to talk to you further off-line if you want to get into more detail.
Q: AI: In 2035, you’re not saying walking, cycling, and transit will take all the slack from cars?
A: SP: O.K. here’s a very short answer: for everything we start off with a fixed number of trips between the
transportation access zones (TAZ) of which there are about ten within our study cordon. They are like
census blocks and based on time and costs; we have survey data that tell us whether people will drive,
take transit or walk/bicycle, assuming all modes are available. Assuming the changes in the roadway,
we put those changes in and get out changes in the mode split. Does that do it for you?
A: AI: I think it does.
Q: LO: My question is this: on the at-grade model, does that include the left-turn for buses because those
numbers came out before that lane went in.
A: GM: It was before we ran the analysis and fed the results to Scott. That was done before the bus leftturn went in.
Q: LO: So that makes a big difference?
A: GM: Not really because it’s not a big left-turn volume. It’s not 100 buses per hour, its 15-20. It’s a bus
or maybe two at a time.
C: PO: It’s more like 33 buses. It’s a 2-3 or -minute headway.
A: GM: That’s not what our discussions with the MBTA indicated.
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C: LO: There were five queued up on the way over here; that’s a credibility problem (for MassDOT’s
analysis) right there.
C: PO: Looking at the Synchro outputs, you have consistently underestimated bus traffic everywhere.
C: GZ: I’m going to focus on the 10% growth in transit use. I’ve heard that transit ridership has gone up
10% over the past few years. Another 10% over the next 20 years doesn’t seem right.
A: SP: That percentage is for all trips made in eastern Massachusetts. It represents commuting, recreational
trips, and school trips. The whole number of transit trips made accounts for 2-3% of all activity in
eastern Massachusetts. Transit ridership goes up, but as a percentage of the whole it doesn’t increase
much.
Q: GZ: But this is a transit hub, why are we looking at all of eastern Massachusetts?
A: SP: Local information is also available. We gave McMahon [Editor’s Note: The traffic consultants
working on the Casey project for MassDOT] region-wide estimates and some assistance on the local
neighborhood-level stuff. The 10% is the neighborhood information.
A: GM: If MBTA Orange Line or Commuter Rail ridership goes up, we account for that as a matter of vehicle
traffic in terms of increased pick-up/drop-off activity at the station and pedestrian trips into it. That’s
been captured.
Q: GZ: People make trade-offs though, isn’t transit volume predicated on the cost of gas and price of
tickets?
A: KF: There’s a very real constraint on how many more people the MBTA can take. You really can’t cram
that many more people onto the MBTA.
C: GM: If I can keep moving here, we’re trying to cover what people wanted us to cover. This isn’t the last
meeting about traffic in the process. So, we got overall volume changes from Scott. We were talking
about alternatives at the outset of the planning process that might result in traffic moving away from the
corridor and we were kicking around a 10% diversion as being acceptable, but that doesn’t happen in
either alternative. We kept all of the future traffic volume going through the area. 2035 operations are
better than today, in the D range for all overall operations. Some movements are E’s and F’s. The
queues are managed better within available storage areas.
Q: LO: How can that happen? You told us there as inadequate storage today, I just can’t fathom how it
works better. Is the road getting longer? What’s the mechanical or engineering change that makes it
better?
A: GM: There are many factors to make it better. First, erase the picture of today’s street system from your
mind. The future street network is much better organized. East/west left turns for regular vehicles,
buses are allowed, but the regular vehicle left turns at the ends of New Washington Street come out. As
the streets become better ordered, we get a better spacing of signals. Think of South Street where the
ramp comes down. There are two signals right on top of each other, you’ve got a bus coming through
there and the through movement is actually a quick left and then a right. Imagine how much better it
will be when the though movement is actually straight.
Q: EW: I have a question about ownership. Who will own the traffic lights and keep them synchronized?
When it’s all done, who will own the lights?
A: VG: The City of Boston will own them.
C: EW: BTD doesn’t synchronize them now.
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A: GM: The existing configuration is impossible to synchronize. BTD isn’t perfect, but here you can’t fault
them. The best engineer in the world couldn’t make this any better without changing the geometry.
Q: Hillary Kelley (HK): How will you synchronize the north/south light at Washington Street and Arborway
and the pedestrian light at the park and ride? I walk through that light every morning and it changes
on a dime and queue gets totally jammed up. That light has to be looked at, but it is pretty much a
pedestrian light. In the morning that parking lot has a constant flow of people. They can request a walk
light and flip the light to red just after it’s turned green.
A: GM: That signal is one that we’ll integrate into the design. Pedestrian crossings must occur in their
appropriate time slot or else you lose coordination. Pedestrian-activated signals are really what make
for the problem. A lot of uncoordinated signals run on a 100-second cycle and give the maximum 20
seconds for pedestrians. Even if the vehicle cycle has just come up, it can flip on a dime if the pedestrian
phase is called. There may need to be restrictions on when we allow the pedestrian phase to come up in
the overall cycle.
Getting back to the presentation, we analyzed travel times for existing conditions and discussed how
difficult they are to model. You’ll have different experiences on different days, but we wanted to give
you a general frame of reference. Mostly we were trying to answer the question of ‘bridge versus atgrade,’ so you’ll see the impacts of the U-turns and the changes to Washington Street west of the
station. Those travel times for future operations are for the 2035 a.m. and p.m. peaks. If you come
through at 10 p.m. it will be a shorter travel time. Both the bridge and at-grade solutions improved
peak hour travel times within the project limits. There are individual movements which either don’t get a
little worse or better between the two options, but in the aggregate, they are comparable. The at-grade
design improves many north/south moves, but does increase time for east/west left turns, which have to
use the bowties. The biggest concern was about regional traffic that currently uses the bridge. Regional
traffic will experience between 30-90 seconds of additional delay in the at-grade design, depending on
time of day and direction traveled. Remember, today’s quick trip across the bridge is off-set by the
hurry-up-and-wait at Murray Circle. The additional lights in the Casey Arborway corridor will help to
meter that flow.
Design is ongoing and we’ll discuss future operations with lane configurations with you. Right now
we’ve got a selected alternative that works for 2035 traffic, but we want to talk about alternatives and
things we can do differently. Possibly there’s an interim condition for 2016 that can be expanded as
2035 approaches. That’s about right-sizing for 2016: things like crossing distances, paved spaces, and
the impacts of right-sizing on queue processing. That’s all for DAG 3 and we’ll discuss it in detail then.
During DAG 3 we’ll also go over channelized islands or ‘pork chops.’ We’ll give you the pros and cons
of those. Some people have told me “never, ever install a pork chop under any circumstances” and then
as I start to tell them about the benefits, they change their mind. We’ll discuss it with you. Right-turnon-red restrictions, do you want them or not? The design can go either way. Pedestrian signal timings
were set at their baseline for the planning study, but we’re looking to increase them. It may be that
there are 2016 signal timing and we don’t have to go to 2035 timings right away.
To summarize traffic operations, when you look at what’s out there today versus what will be there in
2035, pedestrian and bicycle conditions are going to improve. We increase capacity through better
organized streets. That’s how we accommodate the peak volumes and queues. We don’t induce new
traffic to the area and we don’t restrict regional traffic or force diversions. The overall travel time is
consistent between the bridge and at-grade solutions. Any inbound time advantage with the bridge is
off-set by the queue at Murray Circle. We are currently discussing Murray Circle with the DCR.
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Here are the peak-hour volumes.7 These bars represent the combined hourly volumes. That’s the
east/west traffic on New Washington Street and over the bridge. It’s about 3,000 cars total in the
morning peak between 7:00 a.m. and 8:00 a.m.. Go earlier or later and you can see it falls off by
about 25%. In the afternoon, the peak spreads out a bit and the volumes are a little higher. It’s around
the 3,200 range at 5:00 p.m., but its near there at 3:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. as well.
Q: PO: A few questions on this slide: where did those numbers come from?
A: GM: Those are actual volumes based on automatic traffic recorder (ART) counts for a 24-hour period.
There were recorders on the Overpass and New Washington Street.
Q: PO: And was it October, when were the counts done?
A: GM: Early June of 2010.
Q: PO: But when you did it, the students were all gone?
A: GM: No, school was still in session.
C: PO: I mean the college students, which is 20% of the neighborhood and you just did the east/west; you
didn’t do north/south, Washington Street or Hyde Park.
A: GM: This slide isn’t supposed to be informative of every vehicle in the area; it’s supposed to tell you
where the east/west peak hours are. It’s not about South Street or Hyde Park Avenue.
C: PO: The peak periods in the north/south direction start at 6:30 a.m. and run longer into the afternoon;
they are longer than what you’ve looked at.
A: GM: North/south might be a little higher, but we can respond to that with signal timing. Remember, the
volumes drop outside peak hours.
C: PO: That assumes you have some kind of detection.
A: GM: We’ve been assuming detection.
C: MH: Left turns are critical to understanding this plan and why either alternative is better than today. Left
turns, especially in a constrained intersection, wreck the flow through it. The specific area where lefts
are problematic are where you come off the Arborway to New Washington Street and South Street; it’s
very close to together. Whenever you have a left turn the opposing traffic must stop and then you’ve
halved the volume you can get through. That happens when you come off the Arborway right now,
you’re forced to go left and then right instead of what you would be able to do if that green line on your
slide were a real road connection. That’s how traffic operation improves in either alternative. That helps
to get rid of the gridlock which is so infuriating.
Q: LO: I’m wondering if we could ask you to run the model on delays again: add all of the buses and allow
regular cars to make left turns during off-peak hours. The business community will suffer without those
left turns. I think queues are impacted severely and I don’t think we can have a good idea about delays
until we have those models present. I worry that business owners are not well represented on the DAG.
I’m for pedestrians and bicycles and residents, all of which have been well represented but I’m worried
about the revitalization in the neighborhood. Is that possible to rerun those numbers?
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Slide 23 of the PDF of the May 24, 2012 PowerPoint presentation available at
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A: GM: All of the vehicles using the bowties were reassigned for the at-grade alternative. That’s in there.
We re-ran the analysis with the buses in it. That’s coming up at the next DAG meeting. We’re also
going to discuss right-sizing and update the analysis based on that and tell you about travel times.
C: PO: And include the pull-outs where people do pick-up and drop-off.
C: JM: A quick note: it seems like you’re looking at peak periods in a non-directional way; it seems like in
the afternoon the direction is predominantly west-to-east.
A: GM: Yes, this is total, it’s not directional.
C: JM: In the evening if you’re going west to east, there’s no traffic light now between the walk light at the
Arboretum entrance and Cemetery Road. Now there will be three additional traffic lights causing
queuing and delay unless you do something to address it and that will hurt north/south traffic and drive
changes that are not good for pedestrians and bicycles.
A: GM: That’s the balancing act we’re doing as part of this process. That’s just the sort of stuff we’re
getting into now with adjusting the signal timings.
C: AI: I just gave you a mess of materials taken from your own slides. Right now the AM peak has 872 cars
per hour east/west and if you add in the bridge traffic the number gets up to 3,437, so you’re adding
3,000 cars per hour in the east/west period, but I really want to answer Michael and I agree that the
left-turn traffic has an impact which is why we drop the east/west left turns at peak hour. I would ask
that we forget about the bridge alternative. This is about making the at-grade solution work. As far as
bus turns, you say they are no big deal, but according to your Synchro, at Arborway and Hyde Park
Avenue, you show them as only 2% of the volume. It’s 100% of the U-turn of the 39 bus and it’s half of
the westbound traffic in the morning. There’s 32 seconds of total light: green, yellow, and red, but you
also have 14 seconds for buses. That’s a significant portion of the movement through that intersection
and I won’t get into LOS and queue lengths and wait times, but this is why I want to get into the details.
If these results are to be believed it’s like we’re in Alice in Wonderland. We brought up trust six months
ago and I’ve now got it in black and white from your own Synchro that there are serious discrepancies.
A: GM: If we learn new information from the MBTA, the transit heavy vehicle percentage can be boosted,
but as of earlier this month, they told us our transit information was correct. This is for the 2035
conditions. Adding the bus left-turn does have an impact on operations, but you can still see an overall
LOS E and the more important factor is the V/C ratio.
C: AI: The V/C is a key element of westbound traffic where we’re trying to pump those cars through there
and the V/C is 1.15 and that means there’s not enough capacity and there’s 88 seconds of delay and
the queue length is 595 feet and theoretically infinite.
C: PO: And this is after just 15 minutes.
C: AI: It’s two cycles.
A: GM: It’s the worst 15 minutes of the worst hour. Synchro looks at the most concentrated 15 minutes;
that’s what it does to be conservative. All times outside of that are better. There are ways to keep
making things better for the bus. In 20 years, the westbound through movement has a V/C of 1.15, but
the southbound through has a V/C of 0.6 and the buses are at 0.09. We’re now in the part of the
project where we spread that time around to accommodate all the modes.
C: KW: To your point about north/south traffic getting worse, my understanding is that along South Street,
the two big things that cause traffic are the left-right movement at the bottom of the ramp and taxi
overflow. The taxis will be addressed as will that left-right movement so it’s going to be better.
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A: JM: I’m just showing what the traffic model shows. The model shows increased delay and I’ll leave it at
that.
A: GM: Just to touch on that: the at-grade alternative for the north/south direction does get a little better
and it’s about allocating time. The ramp today is at LOS F with 280 seconds of delay. In the future
condition, the same movement goes up to LOS B – that’s during peak hour. During the planning phase
we were just checking if this could work, now we’re timing the signals. Before we were just trying to
show the overall intersections working, now we’re refining the green time.
C: JM: I’m just flagging the problem.
Q: EW: How do we build in the 20% of the population that are college students?
A: GM: College students aren’t 20% of the traffic volume. We’ve looked at counts done at other parts of
the year to verify that impact. Every college student doesn’t bring a car with them.
A: SP: The future growth assumes commuter trips, school trips, recreational trips, and we have those
commuter trips to Boston University and Boston College through the area. The forecast numbers include
those trips.
C: EW: But the counts occurred in June after college was out.
A: GM: Those trips are not in our existing numbers, but they are in the projections. We did check older
studies and volumes and counts to make sure our predictions are reasonable. We can get more counts.
They won’t be done by in time for the meeting on the 18th, but we can get more counts.
C: EW: That would make me feel a lot better.
C: Sarah Freeman (SF): On the issue of business impacts with left-turn restrictions. Many of the people in
this room were part of the Greater Forest Hills Improvement Initiative which proposed a one-way rotary
treatment around the station and so someone who wanted to go from Morton Street to the Dogwood
would be doing a move that’s what we’re suggesting today. It’s a lot like that the rotary idea that
everyone liked so much. I want business to thrive too. I just wanted to put it out there.
C: PO: Back to the counts. Given that for the majority of the year, most people need to drive and June is
the time when people start walking or bicycling. I think September to May is the time when there’s much
more traffic. You really notice it.
A: GM: We use seasonal factors to adjust our counts. You actually see that, in the summer time, volumes
go up. People talk about the summer driving season. Yes, the AM peak drops a little bit, but the PM
gets heavier with recreational trips.
I want to talk now about pedestrian crossings. The design is ongoing and we’ll continue to kick around
ideas and modifications. We’re going to look at ways to reduce the amount of pavement, look at where
the pedestrians are in the cross section (of the road, and look at how they will cross bicycle paths. With
regard to pedestrian signal timing, the clearance time is fairly well prescribed, but the flexibility we have
is about the potential length of the walk phase and whether we go with concurrent or exclusive phasing.
The future conditions right now include concurrent phasing [Editor’s Note: concurrent signal phasing
allows pedestrians to cross a street at the same time that cars are allowed to turn into the street;
exclusive signal phasing gives pedestrians the sole right of way during a particular phase]; today you
have exclusive (around the Forest Hills area). The benefit of concurrent phasing is that it allows you to
get the pedestrians to their phase faster. Channelizing islands can help with that and we’ll discuss that
further in DAG 3.
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We continue to work on the needs of public transit: the bus signal phasing, the relocated bus-way, how
the signal for the Blackwell Footpath signal integrated, how the bus left-turn pocket lane - dubbed by
some as the ‘seventh lane’ –and which was added at the very end of the WAG process -how all of that
integrates with the buses coming in and out of Arborway Yard. We have all that data from the MBTA,
it’s just not in a really tidy graphic yet, but we have it and are breaking it down. Those dead-head buses
are in our base counts, but as the Arborway Yard changes, there will be implications for our analysis that
we’ll discuss at the next DAG meeting. We continue to speak with the MBTA and Dan Webber from the
MBTA Service Planning Department is here with us tonight. Dan has been feeding us information about
the peak hour operations and we’ll have that to present to the DAG. We’re coordinating with the MBTA
on bus prioritization and getting their opinions on other design issues.
School bus coordination: we met with the Boston Public School (BPS) bus operations folks last week.
We’ll meet with METCO on the 25th and have that information for you for the next DAG meeting. BPS
told us that they only have eight buses stopping at Forest Hills and they serve West Roxbury High School.
BPS is flexible about where they stop and are willing to work with us.
C: LO: I want to put this in your thinking for when you talk to METCO: it’s not so much the buses; it’s the
parents sitting and waiting for their child to get on the bus. It’s a colossal mess and I’m not sure if
there’s a good solution, but it’s a big problem that nobody owns.
A: GM: We did hear that and it comes down to where the buses stop and it’s a good question for us to ask.
Q: Karen Wepsic (KWe): Have you considered the special MBTA buses that go to Boston Latin?
A: GM: Yes we did; they are already in the analyzed volumes.
Q: PO: The METCO issue also applies to the 12 supplemental MBTA buses. The ’seventh lane’ has very
little storage and when you run the Synchro models again, pay attention to how long the buses wait
upstream from it, maybe you need to make the lane a little longer. Is the lane for MBTA buses only or
also school buses to use?
A: GM: According to BPS there are no school buses of theirs that need that movement. We’ll have to see
what comes out of the METCO meeting to know if METCO buses might want to use the lane.
C: PO: That’s the west zone and kids from the Blue Hills are going to the Irving School. They might think
they can turn onto South Street.
A: GM: What I can tell you tonight is that BPS is comfortable with left-turn restrictions. We’ll see what
METCO says about it.
On emergency response times, your times will be faster in the future because you won’t have the boxes
blocked and the gridlock you have today. An ambulance will get through here much better (than it does
today). During construction it will be a challenge. We’re continuing to talk through that. Before the July
DAG meeting we’ll have a conversation with EMS. We’ll also be meeting with abutting businesses about
minimizing construction period impacts.
With regard to alternate routes, once the build conditions are in place we don’t anticipate diversions to
other routes. Are construction period patterns going to take hold? We’ll look at processing capacity and
the potential for diversion and strategies to protect the neighborhoods. In the build condition, the delays
on the mainline are not significant enough to drive people onto the local streets. Construction is
another story and we need to start looking at that. We’ve identified the routes and some will be more
attractive than others and could become permanent patterns, so we’ll look at how to address that and
minimize cut-through traffic.
Q: EW: Does the visual on that slide have any meaning? I can’t see it.
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A: MC: Those are the cut-through routes identified by the community. The numbers are the differences in
how long it takes to go on those routes versus the proposed Casey Arborway. We measured the cutthrough routes with a stop watch.
Q: EW: Can you take that graphic and put it on a full slide?
A: KF: Yes, we can make that available to you.
A: GM: There are bigger versions and when we get to this discussion, we’ll resurrect the larger graphic.
C: EW: And if you’re presenting a graphic, it would be helpful if you created those large printouts. I just
think that would be helpful in terms of trying to process this load of information.
A: GM: When we talk about this in particular, we’ll have boards and a different set-up.
A: KF: We agree that’s a good rule of thumb.
C: AI: I want to make a point about the 30-90 seconds of delay. People hate to sit in traffic and they will
do anything to be moving. They will divert. There are studies showing that. 30-90 seconds will drive
people to seek alternate routes.
A: GM: What really drives people to divert to slower routes is gridlock and unpredictability. We’re trying to
pull that out of the corridor.
C: MR: On the construction, I presume the bridge has some lead paint. Can you find that out? I remember
when the Central Artery elevated came down and the lead paint slowed the project down. The Boston
Health and Hospitals Department slowed it down by months and months, so that would be nice to find
out (about the Casey Overpass). Going back to Karen’s point about the supplemental buses, please
break those out because they blight the Route 39 bus operations and I think they impact the station on
the Hyde Park side.
Q: Anne McKinnon (AM): I just want to make sure I heard it and everyone heard it. The seventh lane was
added after the WAG meeting. Two DAG meetings ago we were told it is in there, in the simulation.
The meeting notes went to the great trouble of adding a footnote saying this was discussed at three
WAG meetings. Now I hear that it wasn’t and people should understand that we weren’t crazy that this
was not something we missed and that this was added. I really am disturbed by statements that are
thrown out just to answer the question without regard to being right or wrong. Now did I hear that
correctly that the seventh lane was added after the WAG process? That is what you said earlier.
A: GM: If I did say that, I misspoke. To be perfectly clear, we did a technical memorandum on October
18th, 2011 and we did not have the lane in that analysis. I believe it was talked about and the record
would reflect that it was talked about and it can be double checked. The idea came up around the
October 25th WAG meeting and it was added within that window between October 25 th and the public
meeting.
C: AM: I beg your pardon. I reviewed the meeting notes and it was not in there and I’m sorry you didn’t
review the meeting notes! It was not in there! It was not discussed as a seventh lane. There were
several ideas discussed: one was queue jump signal, one was acknowledging Representative Holmes
saying we can’t increase running times for buses and it talked about adding a lane, I meant a left-turn.
You could have snatched a lane. I looked at the meeting notes and I’m sorry it was not discussed clearly
as a proposal to add a seventh lane.
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C: AI: It was not in the drawings presented before the public meeting and it appeared and it was showing
to public which I brought up before and it gets to the notion of trust and why we have to spend time
correcting records and proving things.
C: AM: I care that somebody is saying it was discussed. Let’s get this right. It’s disturbing me.
A: GM: I’m calling it the ‘seventh lane’ because that’s the term the community coined for it. It’s a short leftturn lane for buses. It’s not a full-length through lane. It’s a left-turn lane for buses only onto Hyde
Park Avenue. It’s a couple hundred feet long and it lets buses get down to the lower bus-way.
C: RH: I think you’re missing the point. I asked the question in a meeting and then you discovered that the
buses wouldn’t work. The DAG members are trying to make sure the bus lane is in the next simulation.
I’d ask you don’t do much more modeling, I think most of us don’t have the information that Allen has.
If I’m supposed to take this paper and discern if I caught things like what Allen did, I need another
primer before you can do more simulations. If you want community input, have 45 minutes of
presentation and then take community questions so we can trust this. I think the presentations are too
long and you need to take the deep dive Allen wants very soon.
A: GM: To finish the topic, the simulations shown at the November 21st public meeting did include the left
for buses.
Q: MH: And you called it what?
A: GM: Queue jump or left turn for the buses. All information from the past is on the website. Google
‘Casey Overpass’ and it’s the first thing that comes up. Then look at the ‘Documents’ page. You’ll find
all the technical memos, there’s a lot of prepared information there. You also have under the ‘Meetings’
section the presentations, the descriptions of the public process, the agendas, meeting notes, and all of
the presentations given. For traffic information, you may want to review the materials from WAG
meetings 5A and 5B. Those are the sets of presentations and minutes for you took look at.
Q: AM: Which one had the traffic impacts?
A: GM: 5B. We have the technical memo from October 18th and that was a preparatory document for the
WAG meeting on October 25th and the public meeting.
So, to bring you up to the present from the November public meeting, the project is moving along. We
actually got someone completely independent to review our traffic study. When you do 18 intersections,
that’s common; a firm called CDM Smith went through all of this and found it to be all right. BTD and
MassDOT will continue to review this effort.
Q: EW: Is the peer review on the website?
A: KF: 5B. I’m not sure but we’ll get it up there.8
C: GM: A little more on the peer review. They found that “the traffic analysis was professional and
consistent with MassDOT standards,” and that traffic operations would be more efficient with either of
the options than they are today. They looked at everything produced by MassDOT and found it to be an
improvement.
We held some additional review meetings; Paula was involved in some of them. We reviewed the
technical elements of the project andno fatal flaws were found. We’ve updated some graphics, done
counts on Cemetery Road, and have updated the traffic graphics accordingly;we’ll give you copies
8
MassDOT is still reviewing the CDM Smith materials, and will post it once the review is complete.
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tonight. Those include the bus left-turn volumes and we’ve updated the volumes at Orchardhill Road.
All of that has been done.
Going forward, we’ll work on signal coordination in all directions and prioritizing green time to make
sure everything is working. With regard to parking supply, we’ve had some meetings and we will keep
discussing it. We’ve identified on-street parking in the courthouse and Shea Circle areas (as needing
extra analysis). Based on your comments, we got rid of the angle parking we were showing in front of
Arborway Gardens. We’ve determined what parking is impacted by this project. The 105 spaces
currently under the Overpass go away, and some employee parking for the MBTA goes away, but we’re
continually refining the parking issue. Many of you might remember the LAZ lot. That’s planned for
development, but it is independent of this project though we do account for those volume changes.
We’ve accounted for it, but where those folks park is beyond that project.
The next step is DAG 3 in June, about a month from now, when we’ll talk about off-peak design
restrictions and options. We’ll go through build year LOS, queues, and delays. We’ll investigate turn
treatments. We’ll be telling you what is feasible and what is not and we’ll refine the design based on
that and your comments. We’ll also go into more detail on how signals work and impact operations,
particularly with the MBTA. We’ll get into cut-through traffic for the construction period at the meeting in
July.
C: KF: I want us to explain the handout and get to the last questions on the white board.
C: GM: The handout we just gave you is the new 2035 at-grade volumes. The matching set to these is in
the October 18th technical memo. As you look at this, north faces the right of the page. This is the
update to those. We made some adjustments. You can see the 15-20 buses going westbound on the
Arborway. These are for the peak hour, in the year 2035, the first one is weekday morning and the
second one is the weekday afternoon. This is the update that was requested. It shows the buses doing
the left turn and the route 39 doing its U-turn.
C: LO: Two requests. The first is, and I did miss some stuff, but it’s about Shea Circle. I missed the
discussion of making Shea Circle into Shea Square. It never had enough time for discussion and it’s
huge and it impacts the cut-through decision. The diversions may increase. I feel that should not be so
cut-and-dry and is worth further discussion.
Another request: in your presentations to us, I see an apparent unanimity and I’m amazed that I don’t
hear skeptics on the design team. It always feels opaque and I’d like to hear someone say “its art, not
science.” The other request is I’d love the next presentation to have the multiple owners of the physical
properties delineated. The Mayor said today that “you guys better get ready for the next Big Dig” and he
says “it’s not my project, it’s the state’s project” and I’m upset about what that means. We need more
ownership among the other owners and they need to be up there taking the heat with you guys. It
would have been amazing to have the Mayor involved in this from the outset. That’s terrible we didn’t
hold our City officials to account. Process that request and I’ll do my part of make my views known.
C: RH: I’d request we end at 8:30.
A: KF: We did miss Todd’s question about bicycle path connections.
A: GM: That will be part of a livability discussion.
C: DW: But it’s traffic and they have to cross the same roadways.
C: TC: It’s about crossing the streets because it’s illegal to ride your bicycle in a crosswalk.
A: GM: We discussed pedestrian crossings a lot. The midblock crossing on New Washington Street is
something we want to get rid of because it’s a major source of congestion. In the future condition, the
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roadway is going to move south and the Orange Line head-house will both move north of the roadway
and allow direct entrance to the platform. That change is going to reduce people crossing the street.
Q: DW: Can you put a certain number of people jay-walking there into the models? A certain number of
people will do it no matter what.
A: GM: We’ll analyze putting it back and tell you what happens.
C: DW: I want to model people crossing there. Maybe we need a fence with spikes.
A: GM: There are things we can do that are nicer than that. There are things we can do to greatly reduce
the desire to cross there and I think the new accommodations for Orange Line access will do a lot to fix
it. At South Street today there’s a cross-walk that ends in the Route 39 turnaround and at Hyde Park
Avenue there’s no crosswalk at all, which is why everyone gets jammed in the middle.
C: RH: Rather than trying to fix this all at 8:30 at night, tell us when the next meeting will be.
A: GM: These are all things we’ll discuss in our next DAG session.
C: RH: I’m saying you still haven’t had the traffic discussion. The community didn’t have their questions
answered.
A: GM: In the next DAG meeting we’re going to cover operational elements and features. What we tried to
do tonight was to update people, give people an overview of what happened and tell them where
additional information is. We’re now into 25% and we’ll discuss all of that within that design context
and take a lot of questions and comments. It’s a big project and we’ve spent 2.5 hours on it. We’re
going to keep answering those questions.
Q: AI: Will the Synchro come into this so we can see how the intersections are functioning so we can all
understand this?
Q: KF: How many people would like to come back for another traffic meeting, maybe between DAG 3 and
4?
A: GM: I’d ask that you all wait until after DAG 3 because a lot of this will come up.
C: VG: At the beginning of the next DAG meeting, it might be useful at the very beginning to go
intersection by intersection and say what movements are accommodated and how it’s different than
today so that people have a good understanding as a point of departure for 2035. And talk about some
of the approaches that are either more or less backed up so you can show where there is play in
adjusting timings.
C: AI: And you’re saying we’ll talk about reducing lanes and we haven’t talked about how these lanes are
projected to perform. We need to talk about that before we talk about reductions. If the approach to
Forest Hills Station is already at a V/C of 1.5, you might not want to shrink it down.
C: HK: Another thing about these meetings. I’d like to get the packets beforehand and just have no
presentation. Just send us a packet and say these are the topics we’ll discuss. When we get here we’ve
either done our homework or not and we can get right into discussion and skip further overviews, which
I’ll admit have been great because I’m new. That’s my suggestion.
Q: JM: Just one last quick question of the traffic volumes pages. What do these represent?
A: GM: The peak hours in June 2035.
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C: Community Resident (CR): I’d like more information beforehand too. I’m a fly on the wall at these
meetings and so I’m not on the distribution list. Without information I’m really stuck on the wall.
A: GM: These next couple of meetings will be more designing and less presentation so the issues you’re
having will moderate.
Next Steps
The next milestone in the public involvement process will be the third DAG meeting of the 25% design
process. This meeting will take place on June 18th, 2012 at 6:00 p.m. at the State Laboratory. The State
Laboratory is located at 133 South Street in Jamaica Plain.
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Appendix 1: Attendees
First Name
Last Name
Affiliation
Jody
Nathaniel
Todd
Andrea
Keith
Dorothy
Kate
Francesca
Sarah
Vineet
Michael
David
Mary
Russell
Allan
Grover
Hillary
Paul
Sarah
John
Steve
Gary
Jessica
Alice
Kevin
Liz
Paula
Michael
Bill
Paul
Mark
David
Dan
Karen
Kevin
Elizabeth
George
Burr
Cabral-Curtis
Consentino
D’Amato
DeSutter
Farrell
Fichter
Fordiani
Freeman
Gupta
Halle
Hannon
Hickie
Holmes
Ihrer
Keith
Kelly
King
Kurpiel
McCormick
McLaughlin
McNaughton
Mink
Molari
Moloney
O’Connor
Okunieff
Reiskind
Reyelt
Romary
Tedrow
Wean
Webber
Wepsic
Wolfson
Wylie
Zoulalian
DAG
Howard/Stein-Hudson
DAG
HNTB
Community Resident
DAG
MassDOT
DAG
DAG
BTD
DAG
DAG
DAG
State Representative
DAG
Community Resident
DAG
MassDOT
DAG
MBTA
MassDOT
McMahon Associates
DAG
MBTA
DAG
DAG
DAG
DAG
DAG
Lemuel Shattuck Hospital
Community Resident
DAG
MBTA
DAG
DAG
DAG
DAG
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