Huntington Ave subway

Was the T going to build a subway up to the Museum of Fine arts on Huntington Ave a while ago?

Why? We still have the Green Line E trolleys going there. The MFA is well north of Heath Street, therefore we have service there already. Or, you can walk to Ruggles for the Orange Line.

No.

When BERy first built the Huntington Ave. Subway, they had a wooden incline at Northeastern. This was for them to be able to expand if they wanted to. (They built a full subway under this incline). Part of the renovations done a while ago included filling in the incline, so that the type 7s wouldn't crash down into this pit. There isn't a point - it's too expensive now, the traffic isn't that bad when it isn't street running. So, no. it was put in just in case, much like the post office square provision. It's there, but never to be used.

Can someone explain the "post office square provsion" to me?

Thanks in advance.

It was a provision built into the the boylston street subway extenstion that would have allowed cars to turn off the main branch and towards post office square.

There was also a concept floated by the BRA back in the the mid 1960's to extend the Huntington Ave Subway down Huntington Ave all the way to Route 9 in Brookline, where it would then connect to the Riverside Line.

However, the rerouting of the Orange Line to the SW coridor, not far from Huntington Ave., reduced the need for a subway extension on Huntington Ave.

Charliemta wrote:There was also a concept floated by the BRA back in the the mid 1960's to extend the Huntington Ave Subway down Huntington Ave all the way to Route 9 in Brookline, where it would then connect to the Riverside Line.

However, the rerouting of the Orange Line to the SW coridor, not far from Huntington Ave., reduced the need for a subway extension on Huntington Ave.

That would've been a great idea epsecially with the connection to Brookline Village. Too bad it didn't happen. However, the Huntington Ave trolley does have its charm.

Charliemta wrote:There was also a concept floated by the BRA back in the the mid 1960's to extend the Huntington Ave Subway down Huntington Ave all the way to Route 9 in Brookline, where it would then connect to the Riverside Line.

Imagine street-running on Longwood Ave. @ Boylston Street?!? Yikes, talk about a headache.

Longwood Avenue doesn't intersect any Boylston Street. Also, the only street running in such a proposal would have been a couple blocks in Brookline Village, where Route 9 passes under the Jamaicaway. That part of Route 9 is plenty wide enough to accommodate trolley tracks.

Sorry Ron, I had a brain-fart.....I meant Boylston Street @ Brookline Ave.

(Sorry, to see the intersection I was referring to you may have to scroll East.)

If you mean the one in Brookline, that's a very wide intersection with plenty of room for a station stop and platforms in the middle. Would have been a great idea.

Yes, I meant Boylston Street (Rte.9) in Brookline, which starts just after the Jamaica Way. The other big problems with tying into the D would be the current buildings adjacent to the station.

Ron Newman wrote:Longwood Avenue doesn't intersect any Boylston Street. Also, the only street running in such a proposal would have been a couple blocks in Brookline Village, where Route 9 passes under the Jamaicaway. That part of Route 9 is plenty wide enough to accommodate trolley tracks.

It'll probably be a good idea someday to throw some tracks down to connect the E and D so the T has an alternate through route to the subway if the Kenmore-to-Copley segment ever becomes inaccessible due to emergency (like the '96 flood). It can stay non-revenue like the Chestnut Hill Ave. tracks under normal operating circumstances, but it would provide a critical (and easy to implement) redundancy for the system if anything were to happen leaving the Kenmore end inaccessible to the 3 lines that feed into it...like that hellish flood 10 years ago. That way all D line trains could continue down 2-3 blocks of street-running to the Huntington Ave. reservation, you could re-route Boston College trains via Chestnut Hill Ave., and do Blandford-to-Chestnut Hill Ave. and C-to-Reservoir loop service to get inbound. That would be a relatively straightforward and inexpensive way to keep the Green Line operating one-seat to downtown in the aftermath of a major accident, multi-hour delay, flood, terrorist attack, or tunnel construction project...and again, the short distance between lines, wide berth of Route 9, and non-revenue status except for emergencies should make it an absolute non-inconvenience for drivers except for the construction phase.

As someone who works at Beth Israel Deaconess, I'd love the T to take on a far more ambitious task. They would never do this, but it would be great if a new alignment went inbound as follows:
At Brookline Village, the D line has an incline that makes it go underground, and turns to the right slightly to run underneath Brookline Avenue. Then, the Longwood stop could really be in the Longwood Area, under the intersection of Longwood and Brookline Ave. Then it would continue under Brookline ave and a new Fenway station would be underneath the busy Park Dr. / Riverway / Brookline Ave / Boylston intersection and better serve the new mall at the Landmark Ctr and the new 20 story apartment building that is under construction there. The subway would continue under Brookline Ave until it reaches Kenmore where it could meet the other lines as it always has.
The surface tracks that run through along the Muddy river could be ripped up and the park can now be an uninterrupted green space. And, perhaps during the construction of the tunnel, a spur could go off of it and surface somewhere near where Rte 9 and the Huntington Ave intersection.
It's a nearly impossible idea, but it would be really cool. Given that over 50,000 people per day come and go from the Longwood Area, maybe more money and effort could go into improvements? A cut-and-cover tunnel couldn't be that hard to make, could it? LOL

I have an even easier plan that I'd like to see the T at least study: Run through rush hour trains over the connecting tracks around Cleveland Circle, so that people could easily ride, say, BC-Longwood Ave. They'd have to do ridership studies to see which routes to do. They'd need a few new turnouts and short connecting tracks, but not many.

The simplest in terms of trackwork would be BC via Higland Branch (Riverside Line). The tracks are there for inbound BC cars to run onto the riverside line and head into town that way; there's even a platform in the right place at Reservoir. The outbound track is there, but it has that funny through the cars waiting on Beacon St. (it surprises some folks in cars when a trolley tries to get through at the beginning of rush hour) and they'd want to build a straighter connection if they were running service regularly.

The simplest in terms of equipment utitlization would be a BC-Beacon St. connection: just extend some or all Cleveland Circle cars to BC, or even just to the first stop on Comm Ave beyond the junction with the tracks to Cleveland Circle. It's not that much further, so it wouldn't take that much more equipment, and it would make it much easier to get to-from the area around Coolidge Corner, which must be half a mile or so from Comm Ave. Beacon St. -- BC is there, and BC Beacon street would just require two new switches and 100 feet of track so that the trains could go directly onto the Beacon St. line without going through the yard.

The most complicated route would be Riverside to Park via Comm Ave, but it would have a big effect by making it easier to get from say Newton to Brighton and BU. Looking at the T's schedules, this might not be any faster than changing at Kenmore and going back, but it might be more attractive to people who were unsure whether they wanted to go by trolley.