What's New (Or Not) With Arborway?

i wish they could, but there isn't anyone to serve west of its former alignment, unless you want to completely realign it in a different direction (not towards forest hills), which could be a good idea...

Are the Green Line stops really in place beyond Heath as described? Do busses serve these stops that make them appear active? I know driving out towards Watertown in the 1990s, I saw streetcar trackage and wire all over the city that gave me the impression of more service than there really was.

I wanna see pics of these abandoned Arborway stations. Who's got?

-otto-

Past Heath St., there are no stops per se, save for Arborway and the ocassional sign reading "Trolley Stop" At Arborway, the old green line stop still stands, with maps and everything. The 39 loops around there, but the track is still in place, including non-revenue trackage towards Arborway Yards.

Arborway Station:

http://world.nycsubway.org/perl/show?18398
http://world.nycsubway.org/perl/show?18399

These last vestiges of the former stops/stations are being removed by the T, as previously noted in this thread. It probably won't be long before the tracks are ripped up, maybe within 5 years or so...

Already the tracks are gone on South Huntington past Heath St., although those might have been ripped up a while ago.

dudeursistershot wrote: ****** ARBORWAY ******
Cost: $71.9 Million
Net Increase in Transit Ridership: 200
Capital Cost/New Transit Rider: ***$359,400***

'nuff said? I could post even more projects if you want me to further demonstrate the ridiculousness of the Arborway extension.

The problem with that is the ridiculously low estimate for new ridership. 200 people??? Thats not even remotely believable!

In fact, its clear that ridership has plumeted since the introduction of the 39, and is continuing to drop substantially. According to The Arborway Commitee (yes, I know they may not be the most reliable source of information, but neither is the "study" you cited) has dropped by about 3000 daily riders between 1997 and 2005. http://www.arborway.net/lrv/news072505.html

I can't find my source, but I remember reading that the ridership numbers for that currently abandonned segment of the Arborway line were considerably higher than the 39 has ever had. If I'm not mistaken, it was in the mid 20k's per day.

darksun23c wrote:Already the tracks are gone on South Huntington past Heath St., although those might have been ripped up a while ago.

The South Huntington tracks were paved over 3 or 4 years ago...although they're stupidly still right there under the pavement (making restoration or even ripping them up entirely even more work).

Ironically, about the same time they were paving over tracks they were also replacing a few rusted-out trolley poles on South Huntington with brand new ones...which didn't make a whole lot of sense either. But that just goes to show you the mixed signals the T was sending out for the couple of years when this project seemingly was a "go" again (as opposed to now, when they're treating it deader than dead even though the legal situation hasn't changed).


There's a reason why the 39 ridership is falling off despite that being one of the most densely-populated routes in the city: it is and always has been a lousy service, worse than any light-rail equivalent (and because it repeats the existing E stops too--which I never understood--people have a direct comparison most of the way). And it gets stuck in traffic a lot more nowadays, too, that they've switched to longer articulated buses for most of the route...so its one alleged advantage over the trolleys is dissapearing.

what exactly is better about trolleys running in mixed traffic than buses running in mixed traffic? give me a grade seperation and i'll be very much in favor of trolleys, but in mixed traffic?

That was what I was thinking. From Heath Street to Forest Hills, a bus is just as fast as a trolley if the trolley was not grade seperated. South Huntington is way too small to run grade seperated trolleys. Perhaps there is logic within the T. But the current E line could be extended to someplace(besides Forest Hills) via a wide street with little to moderate traffic at rush hour. A street with a sidewalk as a center divide would be excellent for trolleys. The center divide can be used as stations. I will try my best to make an ASCII drawing for those of you that don't understand what I am talking about.

|W|SS|T|W|T|SS|W|
|W|SS|T|W|T|SS|W|
|W|SS|T|W|T|SS|W|
|W|SS|T|W|T|SS|W|
|W|SS|T|W|T|SS|W|
|W|SS|T|W|T|SS|W|

W means sidewalk, S means street, T means grade seperated trolley tracks.

AznSumtinSumtin wrote:That was what I was thinking. From Heath Street to Forest Hills, a bus is just as fast as a trolley if the trolley was not grade seperated. South Huntington is way too small to run grade seperated trolleys. Perhaps there is logic within the T. But the current E line could be extended to someplace(besides Forest Hills) via a wide street with little to moderate traffic at rush hour. A street with a sidewalk as a center divide would be excellent for trolleys. The center divide can be used as stations. I will try my best to make an ASCII drawing for those of you that don't understand what I am talking about.

|W|SS|T|W|T|SS|W|
|W|SS|T|W|T|SS|W|
|W|SS|T|W|T|SS|W|
|W|SS|T|W|T|SS|W|
|W|SS|T|W|T|SS|W|
|W|SS|T|W|T|SS|W|

W means sidewalk, S means street, T means grade seperated trolley tracks.

But there is no street like that in JP. The only street the trolley could go down is Center and South St's.

dudeursistershot wrote:what exactly is better about trolleys running in mixed traffic than buses running in mixed traffic? give me a grade seperation and i'll be very much in favor of trolleys, but in mixed traffic?

The one-seat ride to Downtown. That is THE reason above all others. That's what JP lost when the E was cut back...and that's what the Arborway advocates want back. It's much faster and more efficient to get to the downtown hub stations on a trolley...you don't have to make a wholesale transfer, you just board and go. It's also a faster trip, because the E is reservation-running and subway-running part of the way and makes up for the street-running bottlenecks with a dedicated ROW on the busiest portion of the line.

Don't forget...the 39 stupidly makes all the same stops as the existing E. So whatever it gains in maneuverability on the street-running portion it loses by being stuck in traffic on Huntington while the E is on the reservation or underground (an advantage of the trolley that's only going to get bigger whenever the T decides to activate signal priority on the Huntington reservation). The T successfully managed to make sure the A Line never came back by only making the 57 replacement bus limited-stops...picking up where the old line branched off but NOT repeating all the active trolley stops in-between. That's part of JP's ire with the 39...it's duplicate service, and most of its bottlenecks (speed, crowding, bunching) occur on the duplicate-service portion. For a bus that only exists because trolleys don't go to Forest Hills anymore, why does it waste its time making all the active trolley stops?

Running ONE service the whole route will undoubtedly cost less to operate than running two. It'll also make the traffic much better on the Heath-to-Copley portion...takes a lot fewer trolleys to handle the capacity of a lot of buses, and they'd all be using the same tunnel and reservation. And of course you'd take all those 39's off the road...which would make a huge difference to vehicle traffic. And as for the street-running backups on Center St...yeah, it'll happen. That's happening more often anyway with those super-size articulated 39 buses, for the same reason (lax parking enforcement), so the trolley-to-bus maneuverability gap ain't as large as it used to be anyway. Nonexistent parking enforcement hurts ALL modes of public transit on narrow streets...something that seems to be lost here in this debate. It's also not like Arborway is going to get every single trolley (or moreso) than today goes out to Heath Street. The loop is there for a reason...so the busiest portion of the line--along Huntington Ave.--gets more trolleys than the rest. There are going to be a significant percentage of Heath-turned cars on the daily schedule...the T doesn't have to run everything out to Forest Hills, certainly not to the extent they did pre-1985 because of the Orange Line's current proximity. So they'll be able to maintain appropriate headways for a street-running line without totally screwing up headways on the rest of the line if they use the loop judiciously enough...something they probably can't do today with a bus that runs the whole route.

There's the new Forest Hills Station on the Green Line that has replaced the original Arborway Stop, it's under the Arborway Overpass and one can get to it by going up the north stairs from the Orange Line Station (South Street Stairway).

dudeursistershot wrote:Arborway Station:

http://world.nycsubway.org/perl/show?18398
http://world.nycsubway.org/perl/show?18399

These last vestiges of the former stops/stations are being removed by the T, as previously noted in this thread. It probably won't be long before the tracks are ripped up, maybe within 5 years or so...

That IS the Arborway station, but ironically it has never been used as pictured. It was rebuilt by the MBTA AFTER service was suspended which is another case of mixed signals on the Aborway route.

Really? Was the old station very different from the one that's here now?

I know more reasons to keep the 39 bus. Buses can move around traffic accidents, trolleys can't. Buses don't need track maintance(streets aren't maintained by the MBTA). As of now, no ADA compliant trolleys are allowed on the E line.