The scourge of single-story retail

A curious pattern exists in Boston (I've also noticed it in other American cities). Neighborhoods that were primarily developed between 1890 and 1960 tend to have a lot of single-story retail. Oftentimes those retail shops are adjacent to multistory residential or office buildings, but the retail buildings themselves are single-story. Many of them are cheap boxes that look awful, while some of them do have decent architectural features that seem strangely out-of-place.

I'm sifting through some of my pre-snowpocalypse photographs for this post, so we can remember Boston as it once was.

The Fenway is a densely populated vibrant neighborhood with a strange dichotomy between retail buildings and residential buildings, like many other streetcar suburbs built around the same time.

Another example from the Fenway.

Double-whammy of bad 20th century planning: surface parking and single-story retail immediately adjacent to major Green Line station in Brighton.

Same place, across the street. Typical of Comm Ave, there's a strip of single-story retail adjacent to 5-story or more apartment buildings. Some parts of Comm Ave do have ground-floor retail below residential, but it's the exception, not the rule.

Union Square, Allston, with lots of great little shops and restaurants. But almost all of them are in single-story retail buildings. The tall building behind is from the 1980s, and does have a little bit of ground floor retail included, but is separate from most of the shops you see.

Single story retail from the early 20th century. But as you can see, it used to be a whole lot better. Nowadays the building is used for storage of automotive supplies, and the intersection is a motor vehicle-dominated nightmare. In 1889, the first electric trolley line in Boston departed from the Allston depot along those tracks. Now, the Allston depot is a pizzeria with a giant surface parking lot.

In the mid-1960s this theater was torn down to be replaced by a nearly featureless single-story retail building with surface parking out front. As the zoning regulations of the time would dictate.

Single-story retail in the center of Hyde Park's business district.

Single-story retail in triple-decker Dorchester, along Blue Hill Ave, where trolleys once roamed, and where frequent buses ply today.

Single-story retail and massive surface parking near Forest Hills, a major MBTA subway, bus and commuter rail station.

Single-story retail on Comm Ave next to a Green Line station.

Tall residential, short retail, MBTA station: Brookline is no exception.

In a city with an acute housing shortage, where space is at a premium, why do we allow so much waste to take place? It seems like there are hundreds of thousands of people who would like to be able to live in these neighborhoods with decent local shops, and in some cases, places that are only steps away from frequent MBTA service. Multistory buildings with ground floor shops and upstairs residences are not new in Boston -- they were quite commonly built in the 18th and most of the 19th centuries. The oldest neighborhoods in Boston: Beacon Hill, the North End, even the Back Bay, all have streets lined with buildings that have ground floor retail and homes above. Yet, starting around 1890 or so, it seems, some kind of insanity gripped America: suddenly, neighborhoods started being developed with apartment buildings on one block and single-story retail on another. Sometimes even on the same block.

I don't have a definitive answer, but there are several pieces in play:

• The criminally incompetent, so-called "City Planning" movement started around the turn of the 20th century, and these new planners were notoriously blind to the actual sources of city vitality and diversity. In some cases, they were opposed to city life, and actively sought to destroy it. Records from the City Planning Board of Boston show that many early discussions focused around choosing which buildings to destroy in order to widen roads. No doubt, they probably saw mixed uses as being "messy" and falsely perceived them as a source of traffic congestion.
• Property tax laws in this country can be counterproductive: they effectively penalize landowners who invest in their properties. In some cases, building owners may have chosen to cut down floors off their own buildings to save on tax expenses. In a sane world, such crazy outcomes would result in legislative self-examination and reform of the tax laws: for example, by repealing property taxes and replacing them with something less harmful like a land-value tax. In this world, well... no.
• In New England (and NY) it was common to quickly erect buildings that became known as "taxpayers" in order to generate some value quickly for the land without much effort. These taxpayer buildings were just enough to house some retail and then got locked into place when zoning came into effect around the mid-1950s. Many of the featureless boxes plaguing our landscape seem to fall into this category, but there are also plenty of examples of single-story retail with the kind of fine architectural detailing that seems out-of-place on a taxpayer.
• The economics of redevelopment seem to require a significant density boost in order to replace a revenue-generating property with a new one. If floors cannot simply be added to the top of the single-story building, and if the construction requires a shutdown of the business operating within, then the end result of construction has to be much taller than what previously existed. In the case of single-story successful retail, that probably means going up to 4-6 levels.
• And this discussion wouldn't be complete without mentioning the nefarious effect of mid-20th century zoning regulations. It is quite possible that many single-story retail buildings were intended to be temporary. But once zoning kicked in, redevelopment -- already difficult -- became near impossible. The density boost required to make redevelopment financially palatable was now illegal or required expensive variance hearings. In many cases, even the existing property was made illegal by unreasonable zoning requirements that demanded excessive amounts of parking that simply could not be provided in a space-constrained city neighborhood.

So, as a result, we have a bunch of neighborhoods where, if you somehow transported some people from 1915 one hundred years into the future to 2015, they might ask: "Why do you still have all these same crummy, single-story buildings that existed in my time?" ... After, of course, catching up on the past hundred years of history.

If we are serious about tackling the problem of rising housing costs and creating a better, more vibrant city that is accessible to all, then we will need to find a way to deal with these squat, inefficient, single-story structures. I often hear people complain that Boston is space-constrained, that we don't have room for development. That's not really true, as there are too many vacant parcels. But there are also many underutilized parcels in locations that can easily support much more. The replacement of single-story buildings that are located adjacent to frequent transit ought to be a high priority for all of the cities and towns in the region.

False pretexts: motorists only pretend to care about ambulances when doing so happens to be convenient

Two bits of news hit recently that may seem unrelated, at first: Lawmakers seek crackdown on highway protests:

Rep. Colleen Garry, a Democrat from Dracut, proposed making it a felony to block highways. She told the Lowell Sun she was furious about the Thursday morning protests that blocked two sections of the heavily traveled highway through Boston, one north of the city and one south.

"I'm just outraged that people would be that reckless," Garry said. "Everyone has a right to protest, but to do that kind of thing in a highway or a roadway?" [...]

Nearly 30 protesters were arrested and arraigned on charges including trespassing, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and willfully obstructing an emergency vehicle.

State police said an ambulance transporting a seriously injured car crash victim to a Boston hospital was forced to divert to a hospital outside the city that did not have a trauma unit. The man survived. 

State Sen. Richard Ross, a Wrentham Republican, filed legislation that would impose a minimum $5,000 fine and allow a jail sentence of up to six months for willfully trespassing on state highways. Current law allows for a maximum $50 fine and a jail term of no more than three months.

And the same week, State to propose opening S. Boston Bypass Road to all drivers:

State transportation officials will file a notice in February with Massachusetts environmental regulators to allow cars coming into South Boston to use the Bypass Road, which is currently restricted to trucks and other commercial vehicles. The pilot program would last six months and could begin as soon as March. [...] 

The 1.1-mile road was built to accommodate trucks during the construction of the Central Artery, and when the tunnels were done, the road remained restricted. But as traffic becomes heavier in the fast-growing Seaport District, there has been pressure to open up the road to everyone. [...]

As part of its filing, the state will also propose letting all drivers use the high-occupancy vehicle lanes outside of South Station and the South End.

These two pieces of news are, in fact, related: because together they illustrate the hypocrisy and insincerity of our Commonwealth's transportation policy with regard to emergency vehicles. If our elected officials truly cared about emergency vehicle response time -- which they should -- then they would put a quick end to this proposal that will destroy the efficacy of both the South Boston Bypass Road as well as the HOV lanes outside of the South End. If not, then it is quite clear that these politicians, Rick Ross and Colleen Garry, are merely posturing and mouthing platitudes, all while silently sticking it to emergency responders. By far the most common obstacle for emergency vehicles on our roads is not protesters: on a daily basis, emergency vehicles are obstructed by other motorists and the traffic jams created by motor vehicles.

First, a little background: it is quite common for ordinary motorists to believe that the exact same facilities that enable their own travel at high speeds are also beneficial to emergency vehicles. A related objection to certain traffic-calming measures is that they will slow emergency response. However, in reality, the truth is much more complex and requires context-specific analysis. More car capacity might help emergency vehicle response time, under some circumstances. In other scenarios, additional car capacity might harm emergency vehicle response time. An additional, open, free-flowing lane can help emergency vehicles -- but if that same lane jams up with private automobiles then that lane just becomes an obstacle: an overall detriment to response times. In that scenario, removal of a jammed travel lane -- a reduction in car capacity -- can give emergency vehicles the maneuvering room they need in order to avoid the obstacle created by other motorists.

BU Bridge under renovation (source)

The BU Bridge renovation project gives a prime example of how removal of a lane can help emergency vehicles. The engineers behind this project understood that the prior existing condition of having four substandard travel lanes (with no shoulders) was unsafe and liable to create immovable jams at a crucial choke-point for emergency vehicles traveling between Boston and Cambridge. Therefore, they chose to eliminate a lane and reallocated its space into a pair of 5-foot shoulders on either side of the motorway. These shoulders are not intended for motor vehicle travel but they do provide a space for other vehicles to pull over while yielding to an emergency vehicle. In addition, they provide breakdown space to help recover from crashes or other incidents. They also serve as a continuation of the bike lanes coming from Boston. All-in-all, a fairly solid engineering compromise, considering that the intersections on both sides of the river need substantial renovation and rethinking.

But none of those safety issues were important to motorists such as Stanley Spiegel, who was quoted in the Boston Globe, in February of 2009, making this threat:

"There's going to be road rage," predicted Stanley Spiegel, who lives across the bridge in Brookline. "If you're going to spend public money to go for an improvement, you don't predictably make things worse.

This kind of attitude shows zero concern for the safety of anyone else, but it is sadly all too common among entitled motorists of Mr. Spiegel's ilk. Whenever safety or emergency response goals conflict with increased car capacity, we can see quite clearly where motorists like him stand. Thankfully, in the case of the BU Bridge thus far, MassDOT has not capitulated to the bullies who would remove the shoulder space and turn it back into a fourth congested travel lane.

The South Boston Bypass Road (source)

The South Boston Bypass Road was assembled out of a narrow right-of-way for the purpose of helping the industries along the waterfront thrive during the Big Dig. It also keeps a bunch of heavy trucks off of the regular city streets, and it provides a clear lane of travel for emergency vehicles operating between the South Boston Waterfront and South Bay. As you can see from this picture, the shoulders are fairly small: they seem to vary from 2-4 feet. It's not a road designed for high volumes of traveling vehicles. As a result, heavy traffic induced on this road could result in jam-ups that would be impassable for emergency vehicles.

For a number of years, pundits such as Shirley Leung have been campaigning to allow private cars on it. She has quoted old-school 'highwaymen', such as Frank DePaola (who coincidentally is the interim Secretary of Transportation right now), with statements like this: "If you have traffic, and you want to relieve it, you have to find road capacity." As a result of this kind of short-sighted thinking, the South Boston Bypass Road will be jammed up with private cars and will not be able to serve its former purposes any longer. And it goes to show, that when the political push comes to shove, concerns about emergency vehicles suddenly disappear, in favor of a temporary band-aid covering up much deeper, systemic problems with South Boston transportation.

HOV lanes are also a popular target of attack by privileged motorists. It's so common that it's even got a name: the "Empty Lanes Attack", so called because drivers will often claim that the HOV lanes are "mostly empty" or not being used, and therefore should be given over to single-occupancy vehicles. What they (intentionally) fail to realize is that the relative emptiness is what gives the HOV lane its value: it is passable. If it were congested, then it would not be useful. Too bad, then, that even our Boston MPO doesn't seem to understand that most basic of concepts. And because such lanes are designed not to be congested, they are also useful for emergency vehicles that need to bypass major traffic congestion. Thus, the proposal to 'open' the HOV lanes outside of South Station to general traffic will result in degradation of emergency response times.

Where is the outrage? Why, of course there is none: because motorists only pretend to care about ambulances when doing so happens to be convenient. The "Empty Lanes Attack" trumps their false concern about emergency vehicles: the allure of additional single-occupancy vehicle road capacity takes precedence over safety principles.

If officials really cared about emergency response times, then I-93 would have full-width shoulders and/or HOV facilities/zipper lanes extended all the way from end-to-end: taking existing lane space where necessary. It's the only responsible way. But, in fact, the current configuration of the highway that excludes such safety features from much of its length, especially where most constrained. This shows where the true priorities lie: always pushing for 8 lanes of general travel no matter what the consequences are to emergency vehicles or highway safety. Convenience for drivers of single-occupancy vehicles is more important than safety, to our decision-makers.

The fact is that it's easy for officials to claim that they care about emergency vehicle response times when doing so also means more capacity for drivers. But real courage would be shown by officials who show that they care about emergency response even when it's not politically convenient to do so. That means support for restricted lanes such as HOV or bus lanes. That means supporting safety features within the existing right-of-way of roads, without requiring costly expansion. And that means not playing these insincere political games in which 'concern' for safety only arises when it is useful for pursuing another agenda; when that same 'concern' suddenly vanishes the moment it is no longer useful.

Stupid idea of the month: pretending to solve pedestrian signal timing issues using Pong

 Game lets you play Pong with a person on other side of the crosswalk (source)

ThisIsColossal reports on "ActiWait", which is a video game with controllers on either side of a crosswalk, allowing two waiting pedestrians to play a game of Pong.

The ActiWait is a new generation of traffic light buttons. Installed at a pedestrian traffic light with long red phases, it offers pedestrians the possibility to convert boring waiting times into positive experiences. Through a touch screen which is installed in the upper shell of the button, people can interact with each other across the street.

As a public art project, it's neat. Especially while it retains novelty value. But as a "solution" to long red phases, it's incredibly stupid and condescending. Let's get this straight: is it okay to subject pedestrians to needlessly long wait times at traffic signals, so long as you give them a 1970s video game to play? Absurd. What's the message being sent here? As near as I can tell, the message is: "You walked? Well then, your time is worth less than that of a driver. Here, play a game, instead of getting where you're trying to go."

The solution to long waiting times is not games... the solution is shorter waiting times. Engineers should respect the fact that pedestrians are people too and they don't appreciate being forced to wait excessively long times simply for the convenience of motor vehicle drivers. This is not a difficult topic, and it demands no techno-wiz solution. The answer is simple: shorten traffic signal cycle times to reduce average waiting times. And don't require the use of "beg buttons" to cross the street. Pedestrians should be given at least as much respect as drivers. If you don't make drivers press buttons or play games at traffic lights, then you shouldn't force pedestrians do that either.

Slides from Ricardo Olea, SF MTA (source)

San Francisco is known for its pedestrian-friendly signal timing. As you can see, engineers at SF MTA understand that overall cycle length is very important to the pedestrian experience.

Doubling the cycle length causes the average delay for pedestrians to more than double. In San Francisco, a 60 second cycle length is fairly standard. Unfortunately, in Boston, most signal cycle lengths are between 90 and 120 seconds. Sometimes they vary depending upon time of day -- usually lengthening during rush hour. 110 seconds is a fairly common cycle length, in my experience. All of this is firmly in the "red" according to SF MTA, leading to unhappy pedestrians. Well, actually what happens is that Bostonians quickly learn to ignore the signals because the timing is quite obviously terrible.

ActiWait is from Germany so hopefully they will stay over there. Or perhaps they can invent a game that convinces traffic engineers to treat pedestrians better. Here's an idea: perhaps a little device that can be installed in their cars. At every single signaled intersection, it forces them to stop, push a button, and wait 50 seconds on average for a green light. The fun part is that if you push the button at the wrong time during the cycle, you may have to wait an extra cycle to go around before you get a chance to proceed. That's how signals in Boston are programmed. All the fun of a slot machine, and none of the reward!

Vertical farming: stupid idea, or stupidest idea?

Article: Vertical farms offer a bright future for hungry cities.

My impression: It seems like it's just another set of wildly Utopian schemes along the lines of Ebenezer Howard's "Garden Cities." Except, instead of returning people to the farm, it's returning the farm to the city. The goal seems to be the same: curing those wicked sinful city folks with some virtuous farming and "green" space (of a sort).

However, if for whatever insane reason "vertical farming" takes off, I will then propose a revolutionary idea: "horizontal farming." It's where you go out to a place with lots of cheap land, abundant water and sunshine from the sky. Then you use the natural dirt and soil to grow lots of crops at very low cost, using machines such as "tractors" and "combines" to save labor. Finally, you ship it off to market using a highly efficient, fancy new technology called a "freight train." This lets you free up all that valuable land occupied by vertical farms in cities, turning it over to be used by much needed housing developments, employment opportunities, schools and parks.

Wide Boulevard Syndrome: the mistake that planners love to make, over and over again

There's an important Green Line forum coming up today but this article from the Globe today is too juicy to pass up:

Songdo City (source: Jean Chung for the Boston Globe)

Hynes had been courted by the South Korean government to build a massive city from scratch, one of the world’s largest private real estate projects, with 60-story housing complexes, a park, a waterfront golf course designed by Jack Nicklaus, and amenities modeled after major cities around the world, including Boston.

Some 100 million square footage would be built, the equivalent of 83 Prudential Towers in Boston.
“I think we have an opportunity here to have a lot of fun,” he told his partner after viewing the wasteland. “Build a lot of buildings.”

New Songdo City, as the development is called, hasn’t yet turned out the way Hynes and his business partners envisioned, and he left the project four years ago. It currently feels more like a small Midwestern city than a giant international hub, with wide boulevards and newly planted trees but little hustle and bustle.

If I had a nickel for every time an architect or a planner thought that they could inspire urban vitality by building yet another "wide boulevard" then I could probably afford to build my own Songdo City. Not that I would, because it looks awful, and the Koreans seem determined to repeat every mistake possible. However, I want to focus on a particular recurring theme, right now: it seems to me that almost every architect out there gets this idea that if they replicate Parisian boulevards then they will magically create another Paris!

Reading further in the same article:

The city was planned to be about the size of downtown Boston, and the vision was grand: A wide boulevard would be like the Champs-Elysees in Paris, an opera house like the one in Sydney, and canals that would take a visitor to Venice.

.....................

A statue in Paris, which I hereby designate to be known as,
 "The patron saint of stupid architects who try to build Parisian-style boulevards everywhere."

This "Wide Boulevard Syndrome" that infects many architects and so-called urban planners is a disease that causes every street in their developments to become super-sized, nearly highway-like. As if every street is meant to be the Champs-Élysées! The syndrome blinds the planners to the fact that Parisian boulevards exist in a certain context: the already-vibrant, ancient city of Paris, which was a bustling city long before Haussmann carved out the boulevards in a fit of mid-19th-century "urban renewal." Paris is a successful city not because of the boulevards, but despite them! A city can handle a certain number of wide boulevards when it has a robust network of small streets and small blocks that are human-scaled. Like old Boston, for instance. That effect doesn't work at all when Wide Boulevard Syndrome dictates that nearly every street is super-sized!

You would think that by 2014, most people in the urban developing profession would have realized their mistakes from the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. Alas.

His focus now is Seaport Square, a development that aims to transform 23 acres of parking lots into a neighborhood with condominiums, offices, stores, and parks. All told, Hynes hopes to help build 20 projects totaling 6.3 million square feet. Construction will have started on about a third of the development by June and Hynes is aiming to finish by 2020, meaning his new project in the Seaport would be finished the same year as his old one in Songdo City.

Think he learned anything about Wide Boulevard Syndrome? I doubt it. The newer parts of the Seaport suffers from it just as badly as anywhere. Take a look at Northern Ave, Seaport Boulevard, Congress Street, and Summer Street.



View Larger Map
Things aren't any better on the ground, either.

And when combined with the utter failure that is Silver Line-Waterfront, is it any wonder that Downtown Crossing is so much more desirable for new businesses and general street life?

It's okay to make mistakes. It's not okay to make the same mistakes over and over and over again. When will planners learn? It's the small streets, not the big streets, that make a city great. The big streets just make people feel small.

Contrarianism gone wild: the over-hyping of a study about car access and poverty

It's good to consider different ideas and opinions that go against the usual thinking. But it really helps when those different ideas have at least an ounce of common sense or consideration for why they are not widely accepted. This recent study and article by Rolf Pendall, et al, is one such example. The authors found that housing voucher recipients who owned cars were more likely to retain employment and have better outcomes than recipients without cars. Not a terribly surprising or interesting result when considered in context as a correlation. But the authors seemed to have decided to get more juice out of it by slapping a controversial title on an article, "How Access to Cars Could Help the Poor", and then somehow implying that their study produced that result (while mincing words in the actual text). They also sucked in a journalist who really ought to know better, Emily Badger.

What's so bad about creating more car subsidies for the poor? Well, if you don't think any further, then it might be hard to find an objection. But anyone with a moment's thoughtfulness should ask this question: What about the young, the elderly, and the disabled?

Pushing and subsidizing cars just leads to worse conditions for the people who cannot drive; the people who are most often harmed by automobile-oriented policies. This so-called "solution" coming from Pendall and Badger is simply inequitable. Furthermore, it completely ignores the fact that we already give A LOT of subsidies for car ownership in this country, as it is. Cheap gas, cheap parking, free highways, etc. How is it possible that more subsidies are going to help? And what is the plan to help those who cannot drive at all?

Just look at what happens in other countries that accept subsidies and promote car ownership. It's more stark in countries that are not as rich as the United States, and where corruption rules. Mass motorization in the developing world is leading to nightmarish congestion, a hideous death toll, choking amounts of smog, and growing population that is being excluded from opportunity because they do not have a car or are unable to drive. Trying to force more cars onto people just exacerbates all these problems.

Deep in Pendall's article is buried this paragraph that walks back the headline assertion:

More research is needed to determine if the relationship is causal or associative, that is, whether the car is the catalyst or if there is something deeper at work, of which the car is simply one manifestation. Cars are expensive to purchase and to maintain, even more so for families with severely limited resources. A low-income household that is somehow able, inclined, or afforded the opportunity to buy a car might also do many other things to get ahead. Motivation, opportunity, or both could be key.

Well, guess what. It doesn't take a genius to realize that a family stranded in an automobile-oriented environment is going to benefit from an automobile. But the cause of that problem is the automobile-dependency of their neighborhood. And nothing you do to promote car ownership, or even car access, is going to help the third of our population here in America that simply cannot or should not drive.

Advocates trying to help people lift themselves out of poverty will no doubt consider all sorts of means. In some cases, that might include helping people gain access to vehicles. But it would be the incredibly irresponsible to lean on a general policy that depends upon getting everyone into a private vehicle. First, and foremost, it excludes a large segment of the population. Second, it is very expensive, a burden on both parties. And finally, it does not solve the actual problem: it is just a band-aid for the distressingly inhuman public space and transportation policies of the past.

weMove Massachusetts: A disappointing, flawed plan for performance metrics that will repeat the mistakes of the past

This month, MassDOT announced a new plan called "weMove Massachusetts" which introduces the idea of using performance metrics to help plan investment in transportation. Sounds good, right? I was looking forward to reading about a scientific approach towards selecting projects that help people access the opportunities in their lives, while steering towards overall goals like "GreenDOT." But instead of that, when I read the report, I found the same bad old attitude that you also find at the Texas Transportation Institute. The main automobile measure is regressive. The sole metric for bicycle usage is almost completely useless. The transit metrics range from irrelevant, to poorly designed, down to outright worthless. There are no walking metrics in the report. Many of the metrics don't even involve actually measuring anything in the real world!

Metrics have consequences

Before I go into the specifics, let's take a quick step back and think about what we actually want out of our transportation metrics. There are two main ways of looking at transportation broadly, and both have their uses, depending on context: mobility vs accessibility.

Mobility measures the amount of traveling you are able to do: e.g.

• How fast can you go?
• How far can you go?
• How easy is it to move around?

Accessibility measures the amount of opportunity that is open to you because of transportation: e.g.

• How many jobs/needs/activities can you reach in a reasonable amount of time?
• How many choices do you have about getting to your destinations?
• How is your quality of life improved by transportation?

These are not completely distinct viewpoints. For example, you could increase the number of jobs available to you by improving the speed of transportation. On the other hand, you could also achieve the same by having the economy add more jobs within your existing range, or by moving to a region with more job density. The latter is, broadly and superficially, the way cities form.

However, choice of viewpoints does matter when trying to put together cost/benefit analysis for new transportation projects, and it is very important to choose carefully. A metric is a convenient number which tells you something useful, but it is also an intentional oversimplification which can lead you astray if not used judiciously. Unfortunately, our MPO has a history of abusing metrics, and traffic engineers are infamous for applying the wrong tools to our cities, causing terrible destruction in the process.

Is there an ideal general metric at all? I don't think so, but the closest one I believe is the last example I cited above: "How is your quality of life improved by transportation?" Ultimately, transportation is about giving you the ability to live your life as you see fit, to take advantage of the opportunities open to you, and to keep you safe while doing it. The problem with this formulation is that it is very vague and broad, making it difficult to quantify. That's intentional: "quality of life" means as many different things as there are different people, so there really is no one way to interpret this. Instead, when designing performance metrics that are more easily quantifiable, this principle is what you should be striving to justify your decisions by: how does your work help people live the life that they want to live?

Without further ado, I will jump into the "weMove Massachusetts" report and its many flaws:

Pavement, Bridges

I've grouped these two together because they have a similarity: obviously you don't want roads to crumble or bridges to collapse. But, the metrics assume that the status quo is sustainable and desirable, and all that is needed is an influx of money to repair what we have. A very, very large influx of money: $544 million a year on Pavement and $447 million a year on Bridges. That's a billion dollars a year for what will basically only benefit motor vehicle modes. This is not to deny the need for such repairs or such infrastructure. We need some of it. But do we need ALL of it? There should be some cost/benefit analysis applied to the two largest line items in the transportation budget. These metrics do not enable that. There is no consideration given to whether a lane diet might be a better way to go, for safety and money-saving purposes. And there is no consideration given to whether an overpass should be removed instead of rebuilt, even though 1950s traffic levels on it long ago disappeared. Is every square inch of asphalt sacred? Must we continue to perpetuate the mistakes of our forebears, at any cost, without thought?

Mobility

This metric is one of the worst in the document. It's basically lifted straight from the highway-crazed Texas Transportation Institute. Sure, this metric is fairly easy to quantify, but it reduces the whole notion of "mobility" down to one, highly confounded number: hours of delay per 1,000 miles traveled in a private vehicle. To understand why this is a bad metric, even from a driver's standpoint, consider the following tale of two commuters, Alice and Bob:

Alice lives in Waltham and works at an office near Rt 128 in Waltham, about 2 miles away. Under ideal conditions, her commute travel time is 5 minutes by car. However, under typically congested circumstances, it usually takes her about 10 minutes by car.

Bob lives in West Stockbridge and works at a shop in Westfield, about 40 miles away. Thanks to the sparse population, Bob can almost always drive 60 mph from start to finish, for a commute travel time of 40 minutes each way.

I cannot speak for the relative happiness of Alice and Bob, since it would depend on their (fictional) personalities. However, I can point out that Alice only spends 20 minutes a day commuting, while Bob spends 80 minutes a day just getting between home and work. Yet, according to this "mobility" metric of MassDOT, Alice is suffering terribly from delays, while Bob is doing great. Assuming 250 working days per year, Alice puts in 1,000 VMT/year for her commute, and experiences "delay" of 41.6 hours/year.

Viewed through the prism of this mobility metric, the DOT would rate Alice's commuting experience as being miserable, slow, and hellish. But that doesn't make sense from a common sense perspective. Alice only has a 10 minute commute! I bet most people would love to be in her situation, rather than being stuck in a car slogging it out 40 minutes each way. The DOT's metric is completely at odds with the principle of "improving quality of life." Not only that, the metric completely ignores all other modes of transportation. Two miles is not that far. That could even be walkable on a daily basis. It's easily bikeable within 15 minutes. If Alice is the sort of person who values getting exercise to and from work, it could easily be made possible. Or perhaps she would rather take a bus, the 70A, and do some reading on the 15 minute trip. Bob has none of those options: he is a captive car commuter. The only option he has is to car pool with someone else. But the metric doesn't even care about that: since it measures vehicle-delay rather than person-delay, your passengers may as well not exist.

The story of Alice and Bob is a bit too neat, obviously: in the real world, there are many other factors. But it's meant to illustrate a point: the mobility metric chosen by MassDOT is aimed in the wrong direction. The metric of "delay per vehicle-mile" is not designed to produce good transportation outcomes for people, but rather, to produce more funding for expensive road-widening projects which line the pockets of connected contractors and please the egos of highway engineers. The footnote to this metric tells it all:

Funding for mobility projects includes any projects that will increase roadway system capacity such as additional lanes, bottleneck removal, intersection improvements, etc.

MassDOT will claim that Alice is "suffering" from tremendous delay as justification for widening the streets in her neighborhood, installation of fancy traffic engineering techniques such as grade separation and complicated traffic signal phases. All of which will degrade the quality of life in her neighborhood. To be fair, in this day and age most of that will be shouted down by commuter opposition, but this is the same kind of metric that was used to shove these kinds of "improvements" down the throats of our communities in the past. More insidiously, planners will use this delay metric as justification for furthering suburban sprawl, instead of creating compact, walkable neighborhoods. The "delay per vehicle-mile" metric is complete garbage and thoroughly inappropriate for an agency which claims to be about promoting "smart growth" and "green travel" mode shift.

Safety

Safety is important. Everyone knows that. But, this particular way of doing it is an example of a metric which sounds good at first, but is actually quite mediocre, or downright dangerous, when you look at the details of how it is actually implemented. Why is there a focus only on intersections and interchanges. That seems strange. Although those are certainly higher risk locations, crashes can happen at any place. Why the restriction? The answer is found in another section which fills in some of the details:

Roadway safety is typically measured by the number of crashes. Crash rates cannot be easily projected into the future using the types of performance curves applied to other highway metrics. Therefore, safety performance was measured by the number of high-crash locations that can be improved over time for an average cost of $500,000/intersection.

So basically, they claim that they cannot get a good metric for "crashes prevented per dollar" and therefore, as a proxy, they will just count the number of intersection projects that can be funded, assuming half-million dollars each. Here's a litany of problems with this approach:

1. There's nothing about "intersection improvements" which necessarily implies better safety.
2. DOTs have a history of making "improvements" that make streets more dangerous for walking and biking. For example, street widening is sometimes considered a "safety improvement" even though it will end up producing more injuries, particularly to vulnerable road users.
3. The real danger to safety comes from speeding vehicles. Again, "intersection improvements" says nothing about this, and the metric is completely mum about speeding elsewhere on the street.
4. The metric encourages spending money on intersections and interchanges, but it does not actually measure whether that money was spent in a worthwhile way.
5. It assumes that spending a half-million dollars is all that you need to do to "fix" an intersection.
6. Severity of crashes is not considered at all. If you had to pick a design based on safety consequences, which would you select? (a) One person will die each year in a severe crash, or (b) ten people will be slightly injured a year in minor crashes. Obviously, zero injuries or deaths is best, but if you had to choose, then I think that (b) is a much better outcome. The metric considers none of that.

If you are going to adopt performance metrics, then you should actually go out and measure something in the real world. This so-called "safety metric" does not do that: instead it simply divides the amount of money available by the number of intersections, and calls it a day.

Bicycling

Behold, the only bicycle-focused metric in the entire report. The main mobility metric only focuses on cars, so this one should partially make up for that, right? Right? Yeah right. This metric is the first one in the report where you start to think that this whole document is really just a long, boring joke. If you try to consider it, there are a variety of ways you might go about quantifying bicycle performance (not endorsing any particular one): bicycle-miles traveled, % mode share bicycling, % population that owns a bicycle, % population that considers bicycling, number of comments on the Internet complaining about bicyclists, etc. What all these metrics have in common is that they involve making measurements in the real world: something must actually be counted, a number that cannot simply be conjured out of thin air.

This is in stark contrast to the proposed MassDOT metric: completion % of the Bay State Greenway, a network of off-street cycle paths. The DOT's metric is computed by looking at the budget documents and comparing whether or not the Bay State Greenway is funded under both budget scenarios. Since it is, the metric is set at 0% from now until the end of time. The genius who put this one together probably thought he or she was pretty clever to insert a "performance metric" which required a grand total of 30 seconds of work behind a desk, and will never need to be revisited again.

Complete and utter failure. Secretary Davey, this is a disgrace.

Walking

Just kidding. There are no walking metrics in the report. Well, I suppose you could pray that the "Safety" metric will bring "intersection improvements" that actually benefit pedestrians, and that the "Mobility" metric does not end up destroying the walkability of streets which used to be safe before the traffic engineers got their hands on them.

Transit

The tone of the report changes once it reaches the transit metrics. Prior to this, the metrics were somewhat broad or simplistic, but the transit metrics are very precisely chosen. Unfortunately, they are chosen rather poorly for planning purposes. I was told by some MPO staff that the MBTA was responsible for their metrics, and that does seem to be the case because these metrics are largely only of interest to someone working in the T's maintenance department. Since there are so many, I will group a bunch together and address them at once:

• MBTA Bridge condition: the % of bridges that are in state of good repair.
• MBTA Elevator/Escalator condition: the % of elevators/escalators that are in state of good repair.
• MBTA Station Accessibility: the % of stations that comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act and the MA Architectural Access Board standards.
• MBTA/RTA Bus and Train performance: the % of vehicles in state of good repair.
• MBTA Signal performance: the number of annual signal failures.

All of these metrics are important -- to the people in charge of maintaining the system. However, these metrics are fairly irrelevant to the average customer. Reliability is important to the customer, certainly, but we don't go through the trouble of providing public transportation because we really like to do bridge or signal maintenance: the purpose, the reason for existence of the system, is making transportation available to people. People want to know that when they show up at a train or bus station, a vehicle will arrive in a reasonable amount of time. They want a system which gets them where they need to go, which gives them access to the city region and all of the opportunities contained within. Specific "state of good repair" statistics are part of the internal implementation of reliability. I suppose it's fair enough that they are being open about it and including it in the report. Fine. But then, where are the metrics which actually measure what people want out of a public transportation system? Not present in this report. Maybe the closest is another maintenance statistic:

Again, we have a performance metric based on delay, like what cars get. Good? Not quite. One improvement is, at least in this case, positive values don't imply a need for highly destructive road widening, since that is not on the table. So, improvements to delay are probably all upside, no downside other than cost. What else could be wrong? Well, it's another case of the same disease which seems to periodically infect planning at the Boston MPO and the DOT: vehicle-itis, the curious syndrome in which transportation agencies forget that their job is to help human beings, and instead focus entirely on pieces of steel and fiberglass.

This metric, like the mobility metric before, only focuses on the delay to vehicles, rather than people! In the other case, you might shrug it off because the average car only carries a few people at a time (although that attitude still screws over carpools). But it is huge loss when you neglect to account for the fact that a train could easily be carrying over five hundred people who are all delayed when the vehicle is delayed. The next time the Red Line breaks down, think about this: the MBTA, MassDOT, and the Boston MPO have all committed to the belief that your time, as a transit rider, is only worth 1/500th the value of anyone who happens to drive alone in their car.

A lot of perversity about our transportation system can likely be explained by this attitude:

• The ever-increasing insertion of delays into the routine of T travel. From completely pointless, customer-loathing tactics like "Front Door Only alighting," to random "safety stops in the middle of tunnels" that are never fixed, to schedule management that hasn't changed since the early 20th century, to deferred maintenance up the wazoo, it's all part of a culture of not caring about the riders on-board the vehicles.
• The continuing refusal to use signal priority for transit vehicles on the surface. Both Beacon St and Huntington Ave have the technology installed to do it. But the MBTA can't be bothered to implement this modern technique which is used all over the country and the world. In their eyes, a train with 300 people on board is not worthy of causing ten seconds of delay to a precious private automobile.
• An almost complete lack of bus lanes outside of the gimmick lanes on Washington St -- which don't extend into the part of the city where bus lanes are desperately needed. This one's on BTD as well, but the MBTA should be pushing hard to improve the ridiculously slow speed of its buses.
• The achingly slow turnaround time on the barest of improvements. The key bus route improvement project took about three years. Not because it was hard (it's not). Not because it was expensive (it wasn't). But because nothing happened for two years and then finally bus stops started getting moved, and painted in the street, within a few months at the end of last year.
• The truly pathetic state of some of the stations, particularly on the surface, where there's nothing more than a few feet of asphalt with cars zooming by, inches from your body. And that's on a section of roadway that was rebuilt relatively recently!
• The fingernail-pulling it takes to get sidewalks, crosswalks and bus stops shoveled clear of snow around here.

Choosing good metrics for transit is not easy, as it depends on the context and what you are trying to accomplish. But you cannot reasonably plan a transit system without using metrics which count people. Some examples of useful mobility-style metrics might include, but are not limited to: boardings per mile, net cost per passenger, average passenger load, or number of people unable to board vehicle due to crowding. Some examples of useful accessibility-style metrics are: number of jobs available within a 30 minute transit trip, number of people within a 5 minute walk of a frequent transit stop, number of people with disabilities who successfully navigate your fixed-route system, or percentage of riders who claim [dis]satisfaction with the transit system.

Conclusion

I know that I have been a bit crass about the problem here, but it is only because a strong tone is necessary. The "weMove Massachusetts" plan is terrifyingly terrible. It represents a large step backwards, encoding 1950s-style thinking about highways into a document which pays lip service to "smart growth" and "green travel" but does nothing to promote either. It is so bad, that I can only recommend one course of action: rip up the "weMove Massachusetts" document and start over from scratch. This time, choose empirical metrics which require real-world measurements, categorize them under either "mobility" or "accessibility," and justify why the people of Massachusetts should care about the metrics. I propose that the guiding principle be: "transportation investments that improve the quality of life of people in the Commonwealth" but I am open to suggestions.

I also want to add a note about GreenDOT: supposedly, it is a goal of MassDOT to triple the mode share of walking, bicycling, and taking public transportation. This report talked about that goal but, like with many other things, did not really go into any significant detail about it. However, I did hear from MPO staffers that the metric used will be "person-miles" for each of the "green modes." In other words, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts will either seek to encourage three times as many people to walk, bike, and ride transit; or, the Commonwealth will seek to force all current walkers, bikers and transit-riders to travel three times as far as they do today. According to the metric, either one works. Okay, that sounds a bit ridiculous, but that's because "person-miles" is not a good metric for walking, biking or public transportation in cities. If you want more details, read those links, but suffice to say: there's no public good served by forcing people to walk, bike or ride buses further and further away. Distance is not a virtue in itself.

I just wish that the people who put together metrics at our departments of transportation, and our organizations of planning, would put in even an ounce of thought into their work.

For more reading on metrics, and mobility vs accessibility, I recommend this paper by Todd Litman.

Bad parking policy, in one picture

On one side of the street, BTD has installed parking meters at the "usual rate" of $1.25/hour. On the other side of the street, the curb is left largely unregulated except for street cleaning. It shouldn't be too hard to figure out which side is which.

What you are seeing here is a case of poorly designed parking policy. The metered spaces have a price that is too high, and are therefore going wasted. The unmetered spaces have a price that is too low, and are therefore overcrowded. The correct price is somewhere in between, where "correct" means: achieves a reasonable level of utilization that still leaves a few spaces open for new arrivals. Prof. Donald Shoup's rule of thumb is that prices should be set to achieve approximately 85% utilization, which ensures that there will be at least 1-2 parking spaces available on every block, at almost all times.

BTD's bad parking policy and refusal to consider reform means that people continue to suffer unnecessary headaches, and they make claims of parking "shortages" even while most of our neighborhood is covered in asphalt. Although I don't own a car, I still find it important to fix. For one thing, it's the right thing to do. For another, bad policy in one area tends to infect other areas. Much of our land use policy, for instance, is dictated by the supposed "shortage" of parking. Even though about half the residents of this neighborhood don't have access to a car, they are forced by zoning rules to subsidize other people's parking. Those regulations came about because the on-street commons is managed improperly, creating an overcrowding problem. And then, instead of solving that problem the correct way, politics dictated bad ideas like "minimum parking quotas" which dump the burden onto the people who are least able to afford it, and also least able to oppose it.

This goes beyond just rent, and home prices. Economic development in this neighborhood is artificially depressed because of regressive policies like minimum parking quotas. The suburban-style space requirements of that many automobiles are too much for a compact city neighborhood. The net effect of this heavy-handed government regulation, to force more cars on us, is to squelch normal, healthy, incremental growth. Instead, we get almost nothing, and hardly any changes, for decades. That's a lot of lost jobs, lost opportunity, a heavy price to pay, all because of an irrational fear of parking "shortages" caused by broken policies that do not make sense in urban areas.

Boston MPO memo fails to understand purpose of HOV lanes

The Boston MPO recently released a memo titled Screening Regional Express Highways for Possible Preferential Lane Implementation. Quote:

The preferential lanes envisioned in this study would usually constitute specialized, separate lanes, generally constructed in the median of an expressway. The adjacent main travel lanes could continue to accommodate their full lane capacities, up to around 2,200 vehicles per hour, depending on the design standards of the roadway. With preferential lane eligibility set to allow fewer vehicles, perhaps 1,500 per hour, buses and other users of the preferential lane would be able to travel at posted speeds. Depending on traffic conditions, users of the general-purpose lanes would continue to experience delays either as a result of heavy traffic or from queues forming at bottlenecks.

It is sometimes suggested that an HOV lane could be implemented by converting a general-purpose lane for the exclusive use of HOVs. Since it is assumed that any preferential lane eligibility rules would result in fewer vehicles in the preferential lane than in the general-purpose lanes, the result would be a reduction in total expressway capacity. Reducing the capacity of a congested expressway would seriously worsen congestion and queuing within and leading to the capacity-reduced corridor, as well as on nearby surface roadways.

Here's the author's reasoning:

• General purpose lanes have a capacity of 2,200 vehicles per hour
• HOV/preferential lanes should be limited to 1,500 vehicles per hour
• 1,500 is less than 2,200
• Therefore, general-purpose lanes should never be converted to HOV lanes.

Have you spotted the flaw yet? It's the measurement unit: vehicles per hour. The author considers that all vehicles are equal with regards to congestion. Therefore a single-occupancy car is equal to a four-person carpool, and both are considered equal to a bus carrying 50 people. This memo blithely ignores the entire purpose of HOV lanes -- which is to expedite the movement of people, not pieces of metal.

Free highways lead to gridlock in China

The idea of pricing road usage is still controversial in this country. Although it would likely save everyone some time and headaches from congestion (and time is money for most folks), people resist paying for access they feel entitled to be given for free.

This year, China recently decided to celebrate a week of holidays by making all roads free for travel. The result was epic gridlock.

Long tailbacks were reported across the country, with 24 major motorways in 16 provinces effectively transformed into enormous parking lots as 86 million people took to the roads, a 13 per cent increase on last year.

Not everyone was surprised:

Li Daokui, one of China's most prominent economists and a policy adviser to the Central Bank, said the snarl-up was entirely predictable. 

"[Making the] Highways toll free on holidays? We are making a world record of stupidity by launching this policy […] Going free of charge is like shouting out to the public: '1,2,3, let's go jam the road!'" he posted on his Weibo.

I'm sure though that, as an economist, he may have some small appreciation of the mess as an unintentional experiment. I think that this decision by the Chinese government, regarding their toll roads, does a good job of making the case for road pricing: by demonstrating that the opposite causes chaos and unbelievably high levels of congestion.

More stupid zoning antics

At a community meeting last week, two businesses made their case for a zoning variance. The first one was a long time physical therapist outfit that was losing their space near St Elizabeth's hospital and needed to move into a new office about a mile away. The other was a massage therapist that wished to setup shop in a storefront in Brighton Center.

The physical therapist needed a variance because the space in question was zoned for "office" uses which did not the include his business which fell under the "clinic" category instead. The masseuse wanted to reuse a vacant storefront that was zoned for "retail" which also did not include his category.

Does anyone think that these zoning rules are actually useful? What's the point of trying to keep out a "clinic" or a "massage therapist" who is willing to pay rent and run a business?

The probable answer is that the zoning rules are purposefully restrictive in order to force business owners to come beg the community for an exception. This strikes me as being unnecessarily hostile to business and morally suspect. Of course, in this case, there was no issue -- the physical therapist is popular in the community, and the masseuse was invited in particular by the long-time landlord of that building because he felt it would be a good addition to the neighborhood.

But there are other cases I've sat for where people whisper negative words like "unfortunately, he can build it as-of-right" as if they would want to stop the property owner out of spite. And they do sometimes attempt to do this. It's despicable to watch when it happens. More often, these overly restrictive and intrusive zoning rules are used to block growth in the neighborhood. As a result, vacancy rates are negligible and rents are starting to soar again.

Bus lanes don't get no respect

Spotted this sign while wandering around town this past weekend. Essex Street is normally configured as two general vehicle lanes and one dedicated bus lane for the Silver Line. However, construction on a building is occupying one of the lanes here. Under any other circumstance, the likely response would be to simply reduce general vehicle travel to one lane. But in this case, the supposedly "dedicated" bus lane here gets treated like extra space for any motorist to use. A nearby sign indicates that construction is expected to last until "Dec 2012 / Dec 2013" whatever that means.

It's bad enough that people drive into the bus lanes on a regular basis. Now that it's officially sanctioned, they'll even have an excuse. Things like this are why we can't trust transportation planners bearing "Bus Rapid Transit."

More ridiculous parking requirements

While reviewing Cambridge's zoning code I looked at the table of minimum and maximum parking requirements, which has a long list of different uses and their different requirements. Here is one:

Bar, Saloon, or other establishment serving alcoholic beverages but which is not licensed to prepare or serve food.

Minimum Parking Required: 1 per 5/10/15 seats (depending on type of land).

That's right: Cambridge could require as many as 1 parking spot per 5 seats for a bar -- an establishment which, by definition, supplies beverages that make you unfit to pilot a vehicle.

Certainly, people are allowed to go to a bar and not drink, such as designated drivers. But why require that a bar provide parking, instead of letting the owner decide whether or not to assume that liability?

It's almost as if there's a kind of sickness which seems to get into city planners' heads whenever the topic of parking comes up, and it causes all common sense to fly out the window.

A bad sign

A quick follow-up to my previous post: When I first spotted this pictured advertisement on a Pittsburgh bus, I didn't think much of it. But then I read it, and realized that there was an attitude fundamentally wrong behind it. It's nice to say things like "Don't litter" or "Don't engage in loud or rowdy behavior." But what alarmed me was the final message: "Inconsiderate behavior can result in the loss of your bus stop!"

It took me a moment to process that. What the Port Authority seems to be claiming here is that the actions of one person can be used to justify punishment of the group of people who use that bus stop. That seems insane. I don't know if this has ever been carried out, or if this threat is empty.

But what portends for worse is the phrasing. It's about "your bus stop" and "your bus." A long time ago, I distinctly remember someone explaining proudly to me that in Pittsburgh "everyone rides the bus." It's not just for the poor and disenfranchised, as in some places, but for a diverse cross section of the population. It seemed to be quite true at the time. I have been away for many years. I don't know how things have been changing. But it is a bad sign if bus riders are being separated from the rest of society, as a class, and then treated like children whose "bus privileges" may be taken away arbitrarily. This is supposed to be everyone's bus, and everyone's bus stop. Can you imagine the city threatening to close a road because some driver littered? Why should buses get this kind of treatment?

Bad design: Kenmore Square bus station

Kenmore Square bus station (source)

The MBTA finished completely rebuilding Kenmore station just a couple years ago. They even added a fancy new bus shelter with a swooping glass roof (it leaks). But for some reason, a really basic passenger flow issue was either ignored, or completely mishandled.

Using my incredible art skills, I have concocted a diagram which shows a schematic of the Kenmore bus station. Buses arrive at the bottom of the picture, unload, and then move to the top of the picture where they pick-up passengers waiting. Most passengers who exit the bus will then proceed to the subway via the stairs. Passengers coming from the subway may use either the stairs or the up escalator. They typically wait near the bus pick-up point, but may sprawl out all along the platform when it gets crowded.

At rush hour, passengers in a hurry to connect to the Green Line collide with a crowd of people coming up or already waiting to ride the bus. The result: a mess!

The sad thing is, this could have been a much cleaner, safer, and quicker design if only the stairs and the up-escalator had exchanged positions! This is something that should have been caught early in the design stage.

Bike lane innovation

Massholes have invented a whole new use for bike lanes: pass-on-the-right lanes. Just something I observe from time to time around here.

This is a good reason why it is, at best, hideously stupid to widen a road for the purpose of installing a bike lane. Drivers don't really care about markings on a road, and will use every inch of pavement they can. There's little to no traffic enforcement. Widening a road for a bike lane is just as dangerous as widening it for a car lane. And in a way, it's subject to a form of the empty lanes attack where the drivers just take advantage of the extra space whenever they feel like it.

Stupid wastes of money

Part 1 in this never-ending series:

The 57 bus travels from Watertown Yard through Brighton, Allston, and down Commonwealth Avenue until Kenmore Square. The penultimate stop on this route is at Blanford Street on Boston University's campus. It is also the site of the nicest bus stop on the route.

Not only does it have a new sign (showing the Stop ID number!) but it also gets a brand new shelter. This would all be wonderful except for the simple fact that the bus route terminates one block further, in Kenmore Square. In the past, this stop used to be listed as "drop-off only" but that disappeared at some point. Why did the MBTA have a bus shelter built here, instead of at heavily used stops such as Harvard Avenue or Packard's Corner? How did such a waste come about?

About the only reasonable explanation I can come up with is that this might be used as a shuttle bus stop for the Green Line during substitute busing service. But that's a rare occurrence and they haven't shown the same consideration at other more popular stops nearby.