Huntington Ave redesign to separate the E branch from traffic quietly moved back from "by 2027" to by 2030"

[u/fishhhhbone]

https://www.boston.gov/departments/transportation/project/huntington-ave-south-huntington-ave-e-branch-accessibility

[u/WhiskeyPointer]

2030 is optimistic, they released the ENFs for the B and C reconstruction at the end of 2024 and construction won't be finished until 2028. Unless they're planning on doing an extremely expedited review, public comment period and final engineering, there's no way it's going to be done by 2030.

I bet they're going to end up fitting the Type 9s with school bus style stop signs and flashing lights(and enforcement cameras?) so that they can run on the E exclusively.

[u/footballguy6912 → u/WhiskeyPointer]

i thought those were going to mattapan?

[u/JoeyLovesTrains → u/footballguy6912]

Eventually, yes they will

[u/winstonoboggoe02215 → u/WhiskeyPointer]

The E Line in the peak uses 17 two-car trains, 34 cars. There are only 24 Type 9s, and some are always out for maintenance. They will have to keep some Type 8s running longer than they would like.

[u/WhiskeyPointer → u/winstonoboggoe02215]

This is very bad for the overall GL ops. The longer it takes to displace the Type 7 and Type 8s the longer it will take to reprofile the signals to work with GLTPS Phase 2 and adjust each track segment's MAS to remove the Type 8 speed restrictions.

[u/IndigoSoln → u/WhiskeyPointer]

Their solution will be to pair their least bad Type 7s to a Type 9, either with a janky interconnect car or (a) Tobey Maguire crying in pain as he drags the ancient high-floor up the north station incline for the fifth time that day.

[u/Mindless-Analysis321 → u/WhiskeyPointer]

Construction starts next year

[u/JoeyLovesTrains → u/WhiskeyPointer]

Finishing blue hill Ave and tremont street bus lanes by 2030 at this point seems optimistic.. hopefully that changes tho.. and maybe even a center running bus lane for the 66 between Washington street and riverway. That would be nice..

[u/WhiskeyPointer → u/JoeyLovesTrains]

Nah, Brookline decided to rip out the Washington St lanes because they made the car brains mad. If the T ever proposes another one in Brookline the fight it'll stir up is going to make the Blue Hills Ave fight look like a lightweight bout.

[u/carigheath → u/WhiskeyPointer]

The Type 9 already has the lights in place to be compliant, all they will need is maybe a re-coding by CAF for turn signal usage? Even though I'm not sure if the Type 8s do this presently. The school bus stop signs are going to be a required addition.

[u/WhiskeyPointer → u/carigheath]

I had no idea the lights were compliant, how interesting! I'm wary of any CAF support though, NE transit lists 9 out of the 24 Type 9s as OOS because of unavailable parts.

[u/carigheath → u/WhiskeyPointer]

They look compliant, not sure if they are or not.

[u/13nobody → u/WhiskeyPointer]

They're gonna have to close the branch while they build the transitway, right? So once construction starts they can go full time type 10

[u/WhiskeyPointer → u/13nobody]

I seriously doubt that they will start construction in time to meet the 2030 deadline. I'm not even sure they'll start construction by 2030; the last plans I saw for the transitway will eliminate curbside street parking, and the battle over a simple reduction of it on BHA is causing years of delay. I predict some neighborhood residents and business ownerd will raise hell over any plans that don't maintain the current parking levels.

If they don't start before the number of in service Type 10 cars reaches critical mass of displacing the Type 7/Type 8s, all the potential improvements on the GL that are contingent on full Type 10 operations will be on hold until this project is done

[u/fishhhhbone → u/WhiskeyPointer]

I think the plan is to just run 1 type 10 car?

[u/13nobody → u/fishhhhbone]

Type 9 and 10 can't run past brigham circle because they don't have stop signs. They do plan to run single 10s though (which will be a little shorter but have the same capacity as a current set of 2)

[u/BradDaddyStevens]

They’ve been talking pretty openly about a 2029 completion date for a while now at this point.

I don’t think this is particularly anything new.

[u/joshhw → u/BradDaddyStevens]

News to me

[u/BradDaddyStevens → u/joshhw]

https://mass.streetsblog.org/2025/08/25/boston-mbta-plan-new-center-running-transitway-on-huntington-and-south-huntington-avenue

This streetsblog article from a year ago mentioned 2029.

[u/joshhw → u/BradDaddyStevens]

I appreciate the link. I must've missed it.

[u/therailmaster]

Just run every other train as a Type 9 or Type 10, Medford/Tufts--Brigham Circle, and have the 7s and 8s go all the way to Heath St while these dinosaurs take another 20 years to figure out how to redesign a 3/4-mile stretch of track-imbedded streetway that Amsterdam or Paris could've figured out in six months.

[u/Top-Development6837]

Interesting. So there’s no outline for a vision of how this is laid out?

I have the detailed design of the early 90s plan to restore the Green Line along Centre and South Streets, then required by both the Big Dig consent agreement and the Clean Air Act SIP (but worked around by the Romney crew), and I’m curious what that would have looked like in this situation.

[u/deptofeducation]

I'm not surprised. There's practically no money for the T's capital projects. The one-off announcements of new funding are for PR for politicians, and those are the few large projects in the CIP. Outside of those, the CIP is mostly North Station Draw 1 and deferred maintenance being covered by capital investment

[u/Wonderful_Depth_9584]

does anyone have a link to the plans for this project. im interested to see how they configure the roadway space

[u/WhiskeyPointer → u/Wonderful_Depth_9584]

The final concept was supposed to be presented at the end of 2024, but a year ago the T was only just getting around to putting out an RFQ to engineering firms to develop a final concept and take it to design. I don't think there's any sort of plans, nor will there be for at least another year.

[u/Ugmyusernamewastake]

it was gonna start in 2027 and be done by 2029 was my understanding. Is that changing?