Urban Ring Transit

A Policy Paper

by Barry M. Steinberg

Adopted 13 Nov. 2002

by the Association for Public Transportation

The Ring is planned as a tentative, slow process, rather than as a transit line. It is intended to be an overlay to existing service and to interconnect with all other major transit service in the Boston area.

The concept of a ring is a solid, single line, which has a well-known shape and runs in a well-defined way. Phase one of the MBTA's Urban Ring is overlay bus service. Rather than being a line, the service envisioned could be called "The Urban Wreath". It is composed of a network of intersecting lines which likely are going to be difficult to untangle or understand in the aggregate except for the general trend around the city. Any one strand is likely to be flimsy, i.e. tenuous.

To visualize the concept of the Urban Ring service as planned, see figure 1. Orange lines, item 1, represent existing traditional bus routes in the area. Superimpose the Crosstown Transit (CT) routes, item 2, then the proposed Urban Ring service, item 3, and finally rail service, item 4. The shaded line represents Boston Harbor.

The Crosstown Transit "CT" routes generally run from rush hour to rush hour, weekdays, infrequently. They were originally intended to serve the same purpose as the proposed Urban Ring bus service. The fact that they run infrequently indicates that they are less than a rousing success. One of the problems is that they go from point to point, rather than running in a permanent corridor that is intuitive to the passenger. Phase one of the Urban Ring runs the risk of being a duplicate of the Crosstown Transit network.

Already, to serve a number of points of interest, a family of route variants has been proposed in a detailed network of service. The hazard of such a family of routes is that inevitably none of them is going to run frequently enough (regardless of present good intentions) to achieve the interim purpose of emulating rapid transit—a well-defined routing and service frequent enough that a schedule is not necessary. This indeed was the failed promise of Crosstown Transit: to provide service faster than regular bus routes, new routes that would attract significant ridership, relieving downtown rapid transit congestion. A secondary positive effect would be to enhance access to underserved areas, which would have the consequent result of economic growth in the areas served.

The obvious rationale behind phase one of the Urban Ring is (1) do it on the cheap; (2) do it quickly and, less obviously, (3) find out where the passengers really want to go, as opposed to where service providers, planners, and critics feel the service should go.

A comment in a letter from the T’s Peter Calcaterra to the City of Everett’s Marzie Galazka (16 Sept. 2002) referred to a local Telecom City shuttle link to Wellington Station. The ideal of a shuttle is that it provides continuous service, something again that doesn't require a timetable, and that it is of utility. Unfortunately, if it follows the example of Quincy’s "shuttle" from Quincy Adams Station to Crown Colony, it will consist of one bus that runs counterclockwise through the complex, hitting all destinations, and consequently is so infrequent and slow that it is faster to walk than figure out when the bus is coming and whether it is going to run clockwise or counterclockwise.

Figure 1.

Phase Two of the Ring is to be a high-build bus service. This involves street and traffic signal modifications, so routes have to be well-defined.

Here and there busways will be provided. It seems that the provision of underused busways is going to result in their enhancement by making them dual-purpose routes as truck haul roads. In other words, the tail will wag the dog, since the number of trucks will predominate over the number of buses. These busways may well involve tunnels and bridges, routes that may not be intended as routes to be converted to rail service later. Of course, if the route is also used as a haul road, there will be a non-transit constituency for the status quo rather than conversion to rail passenger service.

There is postulated a presumed Phase Three, which will be either a heavily or lightly engineered rail route following the presumed primary passenger market, from Sullivan Square (not necessarily a traffic generator, but a convenient transit connection) through Cambridge to Ruggles or Dudley station. The preliminary ideas for alignments generally follow available rights of way. The routing covers an arc of roughly 140^o of the real urban ring.

In 1963, the federal government financed a bus effort similar to the existing Crosstown Transit. On the bus destination signs, the legend was "Experimental Bus Route 1" or whatever number. The routings in concept were similar to the present Crosstown Transit, but a little farther out. It was obvious that this was not going to be an enduring effort. Indeed, when the federal money ran out, in general so did the bus routes. There were few lasting traces of this service. A generation and a half later, Crosstown Transit tried the same thing, only with local money. Now, only a few years later, we are planning the Urban Ring-- more buses.

It is apparent that the concept of running ring route buses in mixed traffic using limited stops and providing it with a service family name does not have a major purpose in passenger haulage. It seems to be a planning tool to find the location of the most productive travel corridor. It appears that what is planned for Phase One of the Urban Ring is a third generation of bus experiments. From this standpoint, using operating money as opposed to capital money, it is an expensive way of finding out where the Ring should go. Since we already know where the passenger market is, and since we know that they are not going to be attracted by a bus with a name and a different color, it may be time to avoid tentative steps and phases, which in our experience have the tendency to become permanent, yet unsatisfactory. The temporary answer is an intensive review of the current routing of the Crosstown Transit bus routes with an eye to determining the routing of Phase Three, the rail routing. Here's a novel idea: determine the rail corridor, then build it. We have already gone through enough unnumbered phases.

In our opinion, the Urban Ring will achieve success if it features (1) a routing that is simple to understand, as was illustrated by the classic MBTA "spider diagram’, (2) fast trip time, and (3) short headways and all-day service. This combination would attract passengers who might otherwise drive or take a more roundabout rapid transit service.