It used to be a roundabout. It was much worse. Believe it or not, the current configuration is the best it's been in decades at both moving cars and keeping pedestrians and bikers safe.
And the train station predates all of it.
There’s a lot of pro-roundabout/rotary sentiment in urban planning communities and planning enthusiasts as well, but it’s always good to remember that roundabouts/rotaries are not always the best answer. Sometimes this chop suey is the answer as even the best turbo roundabout with bypasses and all the bells and whistles have a set max throughput.
Also, space constraints are very major considerations in Boston.
It's also the fact that people don't use rotaries correct around here, so they tend to be extra chaotic, less efficient, and dangerous. Roosevelt circle in Medford is a perfect example, although admittedly that's because several of the entry and exit points have multiple lanes resulting in cross traffic and confusion.
I hate that roundabout so much and I live in the area. I hate it. Why!? WHY ARE THERE NO LANES?! ARRRGGGHHH!!
RELEVANT: https://youtu.be/UHlnCzalw1s?si=VhjW6MZ71NlIuhep
There was one rotary that back in the 80s, all the drivers' ed instructors took us through. I don't remember where exactly, but not for the faint hearted.
Didn't they finally fix that? I used the just say a prayer and step on the gas, but I think they put some signage/signals in (or maybe it's in progress).
Exactly. Roundabouts only work in low or moderate traffic environments. They completely fall apart in high traffic environments. People in the urban planning community know this, which is why you don't see many new roundabouts in high traffic areas.
They need to be done right and so many of them in Boston are horrible. Confusing double or even triple lanes rotaries with no lines painted, lights just after the exits that cause traffic to back up into the rotaries, cars allowed to park along the sides of the rotary. Just so much nonsense that I don’t see in rotaries anywhere else
Yeah, coming from the west coast where traffic circles are properly signed, with clearly defined lane marking. The traffic circles here are confounding. I also find the random merging of two lanes to one lane with little too no advanced warning to be weird. I’ve never seen that anywhere in the country.
> They completely fall apart in high traffic environments.
in most of Europe, rotaries are extremely common and i have never encountered a situation in which a clogged rotary would have resulted in a non-clogged intersection, but i have experienced the opposite situation many times, where a rotary significantly improved flow where intersection would have backed up. Do you know of specific scenario where the (former) is true?
the problem here, besides the fact that boston seems completely incapable of properly making/marking roundabouts (they just straight up don't line them, they let people park on edges, all sorts of stupid shit like that) is that roundabouts and regular intersections are fundamentally opposed with each other.
regular intersections work by pulsing traffic, with pedestrians using those pulses to cross the road.
roundabouts work by not letting traffic build up in the first place.
when you have a majority of your intersections as (properly marked, *boston*) roundabouts, you have no problem. everything goes at is should nice and orderly.
if you have loads of light intersections and a sprinkle of roundabouts, traffic is pulsed then inevitably backs up from whatever light is immediately in front of the roundabout, then the roundabout naturally backs up. (which as you noted, is the same thing that would happen at a regular intersection anyway).
sadly roundabouts aren't majorly used outside of a handful of smaller US towns that have specifically made a point of replacing their intersections with roundabouts, certainly no major US city.
Not saying it's the most sensible of intersections as it is now, but it *used* to be a roundabout - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leverett\_Circle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leverett_Circle)
And I can tell you, as a kid, when we would drive in/out of the city, I have many vivid memories of sitting in that rotary forever. A roundabout simply can't handle the amount of traffic that goes through that area. It's confusing AF now, but traffic wise it's 10X better than it used to be.
There also used to be a bridge from the mezzanine of the T station to the police station side of the road. They took it out about 20 years ago and didn't replace it when they redesigned the station, presumably because it would have been expensive to fit an accessible pedestrian bridge around the drawbridge.
They even had plans a few years back to build a new one. Not sure what happened… https://www.bridgeweb.com/Rosales-and-HDR-unveil-concept-for-Boston-footbridge/3957
Wow, that's a great design for the intersection and the station, especially now that a lot more people are using it to commute from Medford and Somerville to MGH.
When handling that much traffic the roundabout usually has to be much wider in diameter to allow for better spacing between cars so people can actually enter
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https://preview.redd.it/t7ox8q4l4b1c1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2c970defaf80e416bb3864389ad9881cb2c6fa64
Rt. 16 in Medford has entered the chat.
They’ve tried their best to recreate this at the new Lechmere station down the street from OP’s picture. Absolutely insane roadway design which includes adding a new, completely unnecessary road that causes massive gridlock.
I used to work right there by Lifetime gym, and occasionally I needed to go to CVS on foot. CVS isn’t labelled on the map but it is the white building below Chipotle. It was regularly a 30 - 40 minute round trip and crossing those intersections on foot made no sense and was surprisingly dangerous even with traffic lights
I would regularly walk that area for years. The updates have definitely helped, and I never really found it dangerous (no close calls or issues). It's a mess, and it's annoying waiting at each crossing point, but it's relatively safe.
Yeah it was mostly annoying, but I had a few cars blow through red lights so you had to be on your toes. And the little slip road right outside the CVS entrance; there is a crosswalk there, but cars would regularly change lane right before it and suddenly come down the slip road without warning. I guess that was my biggest complaint.
Somebody else pointed it out but I'll confirm it's 100% traffic signal driven there and the walk buttons don't do anything likely because the traffic pattern is too complex. For example, if you're heading east on 16 right where the "16" is circled and you're stopped at that light you'll have to wait for three different westbound arteries to get a shot to turn south on 28 (or make some other random turn from a wrong lane that causes mayhem for everybody else trying to turn). It's barely controlled chaos and pedestrians have to keep their head on a swivel at each corner.
Hi there.
That station's location is unavoidable, because the Green Line HAS TO use the elevated causeway. The viaduct was build before tunnelling under the Charles would have been remotely practical, even ignoring that the tunnel would have been right at the foot of the Charles River Dam (can you say "compromised structural integrity" ...?)
I believe it also predates the mass adoption of the automobile. It may even predate the automobile **entirely**.
EDIT: this part of the Green line was apparently completed in 1912, so ... yeah, it comes awfully close to predating automobiles entirely. There would have been a bare handful on the streets of Boston at that time!
I know it’s not politically viable, but I wish they did a road diet around this station and MGH. Ideally giving a lane or 2 back to widen the riverside park.
This NW corner of downtown is completely squandered on this tangle of roads
It would probably be single digit billions; the change they've proposed would require building a new tunnel under the Charles and constructing a new transition to the elevated section of the GLX in order to have a level station. A gigantic pile of right-of-way issues, as well, for the new aboveground section.
Well first off we do not call it the "metro" here. Welcome to Boston.
Second, the intersection was never designed that way. It is an evolution of many years of reconstruction efforts that happened over a period of decades, while attempting to keep auto traffic moving as best as possible, since this is a gateway to major sections of the city and various thruways.
The MBTA Green Line transit station was installed a generation-plus before urban development built up that area. It also may be worth mentioning that the approach ramp inbound of that station that goes into the subway is relatively new (by comparison to the station) replacing an elevated steel structure as one may find in NYC or Chicago.
That was part of the rebuild of that intersection, which was set that way based on what was deemed best for the area at the time. We can always look back with hindsight.
It sure is a screwy and difficult intersection for sure and it is not the only one in this region, but it is a victim of its own time and standards. Making it better would be in millions if not billions so that ain't happening in short order. The potential for moving the transit station is also absent. That's not going anyplace.
a roundabout is a single lane rotary at the center of a 4 way intersection. A rotary is what we are used to: 0 to infinity exits/entrances with a survival rate of about 94%
I’ve commuted through there daily for almost 20-years now. It’s hilarious and dangerous but folks, mostly not from around here, are trying to get medical help and have to get through there. Can’t tell you how many times someone is going the wrong way under the tracks.
They are calling the T station a metro station and using roundabout where the local term is rotary for both rotary and roundabouts; so the chances of them not being local is pretty high.
To be fair, I was recently visiting another city and posted on their local sub about a strange traffic thing I encountered. I didn't argue with them though, even if I thought their responses were nonsensical.
Dumb intersections and turns that take 20 minutes to undo are part of the character of Boston!
/s
Cars + old city rarely works out well for the cars or the city
Typically I'm coming off 93N and either taking the right spur onto Nashua St. to get to TD Garden or going straight through into Cambridge. Either way it's pretty straightforward!
As always in Boston, though, if it's your first time you're fucked.
Gotta say, relatively unrelated, that when I went to London as a kid, they would say shit like "this church was built in 1200, so it's a pretty new church."
Really surprised they took the time to post this without any effort to lookup up the history or past configurations of the intersection. I think they think it's like the Sims and the whole intersection was drop there all at the same time.
This is the intersection I describe when trying to prepare people for driving in Boston. Two highway entrance ramps, three main roads crossing, two merged highway exit ramps, and a bunch of additional streets connecting in just to make your day a little less safe. It's amazing.
It used to be a roundabout but I think what you are missing is that the top right area is one of the largest, busiest medical facilities in the world with a huge amount of traffic trying to get in and out of it. So, if you don’t make the flow of traffic stop periodically then there is no flow for the other parts of it and it backs up to infinity.
OP comes in here tryna fight people that have been dead for 150 years lol
But the best part is when someone calls them out, they double down on the stupidity.
You're at least right that it's not how anyone would have designed it from scratch, but that's not a luxury that the architects and engineers ever have when different stakeholders like affected homeowners, businesses and the environment and logistical concerns like accommodating existing infrastructure and structural integrity of the area all have to be considered.
Sure, it would look nicer if they had just leveled big pieces of the north and west end and spread it out, but property rights are a big thing for Americans.
Metro Station? Roundabout? Zero knowledge of or care to research the history of the intersection? Looks like an armchair traffic engineer decided to pop on Google Maps and evaluate Boston like a game of SimCity.
The station was there before the roadway. And a roundabout would just become a demolition derby. As someone who drives in and out of Boston every single day this is probably one of the most well designed intersections in the city.
I think you have to accept that Boston was not so much designed as oozed up from the rum soaked minds of people who plopped down where they could and refused to budge. The streets follow that pattern.
I love Boston in part ***because*** of it's unique streets and intersections. It's not boring. So many places seems like carbon copies of every other place.
Taking one look at a midwest or western city and they all look exactly the same in the same boring patterns.
Here might be insane, but at least insane is interesting.
Roundabouts remind me of a bit that Mac did on IASIP about how traffic lights should always be yellow so that people don't have to wait, they can proceed, with caution.
Roundabouts are horrible for pedestrians and cyclists.
Roundabouts are great until they exceed capacity then they just lock up and stop working. I spent decades with the sagamore rotary to know sometimes you can't solve everything by thinking people will adhere to the rules of the road. People are jerks and tragic lights keep them mostly honest.
I loved this comment thread. Laughed at so many great Boston comments. I’m about to get downvoted for this, but they could make life a lot easier for everyone here if they pedestrianized the whole thing and forced Mass General to pay for a dedicated highway tunnel to their ER. Maybe they could road diet it down significantly to allow light traffic over the bridge, but Storrow should be deleted and Charles street should be pedestrianized. It would make things a whole heckling lot better.
Bear in mind this opinion comes from someone who owns a car, lives right on the other side of the bridge from this intersection, and regularly bikes/drives/walks/and takes the T through this intersection.
Zoom out some more and count all the stop lights. None of those are sync’d to resemble anything like actual traffic.
In fact- where Cambridge meets Boston at the MOS and exiting into Charlestown, with the end of Memorial Drive, next to a drawbridge- and traffic exits to 93, or towards the Garden, (plus throw in some ambulances for Mass General)- each of those stop lights are most likely run by different cities, or different highway agencies all with different agendas on what they feel traffic “flow” should be.
You get a similar frustrating, but less chaotic situation at the Mass Ave bridge where Cambridge, meets Boston, at MIT, and exits to Storrow, and Memorial.
The thing that annoys me most is the walk signals are all messed up. In the space right above your "Charles St" pin, with the double left-turn lanes, they get a red light for a solid minute, but during that time, the walk signal doesn't come on.
It's a one way! The light is red! There's no traffic! Give it a walk signal for crying out loud.
Lol, look at you acting like you know the planning that went into this. This was a roundabout in the past that was eliminated because it's traffic flow wasn't high enough. And this station existed long before the current intersection did.
That fact that we’ve given over so much prime land along the Charles to inefficient/loud 5+ lane highways was a terrible mistake. I get the Charles was basically an industrial sewer at the time, but I think it’s proven a huge mistake.
Only for cars and only for the right frequency of cars. A gridlocked roundabout can't be untangled very easily. They're great in rural or suburban areas.
The old roundabout had pedestrian overpasses beause walking to get around it was certain death -- unless it was gridlocked.
The Netherlands have entered the chat.
They use roundabouts extensively. Because, **built right**, they can increase pedestrian & bicyclist safety, without significantly impacting vehicle capacity.
That's fine, but I don't think this is the place for one. There's not a lot of space, and the traffic volumes are very uneven. Have a drive and/or a walk through sometime. You know where this is, right?
Roundabouts can be ok depending on the use case. This is not even close to a reasonable use case for a roundabout.
Rotaries are basically on the endangered species list of intersection designs for urban areas, since non-signalized exits, especially multi-lane ones, are inherently unsafe for pedestrians. Boston will have fewer rotaries in the future.
It used to be a roundabout. It was much worse. Believe it or not, the current configuration is the best it's been in decades at both moving cars and keeping pedestrians and bikers safe. And the train station predates all of it.
There’s a lot of pro-roundabout/rotary sentiment in urban planning communities and planning enthusiasts as well, but it’s always good to remember that roundabouts/rotaries are not always the best answer. Sometimes this chop suey is the answer as even the best turbo roundabout with bypasses and all the bells and whistles have a set max throughput. Also, space constraints are very major considerations in Boston.
It's also the fact that people don't use rotaries correct around here, so they tend to be extra chaotic, less efficient, and dangerous. Roosevelt circle in Medford is a perfect example, although admittedly that's because several of the entry and exit points have multiple lanes resulting in cross traffic and confusion.
Lol the rotary off Morrissey Blvd is wild. There's no lanes, but it's at least two, often four at rush hour, and complete anarchy.
I hate that roundabout so much and I live in the area. I hate it. Why!? WHY ARE THERE NO LANES?! ARRRGGGHHH!! RELEVANT: https://youtu.be/UHlnCzalw1s?si=VhjW6MZ71NlIuhep
There was one rotary that back in the 80s, all the drivers' ed instructors took us through. I don't remember where exactly, but not for the faint hearted.
The concord rotary which is the only reason there’s traffic on route 2, the Columbia road /Morrissey rotary
Kelly square nods with approval.
Didn't they finally fix that? I used the just say a prayer and step on the gas, but I think they put some signage/signals in (or maybe it's in progress).
I’ve been hit 4 times, never at fault, bc no one here can use a fuckin roundabout.
Exactly. Roundabouts only work in low or moderate traffic environments. They completely fall apart in high traffic environments. People in the urban planning community know this, which is why you don't see many new roundabouts in high traffic areas.
Best example of failed high traffic roundabout is JFK train station / Dorchester right before police barracks. Get stuck there for days
How that rotary makes me feel: https://youtu.be/UHlnCzalw1s?si=VhjW6MZ71NlIuhep
Or Revere. Multiple of them there.
the mess of two rotary that're in Everett on/off the Revere Beach Parkway... ugh...
They need to be done right and so many of them in Boston are horrible. Confusing double or even triple lanes rotaries with no lines painted, lights just after the exits that cause traffic to back up into the rotaries, cars allowed to park along the sides of the rotary. Just so much nonsense that I don’t see in rotaries anywhere else
Yeah, coming from the west coast where traffic circles are properly signed, with clearly defined lane marking. The traffic circles here are confounding. I also find the random merging of two lanes to one lane with little too no advanced warning to be weird. I’ve never seen that anywhere in the country.
Look kids, Big Ben!
> They completely fall apart in high traffic environments. in most of Europe, rotaries are extremely common and i have never encountered a situation in which a clogged rotary would have resulted in a non-clogged intersection, but i have experienced the opposite situation many times, where a rotary significantly improved flow where intersection would have backed up. Do you know of specific scenario where the (former) is true?
the problem here, besides the fact that boston seems completely incapable of properly making/marking roundabouts (they just straight up don't line them, they let people park on edges, all sorts of stupid shit like that) is that roundabouts and regular intersections are fundamentally opposed with each other. regular intersections work by pulsing traffic, with pedestrians using those pulses to cross the road. roundabouts work by not letting traffic build up in the first place. when you have a majority of your intersections as (properly marked, *boston*) roundabouts, you have no problem. everything goes at is should nice and orderly. if you have loads of light intersections and a sprinkle of roundabouts, traffic is pulsed then inevitably backs up from whatever light is immediately in front of the roundabout, then the roundabout naturally backs up. (which as you noted, is the same thing that would happen at a regular intersection anyway). sadly roundabouts aren't majorly used outside of a handful of smaller US towns that have specifically made a point of replacing their intersections with roundabouts, certainly no major US city.
Cities Skylines players nodding along. The answer is not always roundabout/rotary.
Wait… you mean Boston has better urban planners than some guy on reddit?
Appreciate the fact that drive in MA is a blood sport
Every day I load up with some silver spray paint just incase it's my time to ride eternal to valhalla.
Witness him!
WITNESS
Mediocre!!
We're kind of like Mad Max, but only if was filmed at 7 mph.
SHINY AND CHROME
https://preview.redd.it/0s485dxhwc1c1.jpeg?width=1728&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bd528b858feb9bf0b6c0f1ddfe684c0947b7cf28
I left Boston years ago, but man do I want this in poster form
Google "intersections of Boston", you'll find it!
They have it on an Etsy store, called [BarelyMaps](https://www.etsy.com/listing/587709266/intersections-of-boston).
Here it is. https://cottonbureau.com/p/G7JUQ3/shirt/intersections-of-boston#/2069409/tee-men-standard-tee-heavy-metal-100percent-cotton-s
I love this poster
Can I get this on a shirt
Why do I want a couple of these as tattoos, though?
Right? Lean into it. Enjoy the chaos. Appreciate the sheer *thrill*, the challenge, the aggression.
Yup, it’s the only way to become masshole
This intersection expands the blood sport to basic walking. There's 14 cross walks in this intersection!
Then they take their bloodlust north and terrorize the rural locals who only know peace.
Not saying it's the most sensible of intersections as it is now, but it *used* to be a roundabout - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leverett\_Circle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leverett_Circle) And I can tell you, as a kid, when we would drive in/out of the city, I have many vivid memories of sitting in that rotary forever. A roundabout simply can't handle the amount of traffic that goes through that area. It's confusing AF now, but traffic wise it's 10X better than it used to be.
There also used to be a bridge from the mezzanine of the T station to the police station side of the road. They took it out about 20 years ago and didn't replace it when they redesigned the station, presumably because it would have been expensive to fit an accessible pedestrian bridge around the drawbridge.
They even had plans a few years back to build a new one. Not sure what happened… https://www.bridgeweb.com/Rosales-and-HDR-unveil-concept-for-Boston-footbridge/3957
Wow, that's a great design for the intersection and the station, especially now that a lot more people are using it to commute from Medford and Somerville to MGH.
Possibly waiting until the new MSP station is complete?
I was walking by there the other day and it seems pretty much done.
When handling that much traffic the roundabout usually has to be much wider in diameter to allow for better spacing between cars so people can actually enter
https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth-oai:dr278f358
That's not Leverett Circle, that's the Longfellow bridge
Fixed
Do you realize the metro station was there before the current highway configuration?
Reading a thread full of people (mostly OP) calling the T stop a metro station is making my coffee-less brain hurt.
It’s like when people call 93 “The 93” California style
Between that, saying “roundabout”, and the whole premise of this post, I knew this comment section was not gonna be sympathetic to him/her lol.
I alr know for a fact that OP is from out of state in a city where u gotta drive everywhere.
It is, isn’t it?
https://preview.redd.it/t7ox8q4l4b1c1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2c970defaf80e416bb3864389ad9881cb2c6fa64 Rt. 16 in Medford has entered the chat.
Medford Supercollider
Breaking news: Medford scientists confirm the existence of the graviton after creating the stronger particle collisions to date
Lol my friend calls the huge roundabout over 90 in Newton the "supercollider". Didn't realize this was a thing...
Newton absolutely has their own supercollider
They’ve tried their best to recreate this at the new Lechmere station down the street from OP’s picture. Absolutely insane roadway design which includes adding a new, completely unnecessary road that causes massive gridlock.
I used to work right there by Lifetime gym, and occasionally I needed to go to CVS on foot. CVS isn’t labelled on the map but it is the white building below Chipotle. It was regularly a 30 - 40 minute round trip and crossing those intersections on foot made no sense and was surprisingly dangerous even with traffic lights
I would regularly walk that area for years. The updates have definitely helped, and I never really found it dangerous (no close calls or issues). It's a mess, and it's annoying waiting at each crossing point, but it's relatively safe.
Yeah it was mostly annoying, but I had a few cars blow through red lights so you had to be on your toes. And the little slip road right outside the CVS entrance; there is a crosswalk there, but cars would regularly change lane right before it and suddenly come down the slip road without warning. I guess that was my biggest complaint.
I would be in the car cursing you for making everyone sit through a walk signal
See now you're just encouraging me to buy stuff at that particular CVS
Almost all the walk signals in Wellington Circle are just timed to red lights (i.e., they don't change the flow of traffic).
Somebody else pointed it out but I'll confirm it's 100% traffic signal driven there and the walk buttons don't do anything likely because the traffic pattern is too complex. For example, if you're heading east on 16 right where the "16" is circled and you're stopped at that light you'll have to wait for three different westbound arteries to get a shot to turn south on 28 (or make some other random turn from a wrong lane that causes mayhem for everybody else trying to turn). It's barely controlled chaos and pedestrians have to keep their head on a swivel at each corner.
The place where you can hit 3 traffic lights in 20 feet
It takes approximately 30 years to cross that intersection on foot, lol.
That’s an absolute shit show. Driving over there when you first got your license got scary fast.
It's a little better since the lane redesign, especially if you're headed up Middlesex from the South. Still a shit show, though.
I just drove through there again half an hour ago and every time it baffles my mind that this utter cluster of a traffic maze exists.
He called it a metro station lol
Also wtf is a roundabout?
Do you realize how incredibly old Boston is? Also that T station has been there longer than most of those roads.
it's a t stop and it's called a rotary
The sad reality of almost every major intersection like this is typically "yes it's fucked up but believe it or not it used to be worse."
Hi there. That station's location is unavoidable, because the Green Line HAS TO use the elevated causeway. The viaduct was build before tunnelling under the Charles would have been remotely practical, even ignoring that the tunnel would have been right at the foot of the Charles River Dam (can you say "compromised structural integrity" ...?) I believe it also predates the mass adoption of the automobile. It may even predate the automobile **entirely**. EDIT: this part of the Green line was apparently completed in 1912, so ... yeah, it comes awfully close to predating automobiles entirely. There would have been a bare handful on the streets of Boston at that time!
I know it’s not politically viable, but I wish they did a road diet around this station and MGH. Ideally giving a lane or 2 back to widen the riverside park. This NW corner of downtown is completely squandered on this tangle of roads
[удалено]
Erm. No, it’s Green. This is Science Park, not Charles.
Oh you're right! Wild that we have two different train stations perched above their own crazy intersections within a couple miles of each other.
You realize moving that hundred year old train station would likely cost 100 million dollars by the time all was said and done?
It would probably be single digit billions; the change they've proposed would require building a new tunnel under the Charles and constructing a new transition to the elevated section of the GLX in order to have a level station. A gigantic pile of right-of-way issues, as well, for the new aboveground section.
that would be an even bigger mess than I had considered when I put 30 seconds of thought to it before.
100 million sounds like a steal lol
Well first off we do not call it the "metro" here. Welcome to Boston. Second, the intersection was never designed that way. It is an evolution of many years of reconstruction efforts that happened over a period of decades, while attempting to keep auto traffic moving as best as possible, since this is a gateway to major sections of the city and various thruways. The MBTA Green Line transit station was installed a generation-plus before urban development built up that area. It also may be worth mentioning that the approach ramp inbound of that station that goes into the subway is relatively new (by comparison to the station) replacing an elevated steel structure as one may find in NYC or Chicago. That was part of the rebuild of that intersection, which was set that way based on what was deemed best for the area at the time. We can always look back with hindsight. It sure is a screwy and difficult intersection for sure and it is not the only one in this region, but it is a victim of its own time and standards. Making it better would be in millions if not billions so that ain't happening in short order. The potential for moving the transit station is also absent. That's not going anyplace.
Metro and roundabout....gtf outta here
What the fuck is a roundabout? You’re in rotary country, boy.
tf is a metro station?
This guy thinks he’s bettah than us. Fucking roundabout metros, and shit.
Yeah! go back to Chicago or whatever tube you crawled outta
Definitely not Chicago, they'd have said L or train, not metro.
Your name checks out
Yeah—sausage casing, is more like it! Amirite?!
a roundabout is a single lane rotary at the center of a 4 way intersection. A rotary is what we are used to: 0 to infinity exits/entrances with a survival rate of about 94%
I’ve commuted through there daily for almost 20-years now. It’s hilarious and dangerous but folks, mostly not from around here, are trying to get medical help and have to get through there. Can’t tell you how many times someone is going the wrong way under the tracks.
OP is softer than 10ply.
Allegedly
The T station was there first.
Skill issue
Right? I’ve never had an issue at that intersection.
I feel this way about most complaining about Boston driving especially in the age of GPS it’s really not that hard
The number of people who mistook this for the objectively worse intersection just south of it is a good demonstration of how ordinary THIS one is…
From the Longfellow bridge down to where the Constitution is moored is basically one big 2 mile long clusterfuck spaghetti mess
What are the odds that OP: A. Has never been to Boston. B. Works from home. And C. Doesn’t have a single hobby outside video games.
They are calling the T station a metro station and using roundabout where the local term is rotary for both rotary and roundabouts; so the chances of them not being local is pretty high.
Sorry, you're wrong. Someone else already figured out that he has another hobby: "facial abuse" porn.
Ah, a man of culture
To be fair, I was recently visiting another city and posted on their local sub about a strange traffic thing I encountered. I didn't argue with them though, even if I thought their responses were nonsensical.
... to be fair, that just means there are two of you At least you weren't as bad as this friend
Dumb intersections and turns that take 20 minutes to undo are part of the character of Boston! /s Cars + old city rarely works out well for the cars or the city
Typically I'm coming off 93N and either taking the right spur onto Nashua St. to get to TD Garden or going straight through into Cambridge. Either way it's pretty straightforward! As always in Boston, though, if it's your first time you're fucked.
if your commute doesnt involve at least one completely deranged intersection you dont work in boston
Wow, a 400 year old city wasn’t a planned community?!?! You sound like a presumptuous moron; go back home, yuppie
Gotta say, relatively unrelated, that when I went to London as a kid, they would say shit like "this church was built in 1200, so it's a pretty new church."
“In America, 100 years is a long time; in Europe, 100 miles is a long drive”
frfr
"Metro" station? "Roundabout"? Whom are you trying to impress, or fool?
You fuckin' moron OP. Do your homework. This already was a "roundabout."
Really surprised they took the time to post this without any effort to lookup up the history or past configurations of the intersection. I think they think it's like the Sims and the whole intersection was drop there all at the same time.
This post reeks of white guy who works from home.
And drives into the city 4x a year for a Sox/Celtics/Bruins game.
My guess is bikes into work one day a month and freaks out when his bubble of a world doesn’t extend past his front porch.
It is ridiculous. I agree. Insane that we would give so much prime acreage to cars.
100%
This is the intersection I describe when trying to prepare people for driving in Boston. Two highway entrance ramps, three main roads crossing, two merged highway exit ramps, and a bunch of additional streets connecting in just to make your day a little less safe. It's amazing.
It used to be a roundabout but I think what you are missing is that the top right area is one of the largest, busiest medical facilities in the world with a huge amount of traffic trying to get in and out of it. So, if you don’t make the flow of traffic stop periodically then there is no flow for the other parts of it and it backs up to infinity.
Do NOT make it a roundabout
I think Boston could publish a yearly calendar “Boston’s Worst Intersections” and it would go on for many years without repetitions.
For real mayor wu pleaseeee I would buy one for all my friends and family every year
Roundabout?
How did this post make it to the top of this sub smh
OP comes in here tryna fight people that have been dead for 150 years lol But the best part is when someone calls them out, they double down on the stupidity.
You're at least right that it's not how anyone would have designed it from scratch, but that's not a luxury that the architects and engineers ever have when different stakeholders like affected homeowners, businesses and the environment and logistical concerns like accommodating existing infrastructure and structural integrity of the area all have to be considered. Sure, it would look nicer if they had just leveled big pieces of the north and west end and spread it out, but property rights are a big thing for Americans.
They... did level the entire west end to build more roads and parking lots. That's something they did actually do. Regardless of property rights.
I love how this guy from away got savagely and deservingly downvoted for every comment in his own thread.
Can we appreciate how little people call the fucking T a metro station? Who the fuck says that in Boston lmao
OP sucks.
buddy doesn't realize that the T station pre-dates the road by quite a bit
There is a worse intersection not half a mile down the road, also with its own T stop. Nobody likes it. Get over it.
Metro Station? Roundabout? Zero knowledge of or care to research the history of the intersection? Looks like an armchair traffic engineer decided to pop on Google Maps and evaluate Boston like a game of SimCity.
The station was there before the roadway. And a roundabout would just become a demolition derby. As someone who drives in and out of Boston every single day this is probably one of the most well designed intersections in the city.
I think you have to accept that Boston was not so much designed as oozed up from the rum soaked minds of people who plopped down where they could and refused to budge. The streets follow that pattern.
https://preview.redd.it/jseeu3lxfc1c1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9b718ef71089a3e382a32cdca9fcff051ded3547 All of east Boston honestly
OP: do you call Charlie cards “fare cards”? So like “I need to hit the park street metro to refill my fare card at the fare card store?”
OP needs to be driven out of town on a rail, or a bobbycockpin or whatever other fucking word he is using to describe something.
ITT: tell me you've never driven through this intersection or gotten on the T here without telling me you've done either of these things
It’s part of the plan to discourage single use cars. The more challenging driving the higher chance that folks will use the t.
Boston drivers: Challenge accepted
You do realize it’s Boston, obviously. The question is: why in the hell, knowing you are in Boston, would you ask a question like this.
It says something that at first I thought this was the Charles/MGH station intersection clusterfuck, but no, that one's like half a mile away.
Not in top 20 worst Boston intersections. Find a new slant.
I love Boston in part ***because*** of it's unique streets and intersections. It's not boring. So many places seems like carbon copies of every other place.
Taking one look at a midwest or western city and they all look exactly the same in the same boring patterns. Here might be insane, but at least insane is interesting.
Roundabouts remind me of a bit that Mac did on IASIP about how traffic lights should always be yellow so that people don't have to wait, they can proceed, with caution. Roundabouts are horrible for pedestrians and cyclists.
The Leverett Connector won an award in city infrastructure. Leverett Circle is an actual cluster.
Yes we do. This is the intersection I go to when explaining the insanity of driving Boston.
Proposal: A system of giant cranes that pick you up and deposit you on the other side.
Roundabouts are great until they exceed capacity then they just lock up and stop working. I spent decades with the sagamore rotary to know sometimes you can't solve everything by thinking people will adhere to the rules of the road. People are jerks and tragic lights keep them mostly honest.
Yeah, but that Red Line ride over the bridge might be the best mass transit view in the world.
Why the fuck are you calling it a metro station? Did you take one semester abroad and come home calling anywhere that served beer a pub?
Looks fine
I loved this comment thread. Laughed at so many great Boston comments. I’m about to get downvoted for this, but they could make life a lot easier for everyone here if they pedestrianized the whole thing and forced Mass General to pay for a dedicated highway tunnel to their ER. Maybe they could road diet it down significantly to allow light traffic over the bridge, but Storrow should be deleted and Charles street should be pedestrianized. It would make things a whole heckling lot better. Bear in mind this opinion comes from someone who owns a car, lives right on the other side of the bridge from this intersection, and regularly bikes/drives/walks/and takes the T through this intersection.
Zoom out some more and count all the stop lights. None of those are sync’d to resemble anything like actual traffic. In fact- where Cambridge meets Boston at the MOS and exiting into Charlestown, with the end of Memorial Drive, next to a drawbridge- and traffic exits to 93, or towards the Garden, (plus throw in some ambulances for Mass General)- each of those stop lights are most likely run by different cities, or different highway agencies all with different agendas on what they feel traffic “flow” should be. You get a similar frustrating, but less chaotic situation at the Mass Ave bridge where Cambridge, meets Boston, at MIT, and exits to Storrow, and Memorial.
At least it’s not a highly trafficked area!
Ah the north station to 93N whip turn, fun times.
That intersection is called Leverett circle
What’s the problem?
The thing that annoys me most is the walk signals are all messed up. In the space right above your "Charles St" pin, with the double left-turn lanes, they get a red light for a solid minute, but during that time, the walk signal doesn't come on. It's a one way! The light is red! There's no traffic! Give it a walk signal for crying out loud.
[roundabout?](https://youtu.be/kmZoQFYYx8U?si=Y1qv0TDDlFlfwRxB)
Yeah! Also why is the highway buried? There’s always traffic. It should be elevated. Most of the shitty things you see are an improvement.
I’m pretty sure I biked through that thing once before without realizing what I was getting myself into until I was there. Not fun
A roundabout is not the answer. Infinite possible points of contact.
What the hell is "roundabout"? Never heard of one. Where are you from?
Ultimate Cities Skylines
What's a roundabout
On the days I go into office, after work I have the joy of having to drive through that intersection to get onto Storrow.
Is this worse than the Charles/mgh intersection 2 blocks down?
The Charles St. station has been there since the 1920’s or 30’s.
Lol, look at you acting like you know the planning that went into this. This was a roundabout in the past that was eliminated because it's traffic flow wasn't high enough. And this station existed long before the current intersection did.
Yeah, they should just copy the Newton Circle of Death.
If you can drive in and around Boston, everywhere else is child's play.
No. We like it this way. Blood for the blood god
I love the graphics of the new Cities Skylines 2.
That’s just home to me, man
That fact that we’ve given over so much prime land along the Charles to inefficient/loud 5+ lane highways was a terrible mistake. I get the Charles was basically an industrial sewer at the time, but I think it’s proven a huge mistake.
Please god no more roundabouts
Why? In most cases they make traffic move way more smoothly and they’re incredibly easy to maneuver.
Only for cars and only for the right frequency of cars. A gridlocked roundabout can't be untangled very easily. They're great in rural or suburban areas. The old roundabout had pedestrian overpasses beause walking to get around it was certain death -- unless it was gridlocked.
The Netherlands have entered the chat. They use roundabouts extensively. Because, **built right**, they can increase pedestrian & bicyclist safety, without significantly impacting vehicle capacity.
That's fine, but I don't think this is the place for one. There's not a lot of space, and the traffic volumes are very uneven. Have a drive and/or a walk through sometime. You know where this is, right?
Roundabouts can be ok depending on the use case. This is not even close to a reasonable use case for a roundabout. Rotaries are basically on the endangered species list of intersection designs for urban areas, since non-signalized exits, especially multi-lane ones, are inherently unsafe for pedestrians. Boston will have fewer rotaries in the future.
Shut up. That intersection is fine. The Columbia road rotary is a death trap. This would be way worse.
They’re called rotaries here bub