I don't know what goes into milling a road and repaving it, but my rough understanding of costs of something like that were $1M/mile. The urban environment certainly includes difficulties that aren't present in other situations, but this still feels like a huge gap that I don't quite understand.
@crschmidt That's my expectation. Mass Ave is wider and there's all sorts of traffic diversion stuff they have to do, but I can't see that taking the cost past $4M/mile.
Clearly Cambridge assumes otherwise and hopefully that amount is mostly reasonable. Which makes it frankly impressive and scary, and definitely makes me think more conversions-to-bike/ped-space would be a significant savings for the city. (Especially Mass Ave, open it up for al fresco dining and park space and stuff)
@crschmidt Yow! That's insane. I thought the generally assumed cost was about $1M/mile? I'd figure that it'd be more expensive for Mass Ave for all sorts of understandable reasons, but still.
I wonder how much it'd cost to just turn half of Mass Ave into a pedestrian/bike path and leave cars to have the other side? I suspect the cost per person-mile would be a lot lower, at the very least.
@wordshaper There are a lot of problems with doing that, but one that stands out to me is "Mass Ave is a hugely important bus transportation corridor", with the 77 carrying 5000 weekday riders daily even post-pandemic (8000 daily pre-pandemic). I don't think we can reduce the ROW by half and still have the access for (e.g. delivery) vehicles we need and an opportunity for bus priority lanes, which are definitely needed.
@wordshaper In practice, because Mass Ave is a state highway (Route 2A), there are some things that the city can't do, even if they had the political will to be radical (which we largely do not).
In practice, I am hopeful that we can achieve enough of a road diet that drivers don't consider Mass Ave. a useful road to take for short trips; if we could achieve that, even while maintaining current width, I'd be pleased, and I think it's possible.
@crschmidt Having driven Mass Ave in the past I frankly worry deeply about anyone who thinks it's a useful road to take for anything. (Obligatory, sometimes, but never useful)
I'm sure you're right about the state highway-ness putting limits on what can be done, and I bet that's part of the reason for the stupidly high estimated costs too.
Ah, well, I can dream of a time when Mass Ave is a pleasure to drive and I also never ever have to drive it again.
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