T to ‘free the ramp’
Bus OK’d to use cop shortcut to reach Ted Williams Tunnel
The state will “free the ramp” — for a little while, anyway — as Silver Line buses will begin to use the staties’ emergency ramp to skip to the front of traffic in the Ted Williams Tunnel this summer.
MBTA officials informed the joint MBTA oversight and Department of Transportation officials on Monday of the plan for a pilot program to let T buses zip down the state police ramp onto Interstate 90 rather than looping around and entering the Pike farther from the tunnel to East Boston, Logan International Airport and up the North Shore. The buses will use the ramp from 3 to 6 p.m. on weekdays.
The MBTA last year extended the Silver Line 3 route through Everett into Chelsea, a move that’s been cheered by local transportation advocates — even though the buses are at the whims of the traffic that locals say plagues that portion of the Boston area. Advocates have pushed for several years to “free the ramp” and let the buses take it to avoid the crowded Seaport streets, but state officials had been reluctant to allow use other than emergency access.
The tricky part, MassDOT highway administrator Jonathan Gulliver said, is that it’s not safe for the buses to merge into traffic that’s going faster than 30 mph, as the Silver Line drivers have to stop at the bottom of the ramp because they can’t see oncoming traffic until then, and then there’s not enough space to get up to speed once they can merge. But when traffic is slow — like during the afternoon rush hour — it becomes safe, and can cut 10 to 19 minutes off of the trip that’s supposed to take just 20 minutes in good traffic.
“We basically jump to the front of the line,” T Deputy General Manager Jeff Gonneville said. “It’s obviously substantial.”
The goal ultimately is to install sensors and other technology that will allow the T to decide on the fly if the traffic is moving too fast for ramp use. Gonneville said the T will use the pilot to figure out what technology it will need to put in place, and he hopes to have the full program going in under a year.
Joshua Fairchild of TransitMatters, a group that’s advocated extensively to “free the ramp,” said he’s glad to see the change — but that it should just be standard operating procedure to use the ramp at all times of day.
“To me it seems like a crazy high tech solution,” Fairchild said of the various sensors. “It is not that hard to put a flashing traffic signal on the highway that says that a bus is coming and that people should let it in.”
Fairchild said even the smaller time savings the T sees from using the ramp during times with better traffic add up — even if it’s just 90 seconds on a 20minute trip.
“That’s 7%,” he said. “That’s huge.”