The Urban Ring

The Urban Ring is being touted as a circumferential transit line running around the urban core, located approximately two miles out from downtown Boston. It would allow riders entering the city on the MBTA’s rapid transit, commuter rail and bus lines to transfer to this new system to get to their destinations without having to go all the way into downtown, thereby easing the stress on the subway’s central transfer stations. Phase 2 of the Urban Ring, now being planned as Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), purports to be a penny-wise alternative to a full-blown rail transit development along this corridor.

Upon closer examination, however, it is questionable whether this project can accomplish its stated objectives. The Phase 2 BRT system is not a truly circumferential line, but a series of six overlapping bus lines forming tangents of a circle. Thus it would be necessary to transfer repeatedly to go any distance along its route, defeating the very purpose of a circumferential line. While it is touted as an example of Bus Rapid Transit technology, only portions of the route are to run on dedicated rights of way, meaning that the bulk of its mileage will be in mixed traffic, while some neighborhood streets like Melnea Cass Boulevard and Ruggles Street may be substantially widened to accommodate the added traffic. Currently there are four options, with different combinations of street, tunnel and private rights of way along its route.

In seeking to build this line “on the cheap” by making it initially a bus system, the construction of its tunnels and busways risks wasting hundreds of millions of dollars to create something that cannot function well—if it works at all. Its high cost would likely preclude the building of the Ring’s final, Phase 3 rail component (currently planned to traverse only the more affluent half of the Ring, avoid­ing such underserved areas as Chelsea, East Somerville and North Dorchester). While initially more expensive, it would be far more cost-effective of our precious tax dollars to construct the Urban Ring “right” in the first place, as a rapid transit or light rail transit line to create a project that would better serve the people who live and work in Greater Boston.