http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=&...0491618710954337134.0004a4e38985d9d185657&z=8
OK...here's the great Commuter Rail system map for when it's peak oil time, no one in the bottom 75% of income can afford to commute at $5.50/gal., and the "[insert President's name here] Interstate Railway System" gets funded to keep the nation's suburban economy from collapsing to dust.
Note this thing pushed Google Maps to its limits so some stuff spilled onto a second page, with the whole first page disappearing when you click next. Very annoying. A couple minimal-usage alt route lines--the Middleboro Secondary bypass to the Cape via Taunton/Middleboro, and the Attleboro Secondary Attleboro/Taunton...both used till 1996 by the Amtrak Cape Codder--spill awkwardly onto p.2. All the placemarkers also ended up on p.2, but those are easier to follow. I didn't even bother doing the last couple out-of-district lines like the Falmouth branch on the Cape or RIDOT Providence/Woonsocket because they'd look like nonsense with the rest of the map invisible.
Big-deal stuff:
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North-South Rail Link. Built the half-RR/half-rapid transit way I showed on my rapid transit map. Electrics or dual-mode trains can use the Link and pretty much all Amtrak trains will. All commuter rail trains terminate in Boston, with the real biggies running thru the Link (e.g. Worcester--North Station, Concord--South Station) to terminate and all the others staying where they are. It's not like there's a crying need to go from Franklin to Rockport. I cut the Old Colony Lines portal from the original design and left that "for future generations", since those lines aren't intercity with traffic levels worth spending a half-billion on and the Cape is already accessible from the Link from alt. routes. Greenbush and Plymouth will get over the decades of extra wait; they can transfer to Red Line Braintree, which has direct alt routes through the Link/Indigo Line.
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Deleted lines replaced by rapid-transit (per my other map): Fairmount, Reading, Needham (north of Needham Jct.). Most inside-128 intermediate stops on the lines that now have rapid-transit on the same ROW are flipped over to the subway side so the intercity and CR lines are focused outside of 128 and just speed on through.
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HSR lines: Providence, Worcester, Lowell/Concord, and Portland via the Eastern Route. Eastern Route/Newburyport Line is restored all the way back to Dover, NH (not depicted on the map) where it hooks back in to the Western Route for the rest of the Portland trip. I chose this over making the Haverhill Line/Western Route full-on HSR because the Eastern Route has long arrow-straight sections for max speeds, has only a couple serious clusters of grade crossings (Everett/Chelsea and Beverly) to eliminate vs. a constant stream of them, isn't clogged by heavy freight volume like the Pan Am mainline is, keeps the Lowell/Concord Line to Wilmington from getting overloaded with intercity traffic, and aligns better directionally with the Worcester Line for thru service (i.e. north-south Concord-Providence, west-northeast Worcester-Portsmouth). Haverhill/Western Route gets electrified and is much faster than it was, but still sub-HSR speed.
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High-density rapid-transit like service: Worcester Line to Riverside, Fitchburg Line to 128. These are the two mainlines on the system that can't be paralleled by rapid-transit lines because there's not enough room. So I'm adding 128 short-turns at Riverside and Waltham Highlands, a bunch of infill stations (Newton Corner, Brighton, Allston, Alewife, Clematis Brook, etc.), a couple triple-track passing tracks so the CR and intercity trains can get around, adding electrification to Waltham Highlands (everything past that runs on diesel because of lower density and no intercity traffic), and really running the crap out of the inner-suburb headways to give some semblance of rapid-transit.
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MBTA vs. out-of-district: Balancing act here as the MBTA needs to be focused on 128-to-495 (or closeby state lines) as its primary public service, but there's need for Boston regional service into NH and RI. Concord, Dover, and Portsmouth are all revived CR lines that lasted a little bit into the MBTA era mid-60's before going away (Concord briefly revived 1980-81). Sort of like how they used to run, T locals stop at the edge of the district and the interstate trains are subsidized by NH, continue on over the border with somewhat less frequent schedules, and express through all but the most important MA stops en route to Boston. Ditto RIDOT, where the Providence Line will overlap a bit in-state with their homegrown commuter rail to Westerly. Balances out the schedule-keeping and passenger loads, and expressing keeps total travel time reasonable on the longer interstate routes.
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Cape and Newport out-of-district service: Fall River and Buzzards Bay are the practical outer extents of the MBTA district. However, RIDOT has tourist train tracks on Aquidneck Island it's expressed interest in spiffing up and restoring back onto the mainland to Fall River if South Coast Rail is built. Let RIDOT subsidize very limited (1 or 2 rush-hour runs morning/evening) commuter trains year-round, and then in summer ramp it up to a more robust in-season out-of-district schedule. Ditto the Cape, which can have its private seasonal tourist train transform into a "Cape Rail Authority". Mesh with the T at most 1-2 rush hour directs to Boston year-round, then ramp it up big in-season for a much more frequent schedule to Hyannis and Falmouth. Including transfers to RIDOT/Providence and a restored Amtrak Cape Codder from NYC.
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Alternate/radial service: All of these trains are going to be a little difficult to schedule, so we want some rush hour backup. The Framingham Secondary and the Framingham-Leominster "Agricultural Branch" lines are a contiguous stretch of track that intersects 6 T mainlines on my map. Mix-and-match the service patterns to use this thing to the hilt and keep overloaded lines like Worcester or Franklin from having to feed extra branches they can't handle at rush.
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Electrification. It only makes good financial sense with really heavy traffic volumes or 24/7 service. So electrify all the HSR and intercity routes: Providence, Worcester, Concord, Portsmouth, Dover. And electrify the inside-128 Fitchburg because we're compensating for no rapid-transit there. Leave the others all diesel except for maybe tacking on later short branches like Rockingham Park and Rockport that go a majority of their route miles over previously-electrified mains. Nothing else really has the frequencies to justify that huge an investment, and almost 2/3 of the system's traffic is on those electric trunk lines so a majority of your trains are electric anyway. Have a small fleet of dual-mode locomotives if there's need for a rush hour special into the N-S Link...they can power-switch to diesel when they branch off-wire.
Overview of other new extensions:
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Small 1-2 stop extensions of Plymouth Line to Downtown Plymouth, Greenbush Line to Marshfield, Franklin/Forge Park to Milford. First two are where those lines were originally supposed to go in their recent restorations before the NIMBY's forced compromises, so we're just finishing the job. Milford's a longstanding CR proposal that just upgrades a few miles of freight track.
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Salem, NH via Lawrence: We were so close to having service here inaugurated in 1981 that it
got printed on the official T map, but then they had to back out at the last minute due to budget emergency. Upgrades the freight tracks to Methuen/Route 213 then pokes across the border to Rockingham Park on 1.5 miles of abandoned ROW to the racetrack lots for a big I-93 park-and-ride.
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Millis/West Medway: Millis was a CR line till '67 and West Medway till '64. Now badly needed for road congestion, and studied proposal had very high projected ridership. Upgrade the active freight tracks from Needham Jct. to Millis (which junction the Framingham Secondary en route), then to West Medway on the abandoned ROW. Line historically intersected the Milford Line right past Forge Park, but there's subdivisions built over the ROW so it has to stop here. Use the line to feed the Framingham Secondary for rush hour relief of other lines.
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Woonsocket via Franklin: RIDOT did an official studied proposal of extending the Franklin Line to Woonsocket 15 years ago. Uses the active freight tracks a mile past where the Forge Park trains peel off, then 2 miles of abandoned ROW, then an eroded causeway over Harris Pond at the state line in Bellingham. RIDOT would rebuild the causeway, MA would restore the 2 miles to Bellingham, and end of the line would junction with the P&W freight main in Woonsocket. Woonsocket then becomes a mini- regional rail hub because RIDOT also wants to run Providence/Woonsocket and eventually Providence/Worcester CR through this station via the P&W.
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Central Mass Line: Old CR line that branched off the Fitchburg in Waltham and went to South Sudbury till '71 and Hudson till '64. T officially studied restoring it to West Berlin/495 in 1993. Crosses the active Leominster/Agricultural Branch in West Berlin, so would act as a south-flank Fitchburg Line for the increasingly brutal traffic the length of the Routes 20/62 corridors. Splits from Fitchburg at 128, so would bulk up the inner-suburb service where we want near- rapid transit headways.
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Northboro/Leominster Line: On the active Agricultural Branch freight tracks from Framingham. Studied CR proposal. Northboro leg hits Framingham State U, Route 9, Pike, 495, Route 20, I-290 for string of park-and-rides Worcester Line doesn't reach. Can be fed express at rush hour from Framingham Secondary via West Medway line. Junctions with Central Mass Line at West Berlin and can alternate schedules with it for reaching Leominster, I-190, Route 12.
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I swear I haven't spent a whole 40-hour work week on these 3 transit maps! I've been farting around with them a few minutes a pop since early Nov., putting it down for weeks at a time while I had real work to do. I've found that if you push Google Maps to the point where the sheer number of map elements makes it unstable that you can wring more total elements out of it by saving your work when it hits a certain buggy overload...then import all your saved work wholesale into a brand new map...delete the old map...then continue piecemeal work on the imported new map. Rinse, repeat when you hit another instability wall. That's the only way my Green Line/Urban Ring map and MBCR maps ever survived to completion (and the CR map is still crippled by that @#$% page 2 bug)...the rapid-transit one was the only one that didn't get all crashy and unworkable on the original canvas.