Two years ago (nearly to the day),
@The EGE suggested that a long-term vision for the Foxboro branch would be to extend it to Mansfield, and I pooh-poohed it:
As much as I love service to Mansfield via Foxboro from a crayon map perspective, the only way it could make sense is in a 100-year future where 495-land is as dense as 128-land is now, and where there's a fundamental reimagining of downtown's like Mansfield to be highly transit-oriented, combined with the presence of significant employment centers in Foxborough, Norwood and Dedham.
The biggest problem right now is that Mansfield's lot fills up utterly and entirely during rush hour. There is some TOD, and some potential for more, but not a lot more. And you're not going to siphon off many Boston commuters, unless you're willing to offer a major price discount, because the travel time is much worse (see below). So at most you'd be pulling in more commuters who need to park, which aggravates the original problem further.
At best, running largely non-stop, a train from Foxborough Patriot Place takes 45 minutes to get to South Station. Tack on another 5 minutes to travel to Mansfield, and your travel time from Mansfield to South Station clocks at 50 minutes. By contrast, a mid-day local from Mansfield via the NEC, stopping everywhere including Canton Junction and Hyde Park, clocks in at 44 minutes. Pre-pandemic, the morning expresses from Mansfield -- making about as many stops as the 45-minute Foxborough Express -- clocked at 36 and even 31 minutes on the timetable.
(A Foxborough Local, pre-pandemic, was timetabled at 55 minutes, which would make it an even hour from Mansfield.)
60 minute local/50 minute express vs 44 minute local/36 minute express -- in both cases, traveling via Foxborough adds about 37% to your travel time.
Now, strictly speaking, from a crayon map perspective, you possibly could have a little more success running trains the other way -- from Foxborough (or even north) south to Providence. At least there you're not hampered by a significantly slower route, and there probably is a bit more potential for "reverse" commute patronage, at least from as far as Attleboro.
I mean, it's still not much. And of course you'd still have the same parking problem. And if you are gonna run RIDOT trains up the NEC to Attleboro, it's probably better to send them to Taunton, Fall River and New Bedford, the last two having an honest-to-God commuting corridor with Providence.
As with so many transit things, alas.
I'm revisiting this idea, and changing my view, prompted by looking at
where the jobs actually are along the Route 1/Route 95 corridor:
With remarkable fidelity, the string of job densities run along the Northeast Corridor up to Mansfield before diverting west to run along the Foxboro & Franklin Line. This mirrors the
population density map:
In thinking about a Mansfield-Foxboro-Boston rail service two years ago, I had been focusing on Mansfield + Foxboro as suburbs of Boston. But I have recently been thinking about what it will take to de-center the automobile in New England suburbs, and have concluded that we need to look for ways additionally to support collective transit journeys
within the suburbs that aren't oriented toward major cities or necessarily to employment-oriented commutes.
In some ways, the Highland Branch offers a compelling model: a string of medium-density villages with reasonable walkability and predictable (even if not maximally frequent) public transit connecting them, enabling "village hopping" journeys.
Not all of Boston's suburbs could fit such a model; many feature large density cavities, and only a few feature this characteristic string of "islands":
But I would argue that Providence-Mansfield-Norwood-Dedham represents a strong opportunity to reimagine the New England suburb into one that offers bona fide collective transit alternatives to private auto ownership, achievable via modest density increases in "downtowns" but leaving intact the overall character of the communities.
From a transit perspective, this would be achieved by a relatively straightforward expansion of the Regional Rail model: take your every-30-min Foxboro trains and extend them down to Providence via the NEC. This would create half-hour frequencies for journeys within the Route 1 corridor "islands", supplementing faster direct service to Boston and Providence within the appropriate commuter corridors.
Additionally, because of the pattern of diverging vs joining junctions at Walpole, Mansfield, and Canton, the southbound Foxboro trains would be able to use up the slots vacated by South Coast trains peeling off at Canton Junction. Finally, in addition to doubling up with Franklin trains at Walpole to provide 15-minute headways to Norwood and Dedham, Foxboro trains would double up with Providence trains to provide 15-minute headways to Mansfield, the Attleboros, and Pawtucket, creating a legitimate Urban Rail corridor running into Providence. (Mansfield is somewhat at the extreme of this, but Attleboro is well-enough in Providence's sphere to benefit from frequent service.)
To be clear, these through-running Foxboro trains would
not be used (south of Foxboro) for commutes into Boston. This route is made of three segments, roughly corresponding to "within 128", "between 128 & 495", and "outside 495":
- Boston-Readville
- Readville-Norwood-Mansfield
- Mansfield-Providence
This service is meant to enable within-corridor journeys through two of those segments, stringing together a series of overlapping markets:
- Traditional Fairmount/Franklin commute to Boston
- Reverse commute to Dedham, Norwood, Walpole, and Foxboro
- Southerly commute from Norwood, Walpole, Foxboro, Mansfield, and Attleboro to Providence
- Northerly commute from Mansfield, Attleboro, and Rhode Island to Foxboro, Walpole, Norwood, and Dedham
- Suburb-to-suburb journeys along the corridor of higher density population and jobs from Attleboro to Dedham, supporting both work and non-work trips
Living in walking distance, for example, of Mansfield station would afford car-free access not just to downtown Mansfield, but equally to the downtowns of Attleboro, Patriot Place, Walpole, and Norwood. This would also reduce the pressure on each individual downtown to be fully self-sufficient.