TheRatmeister
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Aww hell yeah. This is a gorgeous map -- awesome job! And welcome to the board!
Various scattered comments:
This is a really interesting idea! I have a mini side project I'm working on that sketches out corridors that could potentially support targeted light rail lines; Mt Auburn St is on the list, as is the Minuteman Trail (which, to your point, I agree is a better fit for LRT than HRT). I'm curious, what made you choose Mt Auburn St as the "winning candidate" here?
Very simple. Mt Auburn Street is stupidly, ridiculously wide for where it is, and going down to one car lane per direction, which is already planned as part of a redesign, would allow enough space for light rail without eliminating car traffic, very much street parking, or making dedicated bike lanes as significant problem. There's really not that many places where that works. You can see in Everett that even the limited bus lanes they have now are combined bike/bus lanes with giant carveouts for street parking. I don't think it's impossible, but it's not really in a state of: "We could start building this, like, today" in my opinion.
Also very interesting! The current endpoint of the B Line, as I understand it, actually dates waaaaaay back, to the old boundary between BERy territory and the territory of the Middlesex and Boston Street Railway. (@The EGE would know more about that.) Which is to say, that endpoint is somewhat arbitrary and really just reflects the municipal border between Newton and Boston, and doesn't necessarily reflect the conditions "on the ground". So I like the idea of considering a short extension! Where were you thinking of putting the "New Boston College" station?
I was thinking somewhere near Linden Rd, preferable actually on the BC campus if they're willing.
This is some pretty aggressive stop consolidation and while I'm not opposed, I'm also not quite convinced In particular, it looks like me like you've dropped several higher-ridership stops in favor of lower-ridership stops located in between higher ones (e.g. Englewood Ave and Tappan St being consolidated to Dean Rd). More recent data is available through the MBTA Blue Book portal but I still find the PDF version from 2014 to be a useful quick reference.
The principles for the stop consolidation were to target a 600m stop spacing, trying to make a middle path between good streetcar stop spacing (~300-400m) and subway stop spacing (~1km). But I'll happily admit that it's not perfect, and I didn't get through a ton of revisions with that like I did for some other parts of the map. I still need to look over the ridership data, but I might consider using some weight system or something to try and get the stop consolidation really nailed down.
Yes, this is something I've thought about as well. See here, in particular this subsection. Needham Junction <> West Roxbury-ish is definitely a reasonable proposal. One small challenge of using PCCs specifically: they aren't double-ended, so you would need to install loops at both ends. Not insurmountable, but add that on top of the increasing age of the PCC fleet, and I think probably the "heritage" line would need to be Type 7s or Type 8s. (In fact, if memory serves, the eventual plan once the Type 10s arrive is to use the current shiny Type 9s on the Mattapan Line.)
I know, and you're 100% correct, I just really like the PCCs and I'm not ready to let go. I do think you might be able to find enough volunteers to keep those PCCs running a while longer, especially with some kind of Streetcar museum or something. But again, the Type 7s or Type 8s would be 1000x more practical.
I've written elsewhere as to why I think a full surface LRT line from Park St to Mattapan wouldn't work very well -- I should consolidate that and toss it on to my site, maybe I'll try to do that later today. While I'm not convinced that a full length line all the way to Mattapan is the right answer, I think it's definitely trying to answer the right questions.
Blue Hill Ave is the busiest bus corridor in the region by a mile, it definitely needs something, and being so close to the Fairmount Line, I think it's better to focus some on local connectivity, not just having a fast ride into downtown. That is necessary, and that's why the Indigo Line and Red Line to Mattapan are on the map, but I think that leaves a pretty clear space open for a more local form of transit on the southern part of the line. Once you start getting up towards Nubian, the ride time penalties compared to a faster mode start to decrease quite a bit and I'm less worried about that section.
For what it's worth, I think your Aqua Line concept could be interesting to apply here: a standalone LRT line radiating out from a transfer hub. Swap out Harvard for Ruggles, and Watertown Square for Mattapan... if you extend your Aqua Line to Newton Corner and add a regional rail station there (which I'd definitely recommend), then you'd have a similarity there as well, with Newton Corner being equivalent to Indigo's Blue Hill Ave.
Yeah that would be a good idea.
There's a reason I keep pointing to the River Line in NJ, I think it does a very good job of navigating this niche, kind of like a modern interurban line.Yeah, as mentioned above I think that the Minuteman corridor beyond Arlington is definitely the realm of LRT, not HRT. To me it probably sits somewhere between your Aqua Line corridor and the heritage trolley you propose in Needham, which makes it tricky to find the right fit.