These maps are all beautiful! I really appreciate the use of a new style of maps. I think that will certainly be the way to go soon as, the way I look at it, the current map is kinda maxed out.
I know these maps were intended to really show off the green line reconfiguration proposals, which I think is a great idea, but I did notice a few HRT extensions, or lack thereof, as well. The three included the most obvious ones (OLX South, Lynn, Arlington, and some form of BL west of Charles/MGH), but I also thought it would be a good chance to imagine some northerly HRT extensions. A map with BL Salem (which @ratmeister did include), OL Reading, and RL Lexington/128 would be nice to see on these masterpieces!
Thank you for your kind words! Very much appreciated.
Yes, the absence of northerly HRT extensions was an intentional choice -- even if tonally a fantasy map, the diagram is still intended to be a (semi) serious proposal with a focus on feasibility.
To the specific points:
BLX to Salem: discussed elsewhere, I think BLX to Lynn is rock solid, and I think it gets progressively fuzzier the further north you go. My preference is to focus on BLX to Lynn and high-frequency regional rail to Salem.
OLX to Reading: I really go back and forth on this;
@F-Line to Dudley and I had an
exchange on this upthread; his argument was that Regional Rail maxes out once NSRL is built, but is likely sufficient until then, and I tend to agree; it feels like a lot of political capital to spend which I would prefer to focus on other projects. (F-Line, you mentioned pair-matching problems post-NSRL with Reading -- why not pair-match it with Fairmount? To your point, both routes could handle those frequencies and they're similar lengths which keeps things balanced.)
RLX to Lexington/beyond: I struggle with this one. RLX to Arlington Center is short and has density and demand, but, like BLX beyond Lynn, I think this one gets fuzzier the further north you go. In particular, unlike BLX, OLX, or the South Shore extension, or either Orange Line relocation,
there is no railroad here. The tracks have been gone for over 30 years. Building an at-grade heavy rail line seems like a big swing, and a subway seems impossible to justify that far out
Ironically enough, though, given that this map is nominally focused on Green Line Reconfiguration: I am much more optimistic about the prospect of a light rail line along the Minuteman. It would be an easy extension from Porter, and capacity should be very manageable even with a couple other northern branches. Light rail also gives you more flexibility if you ever make it all the way to Burlington --
Burlington Mall Road would be fun to run a light rail line down.
I actually decided to not draw any LRT beyond Porter relatively early on when planning this map, but it was a big question to me: being able to fan out the light rail network to Medford/beyond, Lexington, and Watertown is, to me, a pretty cool benefit of the GLR. But there would be a lot of specifics to work out, and I wanted to focus on other things.
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Now I'm already planning for the "bigger" version of this map. The contest (sensibly) limited us to 30" x 30", but if I'm making a bigger version for fun, I'd probably just expand that. My list of potential additions would probably include:
- Gold Line to Watertown
- Gold Line to Lexington
- LRT line between Woburn, Burlington, and the Minuteman
- LRT shuttle between Millennium Park and Dover, maybe down to Dedham as well
- LRT branch from Blue Hill Ave up Columbia Road to JFK/UMass
- Gold Line extension to Wellesley Lower Falls
- Blue Line to Newton Corner or maybe Watertown
I'd also experiment with some strategy for showing high-frequency regional rail. I tried doing it with this version but was unhappy with the results.