Just a minor note regarding the bolded part (because I don't think it fundamentally changes other things you said): The current 8-9 min peak frequencies on the 39 appear to be a result of operator shortage. The Bus Route Profile for the 39 shows that in 2018, the 39 operated 5-min peak frequencies during AM peak (7-9am).
Shouldn't the "LRT'ing the key bus routes discussion be moved to "Reasonable/Crazy Transit Pitches"?
recovery.transitmatters.org
Grade separation of intersections doesn't really seem to be on the table, which is probably the main limiter for frequencies. Anyways, it seems like this isn't really about converting the GJ to rapid transit to provide a new local service, but rather adding a CR stop in Cambridge to shorten journey times for suburban commuters. And in other non-news, Cambridge is still being incredibly silly about overhead wires ruining the look of an industrial/lab space area.
Sure, but their approach does mention stop light synchronization with crossing gates added to all crossings, which is at least something. In fact, it's better than what the GL has at its at-grade crossings.
Except this isn't even going to serve suburban commuters all that well, because the outer terminus in all the evaluated Alts is West Station, not anywhere 128 or beyond. Now, the Worcester-North Station study from 11 years ago didn't exactly find hot ridership from the 'burbs; it netted a not-recommended final conclusion because the diversion from Lansdowne/Back Bay/South Station gave up as much ridership as it added. This one is trying to be a purely local route, which has all sorts of problems:Grade separation of intersections doesn't really seem to be on the table, which is probably the main limiter for frequencies. Anyways, it seems like this isn't really about converting the GJ to rapid transit to provide a new local service, but rather adding a CR stop in Cambridge to shorten journey times for suburban commuters. And in other non-news, Cambridge is still being incredibly silly about overhead wires ruining the look of an industrial/lab space area.
It's pretty much the bare minimum, since the 2012 Worcester-NS study detailed all the chaos that would ensue at Mass Ave. and Main/Broadway with a very modest slate of 5 morning inbounds and 5 evening outbounds. Gates down on an every-8.5-minute target is a steep price to pay, and they're going to be grasping at straws on how to handle all those crossing queues. It's not better than the Green Line; the Green Line can share signal phases with the road. RR has absolute priority no matter what the road signal is.
I don't know about that. Except for an extra Cambridge Crossing stop on the North Station approach the current study pretty much sticks to the Urban Ring stop roster verbatim: Cambridgeport (Vassar near Memorial Drive), Mass Ave., Kendall, and East Cambridge (Cambridge St.). And assumes that a Sullivan Square CR stop can be built on the extended-route Alts. The demand certainly chunks out at each location in the absolute because that's been detailed ever since the UR Major Investment Study. But can it be done tolerably on a Purple-based mode? Even with EMU's that's going to be an absolutely excruciating schedule. And the extra Mass Ave. and Cambridge St. stops make the gate timings even worse because the platforms are immediately adjacent and will feature much slower crawls in/out of a dead stop.
On a route that short they'd spend more time charging in the NS terminal district and on the West Station ends-change than they would in-transit on the GJ. So it's somewhat defensible here as a sunk cost if the T is going to indefensibly do it elsewhere like Fairmount and Rockburyport. But BEMU's come with significant performance penalties over straight EMU's. They're much heavier because of the battery bulk. And most available makes de-power one set of bogies per car vs. their straight-EMU variants in order to fit in those big batteries. Meaning they accelerate like ass out of a dead stop (even more convenient for those Mass Ave. gate timings!), and have an acceleration profile closer to DMU's than true EMU's.
Who doesn't like the overhead wires? Name them, please, and name where they said that.
No. It's saying "the T already says they want to do this on Fairmount and Rockburyport because reasons, so *shrug* I guess if we're pooling from the same fleet you might as well do it here."
Are we really sure that was a Cambridge complaint and not from the T themselves (or from Watertown and Belmont), though?
Cambridge never complained about trolleybus wires...ever. The state forced the city to send budgeted road reconfigs back into design over the location of the wires, at risk of losing time-limited funding for those projects. It was a ratfucking from on-high that got the city to finally cave and let the wires come down.
Definitely still WIP:
