Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail (South Coast Rail)

[bigeman312]

Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

Or build the North-South Rail Link with that money!

 

[SeamusMcFly]

Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

"only"? Only Easton, Raynham, and Stoughton? I've seen this movie before, except in the remake, the part of the Hingham NIMBY is being played by Easton, Raynham and Stoughton NIMBYs, with a cameo by the Army Corps of Engineers demanding electrification.

We have to learn either ignore the NIMBYs or let the NIMBYs kill things, because in-between we pay waaaay to much (for tunnels through Hingham) and get waaay too few riders (Greenbush does not sufficiently outperform the Hingham ferry to ever have been worth building and barely enough to be worth using platforms, and trainsets that Middleboro would better use)

I have no soft spot for hingham (growing up in blue collar Rockland next door it's in your blood to not like them), but the CR should not have cut thru the center as originally planned. Did they need a subway? No. The demand isn't really there for rail as mentioned above. But they were a 100% right to demand it be buried..

Easton on the other hand does not have the same support from me. They have existing right of ways through the town. The station in North Easton is testament to the previous train through here. Their complaints are strictly of the selfish variety, and they Get no sympathy from me.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

I want to address points made by Matthew and Arlington.

Electrification is a valid goal in and of itself, and absolutely should be demanded at every opportunity. Lest we forget, with the majority of this being built as a tortured single track, electrification is the last gasp hope to even approach the kinds of headways being promised for South Coast FAIL. It will never achieve any of the promises the state's cheerleaders are making if it doesn't have one (preferably both) of a second track for the majority of its route or full electrification.

That having been said, while I am fundamentally opposed to this project - while I absolutely would cancel it tomorrow if it was my choice - if this thing must go forward, I want it electrified. Unlike most NIMBY demands, extorting electrification out of the MBTA benefits everybody.

Electrifying South Coast forces the MBTA to procure electric locomotives, which can be used tomorrow morning beneath the wires on the Providence Line. It opens the door for electrifying Fairmount in conjunction with (or immediately after) electrifying South Coast, for canceling DMU procurement and going directly to EMUs instead, completes one of the fundamental prerequisites of the Rail Link (the groundwork for an electric district), and probably gets the ball rolling on wiring Worcester (at least to Framingham) in the next two decades instead of the next half-century. There would be significantly less objections to future electric push-pull/dual-mode/EMU acquisitions once the MBTA is forced to operate at least one line as fully electric. In fact, their "unicorn fleet" objections to electrics provides a strong impetus for them to immediately begin using electrics on Providence as well as South Coast and to speed up the time table on electrification elsewhere, feeding back into the aforementioned electric district.

If $2.4b shoveled into a roaring bonfire for Greenbush 2: Electric Boogaloo is the cost of getting electrification from "maybe around 2065" to "definitely by 2025," then - as unhappy as I am about this project on general principle - I'll throw my support behind it.

 

[George_Apley]

Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

^ The DMU procurement will be done, paid for and delivered before SCR is done. While I agree with your overall point, cancelling the DMU order is not going to be one of the benefits to electrification.

 

[underground]

Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

There's no reason (outside of money) it couldn't be EMU despite the incoming DMU order. At some point we have to go electrification, and while that project's going on we'll have to be running both anyway, right? And all told, that project might take decades, so might as well get used to it and start here. We might even end up running both modes in perpetuity. Like CBS said, at least we could use this cluster of a project as the impetus to get started on something we need to do eventually.

 

[George_Apley]

Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

There's no reason (outside of money) it couldn't be EMU despite the incoming DMU order. At some point we have to go electrification, and while that project's going on we'll have to be running both anyway, right? And all told, that project might take decades, so might as well get used to it and start here. We might even end up running both modes in perpetuity. Like CBS said, at least we could use this cluster of a project as the impetus to get started on something we need to do eventually.

I agree with that. Just commenting on CBS's claim that we might be able to cancel DMUs if we electrify.

 

[Matthew]

Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

Re: electrification, I've thought of that scenario but I don't believe it. Why? Because there's a cheesy way out.

They can keep dumping money into this pit while promising electric unicorns to everyone. Eventually, after a billion dollars or so, the MBTA will firmly say: no, we aren't doing electric, no matter what the Army Corps of foolish idiots says, it can't happen.

So they'll suddenly fall back to diesel mode, because they already dumped a billion dollars into it, and they "can't quit now!" What happens next? Well, prospective train schedules get adjusted, proposed service worsens, and the project continues to suck money and move forward. Probably costs the same or more, even without electrification, just because.

Even fewer people ride the white elephant because now it can't do better than a 90 minute trip, and getting stuck in traffic is still faster on most days.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

I'm fine with DMUs as a stopgap.

I don't think there's any reason to be running them in conjunction with EMUs is my only real objection to keeping an active DMU fleet post-electrification. (Dual-mode locomotives solve the "only part of this line merits electrification" problem for e.g. the North Shore lines.) If we can't get everything in place for EMU until after the first DMU procurement, I'm fine with it - I just don't think there's a real compelling argument to keep DMUs around in addition to EMUs.

Re: electrification, I've thought of that scenario but I don't believe it. Why? Because there's a cheesy way out.

They can keep dumping money into this pit while promising electric unicorns to everyone. Eventually, after a billion dollars or so, the MBTA will firmly say: no, we aren't doing electric, no matter what the Army Corps of foolish idiots says, it can't happen.

So they'll suddenly fall back to diesel mode, because they already dumped a billion dollars into it, and they "can't quit now!" What happens next? Well, prospective train schedules get adjusted, proposed service worsens, and the project continues to suck money and move forward. Probably costs the same or more, even without electrification, just because.

Even fewer people ride the white elephant because now it can't do better than a 90 minute trip, and getting stuck in traffic is still faster on most days.

There are two easy counter-arguments here:

Option A) Feds say "so you've been taking a bunch of money for a promise you can't deliver on, and we would like our money back."

Option B) It is never, ever too late to cancel a project no matter how much time and money has been invested into it.

 

[underground]

Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

If we can't get everything in place for EMU until after the first DMU procurement, I'm fine with it - I just don't think there's a real compelling argument to keep DMUs around in addition to EMUs.

A) DMUs will be here in ~5 years (2020 goal) if everything goes as currently planned, so there's no way in hell we'd be able to get everything in place for EMUs before hand. That would entail not just purchasing new rolling stock, and not just electrifying miles of track, but also either raising a ton of bridges or sinking a ton of tracks to accommodate train plus pantograph plus wire infrastructure. That's a massive project all told, which wraps into...

B) There is a compelling argument to keeping DMUs around while running EMUs. It's the amount of time, money, effort, and headache it would take to fix aforementioned low bridges and other clearance related issues. In a world with unlimited money, of course EMU is preferred, but in the real world, we'll probably be running both together for a long time.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

A) DMUs will be here in ~5 years (2020 goal) if everything goes as currently planned, so there's no way in hell we'd be able to get everything in place for EMUs before hand. That would entail not just purchasing new rolling stock, and not just electrifying miles of track, but also either raising a ton of bridges or sinking a ton of tracks to accommodate train plus pantograph plus wire infrastructure. That's a massive project all told, which wraps into...

B) There is a compelling argument to keeping DMUs around while running EMUs. It's the amount of time, money, effort, and headache it would take to fix aforementioned low bridges and other clearance related issues. In a world with unlimited money, of course EMU is preferred, but in the real world, we'll probably be running both together for a long time.

Fair point on A, but doesn't B wrap right back around? Fixing all the bridges and clearance issues has to happen as part of wiring up the core, doesn't it? And if that's the case, then we're back where we started with regards to DMU versus EMU.

Essentially what I'm suggesting is that as we bring electrification online starting with Fairmount, we should phase DMUs out to lines lacking electrification as we procure EMUs and bring them online to replace them. (E.g., Fairmount goes 100% electric and now all of the DMUs are exiled to operation on the North Shore and Worcester and Lowell Lines because the Fairmount Line now exclusively uses EMUs and dual-modes coming up from Franklin. Lowell goes electric and EMUs replace the DMUs there, which then get shunted off to Riverside and Salem, etc.) The eventual goal would be, once electrification is complete, that all of the DMUs have been phased out and EMUs brought in instead.

 

[Matthew]

Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

There are two easy counter-arguments here:

Option A) Feds say "so you've been taking a bunch of money for a promise you can't deliver on, and we would like our money back."

Option B) It is never, ever too late to cancel a project no matter how much time and money has been invested into it.

A) Yep, and guess who pays that debt? You, me, and everyone else who rides the T. Just like the Big Dig all over again! Wouldn't be the first time that politicians had engineers make false projections for political reasons, won't be the last.

B) Haha. I mean, technically you are correct. Because you are smart and you understand the concept of sunk cost. Politicians don't. As Robert Moses always said, once you sink the first stake, the politicians will never ask you to pull it back up. Because that would make them lose face, and they hate that more than anything.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

A) Yep, and guess who pays that debt? You, me, and everyone else who rides the T. Just like the Big Dig all over again! Wouldn't be the first time that politicians had engineers make false projections for political reasons, won't be the last.

B) Haha. I mean, technically you are correct. Because you are smart and you understand the concept of sunk cost. Politicians don't. As Robert Moses always said, once you sink the first stake, the politicians will never ask you to pull it back up. Because that would make them lose face, and they hate that more than anything.

Sure, but the point was that you get A or B (or "Yes") if and only if you pull the "no, we aren't doing electric, no matter what the Army Corps of foolish idiots says, it can't happen, and by the way thanks for the $1b that we've already spent" trick. I don't think that the MBTA is likely to risk crossing the Feds even if it can just offload all of its debt from a half-finished and then canceled bad project onto riders, because crossing the Feds tends to have nasty repercussions beyond what simply pissing all over your local ridership does.

If they aren't going to electrify, then they're going to say it now, when the Feds will merely be annoyed and force them to restart the whole process, rather than later, after fleecing the Feds of $1b or so and almost certainly guaranteeing some... shall we say, "retribution."

 

[Arlington]

Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

I've lost track whether the current CBS-Matthew conversation is about DMUs, Electrification,Fairmont, or FR/NB CR I get that there are a lot of related topics:

1)Electric is crazy-expensive --textbook insane--for a rarely-used line. I keep forgetting that it is operational because that's just too insane for my brain to hold (its easier to imagine it being good for the environment than being operationally worth it).

2)Fleet commonality is important for costs and reliablity. It must be diesel and the whole MBTA is going to be diesel until there's a FFGA to build the NS Rail Link. Period.

3)Electric of some sort would be needed if there's a N-S Rail link (but likely dual mode)

4)DMUs and Fairmont are what half measures and compromises look like. So's a terminus in Taunton.

But *Somebody* who both loves mobility, believes in the power of infrastructure investment, and budgetary sanity (and the need to build other stuff, too) is going to need to re-invent and re-define what "South Coast Rail" means before we can afford to build that, and *everyone* knows it but aren't all politically or emotionally free to admit it.

And we mostly all want to do *something* to improve transit access to that quadrant of the state, and indeed, we mostly like the idea of revitalizing cities of all kinds and sizes, like FR and NB.

If you actually believe in all the stuff that progressive, civic-life-oriented government promises, you hate the overpriced, underscheduled, piss-into-roadbed, gold-plated, empty-cored, monstrosity that SCR has become. I'm just going to start posting a collection of unused, ruined Olympic venues *here* because SCR is more like them than Boston 2024 could ever be.

If we have to incur whatever costs to reactivate a line through the swamps to Taunton, it ONLY makes sense to do it as:

1) A two-track railroad for capacity & frequency (Stoughton should be bought off with a promise of more service, nothing less, nothing more)

2) An unelectrified railroad for cost, speed of construction, and operational commonality.

3) A "Phase 1" Terminus in Taunton with an Alewife/Wickford style park-and-ride w/bus loop. ANY of US44, MA24, MA140, I-495 can be connected to it.

And then see how it goes.

To me, this kind of fresh look has "Charlie Baker" written all over it, where he can claim credit for half-a-loaf of transit (progress! Suburban-swing-voter park-and-ride heaven!) and a whole bakery full of budgetary common sense, and FR and NB city-center democrats will be free to inveigh against him (but its still a net political win for Baker).

 

[George_Apley]

Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

To me, this kind of fresh look has "Charlie Baker" written all over it, where he can claim credit for half-a-loaf of transit (progress! Suburban-swing-voter park-and-ride heaven!) and a whole bakery full of budgetary common sense, and FR and NB city-center democrats will be free to inveigh against him (but its still a net political win for Baker).

Agreed. Baker is the best hope to pare this plan back. I guarantee you that Patrick knew it was a boondoggle too, but he needed FR/NB pols on his side for this bill or that bill, so he offered his full-throated support. Baker probably won't feel the need to suck up to the South Coast democrats.

 

[Arlington]

Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

Agreed. Baker is the best hope to pare this plan back. I guarantee you that Patrick knew it was a boondoggle too, but he needed FR/NB pols on his side for this bill or that bill, so he offered his full-throated support. Baker probably won't feel the need to suck up to the South Coast democrats.

Much--and perhaps all--of the Democratic establishment knows it is a boondoggle too, but until it becomes an outright scandal or bankruptcy threat, I think they' prefer to nudge it along, ensuring it always remains a low-grade fever, rather than become a matter of cure or kill and hand a non-incumbent somewhere a winning issue.

 

[PaulC]

Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

Wouldn't electrifying the Fairmont line also serve as a backup for the Acelar. When the orange line was moved to it's current location Amtrak used the Fairmont line for several years.

 

[Arlington]

Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

Does anyone have a link to the official South Coast Rail budget because I'm 75% sure that a decent chunk of it is actually used for economic development purposes beyond the actual construction and implementation of rail services. Somewhere to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

I know of no evidence to support your belief.

We're throwing around numbers in the $2.4b range because we know that the FEIS was a political document and that's how these things go (or we've seen inflators since, related to breaking the project up)

For example, in the 2012 numbers below, they say $147m for professional services and in 2014 they let a contract for $210m in professional services. Since these are usually based on the overall cost of the project, right there they're hinting that its going to cost $30% more than the "$1.8b" numbers below, which is why $2.4b is probably a fair total-project cost (as Matthew uses and I suspport). And no, from the table below, there's no non-project econ dev money being spread around.

IN 2012 Dollars as estimated in August 2013:
Table 1.4-10 Stoughton Electric Alternative Capital Cost Summary

$1,090,568,000 Total Infrastructure Cost

$ 52,430,000 Real Estate Cost
$ 147,767,000 Professional Services Cost
$ 345,700,000 Contingency
$ 180,970,000 Vehicle Cost

$1,817,435,000 Total

...a decent chunk of it is actually used for economic development purposes beyond the actual construction and implementation of rail services. Somewhere to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

I'm not trying to be snarky, but maybe you're thinking of how we say the only sure winners so far are the consultants? Even $ spent on engineers on absurd projects generally has a mild Keynesian stimulus and keeps talented people in-state and busy. Many here wish instead that we'd been keeping fresh our Red-Blue connector and N-S Rail Link plans with the same kind of "life support"/stimulus funding.

 

[Arlington]

Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

Wouldn't electrifying the Fairmont line also serve as a backup for the Acelar. When the orange line was moved to it's current location Amtrak used the Fairmont line for several years.

Since it skips Back Bay, Amtrak's use would only be for non-rev moves and in extreme, "wires-down" events (for which a spare diesel tug also works). It is a nice-to-have but not enough to be a big thing in favor of electrification (or it'd have been easy to throw in in the 1990s when the NEC and the yards were being done).

 

[Semass]

Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

Perhaps one way to start the funding for this would be for the driving cities and towns to join the MBTA district now. Those funds could be put into an escrow account of some sort to advance the SCR construction in those communities - like stations. It is hard to tell exactly what the formula is. It seems to be a function of service frequency, population, and other factors. For some small towns with a commuter rail stop or bordering a town with a commuter rail stop, the annual bill is about $50K. It is not a ton of money but it gets some skin in the game and over 10 years or so could add up if all of the communities are included.

It ain't gonna be $2 billion but moving from rail-as-handout to rail-as-partnership could be useful for any future extensions.

 

[PaulC]

Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

Since it skips Back Bay, Amtrak's use would only be for non-rev moves and in extreme, "wires-down" events (for which a spare diesel tug also works). It is a nice-to-have but not enough to be a big thing in favor of electrification (or it'd have been easy to throw in in the 1990s when the NEC and the yards were being done).

I don't remember but they must have had a shuttle when the NEC was shut down for the Orange Line relocation