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That's a no from me dawg.
Crazy Transit Pitches
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Yeah, I don't really get any of the Blue Line northside branch proposals. Just do the Urban Ring leg from Sullivan to the Airport.
Charlie_mta
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I agree. That's the better over-all plan.
F-Line to Dudley
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Yeah...and that particular SL3-avoiding jog is the one that avoids all the ridership catchments. Eastern Ave.'s highly industrial up that way and the bus routes all hug Broadway instead because that at least carves a centered path through all available walkshed density, so the local transfer options are nonexistent across the full length being multiple blocks inland. Plus the impacts to Global Petroleum's extensive pipeline infrastructure for pumping fuel off ships into their tank farm is a total minefield on that portion of the eastern riverbank.
This really isn't difficult. The specced Urban Ring NE quadrant terraforms the SL3 route to light rail and hits the all-important Box District and Eastern Ave./Chelsea St. stations where all the local bus transfers fan out. Keep in mind the mixed-running over Chelsea St. Bridge doesn't *have* to be a traffic clog. It's possible to make the intersection with Eastern 'bowlegged', do a quick duck-under for grade separation, pop the trolley tracks up the middle of the road on the approach, and have a signalized transit turnout mere 150 ft. on the Eastie side for sliding onto the ex- Boston & Albany ROW next to CubeSmart. The ex- Grand Junction east extension used to have its own parallel drawbridge here, with only that round-topped pumping station building blocking the old trajectory. The only reason you wouldn't want to re-create Chelsea Draw for the Urban Ring is that it saves you no meaningful time vs. transit priority on the existing road bridge for the extra expense of technical grade separation with the same exact bridge opening schedule. Better to just throw the optimization kitchen sink at it like that intersection duck-under and trolley-bombed turnout signaling than reinvent the wheel.
If you were hellbent on this being an HRT line you probably would have to re-create Chelsea Draw verbatim for the technical grade separation. It can indeed be done if you just move the pump building a couple feet to the side. There is a viable way to do it as such, since the not-very-fleshed-out UR Phase III study objectives envisioned a possible HRT conversion of the complete circuit if they succeeded at solving the brutally tough Kenmore-Longwood-Roxbury ROW sweepstakes. But despite that much official pub it's literally just a placeholder because they haven't got any clue as of yet how the NW and SW quadrants could ever be connected on same mode under grade separation. Or have zeroed in on what's the above-and-beyond demand trigger for such a build when LRT north half and BRT south half + various augments seems to do the job well enough vs. what semi-reliable demand growth data we have for the next 25 years. So HRT preference here really has to make a toothy proof for what's above-and-beyond the LRT option before trying to fix what ain't broke from the SL3-to-UR transition. Plus if there's a Logan Terminal Transitway you'd have to be reinventing the wheel one more time over to thread that service pattern into the terminals, unlike LRT.
This has been sitting open in a tab for days for me. Probably won't get as long a response as I had originally intended, but perhaps that's for the better...
I've been researching and idly wondering about ways to reimagine the rail network in Greater Boston for over 20 years now, and never, not once, not even for the briefest moment did this idea ever cross my mind:
I mean, talk about crazy transit pitches! Crossing over through Chelsea and adding an Amtrak-only hookback (that surely would've have molasses-like speed restrictions) at Wellington in order to send the future-Downeaster up the single track along the Orange Line to the Reading Line? That's nuts. I mean, I love it for its imaginativeness, and I think it's worthwhile to think about – I'm always in favor of considering ideas that force us to look at things from a new perspective.
But to put it bluntly, that shit is wild.
Also, on the more generic note of a cross-harbor tunnel: honestly I think this diagram sums up my problem with it very succinctly:
A downtown alignment (yes, with four tracks) allows you to unify and balance the whole system. (Yes, with a handwavy asterisk next to the Old Colony Division, but that's neither here nor there.) Swapping out a second set of downtown tracks for a cross-harbor alignment shunts those trains over to the Eastern Route, which is important, but definitely doesn't merit half of the traffic from the southside.
Plus, and I cannot emphasize this enough -- the current route from Winthrop Avenue to North Station -- with trundeling diesel, low-level boarding at Chelsea, and slowed terminal approach into North Station... that current route takes something like 15 minutes to get downtown. If you -- somehow -- managed to fly a train between Winthrop Ave and South Station at 45 mph (non-stop)... congrats, under that scenario, you've shaved the journey down by a whopping 9 minutes. Add in your dwell time at Airport Station, and you're probably looking at a 7 minute savings. There simply aren't huge time-savings to be had here.
I'm really sorry to beat this dead horse, but that strikes me as a very minimal time-savings, especially since a 4-track downtown alignment would almost certainly be indistinguishably as fast, provide better access to more of downtown, offer more operational flexibility, and would provide a true "second subway" between North Station, South Station, Back Bay and opposite ends of Longwood Medical Area via Lansdowne and Ruggles. Splitting at South Station dilutes that significantly, and for very little benefit.
Charlie_mta
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How about an urban ring LRT on a high level cable-stayed bridge of this type to pass over Chelsea Creek (photo from Encyclopedia Britannica):
It would follow the old Grand Junction RR route, which is not adjacent to residential areas so shouldn't be too objectionable. I'm thinking one tall tower on the north bank with cables radiating out. The LRT line would be elevated from Chelsea Creek all the way to Airport Station, passing over the East Boston Expressway, preserving the haul road beneath for commercial traffic. Or, as an alternative, the line may be able to touch down in time to pass under the Expressway and use the haul road route.
route.
It would follow the old Grand Junction RR route, which is not adjacent to residential areas so shouldn't be too objectionable. I'm thinking one tall tower on the north bank with cables radiating out. The LRT line would be elevated from Chelsea Creek all the way to Airport Station, passing over the East Boston Expressway, preserving the haul road beneath for commercial traffic. Or, as an alternative, the line may be able to touch down in time to pass under the Expressway and use the haul road route.
route.
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F-Line to Dudley
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How about an urban ring LRT on a high level cable-stayed bridge of this type to pass over Chelsea Creek (photo from Encyclopedia Britannica):
It would follow the old Grand Junction RR route, which is not adjacent to residential areas so shouldn't be too objectionable. I'm thinking one tall tower on the north bank with cables radiating out. The LRT line would be elevated from Chelsea Creek all the way to Airport Station, passing over the East Boston Expressway, preserving the haul road beneath for commercial traffic. Or, as an alternative, the line may be able to touch down in time to pass under the Expressway and use the haul road route.
route.
Problem is the height of such a bridge, because this is in the DPA zone with a boat mast height accommodation equal to the Tobin and the Chelsea St. Bridge in the full-raised position. Hella, hella tall. This means you'd have to take a big whiff on having any sort of station @ Eastern/Chelsea because an egress in the sky is too impractical and becomes too slow for transferring to ground transit. That stop is the transfer to the 112, the pickup spot for the remote Logan Employee parking garage, and the preflight parking lot...an awful lot to be leaving on the table, with likely Massport opposition to the compromised access. You'd also have to do heavy modification to the ROW flipping the Bellingham St. and Curtis St. underpasses to overpasses, and do a long curved viaduct approach on the Eastie side to incline down into the pit.
All for...two? scheduled bridge openings per day in the A.M. only when the fuel tanker makes its round-trip to Global Petroleum? Where currently the lift bridge goes faster than the old road & rail drawbridges by raising variable-height? Yeah...it's annoying when it hits at the tail of rush hour, but that's not very consequential. If the UR NE quadrant is interlaid with two differing 6 min. patterns for net maximum 3 min. service, that means up to 2 (worst-case 3) headways will be disrupted in a row once per day at end-rush or near- off-peak and once per day on the further off-peak. Maybe 1 of 3 headways per opening will need to short-turn before the bridge to keep bunching in-check...in which case you do that at Box District or Eastern/Chelsea at-grade on one side and at Logan BL station on the other side to keep the trolleys hitting the Terminal Transitway undisrupted on headway. We still have SL1 and Blue providing alternate paths. If auto-announcements namecheck a bridge opening 30 minutes prior at all CBD stations, anyone the slightest bit concerned with Logan arrivals can seek alternate routes with enough notice for multiple LRT headways to flush the route prior to any trouble.
Done systematically and predictably enough, that satiates the need. To justify a bridge (or tunnel...which would have similar station-whiff + approach curvature problems because of how deep it would have to go under the PanMax-dredged riverbed) you'd have to quantify the above-and-beyonds where 2 discrete bridge openings--one peak, one off-peak--impacting a grand total of 6 headways and shorting a grand total of 2...somehow isn't enough vs. proper advance notice of the multiple alternate routes. That's basically going to take a Crazy Airport Pitches tie-in unto itself to find that much extra demand justifying extreme costs + compromises here. Which is why none of the official UR plans projecting 25 years ahead on demand ever went there. They all specs shared bridge for BRT/LRT...leaving up to the imagination time-saving tricks like shallow Eastern Ave. duck-under grade separation or trolley-bombed bridge traffic signals. Or...they placeholdered the extremely nebulous HRT option in Phase 3 with a simple parallel drawbridge on the B&A alignment for the grade separation requirement but assumed equal bridge-opening schedule mitigation as the roadway. Because even in the unlikely event that Logan trends a little more towards Paris-like utilization and centrality it's still got a ceiling several orders of magnitude lower than that.
Three comments:
The diagram you have posted is NOT what I have proposed.
The "second subway" will still exist
Yes, the tubes will be somewhat imbalanced but unless maximum throughput of more than 24tph to Lowell/Haverhill and Fitchburg is needed, it makes little difference where the second tunnel is.
F-Line to Dudley
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So it has *not*, in fact, been "studied" before.
Can we pretty please keep just a modicum in post-to-consistency of whatever the hell it is we're supposed to be talking about.
F-Line to Dudley
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God what a shit sandwich Downeaster routing that is. Single-track bottleneck and the grade crossing hell all the same with curves-FTW. On detour days for GLX construction when the DE is punted to the Western Route it only ends up making par time to the NH Main by going completely nonstop North Station-Haverhill. It'd almost be faster under this bizarro-tunnel alternate universe to go slower first by backtracking even further to the Innerbelt connector then speeding up the Lowell Line to Wilmington to 90 MPH to ram it brute-force back to par rather than trying to make lemonade out of the Reading Line's numerous performance deficiencies. At least that way it wouldn't be a such a dispatching nightmare, though it would take as long on the clock to get between Boston and Somerville on that circuitous meander as it would Somerville-Wilmington on the main routing.
Seems awfully self-evident why this "DRAFT" study never advanced to a revision round. Bonkers doesn't begin to describe. Curious as to who scratched who's back in the Legislature to even fund it in the first place, because it had to have taken a curious set of circumstances to light a couple bales of cash on fire for such a naff-by-design prospect. Somewhere deep in the Legislative record there's a fun throwaway story of political sausage-making telling the tale of how this one briefly came to pass.
And here come the emojis! If I didnt make it clear the five times I discussed the route, I never claimed that my exact routing had been studied, only that the general topic of cross-harbor rail had been done.So it has *not*, in fact, been "studied" before.
Can we pretty please keep just a modicum in post-to-consistency of whatever the hell it is we're supposed to be talking about.
And also, I am sorry if my comment on "the diagram" was confusing. I referred to "Figure 4" the diagram of possible routing which did not show any connection with Fitchburg, Lowell etc.
But, hey so much for reasonable discussion backed with data and, dare I say, accuracy.
No, instead, lets throw throw poo emojis around and harass people off the forum. Congrats, F-Line. You've chased another one away. Notch your belt. Hope you feel proud.
F-Line to Dudley
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Orly?. . .
So is this an "I didn't not-not-not claim" by omission? How is this now a "general topic" when the referenced study was pitched as oracle that the costs involved were not all that more recent projections were cracked up to be given--
--but now is just hand-waved at as a general topic relevance instead of the how-to guide explained prior? Do you not recall that costs exchange over the last two pages with roy_mustang76??? Nevermind that consecutive posts can't seem to keep their stories straight about what the demand audience in question is because of the ever-rotating cast of semi- to wholly-unrelated projects it direct-competes with by name...until it suddenly doesn't direct-compete with any of them and retroactively claims never to have done so.
So what *is* this topic anyway, and why are we so obtusely averse to staying on it while reflexively bumping it? Either this is pure derail-bait or we can't see the lane markers on the road amid all the careening off left guardrail to right.
[PICK A LANE AND DRIVE IN IT EMOJI]
I realize that isn't what you proposed, and I apologize that I wasn't clearer. My point is that a cross-harbor tunnel maxes out at serving the Eastern Route -- a second downtown tunnel can serve all routes.
I agree, the second subway would exist, but in significantly diluted form. And it's not just a matter of 24tph (and honestly I'm not even interrogating that number right now, I'm just echoing it back for conversation's sake) to Fitchburg/Lowell/Haverhill -- it's a matter of 24tph to the northern end of the Financial District and to the West End. And likewise from those places to Back Bay and Longwood.
I appreciate that you see value in a cross-harbor tunnel; in a build-everything future, yes, I can see some utility. But short of that, I'm personally unconvinced, but I appreciate you taking the time to engage about it.
And -- just to be clear -- my delight at the study you've posted is genuine. I think the ideas are crazy, but I love coming across crazy ideas like this. So, you have my heartfelt thanks for sharing this strange little nugget of Boston transportation history.
roy_mustang76
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Okay so I stepped away from the discussion for a bit, and while you and I clearly disagree, we at least are doing so civilly. But F-Line is right. You've claimed that the existence of this cross-harbor study was some sort of vindication of following the data (nevermind the fact that studies are done to determine if there's actual demand or cost basis to do so, and are not proof of such owing only to the fact that a study was done), but then have conveniently ignored the study's own words indicating that it was done to study an alternate routing for Amtrak to head north. It wasn't done to give the Eastern direct access to South Station, or to give westward lines access to the Airport. Those are nice side benefits which justify the existence of the crossing on the margins, but based on the details provided in that 94 study, Amtrak access to Logan was the point of bothering to route that way.
So yes, a cross-harbor study was done, but under a totally different premise than the one you're advancing (and the study evaluated ridership accordingly). There are some decent takeaways from the study, but it's zero indication that there is, or ever was, a particular political or local appetite for connecting the Eastern to South Station directly (skipping North Station). It only proves that someone somewhere had a bright (possibly drug- or alcohol-fueled) idea to try to run Amtrak around the horn in the weirdest routing possible to head north to Maine. And as @Riverside says, bless you for finding that study. Regardless of the primary discussion we're having, the whole notion of running the Downeaster or an NE Regional around the horn and up the Western is so delightfully weird that it will have me chuckling for a week.
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roy_mustang76
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Because I didn't do a very good job of explaining the routing I had in mind, and that's on me.
I envision it handling the NxNE compass point on the map (think Route 1-ish). So, fork off after either Maverick or Airport (whichever you can manage, frankly), cross Chelsea Creek, station roughly at current CR station location, (insert handwave to get over to 99/Broadway), follow Broadway all the way up to the 1/99 split/merge, terminate in the Sears parking lot at Square One mall. But, I recognize that's extremely unlikely to happen, beginning with managing to get out of Eastie in the first place. There would be some UR overlap, but it wouldn't be interchangeable with UR (UR is unquestionably the higher priority though). It's better suited for the god mode thread and I know that
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Charlie_mta
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[Mod Edit: From here]
Watertown, Everett and Lexington are underserved by rail of any type, yet they are among the fastest growing communities. Need to target those communities for rail service.
Watertown, Everett and Lexington are underserved by rail of any type, yet they are among the fastest growing communities. Need to target those communities for rail service.
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Easier said than done, but let's explore...
Watertown:
- The only practical way to get to Watertown is by extending GLX out of Union to Porter and from there reactivating the Watertown Branch ROW, which splits off of Fitchburg at Fresh Pond Mall. At the Watertown Mall it would probably have to run on Arsenal Street to Watertown Square.
- Watertown is currently benefiting from bus-priority lanes on Mount Auburn Street between Watertown and Harvard. Arsenal needs similar treatment.
- No easy way to bring rail to Everett. It gets to God-Mode pretty quick.
- Urban Ring Northern Route would give busses from Everett another linkage to more locations.
- Bus Lanes on Broadway are helping speed busses to Wellington/Sullivan.
- Red to Arlington Heights is probably the best we're ever going to get here. There's the slightest possibility that Lexington would accept radically changing the nature of the ROW that currently hosts the Minuteman Path by having Red run alongside... but don't count on it. It's a tough ROW to work with for rapid transit.
- Better bus service and coverage is absolutely needed for the Commuter Rail gap between Waltham and Woburn.
At this point, this features almost as a given to every Future MBTA map I sketch. It's grade-separated until Arlington St/Nichols Ave in East Watertown, and Arsenal is wide enough that you could probably swing dedicated lanes. Certainly at least to East Watertown, it's a no-brainer.
Much less realistic, but ever so often discussed, is a Blue Line extension from Kenmore via the Mass Pike and North Beacon Street (or North Beacon all the way) to Watertown Square and then vaguely-handwavily to Waltham beyond. Abstractly, there's some real sense to this -- from Kenmore, this is indeed one of the clear transit cavities that would be accessible, and rapid-transitifying the Boston & Albany along the Pike is not going to help you much in Watertown, so there would still be a "niche." But... it would be astronomically expensive and challenging, and both Watertown and Waltham alike have such easier access from the north.
I've been noodling for months on whether a super pro-transit local government would somehow be able to run tracks the 1 mile from Sweetser Circle up Broadway to Ferry Street. As can be seen on Google Maps now, parking is being eliminated for (peak only?) bus lanes. San Francisco's MUNI uses street-running LRT with center-running bus lanes between general traffic lanes... but on streets that are a bit wider than Broadway. The best I've been able to come up with is... maaaaaaybe you could do it? It would obviously be easier if you could reduce the general traffic to one-way only, but there really isn't a good parallel street to pair one-way with. So there's a good chance you'd have to contend with street-running mixed traffic LRT, which is pretty much terrible.
That all being said, I think it's worth noting that it's only (literally) that last mile would poses possibly-insurmountable challenges. LRT to Sweetser Circle would be a project, but hardly the most complicated one -- run along the commuter rail ROW down to Sullivan, hook over through the yards into the GLX expansion, and either run trains into the Central Subway or down the Grand Junction. (If you're stuck with mixed-traffic street-running, I'd say better to send down the Grand Junction so as to reduce the impact of the inevitable delays.)
I agree that rail to Everett doesn't have an easy way, but I'm a little more skeptical that you have to jump to God-Mode so quickly. ("You say to-may-to, I say to-mah-to.")
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Yes, the tough part is alignment off of the Pike ROW and into Watertown. I plotted out a map of Blue Line possibilities that shows a bunch of potential routes... all of them are a tough sell. You might have some other ones.
Waltham is not going to work from Watertown. The ROW is too winding and encroached with too many grade-crossings and river crossings. Hit Waltham with a future GLX out of Porter if it's really ever needed. Otherwise Waltham will be happy with RUR.
Fair enough. I'm pretty skeptical of branching street-running as a useful solution to the outlying problems. At least if they're tied into the Green Line as the Urban Ring would likely be. There would already be a 3-way GL split out of Lechmere. Then branching one of those away from the Airport and into Everett seems like it would be a scheduling challenge, especially with one of those routes being a street-car. It's that aspect that separates this from the potential Riverside/Needham split after Newton Highlands.
I believe you've covered all of the alignments I've thought of, and I agree with your comments on all of them (based on my quick readthrough). The only way I could ever see any of them happening is if an Amazon-level company decides to move its global headquarters to either Watertown or Waltham and we see an enormous increase in density. Not impossible, but highly improbable.
Yeah, I've been slowly working on a large-scale reimagining of the LRT network to address these concerns, because they're very very real. Hopefully I'll have something ready to post in January, but the tl;dr is that I think the only way you could make it work is if you largely kept Everett streetcars out of the Central Subway, and supplemented them with extra trainsets coming from other branches, i.e. from Porter. The question would be how much benefit is accrued by having rail service that still requires a transfer at Sullivan for a moderate share of the passengers -- even if those transfers are offset by, for example, a one-seat ride to Kendall, Allston and Harvard.
This ties into the larger idea that's underlies my reimagining -- at some point, the needs of a corridor like Everett Broadway, or Allston Commonwealth Ave differ so markedly in character from those of a GLX-to-Woburn, Highland Branch, or a Huntington Subway that we should start imagining different services for each. But more on that in few weeks...
(Or maybe days, if I get stir crazy over Christmas.)