Crazy Transit Pitches
- Thread starter BostonUrbEx
- Start date
Boston Roads.com has a figure of $1.9 billion for the tunnel.
Thanks, but thats for 8500ft, supposedly(the whole TW,not just the crossharbor part)
A post-NSRL crayon in which we use the Grand Junction to send Worcester Line trains to North Station, pairing them with Providence Line trains on the other edge.
This does a few things:
This does a few things:
- Resolves some of the North/South NSRL balance issues, since Worcester and Providence are two of the heaviest hitters demand-wise. Right now they're both South side lines, so this creates a heavy South side demand imbalance. Turning Worcester into a North line, however, helps balance out the Providence demand.
- The potential for through-running Amtrak! In a speculative future with real American HSR, the only realistic HSR routes will be Boston - NYC/DC and Boston - Chicago. North of Boston is too thinly settled to have HSR-worthy demand, so a South-to-West through-running pattern could make sense. If Amtrak runs trains through Boston, it could also relocate its yard to somewhere less expensive than downtown.
- Both Providence AND Worcester riders get a one-seat to Kendall AND Back Bay, in addition to the downtown stations
.
Never happen! Cambridge would explode
The EGE
Senior Member
- Joined
- Jun 29, 2013
- Messages
- 1,744
- Reaction score
- 4,597
An interesting concept, and I like the Kendall connection. However, aside from the fatal blockers with running frequent service over the Grand Junction, this means that Worcester riders for South Station and Back Bay have to ride the long way around. Lowell and Newburyport/Rockport are good enough matches for Worcester and Providence.
It might be illustrative also to look at the number of curves you have in that alignment and try to estimate how long this alignment would take to traverse with mainline trains. Remember, South Station-Back Bay itself takes 5 minutes; some of this is due to the yard speed restrictions approaching South Station, but not all of it is. That loop is 6.5 miles long; for comparison, that's on par with North Station-Belmont or North Station-Wyoming Hill, which each take about 15 minutes (albeit with some yard speed restrictions at the end... still, Wyoming Hill-Reading itself is only 5.5 miles and takes even longer at 19 minutes, with 4 intermediate stops).
There are a number of practical reasons why this wouldn't work, but I think it's worth considering how useful it would be under the best circumstances.
There are a number of practical reasons why this wouldn't work, but I think it's worth considering how useful it would be under the best circumstances.
GL is a lot more do-able than CR, both technically and politically
Brattle Loop
Senior Member
- Joined
- Apr 28, 2020
- Messages
- 1,167
- Reaction score
- 2,084
While it's technically possible to have LRT(sort of) and RR sharing tracks with time-separation like they do in New Jersey, it'd likely be completely infeasible here. For one thing, do Green and the CR even use the same wheel profiles? River Line in NJ doesn't have to run into an extant LRT system like Green-on-GJ would. Moreover, even getting a time-separation agreement would probably require CSX's approval given that they have freight trackage rights over the GJ (even if they aren't using them at the moment) and they might balk at that (at least without a MassDOT quid-pro-quo). All that's basically moot anyway, given that the nature of temporal separation means that one of the modes (presumably RR) would be consigned to operating only when demand was low (probably overnight), so it wouldn't even be worth running service. Taking GJ off the RR mode is feasible, sharing it is not, so, yes, CR via GJ would kill GL over GJ, and vice-versa.
What does this mean? Even assuming some very generous average speeds for this Crazy Transit Pitches unlimited-money HSR service, BOS-CHI would still take something like 5-7 hours (realistically considerably more), whereas a flight takes 2-3; even if you factor in getting to Logan, security, baggage, and the atrociously-long trip in from O'Hare, you're probably talking a total travel time not far off from the absolute-maximum possible for HSR...except that HSR would cost a bazillion dollars just to bring into existence whereas the aviation infrastructure already exists. That's not Crazy Transit Pitches, it's the God Mode thread. Even leaving that to one side, Amtrak would almost certainly prefer to run any Chicago HSR service to its main terminal at South Station; there's no need for the GJ for a service that, if it ever existed, would inevitably have Boston as its terminal.
Amtrak owns its Southampton Street yard, it'd take the mother of all offers to pry them loose from there (does make me wonder if Amtrak is even legally subject to state-level eminent domain laws). They're never going to have any meaningful interest in running the Acelas through an NSRL, so it's not very likely that they'd be interested in moving their operations to a less-convenient location, at least absent significant incentives from the state to do so. That also has no bearing on the GJ, because it'd only ever come up in an NSRL world.
As a full-scale service, I agree with you. As an "add-on", I'm not so sure. CR-over-GJ wouldn't require that much work (in comparison to GL-over-GJ). I could envision Worcester-to-North Station via GJ making a comeback (and getting done this time) as a Beacon Hill political gift to Worcester should the next administration have a neo-Tim Murray wanting something like that. Political baubles (cough*SCR*cough) are, of course, occasionally immune to questions about sensibility, utility, and cost-effectiveness. As something more than a political trinket, though, CR-over-GJ's hard-fail on the cost-benefit analysis compared to GL-over-GJ would absolutely hamstring it.
Not Worcester, Harvard. Especially given the MBTA's newfound hatred of all things overhead wires, I can't see Green happening anytime soon. CR might be good enough for Harvard's needs.
Charlie_mta
Senior Member
- Joined
- Jul 15, 2006
- Messages
- 4,526
- Reaction score
- 6,389
The MBTA hates trackless trolley wires on streets, but not LRV wires on a dedicated ROW.
^ Exactly. The claim -- dubious as it may be -- is that the problem arises when the T owns the wires but not the ground underneath the wires, which, I think, they say makes it harder to maintain because they have to negotiate for access. Which, I mean. That seems like it should be a solvable problem. But. Who knows.
So, you're going to drop gates on Mass Ave, Main St and Binney for 5ish minutes out of...15? 30?(both ways,BTW) Please provide me with what you are smoking, if you would. And where will you put the 800ft platform? It is PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE to grade separate any of these streets with CR. LRT is the only way to go, and cheaper to boot.
In the building just south of Main Street. Put the gates down as you let people off and make the rest of the trip up to North Station.
Brattle Loop
Senior Member
- Joined
- Apr 28, 2020
- Messages
- 1,167
- Reaction score
- 2,084
Did you mean to reply to my post? The gist of my commentary on CR-over-GJ was that I thought it would only ever happen if it was a political favor, with the implication that it was so born-broken that it couldn't possibly be done for any other (i.e. sensible) reason, in part because of the well-discussed limitations like those you're referencing.
Think of it more as a marketing bullet point for West Station residents. That also keeps the ability to do train moves and freight if necessary. And doesn't have any overhead wires.
In the end maybe they will leave it as is.
In the end maybe they will leave it as is.
Why is it physically impossible? What's to stop you from digging a trench from Cambridge St to the southern end of Vassar St? You could cap it with a bike path and Cantabrigians would love it. I'm not saying it would be simple but it doesn't seem like it'd be impossible.
Brattle Loop
Senior Member
- Joined
- Apr 28, 2020
- Messages
- 1,167
- Reaction score
- 2,084
The Red Line tunnel is under the Grand Junction at the Main Street crossing. Any GJ tunnel would have to go deep, under the Red Line, which (especially on CR given the grade limitations) opens a big, currently-non-existent flooding risk to the Red Line tunnel (in addition to garden-variety water mitigation necessary to deal with tunneling under the existing GJ partially built on top of fill). We're talking costs escalating at Concorde speeds for a project of extremely limited value (if the NSRL doesn't exist, and still questionable value if it does). I don't think it's physically impossible, but it's so wildly impractical from a cost-benefit standpoint that the politicians would have to be out of their minds to approve it (and they're rarely that bad).
Adding overhead wires is not the problem. Adding overhead wires over non-T-owned ground is the (supposed) problem.
Freight and train moves can be done via Worcester-Ayer, whose tracks can be improved at a much lower costs, and train moves can be reduced by expansions to existing maintenance facilities, also at lower costs and greater benefit.
The Grand Junction corridor needs rapid transit more than it needs commuter rail. West Station needs a rapid transit connection to Cambridge more than it needs a commuter rail connection.
Light rail can approach a railroad grade crossing and treat it like an intersection (and can wait for crossing traffic to have a red light). Commuter rail cannot, which means that frequent commuter rail service would mean halting all traffic on Main Street and Mass Ave (including the vitally important and already extremely delay-prone 1 bus) multiple times an hour, including for the excess time it takes for the gates to go up and down before and after the train passes, plus needing to wait for an 800-foot train to pass at well-less than full-speed (since it'll be pulling in and out of a station).
It's a fun idea and I like the creativity of it! There are serious challenges to it that make it pretty difficult to see as a winner.