General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

[tysmith95]

Crazy transit pitch time, route it next to the commuter rail out to the SL3 line, then follow the SL3 line out to the airport. Stops at Sullivan, assembly, encore and rt 16/Everett.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Crazy transit pitch time, route it next to the commuter rail out to the SL3 line, then follow the SL3 line out to the airport. Stops at Sullivan, assembly, encore and rt 16/Everett.

That's not crazy. That's the actual Urban Ring proposal.

 

[tysmith95]

Commuter rail derailment in Beverly.

Service there has recently restarted after construction to implement ptc. Not sure if that played a role.

Happened at the split between Newburyport Rockport lines

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

FWIW...here's the link to my MS Paint drawings from 2020 of what a Green Line'ified Grand Junction would look like.

 

[stick n move]

^
I wish this was in some form of planning stages right now, this really is the best of all worlds that is possible with the gj line. Id love to see that built.

Its so crazy that they screwed up the air rights over the tracks for so little benefit, they built just enough to ruin it but not enough to be worth the loss of air rights. It would have been much better if they could just elevate gj with viaducts to skip the grade crossings, but they built a couple buildings over it. Modern elevated transit is awesome because its not the creaky, loud, leaky crap from the past, it looks good and you get awesome views from the train windows. It was so short sighted to build over the tracks and on top of that they have another building currently building over the ROW again. Such a stupid move to completely eliminate this option for the future.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Its so crazy that they screwed up the air rights over the tracks for so little benefit, they built just enough to ruin it but not enough to be worth the loss of air rights. It would have been much better if they could just elevate gj with viaducts to skip the grade crossings. Modern elevated transit is awesome because its not the creaky, loud, leaky crap from the past, it looks good and you get awesome views from the train windows. It was so short sighted to build over the tracks and on top of that they have another building currently building over the ROW again. Such a stupid move to completely eliminate this option for the future.

The state really didn't have much of an opportunity to intervene with the MIT air rights. Those were negotiated in the late-90's between MIT and then- line owner Conrail. Conrail was positioning itself for merger (it was gobbled up 50-50 by CSX and Norfolk Southern in 1999), wasn't interested in selling any lines to the state that might in any way dilute their sale price, but was very much interested in pocketing any quick buck it could from extracurricular property dumps. So they immediately seized on the opportunity when MIT came calling, and of course had no such thing as future considerations when they did so because the company was soon to be no more. Given what the Commuter Rail network projected as nearly 3 decades ago, and the fact that the Urban Ring (while a crayon pitch back then) had not yet been staked to any sort of toothy major study the state had little standing to try to force its future-proofing in the courts.

As spilt milk goes, it's a reach. The times were very different when those 2 air rights deals were made.

 

[737900er]

FWIW...here's the link to my MS Paint drawings from 2020 of what a Green Line'ified Grand Junction would look like.

Been looking at this a lot in the past few days. One of the best things I've seen on this board!

Do you think that there is any chance that the door could get closed on the BU Bridge Wye from a GJ-Only build?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Do you think that there is any chance that the door could get closed on the BU Bridge Wye from a GJ-Only build?

No...shouldn't be any reason it's incompatible with the installment plan. The wye real estate is all on the BU Bridge hillside, so no reason you couldn't add it later.

But given that the Urban Ring did center itself on Kenmore as a really big hub, it's kind of crucial to do the junction. Plus the little bit of tunneling under the B reservation is very easy digging in the grand scheme. It's going to take a big sales push to get the project on the board, so I think you've got to go all-out with the Kenmore circuit to really sell it rather than trying to dilute it with a Cambridge-only installment plan. City of Cambridge might be the one doing the latest study out of self-interest, but it's a major project for Boston Metro that needs to be pushed on both sides of the river.

 

[Texasian]

I’m probably doing a hard right into Crazy Pitch territory, but would it ever be possible to bookend the Grand Junction with bi-directional wye where it intersects the Union Square branch as “future proofing”?

I doubt we’d ever get to a point where a Cambridge Loop consisting of connected Porter and Harvard branch makes sense, but it’s a nice dream.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

I’m probably doing a hard right into Crazy Pitch territory, but would it ever be possible to bookend the Grand Junction with bi-directional wye where it intersects the Union Square branch as “future proofing”?

I doubt we’d ever get to a point where a Cambridge Loop consisting of connected Porter and Harvard branch makes sense, but it’s a nice dream.

Unlikely. The insertion angle is pretty sharp.

 

[fatnoah]

FWIW...here's the link to my MS Paint drawings from 2020 of what a Green Line'ified Grand Junction would look like.

My crazy version of this extends the western end to Riverside along the CR tracks and eliminating the CR stops in that section. I doubt the ROW supports that, hence crazy. Slightly less crazy is connecting the eastern end to both Lechmere AND Sullivan. That's packing a lot into one space, but gets Kenmore into even more of a superhub accessible w/out clogging central Green Line subway. Sullivan continues to be a feeder for Malden, Everett, and Medford. The proposed T101 route would be a great complement to the GL via the GJ as well. Green Line would add connectivity on the western edge of Kendall Square / eastern Central Square, and the T101 as proposed would serve the northern/eastern part of Kendall. Extend it to meet one of the GL stations and you've massively improved connectivity across Cambridge and to/from Kendall.

 

[ceo]

Since this came up again, and Google Maps has some nice up-to-date imagery of the route, I looked at the Urban Ring route through Brickbottom and Sullivan. It's over here in the Green Line Reconfiguration thread where it belongs.

 

[Urban_Hermit]

. . .there's only one rail mode that can capture them all: Green Line attachment. Purple Line can't...too many intermediate stops on the GJ for bi-directional service at any acceptable schedule, and Northpoint requires a time-consuming transfer to Green at North Station to reach at all. I hope that's appropriately putting its finger on the scale for their final recs.

Would this do anything alleviate or worsen bunching in the central subway?

Would it be better to to create a new light rail line on the grand junction?

 

[Brattle Loop]

Would this do anything alleviate or worsen bunching in the central subway?

Someone with deeper understanding of Green Line operations can correct me if I'm wrong, but it was my impression that the bunching problem stemmed from a combination of the, uh, unpredictable 'scheduling' of the surface branches (given their longstanding lack of signal prioritization) not improved (perhaps exacerbated) by the GL's antiquated signaling system. Throwing more cars into the Central Subway wouldn't necessarily help matters, though some Grand Junction/Urban Ring proposals mainly (or solely) link with the Central Subway at the northern end, which has more spare capacity than the Park-Government Center section and points west. That said, they're already in the (long) process of replacing the vehicles and (unless something's changed) the signaling system, so, operationally, the future Green Line's not going to be as operationally fragile as it is now, meaning there should be more flexibility to add on services. Specifically to GJ and the northern end, they currently either barely use or don't use the Brattle Loop at all (though in their partial defense, a two-car train doesn't quite fit on the raised platform) to turn cars from Haymarket and points north back north, which would allow adding capacity from GLX, GJ, and anything else on the northern end without interacting with the worst of the traffic congestion in the Copley-Park-GC segment.

Would it be better to to create a new light rail line on the grand junction?

No, that'd be pretty much useless, unless Cambridge/MIT decided they wanted to pay for it themselves out of vanity. LRT-over-GJ unlocks value by connecting to the broader transit network; if it's not linked to Green it'd be little more than a glorified people mover that would be a somewhat-nicer transfer from Kendall (or maybe West Station CR if they built it) than a bus would be. Probably wouldn't make it on a cost-benefit analysis (especially given what needs to be done on the Commuter Rail end to allow GJ to be taken off the national network) as just a Cambridge shuttle (especially since it wouldn't likely do much of anything to provide an alternative to Kendall and relief on Red Line crowds).

 

[737900er]

some Grand Junction/Urban Ring proposals mainly (or solely) link with the Central Subway at the northern end, which has more spare capacity than the Park-Government Center section and points west.

The current study seems to be only looking at West-Lechmere, so that would presumably be the first part built.

This memorandum provides a consultant scope for consideration by the CRA Board for the proposed Grand Junction Transit Study. The Grand Junction corridor has long been discussed as a possible transit corridor connecting Allston Yards in Boston, through points in Cambridge (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Kendall Square, and East Cambridge), to the existing corridor’s terminus at North Station.

Specifically to GJ and the northern end, they currently either barely use or don't use the Brattle Loop at all (though in their partial defense, a two-car train doesn't quite fit on the raised platform) to turn cars from Haymarket and points north back north, which would allow adding capacity from GLX, GJ, and anything else on the northern end without interacting with the worst of the traffic congestion in the Copley-Park-GC segment.

I agree that running a West-Lechmere-Government Center service through Park Street would have little utility. In order to do that though, they would have to fix the Brattle Loop and the value engineering of new Lechmere Yard. "Just run it out of Riverside" starts to look more attractive when you add in the cost of cleaning up previous decisions and keep kicking the can down the road to Needham GLX or whatever the next project is.

This got me thinking (and maybe it's not appropriate for this thread): if this ends up in a West to Brattle Loop via Grand Junction service, would it make sense to brand it as something besides Green? A branch of Green (V Branch)?

 

[Brattle Loop]

This got me thinking (and maybe it's not appropriate for this thread): if this ends up in a West to Brattle Loop via Grand Junction service, would it make sense to brand it as something besides Green? A branch of Green (V Branch)?

If it's sharing trackage with the GL from Lechmere to GC-Brattle it'd make sense to brand it as Green, especially in absence of a greater Urban Ring service pattern. (I suppose you could brand this hypothetical service and a linked-to-meet SL3 as something of their own, though I personally hate the idea of co-branding separate modes. That's a discussion for Crazy Transit Pitches, though.) Once upon a time the Brattle Loop was for 'foreign' (non-BERy) cars; I don't know how they handled the old North Station, and Brattle's trackage was separate from the portal to Scollay (and through Adams), now, of course, the Brattle only runs from south of Haymarket to GC, so it'd be comingled with the GL and would only cause confusion if it was separately-branded.

 

[Riverside]

This is probably as good as any place to infodump my thoughts on colors for LRT and BRT services -- "Taming the Green Monster," as we might say of some crayon maps that show full-build LRT Green Line/Urban Ring proposals.

Green: whatever the "flagship" LRT line is -- the one that's closest to a heavy rail line. Usually on my crayon maps, this is the Riverside Line connected to the Huntington Line

Teal, Emerald, Aqua: for use on other radial LRT lines where it is useful to distinguish from the Green Line -- for example, I often give the Boylston Street Subway a different color identity than the Huntington Ave Subway, especially if Huntington has been rerouted over to the Pleasant Street Portal. Teal and Aqua obviously are useful for services that go to the Seaport (which I argue should get their own identity), and Emerald is fun because so much of the Green Line runs through the Emerald Necklace -- the name lends itself well (and is actually somewhat imprecise as a color name, meaning you could justify using either a lighter green or a darker green than the official Green Line on the map).

Gold: circumferential LRT service, especially services that run through the Grand Junction and/or Sullivan but which do not go downtown; the Urban Ring has been colored yellow on maps for decades, and between Silver and Emerald, we have a bit of a jewelry theme going here

Silver: for use on radial BRT lines, particularly outside of the core: things like the proposed T32 or T57 could be branded into the "Silver Line network"

Diamond: circumferential BRT service, such as the T1 or the T96, and whatever southside Urban Ring BRT turns up (e.g. the T12); "Diamond" continues our jewelry theme, and is fun for a circumferential service -- you'd have the "Gold Ring" and "Diamond Ring" services; like emerald, "diamond" is also a somewhat vague color term, but could enable the use of a lighter shade of grey, relative to the Silver Line

Navy: BRT service traveling through downtown Boston -- such as the T7 -- which almost certainly will serve both the Seaport and the Charlestown Navy Yard, making the dark blue color appropriate and consistent with the "Blue Line goes under the ocean, the Green Line parallels the Emerald Necklace" theme, and so on. I would add the T111 to this branding, and maybe if SL1 were replaced by a surface route it would get this branding as well. The "dark blue" of the color navy should still be easily differentiable from the current Blue Line, and only possibly might interfere with an "Indigo" line, which would probably need a more violet hue in this scenario. (Yes, I am still hocking my "Navy Line" proposal, lol.)

Finally -- and this one I've thought less about -- but if the Redesign's Longwood network comes to fruition, those routes (assuming they reach BRT standards) could receive some variant of red, for the red cross medical symbol -- crimson could work, although Harvard might complain (though Harvard does have a number of hospitals in the LMA anyway), but so could ruby.

Though I admit it gets a bit tricky in places, I believe it would be possible to create visually distinct identities for all of these colors: Red, Orange, Blue, Green, Emerald, Teal, Aqua, Navy, Crimson, Gold, Silver, Diamond, Indigo (and further Magenta if needed to further differentiate "RER"-like services).

 

[Brattle Loop]

Green: whatever the "flagship" LRT line is -- the one that's closest to a heavy rail line. Usually on my crayon maps, this is the Riverside Line connected to the Huntington Line

Teal, Emerald, Aqua: for use on other radial LRT lines where it is useful to distinguish from the Green Line -- for example, I often give the Boylston Street Subway a different color identity than the Huntington Ave Subway, especially if Huntington has been rerouted over to the Pleasant Street Portal. Teal and Aqua obviously are useful for services that go to the Seaport (which I argue should get their own identity), and Emerald is fun because so much of the Green Line runs through the Emerald Necklace -- the name lends itself well (and is actually somewhat imprecise as a color name, meaning you could justify using either a lighter green or a darker green than the official Green Line on the map).

I go back and forth on the utility of such color differentiation. On the one hand, it's helpful for making clear distinction between different service patterns, but on the other hand it has the potential to cause confusion if there's too much similarity between colors and/or too much overlap of services. We don't have any interlining service patterns using different colors at the same platforms, though it's not unheard of. In at least the ones that come to mind in the US (i.e. Chicago in the Loop, Washington's Metro downtown) the separate colors are unique identifiers for a specific service patterns. New York, of course, mixes colors that aren't necessarily specific to individual service patterns on the same platforms, but in a system where the service bullet (letter/number) is the critical element.

It seems like it could readily get confusing if we interlined things like Green, Teal, Emerald, and Aqua, especially given the similarities of all those colors. We'd almost certainly have to add some additional designations (which are already essential for the Green Line) to designate the correct service (i.e. the right branch/terminal), at which point the color differentiation looks a little like adding complexity for no meaningful purpose. (The Green Line itself operates, now, almost like a NYC Subway service, with the route letters as the service bullets, sharing the same color because they share the same trunk line, now that GLX is going to more readily normalize the use of the route letters heading north/eastbound.)

Distinguishing the separate modes by color, I absolutely agree with, and distinguishing, say, the radial service pattern (in essence GL routes, if LRT or SL routes if BRT) from the circumferential (i.e. giving GJ->Sullivan->Everett cars a different color than GJ->North->Brattle/Park is probably a worthwhile idea, while some of the other segmentation seems like it'd be unnecessarily ripe for confusion unless there was a hard-and-fast differentiation in all cases between service patterns (and I still think it'd make more sense to use route designators other than color).

 

[Riverside]

Yeah @Brattle Loop, I feel you -- there are pros and cons. To a couple of your specific points:

Emerald, Teal & Aqua: to be clear, I really meant that these are "choices" that could be used for (secondary) LRT lines, not necessarily that all three would be used, because, I agree, it becomes a lot.

But the point about trunk lines is, in my opinion, key, and is what points me toward a more colorful LRT system. NYC uses letters and numbers, but combines those with coloring to create an implicit two-level schema that organizes the routes by their path through Manhattan. I absolutely agree that LRT services would still need letter indicators, but I think coloring them by "trunk line" would make the system much easier to understand. For example, all "Aqua Line" branches would converge at the Seaport, all "Emerald Line" branches would converge at Kenmore and run to Park/GC, and "Green Line" branches are the leftovers (e.g. Huntington + Highland, Nubian, and whatever GLX 2.0 looks like).

(These colors could also be used purely on the maps to make service patterns clearer, while still just calling everything "the Green Line".)

I agree that route designators will remain important, but my trepidation is that if the Green Line (or the Silver Line) seems to "go everywhere", then I think it starts to lose its placemaking significance (and becomes all the more confusing).

For my part, this is the situation I want to avoid:

In Scenario A, the "Green Line" is shaped like... I don't know, I guess it's a snowflake? Whereas if you use the approach in Scenario B, and re-label the routes that feed into the east as an "Aqua Line," then you have a single Green Line and a simple branch-and-trunk Aqua Line, which is familiar and easy to understand.

And Scenario A is a simplification -- in reality, both the north and south ends of the Central Subway (at Lechmere/Brickbottom and at Pleasant St/Bay Village) will look more like this in a full build LRT Green Line + Urban Ring network:

All of which is to say, I do think it will eventually become desirable to do some level of differentiation of LRT services; "Gold Line" for a circumferential LRT route that avoids downtown seems like an easy start, but where/whether we go beyond that is certain an open question.

And I agree that "Diamond Line" vs "Silver Line" might be a little... much, haha, but I really couldn't help myself -- an Urban Ring made of a Diamond Ring and a Gold Ring? That was too good to pass up!

 

[Brattle Loop]

All of which is to say, I do think it will eventually become desirable to do some level of differentiation of LRT services; "Gold Line" for a circumferential LRT route that avoids downtown seems like an easy start, but where/whether we go beyond that is certain an open question.

And I agree that "Diamond Line" vs "Silver Line" might be a little... much, haha, but I really couldn't help myself -- an Urban Ring made of a Diamond Ring and a Gold Ring? That was too good to pass up!

Absolutely I agree that there's a level where differentiation becomes extremely important. New York's scheme, I think, works well with one glaring exception, namely it's out-of-step with, well, most of the other big US transit systems that use line color as the main identifier. (My brother defected to NY some time ago, and between him the Brooklynite and me the transit nerd we've managed to get it through our parents' and relatives' heads that "the green line" isn't a useful concept for specifying which train one needs to take, but it's a recurring issue for non-New Yorkers.) Obviously it makes sense from a standpoint of color=trackage (generally the trunk line through Midtown Manhattan for those unfamiliar) and bullet (letter/number)=service, with the service being the relevant one, but it's not super intuitive. With a future LRT network here, I can see a case for differentiating, say, the radial and circumferential routes, but I worry about different route colors becoming confusing if there's too much overlap (aka I agree with you that the question is open where to draw that line).

Speaking of New York, they offer a solution to the "Diamond Line" problem: they use diamonds for route bullets! I'm not saying it'd be the best choice, but theoretically we could differentiate, say, radial from circumferential (or BRT from LRT, or, as in NY, express from local on overlapping routes) with different indicators. In that case, since the Urban Ring's probably going to have to be split between LRT and BRT, theoretically we could, say, do the LRT half as green with (to continue the theme) a diamond designator (meaning LRT, but circumferential) and the BRT half as silver with a diamond designator (showing the 'flavor' of each half, with a consistent "Diamond Line" nickname for the entire ring...diamond...ring...it works on so many levels )