General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

What’s the guess for Electrification cost per mile? At $5m/mile you could get to Fairmont ($50m) , Riverside ($50m) & Lynn ($50m) each about 10 miles) and do the yards in PVD and the Stoughton branch, maybe?
 

The cost range for most electrification projects in high- income countries is about $2–4.5 million per route- mile. There are high-end outliers, as in Toronto and California, whose projects have suffered from avoidable mistakes in planning and engineering. India is currently fully electrifying its rail network for less than $1 million per route-mile, but this is in a country with low labor costs and it would not be fair to assume this would be replicable in a higher-wage country.
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It says on pg.3 electrification of the fairmount line would cost $30 million. Hopefully that means with this $50 million they are really going to get it done. That would be a huuuge upgrade for the fairmount line.

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Given the bill doesn't say one way or another, is it actually reasonable to assume that we're jettisoning the battery hybrid model, and returning to the conventional? I don't actually think so, and think we're still getting the mixed plan.

Even given dedicated corridor funding, it's possible for it's "not less than" amount, which is fairly notional in infrastructure terms, to be applied to things like an allocated portion of battery rolling stock that would ultimately serve Fairmount. (It's how part of the 86 car rotem expansion order is notionally assigned to the SCR budget.)
 
They've also posted the updated Commuter Rail schedules. They've expanded the South Station-Back Bay-Ruggles schedule to include Forest Hills. Between 6am and 9am, Forest Hills will see 7 inbound trains, through a combination of Needham and Providence/Stoughton (but not Franklin/Foxboro) trains.

I think (though am not positive) that most of the stopping Prov/Stou trains are ones that were going to pass that platform anyway. In general, we're talking about one to three trains per hour, some less than 10 minutes apart, and others separated by most of an hour (including a huge gap between 7:42am and 8:34am -- basically you can arrive at South Station at 8 or just before 9, but nowhen in between).

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We can also enjoy the novelty of seeing Forest Hills on the Providence schedule.

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Finally, if you want to do a reverse commute, traveling inbound from Forest Hills in the afternoon, you are limited to hourly Needham trains starting at 3:30pm until 7:30pm, after which there is a single inbound train at 9:16pm.

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KCasiglio said:
So I asked about this today and was told that because there is no easy street route to through-run the OL shuttles without disrupting all the super important single-occupancy car commuters who's time is super important and deserve to have #1 priority on road space, it’s actually faster as a 3 seat ride going shuttle-green-shuttle than it would have been as a one seat shuttle ride.
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Fixed^
 
Riverside said:
While I can't find it on the T's website, these service diversion posters have apparently been posted in stations and are making their rounds on Twitter:

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https://twitter.com/x/status/1557054599349010432

And then there's this reply from the T:

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This shutdown is gonna be tough. If only there was some sort of "rail link" between North and South and Back Bay stations to take the burden off the system while we do this fix.
 
JeffDowntown said:
Please point out the by-directional street route for large buses that will service the downtown Orange Line Stations?
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Stuart St with a temporary counter flow lane to Kneeland St to the pair of Atlantic Ave and Surface Road (to South Station) to Congress St/Pearl St to Congress St to North Station. Or close Tremont St to through traffic between Boylston and Government Center. Downtown has plenty of wide streets, downtown also has plenty of closely paired parallel streets. Of course, the T can’t unilaterally demand the City modify those streets, but hopefully they can reach an accord in the next couple of weeks.
 
Riverside said:
Stuart St with a temporary counter flow lane to Kneeland St to the pair of Atlantic Ave and Surface Road (to South Station) to Congress St/Pearl St to Congress St to North Station. Or close Tremont St to through traffic between Boylston and Government Center. Downtown has plenty of wide streets, downtown also has plenty of closely paired parallel streets. Of course, the T can’t unilaterally demand the City modify those streets, but hopefully they can reach an accord in the next couple of weeks.
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The waterfront routing is blocks away from the Orange Line stations, but probably better than clogging up the Green Line with all those passengers. One problem, you cannot use Congress to North Station because of the Government Center Garage demo (reason why the Green Line will be shut North Station to Government Center). May be better just staying on the Surface Road, even though that is far from the Orange Line route.

The City seems to be trying to cooperate about temporary bus lanes.
 
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JeffDowntown said:
The waterfront routing is blocks away from the Orange Line stations, but probably better than clogging up the Green Line with all those passengers. One problem, you cannot use Congress to North Station because of the Government Center Garage demo (reason why the Green Line will be shut North Station to Government Center). May be better just staying on the Surface Road, even though that is far from the Orange Line route.

The City seems to be trying to cooperate about temporary bus lanes.
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Ah, good point about Congress St -- yes, running along the Greenway might just be the best option. (Ironically, the Stuart-South Station-Congress route would still get you within 1 block of every Orange Line station except Downtown Crossing, which honestly I was surprised by.) Worth considering also that running shuttle service across downtown isn't just about getting downtown riders closer to their destination, it's also about streamlining journeys across the core -- think Sullivan to Ruggles, that kind of thing.

Yeah, the City seems -- understandably -- pretty eager to provide bus lanes. If it had been possible to plan with the City ahead of the announcement, perhaps the T could have worked out bus lanes in advance and be able to announce full-length shuttle routes from the start. But it sounds like the City heard more or less at the same time we (the public) did.
 
BeyondRevenue said:
This shutdown is gonna be tough. If only there was some sort of "rail link" between North and South and Back Bay stations to take the burden off the system while we do this fix.
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.....at a time when the Commonwealth has a $5+ billion revenue surplus and started receiving $9.5 billion (over 5 years) from the federal infrastructure bill..............Morons taking historical naps.

When Opportunity knocked, our pols were in the backyard searching for four leaf clovers. Jeebus, it's right there on a silver platter!
 
Riverside said:
They've also posted the updated Commuter Rail schedules. They've expanded the South Station-Back Bay-Ruggles schedule to include Forest Hills. Between 6am and 9am, Forest Hills will see 7 inbound trains, through a combination of Needham and Providence/Stoughton (but not Franklin/Foxboro) trains.

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And I think just a day later, they've uploaded a South Station-Back Bay-Ruggles-Forest Hills-Hyde Park schedule instead (which makes sense, since I believe the old South Station-Back Bay schedule was recently expanded all the way to Hyde Park).

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They also have published the Oak Grove-Malden Center-North Station schedule:

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As on the Southside, it appears that no extra trains are being run to supplement the existing schedules.

Notably, it appears that the consolidated schedule unintentionally omits three trains: #216 (inbound, stopping at Malden at 4:52pm), #285 (outbound, Malden at 9:06am), and #297 (outbound, Malden at 6:06pm) are all listed on the full Haverhill Line schedule but are absent from the Oak Grove mini-schedule. (I may try to tweet this to the T later -- I'm sure it's an honest mistake in what must be a mad rush, but it is an unfortunate one, given the challenges already present with this schedule.)
 

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Perhaps we should have a dedicated Orange Line shutdown thread?

But anyway, after much fiddling, here's my bustitution map for the shutdown, based on the service diversion posters shared upthread. As before, I'm borrowing design language from the 1980s to indicate bustitution. I suspect the shuttle routes may still evolve -- at one point, I believe I saw that Mass Ave was not going to get a shuttle stop, but now both the signage and the website suggest it (thankfully) will. So perhaps this will need to be updated. But, as TfL says on its maps, this is correct at time of going to print.

EDIT: Be sure to click the link, I dunno why the board software isn't displaying the image directly.

View attachment Aug 2022 System Map with bustitution.png
 
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Riverside said:
Hmm try again now. You may have tried to click it just as I was updating it to a smaller file.
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Yup, looks like it. Great work on that. Weird to see the Orange Line routed to Copley, though that does make the most sense for the transfer. (I may have missed it, has the T said if the shuttles are serving Copley or Back Bay proper?)
 
Brattle Loop said:
Yup, looks like it. Great work on that. Weird to see the Orange Line routed to Copley, though that does make the most sense for the transfer. (I may have missed it, has the T said if the shuttles are serving Copley or Back Bay proper?)
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My understanding is they will serve both. A north bound shuttle will come up Columbus, turn left onto Dartmouth and stop at back bay, continue up Dartmouth and stop again in front of the BPL, then loop around Boylston/Clarendon to catch southbound Back Bay riders at the bus loop before proceeding back down Columbus.

Edit: to this end, as I’ve said before Dartmouth will be closed to general traffic in front of the BPL and will only be open to southbound general traffic between Huntington and Columbus
 
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