Crazy Transit Pitches
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Charlie_mta
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Isn't a modern DMU similar to a Buddliner?
Brattle Loop
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Conceptually, sure, but lacking any meaningful numbers, meaning that they'd be a unicorn purchase for most operators.
But I am not aware of a single car independently operable rail vehicle, diesel or electric
Brattle Loop
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WES Commuter Rail in Oregon has a few Colorado Railcar DMUs that can run as singles. (That Colorado Railcar went belly-up roughly fifteen years ago with no meaningful replacement is perhaps an indicator of the, ah, unimpressive demand for DMUs.)
Sorry, I should have said currently available
I would actually say that this market still exists and actually has a not terrible number of options - just mostly european and as tiny 2 car DMUs and not quite rail motor standalones.
Stadler FLIRTs in a 2 car config have been bought by San Bernardino for a new service, the Siemens Desiro works the Sprinter service nearby.
I would say that they are increasingly not that rare (still uncommon - operators of these in the US have tiny fleets) but the installed base globally and in the US is growing, so the development, "test subject," and parts orphan burden is minimal as they're just bigger common DMUs with the middle coaches taken out. There's a couple of other global options from Alstom and Bombardier too.
Stadler FLIRTs in a 2 car config have been bought by San Bernardino for a new service, the Siemens Desiro works the Sprinter service nearby.
NCTD Sprinter DMU 4003
NCTD Sprinter DMU 4003 SDNX 4003 Siemens Desiro DMU. Also search SDNR & NCTD (In 2013 some NCTD trains began using NCTC on radio)
www.rrpicturearchives.net
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Charlie_mta
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Thanks for the clarification. The old B&M railroad used to run a single car Buddliner on the Lexington line. I used to see it go through the Alewife area in the early 70s.
I believe it is still there
I think a stop in that vicinity might be better a little farther east towards Webster Square and the Price Chopper which has a lot more redevelopment potential, but half the catchment area is still going to be cemetery. I prefer a +1 extension that incorporates a new layover, either a stop in Auburn at the Auburn mall with the layover in some old sandpits a little further south, or a park and ride in Millbury at the 90/146 junction or Blackstone shoppes.
F-Line to Dudley
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Millbury/146 wouldn't ever be necessary if you simply dropped an infill stop between Grafton and Worcester at US 20/MA 122 right at the next Pike exit. The two sites are only separated by 2.5 miles on US 20, and a stop was proposed here 25 years ago when Worcester service was being reinstated. It would have equal park-and-ride heft, operational advantages of fitting easier onto a Worcester schedule (already in MBTA territory, already on double-track, EMU Regional Rail could easily swallow the scheduling for an extra stop), and the site centers on the actual downtown of Millbury amidst very TOD'able surroundings unlike the barrenness around the sewage treatment plant @ 146. Plus you won't need to double-track 4 miles of the P&W so it can handle headways, signalize a segment of unsignalized line, negotiate precious slots through the busy freight yards, and run a significantly longer Boston schedule to do the job.
As for the Auburn Mall option, that's already served by WRTA routes 27, 29, and 42. They're not lacking in transit. If there's a means-test for the rail option, it probably lies in the bus ridership or projecting the bus ridership through a set of bus service improvements first. AFAIK those routes aren't exactly bursting at the seams, and Auburn Mall is a typically tenant-fragile suburban mall with an uncertain future so there'd have to be some major redev of it anchoring the TOD in order to attract the rail link. It's not impossible to pull off, but it's kind of a longshot. Plus you'd have similar problems of needing to double-track 4.5 miles of P&W, signalize, negotiate slots through Southbridge St. Yard, and significantly lengthen an already long Worcester schedule...so it's a pretty high bar that TOD enhancement would have to clear.
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F-Line to Dudley
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FRA-compliant high-level boarding options tend to be very few, however. The Siemens and Stadlers in-use stateside are for 8-inch platforms only. Only the Nippon-Sharyo DMU's in use by SMART and Toronto's Union-Pearson Express are in-use here for boarding with high-levels, and N-S closed its U.S. assembly plant in retreat from the domestic market so they no longer qualify for Buy America. While Siemens and Stadler do have adaptable overseas makes for high platforms, they haven't exactly been aggressive in bidding them to the U.S. I don't think either vendor was heard from when the T had its RFI out for DMU's a dozen years ago. The incredibly tiny fleet orders thus far make the scale kind of not worth it for the very big vendors, especially when U.S. transit agencies can't help themselves from overcustomizing everything. Very small unit quanties + too much specs tinkering and change orders = lackluster vendor interest.
EDIT: Yeah, DMU quantities like these extant North American systems aren't going to rustle up much interest from the open market. . .
Union Pearson Express (ONT) -- 18 Nippon-Sharyo's
A-Train (TX) -- 11 Stadler GTW's
SMART (CA) - 9 Nippon-Sharyo's
TEXrail (TX) -- 8 Stadler FLIRT's
Capital MetroRail (TX) -- 6 Stadler GTW's
WES (OR) -- 4 Colorado Railcar's + 4 Budd RDC's
Arrow (CA-under construction) -- 4 Stadler FLIRT's + un-exercised option for 3 more
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Charlie_mta
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themissinglink
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Did the NIMBYs who were against the Millbury station proposal ever give their reasoning or justification for opposing a station at this site?
Perhaps I’m looking too deep into it, but it’s always been surprising to me that such an obvious candidate for an infill stop was rejected, especially considering how 4 other infill stops opened in nearby towns, seemingly without pushback from residents.
F-Line to Dudley
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It was the late-90's...a whole different era. Commuter Rail hadn't stopped in that town since 1960, so it was a radical concept at the time. The other intermediate stations didn't come easy either. It took 8 years from Worcester service being restored in 1994 to get them all open, because they were nitpicked half to death. And of course Ashland and Westborough ended up not wanting theirs downtown, to their own detriment.
Millbury was re-proposed in the 2004 PMT and got a medium rating, but their ridership figures were curiously lowballed at 300/day...roughly 42% the next-worst of the outer stops. The absolute floor is pretty much 700, scalable way up the more Pn'R utilization it gets (since the other outer intermediates aren't easily accessible from any highways).
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themissinglink
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Thanks for the clarification, your thorough explanations are much appreciated.
Yeah, that's the general idea. By adjusting the trunk of the Green Line to the south, Longwood becomes a radial destination. That opens up a lot more options for connectivity, especially because you can then layer circumferential connections on top of that. Moreover, using radial service solves some of the problems caused at the eastern ends of the B, C, and D branches: St Mary's St is just a little too far to provide a good conncetion at Audubon Square, but if the C turns southeast toward Longwood anyway, you have an easy transfer at Fenway station itself. The story's a little more complicated on Commonwealth, but the idea is similar.
I mean, looking at the OnTheMap job numbers really is startling:
Huge employment center in Longwood, the edge of a huge employment center in Back Bay, with a modest concentration at Boston University. Practically an employment cavity around Kenmore Square by comparison.
The population maps aren't as pretty visually but:
And from the City of Boston:
And Bostonography's map:
The two tracts immediately north and south of Kenmore Square see lower population density; the walkable neighborhood is bounded to the north by the Charles, to the east by Charlesgate, and to the South by the railroad tracks, the Mass Pike, and then Fenway Park.
Compared to all the surrounding neighborhoods, Kenmore Square is neither a major center of population or employment. The Fenway-Kenmore neighborhood to the south -- whose walkable access to Kenmore Square is substantially limited by the aforementioned barriers -- sees higher density, a higher population, and closer proximity to jobs in Longwood.
All other things being equal, why wouldn't we try to anchor our rapid transit network to Longwood?
~~~
There are some downsides. The biggest probably is cutting off Beacon St from its direct connection to Kenmore Square (if you choose to reroute the C to Longwood, which I should note you don't have to). This can be ameliorated with a bus route, potentially continuing on from Kenmore to Copley via Comm Ave, Mass Ave and Huntington (similar to today's 55).
Likewise, traveling via Park Dr etc does add additional traffic lights and other slowdowns. Some of these can be ameliorated with good planning (organization before electronics before concrete), but probably there will always be some speed penalty compared to running in a tunnel.
We would also need to modify plans for an extended Huntington Subway, and would need to maintain a portal somewhere near the current one. Huntington is wide enough that this is likely doable, but it does complicate things.
Finally, it does have to be said that -- even with all this -- Longwood still remains indirectly served: to the south along Huntington, to the northeast along Fenway, and to the northwest along the Highland Branch. The heart of Longwood remains accessible only by foot, bus, or auto. This is germane because (in my opinion) the obvious alternative to LRT via Fenway is BRT via Longwood Ave -- perhaps a transit mall of some sort. This would serve Longwood centrally, but relegates it again to circumferential service...
...unless you take the Bus Network Redesign approach, and build a sub-network radiating out from Longwood Medical Area across the region. I think this is the more realistic approach, and frankly if done right it could certainly be a very strong proposal.
Still: being able to string together Harvard, West Station, BU, LMA, Prudential, Back Bay, South Station, and the Seaport (and Charlie-willing someday the airport) on a single line is very tempting. (And based on my quick math, would actually provide a slightly shorter route between South Station and Harvard, believe it or not -- and certainly a shorter one between Back Bay and Harvard.) So, even if you don't reroute the C via Longwood, you could still get a lot of mileage out of an east-west Harvard-LMA-Seaport and north-south Kendall-LMA-Ruggles pairing. Running via Fenway might be slightly less useful for Longwood specifically, but could enable much larger change across the system.
~~~
For fun, here's a back-of-the-napkin sketch of what service patterns might look like with a reroute & connection via LMA:
- Harvard-Kenmore-Park: 10 tph (6 min)
- Harvard-LMA-Seaport: 12 tph (5 min)
- Oak Square-Kenmore-Park: 6 tph (10 min)
- plus 57 bus Watertown-Kenmore every 10 min, for cumulative service every 5 min, like today's 57/57A split
- Commonwealth-Kenmore-Park: 10 tph (6 min)
- Beacon-LMA-Park-points north: 10 tph (6 min)
- Riverside-LMA-Park-points north: 7.5 tph (8 min)
- Needham-Kenmore-Park: 6 tph (10 min)
- Heath/points south-LMA-Seaport: 10 tph (6 min)
- Nubian-Park-points north: 15 tph (4 min)
- Kendall/points north-BU-LMA-Ruggles/points south: 10 tph (6 min)
You have lots of flexibility here: send Beacon trains to the Seaport instead, run Oak trains via Huntington instead of Kenmore, use the Kenmore Loop to short-turn some trains, etc etc.
On a different note, let me toss this Crazy Transit Pitch grenade out into the ether before going to bed:
Convert the Southwest Corridor and Haymarket North Orange Line tracks to mainline tracks running layered services that maintain existing frequencies and are connected via the NSRL with a stop at Central Station. Free up the Washington Street Subway for greenfield rapid transit lines to Nubian and points south via a Shawmut Ave subway, and to Chelsea and/or Everett & east Malden via some moonshot project across the Mystic.
How to match existing frequencies:
Service to Providence with local stops in Boston is probably the most skeptical piece here. (Although I'll note that there would still be capacity for at least hourly semi-express service from Providence, because we're increasing the SW Corridor from 3 tracks to 5.) However, looking at the current schedules, the T claims that the Commuter Rail between Forest Hills and Back Bay is only 3 minutes faster than the Orange Line (!); with electrified service that can run at higher speeds in the suburbs, it might not actually be as infeasible as it sounds.
If the list above is giving you a headache, look at it like this:
To be very clear to anyone reading this: this is not a serious proposal. I am not suggesting that the Orange Line be replaced by commuter rail. If anything, I'm suggesting the reverse: expand the Orange Line to replace parts of the commuter rail (and more aggressively/expansively than has generally been discussed before).
Convert the Southwest Corridor and Haymarket North Orange Line tracks to mainline tracks running layered services that maintain existing frequencies and are connected via the NSRL with a stop at Central Station. Free up the Washington Street Subway for greenfield rapid transit lines to Nubian and points south via a Shawmut Ave subway, and to Chelsea and/or Everett & east Malden via some moonshot project across the Mystic.
How to match existing frequencies:
- Reading - Back Bay - West Roxbury: 6 tph
- Oak Grove - Back Bay - Providence (making local stops in Boston): 4 tph
- cumulatively: Oak Grove - Forest Hills: 10 tph
- Waltham - Fairmount - Dedham/Norwood/Walpole/Foxboro: 4 tph
- South Station Upper - Fairmount - Franklin/Wrentham/Woonsocket/Milford: 4 tph
- cumulatively: Readville - Fairmount - South Station: 8 tph
- Framingham - Back Bay - North Shore: 4 tph
- North Station Upper - North Shore - Rockport/Newburyport: 4 tph
- cumulatively: North Shore - North Station: 8 tph
Service to Providence with local stops in Boston is probably the most skeptical piece here. (Although I'll note that there would still be capacity for at least hourly semi-express service from Providence, because we're increasing the SW Corridor from 3 tracks to 5.) However, looking at the current schedules, the T claims that the Commuter Rail between Forest Hills and Back Bay is only 3 minutes faster than the Orange Line (!); with electrified service that can run at higher speeds in the suburbs, it might not actually be as infeasible as it sounds.
If the list above is giving you a headache, look at it like this:
- NSRL has 20 tph capacity
- Allocate 10 to former Orange Line services
- Allocate 2 to Amtrak/long distance
- Allocate 8 for Indigo Line services, supplemented by surface-terminating short-turns
- Extend former Orange Line services where possible to pick up Commuter Rail/Regional Rail routes to take advantage of the added track capacity
To be very clear to anyone reading this: this is not a serious proposal. I am not suggesting that the Orange Line be replaced by commuter rail. If anything, I'm suggesting the reverse: expand the Orange Line to replace parts of the commuter rail (and more aggressively/expansively than has generally been discussed before).