I'd like to see the State generally get more aggressive on acquiring ROW for transit expansion. It's been done before, as the EGE pointed out above. For decades after WW II the state was incredibly aggressive on acquiring ROW for highway expansion, now it's transit's turn.
How so? The state already owns nearly every extant post-1960 abandoned rail ROW, and almost all crayon maps of transit expansions take advantage of that. The New England states are already excellent at landbanking. What projects, aside from very impractical builds like Inland Route HSR, require large amounts of brand new property acquisition?
Uh, SCR phase 2, the one we're talking about in particular? As an early action, buying the privately held portions of the RoW that Phase 2 would require is absolutely sensible, even if building it gets deferred a decade or 2. That lot, even at asking price, is a rounding error in MassDOTs budget and they should buy it, if for no other reason than to prevent something going up on that site, especially since its on the market. Plus, MassDOT has been reasonably aggressive in buying the freight lines, even if the T doesn't operate on them. Something like the Milford Secondary, or buying the Fitchburg past Ayer, etc for CR expansion etc should all be on the table. The abandoned Dedham leg that has single families on it now, if bought piecemeal if they go up on the market, is swallowable by the budget.
There was: the SCR Task Force. Which was less a well-oiled advocacy than a cynical political grift for local politicians to rub noses with state politicians. They didn't challenge the Army Corps' negligent/fraudulent FEIR that left Phase II completely service-crippled. They didn't do any coordination with SRTA for bus integration, which leaves (especially the Fall River Branch) SCR seriously lacking in multimodal connectivity. They didn't put a single ounce of effort into enacting the 2009 Corridor Plan's vision for aggressive mixed-use TOD around the stations consigning them to mostly one-dimensional parking sinks. They didn't raise any questions about whether the Phase I substitution would actually net usably reliable service. Why would something as trivial as prudent advance land acquisition have been any more a priority for them? All of those pols figured to be on the other side of the public-private revolving door before anything got built.
You'd lose whatever speed advantage the NEC express brings by having the 10-minute Attleboro reverse, and then dealing with the Middleboro Secondary's 30 MPH speed limit on the 13.5 miles from Attleboro Jct. to Cotley Jct. Honestly, if you're going to attempt something remotely complex a bog-standard Cape Flyer slot that splits at Lakeville into a separate Newport section would probably do just as well. The Cape Flyer already runs with double-ended locos, so you just need to have 2 coupled cab cars in the center for the split/combine.
Could a combined set be run with the rear (Newport Flyer) half having its cab car at the end instead of its locomotive? (In other words, what gets uncoupled in the center of the combined set is the Cape Flyer's cab car and the Newport Flyer's locomotive.)
That would be pretty awkward, and possibly not allowed if the T has any internal rules about staff needing to access the whole train. What you could instead do is throw it in reverse to the north leg of Middleboro Jct., and then have the middle-oriented cab car correctly point to Newport, although that's going to add a couple minutes longer because a staff-assisted reverse move goes very slowly (it would not require changing ends again at the wye, as you're simply throwing it in R and having the lead conductor spot out the other end).
You can't even get all doors on a 3-car train open with just 250 feet to work with, and the T's consist minimums are 4 cars. They can't even repurpose the East Taunton-Fall River shuttle trains for their own Newport-serving purposes with only that much platform. What I'd do instead is curve a long grade crossing through the busways and eat some of the rear parking lot for a platform. You'd have room for up to a 600 ft. platform that way. This is definitely going to be RIDOT's operational problem to solve. If they want the service at all, they're going to have to significantly reconfigure the transit center accordingly. The last RIDOT study didn't get far enough into detail to spec exactly how they plan to do that, but in all likelihood it's already been thought of because the platform lengths amid all those grade crossings are virtually useless for real-world service and they know it up-front.
The uncoupling can probably be done in 10 minutes with the standard ends-changing brake checks. The re-coupling would probably be padded by 5-10 more minutes to time the arrivals of both train sections. Note that the Lake Shore Ltd. in Albany also does an engine swap on the New York section with the dual-mode loco being turned in favor of a straight diesel the rest of the way to Chicago, so it's actually a multifaceted split/combine that's done there. Not to mention an absurd amount of overall padding given that both eastern legs of the route have rather middling (in previous eras...outright garbage) OTP. It can definitely be done shorter than the LSL's because the overall complexity is a lot lower.
Another (perhaps faster?) way of doing it could be for the combined set to make its junction-area station stop at the new Middleborough platform. The front (Cape) half of the consist would uncouple and proceed just a quarter-mile down the Middleborough Secondary in a forward direction before pulling onto the new siding and coming to a stop. The rear (Newport) half of the consist would then proceed past the Cape half in a forward direction, with the cab car leading the train towards Newport. Once the Newport half clears, the Cape half would then reverse toward the Cape Main Line via the new crossovers leading to the southern leg of the wye, now with its cab car facing towards Hyannis.
That same reconfiguration concept occurred to me, too, as the likeliest Plan B in case 250-foot-long platforms wouldn't cut it. Maybe there has been a more recent RIDOT study, but I looked at the one from 2002, and their station concept at the time was for very short platforms in the block between Bridge and Elm Streets:
| Weekday | MB AVG | NB/FR AVG |
| 7184 | 10280 |
| Weekend | MB AVG | NB/FR AVG |
| 1988 | 2572 |
Thanks for crunching the numbers. I always strongly believed that the projections were low and that the actual numbers would exceed expectations. It's a success in that people are using the service, but it's still just the least bad option. It's not good enough to lure new people to the area in significant numbers and it's not enough to have the economic impact that has been touted for decades. Those things won't happen without Phase II.
SCR in combination with the major redevelopment of the waterfront in Fall River/removal of MA-79 is absolutely having a big economic impact over there. A pretty rare case of the DOT and a municipality working together to create loads of developable parcels near a transit station.
I was skeptical that the ridership would remain after the free parking ended because I figured those who got in a car to drive to the train anyway would just drive all the way to the city if the alternative was $4 parking + $24 in fares every day. Very positive showing of the demand for the rail service, and I hope the T can use it to properly convince the state that Phase II is a very worthwhile investment.
I certainly agree on the cooperative effort between MassDOT and the city. It's both rare and impressive.
