I'm keeping this in Crazy Transit Pitches because I'd argue over the timescale you'd be seeing anywhere near a full-build at, it's could possibly maybe not be that expensive. SMART is building rail in California at $30m per mile today. But yes, it does involve a total (if gradual) total re-imagining of urban development and transportation in New England, which is obviously quite a large undertaking. There is definitely a strong argument for the god-mode threat but hot take: It doesn't really matter, it's probably not happening either way. Anyways, the map. It's so large that the most effective way I can find to share it is a PDF. It's an attachment below.
And here's the vision/utopian pitch: Much of New England was built as railroad towns, and we could, if we choose, rebuild it as railroad towns. This map shows a vision for a re-imagined, significantly decentralized New England. Instead of a couple super-cities (NYC and Boston) with some second-rate cities lagging behind, this map spreads the love across New England. Hartford, New Haven, Providence-Pawtucket, Lowell, Worcester, Manchester, and Springfield are all large job centers, connected with a large rail network providing local, commuter, and intercity services both within and between cities. Connected to these larger cities are mid-sized cities, smaller and more specialized. These are places like Danbury, Leominster, Gardner, Pittsfield, Willamantic, New Bedford, Haverhill, and Portsmouth. They mostly sit at key junctions, giving them wide connectivity across the region but at a level slightly less than the big-heavy hitters. Interspersed between these larger and medium-sized cities are the railroad towns, the new centers of rural New England. Towns and villages like Palmer, Webster, Shirley, Great Barrington, Griswold, Newfields, and Old Saybrook. These communities blend a (relatively) dense, compact core with mostly agricultural and rural surroundings. These towns are where you find your single-family homes with large amounts of private green space. To an extent spralwing, but nonetheless still within biking distance from all the local amenities and the railway station. And yes, biking. Any city or railroad town will have a robust network of cycling infrastructure, really enabling car-free living for the masses. The catchment area for a railway station is not a 10-15 minute walking distance, but a 10-15 minute cycling distance on quiet streets and safe bicycle paths.
About the map:
The network design broadly takes inspiration from the rail networks of the Netherlands and Germany. There are four 'classes' of service, shown in four colors on the map.
In blue are the Amtrak/Acela services. Operating at high (or at least higher) speeds, these trains offer a fast link between Washington, New York, Buffalo, Montreal, Burlington, Albany, New Haven, and Boston (to name a few). They make a few additional stops along the way in mid-sized cities such as Pittsfield, New London, Lawrence, or Framingham. There are many trips per day, with service as often as once per hour on the busiest routes like Boston to DC. In red are the Intercity services. These make more stops, operate mainly at higher (not high) speeds, and don't travel quite as far. That's not to say they're short distance services though, trains from Portsmouth run directly to Greenfield for example. Frequencies on these routes are generally every 30-60 minutes. In green are the local services. These can parallel the express services, or make less-frequent connections between the busiest routes. These operate at a range of frequencies, from once every 1-2 hours on routes like Willamantic-Providence, or every 15-30 minutes on routes like Bridgewater-Braintree. Last but not least, in pink are the interurbans. Making some use of city streets and boulevards, these are mostly concentrated into three networks around Lexington, Salem, and the South Coast where they provide a mix of high-frequency urban-transit and local intercity transit. These routes are among the most frequent, with 15-30 minute headways on each line all day.
In terms of the actual style, heavy inspiration is taken of course from the NYC Subway map first designed by Vignelli Associates,
this unofficial railway map of the Netherlands, and
this MA fantasy rail map.
It's also still very much unfinished. Of course there are still things like a legend that need to get done, and I'm not really happy with the current color scheme to be honest, there's too much green. I'd also like to add some ferries to the map, plus make it more clear where the railroad cities and towns are so that the map alone is better at representing the idea.
