Crazy Transit Pitches

BosMaineiac said:
You don’t have to eliminate any CR lines, the target goal is to increase frequency to Brockton specifically. Beyond that frequency for the CR can be hourly. Does anyone know what the capacity of the OC line is from Braintree-SS? Bi-directional All day hourly frequency for the other 2 lines may be doable. That’s only 6 TPH in the single-track sections.
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I appreciate the desire to serve the largest population center between Quincy and Providence/Fall River/ New Bedford, especially compared to the much smaller cities and towns surrounding it. However, it seems a lot better value on the whole to increase Brockton service through CR rather than trying to extend further the longest end of an already branched line.

The cost would be massive to grade separate, build stations, and widen the ROW to accommodate triple tracking (with stations). All that to serve one destination every 9-13 minutes on a much longer trip to Boston. Compare that to the cost of double tracking Braintree to Montello, a turnback track after Campello for short turns, and focusing your money on double tracking through Quincy. This way you improve the frequency/experience for the entire South shore and the short turn could get you to 15-20 minute frequency on a faster trip to the city. As we move closer to battery/electric regional rail, the advantages of heavy rail subway are lessened but expansions will cost a lot more. If they don't bring system wide improvements (like Orange to Reading and sending Haverhill trains via wildcat branch), I think it's pretty hard to argue for their value as a straight swap.
 
samsongam said:
I appreciate the desire to serve the largest population center between Quincy and Providence/Fall River/ New Bedford, especially compared to the much smaller cities and towns surrounding it. However, it seems a lot better value on the whole to increase Brockton service through CR rather than trying to extend further the longest end of an already branched line.

The cost would be massive to grade separate, build stations, and widen the ROW to accommodate triple tracking (with stations). All that to serve one destination every 9-13 minutes on a much longer trip to Boston. Compare that to the cost of double tracking Braintree to Montello, a turnback track after Campello for short turns, and focusing your money on double tracking through Quincy. This way you improve the frequency/experience for the entire South shore and the short turn could get you to 15-20 minute frequency on a faster trip to the city. As we move closer to battery/electric regional rail, the advantages of heavy rail subway are lessened but expansions will cost a lot more. If they don't bring system wide improvements (like Orange to Reading and sending Haverhill trains via wildcat branch), I think it's pretty hard to argue for their value as a straight swap.
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I agree with you on the last part, but I wouldn’t downplay the cost of double tracking through Quincy, which will surely be in the billions. The Cape Main ROW appears to already be wide enough for 3 tracks so adding RL tracks likely won’t be as expensive. I’m bringing this up as a consideration for an alternative (which there should be many that are analyzed for a project of this magnitude).

Perhaps tying a RL extension to a RedX proposal is a necessary way to look at this. That was previously the idea of the Columbia junction with the intention of trains terminating at South Station.
 
I would point out that my original concept for red lining Brockton would have been contigent on a full build of SCR phase 2 (with full double track through the hockomock), as a substitute to quad tracking through Quincy. That would allow you to unload Fall River and New Bedford onto the Stoughton routing. Then by unloading the Middleboro OC line, by transforming it into Red as far as Campello. The two remaining OC lines, Kingston / Greenbush, could probably run happily in a 30min Regional Rail universe despite the single track through Quincy.

You can continue to serve Bridgewater and Lakeville, which even in a regional rail universe were looking at 30min frequencies, via a Campello - East Taunton Dinky. Cape service can be provided by using the middleboro secondary in "reverse" to how Phase 1 SCR uses it - running down the Stoughton branch before taking the middleboro.
 
Stlin said:
I would point out that my original concept for red lining Brockton would have been contigent on a full build of SCR phase 2 (with full double track through the hockomock), as a substitute to quad tracking through Quincy. That would allow you to unload Fall River and New Bedford onto the Stoughton routing. Then by unloading the Middleboro OC line, by transforming it into Red as far as Campello. The two remaining OC lines, Kingston / Greenbush, could probably run happily in a 30min Regional Rail universe despite the single track through Quincy.

You can continue to serve Bridgewater and Lakeville, which even in a regional rail universe were looking at 30min frequencies, via a Campello - East Taunton Dinky. Cape service can be provided by using the middleboro secondary in "reverse" to how Phase 1 SCR uses it - running down the Stoughton branch before taking the middleboro.
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Yes, I do recall seeing your proposal for that. Definitely an alternative worth exploring!
 
BosMaineiac said:
I agree with you on the last part, but I wouldn’t downplay the cost of double tracking through Quincy, which will surely be in the billions. The Cape Main ROW appears to already be wide enough for 3 tracks so adding RL tracks likely won’t be as expensive. I’m bringing this up as a consideration for an alternative (which there should be many that are analyzed for a project of this magnitude).

Perhaps tying a RL extension to a RedX proposal is a necessary way to look at this. That was previously the idea of the Columbia junction with the intention of trains terminating at South Station.
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Yeah I think it's an interesting idea, definitely worth considering within the scope of just Brockton because it provides the best possible frequency, but I don't think it's better on much else.

I don't mean to downplay the cost of a fourth track through Quincy, it's going to be an incredible amount of money. I just think that you get a whole lot more for that money in comparison. Converting the ROW to Red Line standards is also going to be a whole lot of money. The ROW is wide enough in most places except for the most important spot in Downtown Brockton, where it is mostly surrounded by private property. It would be very expensive to put additional fully enclosed platforms with fare-gates here. If you try to save on costs by bypassing Brockton entirely on the CR, Brockton riders lose their access South of Campello forever. You'd also have to rebuild and add very expensive bridges/ elevated sections not to mention a yard somewhere.

It's not exactly apples to apples, but consider how much GLX cost (more expansive land purchases closer to Boston and poor management/planning from the beginning) for much smaller green line trains on a mostly existing ROW and with all the station downgrades (removal of faregates in particular). $2.3 billion for less than half the length of a Brockton red line extension.

For me it's a question of do we spend a lot of money to provide better service to the 6th most populous city in Mass alone, or do we spend a little more money than that to provide close to as good service to the 6th most populous city as well as much more improved service to the 7th, 8th, 9th (New Bedford and Fall River, depending on funding/timing of SCR 2), 20th, 23rd, 28th, 42nd, 49th, and more. (Everett is 27, Chelsea is 40, and Wellesley is 64 for reference). Now I know population is not a perfect metric either but I just want to show how many more people's lives will improve in addition to Brocktonians ( I think it's 6 to 15 times the reach depending on if SCR 2 has been completed) by focusing Quincy double instead of trying to extend Red. To me it seems like a no-brainer which is better at the end of the day and you definitely can't justify doing both, but maybe there's something I'm missing or my valuations are off.
 
BAT buses across the street from Brockton station depart every :30 on the :30/:00 at peak with only a couple schedule outliers for longer routes, so for getting around the city with transfers 6-minute Red Line branch frequencies are somewhat wasted because you'll be laying over for a few Red frequencies' worth on the transfers. The ridership bump to 6 min. rail frequencies from the :15 or so that a properly upgraded Regional Rail could provide (if you supplemented :30 to Middleboro with some Brockton Station short-turns and made use of the extant third track downtown for layovers) is not that large. I think :30 Regional Rail to start (by double-tracking the mainline to Braintree to uncork that frequency on all 3 branches) and then :15 short-turns as a later reach probably satisfies all the demand you're gonna get from that Gateway city.
 
BosMaineiac said:
I think if the red line’s going past Braintree it has to go to Brockton. That’s where the density is. Would a red line extension to Brockton plus cape main mostly single track through Brockton be a better value than an OC double track project? I’m not sure but it may be worth exploring. I assume that to do this, SCR phase 2 would be a prerequisite. The RL would extend to Campello and absorb Holbrook/Randolph and Montello. Dual CR/RL station at Brockton center. I count 5 grade crossings that should be eliminated. The ROW looks to be at least 3 tracks wide, maybe 4 tracks in some spots allowing for passing tracks in some locations for the CR. It’s at least something that should be looked into as an alternative to OC double track to see how it pencils out.
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First, SCR is doing well enough that the powers that be will fight changes. But if you can give all OC slots to that branch and run GB and Plymouth as RL with batteries. The Braintree Line will have slack where you could slide in 30 minute service to each branch til you get to UMass. Send them to Seaport.
 
At a press conference Tuesday morning outside the state transportation department, Councilors Brian Worrell and Miniard Culpepper pitched the Orange Line extension as a matter of equity. Why, they questioned, should the diverse communities they represent be stuck with shoddy bus service, while white neighborhoods elsewhere in the city can rely on the train?
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Gee, Councillors, I wonder who's consigning the neighborhood to shoddy bus service.
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I mean - they're not totally wrong. In crazy transit pitch territory I'd run the branch from Tufts Medical Center (not Ruggles) down the old Washington St El alignment to Nubian and continue it down Warren St and Blue Hill Ave to Mattapan Square. It would be a slam dunk for ridership and would exist in a society capable of building public works projects in a cost-effective manner.

But unfortunately, we don't live in that world. In the current context, this is a bad faith delay tactic. And "It might cost a little bit more" is the understatement of the century.
 
JumboBuc said:
In the current context, this is a bad faith delay tactic. And "It might cost a little bit more" is the understatement of the century.
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There was a Reddit thread about the councillors' sham community meeting demonizing the bus lanes from a couple months ago in which one commenter with lots of experience dealing directly with the Council expounded a bit on what it's like to work with Culpepper. He's apparently always on his phone not paying attention to proceedings, largely incurious about the world, and has grave misunderstandings about how all manner of budgets work in reality (which made the Redditor's experience working with his office especially fruitless). This all explains a lot of his playing-with-fire with trying to turf the bus lane fed grant. In that commenter's opinion, they absolutely believe that Culpepper absolutely believes he can talk his way into a better deal getting the funds redirected to other neighborhood priorities. The fact that it would take an act of Congress to change the allotment of funds to something else and fact that he's in-reality asking an outwardly transit- and Blue cities-hostile Administration to rescind the funds are completely lost on him. He really thinks he's playing dealmaker. And it's going to blow up in his face.

“And a better proposal,” Culpepper added. “A more efficient proposal. It might cost a little bit more, but this is the best way the community will get the best and efficient transportation, just like the rest of the state.”
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Definitely the kind of statement one makes in public if they don't know fuckall about and don't have the slightest care about how budgets are actually made. And he clearly doesn't have any self-perspective about lots of the rest of his own city, let alone the state as a whole, if he thinks that all of Massachusetts sans Dorchester is living the transit good life right now. Jesus Christ. 😵‍💫


I don't know what Worrell's deal is. He's a lot younger, but he's been on the Council longer than Culpepper (who was first elected last year), was the odds-on favorite for Council President this year before getting upset in the final vote, and has a brother in the State Legislature. Usually a progressive, but he's developed a rep for a maverick streak making deals with more conservative Councillors. But he didn't seem like a total idiot until he went all-in on shanking the bus lanes and lying about it in lockstep with very much total idiot Culpepper. Maybe this is one of his "mavricky" moments gone awry?
 
themissinglink said:
It's too bad they aren't advocating for a Green Line extension to Nubian instead of an unrealistic Orange Line tunnel under Blue Hill Ave. The bus lane opposition is disappointing, to say the least.
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Parking parking parking. That's 100.00% the basis of their opposition no matter how much they're playing the race card or plying false equivalencies with the rail=transit/bus≠transit talking points, and is the complete basis of their crayoning insistence that any transit be completely out-of-sight in a tunnel no matter how much it costs or who has to pay for it.

If it's on the surface--anywhere en route--you have to reconfigure the roadway to some significant degree. That means loss of some ≥1 quantity of parking spaces, and mandatory enforcement of the double- and triple-parking that happens with total impunity today all along BHA. If anything, the existing bus is an inefficiency to be pounded out because you can't have even more parking at the current bus stops.

There's no nuance to it, no underlying but misguided good intentions. You're not going to succeed at redirecting them from an aim-high OL crayon drawing starting conversation to more realistic transit ideas. These guys don't even say boo about all the developments regarding the Fairmount Line that slices right through the heart of their districts and helps hub the BHA corridor. They just don't care. It's all just basal car-brained fearmongering, nothing else.
 
It's bad faith, yes.

BHA south of Seaver would be ripe for a modern El (Green) rather than tunneling, although I understand why it would never happen because of political realities.

Grade-separated transit also doesn't remove the need for a dedicated bus facility on BHA either.
 
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www.bostonglobe.com

‘Why aren’t they listening?’: For many Black residents, this Blue Hill Avenue transit plan repeats old problems - The Boston Globe

Many people living near Blue Hill Avenue are deeply opposed to the bus lane proposal, a skepticism wrought by decades of broken promises.
www.bostonglobe.com www.bostonglobe.com

At a public meeting this spring, former state senator Dianne Wilkerson described the center bus lane as yet another unwanted change that officials were inflicting on her community.

“Nobody takes a bus to go pick up the pizza,” she said. “Nobody takes a bus to go pick up their kids. … That’s not how anybody lives. So we will not have this forced on us.”
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Tell me you've never ridden the bus without telling me you've never ridden the bus
 
Worrell and Culpepper contend that the city and MBTA can do better than bus service for Boston’s predominantly Black communities of Roxbury, Mattapan and Dorchester — where their proposed Orange Line extension would run through — which “have been promised world-class transit” for “nearly 40 years.”

Yes, their Orange Lane extension proposal is such a farce that it's an insult to hastily-scrawled sketches on the backs of cocktail napkins, everywhere. That said, this rhetoric of deeply-rooted grievance comes from a very real, fraught history... and thus I make my periodic plea for everyone here who cares about urban Boston's mass-transit politics to watch the utterly brilliant documentary, Equal Or Better, free on Vimeo (and just 52 minutes), about the dismantling of the overhead OL, its realignment from this corridor a mile west, and the intense controversy surrounding the implementation of its "equal or better" (lol) replacement, the Silver Line:

<note: I see the "This Video Can't Be Played Here Warning," but trust me, it works if you go to Vimeo and plug-in the URL link that you get when you hover your mouse over the "learn more">

 
DBM said:
Yes, their Orange Lane extension proposal is such a farce that it's an insult to hastily-scrawled sketches on the backs of cocktail napkins, everywhere. That said, this rhetoric of deeply-rooted grievance comes from a very real, fraught history... and thus I make my periodic plea for everyone here who cares about urban Boston's mass-transit politics to watch the utterly brilliant documentary, Equal Or Better, free on Vimeo (and just 52 minutes), about the dismantling of the overhead OL, its realignment from this corridor a mile west, and the intense controversy surrounding the implementation of its "equal or better" (lol) replacement, the Silver Line:
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I watched Equal or Better once when you recommended it before. It's a very informative documentary, and it's absolutely worth a watch.
 
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DBM said:
Yes, their Orange Lane extension proposal is such a farce that it's an insult to hastily-scrawled sketches on the backs of cocktail napkins, everywhere. That said, this rhetoric of deeply-rooted grievance comes from a very real, fraught history... and thus I make my periodic plea for everyone here who cares about urban Boston's mass-transit politics to watch the utterly brilliant documentary, Equal Or Better, free on Vimeo (and just 52 minutes), about the dismantling of the overhead OL, its realignment from this corridor a mile west, and the intense controversy surrounding the implementation of its "equal or better" (lol) replacement, the Silver Line:
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You could also argue though that it's a deliberate misrepresentation of that messy history for the benefit of drivers, or more realistically a mix of both.
 
TheRatmeister said:
You could also argue though that it's a deliberate misrepresentation of that messy history for the benefit of drivers, or more realistically a mix of both.
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Yeah, that's my bigger issue, not so much the inept map making (though it's fun to pull that apart). They are not being completely honest with their rhetoric, and are completely ignoring two things that tend to counteract most of the claim being made:
  1. The Fairmont Line is real rail transit that serves much of the geography they are focusing on
  2. The claim that the Blue Hill Ave corridor is the only part of Boston without a subway line is patently false (Brighton, Roslindale, West Roxbury, Hyde Park, etc.)
Arguably, that area has better rail transit than the other underserved areas of the city (20 minute headways on Fairmont vs hourly elsewhere). They are correct about the history of red lining and bustitution, as are they correct on any claims about population density, economic justice, etc. But make the argument on the many available facts, not on misleading hyperbole.
 
On some level, I wonder if their Orange Line Extension AI napkin sketch will hurt the cause of these Councilors. It's so patently ridiculous that it undercuts their credibility in a way that may make "neutrals" find their (other) arguments less convincing.
 
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