That just not true, F Line. The Fellsway crosses the Medford Branch about 1/2 mile west of the Orange Line. There is nothing north of thr ROW for 300ft. The Fellsway is more than wide enough for a two track median (the old Rt100 trolley went there) when you reach 93 (at the Fellsway, not the old Medford ROW, there is sufficient space for single tracks going south to Medford Sq. It is not the shortest route, but is still quicker than buses on 16 by far.
Go due west 1/2 mile to go due north 1 mile to go due west 3/4 mile to hit the highway to go due south 1 mile.
How is a routing that roundabout supposed to be good transit??? And you're going to somehow widen 93 through a tight-fitting residential neighborhood for this??? And somehow find access up onto the highway from below for station stops???
No build tries to prove you can stick rails there solely for the engineering achievement of sticking rails there. It's a transit service. And a transit service with that kind of kooky routing and those kinds of horrible vertical access issues is bad transit.
As far as Saugus, if you come off the existing row near the Super 88 and meet up with the Saugus row you hit Canal Main and Ferry Streets in short order all at nearly 90° angles and if stop lighting and transit prioritized your main angled intersection is Route 60.
No, you don't. The Western Route-Saugus Branch connection follows the derelict freight siding to Piantedosi Baking on Commercial, then crossed the River where the CHA Malden Family Medicine practice parking lot is and hit the Saugus Branch right where it starts pulling away from Canal St. That's all existing RR property, where everywhere else requires private property acquisition. And it's also the only turnout where the curvature is OK enough to not be speed-killing.
Try to turn out by Super 88 and you're. . .
- Banging a right off the Western Route at nearly 90-degrees. And, yes, that hurts performance much more than the bad-angle grade grossings.
- Spending a lot of $$$ rebuilding the embankment with retaining walls so it could be widened for a 4th track.
- Doing property acquisition on every single parcel between there and the Saugus Branch.
Not to mention, you are attempting this as Green Line which means invasive changes to Orange's track layout and blowing up 3-platform Wellington Station to redo in a completely different setup
As for the crossings:
- Main: 25 ft. from the stop line for the Charles light. Probable carpocalypse.
- Ferry: 45 ft. from the stop line for the MA 60 light. Probable carpocalypse.
- 60: 45-degree angle 70 ft. from the Holden St. light. Probable carpocalypse.
- Franklin St: 1 block from 60, slight angle. Not bad.
- Bryant St.: 1 block from 60, perpendicular. Not bad.
- Faulkner St.: 1 block from 60, perpendicular, some sightlines issues with proximity to Bryant. Not bad...preferable if one of these crossings were blocked off.
- Cross St.: 180 ft. from 60, one-way. Not bad, since one-way traffic faces away from 60. Line is curving here, so proximity to adjacent crossings not great for sightlines.
- Maplewood: 170 ft. away from 60, congested. Problematic.
- MA 99: 160 ft. away from 60, congested state highway, angled crossing. Carpocalypse.
- Chapp St.: minor side street. Not bad.
- Beach St.: very bad angle, <100 ft. from messy intersection pooling several roads. Carpocalypse.
These are all high-difficulty crossings, even if individual bad crossings can be mitigated any. As a whole collection,
this is a worst-case. For an extremely not-at-all cheap project for all the reworking you must do along the Orange Line, that's untenable baggage to be carrying.
Again lights and transit prioritization should make that intersection which would be a stop anyways a relatively smooth experience. The next mile to Route 99 has 5 again 90 degree angle crossings all of which could be lighted and Transit prioritized. A stop at 99 is in order anyways one more Crossing at Clapp Street on the next mile 2to the Lynn Ave /Beach Street intersection which is a tangle but it's also the location of a stop opposite the parking lot of the cinema which has enough spaces to pull a ton of cars off of Route 1. Why pay for TSP if we aren't going to use it? It also has a cascade effect on thr Tobin, giving Chelsea some much needed relief.
That's magical thinking not rooted in evidence. Look at how many of those crossings are inside car queue distance of a traffic light to a state highway...but too far from the stop line to actually tie in the signal priority. At crossing after crossing after crossing. This isn't even like the B line where there's a zillion crossings but all of them have squared-up signals. You can't do that at distances 50+ ft. away.
Again, it is not that there is "a" bad crossing...it's that the whole collection of them are bunched in close proximity, contains multiples with bad-angle geometry, and contains multiples too poorly positioned from signalized intersections. So you fight 3 crummy battles at once.
That is not a recipe for functional transit. At all.
And as for giving Chelsea some much needed relief? Why
this exercise in civil engineering strongman theatre instead of building the
actual proposed Urban Ring Southeast quadrant as light rail: Sullivan, Assembly, Encore Boston, Everett, Chelses...and so on via a converted or co-mingled SL3 busway. We actually have studied ridership and congestion relief data for that one instead of magical thinking.
