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Unfortunately, it's not so simple as "just turn the light green when a bus approaches." Signal priority and preemption aren't magic bullets; they have to work within the engineering constraints of the modes. For example, you can't cut off the walk cycle arbitrarily - pedestrians have to have...

I really don't think we need to worry about ensuring surface/tunnel transfers at North Station. At absolute maximum buildout, you're looking at something like: Fitchburg: 4 TPH Waltham + 2 TPH Wachusett + <1 TPH intercity = 7 TPH NH Main: 2 TPH Concord + 2 TPH Nashua + 2 TPH Haverhill + 1 TPH...

Attaching the track chart here for reference. With all the focus on the DPU's failure's to ensure actual safety at the MBTA, I hope someone will take aim at how they've been needlessly constraining operations for years for a wholly misguided idea of "safety". Not only does it waste a great...

Not a half measure - bus lanes are more useful than rail on BHA. They allow overlapping services (22, 28, 29, 31) which can run to different terminals for connections. Buses are faster than trains when running at street level, even in dedicated lanes. The only advantages of rail on a surface...

What a con job. No stop in the second-most-populous city on the line outside current CR territory. Claiming less than one daily rider over 5 daily trains from 20k residents in Adams + North Adams. The lowest-cost option being over a billion dollars for a service that should require 2 small...

I agree that the Union Square and East Somerville entrances are the highest priority. Magoun and Ball are both nonstarters - there's not enough room for an up-and-over, and the portion of the catchment that gets a substantially shorter walk is pretty low. At Medford/Tufts, converting the...

Jonathan Belcher's Changes to Transit Service in the MBTA district and Thomas J. Humphrey's Origin and Development of the Fixed-Route Local Bus Transportation Network are the main sources. They're both amazingly comprehensive, which does mean they take some practice to navigate. I also use BSRA...

Any useful D-E connector is going to involve a lot of tunneling. Longwood is about 3/4 mile, Francis about 1/2 mile. (Both assuming an E tunnel as far as Brigham Circle, which is necessary for any kind of high frequency.) Brookline Village is only about 1/4 mile... except that you either have to...

The 41 mostly originated as horsecar lines, albeit radial rather than crosstown. The West Roxbury Railroad opened a horsecar line from Roxbury Crossing to Hyde Square in 1857, and extended it to JP Carhouse (South at Jamaica) in 1858. It was immediately leased by the Metropolitan Railroad, and...

Anything that goes to South Station - Red and CR - already has decent access to the Seaport. The Silver Line sucks, but the combined tunnel frequency is good and it's a fairly short ride. What's missing is good access from points past South Station: North Station, Back Bay, LMA, and...

The 38 is a bit of a curiosity. Unlike the 35 and 36, it was never a streetcar line. It began as a Monument - Belgrade+Centre bus route in 1924 - one of the earliest BERy bus route, and arguably the first that was a significant expansion rather than replacing an existing line or filling in a...

The current state of the MBTA (metaphorically and literally) in one picture:

Not an MBTA project, but over it: the Carlton Street Footbridge reconstruction is finally showing progress.

It's worth noting that reactivating the Woburn Branch on any mode is pretty much a nonstarter. The ROW in Winchester is sold off, with an apartment building built smack in the middle. (A grocery store too, but that one you could curve around.) There's six street crossings in a mile and a half...

I don't think it ever got particularly far in planning. This is the 1948 state law that directed the MTA to build the subway: https://archive.org/details/actsresolvespass1948mass/page/696/mode/2up?view=theater

I'm agnostic about Harrison versus Washington for the northern half - much like the number of intermediate stops, it will probably come down to technical feasibility, costs, and what the community wants. (There's even an argument to be made for Shawmut to have a straight shot across the Pike...

The more I crayon things out, the more convinced I am that GL to Nubian needs to be built as a subway. My experience as a planner in San Francisco is that busy commercial corridors do not work well for speedy transit, even with dedicated lanes and TSP. Speedy transit is often at cross purposes...

At the end of the day, matching capacity (train length and frequency) is going to be the most important factor for which lines run through: The most important new connections are within the downtown core - northside lines to South Station/Back Bay/Ruggles/Lansdowne, southside lines to North...

And finally, Middleborough station. (Because neither station is easily viewable from public roads, I was not able to photograph Freetown or East Taunton.) The pedestrian entrance from Grove Street (Route 28): Driveway and new turn lane from Main Street (Route 105):

The just-about complete Fall River station. The north canopy, viewed from a less-than-flattering area across the tracks: The ramp-and-stair entrance from Pearce Street: I never love surface parking lots, especially at urban stations. Hopefully this will become TOD someday. The station...