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Has Track 61 as a freight terminal ever been seriously studied? I'm thinking a daily train of goods for the many stores and restaurants downtown coming in by rail to be distributed by small delivery trucks (heck, maybe even cargo trikes) to reduce truck traffic on I-93 and the Pike. An...

On the opposite end of NSRL insanity pitches, how about an NSR-El? Build a huge ramp up over Ft. point Channel, around South Station, down Congress St (no more parking garage in the way!), Merrimac, and Lomasney (passing directly over the Last Tenement for style points) before starting a...

You want crazy? I got crazy: Green Line to Nubian, but it's a consolidated D/E Branch. Yes, of course it verges on God Mode, but hear me out. . . Do the much-discussed "tunnel under Route 9 and get D under Huntington" trick. Build a new LMA station at Huntington @ McGreevey, then dodge east...

My crazy highway pitch is to close all of the I-93 exits between Sullivan and Mass Ave (except for the Pike and Airport exits). Morrissey and Rutherford regain some of their past relevance, and the I-93 tunnel becomes a dedicated "downtown bypass" route instead of a "chaotically sprinkle...

I have two heretical thoughts regarding the above list: 1) Branching Orange not at Sullivan, but at Wellington (for the sake of hopping east to Everett's Broadway corridor). While Malden Center is a big bus hub, quite a bit of that bus traffic is people transferring to the Orange Line from...

So if we're talking about LRT from Mattapan up Blue Hill Ave, would it be worth it to wiggle up Warren St to Nubian and up Washington St to downtown? You'd end up a GL branch to Ashmont (via Nubian and Mattapan). You eliminate the isolated fleet, the only tricky part is figuring out how to go...

Because Amtrak through-running all of their Boston service means they no longer need to maintain a yard in downtown Boston, which sits on some of the most valuable real estate in the country?

The North and South Station stops are a side effect of using the NSRL for through-running, not a "spread the wealth" objective. Having two or three Chicago stops would not be completely unprecedented? It's not that different to Acela stopping in both NYC and Newark. You wouldn't do it for...

I'm not aware of an HSR route that does a Boston-to-Chicago length journey with zero intermediate stops. A dozen stops along a thousand-mile corridor isn't going to tank the travel time on its own.

For any GJ project (CR, LRT, or otherwise) the only NIMBY that really matters is MIT. This isn't the type of thing where the Smalltown Neighborhood Association is fighting against bulldozing Grandma Murphy's house and paving over the Local Historically Preserved Gas Station. You're dealing with...

Just saying, putting electrified CR underneath the GJ would probably go down easier with the NIMBYs (and possibly reduce the vibration issue?). It's not as if Cambridge/MIT lacks money or engineering talent. The Red Line is an issue, but it's cut and cover so it's not extremely deep. Maybe 50...

Why is it physically impossible? What's to stop you from digging a trench from Cambridge St to the southern end of Vassar St? You could cap it with a bike path and Cantabrigians would love it. I'm not saying it would be simple but it doesn't seem like it'd be impossible.

A post-NSRL crayon in which we use the Grand Junction to send Worcester Line trains to North Station, pairing them with Providence Line trains on the other edge. This does a few things: Resolves some of the North/South NSRL balance issues, since Worcester and Providence are two of the...

Putting that much parking on top of the state's primary rail and bus hub just feels like a slap in the face.

My crazy Blue Line tinker de jour has been to branch it at Kenmore in two directions: 1) Watertown via West Station, Harvard, Mt Auburn Hospital, and Arsenal; 2) Neponset via LMA, Jamaicaway (eating the tail end of the E), Arborway, Forest Hills, Morton St, and Gallivan. Neither of these...

Those very same NIMBYs will scream even louder if you propose undoing the damage done by those very same urban highways. A lot of it is status quo bias and car dependency Stockholm Syndrome.

100% this. One of the more radicalizing experiences of my life was living in Nanjing for several years and watching the city open an entirely new subway line every year for four years straight. There are some legitimate reasons why it's harder here but 80% of it is really political will...

One snag is that the GL-X to Grand Junction connection is complicated by having to not only deal with Fitchburg, but also the constraints of the McGrath Highway bridge being right on top of the whole thing. It's not an impossible fix but probably will be fairly expensive no matter how you do...

Welp. Guess it's time for another fiddly Green Line crayon. This one is just going to focus on the Southside, so no North Shore adventures this time around. An Overview: *The B Line is kinda-sorta also the A Line now, in that it ends up going to Watertown via Newton Corner! *The C Line is...

Some fun ideas here. One tricky thing about Red Line Fairmount is that HRT conversion means you can no longer use it as the "back up route" for the Northeast Corridor if the NEC is under construction or has any kind of blockage/accident. Fairmount deserves much higher frequency service but it's...