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I retract all my previous kvetching. Huzzah! Shut down every line!

I'm basing 2021 purely on bigeman's analysis. I can't get the transitmatters dashboard to give me any data for most timeframes, but I'll agree that we do seem to be back to baseline here.

But this thing ran faster even back in 2021. What changed since then? Is it just the decaying trainsets, or is the infrastructure itself that's keeping the system slow?

I'll agree that the shutdown did a fantastic job, but I have remaining questions about why we're not back to the best time recorded historically. What work remains to get us there, and what sort of timeline might we be looking at to get the designed speeds?

Right? They slowed everything down for almost a month, apparently didn't fix the problem, and now things are fine again but we still need to fix it. If I had to guess, I'd say that Eng discovered the issue and had everything slowed down for safety while inspections were made. Maybe there were...

Most of these make a good amount of sense (from a "highways are the only way to move people" perspective), but I can't imagine the critical Nantasket-South Weymouth commuter demographic was really large enough to merit its own expressway.

So... it was fine all along and they were just wasting our time?

I'm seeing 4% on level terrain, with a 1% increase allowed in urban areas. Let's call it 4% for now because I'm not sure if "parking lot next to river" counts as urban, and I'm not sure what sustained LRT grades are allowed to be for lengths this long. From the point where the Tobin goes over...

Ah, I think I was misinterpreting numbers. The clearance height is only about 135 feet, giving a much more reasonable grade of under 4% for the point I selected. The overall height is the number I was quoting before, which makes more sense. Those grades do seem to give some wiggle room for where...

Some super-quick math (~250 feet tall, ~3500 feet of travel from first channel to underground segment of the roadway) shows a grade steeper than any on the MBTA system: 7% versus about 6.5% on the Causeway Street Tunnel up to the Lechmere viaduct. That doesn't bode well for anything other than BRT.

Ignoring the fact that the design process has already started and any major additions to the design requirements are unlikely to be added: What kind of transit could we even expect to add to such a new structure? Bus lanes for a Silver Line/BRT addition are obvious, but do the grades of the...

I believe we've heard every single part of the viaduct (ties, catenary, structure) blamed at one point or another, so what on Earth is even going on at this point?

I'm sure it doesn't actually mean what it looks like it means, but it looks like they have literally three people working on this: "2 contractors working two 12-hour shifts."

Not that I disagree with a bike path being more important, but surely the benefit here would be better connectivity to the rest of the cape, not with Boston. A half-hourly trolley or something like that that gives a quick connection to the middle and upper capes, or even the ferries. Of course...

What would be the reasoning behind such an entrance? It seems to be farther away from everything than the existing entrance. I suppose it removes a bunch of street crossings for people coming from the bridge/Esplanade, but that can't be a high percentage of the people using this station. Are...

Nothing specific. You could probably go under the East Boston Greenway and then under 1A as needed, but this runs into your second point. I think these goals are fundamentally at odds. The Logan terminals are out of the way enough that diverting the entire connection through the heart of the...

Oh yeah, any proposal that assumes a NSRL has to assume that the OC lines are completely (at least out to where they diverge) double-tracked. There's so many projects that would come before something as monstrous as this that any project that is currently being even vaguely seriously considered...

Perhaps a service pattern something like this? I think you'd struggle too much connecting the Worcester/Providence lines to the southern portal, and probably the same with the Fitchburg/Lowell/Haverhill lines on the north side, depending on where that portal ends up. I think going up under...

That's exactly the document I was looking for. Thanks! For those that don't want to click through: it mentions the Boylston Westbound is fine for now, with Eastbound being only 210 feet out of the necessary 225 feet. The question of how to achieve those extra 15 feet remains to be seen. Other...

Since there's not a project for I'm guessing this would be total speculation, but is there any way to lengthen the platforms without ruining the 4-track connection between it and Park? Looking at a track map for Boylston I'm not seeing a lot of room for expansion without either fouling the...