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Which bus tunnel? The Silver Line?

Not necessarily. There was once a crossover from the northbound/inbound Tremont wall track (current track 4) to the fence track (current track 3), which would allow access to the loop. I don't think there was ever one from track 2 to track 1, so you'd have to add one (there are two current...

X Definitely. A forced transfer off of Washington effectively replicates (if not in quite as severe a form) the Silver Line's inbred inadequacy as an Elevated replacement; the lack of transfers. You'd get the Red Line, which is an improvement, but at the cost of a less-useful connection to the...

Fascinating post as usual, and I might go back and add more comments later once I've calmed downs from Bruins-induced irritation. Having experienced quite a few encounters with that atrocious intersection at Summer and the surface route where the South Station offramp comes up from the tunnel, I...

The T frequently seems quite sluggish on escalator repairs. I don't know if that's an in-house thing or a contractor thing. It definitely seems like it's lower on the priority list than elevator outages (which is understandable, given that elevator outages tend to make stations completely...

Not that this is the correct thread for this, but none of that makes any sense. The only thing where there's any question marks as to what Amtrak is buying is the next order for Long Distance equipment they're currently working on. And, while the outcome of that procurement is yet to be...

No chance whatsoever Amtrak ever thought about Class 345s. They're a foot and a half (nearly) too narrow and five or so inches too low to serve US high-level platforms. They bear a (very) superficial similarity to the Airo trainsets Amtrak's recently ordered from Siemens (in that they have a...

Somehow I don't think CCP-style accountability's a good import.

Who do you even punish? This order was placed in 2014, under the Patrick administration. How many of the decisionmakers are even still in government or still working for the T?

I'll freely concede that future developments could well end the need for freight service to Everett/Chelsea. (Though, out of curiosity, is the produce market being redeveloped?) Time separation is a non-starter unless the trackage rights granted to B&M and subsequently inherited by CSX allow the...

Absolutely. I don't think it's clickbait so much as annoyed snark, but either way, the T's own failure to communicate properly is directly responsible for articles like this. The best-case scenario is that they are staggeringly (if not surprisingly) incompetent to the point of either not being...

Yeah, but that's two tunnels on the same alignment. The idea of running an Eastern Route tunnel up and out across the harbor would at minimum mean more portals, more non-shared tunneling. (I'm assuming that even two bores would share some of the prep and construction work, especially around the...

Well, that was more of a hunch. That said, the broader point (admittedly not made all that clear in my post) is that regardless of whether it's more expensive to tunnel underwater than on land, it's unquestionably going to cost a hell of a lot more to make two tunnels than one. Compared to...

Going under the harbor, possibly? Somewhere earlier in this thread (and/or in Crazy Transit Pitches) there was a discussion of a similar proposal. It hamstrings the entire works because now three Northside lines (well, four if you count Reading and Haverhill separately, but Reading has its own...

Kind of feel like that one won't survive a cost-benefit analysis (though I would be happy to be wrong on that), hence why the discussion of the alternative being the State/Haymarket transfer (I wasn't clear enough that that part is what's chained to the Congress alignment, not any Blue connection).

If every line has trains serving both NS-surface and NSRL, it's less of a problem. Pair-matching through the tunnel (which I imagine would be harder with two tracks rather than four, and two is all you get on Congress) means some services are going to have priority for the tunnel and...

CRRC's probably going to join Breda on the MBTA's "no way" list unless they can iron out the problems with the Springfield factory. I'd be more than a little surprised to see a governor willing to sign another deal with them without some ironclad assurances that the procurement won't turn into a...

That would make sense. Congress can only handle two tracks, right? Or am I confused on that one again?

Is that even possible on a CA/T alignment? The transfers would be absurd (not that they'd be short in any event with how deep the NSRL would be). Also, unless the surface terminals get completely abandoned, not being able to connect from North Station on the surface to the NSRL without a...

Maybe we're talking about different things, because "Bluebirds" as I understand them are the #5 Cambridge-Dorchester cars (01400 series), which absolutely have a (fairly subtle) inward curve of the sides near the floor as is visible in this picture you posted. It's a similar profile to the...