Search results

One likely other knock on DEMUs (in addition to @F-Line to Dudley 's points) is worse Mean Distance Between Failures. Diesel engines just have lots of moving parts and are more prone to breaking down. The Transit Matters report on electrification has those numbers for MBTA's current diesel fleet...

@TheRatmeister or @737900er , where are you pulling those numbers from? I'd love to have a look. Looking at common high speed rail proposals, you could also consider eliminating a few other short flights like to Montreal and upstate New York (Rochester, Syracuse, and Buffalo). With really good...

Does anyone know how the bus terminal expansion is going? According to some old schedule, it should have opened in the second quarter of 2024. It doesn't look like they planned for it to be completely finished and connected to the train station by now. But it should have been at least open.

There's a piece about this in the New York Times today, with some good pictures from the exhibit. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/16/arts/design/paul-rudolph-architect-met.html I was in NYC over the weekend and saw the exhibit when I was at the Met. I'm still not a fan of Rudolph's work, but I...

Thanks for that! And to just really clearly draw the conclusion out there: it looks like there are modern, commuter rail BEMUs that can accelerate roughly as good as straight-EMUs. The BEMUs have many other drawbacks, but acceleration probably isn't one of them.

Oh that's interesting. I don't have any of those numbers and can't find them easily. Where might one look those up? There's the train model I linked to, and two that @Koopzilla24 mentioned.

So if that's the acceptable range, 0.8 m/s² to 1.3 m/s², then here's a BEMU that does 1.1 m/s². I'm sure there are a lot of confounding variables there, but BEMU acceleration looks like it's in the range of "good enough," or will be soon. I'm agreeing with you that it's bad for the MBTA to go...

So then what would be a maximum reasonable acceleration for our commuter rail trains? I see all kinds of examples around, but no clear standards. Something like 1.1 meters/second/second? 1.4? (and in whatever units you choose. trying to research this gets annoying when acceleration gets...

I've been wondering about this. There's a practical limit to how fast a train can accelerate, just for passenger safety and comfort. Which means that once BEMUs can hit that limit then they'll be "good enough," and comparisons to straight-EMU acceleration becomes moot. So how close are BEMUs to...

AFAICT, the spans over Soldier Field Road are part of the GJ Bridge and those will be removed. What will be left is a partial bridge, which is not a bridge. So yes, the bridge will be removed during highway construction. The article makes it seem like it's the river span that will be removed...

Oh yeah, a heck ton. But the difference in the these numbers points to something important. Just to really stress what @Stlin is highlighting, the common method of getting friends/family to do airport pickups and dropoffs is basically the worst possible way to move large numbers of people in a...

Wait, where did you get that number @Stlin 's post has the number at 111K.

(oh weird, my post got cut off, so, continued....) @ulrichomega and @Riverside, just a note on that crude drawing for a station, in purple. It's 1050ft long (Amtrak length) and 165ft wide, for a six track terminal station. That's for some extravagant future with 7.5 minute regional rail...

Thanks to everyone commenting on the airport proposal! I got a couple pages of responses here, then no time to respond for a few days, but I'm back I see, I see. My bad. My drawing was off and I was throwing out NSRL specs from memory, which were wrong. Ignoring the details of what I drew...

A fleet of autonomous cars might solve the parking problem (kind of, they still need to park somewhere at night). But I'll pretty comfortably say that isn't going to solve any transportation problems. You might find this interesting. A chart like this is what got me more interested in this...

Bumping this. There was the whole report on costs and benefits for NSRL that was supposed to come out of the Harvard, I think this fall. Anyone know what happened to that?

How slow? You phrased this as if to suggest my new proposed tunnel would average 15-20 mph. That's ridiculous. The route I drew has a half mile curve radius, then over a mile and and a half of straight track. And the grade can be extremely level. This could connect to NSRL tunnels 100 feet...

A very reasonable question that I can't answer for certain. But yeah, I think it's worth it. The route you've drawn is about twice as long. With the extra curves, steep bridge over the Mystic, and extra stop in the middle, it'll average less than half the speed of my proposal. That could end up...

Yes, it is. Most people on Logan-bound trains will still just be people traveling from south and west of the city to somewhere downtown Boston. That includes the North Station area. There are lots of jobs in that area, even if it isn't as dense as other neighborhoods. There's a ton of...