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Since we seem to be transitioning toward discussing the GLX end more than the Allston/Brookline end, should we talk about why the GLX is only going as far as Union Square and Tufts? I get that commuter rail is so bad that West Medford's not a good outer anchor, but why not drag the other branch...

Because the schedule would be drawn to have intercity trains enter the Fairmount Line at Readville just before local trains make the inbound trip, and terminate at South Station right after the preceding local train. With 160 km/h EMUs, the travel time difference between an intercity train and a...

On a different note, this is probably a ridiculous idea, but how about a Green Line branch to South Boston on Broadway? The idea is that the Tremont Street Subway should be fed by multiple branches. F-Line to Mattapan and Forest Hills are really one branch since they run on the street together...

How important is vehicle length here? Specifically, the impact of vehicle length on headways is that the stopping distance is really the distance between the front of a vehicle and the back of the preceding vehicle. This means the headway must go up by the time it takes the vehicle to travel its...

I know, I know. The New Balance station idea is stupid - there's no street access from the south. The West Station idea is also stupid, but it most certainly has enough space. Also, it could work as infill between BU and Allston, in the event the MBTA brings commuter rail to the 21st century...

No, but it will have the capacity if it runs EMUs on 15-minute headways. 18-minute frequency is a terrible idea in general, but it also forces HSR to also go at 18-minute frequency, and since HSR has to share tracks with the Providence Line and the New Haven Line... you see where this is going...

No train should ever skip Providence, for the reasons mentioned by Bigeman312. (By the way: yes, it's possible to revive Providence Union Station and the East Side Rail Tunnel, but it would require severing the connection to the existing line to the north, toward Pawtucket and Woonsocket. The...

Don't build a second platform - just switch the southern track and the platform, so that the platform becomes an island platform. Access shouldn't be a problem, since all the stations are already located at overpasses, and the platforms are actually on the Turnpike side of the ROW, so there's no...

Re: Boston to Cape rail Conversely, there's adverse possession. In New York, the people encroaching on the Rockaway Beach Branch ROW are claiming that, but current law only permits adverse possession of private land, not state land. This has not been this way forever - in the 19th century, it...

What I'm alluding to is that the park-and-riders could park elsewhere, closer to where they live. There aren't 2,000 people commuting to Boston per day living closer to Riverside than to any other station; it has an extended draw, which could just go elsewhere if the Worcester Line stopped...

Sure, but. The issue here is that transit should work as a system. As a simple example of this, I'm very down on using a Green Line branch to connect Allston to Harvard, even though I think such a connection is useful, because it should be part of another line. The point I'm making with the...

Re: Boston to Cape rail Wouldn't the Waltham ends of the Watertown branch make a good GLX, connecting via the inner Fitchburg Line ROW to Union Square?

It's not "we could talk about." You don't, in fact, talk about it. Or Van brushes it off as thinking small, even though it provides equivalent capacity to a Green Line branch without any of the flat junctions on the way. Out here in the first world, the Boston Green Line would not be...

There's no North-South tunnel right now. However, the Big Dig reserved space under the Artery for a future four-track rail tunnel. It's dirt that has to be dug out, but there are no utilities, archeological sites, etc.

The link needs to dip from the existing at-grade track to the space under the Central Artery. If it goes below grade right east of where the Orange Line crosses it, it can get there, but with a steep grade, I believe 3%. Anything that forces the link to begin farther east requires even steeper...

If so then it shouldn't be built because it would complicate NSRL tunneling. No. No, no, no, no, no, no. No. The IND was a disaster, and its penchant for multilevel stations, full-length mezzanines, tunneling around and under an active subway, and flying junctions everywhere, is why...

Contrary to what I expected, the amount bus passenger-km per unlinked bus trips isn't too different between New York (3.4 km) and Boston (3.8 km). So it could just be a matter of length - the Silver Lie is very short, comparable to Manhattan crosstown buses rather than to 1st/2nd or Utica...

Why is it such a problem to dispatch a light rail line running from a portal near the Pike to Mattapan? It's 10 km of street running, versus just under 7 for the B branch, so it can't be a huge problem. And if you look outside Boston, you'll find far longer light rail lines entirely on-street...

This is why I bring up Vancouver: it's the best modern example in North America of transit built to shape growth rather than to serve existing nodes. And what we see in Vancouver is the exact opposite of development-oriented transit pushed in various American cities. To wit: 1. Burnaby built...

There is a limit to bus ridership, beyond which buses bunch as you mention, but no bus route in Boston is even close to hitting it. New York has multiple bus routes in the 50,000 weekday riders region. Vancouver has a route with more than 50,000. These are all at the limit of what buses can do...