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  1. F

    Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail (South Coast Rail)

    As I've said before, I don't think Newport has the demand to move the needle on Phase 2. It's a long way away from Boston in another state, with not a huge commuting population at stake. RIDOT's certainly not going to consider the shuttle--as much as it remains a long-term wishlist item--as...
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    Cape Cod Rail, Bridges and Highways

    That straight, fat power line ROW was considered in the 1970's for an extension of the MA 25 expressway to the Route 6 expressway, but that would've entailed a third interstate-spec crossing rather than a decomissioning of the existing bridges. It died when the final S-curve alignment of 25...
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    New Red and Orange Line Cars

    NETransit updated. . . 134 active Orange cars, 30 active Red cars. Theoretically they now have a 5th active set for Red, though that's not been the practice lately likely due to pairs being down for warranty mods. 4 Orange cars in-testing, 8 Red cars in-testing. Orange deliveries have still...
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    General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

    If the goal is :30 service on the branches, that's plenty much TPH to amortize the electrification costs. A substation nearish to the junction is enough to power both branches end-to-end, so you'd only need 2 subs (an inner one to power the terminal district and inside-128, and an outer one to...
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    Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail (South Coast Rail)

    Studied in 2002 and 2011, and got a fairly lengthy write-up in the 2014 RI State Rail Plan. Again...the SCR Task Force paid no attention that this was even in the universe of possibilities, so there was no interstate coordination whatsoever.
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    MBTA Construction Projects

    Man, I hope the Wellesley-Framingham triple track project doesn't get delayed any, because the temp mini-high they just installed at Wellesley Square isn't even one of those freestanding blocks with a steel deck jobs that a bunch of other stations are getting. It's just a flimsy erector set...
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    Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail (South Coast Rail)

    Battleship Cove was to be a single side platform with freight passing track. It's in a constrained area of ROW surrounded by wetlands so there's probably not enough room to make it an island for future cross-platform transfers. Not that they were really all that engaged with the planning for it...
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    Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail (South Coast Rail)

    It's going to depend on scheduling reliability. If Fall River/New Bedford keeps routinely seeing miserable OTP and lengthy cascading delays like has plagued it in the first week of service (the service alerts this morning show a another horrible rash of 15-45 minute cascaded delays), the...
  9. F

    Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail (South Coast Rail)

    The 2013 Final Environmental Impact Report's schedules for Phase 2 had all trains skipping from Back Bay to Canton Jct. at transit loss for the Ruggles, Hyde Park, and Route 128 stops which would lose all their Stoughton trains. All because they stupidly neglected to model any NEC capacity...
  10. F

    Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail (South Coast Rail)

    Fall River blew it with the bus integration with their lack of interest in moving or tweaking the terminal for Battleship Cove station when that was still in the works. Battleship Cove would've been directly on 2 routes, SRTA 107 & 114, and been within 4 blocks of the City Hall super-loop that...
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    MBTA "Transformation" (Green Line, Red Line, & Orange Line Transformation Projects)

    There's double third rail + OCS from Maverick to Airport because the changeover point has bounced back and forth between the two stops over the years, so they're looking to decommission the segment of OCS they aren't currently using and which has reached replacement age. Orient Heights is the...
  12. F

    MBTA Commuter Rail (Operations, Keolis, & Short Term)

    Not likely to ever happen. The Milford Branch was historically only single-track, so the ROW pinches in spots especially around the wetlands in between Franklin Jct. and Forge Park where it runs on an embankment. The 495 overpasses outside Forge Park are also only single-track width. A...
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    Regional New England Rail (Amtrak & State DOT & NEC)

    No. The height change would mess with the junction with the Danbury Branch just west of the river, which is only about 800 ft. away. And you'd have to replace at least 3-4 over-road bridges with higher ones, too, exploding the budget and making permitting a lot harder because of the...
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    MBTA "Transformation" (Green Line, Red Line, & Orange Line Transformation Projects)

    The Longfellow backs up on the inbound side when there's station dwell delays at Park and DTX, and much more occasionally on the outbound side when there's dwell delays at Kendall and Central. The signal blocks laid out in 1988 with the installation of ATO aren't placed optimally, so...
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    General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

    Standard 25 kV railway electrification takes 115 kV single-phase from the utility and puts it through transformers to 50 kV traction voltage (which is then distributed to the trains at 25 kV)...the world-standard "2 x 25" scheme. So it's still quite a bit different from the T's entire rapid...
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    General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

    The The southside supplies the entire terminal district from a 25 kV Amtrak substation way out in Sharon that covers 30 linear miles of wires end-to-end, so there's nothing saying that there needs to be a sub sited right at/near the terminal district to provide adequate power. They wouldn't...
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    Other People's Rail: Amtrak, commuter rail, rapid transit news & views outside New England

    Probably means some other routes are going to run short on cars like the Downeaster while they bum those Superliners, but perhaps an indication that this is going to take more than a few days to sort out. But hey, it's better than the RR.net hive-mind proposal: "Just borrow a bunch of surplus...
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    General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

    Take it up with Ed Markey. He secured the $4M federal grant to study this yet again...and yet again come to the same conclusion that all previous studies have. Namely: It doesn't work for Purple-Blue transfers unless you do a weather-protected APM between the CR platforms and the Blue Line...
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    MBTA Commuter Rail (Operations, Keolis, & Short Term)

    Is this just a general "Kumbaya"-moment run celebrating the working relationship, or are they actually hashing out some serious business? I know CSX has been hitting them up for permission to install their I-ETMS positive train control system on top of the T's on the Freight Main overlap so...
  20. F

    Green Line Reconfiguration

    Again...they considered mid-block before and it was both a huge budget-buster with the labyrinthine mezzanines and a moderate grades-buster in addition to having very unfavorable transfer penalties. 2 stations with direct egresses legit priced out better than 1 with roundabout egresses it was...

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