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Excellent analysis as usual. Do you know why the GLX platforms were built or provisioned for 300 ft, when it seems unnecessary given that platform extensions to this length elsewhere seem infeasible?

https://www.nbcboston.com/investigations/after-mbta-implements-new-payment-system-rampant-fare-evasion-on-green-line/3707620/?amp=1 Note: While I have no doubt that people evade fares on the surface branches, IMO the title is clickbait-y. As written, the headline would make you think that...

Vehicle Capacities I went down the rabbit hole of figuring out vehicle capacities while writing the recent comment about Silver Line Phase III. Here are the capacity figures for each car that I can find. I've bolded the most reliable figures in my opinion. (Reminder that each Green Line Type...

To clarify: My comment was about the historical, real-world SL Phase 3 proposal's "terrible" Silver-Green transfer for the mid-block option (as pictured) and its impacts on ridership, not about any hypothetical GLR. (I agree that most reasonable GLR plans have reduced needs for a Boylston...

Thanks! A few interesting bits from a read of the section (2.3.4.2 and 2.3.4.3): Planned service levels: Unsurprisingly, they planned for much more Boylston-Seaport trips than full Nubian-Seaport trips. But what surprised me was just how many Seaport trips were planned: 74 vehicles per hour...

Question about Silver Line Phase III (for those who know about engineering and historical studies much more than I do): Why did they do away with a combined Boylston-Chinatown station and opt for two separate stations? The more I think about it, the more I feel that the two-station option has...

To some extent, we already have this at EWR. (The AirTrain can be annoying, but it's much closer to an actual airport APM than JFK's AirTrain is.) So I'd say that any rail-to-air passengers along the NEC south of EWR, and possibly south of New Haven-ish, will probably not be too enticed by a...

Somehow, the dataset "MBTA Commuter Rail Ridership by Trip, Season, Route/Line, and Stop" on the MBTA Open Data Portal is broken: https://mbta-massdot.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/mbta-commuter-rail-ridership-by-trip-season-route-line-and-stop/about Does anyone have an archive of it when it...

How about "Chelsea Depot"? To revive the historical trend of using "depot" as the place-making name if it's not exactly close to the center of that municipality.

Right, I somehow forgot about how bad Courthouse's name is. I'm also wondering about Seaport Common, the name of an actual park nearby. The goal is more as an explicit mention of this being Seaport (and probably the most popular part of it), not because of the park's own notability. But...

Working off this, if we assume that each GL track is 11' wide (minimum spacing, narrower than the eventual design), each CR track is 13' wide, no additional clearance outside any tracks (even the two outmost tracks), and catenary and signal poles take no space, we get... 48 feet. So yeah, looks...

Splitting the details of the ROW into two followup comments due to the character limit:

What @TheRatmeister said was my prior belief going into this... Until I found that even getting to Porter may possibly be more of a headache than we thought. (TIL: You can measure exact ROW parcel widths in the Massachusetts Interactive Property Map.) Here are the "reasonable maximum" widths...

On one hand, yes, there are plenty of reasons to change Maverick given the undesirable history of its namesake colonist (and that's putting it lightly). And if we're set on renaming it, then Jeffries Point is a "safe" option. On the other hand: Despite its origin, the name Maverick has taken...

Now, onto something different: This is so crazy, I love it :) Some station names that I like better than current ones: Transfer stations: City Hall Red Line: Fort Point, Columbia Orange Line: Mystic Landing, Bunker Hill (assuming no future/hypothetical line closer to the neighborhood), South...

I'm glad that the Kendall-Back Bay subway idea is getting some serious discussions here from @ritchiew and @TheRatmeister. There are a lot that I want to comment on, but I'll do so later. Some of the follow-up discussions probably fit better for the "Redesign the Urban Ring" thread, especially...

https://www.hulltimes.com/ht-online/2025/4/24/mbta-plan-would-install-44-fixed-stops-eliminate-flagging-system-for-riders-to-hail-a-bus Also:

Green Line A branch, where A stands for... Arsenal? This is a very quick shower thought. But it has a few curious advantages: Less overlap with the B branch and the 57 bus (which may not necessarily be a pro depending on how you see it) Much better ROW availability than the 57 corridor B&A...

A consolidation of key parts of the Green Line Transformation program from these documents and others (some of which have been posted here before). Corrections are welcome. GLT Entry to Engineering will be requested in Spring 2025 Platform design standards: Current: 8'' high, 7' 6'' wide, 140'...