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  1. 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...
  2. 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...
  3. F

    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...
  4. 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...
  5. F

    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...
  6. F

    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...
  7. F

    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...
  8. F

    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...
  9. F

    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...
  10. F

    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...
  11. F

    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...
  12. 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...
  13. F

    Green Line Reconfiguration

    There were elevators not pictured in those renders, and the egress location in general would have limited wiggle room because of the need to interface with the legacy Green and Orange transfer stations from the mezzanines. So there probably was not any practical option to place the egresses...
  14. F

    Other People's Rail: Amtrak, commuter rail, rapid transit news & views outside New England

    I can't imagine the T's refuse would perform well on intercity routes. The flats ride like ass in their dotage, much worse than the Horizons which at least had a lot more preventative maintenance on their trucks because of the rigors of daily intercity running and the need for a comfortable...
  15. F

    Residential Development | 745 Concord Ave | Cambridge

    It's not even hand-wringing with Alewife. It's more like a "meh...it's on the edge of town by the highway" sort of rudderlessness. That's why it's hard to perceive of a little more height-driven density really drawing out the opposition where there hasn't been many. They haven't exactly been...
  16. F

    Green Line Reconfiguration

    SL Phase III's tunnel bore interacted with building foundations at both Chinatown and Boylston stations, adding a lot of mitigation cost to the core segment. The project's tripling price tag between 2003-2009 wasn't all tied up in the flailing over portal locations; a good portion of it was the...
  17. F

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

    Sort of, but not likely. Only the HSP-46 locomotives are rated for 90; the F40PH-3C's and GP40MC's are still capped at 79 MPH. The 33 unrebuilt 900-series Kawasaki coaches are also still capped at 79, though they're coming due for a (still yet unfunded) rebuild that would uprate them. And of...
  18. F

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

    There's only 152 active single-levels right now, with 85 stored (some of them languishing out-of-service since before COVID) and a couple dozen sold or scrapped. They haven't been using 260 single-levels' worth of capacity for a long time now. The "discrepancy" gets squared by culling the...
  19. F

    Other People's Rail: Amtrak, commuter rail, rapid transit news & views outside New England

    https://media.amtrak.com/2025/03/amtrak-statement-an-update-to-our-horizon-cars/ Amtrak removes its entire 104-car Horizon fleet from service after routine inspections found extensive corrosion on the undersides of their aluminum carbodies. Mass cancellations on the Cascades and several...
  20. F

    Residential Development | 745 Concord Ave | Cambridge

    I have never come across those people. There's a shitload more housing around Alewife than there was 10-15 years ago, and the Reservoir paths are decidely much busier than they've ever been. It doesn't seem to be unleashing a massive crisis of conscience in the locals that has them storming...

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