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That article gives a reasonable explanation of the exploding costs (and the Transit Costs Project he links to is fantastic resource) but I think he's missing a lot of subtlety in station planning. He's painting a lot of those amenities as completely frivolous, but they're not. They actually...

Maybe someone here has the answer for you, but I always like to recommend directly asking a librarian at BPL. https://www.bpl.org/ask-a-librarian/ Call, email, visit in person, or fill out a web form. Even if what you're looking for isn't in their catalog, they can track these things down for...

I was just wondering about this on the Fairmount Line. I don't ride that often, but you're supposed to be able to use a CharlieCard and I've never once seen one of those validation machines working. I rode the other day and told the conductor the validation machine was broken. He said "Yeah,"...

Yeah, this was surprisingly sloppy for a report like this. For the transit planners out there, how should they have gone about predicting ridership? Really practically, is there some kind of standardized software? Or a lot of formulas that have to be cobbled together for each unique project?

Thanks for that, but I don't really know what that 1:53 would mean if we were to reopen the line today. (And I'm not saying we should. We should run more buses.) Like, since we discussed this in another thread, how would acceleration on a 1930s steam locomotive compare to any train today? I...

I think of trips like this on the odd chance someone mentions reviving the train to Provincetown. That train would be slow and unbearable if you took it all the way from Boston, but it could be nice and useful for these kinds of shorter trips once you actually get to the Cape. You could take the...

I've lost whatever point you're getting at in this thread. But the $50 million for White Stadium has nothing to do with redevelopment potential or building a new "Entertainment Zone." Boston is fixing up part of a city owned park, that is and will be open to the public. This is mainly to...

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.