Search results

Green Line trunk: Medford/Tufts: the origin of the city's name is unclear - it may have been "meadow by the ford" in the Mystic River, or one of two towns in England. Ball Square: the square is named for John Nichols Ball, a businessman and politician who had a factory there Magoun Square: the...

A discussion in the Transit Planning $h!tposting thread led me to be curious about the origin of MBTA subway station names. Here are the non-obvious ones on the Red and Orange lines: Alewife: named for the creek, which is named for the fish species. Davis: Davis Square is named for Person...

Thanks so much for posting these. I am extremely unhappy with the seemingly recent trend where slides are shown on video at public meetings, but the PDF is not posted anywhere. PDFs are easy to save and provide a permanent record; videos disappear whenever the hosting service dies.

The near-term B and C accessibility/stop consolidation projects are not part of the Core Capacity program.

$42M design-build contract awarded for C Branch accessibility: https://cdn.mbta.com/sites/default/files/2025-04/2a._Green%20Line%20C%20Branch%20Accessibility%20-%20A26CN04%20%20V2.pdf Also an update on the Core Capacity Program...

For a single-line system it's probably more based on site (and labor) availability than anything else. (CapMetro, for example, is colocated with a bus yard.) I will also note that FrontRunner and Rail Runner are both substantially bidirectional systems - FrontRunner with the biggest metro at the...

That's the nature of transit pitches - it's very common for multiple people to independently come up with similar ideas, especially in a 300-plus-page thread! If you look at the very first page of this thread, there are ideas there that we still discuss 15 years later - and there's someone...

I think that's been proposed on here before, and I know Ari Ofsevit has proposed it. It's certainly not easy - you're talking 4-5 miles of new tunnel, almost entirely under water and filled land - but certainly intriguing.

It makes a bit more sense within historical context. South Acton has always been one of the more significant stations on the line - it was the junction for the branch to Marlborough (after the 1930s, Maynard), and has been a short turn terminal since the late 19th century. Littleton never was a...

Those all seem generally logical. My very quick add-ons: Riverside expansion is tricky because of the proposed development. There is a plausible case for double-decking the storage tracks, though. The inside of the Needham Junction wye was proposed in the 1945-47 Coolidge Commission plan...

There was also a century less of buried utilities and high-rises to complicate construction. And while the BERy's subway/surface transfer stations tended to be spacious, the downtown stations were often rather cramped, never mind modern needs like elevators and escalators and their machinery...

Yeah, and South Acton does have a bit more parking - 287 spots versus 203.

This is clearly the whales' revenge for the MBTA extending service to the Whaling City.

Thanks for this - where are these slides from?

Wickford Junction was never expected to generate substantial ridership to Boston - it was always intended for high-frequency intrastate service. That never materialized, and now it's a sore thumb.

Where are these slides from?

Correct!

Not my photo (actually taken by MassDEP in 2008) but here's one that baffled me for a bit.

Valley Road being eliminated would end a nearly-century-old oddity: the station is not and has never been at Valley Road. Valley Road is 450 feet to the west, while Rock View Road is half that distance. It's not a result of names being changed - the road names were in place decades before the...

Also interesting to note: after being reintroduced in December 2024, 57A service is again being cut in favor of better frequency on the full 57. They're claiming frequency increases from "every 15-20" to "every 10" on the 77 at peak hours as well. However, the 77 currently seems to run as...