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Re: Green Line eRconfiguration $300 million across a number of disparate projects is absolutely a marginal amount of money when the things that you could be spending money on instead all have high-10 or 11 figure price tags (NSRL, Gateway, plus a bunch of other useless projects with 10 figure...

Re: Green Line eRconfiguration A moving overtake, of the kind that you can only do with a contiguous extra track, has superior utility to holding trains for 4+ minutes in the comparative middle of nowhere. There's also no actual drawback to adding the third track - as far as I can tell it's...

I'd be a lot more supportive of this idea if the City Point bus terminal was an actual terminal, or indeed, even just a real place beyond a bus parking lot in the middle of nowhere on the outskirts of Southie. Keep the actual bus storage where it is now, but I'd move the "terminal" (e.g., the...

If I recall correctly, the stated cost of Blue to Charles/MGH was $750 million. This is running entirely under a clean-roomed 60s urban-renewal boulevard and an "extension" of less than a mile, so the actual price point is likely lower and potentially significantly lower than that. This will...

It doesn't. Fixing the Braintree Split requires a whole bunch of exit ramp reconfiguration, but I'm not convinced that it's an implausible project even if you assume that there's going to be zero ROW acquisition. Now, that's not to say life doesn't get a whole lot easier if you put ROW...

No it doesn't. Starting in april, commuter rail monthly passes will just be printed in ink on charlie cards. There will still be no actual acceptance of Charlie on commuter rail.

Re: North-South Rail Link There's only ever going to be one northside portal - there's more than 3000 feet from end of platform to the point where Fitchburg trains need to peel off. If you're willing to build a flyover through the yard, you get another ~1450 feet to work with - but either way...

Re: Dr. Beverly Scott resigns This is a brave, brave move by Bev Scott. I'm extremely disappointed that she's resigning but let's be real - Baker was halfway through writing his smoke-up-the-ass press release where he "demonstrates strong leadership" through firing Scott when this happened...

I'll concede your first and second points. But there's a big difference between a promise and something legally binding. You'll forgive me if I'm rather skeptical of the efficacy of a promise not to come knocking on our doorsteps for spare change later. "Vote yes if you want to be a jerk"...

Depending on how strong the IOC's demands are for dedicated facilities (e.g. Olympics lanes) and state security, it actually very well could stop the bid. But even if it doesn't stop the bid, it does - depending on how the referendum would actually be worded - nicely deal with a lot of my...

No Olympics lane dedication, no dedicated public service ramp-up surrounding Olympics events, no special extra Olympics rail service. I'm sure there's a whole bunch of other little things that the city and the state does for any given large event - things that nobody really thinks about - all of...

You can't reconcile this with the assertion that you and others are making with regards to there being a strong demand for bringing the Olympics back to the US. They're mutually exclusive statements. Either the USOC is in the best position now because the demand's there for a US Olympics, and...

You keep saying this, but I've yet to see an answer for why Congressional meddling in the affairs of DC is an actual disadvantage. In fact, the opposite holds true: nowhere else in the country is federal power so absolute as it is in DC. The question isn't whether DC wants this for DC or not...

Deficiencies in the application are not the same thing as deficiencies in the technology itself. In this case, modern CBTC software deployed around the world today (including in NYC) is capable of 40 TPH per track. I understand that each of the four Green Line branches is using 9~10 TPH per...

Vincent Bono is promising that he won't take a dime in public funding to build his fun train up the Blackstone Valley corridor. As long as that's true, I'm of the opinion that we have absolutely nothing to lose here and no real reason to oppose him. The way I see it, there are three ways the...

Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail Sure, but the point was that you get A or B (or "Yes") if and only if you pull the "no, we aren't doing electric, no matter what the Army Corps of foolish idiots says, it can't happen, and by the way thanks for the $1b that we've already spent" trick. I...

Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail Fair point on A, but doesn't B wrap right back around? Fixing all the bridges and clearance issues has to happen as part of wiring up the core, doesn't it? And if that's the case, then we're back where we started with regards to DMU versus EMU...

Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail I'm fine with DMUs as a stopgap. I don't think there's any reason to be running them in conjunction with EMUs is my only real objection to keeping an active DMU fleet post-electrification. (Dual-mode locomotives solve the "only part of this line merits...

Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail I want to address points made by Matthew and Arlington. Electrification is a valid goal in and of itself, and absolutely should be demanded at every opportunity. Lest we forget, with the majority of this being built as a tortured single track...

That's actually an even bigger argument against this hairbrained scheme. If we are to acquire and begin utilizing DMUs, their maintenance facilities must be located close to the core. It's simply not efficient to have the maintenance facilities out in the pit that is Gillette Stadium if we're...