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Re: Fairmont Line Upgrade Which is why I wrote either/or on an extension or a cutback of the Providence Line. It's absolutely clear that RI's rail services have no business being treated as a conjoined part of the Providence Line in the way that Wickford Junction continues to be treated and...

Where did I say TOD development? I'm not out to get rid of the lumber business and/or try to aggressively up-zone in the middle of a small town with the kind of small-town politics that makes adding a grocery store on the main street a controversial suggestion. The kind of utility relocation...

Re: Fairmont Line Upgrade That would probably require this plan to be at all reasonable. And yet! In addition to the total omission of rapid transit improvements, South Coast FAIL's continued and obnoxious inclusion, no mention of connecting services south of Providence, no extension to...

IN THE INTEREST OF FULL DISCLOSURE, I have a personal stake in Kingston Station because it is my home station and trying to get to either Westerly or Wickford Junction instead is a monumental pain in the ass for me. In other words, I'm biased. That having been said, Kingston has far more room...

This is absolutely fascinating to me: Amtrak doesn't provide an even number of round-trips to ANY of the stations that some Regionals skip with the exceptions of Old Saybrook, Princeton Junction, and Aberdeen. Westerly gets 4 southbound trains but 5 northbound trains a day, Mystic gets 4...

The problem with the Hartford - Providence routing you've drawn is that it requires either a ridiculous amount of property takes in western Providence OR a ridiculously long tunnel underneath western Providence for what is essentially no point. If you drag the line down and across the...

Metro-North's non-revenue Beacon Line is, for the most part, a pile of hot garbage east of Hopewell Junction (and, frankly, west of Hopewell Junction isn't anything to write home about either) - but the section of it east of the Harlem Line that runs out to Danbury actually looks fit for revenue...

And I'm going to point out that he asked what the best way to shave 20 minutes off the trip time was, not an hour or more. If you increase the average moving speed of Amtrak's trains through the 55.7 miles of track shared with Metro-North by just 20 MPH, the total travel time comes down by 14...

Not at its highest potential, no - there are indeed some speed restrictions preventing that. But the line is entirely three-tracked, almost entirely four-tracked, and while dispatching would become slightly more complicated overall, Amtrak is more than capable of shaving some time off of the...

Providence Place was actually constructed with non-Euclidean geometry so that we might confuse and bamboozle tourists and suburbanites into staying just long enough to run over the amount of time needed for the price of their parking ticket to jump up to the next price tier. Also, so that...

Telling Metro-North to fuck right off, Amtrak's in charge of dispatching now. No, I'm serious. The only thing preventing Amtrak trains from running faster than they are today along significant stretches of the New Haven Line (significant enough to shave 20 minutes off the trip) is the fact...

I mean, it's not like the entire point of the NEC Future according to the FRA was to produce a Tier 1 broad-corridor impact EIS, or anything, and it's not like the stated goal of every single potential NEC corridor alternative past the most rudimentary, low-funding level alternatives is to...

39 train slots a day. That's what the fuss is. Because the Connecticut Marine Trades Association holds every single movable crossing in the state hostage, and because the NIMBY coalitions in New London County hold the entire Shore Line hostage through the 11 grade crossings they won't allow...

So you think Hartford - Providence isn't feasible, but the Sunnel is?? Is that what you're saying with this post?

It has to be one and not the other because while reworking the NEC is absolutely not going to be the monolith project it's presented as in its current form, it's also not going to be broken down into phases as small as Hartford to Willimantic or Providence to Coventry. Actual construction may...

Psychologically the biggest impacts are when you cross hour thresholds on travel time - especially the 2 hour threshold and the 3 hour threshold. People are only really thinking about particular minute-by-minute impacts on the total time in the planning phase. Once we've gotten this built and...

First of all, the 84 route might get one more city than the 95 route does - but it also cuts out an entire state. Second of all, if we're moving people at an average speed of 160+ MPH, does it really matter that much if the route is the "fastest" possible? Oh, no, we sent the train through...

What is this fascination with Worcester - Hartford, anyway? I seriously don't get it. Providence - Hartford connects two state capitals (and through Providence - Boston, three), and has a much greater positive impact than Worcester - Hartford would because Providence metro is larger than...

I don't think that the Woonsocket Line is ever going to pull down the numbers necessary for better service than 30 peak / 60 off-peak. Maybe I'm being too negative on it, but that's my assessment. Same situation on the South County Line - 30 peak / 60 off-peak is just about the best that we're...

RIDOT's study on Woonsocket Commuter Rail suggests 27~38 minutes for Providence - Woonsocket Service, and 47~66 minutes for Woonsocket -Worcester. (Total time could be anywhere from 74 to 104 minutes. Not exactly speedy.) As far as I'm aware, at least, this is still a priority for RIDOT and is...