Search results

Re: Open Thread Amtrak and commuter rail both still grounded at this time.

Re: Open Thread They aren't sold out, they've all been canceled between Boston and New Haven.

Re: Open Thread Considering that these guys were engaging in open gun battles and there are reports of them hurling explosives at police, yeah, I disagree. I'm perfectly fine with shutting the city down until this guy is dead or in custody. What's the alternative, in your mind? "Yeah, so...

Rif. Riff! Calm down. It's all going to be okay. Just breathe.

The people of Boston are going to sink a Boston 2024 bid long before any practical concerns (of which anything to do with yesterday's tragedy and the ongoing response to it) get the chance to.

Fair enough. Right, I get that. But with the Southeast Expressway megaproject floating out there and the penchant for graft and mission creep, do you really, honestly expect that we're going to be able to get-in-get-out on dealing with signal hell and then have lightning strike twice on a...

The Cummins/Blue Hill intersection clusterfuck immediately west of Mattapan isn't what I would exactly call a trivial thing to negotiate. I'd also be concerned about the potential impacts to any future plans for Red Line to Mattapan that this would have. Which I don't think they can...

Is there a solid plan of action for Fairmount and Readville (especially Readville Junction, also the Yard) yet? That's the largest immediate-term problem that could be readily pointed to as a cause for this meeting. Everything else that comes to mind is either too long-term (electrification)...

No it's not, because now you have no way for southbound passengers coming in on an eastbound line to transfer to a southbound line without riding up to Park Street or routing a bizarre west-south line that's probably going to require another direction reverse.

If by "little" you mean "complete overhaul of Boylston Station" then, yes, you're right, it just takes a little re-configuration to allow for trains to surface onto Essex. Boylston's current orientation is north-south. Its platforms are north/south-facing and are all located north of...

Boylston Station is pointed the wrong way, so you're talking about introducing an obnoxious back-in/back-out or back-in-wye-out just so that you can surface portal onto Essex Street in order to then street-run along a street you've closed for the express purpose of having a dual-mode...

Re: Boston to Cape rail With the expected trip time coming out at 2 hours and change, perhaps the theory is that Cape residents returning from Boston will board the morning train the next day rather than wanting to deal with a late night Hyannis arrival. That's not a particularly good...

I take offense to the overhyping of these things as a magic bullet solution when really, nothing could be farther from the truth. I take offense to the gross generalizations that anyone who opposes or doesn't like micro-units is "wasteful" - that you're either singing the praises of shoebox...

Re: South Station Tower The real impact for commuters from the North-South Rail Link is being able to deadhead out-of-service trains coming through from the south to BET instead of having them chew up our limited quantity of available platforms because sending things over the Grand Junction on...

Frankly, I think it's cartoonish and it offends my design sensibilities, but I don't want to be caught complaining too much about it since they've finally put a fucking kitchen in and I don't want to risk them taking it back out again. That having been said, there's a huge, huge, HUGE world of...

There's two mezzanines on either end of the platforms, both inside fare control - the elevators and escalators are all on the north end, with the exit up to Tufts and the bus stop on Washington Street. The south end features no elevators (I believe there may be an escalator? I'll check tomorrow)...

Re: Boston to Cape rail People on the Cape can't want to take a weekend trip up to Boston?

A cross-platform transfer is perfectly acceptable for Washington - Waterfront, and still a vast improvement over the existing situation. For that matter, a long ped tunnel is still OK as well. It's the idea that we're going to undo this connection or that spiking this connection is somehow a...

I don't know. Let's ask the judges what they think. Judges?

That's an average you took, not an actual indicator of what the real time from one train to the next is at Back Bay. 20 minutes would be barely acceptable by rapid transit standards if it was a regular 20 minutes, all day long - but it's not. 4.6 minutes - which, again, is an average rather than...