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Moving the following discussion from the $h!tposting thread: While responding to the Urban Ring discussions in particular, I ended up writing enough arguments and analyses that they became a blogpost on its own: Can a Kendall-Back Bay Subway Be An “Urban Ring”? (Opinions and Analyses)...

FWIW, many other cities (especially outside of the US) frequently build direct underground walkways between station exits and the basement levels of nearby developments, avoiding the need to reach the ground level altogether. When I was in Singapore, it was common for shopping malls in...

Don't Needham Line riders still have the option to transfer to OL at Forest Hills and Ruggles? The only issue is with transfers to outbound buses, if most of the bus routes between Forest Hills and Roslindale right now are cut back to Roslindale after OL+1. However, that's a pretty minor issue...

I'll save most details on engineering and cost for future blog posts, but one point that I want to address now: Strong disagree. Yes, we do know how much it takes to build Essex -- expensive enough to kill a real-world project with political momentum. We don't know how much it takes to build...

One last note: In reasoning about all the components (including contents and thoughts planned for subsequent blog post series that I haven't expressed publicly yet), I keep drawing back to this idea that I posted in February 2024: This is essentially Alternative 2 (Tripod + Kenmore-Seaport) in...

Demand and priority for transfers Another aspect is: Which connections actually need a transfer between OL and GLR? Some of them can be handled by alternative routes. (Reminder: Not all of them are replaceable by Urban Ring, because "Kenmore" also has Hynes, "Huntington" also has...

Several good points here that I agree with: Having any kind of 2x2 virtually eliminates concerns about within-GLR transfer, leaving Orange Line transferas the main problem "2x2" here doesn't distinguish Park Inner and GC Nubian-West transfers may need to use Boylston and/or Park...

Excellent analysis as usual. Do you know why the GLX platforms were built or provisioned for 300 ft, when it seems unnecessary given that platform extensions to this length elsewhere seem infeasible?

https://www.nbcboston.com/investigations/after-mbta-implements-new-payment-system-rampant-fare-evasion-on-green-line/3707620/?amp=1 Note: While I have no doubt that people evade fares on the surface branches, IMO the title is clickbait-y. As written, the headline would make you think that...

Vehicle Capacities I went down the rabbit hole of figuring out vehicle capacities while writing the recent comment about Silver Line Phase III. Here are the capacity figures for each car that I can find. I've bolded the most reliable figures in my opinion. (Reminder that each Green Line Type...

To clarify: My comment was about the historical, real-world SL Phase 3 proposal's "terrible" Silver-Green transfer for the mid-block option (as pictured) and its impacts on ridership, not about any hypothetical GLR. (I agree that most reasonable GLR plans have reduced needs for a Boylston...

Thanks! A few interesting bits from a read of the section (2.3.4.2 and 2.3.4.3): Planned service levels: Unsurprisingly, they planned for much more Boylston-Seaport trips than full Nubian-Seaport trips. But what surprised me was just how many Seaport trips were planned: 74 vehicles per hour...

Question about Silver Line Phase III (for those who know about engineering and historical studies much more than I do): Why did they do away with a combined Boylston-Chinatown station and opt for two separate stations? The more I think about it, the more I feel that the two-station option has...

To some extent, we already have this at EWR. (The AirTrain can be annoying, but it's much closer to an actual airport APM than JFK's AirTrain is.) So I'd say that any rail-to-air passengers along the NEC south of EWR, and possibly south of New Haven-ish, will probably not be too enticed by a...

Somehow, the dataset "MBTA Commuter Rail Ridership by Trip, Season, Route/Line, and Stop" on the MBTA Open Data Portal is broken: https://mbta-massdot.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/mbta-commuter-rail-ridership-by-trip-season-route-line-and-stop/about Does anyone have an archive of it when it...

How about "Chelsea Depot"? To revive the historical trend of using "depot" as the place-making name if it's not exactly close to the center of that municipality.

Right, I somehow forgot about how bad Courthouse's name is. I'm also wondering about Seaport Common, the name of an actual park nearby. The goal is more as an explicit mention of this being Seaport (and probably the most popular part of it), not because of the park's own notability. But...

Working off this, if we assume that each GL track is 11' wide (minimum spacing, narrower than the eventual design), each CR track is 13' wide, no additional clearance outside any tracks (even the two outmost tracks), and catenary and signal poles take no space, we get... 48 feet. So yeah, looks...