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Given that by 2003 they had retreated to planning to short-turn most service at Boylston Loop because of growing deficiencies in schedule-keeping on the trunk, I wouldn't even say Phase 3 was promising "high-quality transfers" in the end. Not being able to get to Orange or Red on a 1-seat from...

What??? Like...a whole new alternate rail alignment along I-93? No...nobody's proposing that. That would cost billions more than just widening the current alignment, plus you'd never divert the Old Colony alignment away from the Quincy Center bus hub and all that 2-seat trip generation...

Can't. Red Line cars are 15-1/2 feet shorter than Commuter Rail cars, and the loss of that much carbody underside cannibalizes all of the space you'd need to mix power inputs for 600V DC third rail and 25 kV AC overhead. Plus you'd never be able to do a uni-car that makes weight for the Red...

TransitMatters specced 60-80 MPH actuals on the mainline from the terminal district through Braintree, 30 MPH actuals in the terminal district, and 100 MPH actuals on the branches to make those Phase I meets happen with impossible precision. All of their reports were bad on the speed vs. meet...

No. I'll give the same exact answer as the last time you brought this up. Quincy has a 55-year developed commuting affinity for the Downtown transfer stations and Cambridge. You are not politically going to be allowed to wreck all those commutes by forcing extra transfers and fare penalties...

TransitMatters generally went a little too threadbare for credulity in its Old Colony Modernization report with sheer-perfection timing single-track meets on the OC branches, but even they thought the entire main needed complete double-tracking to pull off effective :30 Regional Rail to all...

It looks awful.

Per Reddit an additional Red Line pair (1960/1961) was spotted in testing this week, so there was 1 confirmed delivery this month after none in February. Unclear if this empties Springfield until the Customs-released shells start arriving, or if they have a couple more yet to come. For...

Wollaston is definitely brutal. I don't see how that gets solved without blowing-up/rebuilding the station yet again. They'd either have to swing the Red Line alignment further out on the parking lot side of the station and/or narrow the somewhat curiously over-wide for its passenger load (28...

Hard to believe that the Old Colony lines are almost 29 years old. This service disruption is for the Boston-Braintree main affecting all OC trains. There are definitely things on the mainline coming up on replacement age (signaling, etc.) that need good preventative maintenance to stay reliable.

There's a finite amount of transit and land-use potential on the Conn River Line on account of the uniformly extremely closeby river itself. You don't have many bridges crossing the navigable river meaning the line has half-catchments over most of its length, and there's a lot of wetlands along...

Unlikely there'd be the service levels to merit it to Greenfield. The Valley isn't super-dense, so I doubt better-than-hourly service would draw enough. The NECR mainline north of Northfield is also an autorack-clearance (19'6") route and VTrans-identified future double-stack (20'6") route so...

Wouldn't bet on it soon. The last ConnDOT study on electrification of the Metro-North branches and Hartford used Caltrain electrification budgeting math, which completely blew it out to boondogglish proportions that broke the cost-benefit calculation. Just another example of how Caltrain...

Game: count the number of illegal parking maneuvers in their flyer photo!

The hourly Springfield-NYC service would probably entail extension of the Keystones from terminating-NY trains to thru-NY trains, since those run on a mostly hourly cadence. That's been talked about extensively as a long-term consideration. Capacity for it will exist once the top-down rehab of...

It's still variable-tension cat over the new bridge instead of fixed (though supposedly the structures are fully compatible with constant-tension if the bookending track is ever upgraded).

They haven't formally committed to it yet; Shore Line East is still running EMU's today. But the problem is not the pricing per se, but the turf warrage between Amtrak and ConnDOT. Friction over the state's heavy hand over Metro-North territory spills over into Amtrak-initiated skirmishes in...

They would only have to come up with 2 more feet's worth of curve radius in the reconfig to equal Park St. loop, which isn't going to be modified. So it's not that big an ask. Looping is definitely appropriate for a terminus like the B's where they have to triage a lot of between-headway...

I'm not talking about the equipment pool. I already said that. I'm talking about revenue. Where does Amtrak become convinced to give up its Boston revenue on any slot? Northeast Regionals are national trains. State sponsorship only goes as far as extensions off of the main trunk. Amtrak is...

Again...what is Amtrak's own motivation for diverting service away from its NEC profit center, regardless of what MassDOT wants to pay for? I know the equipment shortage is easing. I know NYP capacity is going to increase post-Gateway. But what's Amtrak's business motivation, after they...