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    MBTA Construction Projects

    I doubt it. The push-pull sets in the render include lots of single-levels, which are of course going away within the next 2 years. And it's a maintenance pain to paint and/or wrap stainless steel cars, so I doubt the bi-levels are ever going to be more decorated than they currently are...
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    Crazy Transit Pitches

    That's exactly where the 1970's Orange Line extension proposal sited its Reading station. Ash @ Main is also physically closer to Reading center at Town Common up Main St., so the walk scores are slightly better for that location than Reading Depot. Relocating the CR station is a fully viable...
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    Crazy Transit Pitches

    Actually, the way it would almost certainly go is a modification of Alt. C, shown in Magenta below: The dashed black line is the fully existing Wilmington Industrial Track, an out-of-service CSX freight spur. The rest of it is a graded power line ROW. You'd shiv in a southbound wye leg on the...
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    Massachusetts 2026 Congressional elections

    2nd-place finisher State Rep. Tran Nguyen picked up a bevy of late endorsements as the somewhat belated establishment pick, but party leaders basically dickered half the summer away in indecision and it ended up costing them because those endorsements didn't hit until August after a lot of...
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    Massachusetts 2026 Congressional elections

    https://commonwealthbeacon.org/politics/dan-koh-comes-out-on-top-in-crowded-primary-race-to-replace-moulton/ Dan Koh came out on top in the five-way primary (technically six-way, since one recent dropout was still on the ballot) for the open 6th Congressional District seat that Moulton gave up...
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    Other People's Rail: Amtrak, commuter rail, rapid transit news & views outside New England

    CAVEAT: The outfit that's pitching this smells a whole lot pie-in-the-sky and just a little bit scammy.
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    Transit Planning $h!tposting (Ideas so bad, they're good)

    Practically, the only way you're doing New York-Portland is via the Inland Route + a diversion down the Grand Junction + a reverse at North Station, because that's 100% on territory Amtrak has trackage rights and crew qualifications on (they do 2 Grand Junction equipment shuffles per week...
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    Massachusetts 2026 Congressional elections

    Who in Massachusetts GOP politics has a chance of flipping even a low turnout statewide election??? The state party is so MAGA-pilled now it's disowned even Charlie Baker, the only guy who's been able to actually do it in the last dozen years. I don't think a special election is an especially...
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    Copper Mill Development | Elm Street and Grove Street | Davis Square

    Do you have any data to back this up, or is this just your own personal feels about what (read: height) makes a destination "serious"? Do the 15 Red stops that didn't make the Top 12 in systemwide ridership flunk the "seriousness" test even more badly? And what "suburban commuters" are using...
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    Copper Mill Development | Elm Street and Grove Street | Davis Square

    The last time the T published the Blue Book compendium, Davis ranked 12th out of 63 prepayment stations in ridership. I assume if we're holding them to this lofty standard that the other 51 stations below it are goners too and we can just kiss the entire Blue Line and all of the Green Central...
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    Massachusetts 2026 Congressional elections

    That's not a default given. Somebody has to make that case that voting for Markey is throwing a term away due to his age. Moulton's had all year to make that case. He's largely failed to do so. Advertising is way, way down over the competitive Senate primary 6 years ago, Moulton spent too...
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    MBTA Commuter Rail (Operations, Keolis, & Short Term)

    Latest heritage unit, on F40 #1072. . . Homage to this:
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    Regional Rail (RUR) & North-South Rail Link (NSRL)

    If it tightens up the on-time performance, it's probably worth doing right now in spite of the future uncertainty as increased reliability will drive some immediate ridership gains even predating line-wide frequency increases. Haverhill definitely needs that. Although I was led to believe that...
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    MBTA Construction Projects

    Yeah, that line needs gates too. But MassDOT is going to take care of MassDOT-owned lines before it opens the pursestrings to do up private-owned lines, especially when CSX is being so spendy with self-financed upgrades that it can easily afford its own gate installations. The Framingham...
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    General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

    The entire agency would be falling down at repairing vehicles across all lines and modes if the warehouse were the problem, instead of just one make on one line being specifically unable to get parts. This points to an issue with CAF's timeliness at sending them parts. Which...ain't great and...
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    Massachusetts 2026 Congressional elections

    https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/80-year-old-ed-markey-may-trounce-another-young-challenger.html More polls this week: Public Policy Polling: Markey 52-22 among likely voters Suffolk U: Markey 52-38, likely voters Moulton was running about 9-12 points behind this Spring with very large...
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    Massachusetts 2026 Congressional elections

    I don't know if it's so much of that as: 1) Moulton has the personality of dry sandpaper, so it's an uphill battle to try to connect with voters on anything he may be passionate about. Markey is an old pro at (superficially or not) espousing rousing passion for a cause, and with an electorate...
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    Other People's Rail: Amtrak, commuter rail, rapid transit news & views outside New England

    The Effective Transit Alliance suffers from a perfectionism complex in their technical recommendations. Sort of like how TransitMatters' Regional Rail traffic modeling relies on heavily suspect hyper-aggressive performance expectations with threadbare safeguards...but plied on a more grand...
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    Other People's Rail: Amtrak, commuter rail, rapid transit news & views outside New England

    They didn't "economize" so much as they physically couldn't get all the desired lane and shoulder width into the CA/T build's footprint without omitting the inner walls and hoping for the best that the slurry walls could hold the water table. It was a known engineering risk from the start, so...
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    MBTA Buses & Infrastructure

    North Cambridge garage still isn't open, so they aren't running a full-enough fleet of BEB's to take over 100% of those routes and diesel-hybrids are still load-bearing for them at this time. Charlestown garage, where the fleet is temporarily based, only has a couple charging bays.

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