Blue line idea

[tangent]

You refuse to say who in Revere is making such strident objections. If it's as pervasive as you say, then it's documented a whole lot more widely than your own personal private conversations you may have had with somebody in town. Point out some news mentions and stop being coy. It was only months ago that Seth Moulton made his big stump speech about advocating for this. Revere would've had a rebuttal to recent news if it's that big a "non-starter".


And, sorry bud, but you have an established rep on AB of going into passive-aggressive TROLLOLLOL mode pushing unsupported contrarian nonsense on repeat for your own idle boredom. You made your bones in the B24 thread with that, and I'm hardly the only one who's called you out on it. So forgive the skepticism in asking for some source of independent corroboration.

Every time I think you might be willing to engage in an adult conversation you settle in to this pedantic long winded bs and end up with a personal attack.

 

[tangent]

Whenever I think of the Blue Line Extension I always picture the route that doesn't go through Point of Pines by default, and I assume that most others do as well because of the noted ROW issues. I don't see there being project-stalling opposition from just Oak Island, so I too am confused why there would be Revere specific opposition stopping this project. At most I can picture someone in a back room somewhere who is already invested against the project holding up hypothetical or negligible community opposition as an excuse not to do the project.

The reason why the Blue Line extension hasn't yet happened is the same story of every other transit project in Massachusetts, lack of funds and support from the state government.

Of course cost is a big issue. The water crossings make it very expensive.

 

[FK4]

Every time I think you might be willing to engage in an adult conversation you settle in to this pedantic long winded bs and end up with a personal attack.

Well... F-Line has asked you for verified sources, and despite the above being your SIXTH post on the issue you have yet to answer with a source for your claim that there is opposition in Revere. You keep responding, but there's no content. So until you address the question asked, you're just wasting time and proving him right.

 

[tangent]

Well... F-Line has asked you for verified sources, and despite the above being your SIXTH post on the issue you have yet to answer with a source for your claim that there is opposition in Revere. You keep responding, but there's no content. So until you address the question asked, you're just wasting time and proving him right.

I am not naming names about private conversations in a pseudo anonymous online discussion board. They don't even name names in most Boston Globe articles when they name unnamed sources... You are wasting time and diverting the discussion away from discussion of actual constructive solutions with baseless insinuations.

F-Line didn't even know that Seth Moulton doesn't represent Revere when somehow citing his support as evidence of lack of opposition in Revere.

You name names. Tell me the names of elected officials in Revere that support F-Lines suggested route. Vaguely supporting some hypothetical Blue Line extension doesn't count. Especially when the city has been regularly allowing people to build on the right of way past Wonderland Station. That to me alone should be proof enough of intent. We aren't talking about some rumors of opposition here, the local elected government is literally working with landowners to physically block the way.


F-Line suggesting the Point of Pines route is just plain ignorant and I was being polite up until he called me a troll and implied I was lying about having had conversations confirming the opposition from Revere.

Saying that the lack of movement on BLX to Lynn is because of lack of advocacy in Lynn and points North without acknowledgement of Revere's opposition is plain ignorant.

I acknowledge that cost is a major factor, but until you even nail down a route that can garner support from Revere then cost isn't even your first hurdle.

Maybe you can cut through Butler Circle and relocate Wonderland station, maybe make Wonderland a combined Blue/CR station supporting a development at the old dog track, maybe you can cut over through the wetlands just past the station and make some other political and wetlands remediations. Those are the discussions that need to happen... First and foremost with and in Revere.

 

[FK4]

I'm just telling you what I see as an outside observer, dude! If I were in your shoes and someone asked how I had heard something that I strongly stated or claimed here, I would say, "because I live in revere and my neighbor told me this and he knows because he's on a community board" or, "my sister in law knows one of the city councillors"... Etc... Any news article will still release the role of the source, without the name... Because otherwise it's just hearsay. You can't just say, "I know this fact" and then despite multiple questions refuse to acknowledge any source at all. And now, you're basically saying above that the fact that developers have built on the ROW is evidence in and of itself of some organized opposition in revere.

This discussion actually is relevant since support and opposition determines a large part of a route and whether it gets built or not. I don't have a stake in this argument, I don't live in revere, and I don't have any connections to any communities along the proposed route. If you have bona fide information, or connections to revere, then by all means share and you can do so without naming an actual name. F Lines accusation may have been unfair, but again, despite the war of words you're just going back to pointing to some developments on the ROW as an example of presumed opposition.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Oh, FFS. Last response on this inanity.

I am not naming names about private conversations in a pseudo anonymous online discussion board. They don't even name names in most Boston Globe articles when they name unnamed sources... You are wasting time and diverting the discussion away from discussion of actual constructive solutions with baseless insinuations.

But if it's as pervasive as you say, there would be a paper trail. You're not even attempting to do that.

F-Line didn't even know that Seth Moulton doesn't represent Revere when somehow citing his support as evidence of lack of opposition in Revere.

Moulton represents LYNN. His comments about BLX were about LYNN, not Revere. Since BLX must exit Revere to reach Lynn, if Revere had an objection there would've been some sort of publicly recorded response from them.

You're sprouting non-sequiturs as a thread-derail, and damn well know it.

You name names. Tell me the names of elected officials in Revere that support F-Lines suggested route. Vaguely supporting some hypothetical Blue Line extension doesn't count. Especially when the city has been regularly allowing people to build on the right of way past Wonderland Station. That to me alone should be proof enough of intent. We aren't talking about some rumors of opposition here, the local elected government is literally working with landowners to physically block the way.

MY route? I'm sorry...the state has long-preferred the Eastern Route bolt-on because of the encroachment in Point of Pines.

Screencap from the 2003 PMT:

The only open question about their preferred routing, and the only such point I addressed in my post is: what's the most feasible jump-over point from Wonderland to the Eastern Route. Diamond Creek (Option 1 jump-over) has EIS'ing issues which may force Oak Island (Option 2 jump-over) as path of least resistance.

That is the only consideration I laid out, and all I outlined was the what-if if it had to be Oak Island. Obviously they haven't even done a DEIS about Diamond Creek or Oak I, so we don't know enough to yet to say.

You, apparently, either can't be arsed to read that or have a real jones this weekend for putting words in other people's mouths.

F-Line suggesting the Point of Pines route is just plain ignorant and I was being polite up until he called me a troll and implied I was lying about having had conversations confirming the opposition from Revere.

This would be a lie, because I never said that. But you knew that, so TROLLOLLOLLOLLOL.

Saying that the lack of movement on BLX to Lynn is because of lack of advocacy in Lynn and points North without acknowledgement of Revere's opposition is plain ignorant.

And your continued refusals to say what that opposition is, other than inventing some fantasyland where this discussion is advocating for the PoP routing...is being ignorant and insincere.

I acknowledge that cost is a major factor, but until you even nail down a route that can garner support from Revere then cost isn't even your first hurdle.

And when you base this on rebuttal to a completely make-believe discussion about Point of Pines route advocacy, your own threadshitting is the #1 hurdle to us continuing to talk about the various issues.

Maybe you can cut through Butler Circle and relocate Wonderland station, maybe make Wonderland a combined Blue/CR station supporting a development at the old dog track, maybe you can cut over through the wetlands just past the station and make some other political and wetlands remediations. Those are the discussions that need to happen... First and foremost with and in Revere.

Which was exactly the whole point of this discussion. But then you lied about this discussion being about Point of Pines advocacy, cited a monolithic opposition to the routing no one was talking about to begin with, picked nits with non-sequiturs factoids nobody invoked...like who Seth Moulton was and was not talking about..., refused to name any publicly available evidence of said opposition, and then resorted to picking fights with other posters.

So why should any of us assume this pattern of behavior is anything other than the exact kind of trolling you developed quite the reputation for dumping all over the B24 thread and couple other recent threads?

 

[tangent]

If the cutover through Diamond Creek area is not acceptable to environmental regulators, then there really isn't a viable alternative. That's it. It really does depend on that route or something crazy though/over the rotary. My intent is simply to derail talk of going through Point of Pines and any route that cuts over after Diamond Creek. I think I made that clear. Talk like that is counterproductive because it will increase opposition.

I think first you need to focus on increasing commuter rail service regardless of Blue Line expansion. Having increased service to North Station and Salem doesn't detract or distract from BLX, but rather it enables the kind of investment in Lynn that will eventually help justify the Blue Line. Eventually.

And having Lynn become a transit hub for transfers between a more robust CR schedule and Blue Line should be the end goal here. That will help reduce transfers in-town.

 

[Scalziand]

Are you lumping in the Oak Island route with PoP?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

If the cutover through Diamond Creek area is not acceptable to environmental regulators, then there really isn't a viable alternative. That's it. It really does depend on that route or something crazy though/over the rotary. My intent is simply to derail talk of going through Point of Pines and any route that cuts over after Diamond Creek. I think I made that clear. Talk like that is counterproductive because it will increase opposition.

No one was talking about PoP, so your intent was to fabricate a discussion that never happened...then derail a discussion that never happened by citing monolithic opposition without attribution.

Yes...you have made it absolutely clear that you are trolling the everloving shit out of this discussion.

I think first you need to focus on increasing commuter rail service regardless of Blue Line expansion. Having increased service to North Station and Salem doesn't detract or distract from BLX, but rather it enables the kind of investment in Lynn that will eventually help justify the Blue Line. Eventually.

And having Lynn become a transit hub for transfers between a more robust CR schedule and Blue Line should be the end goal here. That will help reduce transfers in-town.

You could've made that case all along and stayed on-topic. But instead you decided to waste one full page of this thread lying your ass off. And you wonder why you're not being taken seriously?

 

[tangent]

Are you lumping in the Oak Island route with PoP?

Probably. Oak Island is better than PoP, but it still cuts off about three hundred apartments from their parking and I think you probably have to knock down the rent-a-tool building to keep the curves reasonable. And still requires substantial wetlands work behind the ballfield.

DC probably would be double the wetland disturbance compared with Oak Island and still require 5 or so houses to be taken in order to turn the at grade commuter rail crossing into an overpass for Oak Island Rd and perhaps widen the ROW.

But making Oak Island Rd into bridge over the tracks would be good for Indigo/DMU increased service frequency and could be packaged that way.

I could see an infill CR station at the old dog track supporting existing businesses and a redevelopment there as being appealing to Revere as part of the package.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

I could see an infill CR station at the old dog track supporting existing businesses and a redevelopment there as being appealing to Revere as part of the package.

CR station idea at Wonderland was already subject to a full feasibility study, and rejected due to anemic ridership. Flaws cited were the extremely long 1000 ft. walk to get across in the transfers, and near-nonexistent trip generation to or from Revere. The only category where its scoring rating came out non- poor was on TOD for mutually supporting dog track redevelopment.

Revere was on-record saying it saw little benefit in advancing commuter rail station plans.

 

[tangent]

The only category where its scoring rating came out non- poor was on TOD for mutually supporting dog track redevelopment.

Thanks. That's what I just said.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Thanks. That's what I just said.

No, you said it would be appealing to Revere. Revere expressed otherwise because it wouldn't bring trips in or out of Revere, just onsite/offsite to whatever was built at the dog park. If I had to guess at what their rationale was for giving that counterintuitive answer parting out "Revere" from Wonderland TOD: fears that the dog park would go casino, since the Gaming Commission was agitating for license powers and salivating over that site 15+ years before the real licensing initiative was passed and Suffolk Downs came available.

The scoping study was released in '99. When the North Shore Transit Improvements study revisited it in 2004 the ridership numbers at Wonderland CR were slashed back to just 400/day (i.e. little bit less than Hamilton-Wenham, little bit more than Montserrat). And that was contingent on increases in CR service and Wonderland TOD being imminent, neither of which have happened. Subsequent follow-on studies for very similar infill CR<-->rapid transit transfer stations at Alewife and Union Sq. have shown even worse projected demand on the CR side, with the JFK infill being the system's biggest modern-era infill ridership flop. Turns out there's a big demand difference between the stations that stick CR, rapid transit, and a bus terminal in a well-integrated hub with routes diverging all directions (Ruggles, Forest Hills, Malden, Porter) vs. the ones where the CR platform is offset from the main station and the bus routes are either fizzing out or sticking to one non-diverging path (Braintree, JFK).

Chances are if Wonderland gets a third pass at a study their number-crunching methodology is going to get updated to reflect what they've learned elsewhere, and that 400/day figure will get slashed again until it ends up on the not-recommended trash heap. Too many unidirectional buses + the system-high outlier on walking distance between rapid transit/busway and CR platforms = near-zero utilization, and TOD + increased CR/Indigo schedules aren't enough to goose the numbers because those liabilities are too steep vs. what passengers have been shown to most value in their transfer hubs.

This is why Wonderland on Indigo isn't a substitute for BLX-Lynn. Enough that mythical full Indigo service to Salem probably still isn't going to produce enough Wonderland demand to merit the infill, TOD or no TOD. Lynn's a near-match on configuration and distribution to Malden Ctr., and would end up an excellent super-hub for all 3 modes. Wonderland can't be hacked together enough serve the same function. They know too much more than they knew in 1999 and 2004 about what riders value on transfer convenience and access to diverging routes, and that location just doesn't serve it up.

 

[tangent]

I said I could see infill CR being appealing to Revere as part of a redevelopment of the old dog park. Meaning if it would help spur a redevelopment of a large site which is currently blighted and which Revere certainly wants redeveloped. But that is a a tangential point about a potential redevelopment, when they still need to prove they can get to a full build out around Wonderland Station. The main point is a package needs to be negotiated with Revere to find what that they want and the less disruptive the route the less expensive any trades will need to be.

And in the meantime don't dismiss the merits of higher frequency on the existing line to Lynn. No it isn't a substitute for BLX. Nor is the bus service that was supposed to be an "alternative" when BLX was shelved last time.

The important thing is that more frequent rail service can be achieved relatively cheaply and quickly for tens of millions compared to hundreds of millions or over a billion inflation adjusted dollars potentially for BLX. More frequent service can happen in the 5 to 10 year time frame or technically it could happen as soon as they get enough trains, while BLX is going to take a while more if the past is any indication.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

I said I could see infill CR being appealing to Revere as part of a redevelopment of the old dog park. Meaning if it would help spur a redevelopment of a large site which is currently blighted and which Revere certainly wants redeveloped. But that is a a tangential point about a potential redevelopment, when they still need to prove they can get to a full build out around Wonderland Station. The main point is a package needs to be negotiated with Revere to find what that they want and the less disruptive the route the less expensive any trades will need to be.

Been there, done that. Revere has given full comment to officially studies on exactly that point. Because it's impossible to have a well-integrated transit station with CR platforms and Blue + busway more than 1000 ft. away from each other, and because the ridership estimates are so very very low on the CR platform--regardless of frequencies--as a result of that non-integration...Revere concluded time and again that there would be very little value added by building a CR platform around that TOD. It has nothing to do with the TOD being good enough, and everything to do with two platforms at the same station being further apart than most Green Line stops are from each other...and thus, functionally not part of the same station at all.

You personally can think whatever you want and project that personal opinion into the heads of Reverans, but Revere's put its two cents in on multiple rounds of official public comment periods and doesn't think that ridership-depressing physical problem can be meaningfully rectified. Or that it needs rectifying when they have the Blue platforms to anchor that TOD to for trips all around town.

And in the meantime don't dismiss the merits of higher frequency on the existing line to Lynn. No it isn't a substitute for BLX. Nor is the bus service that was supposed to be an "alternative" when BLX was shelved last time.

No one was dismissing the merits of higher frequencies to Chelsea and Lynn (and preferably Swampscott and Salem). It's huge for walkup ridership in those dense downtowns; nobody disputes the numbers are there. The reason CR frequencies are unrelated to BLX is because the siphoning of all the bus routes to Wonderland and Haymarket prevents acceptable bus frequencies and bus route distribution. If you live further away from the CBD's of Lynn, Salem, etc. and have to board a bus to reach any train station whatsoever, your frequencies and route options are just as crappy as they were before.

Two disconnected facts do not a dismissive argument make. It takes two transit modes for the North Shore to tango; their transit will forever suck if the yellow bus isn't part of the solution.

The important thing is that more frequent rail service can be achieved relatively cheaply and quickly for tens of millions compared to hundreds of millions or over a billion inflation adjusted dollars potentially for BLX. More frequent service can happen in the 5 to 10 year time frame or technically it could happen as soon as they get enough trains, while BLX is going to take a while more if the past is any indication.

So now it is a direct substitute? Forget all about your own previous paragraph acknowledging different projects, different things. Forget all about the bus component...it's apples-apples frequencies now?


I'm sorry...this isn't getting any less circuitous a discussion when one sentence contradicting the previous sentence keeps getting passed off as building blocks of a coherent argument. It's not coherent at all. It's incoherent.