Cape Cod Rail, Bridges and Highways

Re: Boston to Cape rail

In Massachusetts, I believe you need some color of title to be successful in a claim of adverse possession. This means that you would have to believe that you had a rightful claim to the land based on chain of title. Open and adverse possession of the land, by itself, would not give ownership rights.
 
Re: Boston to Cape rail

In Massachusetts, I believe you need some color of title to be successful in a claim of adverse possession. This means that you would have to believe that you had a rightful claim to the land based on chain of title. Open and adverse possession of the land, by itself, would not give ownership rights.

I have personal experience with such in my first house in Lexington

We were purchasing a small house on a street which branched off Mass Ave

in 1890 when the side street was laid out and the land along the side street was subdivided a granite post was planted on the corner

Sometime in the early 20th C a few houses were built on the part of the street near to the corner with surveys from the granite post

Sometime later Mass Ave was widened to the current 1+ lanes on each side -- the post was moved to the new corner -- 3 feet away

1950 - 1960 Lexington is growing rapidly and the street is being built-out based on the original master subdivision plan

Flash forward to early 1980 all of the street has been built-up -- someone decides to put in a fence and has a survey done -- Sacre Bleu the post has moved

Voila -- everyone now finds that they own about 3 feet of their neighbor's:
driveway
hedge
shed
tree
etc.

Lot's of work for lawyers if the houses now change hands as everyone since the survey now knows the story
 
Re: Boston to Cape rail

Bourne votes to join the MBTA: http://www.capecodtimes.com/article/20150519/NEWS/150519332/101015

As you can see, the process involved convincing town voters that the arguments against joining were just flimsy excuses. Now that Bourne's in the district, that's one less argument against running the CR down to Buzzards Bay.

Well...nobody was really arguing against that. Wareham joined the district way back before the Middleboro Line even opened. The original Old Colony proposal was to go to Wareham, but 20+ years ago was an eternity in terms of community input since none of the residents skittish back then had any concept of what commuter rail was like. Ever since Middleboro station and its surrounding TOD took off, these very same Wareham and Bourne residents have been regular users of the line. It's real and tangible to them now, and they've been pretty consistently behind the extension idea for the last decade. To the point of getting really irate at the South Coast Rail Task Force trying to spread F.U.D. about Cape rail in a turf war to hog all the money/attention.

Bourne joining the district was a formality all along. Now...crossing the Canal and putting a +1 station to trap the pre-bridge traffic? That's still a little controversial because the would-be Sagamore station requires a little bit of private land-taking. The Chamber of Commerce is gung-ho about it, but they may be getting a little ahead of themselves because the community input hasn't been engaged too thoroughly yet. Plus the state was always looking at Buzzards Bay as the Keep It Simple Stupid™ Phase 1 that they could do easily without having to negotiate bridge openings or rope in more of the adjacent towns to vote themselves into the district. It kind of doesn't matter. Get to the foot of the bridge and it's only 1 new station structure, 1.5 miles more signaling on track that's already being upgraded bit-by-bit for state-of-repair with each passing Cape Flyer season, and some paperwork the Coast Guard isn't going to have much problem with. That's little more than a rounding error to tack on independently afterwards when BB is open for daily service.

The question now is whether Baker's going to keep this one coasting on its momentum or pull back. There was funding allocated for it in Patrick's transpo bill. You're not talking big money because the mainland track is very nearly up to max speed for unsignaled track and max state of repair. It's just the signal system, adding the requisite passing sidings (incl. lengthening 1 or 2 of the existing ones out to M'boro), and retrofitting BB station for the permanent full-high. There doesn't even need to be a layover yard there as trains would deadhead back to M'boro layover, which has slack space. The only possible budget cut would be the Wareham Village infill stop. And I'm not sure they'd want to cut it at all because location is pretty much agreed-upon and it's so convenient to the 195/495 interchange that it's hard to pass up. But given the ease of the build they can always open to BB first without waiting for WV construction to start...sort of like Blue Hill Ave. is trailing the other Fairmount-upgrade infills.

I think at this point, despite all the psychological scars from the T's winter of discontent, they might as well just let this one coast to completion on its own momentum. They've got Bourne. They've got the pre-existing station so the cost bloat factor isn't as high as usual. The ridership projections were always bullish, and Cape Flyer's success makes that quite a bit more than a paper projection by this point. They've got more or less fixed cost for the track upgrades since so much of it is already done. If Wareham Vill. looks like a cost overrun risk point...just delay it until the stakeholders get their costs in-gear. And the traffic jams coming on/off the Cape are a legitimate threat to Baker's re-election in '18 in a swing-vote area...with this service easily being able to inaugurate in 3 years or less, to his own advantage.

If there's an expansion exception to be made, this is probably the most favorable and inocuous on the bucket list to just wave through with minimal fanfare.
 
Re: Boston to Cape rail

The first CapeFlyer of the year just left South Station:

https://twitter.com/MBTA_CR/status/601865441313759232

CFpBVVcVEAAuxR0.jpg:large
 
Re: Boston to Cape rail

Flyer's looking like a much better getaway deal this weekend than the track work-related cancellation city that's crippled most of the Downeaster schedule.


Brockton's been added as a new intermediate stop this year.
 
Re: Boston to Cape rail

Flyer's looking like a much better getaway deal this weekend than the track work-related cancellation city that's crippled most of the Downeaster schedule.


Brockton's been added as a new intermediate stop this year.



How long does it take to get to the Cape vs. taking the boat? And does it go to Provincetown? :confused:
 
Re: Boston to Cape rail

How long does it take to get to the Cape vs. taking the boat? And does it go to Provincetown? :confused:

Cape Flyer just goes to Hyannis.

High Speed Ferry is much faster (1.5 hours) if you are going out to P-town.
 
Re: Boston to Cape rail

Cape Flyer just goes to Hyannis.

High Speed Ferry is much faster (1.5 hours) if you are going out to P-town.


Yeah, I took the ferry there and back the very first time that I went to the Cape in '00.
 
Re: Boston to Cape rail

Yeah, I took the ferry there and back the very first time that I went to the Cape in '00.

There's Ptown buses out of Hyannis that connect to the Flyer, as well as rental car places around Hyannis Airport down the street from the train station. But that's more catered to folks who are taking in the whole Cape and Islands for the weekend. One-seat on the ferry out of Boston or Plymouth is going to easily be the better/faster deal if you're just doing Ptown.

Plymouth ferry I think runs more frequently than the Boston one does, but is less accessible to commuter rail because 1) Cordage Park has such pathetic weekend service you'd have to take a bus out of Kingston to get to the ferry terminal, and 2) the fact that they stopped at Cordage Park instead of downtown due to NIMBY kvetching means they passed up a chance at a train station directly across the street from the ferry terminal.


I do think there is a cross-promo angle the respective Chambers of Commerce could be playing up via the Plymouth Line if they set up and advertised a ferry shuttle bus fed by beefed up ferry and weekend commuter rail schedules. CCRTA buses have their hands full covering the outer Cape for the weekenders and strain like hell to hit Hyannis on the return trip in time for Flyer departures (train gets held till the last bus connecting bus arrives). It's enough of a limiter that they'll probably be looking at bolstering the ferries as part of their Outer Cape traffic management strategy once they've put a couple more years of elbow grease into building up Hyannis as the region's multi-modal transpo center. The ferries do ultimately go hand-in-hand with the car-free transit strategy.


BTW...Hyannis rail yard got a major reconfiguration this winter so the Flyer trainsets don't awkwardly block the dinner train in the yard while they're laying over. This spring's track work involved some I.O.U.'s of that sort to Cape Rail, as well as (I think) a passing siding at Buzzards Bay. Will allow the dinner train to coexist around Flyer slots better and let Cape Rail expand its excursion schedule.
 
Re: Boston to Cape rail

Although I love the bike path, it would be so great if the train still went to Falmouth... My family has a summer house in woods hole and my grandfather used to take it into boston to work... Amazing that people could do that back then... Or, rather, that it was actually what everyone did.
 
Re: Boston to Cape rail

One-seat on the ferry out of Boston or Plymouth is going to easily be the better/faster deal if you're just doing Ptown.

That's definitely the case.

The ferry is the best way to get to Provincetown in the summer, and the twice-a-day bus is the only option in the off season (the bus takes 4 hours to Boston vs 1 1/2 hours on the ferry or about 2 1/2 hours by car). The Plymouth ferry schedule is intended for daytrippers from Plymouth to Provincetown, so I can't use it to go the Plymouth unless I do an overnight there and return to Provincetown the next day. So close, yet so far away!

Back to rail: While the Cape Cod Rail Trail is a lovely amenity, it's really too bad that the right-of-way is no longer available for train service all the way to Provincetown (it once went all the way to the end of MacMillan Pier!).
 
Re: Boston to Cape rail

Although I love the bike path, it would be so great if the train still went to Falmouth... My family has a summer house in woods hole and my grandfather used to take it into boston to work... Amazing that people could do that back then... Or, rather, that it was actually what everyone did.

Hell, until the entire Old Colony division (incl. Greenbush, Plymouth, Fall River, and New Bedford) went tits up in 1958 there was a full-slate daily commuter rail schedule to both Hyannis AND Woods Hole with the NYNH&H RR providing train-coordinated connecting bus service to Chatham and Ptown: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/New_Haven_RR_Cape_Cod_timetable_April_28_1957.pdf.

Unfortunately the Falmouth Branch, while well-maintained by CCCR (25-30 MPH passenger, not too shabby on the dinner train), only goes to Otis now. Downtown Falmouth was last served in 1989 by CCCR's predecessor, Cape Cod & Hyannis RR. Woods Hole has been gone much longer, with Penn Central abandoning that line in 1970. Fully intact because the bike path has been around for so long on that segment, but since that abandonment preceded the landbanking statute any restoration past the old Depot Ave. station would be considered an "all-new" railroad charter. Tall order when just de-landbanking the 7 miles of trail that was still active 25 years ago is damn near impossible in this era.

There's still a station on the branch at Monument Beach used by CCCR, the remains of the platform at Pocasset held as a future consideration for CCCR if they want to erect a new structure, and historic (now privately-owned) Catumet depot with a platform in back CCCR's used for special events. Nothing remains at North Falmouth, which was right around County Rd. right before the Otis Branch splits.

I doubt they could float any passenger service on there today, even if they put a park-and-ride on the Otis Branch near the 28/151 interchange and reanimated a couple of those intermediate stops. It just doesn't get close enough to downtown. That's maybe fodder for a CCCR-run shuttle service using a Budd RDC dinky if the state can by some property to install an eastbound wye at Cape Jct. Right now the bridge has to be in the down position to reverse onto the Falmouth Branch, whereas a wye track would let CCCR use it without inducing a bridge movement.



If the T can get proper commuter rail to Buzzards Bay with the full Middleboro schedule, there is potential for funneling some grant money to CCRTA to stage a couple out-of-district rush-hour extras to Hyannis with intermediate stops at the existing ADA mini-highs at Sandwich and West Barnstable. Maybe 2 trains in the morning, 2 in the evening on the commuter extras if track speeds on the Cape are pushed consistently >50 MPH. That's pretty easy to set up once they get the full schedule and 80 MPH speeds to BB, and would tide them over for however many years it would take to Phase II full-blown service to Hyannis.

Both of those on-Cape intermediates are leftover from the Amtrak Cape Codder and permanent stops on the dinner train. Probably will become Flyer stops as early as 2016 or 2017 when speeds get just a little bit better, since they both have CCRTA bus connections right at the stations. Sagamore is the one where there has to be some land acquisition to install a platform at Exit 1C. CCRTA and the Chamber of Commerce want that one bad, but they're just starting to talk about it and the T isn't considering going across the bridge in regular service until they've got it locked-and-loaded.
 
Re: Boston to Cape rail

1:54 minutes Woods Hole to South Station. Not bad. Yes, I don't think that one will be coming back anytime soon, though...

Do you think that there is any realistic hope of solving the Dorchester track crunch in order to accommodate more and more trains coming into South Station in the future? Seems like a real limiting factor on the southside and yet I've never heard it mentioned in the media. It would certainly allow for a more confident expansion of the Old Colony lines.
 
Re: Boston to Cape rail


Of course the only solution is to build more bridge! I mean, it's not like the real problem could possibly be the imbalance between traffic on the two bridges owing to the lack of a freeway connection between their feeder roads on either side of the bridge.

And it's not like there's a contaminated wasteland of a former military base on the Cape side that you will never be able to develop into anything just sitting there, with few to no alternative uses besides being paved over for a connector artery.

Nope, gotta build more bridge. No other choice! [/sarcasm]

1:54 minutes Woods Hole to South Station. Not bad. Yes, I don't think that one will be coming back anytime soon, though...

Do you think that there is any realistic hope of solving the Dorchester track crunch in order to accommodate more and more trains coming into South Station in the future? Seems like a real limiting factor on the southside and yet I've never heard it mentioned in the media. It would certainly allow for a more confident expansion of the Old Colony lines.

The Southeast Expressway is going to need to be overhauled eventually and addressing the abutting transit tracks (e.g. the Dorchester track crunch) will need to happen as a part of that project no matter what.

The real question is whether you can restructure the Red Line tracks. There's no room for a second or third commuter rail track between the point where the Red Line emerges and the point where its two branches diverge. South of the split there's a short stretch of single track that should be fairly easily double-tracked if money's available. Double track already exists (although it might need realigning) as far south as North Quincy, and there's room for an extremely long passing siding south of Wollaston to just north of Quincy Center.

Now, I don't think you're ever going to get unbroken double-track all the way down to Braintree, at least not without the kind of investment that a million other places are going to want and deserve far more than here. You can certainly get it for most of the run, but not for all of it.

Unfortunately, that leads us into a question of whether it's worth it to have two tracks through JFK/UMass - a question to which the answer might unfortunately be no, since the biggest reason to do it would be if you had a real shot at a complete second track all the way down (you don't) and at least one of the four Red Line tracks running through there right now would need to go away to make room for the second commuter track. (Go away in this context could mean burying the Braintree Branch underneath the Ashmont branch. It could also mean busting JFK down to two tracks and building a flyover junction at Savin Hill, which is of dubious merit and probably unreasonably expensive.)
 
Re: Boston to Cape rail

1:54 minutes Woods Hole to South Station. Not bad. Yes, I don't think that one will be coming back anytime soon, though...

Do you think that there is any realistic hope of solving the Dorchester track crunch in order to accommodate more and more trains coming into South Station in the future? Seems like a real limiting factor on the southside and yet I've never heard it mentioned in the media. It would certainly allow for a more confident expansion of the Old Colony lines.

And that's in '57 the year before end of service, when NYNH&H had already started deferring track maintenance in anticipation of petitioning the feds to discontinue the route. You'd be looking at slightly faster today. SS-Middleboro on an all-stops local takes ~1:02, a little faster than the average NHNH&H local which held at some intermediate stops for local bus connections. And then the most recent Buzzards Bay CR study estimated +19 minutes for Buzzards Bay and +1 intermediate stops in Wareham at the same 79 MPH max speed as the rest of the Middleboro Line. 1:21...that's a little bit less than it takes the Providence Line to reach T.F. Green, and a full 10 minutes less than the Worcester Line averages. Can't ask for much better than that. Travel time-wise it brings Bourne very very close to Boston indeed, which is why the ridership projects so good despite the low population density. Like the rest of the M'boro Line it's mostly arrow-straight track with wide enough stop spacing to hit max track speed and make very quick work of all those intermediates.

From the bridge to Hyannis speeds never averaged much greater than 50-55 MPH because of the curves along the canal and the sharp turn onto the Hyannis Branch at Yarmouth. So that's probably going to stick close to what it was back in '57. Just swap the Yarmouth stop on that schedule for Sagamore and figure the same 30 minutes since all the other stops are exactly the same. ~1:40 total...still a couple minutes less than it takes to get to Wickford Jct. on the Providence Line. I would imagine if/when that becomes a possibility that there'd be a couple skip-stop rush hour expresses mixed in to shave time off that total, supplemented by some BB short-turns for crowd control on the mainland stops.


As for balancing all of this on the single-track inbound of Braintree, they can eke out a couple more slots simply by doubling up JFK station into an island platform. The platform is already built to the width of an island, so it only requires taking the inner busway and reconfiguring the headhouse egresses to shiv in a siding. Since Greenbushes are the only trains that permanently stop at JFK, that opens up a *couple* of peak-hour passing opportunities. Nothing big because it's Greenbush, but if that's worth +1 slots per peak they can make it work. Any more than that probably requires doing some more invasive and $$$ hollowing out of the under-street area at Quincy Ctr. to double-up that platform (M'boro stops at QC, Plymouth skips...so packing M'boro slots closer to the Plymouths that would pass at QC might bum a couple more peak slots).

The other thing is simply getting South Station Expansion done. Because Middleboro is assigned to one of the shorter platforms pinched in by the Post Office, the line is capped at 6 cars. The BB extension study says all new ridership is absorbable on the current schedule and current trainsets simply by running 100% bi-levels instead of mixed sets. But to work in Hyannis on rush hour they're definitely going to need 7- and 8-packs. That happens when the Post Office comes down and they can build full-regulation 9-car platforms all the way out to Dot Ave.
 
Re: Boston to Cape rail

The Southeast Expressway is going to need to be overhauled eventually and addressing the abutting transit tracks (e.g. the Dorchester track crunch) will need to happen as a part of that project no matter what.

The real question is whether you can restructure the Red Line tracks. There's no room for a second or third commuter rail track between the point where the Red Line emerges and the point where its two branches diverge. South of the split there's a short stretch of single track that should be fairly easily double-tracked if money's available. Double track already exists (although it might need realigning) as far south as North Quincy, and there's room for an extremely long passing siding south of Wollaston to just north of Quincy Center.

Quincy is a bigger problem than Dorchester for finding the width. I don't think there's any solve for the Wollaston pinch. As for Dorchester...it's pricey, but straightforward. The only thing they have to avoid is the stupid, stupid, stupid "reimagining the SE Expressway" renderings that call for outright HOV lane capacity expansion at Savin Hill and a convoluted Wellington-style tunnel that buries both the Braintree Branch and the Old Colony for a stretch so the highway can get hugely wider. That's a billion-dollar project that's completely unnecessary.

If they kept it simple it could be done by:

1) Reconfiguring Columbia Jct. to be less spread-out. I drew this crude rendering some time back of how to compact the whole works while retaining all of the present-day 4-track grade separation:

file.php



-- The JFK platform is designed as an island so you can just drop the second commuter rail track there as-is by reconfiguring the Red headhouse and taking the inner busway.

-- Instead of the umpteen track splits sorting out inbound/outbound onto the separate islands (making JFK platform assignments really confusing), do a simpler 1 island for inbounds, 1 island for outbounds. That greatly compacts the track layout because you just fork or merge at a crossover near the subway portal to pick branches, and flank the outside of the portal to get to/from the yard. This is what buys the space to continue the Old Colony double-tracking the full distance to South Station.


2) Now...notice on the left of that drawing. Braintree gets buried under Ashmont in a shallow box tunnel immediately south of JFK station. Since the Ashmont IB/OB tracks flank the outside of our new track layout, there's no need for those space-intensive flyover ramps. Braintree just takes the middle and Ashmont spreads out around the portal the same way the yard tracks flank the current subway portal.

-- The bare roof of the tunnel becomes Ashmont's literal trackbed, so it's more of an air rights thing than a subway. It allows for consolidation of the electrical and signaling utilities for both branches, since they currently duplicate themselves 100% of the way to the Clayton St. split. Makes the whole Red Line easier to maintain.

-- Old Colony takes the current Braintree OB track berth for its second track. Braintree IB track gets given over to I-93 for widening the breakdown lane. Tracks can be compacted a little closer together than today because you no longer have Braintree Branch utility boxes and cable conduits eating up a couple feet's space next to the highway.

-- At Savin Hill station the tunnel swings under the OC tracks to avoid the station foundation.

-- Portal-up on Braintree's current alignment just as 93 starts peeling away.

-- Swing the Ashmont tracks a few feet west to create room for +1 track berths on the Freeport St. overpass.

-- Add +1 track berths to the Park St. overpass.


Now the OC is contiguously double-tracked from SS to Wollaston. It's expensive, but it's not billion-dollar expensive like the I-93 HOV lane expansion insanity. So if MassHighway is going to be a significant stakeholder in this they're the ones who have to behave themselves. The T just has to look at this as forward-thinking: they greatly simplify the Red Line infrastructure at zero loss of capacity and make their 50-year maint costs go way down, while gaining that 2-track commuter rail capacity. It doesn't even require a rebuild of JFK station itself...you're just swapping what direction the tracks originate from by culling all that flyover nonsense on both sides, and then doing the box tunnel next to the highway.

Now, I don't think you're ever going to get unbroken double-track all the way down to Braintree, at least not without the kind of investment that a million other places are going to want and deserve far more than here. You can certainly get it for most of the run, but not for all of it.
Only other places it's really doable are minor. For example, the Braintree Split reconfig on Route 3 is going to nuke/rebuild a couple bridges downwind of the interchange for the new lane arrangement. Right now the line gets pinched to 1 track at the freight yard where it passes under those bridges. So MassHighway will probably do all the work of getting the DT modestly extended from the freight yard north to the junction with the Greenbush Line. Possibly even as far as when the OC starts descending into that duck-under of the Red Line past Washington St. That won't be much, but it'll allow Middleboros and Plymouths to pack real close behind a Greenbush, and then if you double-up JFK (which is not dependent on doing anything in Dorchester...just taking the busway and reconfiguring the Red entrance) pass the Greenbush on the platform. Essentially turning any Greenbush slot into one where a M'boro or Plymouth can come either direction 2 minutes later and overtake.

I still don't know how you're ever getting contiguous DT through Quincy. Though if you did the painful digging at QC station to double-up that one you probably get the biggest gain overall by letting Plymouths and Greenbushes pass Middleboros. And then add the Dorchester fix and it's probably enough overall to satisfy Cape and Plymouth growth for a good long time. Don't forget, they were thinking a Big Quincy + Dot Dig was going to be necessary if Fall River/New Bedford were crammed down the Old Colony. That's not going to happen, so for just Cape + Plymouth + Greenbush you'll probably never need to fix Quincy...just do everything north of the river, fix QC station, and don't get any crazy ideas of Indigo-ing these routes anywhere except maybe stepping up short-turn service to Brockton.

Unfortunately, that leads us into a question of whether it's worth it to have two tracks through JFK/UMass - a question to which the answer might unfortunately be no, since the biggest reason to do it would be if you had a real shot at a complete second track all the way down (you don't) and at least one of the four Red Line tracks running through there right now would need to go away to make room for the second commuter track. (Go away in this context could mean burying the Braintree Branch underneath the Ashmont branch. It could also mean busting JFK down to two tracks and building a flyover junction at Savin Hill, which is of dubious merit and probably unreasonably expensive.)
See above. You *do* gain some rush hour slots at JFK by being able to have M'boros and Plymouths ride right on the ass of a Greenbush then blast right by while the Greenbush is making a station stop. That's worth the extra slot or two per peak for re-balancing an M'boro schedule for Cape service. And it's cheap. I'm honestly surprised there's been zero movement on that because it's such an easy fix.
 

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