Commuter Rail to New Hampshire?

[F-Line to Dudley]

We’ve definitely discussed the Eastern Route on AB and I recall:
1) getting through the nuke plant at Seabrook was tricky
2) I don’t remember that there were full breaks in the ROW, just a rail trail issue
3) the bridge In Newburyport $$$

The nuke plant isn't tricky. The RR came before it and the charter is intact. You obviously just need to have some interagency cooperation on the maintenance windows, and emergency protocol filed in the event that a disabled train needs to be evacuated on the property. But that's it. And the plant is old; it's not going to be active too many decades longer.

There are no breaks in the ROW. In Downtown Newburyport and (partially) Salisbury you have standard revokable 99-year rail trail leases. That of course comes with all the standard challenges of trying to de-landbank a ROW, but if it can be done anywhere it can be done here.

The bridge in Newburyport would have to have its derelict swing span replaced with something new, and one set of girders on a small portion of the Newburyport-side approach span were chopped down to build the Harborwalk below, but a feasibility study 20 years ago found the approach spans to be in solid structural shape so some recycling of infrastructure is feasible for cutting down the cost.


The last feasibility study found solid ridership and an attractively fast schedule for the service. The problem is simply schizo NH politics. If a slam-dunk like the Capitol Corridor can't get through a single legislative session of short-attention span political theatre there's very little hope for a longer-game (if straightforward) service restoration with de-landbanking like this. There has to be a sea change in how Live Free Or Die politics approaches transit.

 

[Riverside]

Checking out OpenRailwayMap, it also seems like the simplest solution is to just run off the Downeaster route, or if we are getting crazy, extend the Haverhill Line (or some version using the Lowell Line).

Assuming you're talking about a commuter rail service (rather than a branch of the Downeaster), the downside of splitting at Rockingham Junction is that you miss UNH entirely, and you're further away from both Dover and Rochester, which are each about the same size as Portsmouth + Kittery (I think). But, assuming you're running half-hourly service to Haverhill, you could branch and send hourlies to both Portsmouth and Dover.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

BTW, here's the last feasibility study for Portsmouth Commuter Rail, done by Seacoast MPO in 2001. . .

Executive Summary: https://web.archive.org/web/2008051...-nh.org/PDFs/docs/HampBranchFeas-ExecSumm.pdf
Full study: https://web.archive.org/web/20071217192602/http://www.rpc-nh.org/PDFs/docs/HampBranchFeasStudy.pdf

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Assuming you're talking about a commuter rail service (rather than a branch of the Downeaster), the downside of splitting at Rockingham Junction is that you miss UNH entirely, and you're further away from both Dover and Rochester, which are each about the same size as Portsmouth + Kittery (I think). But, assuming you're running half-hourly service to Haverhill, you could branch and send hourlies to both Portsmouth and Dover.

Populations of the towns on the route, mainline to Dover vs. diversion onto the Portsmouth Branch. . .

Atkinson - 7087
Plaistow - 7830
Newton - 4820
East Kingston - 2441
Exeter - 16,049
Newfields - 1769
Newmarket - 9430
---Portsmouth Branch---
Greenland - 4067
Portsmouth - 21,956


Durham - 15,490
Madbury - 1,918
Dover - 32,741

It's passing up twice the population strictly on the route, not counting places in the overall catchment like Rochester (32,492). Secondly, it's a long schedule via the Western Route making all the local stops. Boston-Dover took 1:52 in 1967 the last time there was MBTA service, and that was running nonstop on the NH Main before starting to pick up the local stops (Salem St., Ballardvale, Andover, Shawsheen, Lawrence, North Andover, Bradford, Haverhill, Atkinson, Plaistow, Newton Jct., Powwow River, East Kingston, Exeter, Newfields, Newmarket, Durham, Dover). To mount that today you wouldn't be able to repurpose a Haverhill local for super-extension as even with fewer NH stops (we'll assume that Atkinson, Powwow River, East Kingston, and Newfields aren't going to make any modern roster) you'd still be pushing 2 hours when all's said and done. You'd probably have to run that as a whole extra-layer MA super-express that hops Anderson-Woburn, Lawrence, and Haverhill...then starts going local with Plaistow, Newton Jct., Exeter, Newmarket, Durham, Dover in an effort to pound it all down to 90 minutes. Sort of how NHDOT studied out Concord as being a super-express layer on top of local Lowell-Nashua trains. Here that's not going to leave enough bandwidth on the Western Route with Downeasters and freights in the mix to tag-team a forked Portsmouth service of two schedules north of the border, because both forks would have to be run as super-expresses to achieve any kind of acceptable schedules.

Contrastingly, the 2001 Newburyport-Portsmouth study had an all-local trip doing extension stops at Seabrook (pop. 8401), Hampton (pop. 16,214), North Hampton (pop. 4538), and Portsmouth in 1:35 with plain-old diesels and Class 4 track. It's a very stark difference on schedule, ops ease (no change in frequencies to Newburyport required), and population served that a Western Route force-fit is woefully unable to approximate.


I think you could easily do a Dover super-express by its lonesome as that would beneficially boost service to Lawrence and Haverhill downtowns deservingly well above plain-old Regional Rail schedules, but Portsmouth is always going to have to run by the Eastern Route.

 

[Riverside]

Populations of the towns on the route, mainline to Dover vs. diversion onto the Portsmouth Branch. . .

Atkinson - 7087
Plaistow - 7830
Newton - 4820
East Kingston - 2441
Exeter - 16,049
Newfields - 1769
Newmarket - 9430
---Portsmouth Branch---
Greenland - 4067
Portsmouth - 21,956


Durham - 15,490
Madbury - 1,918
Dover - 32,741

It's passing up twice the population strictly on the route, not counting places in the overall catchment like Rochester (32,492). Secondly, it's a long schedule via the Western Route making all the local stops. Boston-Dover took 1:52 in 1967 the last time there was MBTA service, and that was running nonstop on the NH Main before starting to pick up the local stops (Salem St., Ballardvale, Andover, Shawsheen, Lawrence, North Andover, Bradford, Haverhill, Atkinson, Plaistow, Newton Jct., Powwow River, East Kingston, Exeter, Newfields, Newmarket, Durham, Dover). To mount that today you wouldn't be able to repurpose a Haverhill local for super-extension as even with fewer NH stops (we'll assume that Atkinson, Powwow River, East Kingston, and Newfields aren't going to make any modern roster) you'd still be pushing 2 hours when all's said and done. You'd probably have to run that as a whole extra-layer MA super-express that hops Anderson-Woburn, Lawrence, and Haverhill...then starts going local with Plaistow, Newton Jct., Exeter, Newmarket, Durham, Dover in an effort to pound it all down to 90 minutes. Sort of how NHDOT studied out Concord as being a super-express layer on top of local Lowell-Nashua trains. Here that's not going to leave enough bandwidth on the Western Route with Downeasters and freights in the mix to tag-team a forked Portsmouth service of two schedules north of the border, because both forks would have to be run as super-expresses to achieve any kind of acceptable schedules.

Contrastingly, the 2001 Newburyport-Portsmouth study had an all-local trip doing extension stops at Seabrook (pop. 8401), Hampton (pop. 16,214), North Hampton (pop. 4538), and Portsmouth in 1:35 with plain-old diesels and Class 4 track. It's a very stark difference on schedule, ops ease (no change in frequencies to Newburyport required), and population served that a Western Route force-fit is woefully unable to approximate.


I think you could easily do a Dover super-express by its lonesome as that would beneficially boost service to Lawrence and Haverhill downtowns deservingly well above plain-old Regional Rail schedules, but Portsmouth is always going to have to run by the Eastern Route.

The Portsmouth pop number could arguably be a little higher since Kittery (~10K) is right there across the bridge from downtown Portsmouth; a downtown station would be as proximate to most of Kittery as a centrally located Dover station would be to the rest of the town. But even so, Durham + Dover still exceed in terms of population.

Has anyone ever studied doing a poke +1 extension into Kittery and/or the Navy Yard? Seems like a potentially large reverse-commute anchor, although I see that the existing ROW into Kittery is pretty roundabout -- I have to think a bus shuttle would end up being faster.

(Fun thought: if you did have a commuter rail extension to the Navy Yard, and you had an extension to Newport RI, then you'd have the frankly hilarious situation of "Portsmouth Navy Yard Station" located in Kittery ME [not actually in Portsmouth, one town over] and "Naval Station Newport" located in Newport RI, two towns over from -- yes -- Portsmouth RI. It's almost like naval yards and towns named Portsmouth usually have something in common...)

Yes, I think once you are talking about the likes of Dover and Concord, we're looking at another layer of "super-express" service. I actually sketched out a crayon network of "long-distance" commuter/intercity rail a while back:

Segments in blue are meant to see something like hourly peak service and every 1-2 hours off-peak (similar to the NYP <> Albany layer cake pre-pandemic). Segments in grey see less -- maybe 1 or 2 peak direction services and something between 1 and 5 round trips daily (more like today's Downeaster). Purple dot indicates the extent of Regional Rail service, making unlisted local stops and running at least hourly all day.

(I'm pretty sure I intended for the New London service to continue on to New Haven and beyond -- something like a state-sponsored overlay of Northeast Regional services making extra stops, but I'm not sure.)

Haven't looked at this sketch in a while and probably there are things I would change... for example, I'm never sure what to do about service levels to the Cape. I can see hourly commuter rail service across the bridge to Bourne, but it's something like another 20 miles to Hyannis, which seems pretty long to me.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Has anyone ever studied doing a poke +1 extension into Kittery and/or the Navy Yard? Seems like a potentially large reverse-commute anchor, although I see that the existing ROW into Kittery is pretty roundabout -- I have to think a bus shuttle would end up being faster.

That would induce a traffic nightmare with all the bridge openings required on the Sarah Long Bridge to swap the traffic span down to the rail span. On 30 minute schedules both directions? That's way more trouble than the extra Kittery ridership is worth. Plus it requires the MBTA to reach agreement with MEDOT as well as NHDOT. A bus from Downtown Portsmouth can scoop up the Naval Base just fine.

 

[HenryAlan]

Checking out OpenRailwayMap, it also seems like the simplest solution is to just run off the Downeaster route, or if we are getting crazy, extend the Haverhill Line (or some version using the Lowell Line).

Ultimately, I think that's the smarter way to go, but the Portsmouth branch would need some upgrades, because right now, it's rated for 10MPH only, which is way too slow for passenger rail.

 

[ceo]

Oh, rail service to Lincoln NH would be so nice (assuming it didn't take 4 hours, which is likely). Assuming the ski areas and Appalachian Mountain Club ran shuttles for skiers and hikers respectively, of course. (AMC does run a hiker shuttle that stops at the Lincoln bus station, but only twice a day.)

 

[fatnoah]

Oh, rail service to Lincoln NH would be so nice (assuming it didn't take 4 hours, which is likely). Assuming the ski areas and Appalachian Mountain Club ran shuttles for skiers and hikers respectively, of course. (AMC does run a hiker shuttle that stops at the Lincoln bus station, but only twice a day.)

Throw in a stop to get people to Waterville Valley and shuttles to Loon, Cannon, and Bretton Woods, and we're on to something.

 

[Massachoicetts]

Any word on B6 to CDG? I find it odd that AMS already has a November date. Yet CDG was announced first and there are still no signs of the flight coming on line.

Good to here about GND though. That was a must add for the Caribbean.

 

[Smuttynose]

Throw in a stop to get people to Waterville Valley and shuttles to Loon, Cannon, and Bretton Woods, and we're on to something.

This is one of those 'Back to the Future' things. Pitched by the Appalachian Mountain Club, the Boston & Maine Railroad launched the 'Snow Train' from North Station to ski resorts in New Hampshire in 1931 as a way to generate additional income in the Depression. Billed as the first of its kind in the United States and modeled after routes in Europe, the service thrived for many years, eventually developing a reputation for rowdier, alcohol-infused passengers, before being discontinued in the 1950s as passenger rail traffic declined.

https://mwvvibe.com/all-aboard-the-snow-train/

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Interestingly, NHDOT did study restoration of the Conway Branch's missing midsection in a feasibility study 19 years ago: https://www.nh.gov/dot/org/aerorailtransit/railandtransit/documents/ConwayBranchFeasibilityStudy.pdf.

That would've allowed freight service by New Hampshire Northcoast RR (the same one that supplies Boston Sand & Gravel @ North Station with its daily sand train) to a secondary sand pit near Conway, and allowed the popular Conway Scenic RR an intact route down to Dover and the Downeaster (and possible Commuter Rail, per this discussion) station there. Cross-platform transfers for both summer fun trains and winter ski trains, as well as an opportunity to charter Amtrak one-offs to North Conway replicating the route of one of B&M's longest-lasting ski trains. NH Northcoast's Dover-Ossippee track is currently Class 2/30 MPH, same as Conway Scenic's across the Mountain Division, so the restored Ossippee-North Conway section would only need to match that to provide parity for Conway Scenic's services. As restorations go it wouldn't be a particularly pricey one.

It's New Hampshire, of course, so the study (which did have interest from NH Northcoast) has been collecting dust for 2 decades and stands little chance of ever getting picked up. But at least they're holding that section as out-of-service/"railbanked" not landbanked with infrastructure still in the ground to keep the trail lobbies away.

 

[grand_junction]

Surprised to see this not posted yet: Craig says she will bring commuter rail to New Hampshire if elected governor

NASHUA, N.H. —
On the Democratic side of the race for governor of New Hampshire, Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig says she can deliver on the issue of commuter rail.

Craig said she wants to connect Nashua and Manchester to Boston if she wins the corner office at the State House next year.

As mayor of Manchester, Craig has been making the case to bring commuter rail to New Hampshire for years. Now running for governor, she said that if she wins, she'll bring long-debated plans into reality.

"Commuter rail is so important to New Hampshire," she said.

Craig contends that the nearly $800 million estimated cost of connecting Nashua and Manchester to Boston is well worth it.

"It will provide jobs. It will provide economic development," she said. "It's what our residents are asking for, and there are federal funds available."

There is a lot of skepticism at the State House, with outright opposition from most Republicans over long-term fiscal liabilities and rural representatives asking what's in it for their constituents.

Nashua Mayor Jim Donchess said the answer is simple.

"Thirty-five percent of the economy is generated in the Manchester-Nashua region, and we can boost that," he said.

"And we also know that young people want to be in New Hampshire, and a lot of the young people don't even want a vehicle," Craig said. "So, they are getting by with bikes and walking and public transportation that's really lacking in this state."

Among declared candidates for governor, Democrats Craig and Cinde Warmington support commuter rail, while Republicans Kelly Ayotte and Chuck Morse are opposed.

The discussion is likely to continue and become more contentious in the general election, but in the primary, Nashua Democrats said rail is a voting issue.

"Absolutely. Absolutely," said state Rep. Latha Mangipudi, D-Nashua. "You see, everybody runs on it, and also because that's what our constituents want. This is our lifeline."

There are too many moving parts here to see this happening in the immediate short-term, but a governor in office with a more favorable view on this could get some things in motion (especially if the state house manages to flip), and would certainly be a welcome change from Sununu's waffling on the matter.