@NHMaples, welcome to the board! Great to have you here.
New Hampshire has decided to prioritize modernizing the southern portion of Rte. 93 and the Everette Turnpike not from lack of imagination but for obvious political reasons: far more people will use the highways than the rail.
I'll politely ask you for a source on this claim. Obviously I understand if you don't have a hard-and-fast source -- you may be speaking based on local knowledge and personal experience, which definitely is a valid part of this conversation.
For my part, I'll share some data points that lead me to question the claim:
First, something like a third of NH residents live in Hillsborough County, and half of those live directly in Manchester or Nashua. Add in Merrimack County, and you've accounted for about half of NH residents. So, definitionally, you're pretty close to the majority of the state living within the service area of commuter rail.
Second, you argue:
People living north of Concord have an economic stake in the ability for people to get into and out of the state, but rail does not solve their particular economic concern. Vacationers will not be using trains to visit the Lakes Region or the mountains. The northern, rural part of the state requires an automobile.
Commuter rail to Concord means that those tracks will be rehabbed up to snuff for speedy passenger use. Rehabbing an additional 25 miles of track up to Laconia allows you to connect to the
Plymouth & Lincoln Railroad, which runs heritage services in the White Mountains and along Lake Winnipesaukee (and which I believe owns tracks all the way up to Lincoln and Franconia Notch State Park). From an infrastructure perspective, that opens the door to a Downeaster-style service that can serve:
- tourists going to the Lakes Region or the mountains
- north-of-Concord residents who want to travel to Boston and points south
- in-state commuters destined for Concord, Manchester, or Nashua
It is true that a great many NH residents who live south of Concord are employed in Mass., but that's not the same as working in Boston. Many work along the 128 belt and places north that are more expediently accessed by car, and workers can easily share a ride.
In fact, it appears that the
most popular destination city in MA for Merrimack & Hillsborough residents after Boston is actually Lowell, which of course would be extremely accessible via a commuter rail extension.
(I'll also note that the numbers
for NH <> Boston commuters are generally similar to those for RI <> Boston commuters, and of course the Providence Line has quite strong ridership.)
Looking at the next three:
- Bulington: poor transit access right now, but would be easy to create a shuttle service between Anderson (or Mishawum) to handle the Last Mile Problem
- Woburn: direct service
- Cambridge: access from North Station via EZ Ride, GLX, and transfer to the Red Line
I do grant though that there is a significant swath of commuters to places like Methuen and Lawrence which, I agree, will not be effectively served by an extension from Lowell. But, to
@Badusername's point, diverting the Boston and Lowell commuters off of the highway frees up space for those other commuters (and since those other commuters are dispersed across various cities, the congestion they cause may also be less concentrated).
But overall, it does actually look to me like there would be a lot of NH commuters who would benefit from rail, both directly and indirectly.
These points don't mean that NH is forever closed off from investing in commuter rail, just not now. When the ten-year transportation plan is updated and revised next year, commuter rail isn't likely to appear even in the out years. That means that in 2026 if rail is added to the plan it will have to bounce out other projects or be paid for by a tax increase. People from New Hampshire aren't dumb. They have different priorities based on different needs.
Building public transit is like planting trees: the best time to do it was yesterday, the second best time to do it is today. Waiting 10 years will make it
more expensive to build, and in the meantime we know that there will be more and more congestion on the highways, both in NH and resultantly in MA. The economic draws of living in commutable distance from Boston, or otherwise living in the Merrimack Valley will mean that there's
always incentive for more people to move there, which means that folks will continue to pile on to the highway (unless tolls are implemented -- unlikely in NH) until the highway becomes too slow to use -- which basically guarantees you'll get congestion no matter how much you expand or modernize the roads.
The only way to reduce traffic is to reduce the number of vehicles. The only way to reduce the number of vehicles is through mass transit.
manchesterinklink.com
