Thanks for all the feedback! My girlfriend thinks I'm crazy and all I get from her is "that's nice".
I get similar feedback from my boyfriend haha. His line tends to be "and you aren't getting paid for this, right?"
I might do a "slightly less crazy" version, or a few maps showing phased extensions. But for this one, I decided since I was doing so much work I would take it as far as the system could handle, although I did limit myself to existing ROWs for the most part. The only things I deemed completely insane were a Harvard Ave subway (less important with all the E-W service) and extending the 8 past Harvard to Union Square through Inman Square. As for what I deemed crazy but not insane:
Hah, I guess my insane line is drawn a little lower down.
-Bringing the 7 north past Waltham to 128 is an old idea of Vans I read years ago on his site and made a ton of sense, as there is a boatload of land right there that could be redeveloped.
And a boatload of happy, quiet suburbanites.
-An Everett Subway under Broadway is a major undertaking, but opens up an entire quadrant of the area previously inaccessible by transit and would be a boon for the region. It doesn't hurt it smacks into the Saugus branch where it becomes useful and they are building a bunch of new development either.
I want to better connect Everett too, and my maps have toyed with a surface line up Broadway before, but I decided it would be too tough to dispatch and too congested. A subway would solve those problems, but would also be a 2.3 mile subway. $$$ + NIMBY = Everett will be pleased to keep the bus.
-The 5 going from West Roxbury to Norwood would not use the old railroad ROW, as it has been almost entirely obliterated. Instead, it would run in a short subway beneeth Belle Ave, before portaling and running as an el or open cut along the east side of the VFW parkway. There is a wide buffer between the highway and the parking lots there, so this wouldn't be an issue at all. Through Dedham Center it would run underground as a subway, before emerging again to run as an el/open cut alongside route 1 to 95, where it would pick up the railroad ROW again.
Cut-and-cover a quiet residential road? Man, dat's craaazy
Also, that's a lot of portaling. $$$... I've toyed with an El along the highway north from Dedham Center off of the old Dedham Line ROW to the Dedham Mall, but more subway portals you build the more and more expensive this gets.
-The F past Mattapan to the end of the Blue Hills Parkway is a concession for removing all but one Milton stop on the old high speed line. There is a wide median there. Running the F continously from North Station to Milton means burying the line as a subway all the way to Dudley. I think this should be done anyway. If not made a subway, then the line would have to be split, requiring a transfer at Dudley to continue into town. That median down Blue Hill Ave is just two damned tempting as a light rail line to not use it.
It is tempting. It was hard for me to trim my F-Line back, and I still kept it to Franklin Park (admittedly, barely on BHA at all). F-Line to Dudley (where'd he go anyway?) convinced me that a surface line streetcar line from the Pike trench to Mattapan would be too long to effectively dispatch, even in a central reservation with signal priority. Also it's clear that with an extended Red Line and the Indigo Line, stretching the Green Line to Mattapan too is redundant.
I wouldn't sweat the Milton stops. The ridership just isn't there in Milton. It's barely there for the stops on the Mattapan Line now.
-The C to Rumford (north Woburn) may be a bit crazy, but if you are extending the green line all the way out there, it makes a lot more sense to run via the old Woburn Branch instead of the current route of the CR, which goes between population centers instead of through them.
You just need frequent bus service down Montvale Ave. Contrary to my ill-begotten handle, in the 'burbs busses are huge part in extending the rail network. You're not going to get to hit every provincial New England town center. Practically and politically it ain't gonna fly.
It's mostly intact to Woburn Center, the two stops beyond that are far more dicey since that half was abandoned much earlier. It would be more realistic to end it in Woburn Center, but again, this is the furthest I think the system could go.
You would have to go subway in Woburn Center.
-D to Stoneham for the same reasons as above, and that ROW is largely intact. I also like ending my branches at individual terminals instead of just a station along the line. Stoneham, like Woburn, has a lot of parking lots that could be developed, and the line nicely hits almost every one of them.
It would be really tricky north of Montvale Ave. Probably subway'd in the middle of residential neighborhoods. Also: Where do the LRVs turn around?
I've accepted realignment of my Lowell Line RT route (on my map it's Red) to Anderson. Make Anderson a super station with Amtrak, MBCR, NHDOT, and MBTA rapid transit. Give it plenty of RTA bus connections, a big park and ride for I-93, and plenty of land open for housing and commercial development around the station.
-the 5 to Medford is hard, but not impossible. The ROW is "intact" as far as 93 for cut and cover. Intact meaning only one house, but everyones backyards and garages would have to be demolished and rebuilt. Then you just have to tunnel under 93 and build a terminal under Riverside Ave. Medford will get transit access at Medford Hillside, but it requires walking almost a half mile and across RT16. While this would be expensive, it would open up Medford Center for more development, and the area of industrial properties around RT28. Even if going all the way to Medford is infeasable, Wellington is a godawful station in a terrible place. Just building a one station spur to Edgeworth at RT28 (where there are still tracks on the ROW) would be a large improvement for neighborhood access and TOD development.
I begrudgingly cut this out of mine. You're just not going to get to blow up people's backyards. You would have to go deep underground before the ROW is encroached upon, doable but oh-so expensive. Medford Square deserves better transit, but it may be more worth it for them to get some better bus connection coverage out of the Medford Hillside extension. Some busses from Medford Square can ping between Davis, Hillside and Wellington.
-The H to Marblehead is a stretch, more because its Marblehead than anything else. Salem State is a far more likely terminal. I do think running a trolley out to Danvers State (Hathorne) would be good, as there is a MASSIVE amount of underused land along the route, and it also gets transit access to Danvers and Peabody, which are difficult to serve on their own but could really use it. For maintenance, the H trolleys could run down the Blue Line to Lynn, since the blue line thankfully uses the same overhead catenary. A small yard could be built in Peabody on one of the other two ROWs I didn't use for storage.
Cool concept to have a stand alone LRV line for the North Shore. I agree that Marblehead is a nonstarter.
-8 via Tobin Bridge is also a stretch, but not impossible. It looks like some reworking of the structural supports of the tobin would allow rail to be built within the current structure as long as the loads work out. Otherwise it could be built after the Tobins useful life is up, and route 1 gets rerouted via the eastern route through Everett and connects south of Assembly. Before that it could connect using the abandoned east boston branch from Airport to Revere Center.
Is that a real plan for Route 1, or a fantasy map Route 1? Like elevated over the Eastern Route? Were's the East Boston Branch ROW? I've scoured Revere Center and can't find anything that looks like an unmolested ROW.
-1 to Hanscom instead of Bedford is pretty easy, there is a manure farm or something (landscaping company?) that would make a perfect park and ride, and the rest of the way to the airport would be an el runing along the side of Hartwell Ave/Barksdale St, which runs directly to the front of the civillian terminal.
Parts of Hartwell/Barksdale through Hanscome run through the AFB. Behind the gates. The air force won't let mass transit through that way.
I tend to route the Red Line northeast to the Burlington Mall along the utility ROW, rather than going to Bedford or Hanscom. Hanscom can shuttle busses to the 128 Park and Ride for commercial flyers. But I don't believe that Hanscom is ever going to become significantly higher traffic than it is now.
This would give the Boston region TWO airports directly on the transit lines. I know people in Bedford don't like the idea of Hanscom being used as a real airport, but it's either that or Norwood as a Logan alternate, and Hanscom has more expansion room.
Will never happen. The combined might of Bedford, Lexington, Lincoln and Concord will see to that.
-I did NOT reactivate the original A through Brighton, instead supplementing it with the blue line, reopening the Faneuil and Newton Corner CR stations, and having the teal line ending in Watertown. This was more a pretty lines decision than anything else, I might play with restoring it from Oak Square to Kenmore.
Hah! A-Line reactivation is one of the more reasonable ideas for the MBTA
I do think that you need to bring it to Watertown Yard though. There's not a lot of room for any train storage at Oak Square, unless you coopt the park in the middle. Which would not go over.
The most important thing I tried to do with my extensions and routings was not just get people into and around Boston, but also into and around the satellite cities. This is why Waltham, Lynn, Watertown, Dedham, and to a lesser extent Quincy all have redundant service. (Quincy is developed pretty lineally along the red line, and also has very few other options for more transit lines). The only other ROW through there I'm aware of was taken over by 93, and there's little TOD potential along it anyway.)
Unless all those communities are ready to develop to much larger degree than they ever have before, any redundant service will be a tough sell.
Lynn has the 7, which is local service not useful for getting to Boston, but very useful for getting around Revere. the 8 is express service to get into Boston, and also connects Lynn to Salem.
I'd just give the Salem - Lynn - Boston Express Riders a 'MU service.
Same thing with Waltham, it gets redundant service with both blue and red running through it, not just to it.
Through it to where? Piety Corner? Not all vacant areas in these towns will be open for development.
The gold line would be torture to ride all the way into Boston, but is very good for getting around, and opens up some vacant areas to development. The A to watertown is useless for getting downtown, but very good for getting to Cambridge and around Watertown itself. This is also why I extended service to Randolph and Norwood. I think these satellites are going to be very important places to house people and business if the metro area continues to expand, and getting them service should be of utmost importance.
Neither of them would be that torturous if you chopped some stops. I wouldn't treat them like street-car stops after a certain point. They have their own ROWs, they can have half the number of stops you assign to them. Your A Line for example - slash Beechwood, Grove, Strawberry Hill and Cambridge Highlands. Now it's no less reasonable than the D, which the ROW is more akin to.
This does get to one of the problems with far-flung RT extensions in MetroBoston: We don't have express tunnels. I would say that you have waay too many stops on the Arlington-Lexington extension of the Red Line. For one, the ridership isn't there. For another, the NIMBYs will slaughter you if your stops aren't placed very deliberately, with specific bus connections in mind. Lexington isn't going to go on a development spree in sensitive wetlands because you want to put a Red Line stop at Pierces Bridge. For yet another, the trip from Hanscom to Park Street would be painful in a Red Line car with that many stops along the way, and no way to skip stations. Stops should be culled on the outer lines. Mystic Lake for example serves no one, and will never serve anyone. Wedgemere should probably get slashed in favor of better bus connections to Winchester, in the interest of speeding the line. Express riders should be served by the Commuter Rail (which wouldn't overlap with RT stations at all - except at the RT's terminal) and inner service 'MUs along the CR routes that don't have duplicate RT coverage. We definitely don't want our Red, Orange and Blue lines to be bogged down in Lexington, Dedham and Swampscott when the demand for them is much higher in Cambridge, Dorchester, JP and downtown.
On some other things:
I know the Mass Ave subway has been discussed to death, and I won't beat the "can't do it" drum too hard, but sufficed to say, I don't see it happening. I don't the engineering working. I still love the concept. But I've resigned it to the dustbin.
Still not really clear on your routing of Blue through Allston and Watertown. Under Lincoln Street to Birmingham Pkway under the Charles to N Beacon? How do you thread it through the Arsenal Center to meet your A Line? Do you tunnel through West Watertown? Seems like a stretch to me.
What's your K routing to Dudley? NVM found it. Tricksy.
Red to Randolph is another one I've given up, though I still love the idea.
I don't think Blue through Point of Pines works. The ROW is built upon. You'd have to cut up to the Eastern Route after Oak Island.
Also not sure the Blue line can go straight under Charles/MGH. The Longfellow's footings run deep. It would have to go back up Cambridge St, lowering it's usefulness.
Shouldn't the Fitchburg Line hug the Red2 line at Belmont? (RT through Belmont is one insane idea I've also refused to give up...)
The Milford CR line is donezo I think. The state killed the ROW. Might be able to get to Milford from Franklin Line though.
