Crazy Transit Pitches

[George_Apley]

Always wondered how the UR hits Lechmere, unless it's just one branch of it going from Sullivan to the Central Subway via Lechmere Viaduct. How does it get from Sullivan to Lechmere to Grand Junction?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Always wondered how the UR hits Lechmere, unless it's just one branch of it going from Sullivan to the Central Subway via Lechmere Viaduct. How does it get from Sullivan to Lechmere to Grand Junction?

Like this. . .

Here's the approximate GLX design of the flyover junction and carhouse. Carhouse leads would be the jumping-off point for the eastbound UR. Can see more detailed design schematics on the GLX site, although that's about 5 years old and probably will change a little in final design.

Really don't think them cutting the Lowell<-->Eastern Route wraparound freight track is going to fly now vs. in 2009 when the study is done, so that may force a design change around the flyover to allow the freight track to slip under and re-connect.



Now here's how it would work with the Urban Ring. . .

All of the infrastructure for getting across the Innerbelt is pre-built with the carhouse and flyover junction. Only modifications are that you probably have to add another yard lead track and reconfigure crossovers to grade separate the yard moves from the thru service. There probably is no room to put an Innerbelt Rd. intermediate stop here because the additional yard lead tracks are going to flank the north side of the ROW, while everything south of the ROW is freight and commuter rail yard tracks. But Community Path access gives what few people work in that landlocked portion of the Innerbelt south of the Lowell Line embankment above-average access to Brickbottom/Washington St. and Lechmere.

Rest is:
-- Underpass the freight wye in a shallow duck-under.
-- Duck under the Union Branch/Fitchburg Line underneath the McGrath overpass for that junction.
-- Take the dead-end freight storage tracks that run next to the Sullivan platforms as your UR mainline and UR Sullivan platforms.
-- Duck under the Orange Line near Assembly to get on the correct side of the ROW for a Mystic River crossing.


So that's not more than a few mil in construction on all-existing MBTA yard dead zone to get the thru access in-place. A LOT less than if UR Phase II were done as a busway. All of the UR expense is tied up on the proper Grand Junction ROW, proper Eastern Route ROW, stations, and the river crossing. This is the single easiest/cheapest part of the project because GLX pre-builds it (we hope...if the final yard lead design doesn't fuck something up in a major design revision from the '09 schematics on the website).

Theoretically, you could just build a stub Sullivan branch almost right off the bat, use that as a turnback for...I don't know, the C?...and be done with all the future-proofing work around the junction and carhouse as some sort of Phase 2.1 tack-on to the Route 16 GLX extension. It's a useful value-added for the bargain basement cost. It's not like that ultra-shallow duck-under beneath the freight wye and plunking an island platform at existing Sullivan between the freight tracks + connecting to the fare lobby is much steel and concrete. Probably less total price tag than building the Assembly Sq. Orange infill stop alone because of the station facilty re-use at Sullivan.

 

[The EGE]

Would there be any real difference in schedule reliability from running a third branch on the two-track North Station-Lechmere section, or would getting the C off the North Station turn offset that?

 

[George_Apley]

So F-Line, do riders from Union or Washington have any way to transfer to the Urban Ring? If the Urban Ring travels from Sullivan through the junction and to the Grand Junction, and the Union branch say, goes from Union, through the Junction to Lechmere, how does a rider from Union get to the Urban Ring? Or can they not? I imagine there's no room for a transfer platform within that tangle of junctions and flyovers by the 28-overpass.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Would there be any real difference in schedule reliability from running a third branch on the two-track North Station-Lechmere section, or would getting the C off the North Station turn offset that?

Probably not. Past GC it's so far under-capacity you could probably run 3x the amount of service without hiccups. It's not the quantity of trains that gunks up the subway...it's the transfer dwell times at Park St. and inability to wave Lechmere trains ahead of GC-turning trains in the queue. Since the C already goes past GC, it can pretty much go anywhere further with no penalty.

The D running end-to-end is the most problematic part of the GLX service plan. I don't know how they're going to keep that on-time between Riverside and Medford with how much the schedule's likely to get blown in the middle. Rush hour's probably going to require some supplemental D's turning at GC and Medford trains turning at Brattle Loop to play the odds.

So F-Line, do riders from Union or Washington have any way to transfer to the Urban Ring? If the Urban Ring travels from Sullivan through the junction and to the Grand Junction, and the Union branch say, goes from Union, through the Junction to Lechmere, how does a rider from Union get to the Urban Ring? Or can they not? I imagine there's no room for a transfer platform within that tangle of junctions and flyovers by the 28-overpass.

Lechmere. It's an island platform so you just walk across and transfer. No room for plunking a station in the middle of the junction, and its ridership would suck because the only street access is McGrath at the Sav-Mor property...absolutely nothing value-added to Lechmere.

At branch headways to Medford and Union the cross-platform transfer is going to net more frequent transfer opportunities than trying to fashion any run-thru options. The UR's audience is radial circulation around Boston to transfer stations, not one-seat rides or getting from Somerville to Everett on a one-seat ride. Ridership patterns on GLX are well mapped-out...it's inbound-outbound, not lateral.

 

[George_Apley]

Okay, so there would be several service patterns for the UR. Some from Lechmere to the east, some from Lechmere to the west, and some that travel through east to west, skipping Lechmere?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Okay, so there would be several service patterns for the UR. Some from Lechmere to the east, some from Lechmere to the west, and some that travel through east to west, skipping Lechmere?

Yes. Though if connected to the Green Line the run-thrus Sullivan<-->Cambridge would probably be the minority pattern and most trains would treat the diverging UR quadrants as conventional GL branches, because the transfers are so much more important and North Station beckons.


Caveat: the design for that junction is going to change. It already has in poorly-documented ways, and will some more.

-- Those animated 'virtual' trips along GLX on the Medford branch already have some differences in the locations of yard lead turnouts from the nearly 6-year-old carhouse siting study. And they're not reflected on any design schematics because the maint facility isn't even in final design. I'd say pull up the carhouse docs from the GLX project site then watch the movie then try to figure out the differences, but I'm not sure any of it is real anymore. And you can't figure out from the movie what's going on up on the flyover. It's just clear that the design is in active flux and dated material may be very dated.

-- Chances are they're only going to build the loop ramp from the mainline to the Union Branch with the first phase of service, then punt the rest off till later. Including touching any of the freight tracks. Which means the only permanent structure constructed soon may be the curving physical overpass of the Fitchburg Line from the outbound-to-outbound side with jersey-barriered "ghost ramp" cuts in it to be added onto later. They may opt to just send both tracks over it instead of building the inbound-side flyover, and have a temporary at-grade/Copley Jct. junction with the mainline at the bottom of a temp incline to handle the first few years of low-volume service then go fishing for money to finish half the associated steel and concrete for the junction later when the carhouse is built. Several design changes later.

-- That severed freight track is going to force the issue because the one difference today from 2008 is that Norfolk Southern, CSX's largest competitor, bought a 50% share of the Pan Am mainline from Ayer-west. And while Pan Am apparently did not give a crap about shooting its own freight access in the foot when it land-swapped out of the Innerbelt and gave consent to cut that track...Pan Am is now saddled with the weight of Norfolk Southern's expectations that it'll do everything possible to generate more traffic to/from Boston and Ayer. The Innerbelt isn't NS's territory, but they're so huge they're the straw that stirs the drink. And that's a change. Most likely they're going to have to reshape that viaduct to let the freight track slip under and keep its contiguous connection, which makes it anybody's guess how the carhouse hook-in to the viaduct and the Medford branch is going to be reshaped between now and 2020.

-- If they're under pressure to slice costs as much as possible with this junction (which they are), we might not like how the end result disregards future-proofing. That's not a blocker for implementing the UR as light rail because the basic layout of this thing has to be able to send trains to/from the carhouse and 1) Lechmere, 2) Union (and thus on-alignment with direction of a future Grand Junction junction), and 3) Medford. And the yard tracks themselves will wrap around the Innerbelt to the 3rd Ave. grade crossing on-trajectory for Sullivan. But is it gonna be more ham-fisted (single track turnouts for the non-revenue carhouse tracks, narrowed viaduct width on those turnouts, less-fluid at-grade connections for the non-revenue tracks, etc.) with compromises that require minor but annoying retooling later when it's time to build the UR?


We don't know. And they don't know...because it hasn't been designed yet. They're under a lot of deadline pressure, so I don't think perfect plug-and-play with the UR 20 years from now is a top priority for the project managers. Nothing they can't easily fix later because the whole setup has to serve trolleys going all the necessary directions for future UR. It's a matter of how disappointed are we going to be with cheap-outs that force more work later and force a little (not much, but a little) more inertia against proceeding with the UR.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

BTW...when the time comes this is the space you have to play with for forking the Grand Junction off the Union Branch for the second leg of the split: http://goo.gl/maps/CiNRH

Single track in the foreground is the freight track and BET access track. That will become the Union Branch, outbound and inbound between the fence and first set of bridge supports. Fitchburg Line stays where it is between the next set of supports, and the crossovers to/from the freight track will be consolidated about 800 ft. east of the bridge underneath the GLX flyover. That's the Grand Junction peeling off in the background.

There were 6 tracks underneath this bridge at one point: http://www.historicaerials.com/aeri...755059643663&lon=-71.0869954015399&year=T1962. Historic Aerials has it downsizing from 6 to the current 4 tracks sometime between 1968-1973. The Grand Junction ROW itself was 4 tracks between this junction and a small freight yard next to Ahern Field (though most of that's been knocked back to 2-track width today).

Turning out for a duck-under tunnel from the Union Branch to the GJ is not a problem in the available space. Wouldn't be a bi-directional split allowing such low-ridership routings as Union<-->MIT, but that's the need cross-platform transfers at Lechmere more than adequately serve.

 

[Deetroyt]

F-line, why does a future LRV UR leaving from Lechmere stop at both Sullivan AND Assembly?? I don't see the point of it, when riders can just transfer at Sullivan. It seems like wasteful extra cost to send it closer to Assembly before crossing the river to Everett. Or is it necessary because of existing constraints?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

F-line, why does a future LRV UR leaving from Lechmere stop at both Sullivan AND Assembly?? I don't see the point of it, when riders can just transfer at Sullivan. It seems like wasteful extra cost to send it closer to Assembly before crossing the river to Everett. Or is it necessary because of existing constraints?

Because that's what the T's own UR study said it had to do to be...I don't know, for maximally awesome TOD-ness? That was their preference, not mine.

Maybe when the new-car smell wears off they'll reconsider whether it really has to be both, but I doubt it. Station pork here is pretty much the cost of doing business for the UR.


I think an Assembly stop is doable without distorting the line too much.

1) Build a new commuter rail bridge on the alignment of the old pre-1988 drawbridge about a hundred feet south of the current span (see where the storage track on the Somerville side aligns, and the little piece of land jutting out on the Everett side): http://goo.gl/maps/UK84F.

2) Shift CR over, let the UR use the existing bridge. Existing span may even have room for a sidewalk on one side if the closer-spaced trolley tracks free up enough space for proper width and fencing on one side.

3) Put a set of trolley platforms near the bottom of the incline. Overhead walkway connecting to the southernmost tip of the OL platforms. Switch off 45-degree view on Google and you can see the OL construction. What...about 300 ft.'s worth of overhead walkway to get to the OL and the nearest egress? That's pretty decent.


That's not bad or the least bit inelegant. Probably is the single cheapest alignment for a new Mystic crossing since the old commuter rail alignment is still available.

 

[BostonUrbEx]

I've been dreaming up some pretty crazy stuff, guys.

This is a rough sketch, but it gets the main point across in a fairly orderly manner, for now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BostonUrbEx/Template:MBTA_Urban_Ring

I'd design for Red Line dimensions, but shift the track beds at stations to suit Blue Line rolling stock. Physical connections allow an expanded Blue Line fleet to be stored at Orient Heights and Wellington for use by this initial phase of the ring. A connection to the Option L maintenance facility for GLX also helps facilitate the movement of MOW equipment.

 

[JeffDowntown]

Regional Transit Game Changer -- Alternative North-South Link via Logan Airport

If we really want to change the game in regional transit alignment, I would propose evaluating an alternative routing for a north-south rail link that puts Central Station at Logan Airport.

Expensive -- yes. But, it completely changes the level of multi-modal connectivity in the region.

NEC trains through run from the south to Maine, via Logan.

Commuter Rail can become Regional Rail, with many trains running through connecting to Logan. These become viable alternatives to the regional buses, and all the cars at Logan.

I have no idea how to so this, and you probably need more than two tracks of heavy rail to get enough through running to make a regional difference. But it would provide a true alternative to all those cars parked at Central Parking, Terminal B and all the maxed out over flow lots. This would be a true alternative transportation Big Dig. It could also make Logan a more attractive international gateway (easy access to the Northeast by train).

Major cities in Europe have pulled this off (you can take the TGV directly from Charles de Gaulle; the ICE directly from Frankfort). Why not Boston?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

That's been floated time and again for generations. Just like that cross-harbor interstate replacement for the Big Dig that certain quixotic groups of individuals keep flogging to this day (if not as a realistic build, then to say "I told you so"). It always gets shot full of holes and ends up looking really poor vs. the conventional Link routing.

-- You lose the ability to thru-route to every northside line except the Eastern Route. There is no capacity for backtracking on that dog-slow Chelsea jog all the way to Somerville--undoing nearly all the extra distance you've traveled--in order to feed Lowell and Fitchburg. Lowell Line is where vast majority of the thru-running ridership to 128 and other population centers is, and where the capacity suits it. This defeats it right off the bat, and now for all intensive purposes you've reduced your case to an airport connector in isolation. Which is not what run-thru regional rail should ever be distorted around.

-- The only viable RR tunnel trajectory from an underground South Station crosses the Harbor at the widest possible point and longest possible tunnel length at maximum possible expense. You can only deviate off the official N-S Link trajectory at about the Northern Ave. Bridge because SS Under is locked in place on only one alignment slipping between Red, Silver, and Pike tunnels. The Blue Line tunnel blocks the shortest hop across the water at Long Wharf so you can't hug the coast. And you've overshot Southie by the time you have freedom to move so you can't hug that coast. 1.2 miles corner-to-corner...that's how much tunneling you have to do for this. Almost 3x longer than every other crossing: Ted, Callahan, Sumner, Blue. At 4 tracks for equivalent capacity with the proposed Link, this will be one of the most expensive tunnels to build in North America. Much more expensive than the proposed Link because you still have to build exactly the same hard parts around South Station as the official proposal to get there at all.

-- Showcase airport rail connections have a bad reputation in this country for badly underperforming their expectations. It's a necessary evil to have an airport connector, but overplaying its importance and attempting to alter the entire transit center of gravity in the city away from the CBD towards the airport is almost always a loser. Airports by necessity are away from the CBD and are more or less urban deserts devoid of anything except explicitly airport-oriented services. They have boatloads of TOD, but it's single-task TOD in direct support of the single-task airport. Trading all the destinations around North Station for all the destinations around the Logan Terminals is a ridership killer (compounded by the flaws of how much of northside commuter rail it cuts off or renders nearly useless). North Station frames one side of a fully-enriched, fully-diversified central business district. Logan is the antithesis of the CBD because of its single-tasking. Too many cities conflate the two and end up overinvesting in their airport connectors thinking "Well, it's a TOD paradise and people gotta use the airport!", not realizing it's a two-dimensional destination vs. the CBD.

-- Another reason why airport connectors don't perform to expectations is that the most frequent of flyers use public transit at lower rate than the general population. That's the luggage factor. If you're only an occasional flyer, yes, you're likely to use public transit at roughly similar rate as the general population. But it's the frequent flyers who bring in disproportionate airport revenue. If you are on the road a few times a month, lugging your stuff around through transfers gets real old real fast and your likely preference is going to be for private ground transportation. Any company that doesn't run itself on a shoestring pretty much makes ground transportation a default in its travel budget. It's a necessary price of doing business when hiring and retaining real road warrior employees requires taking some hassles out of the experience. Having the frequent flyers use the mainline airport station at several ticks lower % than the general casual flyers lowers the growth ceiling for that station to the point where it's unwise to overbuild it and doubleplusunwise to pass up the CBD for the airport. It needs to be right-sized to task. That's the single-tasking aspect of airport transit throwing some planners for a loop when they over-equate the airport with the CBD.

-- The one-seat convenience for some people does not undo the limitations of the last point. Because not everyone is going to be doing a one-seat trip, even if the ones who do have a one-seat available to them use the service in droves. Not every destination even on run-thru commuter rail can be done without transfers. That includes car transfers. The hotel or the office park is not going to be across the street from every commuter rail platform, so the road warriors' utilization is still going to be lower than the population of casual travelers. With the road warriors' disproportionate influence over airports, the ones who do get absolutely perfect door-to-door transit service don't make up enough of the attrition from the frequent flyers taking a pass. Draw the station away from the CBD betting too big on behavior that isn't there, and that hurts more than it helps.

-- These lower margins at a two-dimensional destination are best suited for more of what we've got and what's been officially proposed: transfer-oriented connectors of moderate capacity and quick in/out travel times to the terminals. SL1 is an entirely appropriate airport connector. Actually, BRT in general hits a little above its weight when it comes to serving airport connectors than vs. some other applications where it's mis-applied because it can go door-to-door at each terminal in pretty nimble fashion while an HRT or commuter rail station can only feasibly make 1 stop at an airport that has to unfavorably split the difference between terminals. We can quibble with the final form the Transitway took and the lack of follow-through on getting to downtown, but SL1 is pretty good for what it does. Urban Ring LRT on the north flank would be very good for what it does as an airport connector...because it's all about transfer-to-transfer destinations, not overemphasized on end-to-end one-seaters, and links the CBD to a diverse set of other general-purpose destinations. Same can be said for Blue. It's a North Shore to downtown oriented route that just happens to clip the airport; the Airport doesn't distort the routing the one-seat rides use it for (which is also why a Blue branch to the terminals that siphons frequencies or capacity away from Eastie, Revere, Lynn is a lousy idea).


Some illustrative reading: http://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/09/30/who-regional-rail-is-for/

^THIS^ is basically why none of these harbor bypass proposals ever pass the laugh test. The center of gravity in any city is too heavily weighted to the CBD. Without North Station, run-thru regional rail doesn't pull its weight here. At all. There's no reinventing where the N-S Link goes. It can only go one place and still do its job. Thankfully, they provisioned for that when they did the Big Dig. It costs less to scoop out the fill under 93 than build a 1-1/4 mile bore across the Harbor when all else cost-wise around South Station is the same either way. Why would anyone opt for the latter when the ridership to the other side of the CBD so stratospherically better as well as the thru-running options to the northside lines that have the most thru-running demand?

Solution in search of a problem. And solution that ignores to its own peril where the real CBD-oriented driver for run-thru regional rail is.

 

[Riverside]

I once read a pie-in-the-sky proposal to build, well, basically a viaduct across Boston Harbor, that would include, among other things, a rail bypass. I only recollect the proposal vaguely, but I sorta remember it calling for an expanded Logan, with access provided by this rail bypass, and the bypass linking up with existing infrastructure at Sullivan Square.

This ring a bell to anyone else? F-Line, is this the cross-harbor interstate replacement you referred to?

Also, to summarize what may be the biggest impediment to increasing rail access to Logan (and what, incidentally, sets Boston apart from London, Paris, Frankfurt, etc.):

You have to go under an ocean to get to it.

This means two things: first, any tunnel would be particularly challenging to build, and second, even though Logan is ridiculously close to downtown (unusually so for an airport its size), there has been and always will be a physical barrier to increased access between the two, thus leading to developmental patterns which belie the two areas' physical proximity, hampering transit solutions that work in other cities around the world.

 

[Riverside]

(Sorry for the double post.)

This is the only sort of iteration of a non-LRT, non-HRT rail "link" to Logan Airport that I can at all imagine. (The map is rough, not extremely precise.)

Go up Track 61 (or I suppose you could use the Piers Transitway if it were totally rehabbed– I dunno), then lay some track down along the edge of the pier and cross over the main channel of the Harbor at its mouth (either in a tunnel or some manner of bridge). Then run along the edge of the Logan landfill until you can head up to the terminals. Then take the Grand Junction the rest of the way.

The key here is crossing the Harbor way out there, where the distance is relatively short, and not too much has been built up already, giving you flexibility with construction.

Of course, this alignment doesn't make much sense for commuter rail, for reasons already outlined. Depending on how the Seaport and pier develops, it might possibly serve as an Indigo Line corridor someday, especially if the "Silver Line Gateway" project to Chelsea goes over well.

If a new rail-tunnel along or underneath I-90 could be built (basically a straight line from Back Bay to the Convention Center), then this alignment might make more sense. You might be able to get Amtrak excited about the idea if it meant being able to through-route Downeaster service (rerouted via the Eastern Route) out to Worcester and Albany.

But, in any case, it's highly circuitous, and, as F-Line said, doesn't really address most riders' needs.

(For the record, though: I would love it if there was a way to bring commuter/intercity rail to Logan. That would be way cool for me.)

EDIT: the other really crazy solution, which is pretty obvious from looking at the map I drew up, would be to convert part or all of the TWT to rail. Combine that with a Back Bay-Convention Center connector, and we might have something.

 

[JeffDowntown]

(Sorry for the double post.)

This

EDIT: the other really crazy solution, which is pretty obvious from looking at the map I drew up, would be to convert part or all of the TWT to rail. Combine that with a Back Bay-Convention Center connector, and we might have something.

Or build a third tube at the location of the TWT -- which of course should have been done in the first place.

 

[JeffDowntown]

^^^ F-Line, if you think the "SL1 is an entirely appropriate airport connector", you clearly have not traveled much to cities with real airport connectors.

I use the SL1, and I am rather embarrassed by the Europeans snickering at the "third world" bus ride from the airport, particularly when it so obviously takes you around in circles in Southie. (Actually many third world airports have better connectors. A good connector actually beats a taxi in traffic to the same general destination.)

Also, cities with real airport connectors find that frequent travelers do use the connector, because it works better/faster than the alternatives. We just don't get that about public transit in America, it is not just about poor people; it should be about a fast, efficient transportation alternative around traffic.

 

[Equilibria]

^^^ F-Line, if you think the "SL1 is an entirely appropriate airport connector", you clearly have not traveled much to cities with real airport connectors.

I use the SL1, and I am rather embarrassed by the Europeans snickering at the "third world" bus ride from the airport, particularly when it so obviously takes you around in circles in Southie. (Actually many third world airports have better connectors. A good connector actually beats a taxi in traffic to the same general destination.)

Also, cities with real airport connectors find that frequent travelers do use the connector, because it works better/faster than the alternatives. We just don't get that about public transit in America, it is not just about poor people; it should be about a fast, efficient transportation alternative around traffic.

The airport connector for Logan is the Massport buses and the Blue Line. The Silver is a connector solely for the SBW and South Station, and maybe the Red if you're local and live along it.

I did a quick census of European airport rail connections. Most of them are essentially what Dulles will have or what Chicago Midway already has - a long walk to a nearby rail line. All of those airports have 2 advantages over Logan:

1) The airport is far enough from the city center that a rail line (rarely a metro line in Europe) can reasonably terminate there, and

2) That the rail service is newer than the airport, allowing it to be routed directly to it (this is definitely true in the American cases and at Heathrow, I'm not sure about the others).

Logan is newer than the Blue Line and is located so close to Downtown that terminating a train there isn't really a possibility. It lies out of the approach path for every transit and commuter rail line, so diverting a line to serve it isn't realistic, and Airport station is too far for a walkway. That leaves buses and a people mover as your options, and when Massport studied a people mover they found that running their buses intelligently would get them just as far for much less money, so that's what they've done.

I'm not sure it's reasonably possible to do better. A people mover would look sleeker, but probably doesn't get you there much faster.

 

[George_Apley]

^ Right. And a GL branch still wouldn't give a very direct a link to Downtown. The fastest way downtown with a Green Line airport connector would still be to transfer to Blue, rather than go through Chelsea, Sullivan, and Lechmere just to get to Boston proper.

 

[JeffDowntown]

^ Right. And a GL branch still wouldn't give a very direct a link to Downtown. The fastest way downtown with a Green Line airport connector would still be to transfer to Blue, rather than go through Chelsea, Sullivan, and Lechmere just to get to Boston proper.

So I believe that one of the fundamental differences in transportation design thinking is whether the airport is a "destination" or a "transportation hub".

We, in the US, tend to think of the airport as a destination. So we build connectors to connect the airport to transportation hubs.

In some of the European cities with major regional airports (Paris, Frankfurt), they have rethought the role of the airport. Rather than just connectors (which exist) they also treat the airport as a full fledged transportation hub in its own right. So these airports have not only connector service into the city, they also have TGV or ICE through or originating high-speed service that connects them regionally. The airport as transportation hub concept is so ingrained now that you can book combination air/train connecting tickets.

When I travel to Mannheim Germany, I fly into Frankfurt, and then take an ICE train (which runs hourly) directly from Frankfurt airport to Mannheim central station. 46 miles. 30 minutes transit. SINGLE SEAT RIDE. Which makes all the difference with luggage handling. (I could take a connecting service, which runs more frequently, but it then requires schlepping bags more.)

Note that the ICE service gets me to central Mannheim FASTER than renting a car and driving in traffic (typical drive time is about 90 minutes).

And when I get back home to Logan, I am faced with two options to use public transit to get back home (in Downtown Boston) -- Airport Bus, to Blue to Orange (3 seat ride) or SL1 to SL4 (2 seat ride) (or Red to Orange, if SL4 is off schedule, also 3 seat ride), often the case. All these options take longer than the typical trip from Frankfurt Airport to Mannheim, although they are a fraction of the distance. And the connections are a real pain with luggage. So usually I opt for Uber, which takes 15 minutes from Logan to my house, even with traffic.

Our airport connectors in Boston do not work well, because they are slow, and the transfer locations they connect with are not airport passenger (luggage) friendly (Luggage in DTC or State -- nightmare). And they do not really encourage regional users of Logan to get out of their cars (which does happen in Germany!)