Crazy Transit Pitches

^ If Boston were in Germany or Japan, it would already have this network. If it were in China, it'd be coming soon.
 
BostonUrbEx said:
Not IMO. I think 128 makes a nice growth boundary. Except in the northern regions, where going beyond downtown Peabody or downtown Beverly is entirely excessive.

Exceptions can be made for places like Needham, Reading, and maybe Anderson/Wouburn if you subscribe to Park & Rides (personally dislike them).


Not to stop on your ideas though, I mean, always good to stretch the imagination. But I think things need to be concentrated in the 128-belt. I suppose it's just my personal opinion, so you should do what you want, but I think most would agree. Some here would probably tell you to not even go that far.
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Urb, Commute, Omj -- You continue to try to force fit some sort of LR/HR topia (dis? or eu?) onto a nice diverse set of living. commuting options

Yes there are improvements which could and perhaps be made to the T -- I can list my 5 most useful as all can -- But the reality of towns with varying density and style of life is just that reality. People move to Belmont because it is different than Lexington and more different than Watertown and Arlington and worlds away from Cambridge and downtown Boston and downtown Waltham. All of those towns and the cities all feature something which attracts residents. None of them will make dramatic changes -- rather the timetable is measured in housing generations (about 7 years). That said over long periods of time (several decades) the small accumulation of changes (akin to mutations in the genome) may lead to dramatic restructuring.

If you think of the Population of Greater Boston as concentric rings and nominally radial spokes with some anomalies thrown-in from time to time you will do much better in designing your system.

So start with a core with the density of houses and residents to support Heavy Rail with stations about 0.5 mi apart:
Boston neighborhoods of Back Bay, Beacon Hill, Charlestown, North End, Southy, Eastie, South End, Roxburry, Dorchester, Jamaica Plane, Chelsea
close-in but outside of Boston:
East Cambridge, Central Cambridge; Sommerville, Brookline along the Green Line
a bit further out you have mini cores with lower density surroundings -- only the minicores of:
Medford between the square and Sommerville and the Mystic River; Downtown Quincy; Downtown Lynn; Downtown Waltham; Arlington along Mass Ave; some of Newton; Malden neat to the Center;
out at Tr-128 there are some minicores with the necessary density:
Salem; downtown Peabody; Woburn along Rt-28
still further out but within/on I-495 you have:
downtown Haverhill; downtown Brockton; downtown Framingham; Lowell;

Assumption is that these stations are all stand-alone or may be transfer points from LR or CR or even buses but do not feature parking or much kiss&ride

Now connecting these mini-cores are often bands of density which are lower density or too-narrow to support HR-- but which could support Light Rail with stops 0.5 to 1 mi separation

Fanning out from the mini-cores are much lower density suburban belts and bands which can support commuter rail with sufficient parking - the stations would be 3 to 5 miles apart

In addition to these stations where travelers originate are the primarily destination stations -- e.g. work; entertainment; recreation

The key to all of it is high-enough frequency of service so that people don't have to waste huge amounts of time waiting for a train. This translates into shorter trains where the density is lower -- all of course are electric traction so that they are traveling at close to maximum speed or stopped -- no long starts / stops
 
Commuting Boston Student said:
And, after spending way too much time putting it off (to be fair, in favor of much more important things...)

Here's the Red Line.

Next, I'll get around to turning the Silver Line into the light rail it was supposed to be, I might reassess the Turquoise Line I made earlier (any suggestions on how I can clean that mess up would be appreciated, or some reassurance that it isn't as bad as I think it is...) and then I might sit down and try and figure out how to make a proper map like the ones van has up on thefutureMBTA.
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The town of Lincoln isn't begging for more transit at all. It's a sleepy smaller-half of a regionalized school district with very little development and they like it that way. The Commuter Rail stop serves the community just fine.

Seems to me that if you want to extend the Red Line to the north, the Minuteman Bike Path RoW is the best route for reaching the most riders. Lexington had wanted the extension in the '80s but it was nixed by Arlington's anti-urban schizophrenia. I'm betting that the Arlington Heights attitude would now prevail in Lexington as well, and such an extension would be dead in the water, however much the towns would actually benefit from it.
 
BussesAin'tTrains said:
Seems to me that if you want to extend the Red Line to the north, the Minuteman Bike Path RoW is the best route for reaching the most riders. Lexington had wanted the extension in the '80s but it was nixed by Arlington's anti-urban schizophrenia. I'm betting that the Arlington Heights attitude would now prevail in Lexington as well, and such an extension would be dead in the water, however much the towns would actually benefit from it.
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Yeah...that's the only real option with the intermediate stops that would provide adequate ridership heft. There's also the option to take it from the would-be Hanscom/128 stop over cleared-out power line land to Burlington Mall, which is now developed to the hilt where it wasn't 35 years ago when this extension was planned. That area has zero transit options save for some excruciating long-distance buses.

Route 2 median busting the highway down to 6 vs. 8 lanes hits population no-man's land on the Arlington/Belmont border. The MPO poked around that one, and while it would be pretty to plunk on top of pre-existing grade separation while not compromising the highway it's a born loser on ridership.

Fitchburg Line is arguably the higher population center and used to be a 4-track line out to Beaver St. in Waltham. That was never considered as an alignment, but it's a semi-attractive one because the commuter rail could stay as an express from Porter, switch over at Beaver onto the abandoned Central Mass ROW through north Waltham to give the 2-track Fitchburg ROW through Waltham Ctr. and Brandeis over to the Red Line, then meet back on-alignment at a 128 Red/CR superstation where the Fitchburg and Central Mass cross again. More grade crossings to eliminate than the Lexington route, but Waltham would crave that because it's such a heavy bus terminal. However, the Belmont NIMBY's would've seceded from the MBTA district altogether rather than allow "cityfolk" to enter their town. Those folks were so anti-transit that the Fitchburg Line skipped Belmont Ctr. and Waverly entirely for the T's first 10 years of existence out of the town's refusal to provide subsidy for those stops. They are so immovable to this day (even proposed abandoning the TT wires on the 73 last year before Watertown and Cambridge told them to go to hell) that this was the main reason no one ever seriously considered that route in the early 70's when the Central Mass was still active and available. The money in that town to defeat ANY rapid transit was far greater than Arlington's heft.


Sadly, RL is so far off from ever happening it's like a >2050 deal off anyone's radar to ever revive that plan. I do think 128 could have better options if they built the badly-needed 128 stop at Exit 26, "Indigo Line'd" the inner Fitchburg with DMU's, restored the old Beaver Brook stop in Waltham, and added a stop at Alewife. Significant bus transfers at every stop, including the 73 at Waverly and humongous number of routes at Waltham, and the all-critical 128 park-and-ride. With high frequencies. Other option to shore it up is to simply beef up Lowell Line service to Anderson/Woburn by rehabbing the ridiculously slow track to real 80 MPH speed, then adding a badly-needed Woburn infill stop at Montvale Ave. in walking distance of downtown (and get rid of Mishawum, which is near-useless). Increase the Lowell schedule substantially (this should be #3 in headways among standard CR lines after Providence and Worcester), divvy up half the Haverhill schedule as Anderson expresses--short-turning more at Reading to offset--to flush it nice and full, and get some real circumferential bus routes out of Anderson especially to Burlington Mall.

On a Legislative-reformed T with a viable path out of its debt service, both those minor finessing of the CR lines are very realistic 2020 projections. They have not gotten the knack of route-priming future rapid-transit corridors by maxing out existing commuter rail infrastructure with denser service. They should be studying "Indigo Lines" on all the key inner-suburb CR routes: Worcester Line to Riverside w/Allston and Newton Corner infills, Reading Line with a 128 infill at Lake Quannapowitt, Eastern Route to Salem/Peabody, Needham with an actual 128 stop at a relocated Hersey and/or a Highland Ave. terminus, and the afforementioned Lowell Line Anderson expresses + Woburn infill that can pretty much accomplish the DMU/Indigo-like headways on a regular CR schedule if doubled-up with Haverhill trains.

All of those except Fitchburg and Worcester (which doesn't have the room) are on MPO-rated rapid-transit expansion corridors. They've proven they can't make the giant leap from sparse CR service to full-blast rapid-transit in one leap through these towns. It needs to evolve with them getting acclimated to the cut-rate halfway solution on existing infrastructure before the support crests for going whole-hog with it. Sadly, the T was in all-or-nothing mode with Red Line to Lexington and wouldn't give them their commuter rail line back when the plan fell through. The support would've crested if the Lexington Line came back for the 1980's after a hiatus and ridership grew with the towns. Instead it sat abandoned for 10 years until the Minuteman came about on grounds that they had to do something to not waste the ROW.
 
BussesAin'tTrains said:
The town of Lincoln isn't begging for more transit at all. It's a sleepy smaller-half of a regionalized school district with very little development and they like it that way. The Commuter Rail stop serves the community just fine.

Seems to me that if you want to extend the Red Line to the north, the Minuteman Bike Path RoW is the best route for reaching the most riders. Lexington had wanted the extension in the '80s but it was nixed by Arlington's anti-urban schizophrenia. I'm betting that the Arlington Heights attitude would now prevail in Lexington as well, and such an extension would be dead in the water, however much the towns would actually benefit from it.
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Buss & F-Line -- If you don't build the Uber Alewife at Rt-128 @ the Lexington dump on Hartwell --don't bother at all

It hardly matters whether you go up Rt-2 -- obviously easier with the ROW or under the Minuteman Bikeway. Those routings will determine the number of stops and where -- in a certain way I'd like to see both routings -- as today I have choices of five buses within a 10 minute walk of my house 2 to Harvard and 3 to Alewife

Anyway -- the to make the lower density work is that Lexington, Waltham and Arlington operate small local buses which could connect neighborhoods outside of walking distance to the new Red Line stations

But however you get there the Red Line should end in the mother of all stations at Hartwell with its own exits ramps to Rt-128. Hartwell and Hanscom (whether today's AFB & Civil general aviation airport or the perhaps future R&d center provided with limited commercial service) provides a perfect Transit Oriented Destination + you have all the folks commuting by car to the Hartwell / Hanscom complex

When (if) the Hanscom/Hartwell center is built (3,000 car garage, buses, mini-buses, perhaps mono-rail or LRV/trolleys, bikes, kiss&ride, shops) the surrounding lower-scale development will be redeveloped into a Cambridge Center / Kendall level of density supporting 15 to 10 M sq ft of R&D with Lincoln Lab as its centerpiece. As you look at the demographics dynamics in the census data -- two of the 5 "brightest" Zip-Codes are Kendall and Lexington

In the next 20 years this is a must-do or at least a must-start -- for the continued economic success of the region -- supplying a 15 minute ride from Hanscom to Kendall is much more important than nearly all of the other proposed T enhancements
 
^^ I agree about needing a facility on 128. Would a 15 minute travel time to Kendall be at all feasible though? Short of building express track from Alewife to Kendall it takes 15-18 minutes to get to Kendall from Alewife as it is.
 
BussesAin'tTrains said:
^^ I agree about needing a facility on 128. Would a 15 minute travel time to Kendall be at all feasible though? Short of building express track from Alewife to Kendall it takes 15-18 minutes to get to Kendall from Alewife as it is.
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It used to be before the retarded ATO system they installed in the late-80's screwed with the headways. Trains used to do 60 MPH on the long run between Central and Kendall and could bunch much closer than the signal blocks currently allow (i.e. not nearly as many dead stops over the Longfellow because of a train way ahead at Park St.). Now they're limited at 49 MPH in the absolute fastest stretches and 39 or 29 in most places. The signal blocks are absurdly spaced on the Boston end of the bridge and that makes things routinely crawl at peak load from Kendall to Broadway before it picks up again. The sign they hung at old Harvard station said "10 minutes to Downtown" (Park), and for much of the line's history that was accurate.

CBTC signaling would lick that problem right away. Bi-directional digital signals instead of the analog 1-bit 'ping' of the ATO means dispatcher can see the trains and their spacing in real-time instead of when they cross a signal block, and the trains can see other trains. Computers auto-adjust the spacing and speed on moving blocks, so if there's somebody unloading at Park it'll time the trip at 20 MPH instead of enforcing a dead-stop for 4 minutes on the middle of the bridge and not allowing a proceed until the leading train is ready to leave Downtown Crossing or something ridiculous like that. 2 minute headways are achievable that way, and that means those things can scream through the straightaways at max car speed for the first time since 1988.

IF well-designed and implemented that would solve all of the Red Line's capacity problems, not only rolling it back to what it was during the Reagan Administration but likely making it more nimble than that. All 4 lines could handle much more capacity and further-flung extensions with smarter signaling. We don't have the kind of signal block layouts to facilitate moving trains spanning a whole metropolitan area end-to-end on the same run like a Washington Metro. It's very rinky-dink, one end of a compact downtown to another. Even the Red and Orange ATO systems, which are technologically solid and ubiquitous in much higher capacity situations worldwide, are just not laid out with very much foresight on block spacing vs. peak loads and dwell times.


Massive room for improvement on all existing lines. CBTC everywhere is the best billion they can spend for ROI on what it would do to all existing service and how much it lifts the lines' ceiling for future service. This is why the MTA is long-term investing in it on the NYC Subway over the next 15 years in the face of a truly terrifying price tag to modernize all those lines and hundreds of track miles one by one.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
It used to be before the retarded ATO system they installed in the late-80's screwed with the headways. Trains used to do 60 MPH on the long run between Central and Kendall and could bunch much closer than the signal blocks currently allow (i.e. not nearly as many dead stops over the Longfellow because of a train way ahead at Park St.).

....The sign they hung at old Harvard station said "10 minutes to Downtown" (Park), and for much of the line's history that was accurate......

IF well-designed and implemented that would solve all of the Red Line's capacity problems, not only rolling it back to what it was during the Reagan Administration but likely making it more nimble than that. All 4 lines could handle much more capacity and further-flung extensions with smarter signaling.
Massive room for improvement on all existing lines.
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F-line -- I believe the sign said: "Rapid Transit 8 Minutes to Park Street" -- it was the same at Lechemere
 
^^ F-Line, are there forces within the MBTA that are working against CBTC for reasons other than the price tag, or is it purely a financing issue?
 
BussesAin'tTrains said:
^^ F-Line, are there forces within the MBTA that are working against CBTC for reasons other than the price tag, or is it purely a financing issue?
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Nobody's working against it. They've got line items for studies on Green and Blue for FY2016 that they're actively looking to fund. On Green they're very aware of the urgency with the extensions making existing schedules that much tougher to keep, and also the safety angle. If they have another serious/fatal rear-end wreck due to operator error the NTSB may mandate an auto-stop traffic control system as Strike Three against them for the succession of accidents beginning with the D line and GC wrecks. So they know they better be prepared, lest that several hundred mil expense have to be an unplanned one. On Blue it's simply an operations issue. Those old mechanical trip-arm stops are maintenance intensive out in the open air where each one has to be heated by a pair of heaters. Do away with that in one shot of capital improvements and it lowers the day-to-day maintenance bill for generations.

This isn't easy to do, so the studies are required. They can't make the same mistakes they did with Red Line ATO 25 years ago and blindly lay the signal blocks. They have to traffic-model the lines intensively, project ahead where the growth is going to be over the 25-year maintenance half-life of the system (including wiggle room for unplanned developments and unapproved extensions). Then figure out an implementation for how to roll it out and transition off the old signals. Then figure out how many additional cars they'd need to purchase in the next round of car orders to fill in the headway gains in these traffic-modeled projections.

And that's just to determine price and schedule. They need to be swimming in data and numbers to do that. NYC is taking it slow and cautious. They started CBTC on only one stub shuttle line that had few trains running thru...studied its performance...then rolled it out on a second shuttle line. Further rollouts get a little braver with each new place they install it, but they aren't doing the Lexington Ave. line, the U.S.'s busiest subway line, first because if it has bugs to work out the vengeance from commuters is going to be immediate. The T thankfully has a few years of actionable data from NYC's setup on very similar lines, but there's a reason why relatively light-duty Blue is going before Red. It's not going to fuck up a Blue commute to have teething problems like it would elsewhere. Likewise, on Green it's almost certainly going to be the D or Medford first and not anywhere in the subway where branch schedules are intermixing.

I think they're being entirely appropriate in how they're proceeding, and are behind it. Like with anything, though, even the FY2016 to-do list is a crapshoot without hard structural reform at the Legislative level. So their ability to fund a $2M limited study is up in the air. But it's not like structural reform can get punted forever. CBTC falls more in the deferred maintenance category than the service enhancement. Blue's mechanical system is going to need replacement within the next decade...Green's signal wiring on the D is already past rated life and needs total replacement (safety!...don't get handed Strike Three by the NTSB!). If they're going to be replaced at all, it's going to be by a fiber-fed digital system like CBTC and not more 19th century waysides or mechanical trips. It's not as if this is a choice like doing extending the BL to Lynn is a choice or funding weekend service on the E is a choice. We ain't gonna have a functioning subway system if the signals go too far gone, nor will federal safety regulations let them operate one in that advanced a state of decay.

They know this for the same reason they know they couldn't operate the Red Line much longer without fixing the floating slabs on the Alewife extension. You come up with the money for that life-and-limb stuff hell or high water. 10 years...signals on a couple of these lines are going to be in life-or-limb deterioration. So these studies are a couple of the FY2016 items that they're taking seriously, even if they're negotiable on timing by a year or two. I don't think they're going to skirt it because they know full well what a hole that starts digging them if they delay it until panic time.
 
As long as we're talking CBTC, another proposal I'd like to see is picking ONE of the three heavy rail lines we have right now, taking that rolling stock, and converting the other two lines to use it instead.

At the very least, new trains going forward should be able to run on all the lines, and if not, we should have at most two incompatible systems - Heavy Rail and Light Rail. Not four (and most likely five or six if by some miracle BRT gets killed in my lifetime for proper light rail on the Silver Line/Urban Ring.)

Platform Edge Doors would be nice in new stations/renovated stations going forward, as well.
 
But how are you going to paint the cars different colors so quickly?!?
 
Red Line cars wouldn't work in the Washington St. tunnel or East Boston tunnel. Orange Line cars likewise wouldn't work in the East Boston tunnel (due to length). In theory, Blue Line cars could operate everywhere, including throughout the Green Line system.

As for quick paint jobs, why bother? Other cities with interchangeable rolling stock do not color the cars at all. We could paint them all to look like BERY era Main Line cars, then use LED lighting strips to indicate a color.
 
HenryAlan said:
Red Line cars wouldn't work in the Washington St. tunnel or East Boston tunnel. Orange Line cars likewise wouldn't work in the East Boston tunnel (due to length). In theory, Blue Line cars could operate everywhere, including throughout the Green Line system.

As for quick paint jobs, why bother? Other cities with interchangeable rolling stock do not color the cars at all. We could paint them all to look like BERY era Main Line cars, then use LED lighting strips to indicate a color.
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(I thought the paint question was a facetious one, and responded accordingly.)
 
Wasting the time and money to maintain different paint schemes (let alone four different rolling stocks) never made sense to me. The platform signage and maps are all that they need to reassure people which line they are on. Introducing line numbers would also help tremendously in that regard.
 
HenryAlan said:
In theory, Blue Line cars could operate everywhere, including throughout the Green Line system.
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The Blue Line cars would fit in all the tunnels, but there would be quite a vertical and horizontal gap between the station platforms and the car doors.
 
omaja said:
Wasting the time and money to maintain different paint schemes (let alone four different rolling stocks) never made sense to me. The platform signage and maps are all that they need to reassure people which line they are on. Introducing line numbers would also help tremendously in that regard.
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omaja -- evidently you haven't been in a modern multi-level parking garage -- people like numbers and letters a lot less than colors, names of famous patriots, animals, etc.

That's why when the T was created from the various and sundry pieces -- the Cambridge 7 Assocites Architects created a logo T with the circle around it, the colors of the lines and the spiffy graphics on the wall of the superficially redone stations

As things have evolved in the nearly 50 years of the MBTA the unifying themes have been the T and the colors of the lines -- station styles, equipment styles have all changed -- but not the colors and the T logo
 
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