Crazy Transit Pitches

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.

But it would also be stupid -- the Blue Line is just a heavy rail version of a trolley -- the cars are the smallest in all dimensions and have the least capacity

In the future all work on the stations and tunnels for the heavy rail should be designed to accommodate the Red Line, the most capable cars in the system
 
In the future all work on the stations and tunnels for the heavy rail should be designed to accommodate the Red Line, the most capable cars in the system

They should be designed to accommodate the next generation of T rolling stock, not anything they have now. In that vein, here's how BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) plans to address the color problem without painting the trains (which looks hokey in Boston, IMO). If they can keep those light bars working properly, this looks pretty cool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzjKwU8bwmo

By the way, people get adapted to anything their local agency has been doing for a long time. When Chicago switched to colored lines from simply naming them by terminus ("Evanston Line", "Ravenswood Line", etc.) people found it uncomfortable. Most long-time residents still use the old naming scheme.

Frankly, the T should switch the Green Line from the dumb letter code convention they use now to either the street it runs down or the place it ends. It's crazy that the "B" train runs down Comm Ave. (begins with a C) while the "C" train runs down Beacon (a B), though their terminus stations (Boston College and Cleveland Circle) begin with the correct letters. "This is a Beacon St. train" takes just at much time to say as "This is a C-Line Train," and it contains much more information.
 
That wouldn't really work for the D line, though, would it.
 
That wouldn't really work for the D line, though, would it.

Call it the "Riverside Line" or go back to its original name of "Highland Branch". Really, just about anything is more geographically descriptive than "D Line".

In any case, we are on the "Crazy Transit Pitches" thread and most of the proposals here have that line reassigned from the Green Line to heavy rail anyhow.
 
Maybe they should name the lines after local animals, as in:
"If this Turtle Line doesn't hurry the hell up I'll never catch the Crabs at Northeastern"
 
There's a delay on the sloth line again.

I'm kinda partial to change from the "Numbat' to the "Long-nosed Bandicoot" at Downtown Crossing though if you really insist by walking through the underground passage you can go directly from the Numbat to the " Brush Tailed Phascogale " without having to go one stop on the Bandicoot
 
In my experience, its much easier to catch the crabs at BU
 
In my experience, its much easier to catch the crabs at BU

Especially if you start the afternoon-off by laying in the sun in your gym shorts with your head in the nether-regions of your significant other

Opps Sorry -- I think I just hijacked this thread over to the "New Balance and Brighton/Alston" -- I'm so embarrassed - I almost feel like the Jet Blue Captain whose crew locked him out of the "cockpit" -- or are we now in final approach to the "New Logan Flights" thread
 
But it would also be stupid -- the Blue Line is just a heavy rail version of a trolley -- the cars are the smallest in all dimensions and have the least capacity

In the future all work on the stations and tunnels for the heavy rail should be designed to accommodate the Red Line, the most capable cars in the system

Actually, one place where you might want two lines on the same track is on the Longfellow. Blue Line would still need a separate Charles/MGH platform, but assuming it could then run over the Longfellow and onto, for example, the Grand Junction...
 
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.

A one time capital expense fixes that.
 
Orange would be the easiest to convert to Red dimensions. The tunnel from Chinatown to Haymarket--4 close-packed stations--is the only remaining original installation. The 1975-built Haymarket-north tunnel is built to RL dimensions, and so is the 1967-built South Cove tunnel. All tunnels built post-1912, even on Green, are at RL dimensions except for a couple pinch points (Copley Jct. curve, the low-ceiling C/D portal) where they pinched pennies on a few tougher feet of tunneling. Surface stations are pretty much moot, since all you have to change are the platform juts. Install temporary ones to OL dimensions before making the switch, then yank them off that day of the changeover to reveal the RL dimension juts. It can switch literally overnight. The cars themselves have secondary shocks that raise or lower a few inches (Blue and Orange cars are designed with that fresh from the factory in case Blue cars ever need to get redeployed on Orange).

Now, what's the justification for shaving the walls back in the Washington St. tunnel to widen the clearances? I can't think of a single Red-Orange connection possibility that would make that worthwhile or serve a clear-cut need. That's why no one ever attempted it even dating back to the BERy days (where they did, of course convert Blue from trolleys and did have 50-year plans to convert all Green tunnels to Blue-sized rapid transit).

It's definitely too expensive to do for sole reason of equipment standardization's sake. The equipment already is standardized. Orange and Blue have 100% operationally and parts-identical cars for 30 years, fitted into different-size carbodies. The 01200's and now-retired 0600's can trainline with each other unmodified if Blue got the same cab signal units that were added to the 01200's after the El closed. They almost did send 24 of the 0600's to Orange in lieu of a new Orange order, opting to rehab all Orange cars and using the 24 rehabbed extras as an expansion fleet. It didn't work--the 0600 carbodies were too rusted out to rebuild--but had they proceeded you would be riding mixed consists today comprised of short + long cars running on much beefier headways. The 01200's also have the same pantograph mounts on the roofs. Had the Reading extension ever been done they would've had pantos installed later...slap one on, plug it in, and you're running under overhead.

If Siemens wins the next contract for the combo Orange+Red order, they will quite literally re-fire up the factory with the 0700 blueprints and pump out a few hundred of the same Blue Line guts underneath an Orange or Red carbody. And you could set up a demo consist on the Wellington test track for the ribbon-cutting ceremony with a Blue Line 0700, an Orange Line 01400, and a Red Line 01900 trainlining seamlessly with each other. Same guts, same parts, different tincan clothing. That's it. No reason to unify them if the service patterns are end-to-end instead of anywhere snaking to anywhere like the NYC subway. If they need more service patterns, that's what branching is for and that's what the whole light rail mode is for.
 
They should be designed to accommodate the next generation of T rolling stock, not anything they have now. In that vein, here's how BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) plans to address the color problem without painting the trains (which looks hokey in Boston, IMO). If they can keep those light bars working properly, this looks pretty cool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzjKwU8bwmo

.

I agree. The T needs to plan ahead when it comes to rolling stock and station design. Find whatever the next gen is going to be, and start to bring stations to a point where you can use them everywhere.

I like the light bars too, and I especially like the redesigned bars on the inside of the cars on Interior Concept C, so people can hand on easily in a lot of different spots.
 
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If/when two lines have a connection and equipment can operate interchangeably: A nice thin clear rubber stripe runs all the way down side, and the stripe is threaded with fiber optics where you can set the color of the stripe as fit.
 
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

I'm talking adding line number to the colors like the vast majority of other metro systems, not removing the colors.

On that note, why is it even necessary to have the line color on the train at all? If you're on the platform or finding your way to the platform, you know what line you're on anyway.
 
I'm talking adding line number to the colors like the vast majority of other metro systems, not removing the colors.

On that note, why is it even necessary to have the line color on the train at all? If you're on the platform or finding your way to the platform, you know what line you're on anyway.

It could help in North Station for the tourist or infrequent user where both Orange and Green are directly adjacent on the opposite sides of the same platform

But clearly the solution is modern technology:
LEDs and Optical Fiber or perhaps OLED panels on the train cars
Then you switch on the correct color as the train approaches the station -- then in the tunnel -- it vanishes (or at least the distinctive color)
 
Seems like a waste of money all things considered; simple signs will more than suffice.

Here's Principe Pio station in Madrid where Lines 6 and 10 meet and share platforms. No mistaking which is which despite the fact that trains do not have different color schemes.

PeA6U.jpg
 
Seems like a waste of money all things considered; simple signs will more than suffice.

Here's Principe Pio station in Madrid where Lines 6 and 10 meet and share platforms. No mistaking which is which despite the fact that trains do not have different color schemes.

But whatever do they do about the illiterate riders?

(That's not entirely a joke, as the Mexico City Metro uses pictograms for their stations for that reason, among others).
 
That's why the combination of colors and numbers for route designations (which Mexico City uses as well) works so well - it allows people to remember the line based on whichever they commit to memory easier.
 

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