Crazy Transit Pitches

PART I reply . . . (whoops...hit "post" out-of-sequence from Part II)

Second: you argue that this East-West link would reduce the need for BLX to Lynn, but I'm skeptical. One of the arguments in favor of a North-South link is that it would allow northside riders better access to downtown, which North Station is more removed from than South Station. But South Station itself still isn't the be-all-end-all. Many riders have destinations outside of the Financial District (which is better served by the Blue Line than South Station anyway), and the Blue Line (assuming a Blue-Red connector) offers much better transfer opportunities than an East-West tunnel to South Station would; such a tunnel would dump all of its riders on to the Red Line, who would then need to traverse the already-most crowded section of the line. Plus, South Station-Longwood Medical Area is a significantly more awkward journey than State/Gov't Center-Longwood Medical Area (and more on that in a second, too).

Yes...this is a big myth I've explained at length before. BLX's great hope is not the RUR-rapid transit connection. It's the fact that Lynn is a mega bus terminal and the linchpin of last-mile North Shore transit...but the bus service levels are historically effed because of the distended Wonderland + downtown runs down 1A every 4xx series route has to make, which wrecks equipment rotations to the point where all local routes end up frequency-starved. Greater than one-third of all of the 4xx's duty cycles are 'wasted' in the distended running miles. If you culled all @ Lynn Terminal like they used to be pre-1970 (before the T acquired the local bus carrier) the same equipment cycles can be recouped into >1.5x the last-mile frequenies everywhere from Point of Pines to Danvers & Beverly.

Is that not goddamn crucial for RUR growth alone? It's only half-cocked if bus frequencies persist forever at starvation level at Salem, Beverly, Swampscott, and others because of this systemic breakage. North Shore writ-large's transit shares will remain off-scale low compared to any other similar region (like South Shore) so long as the last-mile problem remains acute and unsolvable like that. Eastern Route frequency increases end up swimming against a headwind to bank their growth because the region-wide feeders not only stay capped low-frequency forever...but get worse with time as escalating 1A congestion chews more duty cycles. There's no other tactical nuclear strike project other than BLX that fixes this glitch with any efficiency. You can build a bigger Lynn Garage and stuff more Yellow-paint bodies there all the same; you still lose upwards of 33-40% of any fleet's duty cycles on the duplicating 'waste' miles.

Remember this. It takes more than one mode to tango a transformation. The RUR potential, no matter how great, still has one hand tied behind its back if the feeder buses are incapable of growing their frequencies. And incapable they will be until you build BLX. BLX arguably does more than RUR on the added one-seat utility because the giant expanse of swamp culls travel patterns from Lynn-proper to Revere not Chelsea...but even if you posit that the RR vs. subway modes can be pitted head-to-head at that task it's missing the entire point. BLX is the only multimodal kingmaker that flips all North Shore transit shares...to the very last mile...on its head. Nothing else.

Ultimately the goal here is to get all transit shares on the North Shore right-sized by taming the outsized car culture. That's only accomplishable by the megaproject that heals the bus breakage as part of its core proposition.

And that brings us to another drawback of a cross-tunnel routing -- it avoids a transfer node at Sullivan which can distribute Cambridge- and Somerville- (and maybe even Allston-) bound riders without going downtown, and it actually results in a trajectory that, overall, misses downtown much more than a Chelsea-Sullivan-North Station-South Station alignment would.

Yes. Maybe we need to highlight what a big effing deal the Urban Ring is going to be to clarify this, because it's challengingly abstract to parse out today vs. what we typically think of as Boston transit patterns. With full grade separation everywhere except for Chelsea St. lift bridge it's going to be a fast trip to go from Sullivan to Logan on a luggage-rack equipped Type 10 consist, with alternating 6-min. frequency filets between the Central Subway (Seaport/South End via North Station origin? Brattle Loop/GC origin?) and the Cambridge/Northwest Ring quadrant (Harvard Sq. origin?). Ultra-mega bus hubs like Sullivan & Harvard have never had such fast trips to Logan before. Kendall--such a very heavy airport-using audience--has never had such fast trips to Logan before. Likewise, with a hookup to a bus+trolley grade separated Terminal Transitway you can ensure that these are true one-seats to check-in/pick-up and not the forced transfer to some sort of shuttle that comes from any other trajectory including this NSRL addendum. Much like how the BLX-Lynn argument tends to get lost on the modal warfare singular tangent vs. the far huger multimodal coattails, real transformation comes first from full-court press across the spider map on more-dynamic service patterns first. Hence, the reason why our five-alarm most urgent projects are all radials and load-spread transfers...and not "route miles" for route miles' sake. The dynamism we seek comes from pushing a very different kind of distribution across the city.

When doing project scoring of these pitches you absolutely do have to weigh the monolithic "nice-to-have" against the more immediately implementable and multi-dimensional services along these high-leverage radial routes. It's not a bunch of 2D lines on a map going full steel-cage match against each other; what do the actual service patterns accomplish. We've discussed at length in the GL Reconfig/"Reimagined" thread that it takes some mental steps to perceive just how different and more dynamic the LRT system is going to be when both north hooks of the Urban Ring are built and cooking. These alternating run-thru patterns straight to the Terminals are excellent examples of that more "4D" dynamic and how it tickles the geographic spread. As one example...let's say you're a born pessimist about dispatching from Downtown to the Terminals on sustained 6 + 6 = 3 min. alternating headways . Well, when it's all interconnected there's nothing stopping you from adding a short-turn frequency of single-car trolleys solely between the Terminals and the BL Airport station so the thing is at full-on APM-level headways above and beyond the copious service coming from the west. Mind you, with SL1 still doing its thing on rubber tires shorn of carrying the water for excess intra-Seaport demand and saving buttload of time in its own right on the multimodal Terminal Transitway.

Tally up the full dynamic range of radial patterns you can unleash here, and then quantify how much is still left lacking from a cross-Harbor RR bore? It's still unfathomable that we arrive at anything "Paris-level" in overall airport centricity mandating that at anytime before second half of the century.

Third (and I'm surprised this hasn't been brought up yet): how exactly would things work at South Station in terms of that X-shaped network you've drawn?

[snip]. . .[/snip]

The reason this matters -- aside from the potential for an incredible amount of spaghetti under there -- is that you have to trade-off between the network comprehensiveness of "all trains everywhere" and the speed reductions incurred by crossovers, curves and capacity constraints. Plus, it impacts passenger journeys: you could mitigate some of that Red Line transfer crush if you can guarantee some x % of trains will travel Airport-Back Bay, Airport-Ruggles and Airport-Lansdowne, but again, that is going to entail a much more complicated build. (Plus, addressing the needs of incoming Airport riders impacts riders from the other direction as well, shunting away trains that might otherwise serve downtown more directly.

Very difficult, to be sure. Because the tunnel spaghetti makes all existing NSRL trajectories very precise slotting, while netting offset deep-cavern stations that no one would exactly call minimal-effort transfers for getting up/across to the Dewey Sq. concourse. It very much is what it is. Ditto with the Silver Line being a kinda rough shoehorn fit where its concourse sits amid all the infrastructure stacking. We haven't gone into engineering depth enough to place this would-be split spatially vs. the station platforms. But chances are overwhelming that even if it's possible it'll either take split before station onto dedicated SS Under platforms to the side at more station cost and less-efficient per-platform traffic utilization...or a crossover minefield just past the platforms imposing a capacity penalty. This is important as the Eastie bypass seems to be propping up the 2-track Congress St. alignment in quasi-aversion to the CA/T alignment. Any additional negative traffic impacts to only 2 tracks thru Downtown is going to hurt. And going to make the broad-based statewide sell job way harder because some regions will have to be prioritized over others and some regions may start being shut out from run-thru patterns. That critical-mass voting coalition is a lot harder to hold together @ 2 tracks vs. 4, so beware how much the bypass actually changes the project's fortunes from the core 2-track Congress vs. 4-track CA/T debate.

The infrastructure placement is pinned into born compromise by its surroundings. Actual results may not be as fluid as necessary to sidestep the whole straight-ahead mainline track capacity conundrum.
 
^ Cheers, @F-Line to Dudley. And no disagreement about Boston-Montreal via NH -- as you saw, it was a parenthetical comment, and my only point was that even in a magical future where we can literally move mountains, the nearest metropolitan center of gravity north of the Boston-Providence-Worcester-Manchester metropolis is Montreal to the northwest and not anything northeast of Portland.

Re HSR to Maine via the Eastern Route's straightaways -- yeah, that's fair enough. I can see value there -- but, as you say, not enough to merit a second tunnel.
 
Re HSR to Maine via the Eastern Route's straightaways -- yeah, that's fair enough. I can see value there -- but, as you say, not enough to merit a second tunnel.

But also the "in addition to. . ." service angle. B&M profitably ran twin-fork Portland service until the late-1950's: Eastern Route and Western Route, on more-or-less alternating schedules. Eastern was slightly faster on-clock, but Western had some outsized-ridership intermediates at what's now the current NH stops on the DE. B&M made their bank on each by the alternate intermediate stop selections, and by spreading the schedule around each flavor to nicely flexible parity. It was only when B&M made its first trip through bankruptcy hell and finally had to scrap the freight-less Kittery-North Berwick segment of Eastern in an effort to circle the wagons around ops modernization on the core-most network that service ended up getting consolidated to the Western until the end of service in 1966. It wasn't because ridership was falling off a cliff or one route drew considerably more than the other. BOS-POR was literally a big enough market to have a full schedule slate fileted across a dueling spread of intermediates. So it reasons that in the future the NSRL-fed Regionals aren't going to eat the Downeaster at all. We just go back to different strokes for different folks: Regionals pumped from D.C. that make a taut/limited stop selection to Portland-only emphasizing biz traveler speed, and Downeaster re-cast around tighter "Train To Maine" core mission with Boston-Bangor primary route and more/smaller intermediates hit before Portland to stake its rep more to comprehensiveness of catchment coverage. All demographic trends past, present, and future say there's ample room for both service flavors to stake out separate growth tracks and thrive along that primary differentiator.

It could conceivably go full-blown back to the B&M days where one takes the Eastern (preferably the Regionals for the speed difference) and one takes the Western, converging via re-stitched Newington Branch @ Dover (better than re-stitching the more rural Kittery-N. Berwick segment of Eastern main) with service differentiation on the co-running miles from Dover to Portland being entirely about what lesser intermediates get picked up vs. skipped in the name of expediency (Regionals) vs. comprehensiveness (DE/"Maine Train").

Truly an "above and beyond..." prospect, but also extremely agnostic about how it gets outside of Boston given the potential upside of forked-by-'brand' routings. Presumably both could use NSRL to/from South Station...Regionals on standard uni-mode electric locos running their thru schedules and Downeasters on dual-modes for the outlying diesel switch. The DE would remain a Boston-terminating job--Brunswick to Bangor being too niche for the baseline NEC's appetite (but nonetheless hittable via easy cross-platform transfer for those who are coming from points south)--but would use the tunnel out of pure convenience for consolidating all Amtrak ops under one roof at Southampton Yard rather than having to fight for layover crumbs on the cramped northwest side of BET with off-center crew changes. And much easier to differentiate by flavor by parsing slots in a 4-track uni-alignment tunnel than trying to pick its spots with less flexibility from commuter traffic in any 2-track only tunnel flavor.
 
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Pardon my ignorance:

Why isn't this being double tracked and used as light rail of some sort?
 
Pardon my ignorance:

Why isn't this being double tracked and used as light rail of some sort?
Look for Track 61 discussions.

The problem is the right of way does not connect to anything useful. It meshes into the railyard maze of Southampton Yard (heavy rail/Amtrak). There is no logical way to get it connected to other light rail service in Boston.
 
Again, a harbor tunnel ER with Reg Rail frequencies would obviate the need for all those feeder buses to Wonderland. The increased speed should more than make up for the Airport transfer delay.
While a RT tunnel would have more potential than RR, you would then need the 2nd NSRL tunnel as well. Although, if Airport Station is c&c, you might be able to build a 4 track tunnel, although the routing is farther to the west than would be ideal.
 
Any new rail tunnel to East Boston should track the Ted Williams (as originally planned) and not split off the NSRL (which isn't provisioned for it). That makes rapid transit much more doable than a railroad.
 
Hey everyone,

I found out about this website quite a while ago and have been browsing regularly, but decided it was time to register and start adding my two cents. I’m a Structural Engineer at a large firm in Boston and want to make clear that everything I post is mine and in no way related to the company (or clients) I work for.

When I moved to Boston and found out about the NSRL I immediately fell in love with the dream piece of infrastructure. The more I’ve learned about it and it’s history the more I felt it was a no brainer for regional mobility. Being from Maine and a regular on the Downeaster, the benefits were even more apparent to me. Since it’s looking like it will likely be decades before the first shovel breaks ground (or TBM arrives), I took a good look at how this project could benefit even more people. So I present to you the NSEW Rail Link.

I chose the DOT preferred South/Congress alignment for the NSRL portion of the Link, with the addition of North Station Under. The EW tunnel will bring airport access and also minimize the need for BLX. The EW alignment follows the East Boston Greenway and Route 1A. The eastern portal could be where the oil tanks are and the abandoned ROW becomes more defined. The Old Colony line portal was not included in the most recent DOT study but I included it for increased capacity. As you can see I incorporated or noted some other fantasy projects like the APM to emphasize the mobility opportunities.

Let me know what you think!
View attachment 8547

I like it.

Amusingly enough, I just had a random crazy transit pitch that is vaguely related:

Extend the commuter rail/intercity rail systems to as many of the other airports in the state as possible.

massachusetts-airports.gif


Obviously, there’s loads of variation between which airports this is even remotely possible for, and which it would be useful for.
 
Thanks for the feedback everyone, it was great to read everyone's take on NSEWRL.
Responding to a few of the questions above:

I should clarify that I made a few assumptions which would definitely be prerequisites before the EW tunnel would be justified. I chose the preferred MassDOT option (South/Congress) because it was just that, what they preferred, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that this was for good reason but I really don't know the answer to that. I agree with F-Line that the CA/T alignment probably makes the most sense because you can build a 4 track tunnel. So the 2-track EW tunnel was my alternative to building S/C and then coming back and building a two track CA/T, it'd probably be one or the other. And IF, big if, the EL to Portsmouth could be upgraded and extended to Dover and allow NE regionals to Portland, then there may be enough demand on the EL routes (incl Peabody branch) to justify the EW tunnel. The airport connection would just be the cherry on top if the EW tunnel had justification based solely on EL demand.

As for X-junction, since the NS route had spec'd for stacked rails in a 51-ft tunnel, the EW tunnel could be identical and you could have two flat junctions, one stacked on top of the other just south of SSU.

And this doesn't all have to be built at once, it could be that the NSRL would be built with provisions for the EW tunnel. That provision would probably be the junction and some sort of space saved underneath SS.

So yes it's a pie-in-the-sky plan that would require our commuter rail system to be more like Paris', but hey I'm sure many on this page hope that it one day is!
 
Again, a harbor tunnel ER with Reg Rail frequencies would obviate the need for all those feeder buses to Wonderland. The increased speed should more than make up for the Airport transfer delay.
While a RT tunnel would have more potential than RR, you would then need the 2nd NSRL tunnel as well. Although, if Airport Station is c&c, you might be able to build a 4 track tunnel, although the routing is farther to the west than would be ideal.

Huh? It geographically wouldn't touch the North Shore buses. The 4xx's all spray outbound of Lynn; the 30%+ 'waste' duty cycles are entirely on the Lynn-Wonderland traffic snarl and express running via Sumner/Callahan or via Ted sans any Airport exit. Very low percentage of those bus patrons are taking transit for explicit purpose of getting to the Airport. It's majority inter-neighborhood transit, Lynn/North Shore to Revere/Eastie. The coastal-strip population density has been geographically aligned for travel to & from for over 200 years...ever since most of Revere & Eastie were island-hops isolated from the city. Back beyond the days of Eastern Mass Street Railway and the Boston, Revere Beach & Lynn RR. This is why there are no local routes whatsoever spanning Chelsea with Lynn or outer Revere Beach.

A RR harbor crossing wouldn't solve any of the bus problems. The 'waste' cycles are still in effect and still worsening over time in 1A traffic, unable to be redeployed as additional frequencies to the outlying North Shore population. And that represses transfer traffic on all rail modes...any flavor of RUR included. You can't do an RUR-side augmentation @ Lynn-proper in lieu of BLX because too much of the local bus patronage diffuses down the Blue Line into Revere/Eastie (but not Logan in a singularity). It won't fire on all cyclinders, and whether the source frequencies come from a Somerville-portaling NSRL or an Airport-portaling NSRL they hit Lynn exactly the same. You can't do an RUR-side augmentation @ a Wonderland superstation, because the buses are too strung out by 1A 'waste' by that point to return fire with enough additional frequencies to matter. That's why Wonderland CR studies out a ridership loser every single time no matter what rail frequencies it's benchmarked against. And you can't draw the buses to an Airport superstation with RUR-side augmentation via Harbor crossing because their schedules are all completely shot by the time they hit the Sumner/Callahan or Ted portals. That simply bakes in the totality of the 'waste' miles forever instead of doing anything whatsoever to heal the breakage.

Again...the core problem is that the bus ops are so wrecked the 'waste' miles halve the achievable outlying frequencies that deliver the motherlode of ridership to ANY and ALL rail transfer modes all the way out to Beverly and 128, no matter what trunk mode they're connected to. So the underlying problem is 100% as acute for Regional Rail ridership growth; it's a problem for all modes, because the inability to stimulate meaningful feeder frequencies inhibits transit shares across the entire North Shore. It doesn't matter how many RR or HRT frequencies you throw at the problem from which direction; if you are proportionately perma-capped by this very stiff equipment cycling penalty the entirety of North Shore transit universe runs with one hand behind its back and underperforms native demand relative to service levels offered to Downtown. Speeding up or augmenting RUR on any trajectory does nothing for that problem. Adding stet Blue Line line frequencies down to minimum 3 min. Wonderland headways does nothing for that problem. Throwing more buses at that problem does little itself for the problem, because it just means more systemwide bodies get trapped in the 1A 'waste' twilight zone not applied with any efficiency to increased feeder service levels.


The one and only way to perma-fix this is to make it so that every incoming bus cycle to the terminal is returned immediately and 1:1 back out as an outgoing frequency...zero waste instead of wasting 33-40% of its total running schedule on passing the kidney stone up/down 1A. BLX does that, because all demand shares get covered at the home terminal freeing those wasted cycles to be returned to the wild as 2x the feeder frequencies for either/both rail mode to gorge on. RUR, even with an Airport trajectory, does not do it. You'd have to balance judicious stop selection with speed meaning likely no intermediates between Logan and Lynn. And that doesn't work when shares of real-world bus utilization diffuse across the whole Wonderland-Maverick swath of stops non-specific to destination. Again...specific to/from-Logan shares are not big enough vs. the spread of North Shore patterns to rise above the din with RUR as a killshot. You'd have to add so many intermediate stops to the new alignment it would kill the utilization. This is baked into history. The BRB&L and Eastern RR historically thrived alongside each other via different audiences; the BRB&L scooping up the coastal stops Blue does, the Eastern doing expressing via long-haul. Things really haven't changed much 85 years later in the way Lynn Terminal diffuses its patronage. One killshot is incapable of doing it all.


This doesn't mean you can't have a cross-Harbor RR bore someday. But practically it's so deep down the bucket list it's beyond practical planning comprehension. It means you can't plausibly pit mission-critical projects of known urgency against each other winner vs. loser to artifically make room on the priority pile or turn it on its head for some eye-of-beholder pet project. Bus breakage isn't fixed without BLX. So why do we waste so much energy on these threads pitching Regional Rail tactical nuclear strikes to exclusion of BLX as some proof-of-concept...when none of them actually address the breakage and ALL of them are ridership-hindered by the same breakage. It's irrelevant for not even asking the right questions. BLX has known cost ranges; just fucking build it already, settle this arbitrary either/or debate, and keep arguing till the cows come home about more-perfect NSRL alignments. Why do we keep putting projects in steel cage match competition with each other...that have nothing whatsoever to do with each other? Want crappy North Shore transit forever? Keep throwing shade at BLX with some RUR red herrings and watch RUR never hit its true ridership mark. Is that really winning??? How about just fixing the damn problem at its source.


As for whether an Airport bore has any juice to itself? It's going to be very, very hard to prove that it matters more than completing the missing Ted bore for rapid transit from Southie. A whole many decades of proto-Silver Line transit studies would have to be turned completely on their heads to show a RR > RT priority order. It doesn't matter if you personally have your own napkin-sketch math for that passing some eye test; the burden of proof comes from counterpointing the reams of it archived in the State Transpo Library. It's likewise going to be very hard to prove that it trumps well-studied radial transit links like an LRT-integrated Urban Ring that enhance by first- to nth- degrees ease of crosstown access between hard-to-reach nodes. Like with BLX these are not projects that head-to-head compete with each other, one victor vs. one loser. The UR is a five-alarm critical project because it enhances by degrees of difference the radial transit ease across the spider map for such a huge swath of population and multitude of 2+ seat trips. It's not supposed to matter that some micro-target audiences will/won't have to take a shuttle to Logan, because the share of total transit users buoyed up by the extra dynamism of crosstown service is so frigging massive. It's multi-faceted to a point that defies comparison with some Logan-centric target. There's logical fallacy in trying to pit them against each other. You can do both if it's merited. But you're going to be waiting an eon for a funding shot at the Logan target fixation compared to the urgency of something with extremely broader ridership coattails like the UR.

See the logical fallacy here? If these nice-to-haves slot umpteenth down on the priority pile such that they're >50 year beyond practical planning range...you can't change their fortunes by attacking projects in the Top 10 to fish for new oxygen for this. BLX and the Urban Ring defy one-on-one scoring vs. something like this by being as broad-based as they are. So does the NSRL's CBD bore. It doesn't prove anything to goose the topline of [somebody's pet project] and re-stack the priority order by attacking the consensus builds. How clearer can it be when failing to mend the North Shore bus breakage kneecaps the very Regional Rail ridership such a build would depend on. Goalposts don't rearrange like this in real-world priority. And in purely intra-NSRL debate, shorting the CBD-feeds-all bore to 2 tracks instead of 4 doesn't create natural headroom for expedited alt bores when that's a wholly arbitrary choice decided on splitting-hairs headhouse placement grounds not strenously tied to to quantified degrees-of-difference in the numbers.

If it's a nice-to-have, it's going to slot behind the exponential-increaser projects. If that means it slots umpteenth in natural resting-state priority, then it's going to take a fucking long time to mount. Incredible feats of goalpost-moving to net a higher-ranking arbitrary priority score by dinging up the chances of higher-ranked projects isn't a useful exercise in seeking better transit. Find a way to make the priority list move faster if we're hot to get nice-to-have's built before we're dead.
 
Look for Track 61 discussions.

The problem is the right of way does not connect to anything useful. It meshes into the railyard maze of Southampton Yard (heavy rail/Amtrak). There is no logical way to get it connected to other light rail service in Boston.
Also can't be double-tracked at all. And is so constrained in the pit there'd be no room for station platforms or egresses at any of the Southie side streets. And crosses the nerve center of Amtrak Southampton Yard--where all AMTK trips pit-stop between departures--and the Old Colony main at-grade severely limiting slots. Grade separation at RR grades not possible. Mode change to LRT/HRT not possible as it's a non-abandoned freight RR protected by federal interstate commerce, with CSX having lifetime free trackage rights to the Port it makes no scruples to voluntarily sunset whether any new Massport biz is coming sooner vs. later. Time-sharing waivers for nonstandard lightweight equipment also not possible because of the crossing (e.g. an Acela 2 on a slow-speed yard move has par chance of causing fatalities in a sideswipe with waivered non-FRA ultralight DLRV).

Basically, it's this shiny bauble that politicians and City biz leaders who themselves never use transit think...must...be because it exists. When there's no plausible application for it whatsoever that would draw any ridership from the real world. It'll make a nice 12:00am-5:00am freight corridor when Massport builds its Tide St. spur to Marine Terminal and the cement plant at end-of-track on the pier gets wooed back into taking rail service. *Maybe* some future container traffic with a Conley Terminal track hookup...although see other thread explainers for why the economics of IM load distribution out of Conley is a real dodgy prospect for rail.


Haul Road-proper, on the other hand, can be a future Urban Ring hookup on the Southeast Quadrant from Nubian to Southie/Transitway. Either as another BRT service flavor once the Green Line's hookup to the Transitway clears out the intra-tunnel dwell congestion, or (less likely) by burying trolley tracks in the Haul Road pavement with a reservation'ed streetcar via Melnea Cass/Mass Ave. Connector/Haul Rd. It's basically a busway-in-wait with the prohibition on non-truck traffic and very very specific Massport regs on who's allowed to use it (and whose employer gets perma-banned from it for bad trucker behavior). So long as Seaport politics short attention span theatre doesn't squander Haul Road by opening it up permanently to car traffic you can definitely do future stuff there. It just has to be on the Haul Road side of the cut because Track 61 is too narrow, Haul Road's trucking bread-and-butter is too mission-critical, and there's not enough room anywhere to finesse the fence for splitting the difference.
 
I like it.

Amusingly enough, I just had a random crazy transit pitch that is vaguely related:

Extend the commuter rail/intercity rail systems to as many of the other airports in the state as possible.

massachusetts-airports.gif


Obviously, there’s loads of variation between which airports this is even remotely possible for, and which it would be useful for.

Not even Crazy Transit Pitches difficulty level!
  • Logan (with or withoutNSRL...no firm prereq either way)
    • South Station transfer Amtrak/RUR to SL1 -- Service improvements to-come via State Police ramp, Green Line-to-Transitway clearing out intra-Seaport crowding away from target-specific SL1's, Logan Terminals Transitway grade-separating the Terminal stops.
    • North Station / Sullivan / Chelsea RUR transfer to Urban Ring NE quadrant. 6-min. headways via NS/Central Subway + 6-min. headways via Kendall/NW quadrant Ring = 3 min. total headways @ Sullivan/Chelsea. Trolleys extended from Blue Line/Logan Station terminus along grade-separated Logan Transitway co-mingled with SL1/Logan Express/etc. Customize assigned portion of Type 10 fleet with luggage rack interior livery.
    • West Station RUR transfer to Urban Ring Harvard Branch, radially alt-routed via NW + NE quadrants....'bit player' headways, maybe 12 min. depending on how rotation of individual frequencies picks up this specific collection of routings (as long as it's regular/predictable at whatever rate it is covered).
  • T. F. Green
    • Future permanent turnback of Providence Line (MBTA picks up Pawtucket, Providence, Green in RI...skips Olneyville, Cranston infills on Boston service).
    • RIDOT intrastate 'overlap' region: Westerly-Pawtucket + Woonsocket-Wickford service, all intrastate stops covered.
    • Amtrak Northeast Regional platforms (officially proposed). Likely means Regionals scrape Mystic + Westerly completely off schedules once they're supplanted by RIDOT/ConnDOT commuter rail, and picks up Green instead with the freed schedule slack.
  • Bradley International
    • Amtrak Inland Route New York/New Haven to South Station via Springfield. Change to shuttle bus @ new Windsor Locks Depot (faster/straighter than rail dinky over Bradley Branch).
    • Lake Shore Ltd. / other BOS-ALB / BOS-MTL vs. Montrealer cross-platform timed transfers @ Springfield Union at all slots that don't make the BOS-NHV southbound "L" move. Schedule coordination + summons of extra short-turns increases cross-ticketed destination options @ SPG Hub. (all per NNEIRI study / not East-West tankapalooza study).
    • Hartford Line as backfill transfer option on any slot mismatches.
  • Manchester International
    • NHDOT Capitol Corridor -- North Station to Concord as extra service layer on top of Lowell/Nashua locals. Skip-stop in MA: NS + Anderson + Lowell. All local stops in NH: South Nashua, Downtown Nashua, Merrimack, Manchester Airport, Manchester, Hooksett, Concord.
    • Amtrak Northeast Regional (NSRL prerequisite) -- representative number of NSRL run-thru Regionals to Concord. Stocked until end-to-end electrification with same dual-mode locos planned for purchase to handle D.C. Union power switch for Virginia running. Stops @ South Station, North Station, Anderson RTC, Lowell, Nashua (pick one), Manchester Int'l, Manchester, Concord. Can serve T.F. Green + Logan (South Station/SL1 & North Station/UR) + Manchester on same schedule.
  • Portland International
    • Amtrak Downeaster + city bus (airport on other side of river from PTC or ex/future- Union Station).
    • Amtrak State of Maine revived -- Penn Station-Portland via Inland Route + Grand Junction Branch + North Station reverse. 1x/daily...judicious skip-stopping on native Inland + DE route halves. Transfer utility boost via SPG Hub schedule coordination. Real/actual present-day NNEPRA proposal. Use until Grand Junction taken up by Urban Ring (NNEPRA supports UR conversion as an overall Maine ridership increaser).
    • Amtrak Northeast Regional (NSRL prerequisite) -- representative number of NSRL run-thru Regionals to Portland. Stocked until end-to-end electrification with same dual-mode locos planned for purchase to handle D.C. Union power switch for Virginia running. Express-oriented stop selection vs. Downeaster (which remains as a to-be- Bangor-extended BOS-originating run with denser stop selection). Can serve T.F. Green + Logan (South Station/SL1 & North Station/UR) + Portland on same schedule.
  • Burlington International
    • Amtrak Montrealer + BOS-MTL train and cross-tix coordinated transfers @ SPG Union. Airport shuttle @ Essex Junction Station (3.5 miles via VT 15 + Airport access road),

Basically we check the boxes on half this list just by building SPG Hub like it was supposed to be all along before this East-West tankapalooza trojan horse laid waste to Western MA politics. Logan gains its northside utility via the Urban Ring. NSRL isn't an ironclad prereq for that tie-in. The others all fall into line as bog-standard faire on their native routes. Green would be the only other one featured on 'true' in-district subsidy full-schedule Purple Line service, but Manchester probably hits hourly peak, 90-min. off-peak on that extra NHDOT-mercenary layer-cake service.

Minor pax airports like Worcester, New Bedford, Tweed-New Haven and others (Portsmouth?) would be served by local buses out of their nearest rail stations...but those third-tier touches are nice-to-haves, nothing to overrate to the point of self-contortion. General aviation airports only need enough demand to merit a local bus if they're close enough to stops. Per the MA list Beverly, Lawrence, Norwood, Hyannis are designated "reliever" airports (cut above the general aviation/crop-duster class): all are bus-accessible from rail stops, with only Hanscom, P'town, and the Islands' airports being significant and rail-inaccessible. The others kind of get lost in the weeds of trace utilization, but there are enough could-be's for a local bus to fill the map handsomely. Obviously amongst the non- rail-accessibles Hanscom has other thorny strategic considerations and vexing transit issues with the yes/no/how-far decision on a Red Line extension, but that's just about the only one posing a brain teaser.

Additionally, figure the NEC also providing all the access in the world to NY/NJ, Philly, Baltimore, D.C. And even Montreal (or Toronto for that matter if we "Lake Shore'd" ourselves into a newfound lash-up with the Maple Leaf @ Albany) in the event of some snowpocalypse grounding flights across the entire Eastern seaboard.


If that list is the undisputed first & second tier for New England, I can't really see anything truly "crazy" about how we connect them. It's pretty much already been comprehensively thought out well in advance by real expansion plans, virtually all of them common-sense and non-megaproject in scope. YMMV on the rapid transit connections for Logan, but keep in mind that's a moving target over time of enhancements via BIG overall gravity-well stuff like the Urban Ring getting built out. So anything left wanting on target-specific Logan stuff is practically going to be mired in the low teens on the transit build priority bucket list. As per last post, if that's a problem...it's first and foremost more a problem of making the bucket list overall move much faster than a slippery-slope zero-sum argumentative exercise in goosing the ratings of the target-specific stuff while knocking the broad-consensus stuff off its pedestal. We can have our cake and eat it too if so inclined, but first priorities do have to come first.
 
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Huh? It geographically wouldn't touch the North Shore buses. The 4xx's all spray outbound of Lynn; the 30%+ 'waste' duty cycles are entirely on the Lynn-Wonderland traffic snarl and express running via Sumner/Callahan or via Ted sans any Airport exit. Very low percentage of those bus patrons are taking transit for explicit purpose of getting to the Airport. It's majority inter-neighborhood transit, Lynn/North Shore to Revere/Eastie. The coastal-strip population density has been geographically aligned for travel to & from for over 200 years...ever since most of Revere & Eastie were island-hops isolated from the city. Back beyond the days of Eastern Mass Street Railway and the Boston, Revere Beach & Lynn RR. This is why there are no local routes whatsoever spanning Chelsea with Lynn or outer Revere Beach.

A RR harbor crossing wouldn't solve any of the bus problems. The 'waste' cycles are still in effect and still worsening over time in 1A traffic, unable to be redeployed as additional frequencies to the outlying North Shore population. And that represses transfer traffic on all rail modes...any flavor of RUR included. You can't do an RUR-side augmentation @ Lynn-proper in lieu of BLX because too much of the local bus patronage diffuses down the Blue Line into Revere/Eastie (but not Logan in a singularity). It won't fire on all cyclinders, and whether the source frequencies come from a Somerville-portaling NSRL or an Airport-portaling NSRL they hit Lynn exactly the same. You can't do an RUR-side augmentation @ a Wonderland superstation, because the buses are too strung out by 1A 'waste' by that point to return fire with enough additional frequencies to matter. That's why Wonderland CR studies out a ridership loser every single time no matter what rail frequencies it's benchmarked against. And you can't draw the buses to an Airport superstation with RUR-side augmentation via Harbor crossing because their schedules are all completely shot by the time they hit the Sumner/Callahan or Ted portals. That simply bakes in the totality of the 'waste' miles forever instead of doing anything whatsoever to heal the breakage.

Again...the core problem is that the bus ops are so wrecked the 'waste' miles halve the achievable outlying frequencies that deliver the motherlode of ridership to ANY and ALL rail transfer modes all the way out to Beverly and 128, no matter what trunk mode they're connected to. So the underlying problem is 100% as acute for Regional Rail ridership growth; it's a problem for all modes, because the inability to stimulate meaningful feeder frequencies inhibits transit shares across the entire North Shore. It doesn't matter how many RR or HRT frequencies you throw at the problem from which direction; if you are proportionately perma-capped by this very stiff equipment cycling penalty the


The one and only way to perma-fix this is to make it so that every incoming bus cycle to the terminal is returned immediately and 1:1 back out as an outgoing frequency...zero waste instead of wasting 33-40% of its total running schedule on passing the kidney stone up/down 1A. BLX does that, because all demand shares get covered at the home terminal freeing those wasted cycles to be returned to the wild as 2x the feeder frequencies for either/both rail mode to gorge on. RUR, even with an Airport trajectory, does not do it. You'd have to balance judicious stop selection with speed meaning likely no intermediates between Logan and Lynn. And that doesn't work when shares of real-world bus utilization diffuse across the whole Wonderland-Maverick swath of stops non-specific to destination. Again...specific to/from-Logan shares are not big enough vs. the spread of North Shore patterns to rise above the din with RUR as a killshot. You'd have to add so many intermediate stops to the new alignment it would kill the utilization. This is baked into history. The BRB&L and Eastern RR historically thrived alongside each other via different audiences; the BRB&L scooping up the coastal stops Blue does, the Eastern doing expressing via long-haul. Things really haven't changed much 85 years later in the way Lynn Terminal diffuses its patronage. One killshot is incapable of doing it all.


ng time to mount. Incredible feats of goalpost-moving to net a higher-ranking arbitrary priority score by dinging up the chances of higher-ranked projects isn't a useful exercise in seeking better transit. Find a way to make the priority list move faster if we're hot to get nice-to-have's built before we're dead.

So you have on numerous occasions extolled the virtues of BLX to Lynn by commenting on the ability of truncating those 4xx routes due to RT replacement. Are you now claiming that these riders are going to those employment, retail and entertainment powerhouses of Wonderland, Revere Beach, and Beachmont? Some might be going to Logan, but most are going to Boston.
The plans for BLX that Ive seen usually involve the BL following the ER ROW from somewhere near River Works, depending on the routing. I see no difference between a 5 minute Reg Rail train and a BL train for anyone in Lynn-Salem, other than a significantly shorter ride, even with a transfer at Airport. The added expense of Reg Rail AND BLX for what mostly(especially with Airport routing) would be duplicative routes is unwarranted.

You continue to ignore the impact of ER past Airport in obviating the need for a second tunnel through downtown. A single tunnel NSRL will be at capacity nearly immediately, if not over. Yes, a RT harbor tunnel would be more useful than RR, IF IT WAS ONLY USED TO THE AIRPORT! But we need a second NSRL tunnel first.
I think that analysis shows that making one of them go under the harbor gives a bigger bang for the buck.
 
So you have on numerous occasions extolled the virtues of BLX to Lynn by commenting on the ability of truncating those 4xx routes due to RT replacement. Are you now claiming that these riders are going to those employment, retail and entertainment powerhouses of Wonderland, Revere Beach, and Beachmont? Some might be going to Logan, but most are going to Boston.

Inter-neighborhood Transit 101: they go to all of the above. Work trip ≠ errand trip ≠ leisure trip ≠ other trips. The same riders use transit for more than just the home-to-work/work-to-home trip, and it isn't always to the same places. The higher the transit shares of a given location, the more the non-work commute trips are going to end up proliferating around the clock and proliferating by destination.

The way geography pinches around Rumney Marshes makes all diverging nodes unify at Lynn Central Square: the last place you can collect a western/Saugus-oriented or Eastern/Swampscott or Nahant -oriented diverging route before all trajectories are locked due-south across Revere Beach (i.e. Summer St. + ex-Saugus Branch...129/Broad St. + ex-Marblehead Branch). The terminal collecting all diverging last-mile routes situates there, nowhere else...which is why there is such excessive/intactable duty cycle waste in transit ops when the terminal attempts to operate somewhere else. All paths are then constrained by the water to due-south: 1A + BRB&L, 109 + Eastern. The necessities of life space some varying linear distance apart on those corridors through Revere Beach before the next spreading opportunity happens at the Chelsea (Eastern + MA 16) vs. Eastie (BL + 1A) forks where the diverging routes re-proliferate--i.e. splitting of ROW's/modes and engagement of Chelsea vs. Maverick bus routes.

"I" didn't invent this for argumentative purposes. This is how travel patterns on the North Shore developed around the surrounding geography for close to 2 centuries. Refrain, please, from framing that citation as some sort of mano-e-mano personal barb egging on a heated response. Geography doesn't attack people; people choose to attack people. And that's not where such a cite is going...at all.

The plans for BLX that Ive seen usually involve the BL following the ER ROW from somewhere near River Works, depending on the routing. I see no difference between a 5 minute Reg Rail train and a BL train for anyone in Lynn-Salem, other than a significantly shorter ride, even with a transfer at Airport. The added expense of Reg Rail AND BLX for what mostly(especially with Airport routing) would be duplicative routes is unwarranted.

This counterpoint needs to be juxtaposed against the historical travel patterns outlined ^above^ which show destinations diffusing in a string along the 'neck' of Revere Beach before any significant Chelsea vs. Eastie forking of trunks. And then re-spreading of last-mile feeders at the Chelsea or Maverick terminals. This requires both dense stop spacing for the diffusion and purpose-fit diverging trunks for where in Boston you reach how quickly from there. That's extremely hard to unify under any *one* build running *one* class of service without complement from another. 90+ years of official studying has concluded time and again that differing-purpose modes constructed in plural is the only way to parse it.

A one-sentence "I see no difference" statement of opinion doesn't wash that whole history aside, much less rejigger a project priority pile that has been historically benchmarked on building complementary pieces to suddenly cherry-pick those pieces for 1-on-1 winner-take-all/loser-goes-home sweepstakes. Justify it against the balance of data collection history. That's non-optional for the counterpointer.

You continue to ignore the impact of ER past Airport in obviating the need for a second tunnel through downtown. A single tunnel NSRL will be at capacity nearly immediately, if not over. Yes, a RT harbor tunnel would be more useful than RR, IF IT WAS ONLY USED TO THE AIRPORT! But we need a second NSRL tunnel first.
I think that analysis shows that making one of them go under the harbor gives a bigger bang for the buck.

Again with the "you's" teeing up implicit ad hominems. The thread wasn't going there...so why steer it there? This is a baffling behavior hangup to have resurface again and again and again in discussions that run the topic gamut.


Substantively...no, put the goalposts back. 4 tracks ≠ "second tunnel" unless you swallow the state's incoherent Preferred Alt. word-salad verbatim as infallible explainer. 2 tracks + tunnel wall + 2 tracks on one alignment is a double-bore 4-track tunnel...singular. "Two tunnels" is requiring the same capacity to be split between two completely different alignments of completely different stations and completely different homegrown EIS-design-fund-build obligation. They are not neutral equivalents.

Rationale for the Airport leg can't rest on a spurious assumption that any "bore" of 2 tracks is cost-neutral, because that is no way/shape/form the choice we are being given. Full capacity via a twin-bore single tunnel is less costly than half capacity in one tunnel requiring a second tunnel. Only if 4-track CA/T is conclusively eliminated from consideration could one ever claim that the "second tunnel" placement is neutral. That's false; the state has neither eliminated CA/T from consideration nor explained why it is non-preferred for costing less at full capacity with same achievable stops and only splitting-hairs difference in some transfer concourse lengths & headhouse placements vs. others. If we want full capacity from Day 1 we're going to build the single alignment with all 4 tracks first.

Does that mean you can still build an Airport bore as Tracks 5 & 6 on a "second tunnel". Sure! You can probably do it at similar cost to the 2-on-Congress + 2-on-CA/T gobbledygook in the state's official rec. But now you're really really sitting far back of the pack on the priority build list. Damn straight behind a Ted-redux RT bore, BLX, and everything else radially half-urgent. And that priority list can't be artificially shortened by taking unlike projects--Eastern Route RUR and BLX for starters--and pit them in single-elimination death match on grounds of personal opinion. Project scoring doesn't warp to the eye of the beholder that way.


Want your cake and eat it too? There's a straightforward, if argumentatively unsatisfying way to achieve that: git-R'-the-eff-DUN faster chowing through the priority pile as it is. Not by deploying the rhetorical army to resequence it as one's opinion prefers it should be. And if things need to be resequenced by evident proof?...then start citing where/when/why vs. the balance of study history, instead of itching to tag some messenger to shoot.



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(DISCLAIMER: Reply offered as-is without warranty in service of continuing this thus-far exemplary civil group discussion amongst many members of varied well-spoken stances. But offered with eyes wide open at the posting history of 'bait' insertion in question. :cautious:
 
The position the the residents of Lynn want BLX for quicker access to Revere Beach and Orient Heights is not supported by any data: population density, job patterns, retail and entertainment placement, government transit studies, or politicians comments. They want better access to Boston. Frequent(8-12 tph) Reg Rail (especially with the new routing) gives them that. People wont care what color the train is.

Two twin track tunnels, side-by-side or diverging in perpendicular directions, with the same number of stations and of the same length, should cost the same. I have already discussed the advantages and disadvantages of each.
 
The position the the residents of Lynn want BLX for quicker access to Revere Beach and Orient Heights is not supported by any data: population density, job patterns, retail and entertainment placement, government transit studies, or politicians comments. They want better access to Boston. Frequent(8-12 tph) Reg Rail (especially with the new routing) gives them that. People wont care what color the train is.

Why is it so hard to understand that the residents of Lynn (and the surrounding towns) might want both enhanced local connectivity AND better access to downtown? They want and need both (the failure of I-95 to make it out this way was both a blessing and a curse for the area). The reality of your plan is that it cannot, in any world, grant the Greater Lynn area enhanced local connectivity. Routes such as the 424 and 455 (both routes that in any sane world would terminate at Lynn Central Square) will always have that drag down to Wonderland to enable local access, because your use of the Airport ROW misses where all the people live along that stretch. You can't even hit Maverick because of the grades involved. Even if that local access is a minority of desired access, why should we choose a path that actively forecloses that possibility? For a train that ultimately connects you to a shuttle bus or APM at the airport anyway? You're trading away an entire area's mobility to shave maybe 5 minutes off an airport trip?

Two twin track tunnels, side-by-side or diverging in perpendicular directions, with the same number of stations and of the same length, should cost the same. I have already discussed the advantages and disadvantages of each.

CA/T alignment was provisioned for during the Big Dig. There's dirt there, but it's all clean and left there to make life easy for a future use. Diverging to the airport was not, and is going to require much more work and expense. Diverging to the airport also means going under the water. It's unclear to me how a tunnel entirely under terra firma and through pre-cleaned dirt is supposed to cost the same as an unstudied and unplanned tunnel that needs to duck under the harbor and Jeffries Point. Your diverging tunnel would also be a bit longer than a link on either the CA/T or Congress alignments. Again, all fine and possibly worthwhile behind some of the other projects such as BLX, this is Crazy Transit Pitches after all. But the cost absolutely would not be the same.

This is a great surplus project that would be nice to have for all involved. It's not a drop-in replacement for BLX though. They don't serve the same purpose, no matter how hard you try to shotgun Logan access for Hingham and Weston together with downtown access for Lynn.

Additionally... how exactly do you balance all of those southside lines anyway? You've got nearly 7 southside lines, and you've just sold them direct airport access which is located on just one ROW (granted, with two endpoints further north, but still). Obviously not every southside train is going to be able to run to the airport, so how do you square that circle? First WOR train of every hour goes up the Eastern or something? Why is giving, say, one airport train an hour to each southside line any better than just doing a 3rd bore of the TWT at lower expense (because buses can handle steeper grades than rail) and shaving off the 5 minutes by eliminating that stupid loop and power switch in Southie?
 
Connectivity to what? The population density along the BL is abysmal. The jobs per acre is miniscule. I lived in Eastie and spent plenty of time in the area. What is there in the 1/4 mile between the ER and the BL that Lynn is just clamoring for? The 3 restaurants and 3 local markets at Beachmont? Napoles, the only retail operation near Suffolk Downs? Is there a medical institution in Revere Beach of which I am unaware? The major commercial/retail area is west of 107. Spending $1B for that local connectivity? Crazy. Connecting Lynn to Boston? That makes sense. While $1B won't get you all the way across the harbor, it would be a good chunk.

As far as who and where get what regarding one ride to Logan, I presuppose a cut and cover SSU, which would allow all tracks/both tunnels access. There are several ways the tunnel pie can be split, and short-turns just north of Airport are a possibility.

As far as the possible geological conditions under the harbor, a study would be easy to do, if one hasnt been done(although a Logan NSRL routing was studied in the 80s?). I am not a geological expert, but I suspect that none of us maybe.
 
Yo I'm just gonna say this -- Regional Rail to Lynn vs BLX is, you know, one topic (well worth discussing). Building a cross-harbor tunnel is totally and completely different.

We've already established that the travel time difference between a Chelsea surface and an Eastie tunnel alignment is on the order of 5 minutes, maaaaybe 10. We're not talking about straightening the NEC's S-curve through NYC here.

And while the Eastie tunnel grants you better access to Airport Station (but still need to transfer to get to Terminals), you lose out on access to a wider swath of Downtown and on improved connectivity to the subway network. The Chelsea alignment results in direct transfers to the Green and Orange Lines at North Station/Haymarket, Red Line at South Station and maybe Orange (and future Green) at Sullivan. The Eastie alignment dumps nearly everyone out at South Station, where they need to squeeze onto the Red Line to complete their journey to Green/Orange (along a stretch where Red is already maxed out).

Regional Rail to Lynn at 8-12 tph is definitely worthwhile, I don't think anyone disagrees on that. (The disagreement is whether it replaces or supplements BLX, but that's not the point here.) But Regional Rail to Lynn absolutely does not entail an Airport-South Station tunnel.
 
Yo I'm just gonna say this -- Regional Rail to Lynn vs BLX is, you know, one topic (well worth discussing). Building a cross-harbor tunnel is totally and completely different.

Yup. This is also failing to go anywhere because it's rigged as an assymetrical debate. ALL of the data in the land, all of the history of travel patterns, all of the archived studies. Vs. "I don't think" / "I suspect" / "My experience of a, b, c" speaks for the whole for reasons unattributed / etc.


No one is talking at the same wavelength on these forced terms. It has to be some common-ground where somebody's evidence-based reality provides a way in. We have an addictively entertaining "God Mode" thread expressedly for the dueling "I thinks" proposals to scratch that itch. "Crazy Pitches" at least loosely lives in an neutrally agreed-upon empirical-world basis for the demand + nutsy-boltsy build side even if assuming an infinite-resource universe for tackling costs and reaching down the consensus priority pile to later priorities. In practice that means common ground is usually forged dealing off the data, any prior studies, or whatnot. It's how this particular one has remained civil despite lots of fundamental disagreement amongst several participants.

That doesn't work with assymetrical talking-past. Like I said...we could go to nice-to-haves deeper down the list by making the majority-consensus priority list get built faster. That's a useful assumption for hashing out how you'd get to this breakout. But how is it in any way human-parsable for discussion when "I personally disagree that's the priority list. That's 'your' priority list because it was quoted under your post. Mine is better by virtue of the disagreement, because reasons unstated." How is that parsable with any common-language discussion when the terms are hidden and never mentioned? It's an end to itself: topic-settled, lock it, move onto the next topic of preordained conclusion.


Predictably, it doesn't go anywhere fruitful this way.
 
Connectivity to what? The population density along the BL is abysmal. The jobs per acre is miniscule. I lived in Eastie and spent plenty of time in the area. What is there in the 1/4 mile between the ER and the BL that Lynn is just clamoring for? The 3 restaurants and 3 local markets at Beachmont? Napoles, the only retail operation near Suffolk Downs? Is there a medical institution in Revere Beach of which I am unaware? The major commercial/retail area is west of 107. Spending $1B for that local connectivity? Crazy. Connecting Lynn to Boston? That makes sense.

But it's not "spend $1B to local connectivity", it's "spend $1B on local connectivity and connectivity to Boston". It's not an either-or proposition with BLX, whereas it is with your airport routing. Also, local concerns aren't locked totally to jobs. People go to visit family, friends, recreation (beach, or whatever ends up actually getting built at Suffolk Downs or Wonderland), etc. The lack of density in the area is definitely a demerit, but the huge pocket of density that is Lynn (and then Salem beyond that if we ever manage that far) is a massive target that screams out for trunk rapid transit service imo.

If we make the argument that Regional Rail at 8-12tph is adequate for that (I disagree, but it's not really the topic under discussion), your cross-harbor tunnel is still a poor an overpriced way to get it there. We have the rails already! There might be some trackside improvements you need to make to make that a reality, and of course you need to literally have the trains available, but the new tunnel nets you very little on the Lynn end compared to standard NSRL on either alignment. It's airport access, which is nice! But not "extra $1B of transportation spending" nice.

While $1B won't get you all the way across the harbor, it would be a good chunk.

Sorry, citation needed. I don't know just how much a cross-harbor tunnel will cost, but I do know that the 2-track CA/T alignment alone is estimated to cost $4.2B, and that's the tunneling alone (the 2018 Reassessment very helpfully splits out tunneling, station works, trackworks, etc). And again, that's in a clean-roomed, free of obstructions due to advance work done by the Big Dig, profile. The Congress alignments already cost a bit above $1B more in tunneling, and that's without needing to engage the Harbor at all. I'd peg it as at least $2.5-3B additional with that knowledge, and that's probably generous. So call it $7B for the tunneling alone on your cross-harbor tunnel.

As far as who and where get what regarding one ride to Logan, I presuppose a cut and cover SSU, which would allow all tracks/both tunnels access. There are several ways the tunnel pie can be split, and short-turns just north of Airport are a possibility.

I'm not all that worried about the track layout of SSU, and operated under the assumption that all tracks will have access. But you did just kind of handwave away the question of "why this, instead of a third TWT bore which we know can be done far more cheaply and quicker than a cross-harbor RR tunnel?"

You could probably do BLX and that third bore and 4-track NSRL for close to the cost of this NSEWRL (I'd peg the total of all three projects at about $19B), and that's my hangup. You can serve all of the constituencies the proposal benefits without needing to engage the unknowns that could spike the cost of this proposal even further, and provide more utility to all of them to boot.

As far as the possible geological conditions under the harbor, a study would be easy to do, if one hasnt been done(although a Logan NSRL routing was studied in the 80s?). I am not a geological expert, but I suspect that none of us maybe.
I have no idea what lurks under the Harbor. But we know what lurks under the CA/T alignment: nothing!

EDIT to clarify my cost estimates.
 
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