Do you think it hurts ridership that the 4 goes in two different routes back and forth?
Crazy Transit Pitches
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Do you think it hurts ridership that the 4 goes in two different routes back and forth?
NoShJFK
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I just disagree.
One thing you’re forgetting is the attitudes toward the BUS and RAIL is dramatically different. If you’re a young couple living within a few miles of a LRT/HRT station and want to go get dinner in the North End or go to the feast- there’s a reasonable chance you’ll take the T. If the option is to drive or take the bus. You’re going to drive almost always drive.
Wouls it be the busiest station? No. Are there bigger priorities even in a CTP world? Yes. But would it be useful and used enough to justify it? Yes. You may disagree however.
Charlie_mta
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The farthest walk to Haymarket Station is only 0.5 miles from the northern end of Hanover Street, and 0.6 miles from the end of Battery Wharf (also the other nearby wharfs). Everywhere else in the North End is closer. Those are short walks for most people.
As a 20 something year old cambervillian with a car, I would never, in a million years drive into the north end for dinner; you can't find parking in it! The garages are just as far as the T stops, and pricy. 10 minute walk to Haymarket (Green/Orange) from the CG base, 12 to aquarium, 15 to Govt Center (Blue), 25 to Park (Red). That's not including North. That's definitely walkable for most everyone, especially as the CG base is literally the furthest point in the North End; I don't think you can ever be more than 15 minutes from a rail stop.
NoShJFK
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Remember this thread is “Crazy” transit pitches. As long as there’s a legitimate purpose for it - that’s the only requirement (or am I misunderstanding?)
The thought behind my proposal is - at some point extending HRT lines up CR lines can be a bit redundant. Just electrify and increase headways if that’s the case.
My plan reaches areas that would likely consider it a hassle to reach mass transit. Chestnut/Western is a dense area that’s on the other side of Lynn and intersects with a couple bus lines. You’d like see it pull a great deal of commuters from the East Peabody
Vinnin Square would be a phenomenal location as it would surely attract a ton of work day commuting from Marblehead who has no rail transit.
Salem State speaks for itself and the area surrounding the edge of Downtown Salem is a no brainer.
Especially if you extend the Blue line South to Charles and to Kenmore... then anyone coming from the North Shore to a Sox game would likely be taking the T
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bigeman312
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Your proposed North End Green Line station is 0.4 miles from Haymarket’s Green AND Orange Line station.
Any service to the North End within your proposal would divert service away from Haymarket.
Therefore, you are proposing spending billions of dollars for a T station with worse service that is 0.4 miles closer to some people than the existing station.
Those aren’t debatable things that you can honestly keep typing “I disagree” to. Those are real-world realities. Why post if you aren’t willing to acknowledge when other users point out obvious flaws in your proposal?
Any service to the North End within your proposal would divert service away from Haymarket.
Therefore, you are proposing spending billions of dollars for a T station with worse service that is 0.4 miles closer to some people than the existing station.
Those aren’t debatable things that you can honestly keep typing “I disagree” to. Those are real-world realities. Why post if you aren’t willing to acknowledge when other users point out obvious flaws in your proposal?
NoShJFK
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Red Line Waltham Extension
(Estimated Cost: $5.5B for "A" $6B for "B")
Central
(continues tunneling for 6.8 miles for Option A; Line comes above ground just before or after Charles River for Option B)
OPTION A: Western Ave
(corner of N.Harvard St/Western Ave)
(1.3 miles to next station)
OPTION B: Cambridge St ("West Station")
(1.0 miles to next station)
Option B: Boston Landing (CR)
(line transitions to elevated structure)
(crosses Charles river)
(1.0 miles to next station)
Arsenal St
(station can be subway or aerial, park & ride
at corner of Arsenal and Greenough)
(option A: lines continues tunneling)
(option B: line goes below grade, tunnels for 4.6 miles)
(1.8 miles to next station)
Watertown Sq
(1.9 miles to next station)
Farwell
(1.0 miles to next station)
Waltham (CR)
(Estimated Cost: $5.5B for "A" $6B for "B")
Central
(continues tunneling for 6.8 miles for Option A; Line comes above ground just before or after Charles River for Option B)
OPTION A: Western Ave
(corner of N.Harvard St/Western Ave)
(1.3 miles to next station)
OPTION B: Cambridge St ("West Station")
(1.0 miles to next station)
Option B: Boston Landing (CR)
(line transitions to elevated structure)
(crosses Charles river)
(1.0 miles to next station)
Arsenal St
(station can be subway or aerial, park & ride
at corner of Arsenal and Greenough)
(option A: lines continues tunneling)
(option B: line goes below grade, tunnels for 4.6 miles)
(1.8 miles to next station)
Watertown Sq
(1.9 miles to next station)
Farwell
(1.0 miles to next station)
Waltham (CR)
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NoShJFK
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I think youre misunderstanding me, I'm not discounting flaws. They're legitimate points and not something I considered enough when coming up with the idea. I welcome criticism, I think those who dont are weak minded. By saying I "disagree" I just meant that I don't think its SUCH an oversaturation that it wouldnt be used (if it were placed deep into the North End and not on the edge near the greenway)
F-Line to Dudley
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Not enough to raise it 120 places in the rankings to make it rapid transitable. Same goes for pumping up the frequencies (~25 min. presently). Too many orders of magnitude off-scale. It's literally the worst-patronized central-most bus in existence on the system, and that's an *awkward* distinction for sure. If there were a real rapid transit corridor here, the most shittily-configured 4 imaginable would still have being showing signs of severe loading problems instead of basically running empty. It's not slow...you hit North Station pretty fast going that direction, even if the southerly side gets a little unwieldy.
Can you quantify this with *any* walkshed comparison whatsoever? The longest physically possible walkshed from anywhere in the North End to rapid transit is less than a half-mile. Majority of the neighborhood it's well under 1/3 mile. At what point sub-1xxx feet does there definitively result a massive diversion to car mode? I'm not sure where you can come up with such car share v. transit walkshed diversions for the North End anyway since most of the publicly available garages are within 2-3 blocks of Haymarket to begin with, most of the lots on the wharves are within 2-3 blocks of Aquarium to begin with, there's severe shortage of metered parking everywhere spanning the neighborhood because of residential spaces, and the largest lot furthest from rapid transit is at the not-public Coast Guard base.
Numbers...case studies...evidence of any kind? This response is 100% pure personal feeeeelings, and that's not gonna cut it for making a "Transit Pitch" meant to persuade others. Take it to the "God Mode" thread where we don't even hold it to that much justification.
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NoShJFK
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Maybe I just simply misjudged the distances or potential ridership.
And this was in part based on personal feelings to a degree. I remember when going to college in the city and going to the North End to not always be a fun experience when it was cold out (where walking even 10 minutes can feel too long). And more recently went for dinner in the North End a couple weeks ago and found it to be a hassle.
My line of thinking was - how many residents of the North End would use a station right in their neighborhood. And how many restaurant goers would love to be able to the T within a stones throw of their destination. But obviously after hearing the feedback in this thread - clearly I'm in the minority and it would be oversaturation.
F-Line to Dudley
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Western Ave. has the 424 and 450 direct out of Central Square. Chestnut has the 436. Ridership is not exactly awesome on those, per the 2014 Blue Book's stats for all 169 Yellow Line routes. The 450 ranks 73rd on the system with 1785 weekday boardings, the 436 ranks 125th with 823 boardings, and the part-timer 424 ranks 151st with 258 boardings. That's not only pretty poor, it's several orders of magnitude below anything that has the properties to support rapid transit. It's also two entirely different directional corridors you're attempting to mash into one uni-corridor, so the demand ends up splitting those very low source ridership stats to a point where the likely stops almost can't escape being some of the biggest loss leaders for low ridership on the entire rapid transit system, regardless of frequencies. The corner of Western + Chestnut isn't a known diverging node or 'square' of any consequence that's any destination unto itself nor a linchpin for major transfers. It's just an intersection. If it were a 'square'-level gravity well, it would already be leaving its fingerprint on the riderships for these routes. Lots of big dense-looking thoroughfares intersect...not all of them end up creating a sum-greater-than-parts gravity well out of the resulting node. The intersection is one that very clearly does not, in spite of how convenient it *might* look on Google Maps. The on-the-ground evidence is completely lacking, and shows no signs of translating into transit shares. These are the very tells that any transpo study looks for to pop out when one is trying to quantify what makes a potential map corridor a real ride-generating capital-C Corridor.
Now...the frequencies are admittedly not real good on all of these Lynn routes. Frequencies are a problem with all of the 4xx-series buses because of the equipment-cycle drain caused by thru-routing all of them to Wonderland then nearly all of them to Downtown through the congested tunnels. Of course, one of the biggest resulting booms from bringing BLX to Lynn at all is that it ends the bus cycling anemia and simplifies route turn to *just* Lynn Terminal...meaning an enormous amount of equipment availability comes available to reinvest directly into better frequencies. Something on the order of 40% more cycles with the same equipment sprayed all throughout the 4xx routes and targeted map expansion therein. So you could grow the ridership on each of those routes handsomely if enough bus equipment came available to pulse 10 min. frequencies on Western and 15 on Chestnut. With the convergence of those routes not being a particularly unique destination unto itself and just a single-point crossroads, does the baseline frequency improvement not do plenty to improve transit accessibility throughout Lynn??? Yes...it will, just by them being better buses. The evidence is still sorely lacking that there's any latent rapid transit corridor there. This is sort of why all BLX studies to-date just stub out at Central Sq. and don't bother with Swampscott & Salem until a later extension. Yes...the pan- North Shore demand will probably at some point crest enough that you eventually need real Blue Line frequencies into Downtown Salem. But the bus network reboot just from getting the transfer implanted at Central Square is an enormous amount of uncapped growth unto itself for how much it increases Yellow Line frequencies across the North Shore. Eyes-on-the-prize as far as the installment plans go.
------------------------------
Finally...when it comes to Salem: look at what parallels the Eastern ROW in walking distance: the afforementioned 450, and the 456 up the rest of MA 107 to Salem...plus the 455/459 to Salem via Swampscott + Salem State U. and the 4 Marblehead routes. Station siting at the ex-B&M East Lynn stop on Eastern Ave. would be a large secondary node unto itself, as would Swampscott Station, just by looping the buses around the station block. On the systemwide spider map the whole area from Riverworks to Swampscott is so thickly paralleled by multitude of bus routes that it *very* strongly resembles the GLX corridor in Somerville for potential multimodal network effects. Enormously shorter bus trips to the endpoints, enormously better-frequency buses in general across the network, way better loading profiles in the areas of route overlap, and new routing possibilities galore. All because every potential stop on the Eastern ROW (including even a relative throwaway like a Swampscott-Salem State spacer @ Essex St. by the cemetery) is a thickly-served new transfer node to multiple diverging routes. Much like the GLX corridor it's ripe for densification. Unfortunately the existing Purple Line mode isn't well set up for extremely dense Fairmount-like stop spacing. Travel times to the Newburyport and Rockport endpoints carry a lot of riders, and need to stay snugly within an hour. Even with EMU's, speed increases, and overall tightened ops Transit Matters is having trouble explaining in its Implementation Plan how its recs for 3 infills (Everett, Revere, and South Salem...in addition to full-timeing Riverworks) are ever going to fit inside a same-or-better end-to-end schedule. They probably all can't...at least not the Everett + Revere ones. That leaves pretty much South Salem/SSU as the consensus "must-have" by everyone who's been studying the North Shore over the last 25+ years. East Lynn's close spacing is definitely a bridge too far on even the electrified CR mode for all that needs to be kept in-balance right out to the Rockburyport endpoints, and even the worlds-better acceleration profile of EMU equipment is still an order of magnitude clunkier for dense stop spacing than literally any HRT/LRT rapid transit vehicle on the planet.
These are the same sets of conditions that GLX studied to-death on the Lowell Line corridor. In every case a Purple Line shuttle rated worse than side-by-sideing rapid transit when the Alternatives were studied. And in every case the optics arguments "why not tunnel under _____ street to avoid ROW duplication" (which was indeed studied for GLX to attempt to uni-branch Union + Medford into one mainline) paled in comparison to splitting the difference on-ROW with a mode way better task-oriented to serving the stop density. The Central Sq.-Swampscott corridor is a shoe-fit analogue to that. Shockingly good fit, in fact. BLX-Salem probably would've been given a comprehensive study long ago were it not for the fact that Wonderland-Lynn has been an unfinished mandate going on 6 decades. If/when an actual study lassoes all the data streams into an Alternatives rec...it's going to bullseye the expandable Eastern ROW hands-down over anything/everything off of it. And rely on leveraging stations at East Lynn, Swampscott, a trans-Swampscott spacer in the Essex vicinity, Salem State U. to amplify the density effects to the converging/diverging bus routes. We know this because we already fed the very similar at broad-based level GLX corridor into the same amount of study rigor, and it wasn't even a contest what shape the final recs ended up taking.
F-Line to Dudley
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Golden rule of branching: thy shalt not diminish mainline frequencies before the largest multimodal transfer station on the line.
Harvard is the third-busiest station on the entire rapid transit system...and the only one in the Top 6 that doesn't have another rail transfer. The RLT frequency increases to 3 min. headway are in large part because Harvard's growth is so insatiable as to suck up every ounce of slack left remaining in the system. The downsides...sprayed across all of the connecting buses...to decreasing Red's frequencies at Harvard (let alone Porter+Davis+Alewife) for an earlier branching fork are so severe as to likely overwhelm any and all ridership increases you could possibly hope to achieve from the new branch.
We run into this same problem with any crayon-draw schemes to re-use the old pre-1981 RL alignment through Brattle Sq. to interline for Allston/Watertown, etc. because the mobility loss from frequency reductions north to Porter-Alewife and those transfers aren't worth the gains from the new branch. And we run into variations of the same problem trying to create reverse-branching down Mass Ave. into Boston forking off between Central and Kendall. Some segment of utterly mission-critical Red mainline that's carrying breakneck Boston-Cambridge growth on its back gets vultured of frequencies to a degree that's completely crippling to continued sustaining of that growth. Unless you want to spend $6B or something quad-tracking the 1912 Red Line all the way through its gut to JFK so branching doesn't vulture *any* headway, it's not possible to do what you're asking from a Red Line source.
Waltham is sourceable from the GLX Union Branch running alongside the formerly quad-track Fitchburg Line to former Clematis Brook Station in Waltham, shifting Fitchburg CR to a reactivated Central Mass Branch bypassing north of Downtown, and straight-flipping the current CR line through Downtown and along the River to LRT until it meets back up with the Central Mass bypass @ the preferred-siting Route 128 superstation. Watertown can't physically be uni-lined with Waltham because the ex-B&M Bemis Branch between H2O Sq. and Waltham Ctr. is obliterated by new development and was a grade crossing minefield, while subwaying in the heart of the Charles River floodplain is going to accrue fatal cost blowouts on waterproofing. You can, however, fork Waltham and Watertown onto separate GL branches at Fresh Pond and pulse up 6 min. branch-reference headways on each (meaning: 3-min. doubled-up headways thru Union-Porter). Then load-balance with Downtown by having the alternating patterns make liberal use of (A) Brattle Loop short-turns or (B) Urban Ring run-thrus to/from Sullivan keep the greater Green Line system in balance. And do it without costing an arm-and-leg because it's mostly at-grade (and not deep down in a cut like the current GLX is) on pre-existing ROW's. Check the Green Line Reconfiguration thread for diagrams on how that's done.
You can also source Watertown from something trans-Allston...since the Boston Transit Commission in 1945 tried to do exactly that with HRT to Newton Corner on 2 of 4 Boston & Albany tracks before the Pike was built there. You'd have to cut-and-cover the remaining 2 B&A tracks most points west of New Balance to offset the capacity loss from the Pike, but it's build-feasible because the tunnel would stay far enough away from the river's floodplain to not require punitive waterproofing above-and-beyond cost and requires a *merciful few* utility relocations to tunnel under the existing tracks and/or Pike shoulder (remember: utility relocations take disproportionately high share of total tunneling costs). Watertown Sq. can then be accessible by turning north under wide Galen St. @ Newton Corner. If the Blue Line ever reaches Kenmore via a Storrow Drive transit trade-in, you'd have your hook-in point from that source. Watertown is actually a big enough hub unto itself that both the GLX and BLX builds meeting there might wind up a preferred final configuration...as trans-Allston rapid transit (57 + others) corridor isn't going to do anything for trans-Cambridge demand (70/71) or vice versa. Split-the-difference along the 70 corridor out of Central (70) incurs all the nasty problems ^^outlined above^^ with vulturing Red mainline frequencies...and there is no other source rapid transit line but Red for Central so that demerit likely eliminates Central entirely as an option.
Meaning...triage rapid transit from the trans-Allston/Newton (BLX) and trans-Cambridge (GLX) sides meeting at the Square then a significantly load-lightened BRT'd 70 splitting the difference for the 'tweener cases is likely the way that's going to practically go.
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The issue with the North End isn't that it needs a new rail line, for reasons well covered above. That being said the North End does not feel as well connected as it should based on as the crow flies proximity because crossing the greenway isn't exactly frictionless. One does not really just wander into the North End. You want a crazy transit pitch for better connecting the north end? Shut down the entrance/exits at Haymarket and Faneuil Hall
Purely as a hypothetical god moding it question... Would you say a circumferential LRT/HRT "urban ring" is the last major "all new" line Boston will ever need to build beyond extensions and reconfigurations? (Ie, OLX, BLX, GLX/ GL reconfig to Seaport and Nubian) Or, do you think that in 50+ years we'll need additional radial line(s) through the urban core?
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Charlie_mta
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I'd like to see a circumferential HRT or LRV line all along the Route 128 corridor, connecting the Quincy Adams Red Line Station with: the Route 128 Commuter Rail station, Riverside station, and continuing up to Peabody and then to a Salem BLX station. It would also obviously connect with all the other commuter rail lines and future HRT/LRV lines radiating out from Boston.
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I think trying to project the needs of the city beyond 30 years is a fools errand and "the city" as a concept (not just Boston) is never in a finished state
F-Line to Dudley
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Purely uni-lined UR like a Crossrail analogue probably isn't ever going to be needed. And that has to do with Greater Boston's uniquely chaotic square-to-square clumping as opposed to the grid (or "griddier") orientation in most other cities that possess unified transit radials. The UR Major Investment Study found that the transfer hordes take such super-dumps at the mega-nodes--Kenmore, Harvard, Nubian, Sullivan--that the run-thru audience spanning the quarter-points doesn't rise above statistical noise. And as outflow found that strengthening the the mega-nodes through other means (LRT'ing Washington from Downtown to Nubian, for instance) took way higher priority than the integrity of the one-seat for accomplishing the same goals. Very few people would be riding more than a third of the radial circuit, and virtually no one would be riding the whole thing. This is especially true since the UR existing at all in any configuration largely accomplishes Job #1 of de-congesting the Big 4 Downtown transfers of dwell overcongestion to the point where the regular linked trips through the CBD snap together a lot more efficiently than they do right now.
Keeping that in mind, the build bucket list is more informed by node-to-node "arcs" of urgent need rather than trying to forge some monolith pattern. Just have appropriate frequency and routing variety to spray between the mega-nodes of utmost significance, and the network effects do the heavy lifting. With that in mind, you can consider the Harvard spur of the NW quadrant Urban Ring that passes through West Station a big-deal piece of the puzzle if its fileted LRT frequencies (plurality Downtown via Kenmore slots, strong but sub-plurality Downtown via Kendall/Lechmere, sparser bit-player radial via Sullivan/Logan slots) mass up together by the right percentages.
As for new Urban Core lines...well, we sort of have been kicking that around with these western BLX schemes in this thread. The supremacy of the Kenmore super-node sure does write a compelling case for bringing BLX there via Charles and traded-in Storrow ROW...even before you turn attention to plug-compatibility with some trans-Allston route. It's going to be especially hard to quantify what Downtown is going to look like come 2050 if NSRL gets built. It's thought that Orange would see a fair amount of load reduction from the Purple Line terminals being united and Back Bay being recast in a very different role...but that correspondingly Red might in turn get a problematic new level of overload thrown at it where it'll ill-equipped to handle more (meaning at minimum we basically *can't* build NSRL without Green-to-Seaport as an outright prereq). In which case...yeah, that BLX-Kenmore scheme looks a lot tastier for what linked and crosstown trips it enables totally apart from Red Line reliance. I've theorized as much earlier: the Congress St. NSRL study alignment is objectively bad for NSRL capacity vs. the CA/T alignment, but the Congress alignment might ultimately make for an *excellent* re-use case for "Red X" rapid transit if post-NSRL overloading projects bad enough. Or maybe it ends up being something completely else nobody has conceptualized yet, because we aren't seeing exactly through the predictive murk on where the growth is going truly going to be headed in 50 years.
F-Line to Dudley
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The problem with that is the whole lot of *NOTHING* that chops up the 'tweener positions on that circuit. Blue Hill Reservation sits as a big-zero gap between Braintree and Westwood. Conservation forest sits as a big-zero gap between Dedham and Needham. Charles River Basin, Stony Brook Reservoir, and associated conservation land create the big Weston gap between Newton and Waltham. More conservation land and the entrails of Bedford State Forest creates the Lexington-Bedford gap between Waltham and Burlington. Radial demand clusters around the intersecting core lines and office park density a stone's throw from the intersecting core lines...but doesn't jump all the way spanning core lines because every which way has to plow through some zero-zone of protected forest or watershed. Even a relatively easy linked ROW like spanning Riverside station with the Fitchburg Line @ US 20 in Waltham with a side reservation on 128 absolutely chokes on what zero is in-between. Like...what kind of ridership is a River Rd. Weston intermediate stop possibly going to generate??? Town of Weston doesn't even build sidewalks.
Remember: the Highway Dept. did study a medianed rail line 60 years ago when they were upgrading 128 from its original 4-lane parkway to 6-lane @ interstate standards...and high-concept and forward-thinking as that was for the era they just couldn't find any users for it because there were too many conservation-land gaps where absolutely no density would/could ever be backfilled. It's not dramatically better a look today. What we most need here is to build out service on the core lines in a big way and start running much more in the way of office park shuttle buses. That's pretty much exactly what Newton/Needham envision for the Green Line on the Needham Branch, and the 128 Business Coalition for the Fitchburg Line 128 superstation: circulator buses fanning out on both frontages of the highway to all the office parks to kick them up to a new degree of densification, and dense Urban Rail or outright rapid transit frequencies on the mainlines. If Westwood weren't so planning-stupid they'd be aiming for the same with the swath around Westwood Landing instead of actively inhibiting it. Woburn-Burlington: also ripe-as-hell for it.
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The Urban Ring (at a 2 to 4 mile radius) seems to be the ring that would work best
After that circumferential trips will also be somewhat better accommodated by better hubs at Ruggles, Sullivan, and West Station
and beyond that through running NSRL does better, say, Beverly-Waltham or Reading-Dedham
After that circumferential trips will also be somewhat better accommodated by better hubs at Ruggles, Sullivan, and West Station
and beyond that through running NSRL does better, say, Beverly-Waltham or Reading-Dedham