Crazy Transit Pitches

[Riverside]

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

I applaud you for thinking in terms of "Where Transit Needs To Be Built" rather than "Where Transit Is Easy To Build". That's always an important perspective to have in these conversations, especially given that there is overwhelming political and institutional pressure that creates bias toward the latter.

That being said, there still needs to be a balance, and I tend to agree that building a tunnel in the North Shore seems unnecessary. The Eastern Route ROW as-is provides an excellent spine for local HRT and express electrified mainline rail; the missing piece is a more robust feeder bus system, the bones of which are currently there, but which needs major frequency enhancements (and probably a few bus lanes), so that it creates a seamless "turn-up-and-go" experience for riders.

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 goal of this thread has drifted over the years, but these days this thread is typically used for proposals that are largely absent from the "official" planning discourse but which still stand up under rigorous scrutiny, at least from a technical and value perspective (we tend to discount, though not ignore, the short-term political challenges here and likewise the "raw" price tag -- though not the "bang-for-buck" efficiency price tag).

For example, extending the Green Line from Union to Porter and then to Watertown: it's not on any official plans, and hasn't been seriously floated in the public discourse, mainly because there's so much focus on just getting the current GLX built. But the ROW is largely extant, the corridor is similar to others that have seen success, and it wouldn't require massive capital investments like tunneling. It's "crazy" perhaps in a political sense, but not in a technical one.

That contrasts with a thread called "Reasonable Transit Pitches", which in my eyes has evolved into "Proposals That Could Be Implemented In The Next 10 Years" as well as "Proposals That A Politician Could Make And Not Get Laughed Out Of The Campaign." A lot of the current discussion in there focuses on BRT concepts, such as my proposed Navy Line.

Then there is the God Mode thread, which I think is best suited for the ideas you're raising here. Feasibility -- both technical and political -- is pretty much ignored there, and it's a valuable space for letting the imagination run wild.

There's definitely cross-pollination across these threads -- for example, a high-flying idea in the God Mode thread might get the gears turning, as someone realizes, "Hey, with a couple of tweaks, that actually could turn into a buildable idea!" And sometimes an idea is raised here in Crazy Transit Pitches that, on further examination, doesn't quite work, so the convo gets shifted to God Mode, and so on.

Don't share your opinion on the lack of need. There is a fairly decent gap in the financial district where most other parts of Downtown area have stations within a minute or two. ALTHOUGH that could be up for debate I'll admit. What I don't understand is how you don't see a need in the North End. That neighborhood (along with Charlestown - unless you count CC) is vastly underserved. I think a North End rail station would be very popular and would go a long way to the never ending parking chase on summer / weekend nights in the North End.

So, I am less skeptical of the usefulness of rail to the North End than some other folks here. The prevailing standard for stop-spacing in the core is a 5-7 minute walk between stations, and that drives (and is driven by) a fair number of local behaviors and other factors. One of those is the idea that you only have to walk ~3-4 minutes to reach your destination from the nearest T stop. Next to that, a 10-minute walk one-way is a significant difference.

I think you are right to raise (in a separate post) that a 12-minute walk becomes significantly less hospitable when it's cold, raining, snowy, or if you have some sort of limitation on your mobility -- whether that's groceries, children, or a physical difficulty. Again, not impossible by any means, but discouraging.

By the 5-7 minute walkshed metric, that would point to a rail station somewhere around the intersection of Prince and Hanover. (Ironically, 115 years ago, this was a proposed station location for what became today's Blue Line subway.)

^ Those are the pros, and I agree they're not trivial. Let's talk about the cons.

First, let's talk about tunneling. At this point, I think there are really only two scenarios where tunneling makes sense for transit in Greater Boston:

1) There is a segment where a very short tunnel will significantly increase the operational efficiency of a new line. I can't really think of a good example of this, but in principle it could work.

2) A tunnel will have transformative impact across the entire system. Some examples include the North-South Rail Link, the Blue-Red Connector, and (debatably) subways under Comm Ave and Huntington Ave for the B and E Lines respectively.

A subway through the North End fails both of those tests. Simply put, we need to be able to say why such a subway would be good for the whole system, not just the North End.

Second, there's the impact on the rest of the Green Line. I'm not going to belabor this point, but consider:

• the impact of diverting service away from the core section (including the Red Line transfer at Park!)
• how you're going to connect at Boylston (discussed above re Essex Street)
• how you're going to hook in at North Station (remember that you need to thread through the Orange Line, the future NSRL, and the Central Artery Tunnel in order to reach the Green Line tunnel -- that's a tall order, and add on top the need to have a flying junction so as to not create delays with a flat junction)

So I think that a subway is not the right way to provide rail service to the North End. Ultimately I think it's probably a question of re-examining bus service to the neighborhood:

• Why does the 4 get low ridership?
  • Note that according to the Better Bus Profile, the 4 is mainly used by North Station commuters heading to the Seaport, which tracks with its ridiculous routings, and suggests that it may not be representative of the real transit potential of the North End
• How many people would go to the North End if transit existed but currently don't?
• How many people currently go to the North End would use transit if it existed?
• How many riders might be diverted from tourist trolleys?
• What kind of riders would use transit to the North End? And what is their tolerance for travel times and wait times?

I think it might be possible to adjust bus routes in the North End to make it friendlier for transit users -- that would probably be prime material for Reasonable Transit Pitches. The question becomes how much will it cost and how much pay-off will there be.

(For what it's worth, if you feel that there's a must-have need for rail rather than bus in order to attract riders, one could consider a "heritage trolley" line -- perhaps South Station-Greenway-Aquarium-Commercial Street-Hanover Street-Haymarket. Or even just up and down Hanover Street from Haymarket. You could also consider a westward extension via Cambridge St -- if Blue-Red construction ends up closing Bowdoin, there would be a sizable gap.)

 

[Charlie_mta]

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.

Good points that I agree with. Other reasons against a circumferential rail transit line along Route 128 would be huge NIMBY blowback from all the residential areas abutting 128, and the mega cost of constructing elevated rail structures for many miles. The only way to squeeze in a two track rail line along most of 128 is to elevate the tracks right alongside the road, practically above the residential neighborhoods, or taking residential properties. Both of those options would be DOA. Also a lot of parkland and wetlands along the route would likely be a deal killer.

 

[Scalziand]

1) There is a segment where a very short tunnel will significantly increase the operational efficiency of a new line. I can't really think of a good example of this, but in principle it could work.

2) A tunnel will have transformative impact across the entire system. Some examples include the North-South Rail Link, the Blue-Red Connector, and (debatably) subways under Comm Ave and Huntington Ave for the B and E Lines respectively.

An example of #1 would be extending the seaport transitway under D street.

 

[Riverside]

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

I think that last point is especially relevant, and I think is easy to overlook sometimes when we forget the relatively small physical distances in Greater Boston. Quincy Adams to Riverside via 128 is 19 miles; rail-running via Red Line and RER on the B&A, it's 20 miles. Obviously not every journey is going to be so closely competitive, but when you are dealing with a circle that is only 10 miles in radius, there's actually a very limited range of journeys along that circle where you get a massive time-savings by a circumferential journey, assuming you have high-speed radial routes. Combine that with the aforementioned large tracts of nothingness along 128, and you get a poor payoff on transit investment.

(This is a key difference between road traffic and rail transit: with proper planning and modest infrastructure, it's physically possible to keep a city core moderately uncongested, meaning that speedy journeys in and out can be comparative with circumferential journeys; I don't think it's physically possible to do so with road traffic.)

Two vaguely tangential musings in the spoiler boxes below -- one on geography and one on geometry.

Spoiler: Musing on geography

Musing on geography:

128 runs pretty consistently ten miles out from downtown. Pretty much every fantasy T map I've come across terminates its rapid transit lines either here at 128's 10-mile mark, or sometimes closer to the 15-mile mark (Norwood, Salem). This is the "edge" of Boston's hypothetical built-up area, and building rapid transit out this far in every direction still seems a long way off.

I decided to do some comparisons with other cities. New York of course is always top of mind, and the results were striking: 10 miles from Lower Manhattan puts you at... Brighton Beach, Jamaica, Flushing, the northernmost reaches of Manhattan (!), Newark, EWR, and a point about a quarter of the way down Staten Island. In other words, comfortably within the region's built-up area. And yet even there, to my knowledge there has never been a proposal for a circumferential rail route at that distance.

The closest thing is the Triboro RX, which would sit about 6 miles from Lower Manhattan -- in Boston terms, that would be roughly like a route running Wollaston-Mattapan-Roslindale Village-Newton Corner-Alewife-Oak Grove-Wonderland. On the other hand, the G train -- arguably New York's only true circumferential subway line -- runs circumferentially around Lower Manhattan at a distance of about 2.5-3 miles; in Boston terms, that would be something like Wood Island-Chelsea-Assembly-Harvard-Longwood-Nubian-JFK/UMass... i.e. exactly the corridor the Urban Ring would service.

New York of course is one-of-a-kind. But the pattern holds: Chicago, Philadelphia, Toronto, Washington, Cleveland, Atlanta, Seattle, Miami, San Diego, San Francisco and Oakland all see their rapid transit services peter out roughly around the 10 mile mark. (With some exceptions -- DC's Metro and BART both act a bit like hybrid rapid transit/commuter rail systems, and BART's frequencies beyond the 10 mile mark reflect that.)

(And just to illustrate how one-of-a-kind Los Angeles is -- its shortest full-build transit line runs 10 miles from DTLA. Its other routes run 15 or 20 miles from downtown. Truly another planet.)

And -- here's the kicker -- with only two (very) exceptional cases, none of those systems have circumferential transit routes (current or proposed) at the 10-mile mark. The two exceptions are DC/Maryland's Purple Line, and a conceptual O'Hare-Midway Link -- and I think each one is illustrative. Washington's built-up area is amplified by the afore-mentioned subway lines that stretch unusually deep into the suburbs, with multiple lines hitting the 17-mile mark -- not even NYC can match that. And an O'Hare-Midway Link gets a massive boost by being anchored by airports at both ends, which would allow it to perform triple-duty as a circumferential line, dual airport feeder lines, and as an airport-transfer shuttle. The closest thing to an NYC 10-mile line would be a JFK-LGA link -- again, performing double duty as an airport-transfer shuttle.

A 10-mile circumferential transit line rarely makes sense. A 6-mile one sometimes makes sense in larger cities (NYC's Triboro RX, Chicago's Lime Line on Cicero, Toronto's Eglinton LRT and erstwhile Jane LRT, and debatably Philly's Norristown High-Speed Line and the Sharon Hill trolley, though they act more like radial feeders), and a 3-mile circumferential route is often a solid idea (NYC's G, Washington's Blue along the Potomac, Chicago's Circle Line and Ashland BRT, Toronto's St. Clair and Roncevalles streetcars, San Diego's Purple Line, and of course Boston's Urban Ring).

I'm betting that it's not just the idiosyncrasies of the 128 corridor that make it a bad fit for transit -- I think there's something more fundamental at play here.

Which brings us to...

Spoiler: Musing on geometry

Musing on geometry:

Here's an SAT problem for you: you are standing on a circle with a diameter of 20 miles (radius of 10 miles). You are traveling to another location on the circle; you can travel either along the circumference, or by heading in to the center of the circle and then back out to your destination. How far along the circumference must you travel before you reach a point where the journey would have been shorter via a radial route?

The answer? 20 miles, or twice the radius. The reason for this is relatively straightforward: the radial journey will always be 20 miles, so it makes for an easy comparison.

I'll spare us the mathematical proof here, but this means that the "inflection point" for a circumferential vs double-radial journey will always be roughly one-third of the way around the circle. If you are journeying circumferentially -- regardless of the size of the circle -- your circumferential journey will only be shorter when you are traveling less than a third of the way around.

I think this ties into the numbers I've been discussing above, although to be honest the math is still eluding me. I think that the commonality of 3-mile loop is not coincidental... if you have a network with a radius of 10 miles, where do you put your Circle Line? Let's assume that the reason the build-out ends at 10 miles out is because that's as far as riders are willing to travel.

If you put your Circle Line all the way at the edge (i.e. Route 128), then that 10 mile limit hampers you pretty severely -- only a sixth of the way around the circle. As discussed above, if you're going a third or more of the way around the circle, you're better off with a double-radial journey. If however you put your Circle Line about three miles out -- specifically 3.18 miles out -- then your Circle Line will have a total circumference of 20 miles -- meaning that your 10 mile limit will be enough to get you halfway around the circle, at which point you're always going to be better off with a double-radial journey.

(All of this assumes exceptionally idealized conditions, of course.)

As it happens, to get an "Inner Circle" whose circumference is twice the radius of your overall network, you need to place the Inner Circle at 31.8% of the distance from the core to the edge of the network -- this actually turns out to be the radius of your network divided by pi.

Note that a 31.8% Circle Line still loses you some efficiency: you can make it halfway round before hitting your journey limit, but the double-radial alternative still becomes faster once you go further than a third along the circumference, for the same reasons noted above. However, I think the 31.8% distance is still "special," because of one-seat rides.

In our hypothetical abstract system, every radial line is perfectly straight, and intersects only in the core. (Obviously this rarely happens, but roll with me here.) This means that a Circle Line journey will not have a one-seat alternative unless you are journeying more than halfway around. Once you reach that point, you'll definitely have a faster one-seat radial alternative. However, for everything before the halfway-point, the Circle Line will be a one-seat journey, as opposed to a two-seater through the core.

If you build your Circle closer than 31.8%, you'll have more and more redundancy with radial one-seaters, but with slower journey times. If you build your Circle farther than 31.8%, you'll have fewer and fewer journeys divertable from the radial core.

All of which is to say, I think there actually are geometric reasons that point to a 3 mile ring being ideal in a 10-mile radius network.

 

[Tallguy]

You might be able to cobble together a GL based ring segment out of Riverside-Newton Highlands-Needham Heights- W Rox-Dedham-Readville-Mattapan-Ashmont-Neponset, but, that is way curvy and, man, I would have to see some serious data to be convinced of its viability.....maaaaaybe a Riverside-Brandeis-Totten Pond segment(really sucky topo), and a Woburn-Burlington segment miiiiight make sense (again, serious data needed)

 

[lexicon506]

A round of applause for everyone currently contributing to this thread. Posters who aren't as well-versed in the intricacies of transit planning aren't being shut down or ridiculed, but rather encouraged and given constructive feedback. The level of care and detail and respect here makes for a fascinating read and is ArchBoston at its best. Keep it up!

 

[NoShJFK]

I applaud you for thinking in terms of "Where Transit Needs To Be Built" rather than "Where Transit Is Easy To Build". That's always an important perspective to have in these conversations, especially given that there is overwhelming political and institutional pressure that creates bias toward the latter.

That being said, there still needs to be a balance, and I tend to agree that building a tunnel in the North Shore seems unnecessary. The Eastern Route ROW as-is provides an excellent spine for local HRT and express electrified mainline rail; the missing piece is a more robust feeder bus system, the bones of which are currently there, but which needs major frequency enhancements (and probably a few bus lanes), so that it creates a seamless "turn-up-and-go" experience for riders.



The goal of this thread has drifted over the years, but these days this thread is typically used for proposals that are largely absent from the "official" planning discourse but which still stand up under rigorous scrutiny, at least from a technical and value perspective (we tend to discount, though not ignore, the short-term political challenges here and likewise the "raw" price tag -- though not the "bang-for-buck" efficiency price tag).

For example, extending the Green Line from Union to Porter and then to Watertown: it's not on any official plans, and hasn't been seriously floated in the public discourse, mainly because there's so much focus on just getting the current GLX built. But the ROW is largely extant, the corridor is similar to others that have seen success, and it wouldn't require massive capital investments like tunneling. It's "crazy" perhaps in a political sense, but not in a technical one.

That contrasts with a thread called "Reasonable Transit Pitches", which in my eyes has evolved into "Proposals That Could Be Implemented In The Next 10 Years" as well as "Proposals That A Politician Could Make And Not Get Laughed Out Of The Campaign." A lot of the current discussion in there focuses on BRT concepts, such as my proposed Navy Line.

Then there is the God Mode thread, which I think is best suited for the ideas you're raising here. Feasibility -- both technical and political -- is pretty much ignored there, and it's a valuable space for letting the imagination run wild.

There's definitely cross-pollination across these threads -- for example, a high-flying idea in the God Mode thread might get the gears turning, as someone realizes, "Hey, with a couple of tweaks, that actually could turn into a buildable idea!" And sometimes an idea is raised here in Crazy Transit Pitches that, on further examination, doesn't quite work, so the convo gets shifted to God Mode, and so on.



So, I am less skeptical of the usefulness of rail to the North End than some other folks here. The prevailing standard for stop-spacing in the core is a 5-7 minute walk between stations, and that drives (and is driven by) a fair number of local behaviors and other factors. One of those is the idea that you only have to walk ~3-4 minutes to reach your destination from the nearest T stop. Next to that, a 10-minute walk one-way is a significant difference.

I think you are right to raise (in a separate post) that a 12-minute walk becomes significantly less hospitable when it's cold, raining, snowy, or if you have some sort of limitation on your mobility -- whether that's groceries, children, or a physical difficulty. Again, not impossible by any means, but discouraging.

By the 5-7 minute walkshed metric, that would point to a rail station somewhere around the intersection of Prince and Hanover. (Ironically, 115 years ago, this was a proposed station location for what became today's Blue Line subway.)

^ Those are the pros, and I agree they're not trivial. Let's talk about the cons.

First, let's talk about tunneling. At this point, I think there are really only two scenarios where tunneling makes sense for transit in Greater Boston:

1) There is a segment where a very short tunnel will significantly increase the operational efficiency of a new line. I can't really think of a good example of this, but in principle it could work.

2) A tunnel will have transformative impact across the entire system. Some examples include the North-South Rail Link, the Blue-Red Connector, and (debatably) subways under Comm Ave and Huntington Ave for the B and E Lines respectively.

A subway through the North End fails both of those tests. Simply put, we need to be able to say why such a subway would be good for the whole system, not just the North End.

Second, there's the impact on the rest of the Green Line. I'm not going to belabor this point, but consider:

• the impact of diverting service away from the core section (including the Red Line transfer at Park!)
• how you're going to connect at Boylston (discussed above re Essex Street)
• how you're going to hook in at North Station (remember that you need to thread through the Orange Line, the future NSRL, and the Central Artery Tunnel in order to reach the Green Line tunnel -- that's a tall order, and add on top the need to have a flying junction so as to not create delays with a flat junction)

So I think that a subway is not the right way to provide rail service to the North End. Ultimately I think it's probably a question of re-examining bus service to the neighborhood:

• Why does the 4 get low ridership?
  • Note that according to the Better Bus Profile, the 4 is mainly used by North Station commuters heading to the Seaport, which tracks with its ridiculous routings, and suggests that it may not be representative of the real transit potential of the North End
• How many people would go to the North End if transit existed but currently don't?
• How many people currently go to the North End would use transit if it existed?
• How many riders might be diverted from tourist trolleys?
• What kind of riders would use transit to the North End? And what is their tolerance for travel times and wait times?

I think it might be possible to adjust bus routes in the North End to make it friendlier for transit users -- that would probably be prime material for Reasonable Transit Pitches. The question becomes how much will it cost and how much pay-off will there be.

(For what it's worth, if you feel that there's a must-have need for rail rather than bus in order to attract riders, one could consider a "heritage trolley" line -- perhaps South Station-Greenway-Aquarium-Commercial Street-Hanover Street-Haymarket. Or even just up and down Hanover Street from Haymarket. You could also consider a westward extension via Cambridge St -- if Blue-Red construction ends up closing Bowdoin, there would be a sizable gap.)

Appreciate the CONSTRUCTIVE feedback. All good points. Enough to persuade me on the matter in fact.

My thinking was a low budget GreenLine INFill station would be swarmed on Friday and Saturday nights. And used at least to a justifiable degree for a small number of North End residents during the week. But the points you make kind of overwhelm that argument.

 

[bigeman312]

Appreciate the CONSTRUCTIVE feedback. All good points. Enough to persuade me on the matter in fact.

My thinking was a low budget GreenLine INFill station would be swarmed on Friday and Saturday nights.

Another piece of constructive feedback: infill stations are, by definition, built along existing lines and are, by their nature, generally "low budget," relatively speaking.

What you proposed is neither an infill station (it would require a new tunnel under the North End separate from existing trackage) nor low budget (it would require a new tunnel under the North End).

Assembly Station is an example of a "low budget," infill station.

 

[NoShJFK]

Another piece of constructive feedback: infill stations are, by definition, built along existing lines and are, by their nature, generally "low budget," relatively speaking.

What you proposed is neither an infill station (it would require a new tunnel under the North End separate from existing trackage) nor low budget (it would require a new tunnel under the North End).

Assembly Station is an example of a "low budget," infill station.

I know what an infill station is - I was using the term liberally. What I meant was - it wouldn’t require a whole new line - merely a stub off the existing line. But yes I guess technically it’s not an infill scenario.

And in order for any infill to be low budget they all have to be at grade

 

[ra84970]

I know what an infill station is - I was using the term liberally. What I meant was - it wooodnt require a whole new line - merely a stub off the existing line. But yes I guess technically it’s not an infill scenario.

And in order for any infill to be low budget they all have to be at grade

That's not infill.

It's also doesn't improve the GL (or any other heavy rail line) travel patterns either.

 

[Vagabond]

The OL has the little-used express track that stops at Community College. With as full as the OL is, if it were to ever be extended either to Wakefield-128 or to Everett Center, would activating that track all the way into at least NS would be a priority?
Was North Station built to accommodate a continuation of that track?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

The OL has the little-used express track that stops at Community College. With as full as the OL is, if it were to ever be extended either to Wakefield-128 or to Everett Center, would activating that track all the way into at least NS would be a priority?
Was North Station built to accommodate a continuation of that track?

It was designed for extension to Oak Grove, but not further inbound. The Reading extension was canceled early enough on that the ops plan for the track was never explained in detail, but it's thought that it was going to damp down suburban headways further out from Malden.

 

[Charlie_mta]

The OL has the little-used express track that stops at Community College.

I always thought it would be worthwhile to convert the easternmost of the three OL tracks to become a second southbound commuter rail track. That way you would have both SB and NB commuter rail tracks, Seems like a better use of the track.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

I always thought it would be worthwhile to convert the easternmost of the three OL tracks to become a second southbound commuter rail track. That way you would have both SB and NB commuter rail tracks, Seems like a better use of the track.

It would do almost no good. OL travels on its own elevated viaduct CC-Sullivan, I-93 abutments and the foot of the CC viaduct touching Sullivan physically prevent a CR turnout at Sullivan, and the OL yard turnout interlockings require enormous amounts of physical plant relocation/reconfiguration at Wellington. There are already passing sidings between Reading Jct. and the bridge + between Wellington-Malden; the other feasible segments you could possibly reclaim for all the pain and suffering are too short to enable any additional meets.

The primary CR capacity constraint is the Malden Ctr.-Wyoming single-tracking...and that's where the OL express track ain't. No easy fix there.

15-minute bi-directional headways to Reading are possible with 2 very minor touches: drag the Reading Jct. passing siding into the Eastern Route track split so it's 2 x 2, and lengthen the Wellington passer to the other side of Medford St. bridge (on the footprint of a derelict freight siding) so it's functionally twice as long. Haverhill thru trains have to vacate to the Lowell Line because the MC-OG pinch constrains the further meets and would cost a megaproject in embankment/cut widening, but full-spec Urban Rail to Reading is very easily doable no-mess.

The express track isn't fungible; taking it would do virtually nothing for aggregate Purple Line frequencies.

 

[themissinglink]

The primary CR capacity constraint is the Malden Ctr.-Wyoming single-tracking...and that's where the OL express track ain't. No easy fix there.

15-minute bi-directional headways to Reading are possible with 2 very minor touches: drag the Reading Jct. passing siding into the Eastern Route track split so it's 2 x 2, and lengthen the Wellington passer to the other side of Medford St. bridge (on the footprint of a derelict freight siding) so it's functionally twice as long. Haverhill thru trains have to vacate to the Lowell Line because the MC-OG pinch constrains the further meets and would cost a megaproject in embankment/cut widening, but full-spec Urban Rail to Reading is very easily doable no-mess.

This may be a bit off topic, but wasn't it speculated that extending the OL to Reading would be cheaper than modifying/grade separating tracks for RUR service to Reading? The Orange Line seems to me like the more appropriate/desirable option for service in Melrose/Wakefield/Reading.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

This may be a bit off topic, but wasn't it speculated that extending the OL to Reading would be cheaper than modifying/grade separating tracks for RUR service to Reading? The Orange Line seems to me like the more appropriate/desirable option for service in Melrose/Wakefield/Reading.

:15 bi-directional Urban Rail frequencies North Station-Reading is fine with the following conditions:

• thru Haverhill trains go back to their pre-1979 alignment on the Lowell Line
• Reading Jct. in Somerville modified to be a 2 x 2 track split
• Wellington passing siding lengthened out past Medford St. (+1/2 mi.)
• Double-track extended 1/4 mi. through Reading Depot platforms

Sustains the headways, so long as you're not tasking it with carrying traffic to 495-land, and so long as it's understood that when there's a traffic conflict with the Eastern Route at Reading Jct. the short-turning Reading trains are always going to be the ones to have to hold for a schedule adjustment. The grade crossings suck, but at that level of frequency there'd be some very tangible car load diversions from Melrose/Wakefield downtown streets and at such a very short distance you have a lot of margin for error to burn in the schedule for variability at the crossings and/or at Reading Jct.

The setup chokes, however, if you build NSRL and try to pair-match something from the southside, as the meets change. Reading Jct. also becomes a capacity concern for all the pair-matches that trawl the Eastern Route, especially if the Sullivan superstation gets added. And the inability to thru-route anything to Haverhill in that universe becomes a bigger concern. The cost of blowing shit up throughout Malden to widen the cut + embankment and zapping the performance-killing grade crossings gets very punitive and rivals and/or exceeds the cost of doing Orange to Reading (no Malden ROW touches required, way more compact project areas at the crossing eliminations because rapid transit can climb way steeper inclines). Orange-Reading goes on the board as a study subject if you build NSRL because the inner Western Route is a misfit gimp that isn't going to play nice with run-thrus.

 

[ra84970]

:15 bi-directional Urban Rail frequencies North Station-Reading is fine with the following conditions:

• thru Haverhill trains go back to their pre-1979 alignment on the Lowell Line
• Reading Jct. in Somerville modified to be a 2 x 2 track split
• Wellington passing siding lengthened out past Medford St. (+1/2 mi.)
• Double-track extended 1/4 mi. through Reading Depot platforms

Sustains the headways, so long as you're not tasking it with carrying traffic to 495-land, and so long as it's understood that when there's a traffic conflict with the Eastern Route at Reading Jct. the short-turning Reading trains are always going to be the ones to have to hold for a schedule adjustment. The grade crossings suck, but at that level of frequency there'd be some very tangible car load diversions from Melrose/Wakefield downtown streets and at such a very short distance you have a lot of margin for error to burn in the schedule for variability at the crossings and/or at Reading Jct.

The setup chokes, however, if you build NSRL and try to pair-match something from the southside, as the meets change. Reading Jct. also becomes a capacity concern for all the pair-matches that trawl the Eastern Route, especially if the Sullivan superstation gets added. And the inability to thru-route anything to Haverhill in that universe becomes a bigger concern. The cost of blowing shit up throughout Malden to widen the cut + embankment and zapping the performance-killing grade crossings gets very punitive and rivals and/or exceeds the cost of doing Orange to Reading (no Malden ROW touches required, way more compact project areas at the crossing eliminations because rapid transit can climb way steeper inclines). Orange-Reading goes on the board as a study subject if you build NSRL because the inner Western Route is a misfit gimp that isn't going to play nice with run-thrus.

I was looking at both the Reading and Needham corridors (together and separately) this weekend thinking about "what if you could "through-run" trains like they do in East Asia?". In the end, it felt like it would be better to just extend the OL to both those terminii instead of doing a through-running experiment where you'd electrify the CR lines and purchase OL-compatible trains. You'd already be doing most of the work at the CR stations to build platforms capable of meeting passengers coming off of trains fit for the OL loading gauge. So, it felt like if you were going to try to through-run CR to RT anywhere in the two corridors as a set, it just makes more sense to do it all as OL.

For the individual corridors by themselves, it's a different story. In the Needham corridor, a through-running CR to RT did seem to resolve the issues with the level crossings in the NEC, but, I could not imagine the potential to build express OL tracks in the SW corridor trench. This would make the travel time from Needham pretty long, so, I couldn't imagine they'd be happy. Perhaps those folks would accept better frequencies for the longer travel time though?

For the Reading corridor, with some express service, it did seem doable in that there is space for an express OL track already there in the ROW. So, I could see it being done as a through-running CR to RT in the inner 93/128 to North Station corridor. But, again, it felt like if you're already doing that level of work, you might as well just extend the OL. And, adding to the bullets above, it feels like maybe it would just be better to do the OL to Reading.

As an alternative, I thought about the NSRL "Urban Rail" version of both of those lines from the CR Vision study and the question that kept coming up for me was exactly what to pair Reading line service with on the southside. I didn't seem to find a decent fit across Downtown to stitch together.

EDIT: Copy pasta problems.

 

[Charlie_mta]

It would do almost no good. OL travels on its own elevated viaduct CC-Sullivan, I-93 abutments and the foot of the CC viaduct touching Sullivan physically prevent a CR turnout at Sullivan, and the OL yard turnout interlockings require enormous amounts of physical plant relocation/reconfiguration at Wellington. There are already passing sidings between Reading Jct. and the bridge + between Wellington-Malden; the other feasible segments you could possibly reclaim for all the pain and suffering are too short to enable any additional meets.

The primary CR capacity constraint is the Malden Ctr.-Wyoming single-tracking...and that's where the OL express track ain't. No easy fix there.

15-minute bi-directional headways to Reading are possible with 2 very minor touches: drag the Reading Jct. passing siding into the Eastern Route track split so it's 2 x 2, and lengthen the Wellington passer to the other side of Medford St. bridge (on the footprint of a derelict freight siding) so it's functionally twice as long. Haverhill thru trains have to vacate to the Lowell Line because the MC-OG pinch constrains the further meets and would cost a megaproject in embankment/cut widening, but full-spec Urban Rail to Reading is very easily doable no-mess.

The express track isn't fungible; taking it would do virtually nothing for aggregate Purple Line frequencies.

You're right about the 4-track footprint ending just south of Malden Center. North of that point, for the rest of the OL, there's only room for two OL tracks and one CR track.

 

[The EGE]

My proposal to fix the Harvard curve and beautify Harvard Square in one fell swoop.

 

[vanshnookenraggen]

That would beautify Harvard Sq how?