Crazy Transit Pitches

luobo said:
Why is it physically impossible? What's to stop you from digging a trench from Cambridge St to the southern end of Vassar St? You could cap it with a bike path and Cantabrigians would love it. I'm not saying it would be simple but it doesn't seem like it'd be impossible.
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The Red Line tunnel is under the Grand Junction at the Main Street crossing. Any GJ tunnel would have to go deep, under the Red Line, which (especially on CR given the grade limitations) opens a big, currently-non-existent flooding risk to the Red Line tunnel (in addition to garden-variety water mitigation necessary to deal with tunneling under the existing GJ partially built on top of fill). We're talking costs escalating at Concorde speeds for a project of extremely limited value (if the NSRL doesn't exist, and still questionable value if it does). I don't think it's physically impossible, but it's so wildly impractical from a cost-benefit standpoint that the politicians would have to be out of their minds to approve it (and they're rarely that bad).
 
jklo said:
Think of it more as a marketing bullet point for West Station residents. That also keeps the ability to do train moves and freight if necessary. And doesn't have any overhead wires.

In the end maybe they will leave it as is.
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Adding overhead wires is not the problem. Adding overhead wires over non-T-owned ground is the (supposed) problem.

Freight and train moves can be done via Worcester-Ayer, whose tracks can be improved at a much lower costs, and train moves can be reduced by expansions to existing maintenance facilities, also at lower costs and greater benefit.

The Grand Junction corridor needs rapid transit more than it needs commuter rail. West Station needs a rapid transit connection to Cambridge more than it needs a commuter rail connection.

Light rail can approach a railroad grade crossing and treat it like an intersection (and can wait for crossing traffic to have a red light). Commuter rail cannot, which means that frequent commuter rail service would mean halting all traffic on Main Street and Mass Ave (including the vitally important and already extremely delay-prone 1 bus) multiple times an hour, including for the excess time it takes for the gates to go up and down before and after the train passes, plus needing to wait for an 800-foot train to pass at well-less than full-speed (since it'll be pulling in and out of a station).

It's a fun idea and I like the creativity of it! There are serious challenges to it that make it pretty difficult to see as a winner.
 
Riverside said:
Freight and train moves can be done via Worcester-Ayer, whose tracks can be improved at a much lower costs, and train moves can be reduced by expansions to existing maintenance facilities, also at lower costs and greater benefit.
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The MBTA seems to like having it there. Would Green be better for transit? Yeah... but that's not the main driver here.
 
jklo said:
The MBTA seems to like having it there. Would Green be better for transit? Yeah... but that's not the main driver here.
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Of course they like having it there, it's convenient, and they aren't particularly motivated to use it for anything more than the equipment swaps it already hosts. The one passenger use of it that was actually studied (or, at least, I thought it was studied) was running some Worcester service to North Station as basically a political favor to the then-Lieutenant Governor, and even that meager service proposal didn't rate favorably on usefulness, cost-benefit, or traffic impacts. None of the rest of the GJ proposals here are official, even at the "political favor" level, so it's not surprising that the T has no interest in changing anything where the politicians they answer to don't either. There's legitimate reasons for them to prefer the status quo; replacing the GJ for equipment swaps would, as Riverside noted, require both upgraded maintenance and storage facilities (to reduce the frequency of equipment swaps) and upgrades to Pan Am's Worcester Main (to make those reduced-frequency swaps not take an atrociously long time like they do now when the GJ is out of service), and there's little to no incentive for anyone to do anything about that unless they have to, and they only reason they'd have to is if GJ was getting taken off the RR mode in favor of transit. Get enough momentum for Green over GJ and they'll have to tee up the work necessary to make it happen, but until and unless that happens, we're staying in pure-theory Crazy Transit Pitches territory.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
The T couldn't even be arsed to comment on the years-long construction diversions to the Worcester-Ayer route forecast for the Mass Pike Allston reconstruction, despite being a daily user of the line.
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I didn't know that, but have absolutely no difficulty believing it 😞
 
Brattle Loop said:
The Red Line tunnel is under the Grand Junction at the Main Street crossing. Any GJ tunnel would have to go deep, under the Red Line, which (especially on CR given the grade limitations) opens a big, currently-non-existent flooding risk to the Red Line tunnel (in addition to garden-variety water mitigation necessary to deal with tunneling under the existing GJ partially built on top of fill). We're talking costs escalating at Concorde speeds for a project of extremely limited value (if the NSRL doesn't exist, and still questionable value if it does). I don't think it's physically impossible, but it's so wildly impractical from a cost-benefit standpoint that the politicians would have to be out of their minds to approve it (and they're rarely that bad).
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Im sorry, I didn't think I needed to say "physically impossible without crazy expense"
 
Brattle Loop said:
I didn't know that, but have absolutely no difficulty believing it 😞
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Well...they've put buildout of new southside maintenance facilities @ Readville into design. They've got multiple coach procurements on the CIP. And CSX is planning to upgrade Worcester-Ayer from Class 1 (10 MPH) to Class 3 (40 MPH freight/60 MPH passenger) once it acquires Pan Am. Some of these future bucket list items for freeing up the GJ from daily Commuter Rail swaps are already substantially underway.

They might only be using it a couple times a week come decade's end on that trajectory, instead of every day. There isn't a lot of impetus for them to care about their non-revenue dibs as a big strategic linchpin, and they already know in advance the revenue proposals for Purple Line service across it are all a hot mess.
 
Tallguy said:
Im sorry, I didn't think I needed to say "physically impossible without crazy expense"
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Ah. I'd personally categorize "physically impossible" and "wildly impractical" as different things, hence the implicit distinction in my post. There's no meaningful practical difference between the two, as they both lead to the same result (no build), but I do tend to parse the technical difference and sometimes forget that not everyone is as pedantic as I am, so sometimes I wind up responding unnecessarily.

You're correct that it's impossible without crazy expense given the tunneling and flood-mitigation necessary to support such tunneling, so the final point stands that grade separation on the RR mode is non-viable.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
The T couldn't even be arsed to comment on the years-long construction diversions to the Worcester-Ayer route forecast for the Mass Pike Allston reconstruction, despite being a daily user of the line.
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Maybe they've gotten assurances that it won't be taken away from them permanently. And thus don't need to comment.
 
jklo said:
Maybe they've gotten assurances that it won't be taken away from them permanently. And thus don't need to comment.
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Can't be taken away permanently without going before the Surface Transportation Board 'cause of CSX's freight trackage rights, so it's probably not that.
 
jklo said:
Maybe they've gotten assurances that it won't be taken away from them permanently. And thus don't need to comment.
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That was never in the cards to begin with, as all Pike designs had to provision for it. They were presented with up to a 2-year shutdown where they'd be consigned to the Worcester-Ayer swap route, and said nary a peep about it.


You're implying that they are asserting a defined strategic importance to it as a "main driver" in your words. Please cite some evidence for that.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
That was never in the cards to begin with, as all Pike designs had to provision for it. They were presented with up to a 2-year shutdown where they'd be consigned to the Worcester-Ayer swap route, and said nary a peep about it.
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That's temporary versus permanent. Going Green means they lose it forever.

If you think about it, the options are:
1. Do nothing and largely leave as is
2. Lay down the second track and do the one CR station at Kendall and not much else
3. Do Green instead
4. Do BRT instead
5. Sever it completely and VE out the quad tracking at West Station

As long as they are confident that #1 or #2 is going to be the end result, there's not much reason to comment.
 
jklo said:
That's temporary versus permanent. Going Green means they lose it forever.

If you think about it, the options are:
1. Do nothing and largely leave as is
2. Lay down the second track and do the one CR station at Kendall and not much else
3. Do Green instead
4. Do BRT instead
5. Sever it completely

As long as they are confident that #1 or #2 is going to be the end result, there's not much reason to comment.
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"Do nothing" is not evidence for some big stick being swung behind the scenes as a "main driver" charting the future course here. Don't imply that the MBTA is stirring the pot here for some particular outcome they "like" if you can't/won't back those assertions up with anything. :rolleyes:
 
There is significant interest in a LRT from West Station to Sullivan. Several stops. Bridge over Mass Ave and street light coordinating at Main St and Binney. Cheap to do. Move a lot of people and even more with time.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Don't imply that the MBTA is stirring the pot here for some particular outcome they "like" if you can't/won't back those assertions up with anything. :rolleyes:
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Who says the MBTA is stirring the pot? Harvard wants something and isn't picky. CR gets what Harvard wants. They are getting CR.

Tallguy said:
There is significant interest in a LRT from West Station to Sullivan. Several stops. Bridge over Mass Ave and street light coordinating at Main St and Binney. Cheap to do. Move a lot of people and even more with time.
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But not from Harvard. They'd have to insist on Green.
 
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jklo said:
Who says the MBTA is stirring the pot? Harvard wants something and isn't picky. CR gets what Harvard wants. They are getting CR.



But not from Harvard. They'd have to insist on Green.
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You do know that Green IS LRT?
 
And assuming a GL GJ, a spur through Allston at least to the river if not to Harvard Sq would be next.
 
Tallguy said:
You do know that Green IS LRT?
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Well yeah. LRT=Green in this context. None of the other subway lines are LRT. Until there's any evidence Harvard wants Green there's really no reason to think that anything other than CR will end up happening.
 
jklo said:
Well yeah. LRT=Green in this context. None of the other subway lines are LRT. Until there's any evidence Harvard wants Green there's really no reason to think that anything other than CR will end up happening.
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CR will never, ever happen on the GJ. The Cambridge government and NIMBYs are absolutely against it, and when Cambridge is against something, it ain't happening. On the other hand, light rail is politically doable.
 
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