Crazy Transit Pitches

Of course, Palmer is not the only possible stop between Spr-Worc. I might be possible to offer both west of Worcester and Southwest(an Auburn P&R could draw from CT)
 
And if Prov-Worc service ever happened, Worcester could have a nice little network
 
Tallguy said:
But I am not aware of a single car independently operable rail vehicle, diesel or electric
Click to expand...

WES Commuter Rail in Oregon has a few Colorado Railcar DMUs that can run as singles. (That Colorado Railcar went belly-up roughly fifteen years ago with no meaningful replacement is perhaps an indicator of the, ah, unimpressive demand for DMUs.)
 
Brattle Loop said:
WES Commuter Rail in Oregon has a few Colorado Railcar DMUs that can run as singles. (That Colorado Railcar went belly-up roughly fifteen years ago with no meaningful replacement is perhaps an indicator of the, ah, unimpressive demand for DMUs.)
Click to expand...
Sorry, I should have said currently available
 
I would actually say that this market still exists and actually has a not terrible number of options - just mostly european and as tiny 2 car DMUs and not quite rail motor standalones.

Stadler FLIRTs in a 2 car config have been bought by San Bernardino for a new service, the Siemens Desiro works the Sprinter service nearby.

NCTD Sprinter DMU 4003

NCTD Sprinter DMU 4003 SDNX 4003 Siemens Desiro DMU. Also search SDNR & NCTD (In 2013 some NCTD trains began using NCTC on radio)
www.rrpicturearchives.net
I would say that they are increasingly not that rare (still uncommon - operators of these in the US have tiny fleets) but the installed base globally and in the US is growing, so the development, "test subject," and parts orphan burden is minimal as they're just bigger common DMUs with the middle coaches taken out. There's a couple of other global options from Alstom and Bombardier too.
 
Last edited:
Tallguy said:
But I am not aware of a single car independently operable rail vehicle, diesel or electric
Click to expand...
Thanks for the clarification. The old B&M railroad used to run a single car Buddliner on the Lexington line. I used to see it go through the Alewife area in the early 70s.
 
There's a preserved RDC at the Bedford end of the Minuteman Bikeway, but I'm pretty sure it's not one that historically ran that route.
 
themissinglink said:
How feasible would it be for an eventual +1 extension of the Worcester Line to a station on the Western side of Worcester? (near the old B&A Jamesville station site)

View attachment 27397

A station in this site would better serve the Jamesville and Ludlow neighborhoods in Worcester, in addition to underserved Central Mass communities such as Auburn, Leicester, and Paxton. Connections to the WRTA bus network would be provided by a stop on the 27 bus, and it would be ideal for the 33 bus to also stop at the station for connections to communities along Route 9. This could possibly be achieved by rerouting the 33 down Ludlow St and Stafford St, with increased frequencies on the 19 bus to compensate for the 33 being re-routed off of Main St.

Obviously the MBTA would need to negotiate trackage rights on the B&A west of Union Station for such an extension. Also, an additional track would be constructed between Union Station and the new "West Worcester" station site for traffic separation (I'm pretty sure a new track through this area has been discussed as part of East/West rail).

This project would be best suited for after the Weston-Framingham third track project and the Newton/Wellesley/Natick station reconstructions were finished.
Click to expand...

I think a stop in that vicinity might be better a little farther east towards Webster Square and the Price Chopper which has a lot more redevelopment potential, but half the catchment area is still going to be cemetery. I prefer a +1 extension that incorporates a new layover, either a stop in Auburn at the Auburn mall with the layover in some old sandpits a little further south, or a park and ride in Millbury at the 90/146 junction or Blackstone shoppes.
 
Scalziand said:
I think a stop in that vicinity might be better a little farther east towards Webster Square and the Price Chopper which has a lot more redevelopment potential, but half the catchment area is still going to be cemetery. I prefer a +1 extension that incorporates a new layover, either a stop in Auburn at the Auburn mall with the layover in some old sandpits a little further south, or a park and ride in Millbury at the 90/146 junction or Blackstone shoppes.
Click to expand...
Millbury/146 wouldn't ever be necessary if you simply dropped an infill stop between Grafton and Worcester at US 20/MA 122 right at the next Pike exit. The two sites are only separated by 2.5 miles on US 20, and a stop was proposed here 25 years ago when Worcester service was being reinstated. It would have equal park-and-ride heft, operational advantages of fitting easier onto a Worcester schedule (already in MBTA territory, already on double-track, EMU Regional Rail could easily swallow the scheduling for an extra stop), and the site centers on the actual downtown of Millbury amidst very TOD'able surroundings unlike the barrenness around the sewage treatment plant @ 146. Plus you won't need to double-track 4 miles of the P&W so it can handle headways, signalize a segment of unsignalized line, negotiate precious slots through the busy freight yards, and run a significantly longer Boston schedule to do the job.

As for the Auburn Mall option, that's already served by WRTA routes 27, 29, and 42. They're not lacking in transit. If there's a means-test for the rail option, it probably lies in the bus ridership or projecting the bus ridership through a set of bus service improvements first. AFAIK those routes aren't exactly bursting at the seams, and Auburn Mall is a typically tenant-fragile suburban mall with an uncertain future so there'd have to be some major redev of it anchoring the TOD in order to attract the rail link. It's not impossible to pull off, but it's kind of a longshot. Plus you'd have similar problems of needing to double-track 4.5 miles of P&W, signalize, negotiate slots through Southbridge St. Yard, and significantly lengthen an already long Worcester schedule...so it's a pretty high bar that TOD enhancement would have to clear.
 
Last edited:
Stlin said:
I would actually say that this market still exists and actually has a not terrible number of options - just mostly european and as tiny 2 car DMUs and not quite rail motor standalones.

Stadler FLIRTs in a 2 car config have been bought by San Bernardino for a new service, the Siemens Desiro works the Sprinter service nearby.

NCTD Sprinter DMU 4003

NCTD Sprinter DMU 4003 SDNX 4003 Siemens Desiro DMU. Also search SDNR & NCTD (In 2013 some NCTD trains began using NCTC on radio)
www.rrpicturearchives.net
I would say that they are increasingly not that rare (still uncommon - operators of these in the US have tiny fleets) but the installed base globally and in the US is growing, so the development, "test subject," and parts orphan burden is minimal as they're just bigger common DMUs with the middle coaches taken out. There's a couple of other global options from Alstom and Bombardier too.
Click to expand...
FRA-compliant high-level boarding options tend to be very few, however. The Siemens and Stadlers in-use stateside are for 8-inch platforms only. Only the Nippon-Sharyo DMU's in use by SMART and Toronto's Union-Pearson Express are in-use here for boarding with high-levels, and N-S closed its U.S. assembly plant in retreat from the domestic market so they no longer qualify for Buy America. While Siemens and Stadler do have adaptable overseas makes for high platforms, they haven't exactly been aggressive in bidding them to the U.S. I don't think either vendor was heard from when the T had its RFI out for DMU's a dozen years ago. The incredibly tiny fleet orders thus far make the scale kind of not worth it for the very big vendors, especially when U.S. transit agencies can't help themselves from overcustomizing everything. Very small unit quanties + too much specs tinkering and change orders = lackluster vendor interest.


EDIT: Yeah, DMU quantities like these extant North American systems aren't going to rustle up much interest from the open market. . .

Union Pearson Express (ONT) -- 18 Nippon-Sharyo's
A-Train (TX) -- 11 Stadler GTW's
SMART (CA) - 9 Nippon-Sharyo's
TEXrail (TX) -- 8 Stadler FLIRT's
Capital MetroRail (TX) -- 6 Stadler GTW's
WES (OR) -- 4 Colorado Railcar's + 4 Budd RDC's
Arrow (CA-under construction) -- 4 Stadler FLIRT's + un-exercised option for 3 more
 
Last edited:
ceo said:
There's a preserved RDC at the Bedford end of the Minuteman Bikeway, but I'm pretty sure it's not one that historically ran that route.
Click to expand...
Here's a great photo posted by F-line on aB back in 2006. It shows a Buddliner on the Lexington line in the Alewife area (looking SW from the Concord Turnpike towards the location of the current Red Line station):
Hale_print_027.jpg
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Millbury/146 wouldn't ever be necessary if you simply dropped an infill stop between Grafton and Worcester at US 20/MA 122 right at the next Pike exit. The two sites are only separated by 2.5 miles on US 20, and a stop was proposed here 25 years ago when Worcester service was being reinstated.
Click to expand...

Did the NIMBYs who were against the Millbury station proposal ever give their reasoning or justification for opposing a station at this site?

Perhaps I’m looking too deep into it, but it’s always been surprising to me that such an obvious candidate for an infill stop was rejected, especially considering how 4 other infill stops opened in nearby towns, seemingly without pushback from residents.
 
themissinglink said:
Did the NIMBYs who were against the Millbury station proposal ever give their reasoning or justification for opposing a station at this site?

Perhaps I’m looking too deep into it, but it’s always been surprising to me that such an obvious candidate for an infill stop was rejected, especially considering how 4 other infill stops opened in nearby towns, seemingly without pushback from residents.
Click to expand...
It was the late-90's...a whole different era. Commuter Rail hadn't stopped in that town since 1960, so it was a radical concept at the time. The other intermediate stations didn't come easy either. It took 8 years from Worcester service being restored in 1994 to get them all open, because they were nitpicked half to death. And of course Ashland and Westborough ended up not wanting theirs downtown, to their own detriment.

Millbury was re-proposed in the 2004 PMT and got a medium rating, but their ridership figures were curiously lowballed at 300/day...roughly 42% the next-worst of the outer stops. The absolute floor is pretty much 700, scalable way up the more Pn'R utilization it gets (since the other outer intermediates aren't easily accessible from any highways).
MB.png
 
Last edited:
F-Line to Dudley said:
It was the late-90's...a whole different era. Commuter Rail hadn't stopped in that town since 1960, so it was a radical concept at the time. The other intermediate stations didn't come easy either. It took 8 years from Worcester service being restored in 1994 to get them all open, because they were nitpicked half to death. And of course Ashland and Westborough ended up not wanting theirs downtown, to their own detriment.

Millbury was re-proposed in the 2004 PMT and got a medium rating, but their ridership figures were curiously lowballed at 300/day...roughly 42% the next-worst of the outer stops. The absolute floor is pretty much 700, scalable way up the more Pn'R utilization it gets (since the other outer intermediates aren't easily accessible from any highways).
View attachment 27461
Click to expand...

Thanks for the clarification, your thorough explanations are much appreciated.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top