Roslindale and West Roxbury already strongly rejected a Rail Vision proposal for high-frequency Needham Line CR shuttle with forced transfer at Forest Hills. The loss of the one-seat to Downtown and the Ruggles bus hub was their line-in-the-sand. So no, they'd never accept a dinky out there. It's pretty clearly Orange Line extension or bust.
The only place the lines would split is Forest Hills, because of the Northeast Corridor serving up a surface ROW to avoid the heinous cost of that much tunneling. And the NEC doesn't have space, because Amtrak has claimed all 4 track berths from FH to Readville as necessary for future frequency expansion. If you're going to tunnel anywhere, it's under the NEC...and I doubt the costs are worth it for that when 15-minute service on the Fairmount Line serves Readville and Hyde Park plenty well.
OL extension either to W Roxbury or a mostly single track OL to either Hersey or Needham Jct(possibly just to the north near the hospital)
The Needham Cutoff ROW (W. Rox Jct. to Needham Jct.) was designed for 2 tracks everywhere except for the Route 128 overpass. No need to single. Just plop second bridge decks on 3 pre-designed spans (Charles River, Cutler Park path, and Route 135) and rebuild the 128 overpass as a 2-tracker.
Problem is OLX has never been studied past W. Rox, whereas it's been studied many times over to W. Rox. Prior to the ROW being salted over with development of private homes, Dedham was considered the optimal terminus. So we don't really know how Greendale or Hersey would fare at 4-minute Orange headways. They're certainly amongst the least-dense environs anywhere on the rapid transit system, comprising of mostly single-family homes on half-acre lots with little commercial and the golf course chopping things up. It's certainly nowhere near as dense as the Green Line Newton-Needham corridor through Downtown to Needham Junction. You could have a 128 parking sink at Greendale (but probably not Hersey), but the usage would be abysmal on the off-peak with most of those trains running nearly empty. And I doubt it would be full for cars on-peak because the Gould St./Highland Ave. stop on the Green extension is so much denser and :15 Regional Rail to Dedham Corporate and Westwood will suck up demand from the south.
Green Line dispatching has enough variability in it that single-track would not work. The meets are just too unpredictable, and delays would readily ensue even on sparse-ish headways. Upper Falls had lots of freight sidings back in the day, so accommodating the trail with double-track is doable. The last Newton study did envision such a rail-with-trail setup, so the feasibility is more or less proven.
That would be my preference. I just mentioned single track to Hersey because, while F-Line is technically correct(although 128 bridge abutment doesn't look like a double) the ROW goes through a marsh.
There would be some property takings, probably also some political pushback, but I don't know that it couldn't be done with enough political will. The takings would probably add a $10-$15 million to the cost, that's about it.
It's dead. The ROW along Belle Ave. is completely obliterated by new-construction housing thanks to the T selling off that land about 15 years ago.
The 128 bridge was a circa-1955 addition so they didn't bother future-proofing. All of the original 1911 ROW grading and bridge abutments were laid out to support double. The marsh wouldn't be any environmental challenge because the ROW is perched high up on an embankment that's DT-width throughout.
Probably not. South of 128 the ROW is a little more densely abutted. But the real connectivity of that trail hasn't been realized yet because it's the freight spur that crosses Needham St., snakes around the back of New England Business Center, crosses the Charles, and ends at 3rd Ave. that ends up being the more useful link. They haven't yet built a trail down there. That one would connect at Kendrick St. to the Cutler Park trail system, and probably would get lots more utilization. The 'mainline' trail is pretty much going to be along the freight spur, with the twin ends of the current trail becoming glorified 'entrances'.
Yeah, they tried 34-to-Dedham-Square in Spring 2022 and cut it right back in Summer 2022. It lengthened 34 headways by a good amount so clearly the ridership wasn't worth it in Dedham.
I always thought that was an operational issue. To turn the buses around, they need to go down Washington St all the way to Elm St, then come back via Boston Providence Hwy (at least that was the case when I took it). Too much dead mileage.