Crazy Transit Pitches

Vagabond said:
Keep your plan of Red from Davis up Mass Ave and skip Alewife.

I despise Alewife - it's just a terrible clusterfuck, the building is falling down, and its primary purpose is to support further out suburbs and bus connections.

You can't get rid of it without 2 features.
1 - adding a larger station somewhere farther out easily accessible from route 2. Probably on the Lex/Arl line at Rt 2
2- maintaining some level of T service to the growing Alewife business district, but scaled to the neighborhood (I.e. not heavy rail). This is accomplished by extending the GLXUnion past Porter to Fresh Pond (or beyond)


EDIT: Before the "95 or bust" crowd chimes in... it's a very steep dropoff of population density outside of Arlington. Your added "riders per mile" gets pretty ugly if you add in Lexington.
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Ooooh where did you generate that map from?

But yeah I was gonna say: the true "crazy transit pitch" would be to reroute the Red Line away from Alewife -- going up Mass Ave is as good an option as any -- and then find something else to serve Alewife. An extension of the Green Line from Porter could do it. And to your point about density drop-off in Lexington: a RLX via Mass Ave could terminate at Arlington Center, and leave the Minuteman uninterrupted from Porter all the way to Lexington and beyond to enable a less-expensive LRT service.
 
The 128 or bust is because Arlington (and presumably Lexington) doesn't want people from the burbs parking at the terminus.
 
-anarresti- said:
I've been interested for a while in how to bring LRT to the Seaport and to Southie, so to that end, I submit my first crazy transit pitch: A loop line through South Station.

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The key contingency in all of this is the sale and redevelopment of the USPS Fort Point facility. Removing it from the picture makes a few interesting things possible.

After leaving Broadway, trolleys would serve the big new development, following a pedestrianized Dorchester Ave and then turning off into a portal where it would connect to the existing Silver Line tunnel by blowing through the bus loop there. Trolleys would serve the existing transitway stations until Silver Line Way, then follow Summer St into Southie and back up along Broadway.

I imagine that this line would be an especially good, nearly 1-1 replacement for the frequently overcrowded 7 bus, bringing a large boost in frequency, capacity, and rider-comfort, and would follow a better alignment by hitting the denser parts of the Waterfront. The weekend boost to ridership between Downtown, the Seaport, and Southie would presumably be quite large. Benefits over the 9 bus are a bit less certain, since crosstown commuters would need to transfer at Broadway in order to continue on toward Back Bay, though at AM peak Broadway is by-far the most common stop for alightings for riders coming from Southie, so this would benefit that set of riders quite a bit while hurting crosstown connectivity.

What would be the fate of SL1/3? Well I imagine that buses would start to turn around at Silver Line Way, not entering the transitway, killing the one seat ride from South Station to the Airport and to Chelsea. However, imagining that Red-Blue comes to fruition beforehand and with SL6/7 better-connecting Chelsea on the other side, perhaps it can be stomached. With a faster trip on LRT to Silver Line Way, a free transfer, ditching the mode-switch, and perhaps allowing the Silver Line to take the State Police ramp into the Ted Williams tunnel, trips from South Station to the Airport and to Chelsea may even become more appealing, in spite of the transfer.

As others have mentioned before, space for a yard is pretty tight down here, so some property-takings are inevitable. The only spot that I could identify is at the Massport site at 85 Fargo St, which you can see I just sort of crayoned-in. It's on the other side of Summer St though, so I'm not sure how that intersection would need to be reconfigured to make this feasible (perhaps via a trench, but is there even enough room for the inclines on both ends to work, and will the water table simply make it a nightmare?)

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Also, does anyone know whether extending the Silver Line tunnel to Dorchester Ave would block NSRL tunnels? If so, my plan should of obviously be regarded as dead on arrival. :D

So, is a short loop line with only a single in-station transfer to just one other rapid transit service a recipe for low-ridership? Sydney Monorail 2.0? Clearly it does have a few major drawbacks. I can't compare it to any of the plans that call for a reconfigured Green Line to feed a Huntington Ave subway into South Station and to the Seaport, mostly because I don't have the expertise. It would be significantly cheaper, though, and in my mind readily achievable as a medium-term project. But is it the best project for the long-term? I highly doubt it, and there are other projects elsewhere that are more important. Enjoyable thought experiment though.
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Teban54 said:
First of all, that's a pretty creative proposal! I've seen a few pitches of light rail lines connecting Seaport to South Boston and beyond, but can't recall anyone suggesting an extension from the South Station end to Broadway.

That said, unfortunately it may face some issues getting out of South Station. @F-Line to Dudley has mentioned a few times that an extension of the Transitway south of South Station is likely infeasible due to vertical space constraints, as the current South Station SL level and the bus turnback loop to the south are just above an I-93 ramp.

A few quick searches gave me the following posts: this, this and this.

I'm not sure if a trajectory to the southeast is feasible by avoiding the conflict with I-93, especially if you plan on abandoning the bus loop and making the tunnel LRT only.



I'll say that's a no, for two reasons:
  • The 7 bus has substantial boarding east of L St, which your proposed route does not capture.
  • The 7 also has many passengers alighting in the Financial District and Downtown Crossing, which are also not served by your route.
These are best illustrated in the bus route profile as shown below. Keep in mind this was pre-Covid, when the 7 ran frequent short-turn trips at South Station, resulting in more than half the AM peak inbound trips not serving downtown. This is no longer true today.
View attachment 39267
I took a look at the more recent data from Fall 2022. On weekday inbound trips in a single day, on average:
  • 295 riders board between City Point Terminal and P St. The O St and P St stops, where most of these boardings occur, require a 10-min walk from your route.
  • 200 riders board at N St (5-min walk from your route).
  • 559 riders board at the L St stops, which are on your route.
So about 47% of riders board at stops that will be removed in your proposal, with half of them requiring a non-trivial walk.

And then there's additional walking at the other end of the route. Comparing South Station alightings and downtown alightings:
  • 591 riders alight at South Station.
  • 673 riders alight at the two downtown stops (Franklin @ Devonshire, Otis @ Summer). The former accounts for roughly 2/3 of these alightings (457 riders). Franklin @ Devonshire is a 6-min walk from South Station, but some offices may be further north.
Once again, more than half of the existing riders will be inconvenienced by the proposal at the downtown end alone.

An argument can be made that it's manageable and worth the tradeoff for better service, but that's still a very significant amount of riders - probably three quarters of people who take the 7 today will need to walk more to take your proposed line.



Handling SL1/3 in a world with the Transitway being turned into LRT has been discussed somewhat frequently here. Among current ideas, the two most notable ones (that do not involve mixing LRT with BRT in the Transitway) are:
  • Send both bus routes to Summer St, where there's some effort at BRT infrastructure being planned, and terminate at street level at South Station (or the new bus terminal under construction, which will be much closer to the station - correct me if I'm wrong)
  • Make the SL1 express from South Station to Logan Airport, skipping Seaport; SL3 goes to Summer St
    • Rationale: Relatively few riders utilize the Logan-Seaport connection, as most SL1 riders are travelling either Logan-SS or Seaport-SS
    • SL3 mayyy be able to terminate within Seaport in a post-Red-Blue world
I do think South Station is a non-negotiable for both routes at least before Red-Blue. (Most of) SL1's riders from Logan are going to South Station to connect to the subway, especially the Red Line, and commuter rail. SL3's riders - from both Chelsea and Blue Line transfers - additionally see South Station as a way to get to the Financial District, with a one-seat ride from Chelsea. A forced transfer at Silver Line Way or WTC just doesn't make the cut, especially for SL1.

SL3 does need to keep serving Seaport, as it has significant Chelsea-Seaport and Airport Station (BL)-Seaport markets.

@Riverside has done some excellent analyses on ridership patterns on SL1 and SL3. He may be able to add more to the discussion.



IIRC, the NSRL tunnels will be way below the Silver Line platform level at South Station, so that itself is not a concern.
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Very fun concept! I don't have much to add beyond what @Teban54 and others have said. One benefit of your analysis, though, is that it points out a potential option to put a small LRT yard to run a standalone South Station - Seaport LRT service before building a connection to the rest of the Green Line. Assuming SL2 also gets converted to LRT (in part or in whole), you could simply use street-running tracks to connect the yard via a short stretch on Haul Road. If it's only crossing Summer Street for non-revenue moves, that probably wouldn't be super disruptive. You could also move the yard entrance to the Summer St & Drydock Ave intersection and instead connect to an LRT SL2 loop on Drydock Ave.

Is there a hugely pressing need for a standalone South Station - Seaport LRT line? That I'm less sure of.
 
Riverside said:
RLX via Mass Ave could terminate at Arlington Center, and leave the Minuteman uninterrupted from Porter all the way to Lexington and beyond to enable a less-expensive LRT service.
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So that's where I get stuck. Heavy rail makes sense to have a suburban access terminus, so Rt 2 or 128 makes sense. But the density of Arlington really is only appropriate for light rail.

So if we look at the potential extension questions:
1. Does GLXPorter make sense? Yes - for connectivity, but it is an already-served area, so will score poorly.
2. Does GLXFreshPond make sense? Yes - Fresh Pond/Triangle is growing like crazy and is a great TOD location that is currently completely dominated by auto-centric design.
3. Does a GLX FreshPond make Alewife expendable? Maybe... I don't know ridership statistics, but my gut is a shift the already overloaded Red to a Green shift would overwhelm on day 1. Red is still needed somewhere to handle suburban traffic. I proposed a big garage terminus here https://goo.gl/maps/JCbsm6PCyR4ibTbj8 in the past, and don't really care if you go through Arlington or straight up Rt 2 to get there.
4. Assuming GLXFreshPond, where next? Go up Minuteman, West to Belmont/Waltham, or South to Watertown? Could it even handle another split?
 
jklo said:
The 128 or bust is because Arlington (and presumably Lexington) doesn't want people from the burbs parking at the terminus.
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So don't build parking at the stations. There's no way a modern study of RLX is going to photocopy the 1970's plans for multi-hundred space parking garages at AC and AH. They're "Square" stations with bus connections. Why should they be any different from all the "Square" stations inbound?

False choice to be inventing "128 or bust" ultimatums based on that. It's not 1975 anymore.
 
Forest Hills gets plenty of ridership without a huge park and ride or remotely nearby highway access. The feeder buses burst the ridership well above the walking catchment, that model should work in lots of non Rt128 terminus stations.
 
Vagabond said:
So that's where I get stuck. Heavy rail makes sense to have a suburban access terminus, so Rt 2 or 128 makes sense. But the density of Arlington really is only appropriate for light rail.
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How so? Keep in mind, Alewife will be emptied of all of its buses except the 79 (and possibly some future-extended 77A). The 67 and 350 will move to Arlington Center. The 62, 76, 84, and 351 will move to Arlington Heights. The 77/79, 80, and 87 gain outer rapid transit transfers. And the Lexington Express bus system gains a rapid transit terminal and/or entry for its busiest routes to join the MBTA system.

Pooling local transfer opportunities is how the HRT system in Greater Boston has always been organized, and that continuity continues at least as far out as Arlington Heights the way the bus transfers align. We forget because we've been stuck with it for so long, but Alewife is a really shitty bus terminal. Especially for all those distended routes down the Route 2 frontage roads that always get stuck in traffic. A straight-on extension restores balance and opens new opportunity to the suffering northwest corner of the system, and that's the very reason why the original 1945 trolley shuttle plan was so short-lived in planning docs in favor of the full-on Red extension. There's a lot of linked trips to be tapped out there.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
jklo said:
The 128 or bust is because Arlington (and presumably Lexington) doesn't want people from the burbs parking at the terminus.

So don't build parking at the stations.
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Yes, this, one thousand times this. And I agree with @HenryAlan -- Forest Hills is a closer analogue than, for example, the Quincy stations.
Vagabond said:
So that's where I get stuck. Heavy rail makes sense to have a suburban access terminus, so Rt 2 or 128 makes sense. But the density of Arlington really is only appropriate for light rail.

So if we look at the potential extension questions:
1. Does GLXPorter make sense? Yes - for connectivity, but it is an already-served area, so will score poorly.
2. Does GLXFreshPond make sense? Yes - Fresh Pond/Triangle is growing like crazy and is a great TOD location that is currently completely dominated by auto-centric design.
3. Does a GLX FreshPond make Alewife expendable? Maybe... I don't know ridership statistics, but my gut is a shift the already overloaded Red to a Green shift would overwhelm on day 1. Red is still needed somewhere to handle suburban traffic. I proposed a big garage terminus here https://goo.gl/maps/JCbsm6PCyR4ibTbj8 in the past, and don't really care if you go through Arlington or straight up Rt 2 to get there.
4. Assuming GLXFreshPond, where next? Go up Minuteman, West to Belmont/Waltham, or South to Watertown? Could it even handle another split?
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Keep in mind that the Green Line will see major capacity increases when the Type 10 supertrains arrive.

To your question of whether it can handle another split -- I would actually argue that it needs to be able to handle another split, by which I mean there should be at least two branches running out to this area. Lechmere really is too close to the core for a split; branches should be for lower-frequency services, and the current GLX is well within "Rapid Transit Land", meaning the Union and Medford branches really should be semi-trunk lines, like the Boylston Street Subway between Kenmore and Copley.

I'd also point out that you can layer on additional services originating from Sullivan rather than downtown (in addition to services originating from the Brattle Loop); I don't love the idea of extending the Green Line to Watertown via Porter -- too roundabout -- but a Newton Corner - Porter - Sullivan service seems very intriguing.

But either way, I'm arguing that you should have two, if not three, LRT services coming out of Porter, in which case, yeah, you can do all of the above if you want. You can even probably do a little S-curve thing to maintain service to Alewife if you want; long ago, there was a railroad that ran directly west from Davis to Alewife to Belmont, and the ROW is now a bikepath.

Something like this; I've included your suggestion of a Route 2 branch as an alternate, but you get the idea:

1687470981283.png
 
jklo said:
People will park there anyway even if the MBTA doesn't build parking.
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C'mon...what kind of lazy pretzel logic is this??? Induced demand goes down when you stop doing things to induce the demand. How and where specifically did local parking spiral into 'crisis' when Porter and Davis Square stations opened thoroughly in the modern era at places that previously didn't have rapid transit?

You're citing this as the linchpin of a "128 or bust" build mentality. Stop hand-waving and present some actual evidence, please.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
How so? Keep in mind, Alewife will be emptied of all of its buses except the 79 (and possibly some future-extended 77A). The 67 and 350 will move to Arlington Center. The 62, 76, 84, and 351 will move to Arlington Heights. The 77/79, 80, and 87 gain outer rapid transit transfers. And the Lexington Express bus system gains a rapid transit terminal and/or entry for its busiest routes to join the MBTA system.

Pooling local transfer opportunities is how the HRT system in Greater Boston has always been organized, and that continuity continues at least as far out as Arlington Heights the way the bus transfers align. We forget because we've been stuck with it for so long, but Alewife is a really shitty bus terminal. Especially for all those distended routes down the Route 2 frontage roads that always get stuck in traffic. A straight-on extension restores balance and opens new opportunity to the suffering northwest corner of the system, and that's the very reason why the original 1945 trolley shuttle plan was so short-lived in planning docs in favor of the full-on Red extension. There's a lot of linked trips to be tapped out there.
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Minor correction: Bus routes 79 and 84 have been permanently suspended since Covid, and 351 no longer serves Alewife. They have been removed from the MBTA website (where there used to be alerts about their "temporary" suspension before), and the Bus Network Redesign doesn't have them.
 
jklo said:
Politically I don't see it happening without it.
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But you have no evidence whatsoever to support your assertion that there will be a parking apocalypse at each of the stops just like there wasn't when Porter, Davis, and the GLX sextet came to town sans station parking. Just 'vibes' that this time it's different.

Got it. Very productive discussion. :rolleyes:
 
Charlie_mta said:
I like your layout here. The one thing I question is the need for a GL branch to Arlington if the RL reroute/extension to Arlington is built as shown.
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I think the reason for @Riverside showing that branch was because @Vagabond initially suggested that Arlington is more suited for a light rail line instead of a heavy rail line, due to its lower density. So his proposal was to extend RL only to Arlington Center, and have a GL branch to Arlington Heights, Lexington, etc.

I myself disagree with that, though, for similar reasons as others have elaborated above.
 
Quincy Center didn't become a mess when they closed the garage there. Quincy Center bus routes had above-average ridership growth (compared to the rest of the bus system) in the period after garage closure.

Better service and more reasonable prices on the Commuter Rail will also decrease demand for P&R at the 128 stations -- especially on the Fitchburg line with easy access to Kendall.
 
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Riverside said:
Yes, this, one thousand times this. And I agree with @HenryAlan -- Forest Hills is a closer analogue than, for example, the Quincy stations.

Keep in mind that the Green Line will see major capacity increases when the Type 10 supertrains arrive.

To your question of whether it can handle another split -- I would actually argue that it needs to be able to handle another split, by which I mean there should be at least two branches running out to this area. Lechmere really is too close to the core for a split; branches should be for lower-frequency services, and the current GLX is well within "Rapid Transit Land", meaning the Union and Medford branches really should be semi-trunk lines, like the Boylston Street Subway between Kenmore and Copley.

I'd also point out that you can layer on additional services originating from Sullivan rather than downtown (in addition to services originating from the Brattle Loop); I don't love the idea of extending the Green Line to Watertown via Porter -- too roundabout -- but a Newton Corner - Porter - Sullivan service seems very intriguing.

But either way, I'm arguing that you should have two, if not three, LRT services coming out of Porter, in which case, yeah, you can do all of the above if you want. You can even probably do a little S-curve thing to maintain service to Alewife if you want; long ago, there was a railroad that ran directly west from Davis to Alewife to Belmont, and the ROW is now a bikepath.

Something like this; I've included your suggestion of a Route 2 branch as an alternate, but you get the idea:

View attachment 39467
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Keep Alwife and have the light rail extend out to the Arlington and Waltham, similar to the Mattapan line that starts at Ashmont. Eventually the light rail could be extended east to Porter / Union Sq. in the future.
 
Perfect time to site this study again. Even in fall 2019, the absolute peak of modern MBTA ridership, Alewife had more passengers accessing the station via bus than by parking at it.
1687647305683.png

Alewife also being the rapid transit station with the most available parking spaces at 2733 had hundreds of spaces left unoccupied. Braintree and Quincy Adams have terrible bus service and don't see the same numbers. This extends to Commuter Rail stations to.
1687647915093.png

If there isnt parking, people will use other modes, and even if there is parking, if theres an alternate way to comfortably and conventietnly reach the station, people will do that instead.
 
My vote is an extension all the way to Burlington Mall along the utility corridor (tunnel under the hill or do as an elevated structure nature will recover). HUGE employment center there and it'd be a place for kids to easily access to hangout via RLX.
1687648463606.png
 
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