I don't think it's possible to make that curve. Not only do the platforms at Assembly go further north, ending around Foley St, but there is also the Earhart Dam to contend with, plus the need to get 30-ish feet of height clearance over the river necessitates some pretty steep gradients. That part is probably doable but it's certainly not making it any easier. All three of those factors combined make me think it's not possible for an Everett Diversion to also serve Assembly and avoid demolishing part of the Gateway Center.
The dashed line is meant to indicate that the alignment is not precise. The gradient aspect is one I hadn't thought about, though, as you say, it's probably doable. I don't see why Gateway Center would need to be partially demolished though.
In terms of benefits, I think it's hard to justify. You wouldn't be catching that many people in the walkshed of a potential Sweetser Circle station, so you'd be relying on bus transfers. Which then begs the question, what does this project do that the Alford St busway doesn't do? I'd argue that it's not much.
This seems like a case where you either build a subway line through Everett or you don't, there's no half-assing it.
(Well, one thing to note is that the Wellington alternative, yes, does get a limited walkshed in Everett. However, the other alt I present would enable a station at, for example, Tileston St, which is more centrally located.)
In the past, I've felt similarly, that it doesn't give you much more than an Alford St busway does. It is worth noting, though, that getting to Assembly Square from Everett requires a 2SR today, which is a little silly given how close it is as the crow flies, and is due to the barrier formed by the river(s). And, I dunno. Like I said, I've started paying a lot more attention to the role of rivers, and maybe even entertaining the idea that
any water crossing in an urban area should have a transit crossing.
(Which, in some ways, is already true: by my count, all but three of the crossings of the Charles River out to Waltham Central Square have some sort of transit service trasversing them, most of them bus. The shorter Malden and Neponset Rivers see transit over all crossings. The Mystic, by contrast, has something like six crossings without transit. Of course, for this proposal I am implying a higher standard of
rail service at every crossing; but given the size of Everett and Boston, and the paucity of any Mystic or Malden Rivers crossings overall, the higher standard seems worth considering.)
I was also influenced by this:
These are prospective "nodes" for Everett and Malden rapid transit services. The lighter colored circles are potential locations of stations if a route gets built along that corridor, but they themselves are not necessarily the "target" nodes for an alignment. What's notable to me is that both "Parkway" and "Square" can be served with an "Everett Diversion" style approach (at least in terms of raw deviation distance):
Which brings us to a bigger question: more than where should an Orange Line extension to Everett
go, the big question is where should the
stations be?
This isn't a trivial question. From "Parkway" to "Glendale" is just over 1 mile. At Red Line stop spacing, that would point to stations just at "Parkway" or "Square" and then at "Glendale", running express through most of the denser half of the city. And is "Glendale" itself a strong enough draw for a station/node for that?
And on the other hand, Orange Line Southwest Corridor stop spacing is about 0.5 miles, which is where we'd see separate "Parkway" and "Square" stations along with an infill somewhere along Broadway. This calls to mind the distinction we were drawing in the GLR thread between the "Lechmere Model" (emphasizing transfer nodes) and the "Medford Model" (de-emphasizing transfer nodes and instead just focusing on serving the community directly).
Big picture, the question I'm trying to get at is whether there needs to be an "Everett Line" (or "Branch") or if an "Everett Diversion" would be sufficient. And the Diversion approach doesn't need to be thrifty! For example, a modest subway through downtown:
Or, like above, a more curve-intensive option that maintains service to all current stations (potentially with a relocated Wellington platform):
The ultimate question here is whether an Everett rapid transit service needs to have stations northeast of Everett Square. And maybe it does! I'm not trying to argue against that. But I do think that's what all this hinges on. If further stations past Everett Square are needed, then:
- It probably can't be served by the Orange Line, due to the need to maintain service to Malden (the exception being if Orange Line core capacity can aggressively increase, which seems unlikely). If it's not the Orange Line, then:
- The options to build a 1SR to downtown get complicated quickly, potentially including:
- A Green Line extension from the Green Line Maintenance Facility or East Somerville
- A new service, cutting some sort of greenfield route across Charlestown (or maybe swinging over from Chelsea)
- If none of those options work, then:
- An Everett service could run to Kendall and potentially onward to Longwood
- (Hitting both of these employment centers might mitigate the lack of 1SR to downtown)
Soooooo am I suggesting that it's a forced choice between "Everett <> Downtown 1SR" vs "rapid transit stations in northeastern Everett"? Not necessarily; anything is possible. But when you look at the system overall, the paths of least resistance seem to point to those objectives being hard to achieve in tandem.
The best compromise I can see, as mentioned above, would be a Green Line branch into an Everett subway:
But... (insert comments here about frequencies, vehicle capacities, throughput capabilities, relative construction costs, and the fact that either way you're building about ~1.25 miles of subway so which one is gonna give you the most bang for buck, etc etc)
