Crazy Transit Pitches

This is the map I've been looking at. Individual census blocks, within 10km of Park Street, colored by Housing Unit density. You can click on each block for more details.
 
I made it by importing census block data into PostgreSQL, using PostGIS to select all geographies within 10km of Park St, and outputting a table with some computed densities. The map canvas is courtesy of Google "Fusion" (a.k.a. "beta" Tables) which lets you import spreadsheets with geography information for visualization.
 
Been updating my vision for Boston's rapid transit rail network: click the image to see the latest.



The biggest change is the addition of a northern loop to my circle line to provide a crosstown route connecting East Boston, Chelsea, Everett, Medford, Somerville and Cambridge.
 
Blue Line heavy rail along that route to Needham is a way better proposal than extending the D that way or the Orange Line from the east. It would give the speed of the Orange Line but serve a corridor with many more destinations of interest to Needhamites (you'd struggle to find many people moving between Needham and Roslindale as opposed to Newton).
 
czsz said:
Blue Line heavy rail along that route to Needham is a way better proposal than extending the D that way or the Orange Line from the east. It would give the speed of the Orange Line but serve a corridor with many more destinations of interest to Needhamites (you'd struggle to find many people moving between Needham and Roslindale as opposed to Newton).
Click to expand...

No, I disagree. Needham-Newton Traffic can be served just fine by a light rail service, you won't struggle at all to fill an Orange Line train with Needhamites moving to Back Bay or Ruggles, and if you've already dug up half of Storrow to get the Blue that far, there's no reason not to send it to Oak Square instead (with the eventual goal of restoring transit to Watertown).

Blue-eats-D is a terrible idea.

My only other complaint with that map is that the Mass Ave. Subway / Line 10 splits off of the Red Line at Andrew instead of JFK/UMass, but that's comparatively minor.
 
Commuting Boston Student said:
No, I disagree. Needham-Newton Traffic can be served just fine by a light rail service, you won't struggle at all to fill an Orange Line train with Needhamites moving to Back Bay or Ruggles, and if you've already dug up half of Storrow to get the Blue that far, there's no reason not to send it to Oak Square instead (with the eventual goal of restoring transit to Watertown).

Blue-eats-D is a terrible idea.
Click to expand...

The Needham Line corridor cuts across a rather large swath of protected and uninhabitable land that makes it much less appealing for upgrading to rapid transit, especially considering the D branch would traverse a denser area with a lot of potential around 128. The 1945 MTA plan even had a heavy rail Riverside Line branching to Needham and the Orange Line continuing past West Roxbury to Dedham. Obviously the West Roxbury-Dedham corridor has been compromised, but the extension to West Roxbury would still be wildly successful.

The Blue-D combination just seems so natural. I'd guess that the two lines, meaning D from Riverside to Government Center and the entire Blue, see similar passenger numbers, which would make it a very used line across its whole route. The D may actually have the leg up now, but the Blue Line has massive potential for substantial increases with an extension to Lynn.

Commuting Boston Student said:
My only other complaint with that map is that the Mass Ave. Subway / Line 10 splits off of the Red Line at Andrew instead of JFK/UMass, but that's comparatively minor.
Click to expand...

The point there would be to maximize the number of single transfers from the three lines that converge. Otherwise, everyone would have to make a double transfer to get from Line 10 to Line 12 (changing first at JFK/UMass and then at Andrew, or vice-versa)
 
omaja said:
The Needham Line corridor cuts across a rather large swath of protected and uninhabitable land that makes it much less appealing for upgrading to rapid transit, especially considering the D branch would traverse a denser area with a lot of potential around 128. The 1945 MTA plan even had a heavy rail Riverside Line branching to Needham and the Orange Line continuing past West Roxbury to Dedham. Obviously the West Roxbury-Dedham corridor has been compromised, but the extension to West Roxbury would still be wildly successful.
Click to expand...

The Needham Line corridor is also complete and intact, and we can rip it out for Rapid Transit without losing anything of value. Converting its stations is also easy, and, in fact, because of all that protected uninhabitable land, you can speed Orange Line trains between Needham, Hersey and West Roxbury with very little slow down. Stop the Orange Line at Needham Junction and let a branch of the green line handle travel between the Needham Stations.

omaja said:
The Blue-D combination just seems so natural. I'd guess that the two lines, meaning D from Riverside to Government Center and the entire Blue, see similar passenger numbers, which would make it a very used line across its whole route. The D may actually have the leg up now, but the Blue Line has massive potential for substantial increases with an extension to Lynn.
Click to expand...

So convert the Green Line into Heavy Rail, full stop. If you're sending Blue that way, all of that prep work - right down to rolling stock appropriation - can easily be shifted to a Green Line Heavy Rail project instead. Make the B a branch of your Line 6, and you've got the right idea with C Branch -> South Station -> Silver Line Bus Tunnel already. Presto, you've got three light rails that still offer the glorious single-seat ride to downtown AND you've got a heavy rail Central Subway AND you can send the Blue Line somewhere it will be far more useful, like Oak Square, Newton Corner, and Watertown.

I'm not seeing how Blue-eats-D is natural at all.

omaja said:
The point there would be to maximize the number of single transfers from the three lines that converge. Otherwise, everyone would have to make a double transfer to get from Line 10 to Line 12 (changing first at JFK/UMass and then at Andrew, or vice-versa)
Click to expand...

Just have them change at a station built at Melnea Cass / Mass. Ave. Connector. There has to be a station there anyway if you want a single transfer between 10 and 8.
 
omaja said:
The Blue-D combination just seems so natural. I'd guess that the two lines, meaning D from Riverside to Government Center and the entire Blue, see similar passenger numbers, which would make it a very used line across its whole route. The D may actually have the leg up now, but the Blue Line has massive potential for substantial increases with an extension to Lynn.
Click to expand...

As a former resident of Newton who grew up minutes from the D and used it often, it would be awful for Newton (and worse for Needham) to convert that line to HRT. Newton folks tend to use the Green Line to get between parts of Newton more than to get to Boston - I know of very few people who regularly went beyond Chestnut Hill - and for that purpose LRT as it's currently built works fine. This is even more important when talking about the extension to Needham, since that line isn't grade separated and would be pretty well embedded in village centers. Even where HRT exists at grade (I'm thinking about Chicago here), it tends to be ugly and uninviting, with heavy fencing of the ROW due to the third-rail safety issue. LRT is much less intimidating.

People in Needham won't be using this service to get to Boston since they'll have either truncated CR or Orange Line for that, making fewer stops at higher speeds. Similarly, folks from Riverside and points west won't (and don't) go all the way into Boston that way much, since under a full build-out there would be DMU or HRT along the Pike.

As I've said before, the D and Needham lines are primarily intra-suburban lines with redundant faster spokes to Downtown. That's about as clear-cut a context for LRT as you can get.
 
Equilibria said:
As a former resident of Newton who grew up minutes from the D and used it often, it would be awful for Newton (and worse for Needham) to convert that line to HRT. Newton folks tend to use the Green Line to get between parts of Newton more than to get to Boston - I know of very few people who regularly went beyond Chestnut Hill - and for that purpose LRT as it's currently built works fine. This is even more important when talking about the extension to Needham, since that line isn't grade separated and would be pretty well embedded in village centers. Even where HRT exists at grade (I'm thinking about Chicago here), it tends to be ugly and uninviting, with heavy fencing of the ROW due to the third-rail safety issue. LRT is much less intimidating.

People in Needham won't be using this service to get to Boston since they'll have either truncated CR or Orange Line for that, making fewer stops at higher speeds. Similarly, folks from Riverside and points west won't (and don't) go all the way into Boston that way much, since under a full build-out there would be DMU or HRT along the Pike.

As I've said before, the D and Needham lines are primarily intra-suburban lines with redundant faster spokes to Downtown. That's about as clear-cut a context for LRT as you can get.
Click to expand...

What about keeping the D as light rail, four-tracking from Kenmore to Park Street what isn't four-tracked already, cutting the D back to Park Street, and converting one of the other Green Line branches to Heavy Rail? You'd get two HRT tracks and two LRT tracks from Kenmore to Park, and cross-platform transfers from heavy rail to light rail. It'd be a bit of an engineering challenge and probably require an elevated ROW, but hey, this is Crazy Pitches.

Would the B branch be better served as Heavy Rail?
 
Commuting Boston Student said:
What about keeping the D as light rail, four-tracking from Kenmore to Park Street what isn't four-tracked already, cutting the D back to Park Street, and converting one of the other Green Line branches to Heavy Rail? You'd get two HRT tracks and two LRT tracks from Kenmore to Park, and cross-platform transfers from heavy rail to light rail. It'd be a bit of an engineering challenge and probably require an elevated ROW, but hey, this is Crazy Pitches.

Would the B branch be better served as Heavy Rail?
Click to expand...

To the first point - I am no more of an expert in light rail subway design than you are, so I'd have to defer that question to F-Line, who will show up here at some point. However, in a world where Newton and Needham each have their own higher-speed connection to Boston, I see no real need for the D Branch beyond Park Street. In fact, I don't see much of a need for it beyond Kenmore. As to your second point, again, I know less about that neighborhood than the many other people who have endlessly debated B-Line HRT on this site before, so I'll defer to them, but yes, that route must have higher density and greater transit demand.

In general, I think it wouldn't be a bad idea to plan a future MBTA as a set of line pairs that meet at a particular outer station - one taking intra-suburban traffic, the other designed for hub-and-spoke. Just off the top of my head, you could have:

Riverside (EMU/Green D)
Needham Junction (Orange/Green D)
Ashmont (Red/Green F)
Porter (Red/Green ?)
Waltham (HRT through Belmont/Green A from Watertown)
Hartwell Ave (Red down 2 Median/Green on Minuteman ROW)
Wonderland (Blue/Green from Chelsea/Everett)

I realize that some of these might require some folks to drive a short distance to the train, but it allows for functional quieter service between surburban town centers while still allowing communities faster access to Downtown within their borders.

Just a thought. Not well developed.
 
Commuting Boston Student said:
What about keeping the D as light rail, four-tracking from Kenmore to Park Street what isn't four-tracked already, cutting the D back to Park Street, and converting one of the other Green Line branches to Heavy Rail? You'd get two HRT tracks and two LRT tracks from Kenmore to Park, and cross-platform transfers from heavy rail to light rail. It'd be a bit of an engineering challenge and probably require an elevated ROW, but hey, this is Crazy Pitches.

Would the B branch be better served as Heavy Rail?
Click to expand...

A "bit" of an engineering challenge? Try a humongous engineering challenge. That's Back Bay landfill. All the buildings are sitting on wood stilts. You've got hundreds of pumps balancing the water table. There is no freaking way the Central Subway is getting touched between Mass Ave. and Boylston. They could build it in the first place because the landfill was new and there were tons of open lots on Boylston. The filled-in density wouldn't work. At least not on old, unreinforced infrastructure like that. Under Boylston is a lot different than, say, the Pru complex where the landfill was compressed flat to support the weight of the ex-train yards that moved in the second the filling was finished. I mean, the Copley elevator project started causing the church outside to develop masonry cracks. That's how fragile the underground dependencies are under those streets.

If you're going to add extra track capacity to Kenmore...the Riverbank Subway is it. Or Huntington Ave. BERy had both of those proposals going for a reason. The diggable places in town are under the B and E reservations, under the NEC, in the cleared Big Dig fill (under, around, etc.) and on the Pike frontage roads. For the same reason BRT under Chinatown was a batshit insane idea, quadding the Central Subway ain't gonna work without costing billions in overruns and royally, royally screwing up the surface for years on end. For something a parallel route offset several blocks would get them sooner, at half the cost, with a fraction of the frayed nerves.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
A "bit" of an engineering challenge? Try a humongous engineering challenge. That's Back Bay landfill. All the buildings are sitting on wood stilts. You've got hundreds of pumps balancing the water table. There is no freaking way the Central Subway is getting touched between Mass Ave. and Boylston. They could build it in the first place because the landfill was new and there were tons of open lots on Boylston. The filled-in density wouldn't work. At least not on old, unreinforced infrastructure like that. Under Boylston is a lot different than, say, the Pru complex where the landfill was compressed flat to support the weight of the ex-train yards that moved in the second the filling was finished. I mean, the Copley elevator project started causing the church outside to develop masonry cracks. That's how fragile the underground dependencies are under those streets.

If you're going to add extra track capacity to Kenmore...the Riverbank Subway is it. Or Huntington Ave. BERy had both of those proposals going for a reason. The diggable places in town are under the B and E reservations, under the NEC, in the cleared Big Dig fill (under, around, etc.) and on the Pike frontage roads. For the same reason BRT under Chinatown was a batshit insane idea, quadding the Central Subway ain't gonna work without costing billions in overruns and royally, royally screwing up the surface for years on end. For something a parallel route offset several blocks would get them sooner, at half the cost, with a fraction of the frayed nerves.
Click to expand...

So if I'm following you, everything west of Boylston is a lost cause. However, Boylston to Park Street is already four-tracked, so we could do something like reroute the E branch from Huntington Avenue, under the Pike and then up Tremont Street to Park Street, cut it there, reroute the C and D branches under the Pike from Kenmore and have them join the E at Prudential, and then elevate or bury the B, grab half of Park Street's tracks for heavy rail usage and convert the Central Subway that way, without giving up any of the light rail lines?
 
Here's the most practical way of going, in my opinion - I think this will raise some ire, but I model this after real multimodality like you can see in Toronto.

GLX, Central Subway and D Line - complete heavy rail conversion

B and C become street-running light rail OVER the central subway, primarily through the Back Bay in one-way pairs along Newbury and Boylston using one current parking lane of each street. Kenmore's overbuilt bus shelter can now be used for these light rail lines, which, downtown, loop around the Commons to connect at Park Street.

E tunnel from Prudential gets continued cut-and-cover along Stuart Street, rises to a surface median where Stuart/Kneeland widens, and continues up Atlantic into the SL tunnel to South Station and out to the Seaport. The disused Tremont Street Tunnel can be repurposed - its northernmost section as a pedestrian concourse between the Boylston Street heavy rail station and a light rail Stuart/Charles street station; the section south of Stuart Street as an F line light rail branch from the E mainline to Dudley.

Whatcha think? Ready to bring back the streetcars?
 
Shepard said:
Here's the most practical way of going, in my opinion - I think this will raise some ire, but I model this after real multimodality like you can see in Toronto.

GLX, Central Subway and D Line - complete heavy rail conversion

B and C become street-running light rail OVER the central subway, primarily through the Back Bay in one-way pairs along Newbury and Boylston using one current parking lane of each street. Kenmore's overbuilt bus shelter can now be used for these light rail lines, which, downtown, loop around the Commons to connect at Park Street.

E tunnel from Prudential gets continued cut-and-cover along Stuart Street, rises to a surface median where Stuart/Kneeland widens, and continues up Atlantic into the SL tunnel to South Station and out to the Seaport. The disused Tremont Street Tunnel can be repurposed - its northernmost section as a pedestrian concourse between the Boylston Street heavy rail station and a light rail Stuart/Charles street station; the section south of Stuart Street as an F line light rail branch from the E mainline to Dudley.

Whatcha think? Ready to bring back the streetcars?
Click to expand...

Personally, I'd much rather bring back the El, but I am too young to remember the old Els, so perhaps my judgment is flawed. Alas...

As it stands, I don't know if I'm ready to get on board with more surface-running.
 
Equilibria said:
As a former resident of Newton who grew up minutes from the D and used it often, it would be awful for Newton (and worse for Needham) to convert that line to HRT. Newton folks tend to use the Green Line to get between parts of Newton more than to get to Boston - I know of very few people who regularly went beyond Chestnut Hill - and for that purpose LRT as it's currently built works fine.
Click to expand...

As somebody who has lived in Newton, within a mile of the D, for the past 21 years, I disagree. I found this used to be the case in the old price structuring, but that all changed in 2007. When it became the same price no matter where you were leaving from/going to, and the free rides going outbound ended, people adapted. Now, I find the majority of trips people I know take are going to Resevoir or beyond, while 5+ years ago it was within Newton.
 
Shepard said:
Here's the most practical way of going, in my opinion - I think this will raise some ire, but I model this after real multimodality like you can see in Toronto.

GLX, Central Subway and D Line - complete heavy rail conversion
Click to expand...

Yes. Agreed.

Shepard said:
B and C become street-running light rail OVER the central subway, primarily through the Back Bay in one-way pairs along Newbury and Boylston using one current parking lane of each street. Kenmore's overbuilt bus shelter can now be used for these light rail lines, which, downtown, loop around the Commons to connect at Park Street.
Click to expand...

I dislike. Maybe I'm not open-minded enough about this, but the concept of surface street cars running through the Back Bay does not sit well with me. Between the traffic and dense development, I'm inclined to say that there shouldn't be any surface lines east of Mass Ave. I'd rather see elevated, if anything. I'd actually rather see B and C terminate inbound at Kenmore with a transfer to the heavy rail Central Subway line. This, in my opinion, would serve everybody better, transit users or not. I also think it would be cheaper, but hey this is Crazy Transit Pitches so why does that matter.

Shepard said:
E tunnel from Prudential gets continued cut-and-cover along Stuart Street, rises to a surface median where Stuart/Kneeland widens, and continues up Atlantic into the SL tunnel to South Station and out to the Seaport. The disused Tremont Street Tunnel can be repurposed - its northernmost section as a pedestrian concourse between the Boylston Street heavy rail station and a light rail Stuart/Charles street station; the section south of Stuart Street as an F line light rail branch from the E mainline to Dudley.
Click to expand...

I like. I really do.
 
While we're at it, can we do something to speed the B?

EDIT: Can someone explain why it is scheduled to take 7-8 minutes from Boston University East to Kenmore? That is a distance of 0.5 miles and the B has it's own approach to Kenmore, with one stop in between at Blandford Street. This is 4 miles an hour. Could a 500 foot cut and cover through Silber Way and turning Granby Street into a right turn only lane save riders 6 minutes?
 
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bigeman312 said:
As somebody who has lived in Newton, within a mile of the D, for the past 21 years, I disagree. I found this used to be the case in the old price structuring, but that all changed in 2007. When it became the same price no matter where you were leaving from/going to, and the free rides going outbound ended, people adapted. Now, I find the majority of trips people I know take are going to Resevoir or beyond, while 5+ years ago it was within Newton.
Click to expand...

I agree that the fare structure has changed things, but again, this is a crazy transit pitch. One would hope that graduated, itinerary-based pricing would have come to Boston by then, so trips in Newton would cost less than a buck each way (adjusted for inflation, of course) and could be paid with a smartphone, or something.

I happen to think that the old way of doing things was ideal (and far longer-lived), so I'm basing my vision on that.

As to the street-running issue: A major problem, in my experience, with newer LRT systems is that they insist on running at-grade in Downtown, which slows traffic and trains while discouraging through-trips. Portland is a huge offender in this way. Boston is lucky to have tunnels for its light rail (along with SF), and I don't think backsliding is the right idea here. I don't remember anyone ever holding Toronto up as a paragon of transit before.
 
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