Crazy Transit Pitches

[Shepard]

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.

If you think that a trolley moves faster underground between Hynes and Arlington than it would at grade on Boylston Street (with signal priority etc) then you haven't been on the Green Line enough!

 

[Matthew]

My favorite part is when you wait 20 minutes for a train and then it stops every 20 feet in the tunnel to wait for the signals to change to green, even though you know there's no possible way something is in front of it.

I think there are three places where the train stops just before Kenmore alone. And only one of those is to check the switch.

 

[omaja]

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.

I'm not sure I follow that more service with larger and more capable trains is a bad thing.

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.

I counted only five grade crossings along the Needham extension route; doesn't seem like it would be much trouble to plop a cut-and-cover tunnel or short viaduct over these roads. There's a simple solution for the third rail: overhead catenary. The Blue Line already uses catenary from Airport to Wonderland so the rolling stock is already capable of switching. Not to mention I can't see it being a huge issue to convert the third rail segment from Bowdoin-Airport back to catenary so the line is all one mode.

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.

I wouldn't be so quick to count out Needham-Downtown Boston commuters via a Green Line extension. And I can't see Needham ever having both the Orange Line and Green Line serving it. Further, I would think that if a Green Line branch were built, you'd actually see Commuter Rail traffic plummet from Needham as a result of more frequent, reliable service.

Theoretically, it might just be almost identical travel times from Needham to Downtown via either:

Blue-D Combination:
Needham Center-Kenmore: 13 stops, 30 minutes (20 mins from Newton Highlands + 10 mins for Needham extension)
Needham Center-Clarendon: 15 stops, 34 minutes (2 mins for each additional station)
Needham Center-Government Center: 19 stops, 42 minutes (2 mins for each additional station)

Orange Line Extension:
Needham Center-Forest Hills: 7 stops, 18 minutes (current CR blocked at 26 mins - this assumes upgrades to allow for faster travel... YMMV)
Needham Center-Back Bay: 14 stops, 30 minutes (current Orange Line blocked at 12 mins Forest Hills-Back Bay)
Needham Center-State Street: 18 stops, 39 minutes (current Orange Line blocked at 9 mins Back Bay-State Street)

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?

Wasn't the original purpose of the subways and els to get rid of streetcars Downtown.

I'm not seeing as much value in converting the Central Subway to heavy rail with prospects like branching service from Boylston towards the east and south, and consequenses like eliminating through subway service on two Green Line branches instead of augmenting what is already there.

It also seems like messing around with those tunnels is flirting with trouble; who knows what kind of craziness might be involved with converting them to heavy rail. I do like the idea of a relocated E Line via Stuart Street. Why not leave the Central Subway as-is for light rail service, with the Riverbank Subway (heavy rail) and Stuart Street Subway (light rail) to better distribute traffic?

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?

I feel like speeding up the B Line is a weekly discussion here: signal priority, stop eliminations, communications-based train control... pick any one and we'd see noticeable gains. Do all three (a crazy transit pitch in and of itself) and we'd have a completely different Green Line on our hands.

As for BU East-Kenmore, I think the pocket track switches and the stop signal at the bottom of the tunnel just before Kenmore are enough of a hindrance to warrant that schedule time. It typically doesn't take that long, though, considering most conductors blast through the pocket track area.

 

[Equilibria]

I'm not sure I follow that more service with larger and more capable trains is a bad thing.

Just because a vehicle is "larger and more capable" doesn't mean it makes sense in every context. If this were true, we'd all be driving Hummers.

I recognize the wonderful work and effort you put in to your proposals, and I love seeing them and analyzing them, but I think you fall into the same trap that everyone does (including me) when considering potential new transportation networks - you get sucked in by the big picture. I totally get that the D-Line looks like the perfect place for a HRT extension. It was built for full-size locomotive-pulled trains, so it has gentle curves and minimal at-grade intersections. It serves some fairly dense areas of Newton and Brookline. I see how it seems obvious.

But read what you're proposing. You claim that at 5 intersections in Needham you would either grade separate or use canternary wires. Those are 5 intersections which exist largely as central squares or lead-ins to village centers, and you're proposing underpasses there? That might keep traffic moving, but it would seriously harm aesthetics in the neighborhood and would create visual and functional barriers for folks in Needham to get to Highland Ave, which more or less functions as "Main St." for that part of town.

As an Urban Planner as well as a Transportation Engineer, I think that you have to consider on a micro scale every consequence of something like a transit line, not just how fast or capable the trains may be. Who knows how frequently someone living near Needham Heights needs to get to Boston, or even to Needham St. in Newton, but I bet it's way less often then they'd like to have a pleasant walk around the neighborhood without dingy underpasses or barbed-wire safety fences.

Speaking of Needham St, I would imagine that any future in which the Needham Line is converted is also a future in which serious redevelopment occurs on that corridor (as Newton already plans to encourage regardless), turning it into a semi-urban commercial center with TOD aspirations if possible. This really would limit the need of folks in Needham to take the line past a potential Upper Falls Station, since fairly dense retail and office uses would be available to them just 3 stops down the line. Getting there on a suburban trolley would be much less intimidating and more attractive, and would only take 10 minutes or so at 30 mph. Put a HRT line along the back of that development, and you build a wall between it and Upper Falls (a study proposed a rail trail parallel to a single LRT track with pedestrian crossings) instead of integrating the new uses for the benefit of the community.

It's tempting to simply take every abandoned ROW in the Boston area and throw a HRT line on it, but it's not necessarily the best solution in every case.

 

[Matthew]

Nicely said Equilibria. I would also add that this obsession with HRT is counterproductive. LRT is more than capable, and it is much more flexible and adaptable too. Just because Boston's Green Line is slow and malfunctioning doesn't imply that LRT has to be that way.

 

[omaja]

That's a bit of a straw man, Equilibria. We are talking about the same corridor, right? I don't see anything near these at-grade intersections (revised count of six - left out the May St one near Needham Center) that would preclude burying the tracks in a shallow, cut-and-cover tunnel a la the curve leading to Shawmut from Fields Corner on the Red Line - though obviously with the one addition of landscaping. I'm not envisioning anything remotely resembling a "dingy underpass" that would create any more of a barrier than already exists with the rail right of way.

All of what you are saying, otherwise, would point to increased usage that would ultimately be better served with heavy rail - we are tying to encourage development, right? And at the end of the day, it isn't only about what local traffic would be served; there is a network effect where the immediate Boston area benefits from increased transit access to Needham and vice-versa.

I guess I'm not sure why everyone is hung up on defining it as light rail versus heavy rail. My thought is that if you're going to have to do at least 75+ percent of the work to get the corridor up to light rail standards a la the current D Line, why not go the extra mile now and get the heavy rail infrastructure in place to support more growth further into the future? As we see with the Central Subway, the build-as-LRT-now-convert-later approach doesn't work out so well.

Edit: For what it's worth - my latest plan is split almost equally route length-wise between HRT and LRT - 5 or 6 lines HRT and 6 or 7 LRT.

 

[Equilibria]

I hadn't pictured a cut-and-cover like Shuwmut, Omaja, and if that's what you had in mind, it would probably resolve a lot of the aesthetic issues. The cost would be astronomical for the benefit, though. I don't think it's a strawman to put in to words what I immediately thought of when you said "underpass".

I can't imagine that ridership from Needham, even counting that to an expanded Needham St. corridor, would justify the expense of a cut-and-cover tunnel with HRT service (which I don't think is just 125% of a surface LRT line using modified existing tracks and stations and overhead wires), so when you say "more growth further into the future" you are implying that we should be planning for Needham to look like Brookline or Roxbury in the future.

You're making, IMO, 2 unrealistic assumptions. First, you're assuming that Needham will grow density that it isn't zoned for and that the residents don't want, and second, that the primary desired destination of people in Needham by transit will be Downtown Boston for commuting purposes. I'm assuming that Needham stays fundamentally as it is with new denser development in areas already zoned for it along Needham St./Highland Ave and a population working primarily along 128 and shopping/eating/hanging out in the new Needham St. corridor.

Again, I hate to focus you too much on what is a minor segment of a very impressive project, but this has bothered me in many people's Future MBTA proposals.

 

[davem]

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?

The B between Packards and Kenmore is a disaster because of three main factors
1) No traffic signal priority, and there is a crossing every single block.
2) BU screams bloody murder if it even has the slightest inkling there might be a thought of closing one of the stations through their campus. They had a hand in the Comm Ave reconstruction and the shiny new BU Central and East stations, there is no way they will let one close. Its the primary transportation for the precious students.
3) Loss of the ability to do short turns and multiple routing. Back in the day there was a loop at Braves Field, as well as double the amount of trains with both the A and B operating. You also didnt have ten gazillion kids with no idea how to get on a train cramming into every trolley that comes by.

My favorite part is when you wait 20 minutes for a train and then it stops every 20 feet in the tunnel to wait for the signals to change to green, even though you know there's no possible way something is in front of it.

I think there are three places where the train stops just before Kenmore alone. And only one of those is to check the switch.

]

There is a safety stop as soon as you go underground where the B goes from "do whatever you feel like" mode to the actual signaled central subway. There is another right before the S curve where it goes from running under Comm to under Newbury. Then of course there are the switches as you mentioned.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

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?

The Park-GC 2-track is a problem. It was built narrow in 1897 because of the burial ground and the building foundations. It would've been a 4-tracker were it not for that constraint; BERy did it the only way it's possible. When the El trains ran through the Central Subway 1901-1908 all trolley service had to loop at Park and Brattle Loop because they couldn't continue on intermixed with heavy rail (third rail clearance issues, heavy rail-on-trolley collision would be...um...bad). And you can't dig a lower tunnel to double-stack it because of the Red Line bisecting at Winter St. and Blue Line bisecting at Court/Cambridge. I think the best you can do there, if an engineering assessment turns out favorable, is 3-track. Which would allow light rail vehicles on the eastbound side finish their runs on-time with past-GC trains fully segregated, while on the westbound side GC/North Station-turning trains on the beginning of their runs aren't under as much schedule stress and can single-track. Even that build I think is gonna be dubious.

But you cannot mix modes through there. There's no way to build it. You CAN make the existing Green Line run a lot more efficiently. I do think ultimately moving the E onto the Tremont tunnel (possibly with thru-D alt routing) is going to be the answer if the Urban Ring and SL Phase III become part of a larger light rail network. You don't have to dig under the Pike, though. Punch sideways through the retaining wall on the WB side and under Marginal St. is an easy dig. I think that's a very very worthwhile project (realistically) 25 years from now.

You're not building under the Pike, though. Back Bay landfill east of Mass Ave. Notice how the subway at Hynes is above ground on the other side of the Pike retaining wall. Between Muddy River and Mass Ave. is the easterly extent of pre-landfill terra firma.


These west-leaning builds under the Pike are way, way, way overthinking it. BERy had this sorted in 1900. It's called the Riverbank Subway. If we ever blow up Storrow that's probably going to be a trade-in condition. It's on-alignment with the Blue Line. Even if the D does not have the ridership to merit a conversion, the Needham Branch (with grade crossings) is needed, and the Urban Ring zigzag Kenmore-Brookline Village is needed because the cross-Brookline tunnel is no-go...you can still bring the BL to a Kenmore turnback. It would work extremely well for the loads there. I don't think there's any issues with that build.

But, really...Crazy Transit Pitches vs. Impossible Transit Pitches. Really need to apply the filter here a bit because the landfill zone is a total no-go.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

The Park-GC 2-track is a problem. It was built narrow in 1897 because of the burial ground and the building foundations. It would've been a 4-tracker were it not for that constraint; BERy did it the only way it's possible. When the El trains ran through the Central Subway 1901-1908 all trolley service had to loop at Park and Brattle Loop because they couldn't continue on intermixed with heavy rail (third rail clearance issues, heavy rail-on-trolley collision would be...um...bad). And you can't dig a lower tunnel to double-stack it because of the Red Line bisecting at Winter St. and Blue Line bisecting at Court/Cambridge. I think the best you can do there, if an engineering assessment turns out favorable, is 3-track. Which would allow light rail vehicles on the eastbound side finish their runs on-time with past-GC trains fully segregated, while on the westbound side GC/North Station-turning trains on the beginning of their runs aren't under as much schedule stress and can single-track. Even that build I think is gonna be dubious.

But you cannot mix modes through there. There's no way to build it. You CAN make the existing Green Line run a lot more efficiently. I do think ultimately moving the E onto the Tremont tunnel (possibly with thru-D alt routing) is going to be the answer if the Urban Ring and SL Phase III become part of a larger light rail network. You don't have to dig under the Pike, though. Punch sideways through the retaining wall on the WB side and under Marginal St. is an easy dig. I think that's a very very worthwhile project (realistically) 25 years from now.

But I don't understand why you would need to mix modes? Both branches of the Green Line north of that problem area are prime candidates for heavy rail, and that's part of the reason why I'm so fixated on Green Line Heavy Rail to begin with.

The only real issue, to me, is what to do with the other branches so that they can stop at Park Street or continue on into a different tunnel, and therefore not become victims of eliminating LRT through the Central Subway in favor of HRT.

Side questions: We can't just build a Porter-style set of stations underneath the Red and Blue Lines? What about light or heavy rail underneath/next to the Orange Line Tufts-State, light rail under/on Essex Street to the Greenway, or going up Park Street, under the State House and down Temple Street to Staniford Street if it's important to preserve the ability to run future light rail branches through North Station?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

But I don't understand why you would need to mix modes? Both branches of the Green Line north of that problem area are prime candidates for heavy rail, and that's part of the reason why I'm so fixated on Green Line Heavy Rail to begin with.

The only real issue, to me, is what to do with the other branches so that they can stop at Park Street or continue on into a different tunnel, and therefore not become victims of eliminating LRT through the Central Subway in favor of HRT.

Why heavy-rail on the same routes? How much extra value-added does that really bring over light rail that's capable today (and maybe pretty soon) of trainlining 4-car? 210 seats vs. 176. Tight, tight station spacing...not dramatically faster than a CBTC-signaled light rail subway would be. Impossible to have a single grade crossing. Billions in tunneling costs to replicate existing service. No way of doing any mixed-traffic surface branches whatsoever on the zillions of possible routes where that would come into play, no way of connecting the Urban Ring. Shreds the per-trip costs of running any streetcar routes with whatever scraps may be left or un-buryable isolated. Meaning Boston gets deprived of routes and route potential heavy rail can't serve, and loses transit on Comm. Ave. Allston and Beacon St. in the hilly terrain where tunnel grades can't rise fast enough to build acceptable-depth stations. Have to have more gentle grades than surface because a brake failure inside a tight tunnel is more dangerous than in open space like a portal incline. You can barely feel the descent into Porter or Aquarium. Keeping up with the hills on the B and C are impossible. Which is why BERy said no frickin' way to those two when it sketched out its A and E/D heavy rail plan.


Why? I am not seeing a benefit here. Make the Green line functioning. We know exactly what that would take from a signaling standpoint. Make it have better connectivity and flex. Consolidate some of these pie-in-sky builds like the UR into stuff that's actually buildable as Green Line appendages. Do the judicious tunnel relocation and traffic shaping where it is engineering-feasible like sending the E to Back Bay under Marginal to eliminate Copley Jct., reconfigure Kenmore so the UR can zigzag around without dying a decisive defeat on the billion-dollar Brookline tunnel, reconfigure GC so there can be some 4-track platform traffic management (since the Park-GC tunnel probably isn't fixable), trudge forward with subways to BU Bridge to link the UR and D-to-E. And so on, and so on.

You don't get to do ANY of that blowing the exact same sum of money to finesse the existing routes with Blue Line cars. That is some perfect ideal that hasn't been possible since the 1930's. Even BERy gave up on it quick. Do we want to get lots of good-enough stuff built, or do we want a perfect integrity of concept and punt the rest until 2060? Funding will never be infinite enough to have cake and eat too on the same timetable.

Side questions: We can't just build a Porter-style set of stations underneath the Red and Blue Lines? What about light or heavy rail underneath/next to the Orange Line Tufts-State, light rail under/on Essex Street to the Greenway, or going up Park Street, under the State House and down Temple Street to Staniford Street if it's important to preserve the ability to run future light rail branches through North Station?

Have a look at Porter now that the ceiling is ripped open for the elevator shaft. Solid...ass...bedrock. North Cambridge is higher elevation than downtown, and the glaciers were kinder to the bedrock out there than the silt debris that fills the Charles basin and ex-bay in the Back Bay. The Common was dry land when Boston was settled. It was bay-waterlogged pre-Ice Age. See Big Dig engineering challenges. Spongy, spongy soil.

Only way you're getting a N-S subway that undercuts E-W Blue and Red is the N-S Link and approach tunnels. E-W you can definitely do on Riverbank Subway since that's really shallow, under the B and E reservations, under Pike frontage roads (shallow) and NEC in the Big Dig-cleared zone. And, yes, it's engineering-feasible through Chinatown and Stuart St., but ghastly ghastly cost.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

Why heavy-rail on the same routes? How much extra value-added does that really bring over light rail that's capable today (and maybe pretty soon) of trainlining 4-car? 210 seats vs. 176.

If we can actually get 4-car trains up and running, I'll drop my Green Line Heavy Rail advocacy.

 

[omaja]

I hadn't pictured a cut-and-cover like Shuwmut, Omaja, and if that's what you had in mind, it would probably resolve a lot of the aesthetic issues. The cost would be astronomical for the benefit, though. I don't think it's a strawman to put in to words what I immediately thought of when you said "underpass".

That's just the thing: I didn't say "underpass".

I can't imagine that ridership from Needham, even counting that to an expanded Needham St. corridor, would justify the expense of a cut-and-cover tunnel with HRT service (which I don't think is just 125% of a surface LRT line using modified existing tracks and stations and overhead wires), so when you say "more growth further into the future" you are implying that we should be planning for Needham to look like Brookline or Roxbury in the future.

You're making, IMO, 2 unrealistic assumptions. First, you're assuming that Needham will grow density that it isn't zoned for and that the residents don't want, and second, that the primary desired destination of people in Needham by transit will be Downtown Boston for commuting purposes. I'm assuming that Needham stays fundamentally as it is with new denser development in areas already zoned for it along Needham St./Highland Ave and a population working primarily along 128 and shopping/eating/hanging out in the new Needham St. corridor.

Again, I hate to focus you too much on what is a minor segment of a very impressive project, but this has bothered me in many people's Future MBTA proposals.

My thought to convert the D to heavy rail and branch toward Needham isn't assuming anything like Needham needing to densify to the level of Brookline (I'm assuming the northern section? the southern part of Brookline really isn't all that dense) or Roxbury. In reality, the urbanized area of Needham actually isn't far off from West Roxbury as it is, and I don't think anyone would argue that the Orange Line wouldn't be a natural extension to that area.

I feel like you are shortchanging the value of the network effect here. Seems like you're considering heavy rail here only in terms of serving Needham residents when, in reality, it would be both an origin and destination point for many more people; think about the added connectivity with 128, linking more parts of Newton, and providing a rapid transit route from the rest of the Boston area to/from Needham. In the end, converting the D Line to heavy rail would happen as a result of pressure on Kenmore and the busier Brookline stations, combined with the need to alleviate congestion in the Central Subway via the Riverbank Subway, and potential to join with the Blue Line. Needham as a factor into whether to convert the line would be much more peripheral. If the inner portion warrants conversion, you'll see the whole line convert or splitting the line into light rail spokes from the heavy rail terminus.

In terms of rail service as a whole to Needham, I can't see opting for any major upgrades to Commuter Rail there, or even bringing the Orange Line all the way out because that would mean more track mileage to bring up to rapid transit standards, not to mention service through a significantly less populated area. The rail right-of-way from Newton Highlands to Needham Center is much more attractive in terms of it being shorter and also surrounded by more uniform density. Why clog Back Bay and South Station with Needham Line trains when an upgraded D + D extension + Riverbank Subway + Blue Line would likely result in more connectivity, similar travel times and (most importantly) more regular, frequent service?

Seems like we are agreed that rail to Needham via a D Line branch is a good idea, right? Isn't our disagreement, then, founded in a discussion of whether the D should be connected to the Blue Line, which would necessitate that the D be converted to heavy rail?

 

[Equilibria]

That's just the thing: I didn't say "underpass"

Now that I look, you said "viaduct", which is basically the same thing. It's a silly semantic argument, and you weren't proposing what I thought, so let's drop it.

I think you're way overestimating the desire of the "network" to get to Needham. What is there in that town they'd want to access? They have banks, bookstores, and charming restaurants where they are. Maybe some people will head out there once or twice to check it out, but hardly in droves.

As for the 2 major attractions along this stretch of the line: Needham St. will be a pretty big draw, but only for people who live elsewhere in Newton and Needham, for the same reason as above. Much of the new development is planned to be mixed use and designed with a neighborhood plan in mind, which means it won't have regional attractions - it's supposed to generate its own demand. Again, a bunch of restaurants, clothing stores, banks, and a Newbury Comics won't bring people in from Somerville or Quincy, and I don't see many people working in the corridor and commuting by train.

Route 128 access is less valuable than you might think, IMO. The general consensus on this board is that every connection you can make to 128 with a park-and-ride is a critical asset. I don't agree in every case. The point of 128 access is to allow those from outside the immediate suburbs to ditch their cars before hitting the urban road network. That means access is only necessary at key choke points a lot of drivers will hit: I-95/128 (Peabody or Salem), US-3/128 (Burlington Mall), 2/128 (Lexington), I-90/128 (Riverside), I-95/128 (128 Station), 24/I-93 (No ROW nearby), and 3/I-93 (Braintree).

Needham sits between two of these points, which means any drivers reaching it would have had to pass at least Riverside or 128 Station. I don't see much demand for park-and-ride. A small lot at the Gould St. station will be fine.

We totally agree that rail through Newton to Needham is a good idea. My argument is simply that demand does not justify the costs to neighborhood aesthetics and cohesion that a surface HRT line would require. This is important, IMO, because the idea of Green Line to Needham isn't as much of a Crazy Transit Pitch as one might think - it's been proposed seriously in both towns and might well happen when Needham St. is developed (will happen soon) and when the T can gets its financial house in order (probably never). My guess is that the CR line will be truncated to Needham Junction at this point, which will provide faster Downtown access to those in Needham who want it, without any need for an Orange Line conversion.

By the way, the Riverbank Subway is a great idea, and I hope it happens someday. It should be extended under one of the streetcar reservations, though. Those branches have the proper density all the way to termini at the historic limits of Boston's inner transit network.

 

[Riverside]

What if Needham-Newton rail was done as a Mattapan High Speed Line-esque LRT line, terminating at Newton Highlands? The Riverside line could still be converted to HRT, and commuters looking to go into Boston would transfer cross-platform at Newton Highlands. Since it sounds like the demand is in large part village-village out there, I don't think that transfer would be a huge negative.

The main issue, I'd think, would be having to share the ROW between Newton Highlands and the split just south of Route 9. Looking at the satellite images on Google Maps, it doesn't look like the ROW could handle 4 tracks. But maybe 3? How restrictive would 1360 feet of single track at the end of the line be for a Needham-Newton LRT line?

A crazy idea: replace the Riverside (and hypothetical Needham) line(s) west of Reservoir with an LRT extension of the C line. Institute EMU service from Riverside along the B&A to offer a (theoretically) faster route downtown. Maybe expand the Beacon Street median to 3 tracks to run expresses (maybe). Extend the Blue Line through Charles, down a Riverbank subway or redone Storrow Drive (can you really do a subway through the Back Bay landfill?) to Kenmore, have Blue-eat-D through Reservoir, and then have the Blue turn north up Chestnut Hill Ave to service Brighton. From there, it could go any number of places.

I will draw up a map of this later when I have time.

 

[Equilibria]

A crazy idea: replace the Riverside (and hypothetical Needham) line(s) west of Reservoir with an LRT extension of the C line. Institute EMU service from Riverside along the B&A to offer a (theoretically) faster route downtown. Maybe expand the Beacon Street median to 3 tracks to run expresses (maybe). Extend the Blue Line through Charles, down a Riverbank subway or redone Storrow Drive (can you really do a subway through the Back Bay landfill?) to Kenmore, have Blue-eat-D through Reservoir, and then have the Blue turn north up Chestnut Hill Ave to service Brighton. From there, it could go any number of places.

I will draw up a map of this later when I have time.

I had actually thought of that (without the extension beyond Reservoir), but I'm unsure how one would connect the C to the current D ROW. It would have been easier before the Water Pumping Station redevelopment, but while it's easy enough to run C trains to Reservoir, the end up pointing the wrong direction and can't go very fast.

I'd still have to see the passenger numbers that justify HRT from Newton to Boston before I would get behind your truncation idea. If the issue is Sox game traffic from Riverside or building another HRT connection to 128, that can be accomplished with EMUs on the Pike, and there's other better alignments to serve Brookline.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

If we can actually get 4-car trains up and running, I'll drop my Green Line Heavy Rail advocacy.

They're testing it right now. You may by pure chance encounter a random quad in revenue service over the next several weeks. I wouldn't expect it to grow to a majority/plurality of service, but if the test goes OK there probably will be some quads making up a small portion of service within a year-plus.

It'll take some upgrades to power draws to go mass-scale, and some of the non-ADA platforms on the surface are inadequate-length (all subway stops are, although Boylston inbound's a little awkward with that zigzag in the middle). But they did do overbuilt and future-proofed power upgrades to get every line up-to-spec for running triplets of power-hungry 7's and 8's, so they're not far off except for North Station-Lechmere (getting it anyway for GLX) and outer branches. Front-door boarding makes the inadequate platforms a total moot point as long as that asinine policy is in effect.

GLX and the 9's will require a little more on the west end to run D's end-to-end, and the D is unfunded-scheduled for a total 100% overhead replacement on the FY2012-16 cap improvements plan because the infrastructure is at end-of-useful-life. So this will happen, unless they let maintenance defer so badly the Green Line starts having power outages. And that work alone will probably be enough to allow quads to run on every line all the time. I wouldn't expect to see too many of them on the B, C, E because that gets awfully clumsy in mixed-traffic, especially with some of those perilously narrow B platforms up on the hill and street-running past Brigham. But most definitely for the D, subway, and GLX. Not just in our lifetimes, but as a 2020 necessity for things to work at all.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

They're testing it right now. You may by pure chance encounter a random quad in revenue service over the next several weeks. I wouldn't expect it to grow to a majority/plurality of service, but if the test goes OK there probably will be some quads making up a small portion of service within a year-plus.

It'll take some upgrades to power draws to go mass-scale, and some of the non-ADA platforms on the surface are inadequate-length (all subway stops are, although Boylston inbound's a little awkward with that zigzag in the middle). But they did do overbuilt and future-proofed power upgrades to get every line up-to-spec for running triplets of power-hungry 7's and 8's, so they're not far off except for North Station-Lechmere (getting it anyway for GLX) and outer branches. Front-door boarding makes the inadequate platforms a total moot point as long as that asinine policy is in effect.

GLX and the 9's will require a little more on the west end to run D's end-to-end, and the D is unfunded-scheduled for a total 100% overhead replacement on the FY2012-16 cap improvements plan because the infrastructure is at end-of-useful-life. So this will happen, unless they let maintenance defer so badly the Green Line starts having power outages. And that work alone will probably be enough to allow quads to run on every line all the time. I wouldn't expect to see too many of them on the B, C, E because that gets awfully clumsy in mixed-traffic, especially with some of those perilously narrow B platforms up on the hill and street-running past Brigham. But most definitely for the D, subway, and GLX. Not just in our lifetimes, but as a 2020 necessity for things to work at all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQykcICsJGI

Proof they do exist! It's apparently been done here and there since last year for Red Sox extras. One of the video's commenters also mentions spotting an 8-7-7-8 at GC just last week.

 

[davem]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQykcICsJGI

Proof they do exist! It's apparently been done here and there since last year for Red Sox extras. One of the video's commenters also mentions spotting an 8-7-7-8 at GC just last week.

Isn't the biggest issue they have to bypass Boylston because it's not long enough to platform all four cars? Maybe its time to dust off the Park-Boylston superstation plans from the early 1900s

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Isn't the biggest issue they have to bypass Boylston because it's not long enough to platform all four cars? Maybe its time to dust off the Park-Boylston superstation plans from the early 1900s

The platform is long enough (they unload deuces back-to-back sometimes), but people would have to get off at the tips of the station behind the faregates and by the inspector's booth. On the rear inbound side there's open access behind the stairs to the abandoned tunnel as an emergency exit. In a blind spot for any station staff, so that's almost daring people to go exploring.

The solution...security cam the place end-to-end...put an alarmed emergency exit door on the behind-stairs passageway. Not hard. If quads are under serious consideration that's probably exactly what they'll do. You wouldn't be talking more than 5-10 grand in cost.


Technically they could even make the outbound side (not sure about inbound) ADA-accessible by sticking an elevator behind the stairs, relocating that electrical box, and fencing off the walkway behind the faregates from the tracks. But...you know...effort.