Crazy Transit Pitches

Commuting Boston Student said:
Yes, because if you're really going to be running it inside the median of an interstate highway, hills are getting blasted through anyway. Taking the future NEC out of the median does not change that, and since this is the only place where we might conceivably ever make the highways work for us instead of against us, it's objectively foolish NOT to take advantage of the swath of hill-related destruction that's coming down the pike either way.

If, on the other hand, the highways exit the picture entirely, then it's a different story. In that case, the Washington Secondary is still an objectively bad ROW because there's already an existing 150 mph stretch south of Cranston, through the Airport, and on down to Kingston. Maybe/maybe not that's eventually 165+ territory, certainly it can be four-tracked, and it's a stone's throw away from the Washington Secondary anyway. Do you really, honestly believe that there's going to be enough critical mass backing the Washington Secondary routing to overcome the opposition it would face, especially when it's so close to active 150+ MPH track? That's just as much a scorched earth decision as blowing up a bunch of hills in the countryside. Only difference is, hills can't grab the ear of polticians. People can.

The Washington Secondary is not coming back. Sorry, pick another route. My two suggestions would be trying to swing around the north end of the Reservoir, or take advantage of that unpleasant looking right turn past the south end of the existing 150 mph stretch to try and reach Plainfield or Norwich from there, both of which look to be relatively clean shots through totally undeveloped countryside.
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No. Hills are not getting blasted away on the 384 routing. That is the one way to thread from Bolton Notch to Willimantic to Plainfield on a mostly curve-free ROW within 1-2% rail grades. And the environmental sensitivity of the Hop River requires that first leg of it to be built with a minimum 1000 ft. greenway median. Not a nuke-it-from-orbit path of destruction with token effort at wetlands restoration like pouring a moat inside a 1960's cloverleaf. I mean, positioning the carriageways to have the least possible environmental impact. Where are you getting this fixation that the only way to build something is through "a swath of hill-related destruction" or otherwise apocalyptic all-blowed-up imagery?


Where there is no way to do it without tunneling through hills or totally reshaping the landscape with invasive superelevation: on the current I-84 median in Tolland County, and on the canceled I-82/84 routing east of 395 in RI. Where the highways are climbing some of the tallest hills in Eastern CT and RI in excess of acceptable RR grades. That's not just destructive, it's engineering-stupid and operationally stupid. You are not getting a train on a straight-line path through 400, 600, 800 ft. rolling hills one after the other at track speed. The original NYNE failed because of this. That missing piece of connecting track between Newtown and Waterbury was first abandoned because the line was so godawful hilly it took lashing 3 steam engines together to get across it at track speed in one direction. The best electric trains in the whole fucking world are not doing 165 over or through Jerimoth Hill.


And, no, the Washington Secondary is not a scorched-earth decision. It's a state-owned, law-protected landbanked ROW with enforced property lines (because it's un-abutted west of Coventry, and east of Coventry was flipped from freight-active to landbanked quickly enough that the encroachers couldn't move in). It is zoned RR, has an active RR operating charter, and requires no property-taking to reactivate as a RR. Unless that charter is declared null and void by the Surface Transportation Board (which it never does unless the RR voluntarily abandons it) that zoning never goes away, regardless of what's on top of it. It's interstate-commerce enforceable law. Whether somebody wants to vouch for it is a matter of political will, not law.


There are no such protections on all-new ROW. You have to take scads of private property (and much of those unoccupied woods are privately owned...there's very little unincorporated land left in Southern NE). You would have to rezone parts of state environmental preserves. For the 384 portions you at least have large chunks of land the state has owned for 50 years in anticipation of the original highway (esp. the Willimantic-Plainfield leg where the routing was never in much question). You aren't going to have that into RI. Because the hills just won't cut it for RR engineering. Because Scituate Reservoir isn't passable: one I-82/84 highway carriageway is already built as the Route 6 bypass claiming first dibs, and all other paths around the other sides of the reservoir hit both 400+ ft. hills and require taking dozens of homes.

You aren't getting some intermediate path either. When the original I-84 hit problems at the Reservoir they tried pitching a revised plan that connected to the RI 37 expressway in Cranston. That died an instantaneous death from the required land-takings, and the state was pretty much stuck with the Reservoir route or bust because that's the only place they held sufficient land. You run into the same problem trying to split the difference with a 'tweener rail ROW between Route 6 and the Washington Secondary skirting the Reservoir.



Now, my question for you is: if you think the federal protection on a landbanked ROW is as worthless as the piece of paper that it's written on that it's utterly unenforceable for reactivation in the face of abutter opposition...how do you reconcile being bullish about treating private property deeds and wetland protections as worthless as the pieces of paper they're written on but FULLY enforceable over all opposition with enough raw might? That does not compute.

You're not interested in building consensus where there's legal standing for consensus because subjectively you think that forces "objectively bad" lines on a map (you haven't, BTW, explained why the Wash. Secondary is "objectively bad" for Hartford-Providence intercity trip times...you're objecting to how it visually looks paralleling the NEC on a map of Cranston). But you're also not interested in building consensus around property rights and environmental regs...because those lines look good on a map, and no amount of shock-and-awe should be spared making things look good on a map. What you are arguing, in effect, is that the only political consensus worth pursuing is between the planner and his map.

I don't see where the public service is with that mentality. People will damn sure reach consensus rebelling against it because they don't like being treated like serfs on some king's manor. I wish as much as anyone that our leadership would grow a spine around NIMBY's impeding essential services out of selfish spite, but that doesn't make me stop believing that public support is a necessary and inseparable part of public works. If you can't feasibly demonstrate how and where you're going to get public and legal support for these dream builds, you won't ever gain access to the firepower required to build them. It is not the fault of the public for not agreeing fervently enough with the mapmaker's own ambitions and...conceding to a consensus forced upon them just because. Democratic society doesn't work that way.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
No. Hills are not getting blasted away on the 384 routing. That is the one way to thread from Bolton Notch to Willimantic to Plainfield on a mostly curve-free ROW within 1-2% rail grades. And the environmental sensitivity of the Hop River requires that first leg of it to be built with a minimum 1000 ft. greenway median. Not a nuke-it-from-orbit path of destruction with token effort at wetlands restoration like pouring a moat inside a 1960's cloverleaf. I mean, positioning the carriageways to have the least possible environmental impact. Where are you getting this fixation that the only way to build something is through "a swath of hill-related destruction" or otherwise apocalyptic all-blowed-up imagery?


Where there is no way to do it without tunneling through hills or totally reshaping the landscape with invasive superelevation: on the current I-84 median in Tolland County, and on the canceled I-82/84 routing east of 395 in RI. Where the highways are climbing some of the tallest hills in Eastern CT and RI in excess of acceptable RR grades. That's not just destructive, it's engineering-stupid and operationally stupid. You are not getting a train on a straight-line path through 400, 600, 800 ft. rolling hills one after the other at track speed. The original NYNE failed because of this. That missing piece of connecting track between Newtown and Waterbury was first abandoned because the line was so godawful hilly it took lashing 3 steam engines together to get across it at track speed in one direction. The best electric trains in the whole fucking world are not doing 165 over or through Jerimoth Hill.


And, no, the Washington Secondary is not a scorched-earth decision. It's a state-owned, law-protected landbanked ROW with enforced property lines (because it's un-abutted west of Coventry, and east of Coventry was flipped from freight-active to landbanked quickly enough that the encroachers couldn't move in). It is zoned RR, has an active RR operating charter, and requires no property-taking to reactivate as a RR. Unless that charter is declared null and void by the Surface Transportation Board (which it never does unless the RR voluntarily abandons it) that zoning never goes away, regardless of what's on top of it. It's interstate-commerce enforceable law. Whether somebody wants to vouch for it is a matter of political will, not law.


There are no such protections on all-new ROW. You have to take scads of private property (and much of those unoccupied woods are privately owned...there's very little unincorporated land left in Southern NE). You would have to rezone parts of state environmental preserves. For the 384 portions you at least have large chunks of land the state has owned for 50 years in anticipation of the original highway (esp. the Willimantic-Plainfield leg where the routing was never in much question). You aren't going to have that into RI. Because the hills just won't cut it for RR engineering. Because Scituate Reservoir isn't passable: one I-82/84 highway carriageway is already built as the Route 6 bypass claiming first dibs, and all other paths around the other sides of the reservoir hit both 400+ ft. hills and require taking dozens of homes.

You aren't getting some intermediate path either. When the original I-84 hit problems at the Reservoir they tried pitching a revised plan that connected to the RI 37 expressway in Cranston. That died an instantaneous death from the required land-takings, and the state was pretty much stuck with the Reservoir route or bust because that's the only place they held sufficient land. You run into the same problem trying to split the difference with a 'tweener rail ROW between Route 6 and the Washington Secondary skirting the Reservoir.
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The Hop River and Scituate Reservoir are, as far as I'm aware, the only environmental concerns for that road which are specific environmental concerns and not blanket 'highways are capital-B Bad for the planet!' environmental concerns.

That aside, I've seen movements to save the waters and save the wetlands and save the forests, but I've never seen a movement to save a hill. And believe me, if 384 ever goes anywhere east of 395, I'm sure expecting there to be some hills in its path - and I'm expecting those hills to go away.

Yes, the Washington Secondary is a scorched-earth decision. You're going to be building it at-grade, right? I don't have time to go through and count the precise number of grade crossings you'll have to eliminate part and parcel to re-running rails down the Washington Secondary, but I can promise you that it's a significant number. Certainly it's not insignificant past West Warwick - Providence Street, East Avenue, West Natick Road, Sherman Avenue, Uxbridge Street, Park Avenue/RI 12, Dyer Avenue, and probably Cranston Street (though the bike path itself seems to fizzle out just before.) That's seven, quite possibly eight. Fortunately, the really bad grade crossings were already zapped for the bike path - Oaklawn Avenue/RI 5 and New London Ave/RI 33 would all have likely posed significant problems, so there's that - it's still going to be a major disruption, and West Natick/Sherman/Uxbridge would probably just be dead-ended both ways. Not exactly a pleasant prospect for those folks.

Speed-wise, that's the 'good' half of the ROW. Before West Warwick, you trade one issue for the other - it's a far less developed area with no neighbors/neighborhoods to worry about, but it looks to me like the ROW would need to be straightened out in a big way.

If there was some way to connect the Washington Secondary from Coventry on to the existing NEC south of the airport, we'd be golden. Alas, there's no path from here to there - at least, not one that isn't more destructive than taking the good half of the ROW with the bad half. Better, then, to give it up entirely.

F-Line to Dudley said:
Now, my question for you is: if you think the federal protection on a landbanked ROW is as worthless as the piece of paper that it's written on that it's utterly unenforceable for reactivation in the face of abutter opposition...how do you reconcile being bullish about treating private property deeds and wetland protections as worthless as the pieces of paper they're written on but FULLY enforceable over all opposition with enough raw might? That does not compute.

You're not interested in building consensus where there's legal standing for consensus because subjectively you think that forces "objectively bad" lines on a map (you haven't, BTW, explained why the Wash. Secondary is "objectively bad" for Hartford-Providence intercity trip times...you're objecting to how it visually looks paralleling the NEC on a map of Cranston). But you're also not interested in building consensus around property rights and environmental regs...because those lines look good on a map, and no amount of shock-and-awe should be spared making things look good on a map. What you are arguing, in effect, is that the only political consensus worth pursuing is between the planner and his map.

I don't see where the public service is with that mentality. People will damn sure reach consensus rebelling against it because they don't like being treated like serfs on some king's manor. I wish as much as anyone that our leadership would grow a spine around NIMBY's impeding essential services out of selfish spite, but that doesn't make me stop believing that public support is a necessary and inseparable part of public works. If you can't feasibly demonstrate how and where you're going to get public and legal support for these dream builds, you won't ever gain access to the firepower required to build them. It is not the fault of the public for not agreeing fervently enough with the mapmaker's own ambitions and...conceding to a consensus forced upon them just because. Democratic society doesn't work that way.
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I don't need to 'reconcile' anything. The difference is clear: in one of these scenarios, you're going straight through people's developed land - through neighborhoods and over or under streets. In the other scenario, you're going through the environment. Whoever does or does not own the undeveloped land you have to clear is less relevant than whoever owns the space around the crossings you need to eliminate or any properties that you might or might not need to grab, because there's no loss of developed property - only undeveloped environment. And you know what? There's no love lost between me and the green movement. I'm not afraid to admit that. Maybe I have more in common with the 1950s school of engineering than I care to admit because of it. Maybe it's that affinity for the brute-force approach that makes me so willing to go to bat against anyone or anything that happens to be standing in the way of a project. I don't know.

And I think you and I share some degree of frustration with NIMBYism and the ability for some group of 'Neighbors' to singlehandedly shut down a project, and I know that I'd be right there with you on this if I honestly believed that the Washington Secondary was a superior routing. I don't think the Washington Secondary is a superior routing, I think the superior routing is the one that lets us pick up Johnston and any one of Manton/RIC, Mount Pleasant or Olneyville - Atwells Avenue as commuter rail stations, and I think the second-best routing is your choice of connecting Plainfield or Norwich to the existing stretch of Class 8 track from Kingston to Cranston, and I think the third-best routing is the one that lets the 384 extension/future I-82 do 90% of the work and take 90% of the heat for the project while rail can be easily inserted into the median and run all the way into Providence along interstate ROWs. The Washington Secondary comes in a very distant fourth place.

And at the end of the day, just because I think that destruction is sometimes necessary doesn't mean I wouldn't much rather limit allowable destruction to places that haven't been inhabited by any human being for hundreds of years - if ever. There's a huge difference between leveling hills and leveling buildings, between reconfiguring the environment and reconfiguring a municipality. If we have to go through somebody to get something done, I don't have a problem with that, but I'd much rather go through the environmentalists than I would the NIMBYs.
 
Commuting Boston Student said:
The Hop River and Scituate Reservoir are, as far as I'm aware, the only environmental concerns for that road which are specific environmental concerns and not blanket 'highways are capital-B Bad for the planet!' environmental concerns.
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And you'll note I never argued otherwise. In fact, 384 to Willimantic would probably be open today if the Army Corps hadn't played politics 10 years ago...because north-of-Hop did finally secure the community support. And I never said Scituate Reservoir couldn't be built around. There is already 1 full interstate carriageway going across it. They just stopped before they could double it up. But that's not germane to this discussion. There is most definitely no room to pair rail with highway east of 395 because of the reservoir and the road claiming the causeway first, because the hills are too steep to engineer acceptable grades, and because any alternate paths around the reservoir have a combo of hill problems and required property takings in Scituate and Johnston.

That aside, I've seen movements to save the waters and save the wetlands and save the forests, but I've never seen a movement to save a hill. And believe me, if 384 ever goes anywhere east of 395, I'm sure expecting there to be some hills in its path - and I'm expecting those hills to go away.
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Excuse me...are hills devoid of forest, wetlands, streams, ponds, and water tables? Brush up on basic Geology and Ecology before making that statement. You think it's simple to EIS a hill when shaving it changes a water table that flows downhill and feeds low-lying areas, or that tunneling through a water table is a simple engineering feat? These are loose glacial hills, not the solid bedrock of the Berkshires the Hoosac Tunnel was blasted through a century ago. The highway can climb steeper grades and not have its landscaping fuck with the water table. There is no way to do the same with tracks through here on a max 2% grade.

And, yes, there are plenty of movements to save hills. Go look at how controversial fracking is. It's one of the bitterest environmental debates going today.

Yes, the Washington Secondary is a scorched-earth decision. You're going to be building it at-grade, right? I don't have time to go through and count the precise number of grade crossings you'll have to eliminate part and parcel to re-running rails down the Washington Secondary, but I can promise you that it's a significant number. Certainly it's not insignificant past West Warwick - Providence Street, East Avenue, West Natick Road, Sherman Avenue, Uxbridge Street, Park Avenue/RI 12, Dyer Avenue, and probably Cranston Street (though the bike path itself seems to fizzle out just before.) That's seven, quite possibly eight. Fortunately, the really bad grade crossings were already zapped for the bike path - Oaklawn Avenue/RI 5 and New London Ave/RI 33 would all have likely posed significant problems, so there's that - it's still going to be a major disruption, and West Natick/Sherman/Uxbridge would probably just be dead-ended both ways. Not exactly a pleasant prospect for those folks.

Speed-wise, that's the 'good' half of the ROW. Before West Warwick, you trade one issue for the other - it's a far less developed area with no neighbors/neighborhoods to worry about, but it looks to me like the ROW would need to be straightened out in a big way.
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Go look at it on a map. From Rogers Lake in Moosup, CT to RI 33 in Coventry there is no curve tighter than 120°, most at 150° or greater, and 3 different straightaways of 3 miles or greater. That is 17 miles of 150-165 MPH. The 3.5 mile West Warwick S-curve from the RI 117/33 intersection to East Ave. is the only sub-100 MPH segment, then it's another 6.5 miles of straightaway to the NEC with no curves tighter than 150°.

The awful downtown Moosup segment probably does have to be bypassed, but I don't know how you are getting a faster ROW than this between 395 and Providence. All your other straight-line options have acceleration up hills making it operationally impossible to hit these speeds. I will say it again...2D straight line ≠ 3D straight line. If your alternative is mountaintop removal to get a 3D straight line...you cannot reconcile the caustic impacts of that while complaining about grade crossings. It's impossible to produce the evidence to equate or flip those two on an impacts scale, no matter how hard you want to believe otherwise.

If there was some way to connect the Washington Secondary from Coventry on to the existing NEC south of the airport, we'd be golden. Alas, there's no path from here to there - at least, not one that isn't more destructive than taking the good half of the ROW with the bad half. Better, then, to give it up entirely.
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You cannot get on-alignment to the NEC any faster than the existing ROW without a sharp-angle junction near T.F. Green at < 90° angle and introducing the same 2 Cranston curves on the NEC that the landbanked ROW lacks. So forget about that...it fails basic geometry on speed comparison.


I don't need to 'reconcile' anything. The difference is clear: in one of these scenarios, you're going straight through people's developed land - through neighborhoods and over or under streets. In the other scenario, you're going through the environment. Whoever does or does not own the undeveloped land you have to clear is less relevant than whoever owns the space around the crossings you need to eliminate or any properties that you might or might not need to grab, because there's no loss of developed property - only undeveloped environment. And you know what? There's no love lost between me and the green movement. I'm not afraid to admit that. Maybe I have more in common with the 1950s school of engineering than I care to admit because of it. Maybe it's that affinity for the brute-force approach that makes me so willing to go to bat against anyone or anything that happens to be standing in the way of a project. I don't know.
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I don't know what more I can say about legally-protected landbanking to make this sink in. The RR ROW is owned by the state, and chartered in perpetuity to operate a RR. The space around the ROW is irrelevant if the ROW's owner doesn't let it get encroached. They can sink the ROW in a cut or raise it on an embankment all they want within the ROW property lines with a proper EIS. The abutters have no more claim to transportation infrastructure that is somebody else's property than they have claim to "owning" the sidewalk in front of their house, the shoulder of the road in front of their driveway, the telephone pole on their grass, the turn lane on the intersection at the corner of their property, or culverts by the side of the road on their property. Throw in legal conditions of easements, etc...and they don't even have control of whether a municipal sidewalk gets constructed on their property where there was none before. Exactly the same conditions affect rail abutters. They don't own the crossing. They get a say at the hearings for the EIS and impacts on their property...definitely...but they cannot prevent essential transportation infrastructure from being built on adjoining transportation-zoned land that they don't own.

Property law governs all. Believing otherwise does not make it so. Rinse, repeat.

And I think you and I share some degree of frustration with NIMBYism and the ability for some group of 'Neighbors' to singlehandedly shut down a project, and I know that I'd be right there with you on this if I honestly believed that the Washington Secondary was a superior routing. I don't think the Washington Secondary is a superior routing, I think the superior routing is the one that lets us pick up Johnston and any one of Manton/RIC, Mount Pleasant or Olneyville - Atwells Avenue as commuter rail stations, and I think the second-best routing is your choice of connecting Plainfield or Norwich to the existing stretch of Class 8 track from Kingston to Cranston, and I think the third-best routing is the one that lets the 384 extension/future I-82 do 90% of the work and take 90% of the heat for the project while rail can be easily inserted into the median and run all the way into Providence along interstate ROWs. The Washington Secondary comes in a very distant fourth place.
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There is no other path. You can't bootstrap on the highway east of Plainfield. You can't move the hills and get it EIS'd. You can't achieve similar speeds moving the hills because of basic acceleration physics. So if it's this or bust, you deal with the grade crossings. Which you can do on a legally-protected ROW. There are no property takings involved to dig a cut or landscape an embankment. No doubt it is not easy to do or achieve support for, but there are not other options. If the existing east-of-395 ROW is impossible to engineer or gather support...then the brute-force alternatives you are proposing are so far beyond-the-pale impossible to engineer or gather support that it's either this or no Inland HSR to Providence.

I think there can be Inland HSR to Providence. But if you don't feel that's perfect enough, come to some sort of acceptance that it's not meant to be and start looking Worcester-way instead. Because squinting at the map and rebutting with "if only there were more firepower..." scenarios for a path through the hills to Johnston is a waste of time. You can't just believe something hard enough for it to be true. That is not reality-based thinking.

And at the end of the day, just because I think that destruction is sometimes necessary doesn't mean I wouldn't much rather limit allowable destruction to places that haven't been inhabited by any human being for hundreds of years - if ever. There's a huge difference between leveling hills and leveling buildings, between reconfiguring the environment and reconfiguring a municipality. If we have to go through somebody to get something done, I don't have a problem with that, but I'd much rather go through the environmentalists than I would the NIMBYs.
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I'm sorry, but I find this statement all-around horrifying. Public works require public consensus. You are arguing that public consensus should be bypassed for some planner's unilateral directives in cases where there are no abutters. Even when there ARE the same private property rights and laws, and environmental laws to consider. Even when the environmental impacts there have immediate and vital effects on the people elsewhere, and people have a stronger desire than ever to give voice and weigh consensus on environmental matters. Forget it all: people's rights should be determined by where their coordinates plot on a map, and all that exists where they ain't is fair game for somebody else to dictate without consent and without limits to the scope of the project.

Guess what...that kind of power corrupts. You think for one second concentrating such power in the hands of so few planners and foregoing the notion of public consent and rule of law for 'public' works won't regress almost instantaneously into infringing on where people can and do live? Just like it did the first time around?

Hey...urban renewalists started with good intentions, too. Then the power corrupted them, people stopped being people to them (and thus there was no need for an inconvenient planet that supported people), everything got reduced to movable objects on a map, and the destruction went too far. That's the road to hell making wholly arbitrary value judgments on the notion of democratic consensus paves you. Seriously consider what kind of country you want us to be living in with this scorched-earth approach to 'public' works.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
I'm sorry, but I find this statement all-around horrifying. Public works require public consensus. You are arguing that public consensus should be bypassed for some planner's unilateral directives in cases where there are no abutters. Even when there ARE the same private property rights and laws, and environmental laws to consider. Even when the environmental impacts there have immediate and vital effects on the people elsewhere, and people have a stronger desire than ever to give voice and weigh consensus on environmental matters. Forget it all: people's rights should be determined by where their coordinates plot on a map, and all that exists where they ain't is fair game for somebody else to dictate without consent and without limits to the scope of the project.

Guess what...that kind of power corrupts. You think for one second concentrating such power in the hands of so few planners and foregoing the notion of public consent and rule of law for 'public' works won't regress almost instantaneously into infringing on where people can and do live? Just like it did the first time around?

Hey...urban renewalists started with good intentions, too. Then the power corrupted them, people stopped being people to them (and thus there was no need for an inconvenient planet that supported people), everything got reduced to movable objects on a map, and the destruction went too far. That's the road to hell making wholly arbitrary value judgments on the notion of democratic consensus paves you. Seriously consider what kind of country you want us to be living in with this scorched-earth approach to 'public' works.
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You are also probably more right than I care to admit. Especially that last paragraph.

I think I need to reassess my opinion on this.
 
Not much to add... but thought this would be relevant to the discussion:

http://www.salon.com/2011/11/15/america_needs_more_powerful_bureaucrats/

Massachusetts in particular used to have much more powerful bureaucrats... Some of the most influential governors in the last century had been DPW commissioners.

We could use more politicians and bureaucrats with engineering backgrounds, and less lawyers. Public policy has gone way downhill as bureaucrats have become more subservient to politicians and good politics has trumped good policy.
 
Southern Massachusetts and Rhode Island Transit Ideas
New Map...New Ridership Projections

https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=215312482559953359515.00049110c2f416653cba3&msa=0&ll=41.887966,-71.087036&spn=1.380142,3.348083

Southern Massachusetts
Providence line - 28,000 (2010) > 45,000 (2030)
Greenbush line - 5,600 (2010) > 8,800 (2030)
(Milford) / Franklin line - 13,000 (2010) > 17,200 (2030)
Needham line - 8,400 (2010) > 15,000 (2030)
Fairmount line - 2,200 (2010) > 21,700 (2030)
Old Colony lines - 20,000 (2010) > 48,000 (2030)
Worcester line - 19,000 (2010) > 35,000 (2030)
Stoughton / (South Coast network) - 3,600 (2010) > 62,000 (2030)
Millis Branch - 2,700 (2030)
Western Link - 8,600 (2030)
Inland Connector - 6,200 (2030)
New Bedford line - 15,800 (2030)
Fall River line - 25,700 (2030)
Woonsocket Branch - 3,100 (2030)

Rhode Island
Providence/Pawtucket Streetcars - 124,000 (2030)
Worcester / Woonsocket line - 12,900 (2030)
South County line - 4,400 (2012) > 35,400 (2030)
Fall River / Newport line - 5,800 (2030)
Hartford line - 17,000 (2030)
Bristol LRT - 15,000 (2030)
West Warwick LRT - 25,000 (2030)
I-195 Xpress Rail East - 45,000 (2030)
 
Commuting Boston Student said:
I've been meaning to ask you this for a while, Nexis.

Where are these numbers coming from?
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The Autistic Rail Fanners ,Railroad Employees , Urban Planners and Civil Engineers there's about 3,600+ of us in this region.....i'm the only one without a college degree...blah... We all gather on the Skype and discuss various Rail Projects a few times a month...but most of the time we talk about Autistic issues... I never been wrong with any of my projections , at least overestimating , its often underestimating them with the case of NJT and SEPTA some of the 2030 Projections ended up being the 2012 Q2 Ridership. Theres 4 of us who do Ridership projections , which aren't too popular then there are 50 of us who do the transit mapping and other crap. Most of the time we discuss Global Railroad News usually on a daily basis. We also plan meets and lunchins and private Rail rides...
 
Nexis4jersey said:
Southern Massachusetts and Rhode Island Transit Ideas
New Map...New Ridership Projections

https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=215312482559953359515.00049110c2f416653cba3&msa=0&ll=41.887966,-71.087036&spn=1.380142,3.348083

Southern Massachusetts
Providence line - 28,000 (2010) > 45,000 (2030)
Greenbush line - 5,600 (2010) > 8,800 (2030)
(Milford) / Franklin line - 13,000 (2010) > 17,200 (2030)
Needham line - 8,400 (2010) > 15,000 (2030)
Fairmount line - 2,200 (2010) > 21,700 (2030)
Old Colony lines - 20,000 (2010) > 48,000 (2030)
Worcester line - 19,000 (2010) > 35,000 (2030)
Stoughton / (South Coast network) - 3,600 (2010) > 62,000 (2030)
Millis Branch - 2,700 (2030)
Western Link - 8,600 (2030)
Inland Connector - 6,200 (2030)
New Bedford line - 15,800 (2030)
Fall River line - 25,700 (2030)
Woonsocket Branch - 3,100 (2030)
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What sort of service patterns were you envisioning for the MBTA? (Like, where do trains on the Western Link and Inland Connector go from/to?)
 
Riverside said:
What sort of service patterns were you envisioning for the MBTA? (Like, where do trains on the Western Link and Inland Connector go from/to?)
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Providence line - Providence Central to South Station : Peak : 5-10 minutes : Reverse Peak : 15-20minutes : Offpeak : 25minutes : Weekend & Holiday : 30min

Greenbush line - Greenbush to South Station : Peak : 10-15 minutes : Reverse Peak : 30-45minutes & Offpeak : 45minutes : Weekend & Holiday : 60min

(Milford) / Franklin line - (Milford)Franklin to South Station : Peak : 5-15 minutes : Reverse Peak : 15minutes & Offpeak : 30minutes : Weekend & Holiday : 45min

Needham line - Needham to South Station : Peak : 10-15 minutes : Reverse Peak : 20-25minutes & Offpeak : 30minutes : Weekend & Holiday : 45min

Fairmount line - Readville to South Station : Peak : 5-10 minutes : Reverse Peak : 10-15minutes & Offpeak :20minutes : Weekend & Holiday : 30min

Old Colony lines - (Hyannis)Middleborough/Kingston&Plymouth to South Station : Peak : 10-15 minutes : Reverse Peak : 20minutes & Offpeak : 35minutes : Weekend & Holiday : 45min

Worcester line - Worcester Union to South Station : Peak : 5-10 minutes : Reverse Peak : 20minutes & Offpeak : 25minutes : Weekend & Holiday : 45min

Millis Branch - Millis to South Station : Peak : 10-15 minutes : Reverse Peak : 35minutes & Offpeak : 45minutes : Weekend & Holiday : 45min

Western Link - Providence Central to Hyannis : Peak : 5-10 minutes : Reverse Peak : 15minutes & Offpeak : 25minutes : Weekend & Holiday : 35-45min

Inland Connector - Mansfield to Framingham : Peak : 5-10 minutes : Reverse Peak : 15minutes & Offpeak : 25minutes : Weekend & Holiday : 35min

New Bedford line - New Bedford to South Station : Peak : 5-10 minutes : Reverse Peak : 15minutes & Offpeak : 25minutes : Weekend & Holiday : 45min

Newport / Fall River line - Newport/Fall River to South Station : Peak : 5-10 minutes : Reverse Peak : 20minutes & Offpeak : 25minutes : Weekend & Holiday : 35-45min

Woonsocket Branch - Woonsocket to South Station : Peak : 10-15 minutes : Reverse Peak : 25minutes & Offpeak : 45minutes : Weekend & Holiday : 60min

Worcester line / Woonsocket line - Worcester to Providence Central : Peak : 5-10 minutes : Reverse Peak : 25minutes & Offpeak : 35minutes : Weekend & Holiday : 45min

South County line - Westerly to Providence Central : Peak : 5-10 minutes : Reverse Peak : 15-20minutes & Offpeak : 25minutes : Weekend & Holiday : 30min

Inland New Northeast Corridor Local Rail - Hartford Union to Providence Central : Peak : 20 minutes : Reverse Peak : 25minutes & Offpeak : 30-45minutes : Weekend & Holiday : 45min

Providence Streetcars - Peak : 2-7 minutes : Reverse Peak : 10minutes & Offpeak : 15minutes : Weekend & Holiday : 15-25min

West Warwick Light Rail - Conventry to Kennedy Plaza : Peak : 5-10 minutes : Reverse Peak : 15minutes & Offpeak : 20minutes : Weekend & Holiday : 25min

Bristol Light Rail - Bristol to Kennedy Plaza : Peak : 5-10 minutes : Reverse Peak : 15minutes & Offpeak : 20minutes : Weekend & Holiday : 25min

I-195 Xpress Rail - Kennedy Plaza to Wareham : Peak : 5-10 minutes : Reverse Peak : 15minutes & Offpeak : 20minutes : Weekend & Holiday : 25min
 
Nexis, what do you think ridership would look like if the Worcester line was extended to Webster with stops in Auburn, Oxford, and Webster. Obviously there wouldn't be a lot of through traffic to Boston, but it could capture those commuting along 290/395 to Worcester. I envision it as a precursor to Worcester beginning to develop its own commuter rail network, along with the P&W Woonsocket line, maybe up to Ayer too eventually.
 
Scalziand said:
Nexis, what do you think ridership would look like if the Worcester line was extended to Webster with stops in Auburn, Oxford, and Webster. Obviously there wouldn't be a lot of through traffic to Boston, but it could capture those commuting along 290/395 to Worcester. I envision it as a precursor to Worcester beginning to develop its own commuter rail network, along with the P&W Woonsocket line, maybe up to Ayer too eventually.
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Worcester wants/needs an extension to Springfield, and I see Springfield as a much more central location for a commuter rail network.

At worst, I'd expect a double-hub system anchored by a Springfield-Worcester mainline with a bunch of branch spurs.
 
Commuting Boston Student said:
Worcester wants/needs an extension to Springfield, and I see Springfield as a much more central location for a commuter rail network.

At worst, I'd expect a double-hub system anchored by a Springfield-Worcester mainline with a bunch of branch spurs.
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The problem with Springfield-Worcester is that the B&A passes through a whole lot of nothing in-between to get around the hills and maintain its grade separation. Most of the intermediate stations that existed on it in old times were flag stops at long-abandoned branchline junctions that were trapping little bits of local transfer traffic. The only places today you're likely to get decent ridership are Palmer (Pike exit, MA 32, junction with NECR...could be an infill Amtrak Regional or Boston-Montreal stop), one of the Brookfields (MA 9 and various N-S roads), and maybe something in west Worcester or Ludlow/Wilbraham on the other sides of town from existing Worcester Union and Springfield Union (but really, the end result of the crosstown stops wouldn't be much different from an express bus to the big Union station terminals with their superior transfer options). The B&A made most of its passenger dough running the same Worcester Line we know today at almost the same outside-128 stops; Worcester-Springfield-Albany intercity/non-commuter; trapping N-S transfer traffic at a few big interstate junctions like Palmer, Pittsfield with the Housatonic RR out of Danbury, and Chatham where the (now-Metro North) Harlem Line ran a full NYC commuter schedule until 1972; and milking a meager extra at the small-town branchline transfers. Take away all the defunct branches and it's not much different than what you've got today: Albany, Springfield, Worcester + Palmer and Pittsfield.

I could see maybe fluffing up Amtrak Inlands with some state-sponsored extra runs serving commute hours, serving a Palmer intermediate stop, and offering additional subsidy for employers to offset fares for the small number of commuter who do need to get across state. That is done on several routes. But Springfield is a whole different universe regional ID-wise from Worcester and Boston. I think floating any sort of substantial locals schedule, even out of Worcester instead of Boston, is going to take a bath on operating cost vs. revenue. It's simply not how the regions orient. The ridership is much, much more substantial N-S of Springfield. Worcester is a NE-SE-S-E orientation with Palmer pretty much the outer limits of its sparser western extent. They're de facto different states--Eastern MA and "North Connecticut"--, different accents and all.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
The problem with Springfield-Worcester is that the B&A passes through a whole lot of nothing in-between to get around the hills and maintain its grade separation. Most of the intermediate stations that existed on it in old times were flag stops at long-abandoned branchline junctions that were trapping little bits of local transfer traffic. The only places today you're likely to get decent ridership are Palmer (Pike exit, MA 32, junction with NECR...could be an infill Amtrak Regional or Boston-Montreal stop), one of the Brookfields (MA 9 and various N-S roads), and maybe something in west Worcester or Ludlow/Wilbraham on the other sides of town from existing Worcester Union and Springfield Union (but really, the end result of the crosstown stops wouldn't be much different from an express bus to the big Union station terminals with their superior transfer options). The B&A made most of its passenger dough running the same Worcester Line we know today at almost the same outside-128 stops; Worcester-Springfield-Albany intercity/non-commuter; trapping N-S transfer traffic at a few big interstate junctions like Palmer, Pittsfield with the Housatonic RR out of Danbury, and Chatham where the (now-Metro North) Harlem Line ran a full NYC commuter schedule until 1972; and milking a meager extra at the small-town branchline transfers. Take away all the defunct branches and it's not much different than what you've got today: Albany, Springfield, Worcester + Palmer and Pittsfield.

I could see maybe fluffing up Amtrak Inlands with some state-sponsored extra runs serving commute hours, serving a Palmer intermediate stop, and offering additional subsidy for employers to offset fares for the small number of commuter who do need to get across state. That is done on several routes. But Springfield is a whole different universe regional ID-wise from Worcester and Boston. I think floating any sort of substantial locals schedule, even out of Worcester instead of Boston, is going to take a bath on operating cost vs. revenue. It's simply not how the regions orient. The ridership is much, much more substantial N-S of Springfield. Worcester is a NE-SE-S-E orientation with Palmer pretty much the outer limits of its sparser western extent. They're de facto different states--Eastern MA and "North Connecticut"--, different accents and all.
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Far from being an issue, I see that as a draw of the service. No need to screw around making a dozen stops in Nowhere, MA - you have your train on a branch that pulls into Worcester and then blasts through the countryside to Springfield, or on the other end, a branch line into Springfield that then expresses into Worcester. Something like the Shoreline East's current 'to New London' setup - or to a lesser extent, what through-running might look like in Boston when the N-S Rail Link gets finished.

You make your money on, say, the Greenfield-Springfield Line, which then expresses to Worcester with only maybe an intermediate stop at Palmer. Once it gets into Worcester, it changes its identity to, say, a Worcester-Fitchburg train, and makes the rest of its money on that routing.

Is there a huge demand for a single-seat ride from Greenfield to Fitchburg via Springfield and Worcester? Absolutely not, but the losses you incur on the Springfield-Worcester run should be more than made up for on the Greenfield-Springfield and Worcester-Fitchburg segments.

Hell, you don't even have to make it an official through-routing! Kick everyone off at either Union Station, and charge them again for the stretch between the stations. Figure that, if the same guys are running both networks, every train running that stretch is essentially one step above a deadhead move. You're flipping equipment around between your two (three?) layover yards, and if people want to pay to ride that stretch, well, that's a bonus - but even if they don't, the train needed to make that run for the sake of balancing.
 
Commuting Boston Student said:
Far from being an issue, I see that as a draw of the service. No need to screw around making a dozen stops in Nowhere, MA - you have your train on a branch that pulls into Worcester and then blasts through the countryside to Springfield, or on the other end, a branch line into Springfield that then expresses into Worcester. Something like the Shoreline East's current 'to New London' setup - or to a lesser extent, what through-running might look like in Boston when the N-S Rail Link gets finished.

You make your money on, say, the Greenfield-Springfield Line, which then expresses to Worcester with only maybe an intermediate stop at Palmer. Once it gets into Worcester, it changes its identity to, say, a Worcester-Fitchburg train, and makes the rest of its money on that routing.

Is there a huge demand for a single-seat ride from Greenfield to Fitchburg via Springfield and Worcester? Absolutely not, but the losses you incur on the Springfield-Worcester run should be more than made up for on the Greenfield-Springfield and Worcester-Fitchburg segments.

Hell, you don't even have to make it an official through-routing! Kick everyone off at either Union Station, and charge them again for the stretch between the stations. Figure that, if the same guys are running both networks, every train running that stretch is essentially one step above a deadhead move. You're flipping equipment around between your two (three?) layover yards, and if people want to pay to ride that stretch, well, that's a bonus - but even if they don't, the train needed to make that run for the sake of balancing.
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The regional ID barrier is going to make that a nonstarter. Springfield and Worcester are in different worlds. Springfield and Brattleboro are arguably a better commuter market than going E-W over similar distance. With Inland Regionals you at least have the intercity draw of stringing New Haven-Hartford-Springfield-Worcester-Boston together and having anchor draws despite the disparate regions. Lopping the CT portion of it off takes it below the level of viability, which in turn will not support a very robust schedule, which in turn will bleed it on operating costs. I do think you have to set a viability floor for any service on paying the crew wages and fuel; if it can't do that and won't project to do it for decades in-service, then they shouldn't be running it at all (see South Coast FAIL south of Taunton). This is the folly and political pander of the occasional bluster from Beacon Hill about running CR to Springfield. Yeah, it's easy and requires virtually nothing for infrastructure cost. Yeah, you can segment the route if it's easier than a run-thru. But it's still an operating sinkhole below the minimum viability threshold.


Re: thru-routing. It's very impractical to send the same trains in a circuit around the state because the equipment pools for such a routing would be split between different states and different agencies. CTDOT and the MBTA are charter-prohibited from sharing crews and pooling equipment. The T can only do it with RIDOT under a mercenary operator agreement loosened by legacy NEC trackage rights conferred to the T all the way to the CT/RI border. As for CTDOT, they can't even lay over Shore Line East crews in Metro North territory and all of its current equipment is wholly separately operated and serviced from Metro North. New Haven yard is the only joint share between the converging services (including NHHS when it goes online). It took a near- World War III with Metro North to hammer out the agreement to use the new M8's on SLE--vehicles CTDOT owns itself. It's still not certain whether the SLE EMU fleet is going to have to be administratively isolated from the Metro North pool...that fine print is still under dispute.

It's red tape, but when it's constitutional red tape in an agency charter it's damn near impossible to amend. Especially when some of these things are conditions conveyed in the operating charters from private RR's still enforced by fed interstate commerce law 150 years later. For example, notice that New Haven Line trains still don't ever stop in the Bronx. That's because New Rochelle-east was CT-headquartered NYNH&H RR and west of there (i.e. third rail territory) was NY-headquartered New York Central. Penn Central was bound and gagged by that track rights agreement when it swallowed both RR's, then Conrail when PC went belly-up, then Metro North when it was founded. And this can never change without re-writing multiple state laws in NY and CT, getting the Surface Transportation Board to revoke all historical charters in favor of the new ones, and navigating through any private minority holders still with a legal stake in the old charters (<-- this in particular is the Pandora's Box they never ever open).

Throw in smaller regional transit agencies and possible VTTrans involvement between Brattleboro and Springfield and you have to start acknowledging the reality that remaking regional transit as a unified interstate operation is hard to impossible. Sometimes it's not even intra-agency possible when you look at CTDOT and Metro North's working relationship, or the fight between MTA sisters MNRR and Long Island RR over Penn Station access. The legalities are not something you can just blow up and reset when the fine print stretches back to the 19th century. The T is very lucky it inherited those ex-Conrail rights into RI, that the northside is all ex-B&M territory where New Hampshire (or even Maine) is a simple one-on-one transaction with Pan Am, and that P&W for Worcester-Providence is likewise a one-on-one deal no longer bound by any Penn Central/NYNH&H legacy after P&W outright pulled its charter out of that conglomerate 40 years ago. Go to Western Mass. and you better be reading the fine print because that one junction at Springfield Union is a mash of ex- NYNH&H-, B&A-, and B&M-swallowed charters plus all the state-level and Amtrak-charter do's and don'ts.

There's no legal bulldozer that makes this all clean and tidy in one shot. Too many centuries of rule of law to undo. It's remarkable they were able to legally push Amtrak into existence 40 years ago as the sole intercity carrier. The negotiations required to cede all those charter rights to one public entity were nothing short of heroic. And probably can never be replicated again the way things are lawyered up today.



On more practical level, fueling and maintenance are difficult on such long runs when you can't exchange trainsets everywhere like Amtrak can in Boston, Albany, New Haven, and NYC where multiple routes converge (and eventually they'll be able to do it in Burlington for the Vermonter and extended Ethan Allen, and Montreal for the Adirondack and extended Vermonter/Montrealer). Especially when it's a CTDOT equipment pool in Springfield, an MBTA equipment pool in Worcester and all destinations along the I-190/MA 146 corridors, and possibly a VTTrans equipment pool north of Greenfield. These outposts owned by others would be turnback-only, not a regular layover and fueling facility. So operating there would resemble the way Amtrak operates long distance trains...2 lashed-up locomotives sharing the fuel load, remote crew changes and possibly some room-and-board (called "canning" in the freight world) when it's an end-of-shift run. This is a major reason why Amtrak LD's are such an operating sinkhole. Commuter rail margins definitely won't support it when you start talking about doubling fuel costs and introducing remote crew changes and/or overtime pay. There's very good reason why CR is almost universally a point-to-point + turnback operation, even when it's spanning a district instead of terminating at a central location. Ops cost/benefit doesn't favor point-to-point-to-point route mixing. That's intercity's realm.

The good news is, all of these routes are possible point-to-point with loose cooperation. With Amtrak intercity overlap pretty much everywhere and a healthy amount of state sponsoring of those Amtrak routes to get finer-tuned intermediate stops. So I don't think thru-routing brings anything different to the table or serves a need people want. As long as the point-to-point routes meet the viability threshold, git-'r-dun. The only one I have my doubts about is Worcester-Springfield, especially with this Worcester Line extension chatter. I'm more than willing to be proven wrong, but lets see a formal study before there are assumptions of a real market. That regional ID difference is a significant factor for demand to overcome. To-date there's not a lot of evidence pointing to significant demand growth at a commuter level (intercity with high-enough frequencies...different story).
 
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Scalziand said:
Nexis, what do you think ridership would look like if the Worcester line was extended to Webster with stops in Auburn, Oxford, and Webster. Obviously there wouldn't be a lot of through traffic to Boston, but it could capture those commuting along 290/395 to Worcester. I envision it as a precursor to Worcester beginning to develop its own commuter rail network, along with the P&W Woonsocket line, maybe up to Ayer too eventually.
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There was a proposal to run a line from Worcester to New London which would service , Worcester Union , Auburn , Oxford , Webster , Putnam disrict , Danielson , Jewett City , Norwich , Mohegan Sun , New London , of course this will probably come after the Central corridor is built later this decade between New London and Brattleboro via Palmer and Amherst... As for a line up to Ayer , I thought about that , but as you dig into the traffic data between the cities and regional wise it would be a waste....probably less then 5000 would use the line daily. But by 2025 Worcester and Springfield should be Rail hubs with lines going out from them to various other large towns and cities. I'm sure well see commuter rail expanded around Springfield servicing all of Western Mass by 2030.
 
Tri-State Area Rail ideas (originally LIRR 2050 map) , I'm suprised all this fit...and yes its the NYC Metro....i'm working on New Hampshire and North Station division map.

https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=215312482559953359515.000496c9cdea77cff2ae1&msa=0&ll=40.772742,-73.940048&spn=0.346839,0.837021

City-Long Island Ideas
Coney Island Xpress - 10 Stations - 16.8 Mi - Projected Ridership : 35,000
Rockaway Beach Branch - 8 stations - 9.8 Mi - Projected Ridership : 45,000
Far Rockaway Branch - 7 Stations - 11.6 Mi - 2012 Ridership : 10,500 > 2030 Ridership : 21,000
Long Beach Branch - 5 Stations - 6.8 Mi - 2012 Ridership : 15,200 > 2030 Ridership : 25,600
Long Island Connection - 1 Station - 2.1 Mi - Projected Ridership : 2500
Atlantic Branch - 4 Stations - 9 Mi - 2012 Ridership : 25,800 > 2030 Ridership : 55,200
East Side Access - 1 Station - 3.6 Mi - Projected Ridership : 120,000
Long Island Downtown Access - 2 Stations - 2.6 Mi - Projected Ridership : 135,000
Metro North Downtown Access - 2 Stations - 2.2 Mi - Projected Ridership : 125,000
New Jersey Downtown Access - 3 Stations - 6.5 Mi - Projected Ridership : 95,000
West Side Side line - 4 Stations - 10.2 Mi - Projected Ridership : 16,000
Hell Gate line - 9 Stations - 14.6 Mi - Projected Ridership : 75,000
Main Trunk - 19 Stations - 31.6 Mi - 2012 Ridership : 150,000 > 2030 Ridership : 290,000
Port Washington Branch - 12 Stations - 14 Mi - 2012 Ridership : 47,100 > 2030 Ridership : 125,000
St. Albans Branch - 1 Station - 3.2 Mi - 2012 Ridership : 1,600 > 2030 Ridership : 5,200
West Hempstead Branch - 5 stations - 4.4 Mi - 2012 Ridership : 9,300 > 2030 Ridership : 15,800
Hempstead Branch - 9 Stations - 4.7 Mi - 2012 Ridership : 7,400 > 2030 Ridership : 17,900
Oyster Bay Branch - 10 Stations - 14.5 Mi - 2012 Ridership : 6,100 > 2030 Ridership : 12,800
Oyster Bay Branch Extension - 3 Stations - 2.9 Mi - Projected Ridership : 2600
Central Branch - 17 Stations - 16.2 Mi - Projected Ridership : 45,700
Port Jefferson Branch - 14 Stations - 33.2 Mi - 2012 Ridership : 7,200 > 2030 Ridership : 14,300
Greenport Branch - 15 Stations - 65.7 Mi - 2012 Ridership : 24,200 > 2030 Ridership : 35,800
Montuak Branch - 19 Stations - 78.6 Mi - 2012 Ridership : 5,600 > 2030 Ridership : 7,200

Northern Suburbs
New Haven line - 30 Stations - 61.3 Mi - 2012 Ridership : 120,360 > 2030 Ridership : 280,000
New Canaan Branch - 5 Stations - 6 Mi - 2012 Ridership : 5,100 > 2030 Ridership : 12,000
Danbury Branch - 7 Stations - 23.9 Mi - 2012 Ridership : 3,800 > 2030 Ridership : 18,000
Waterbury Branch - 7 Stations - 28.7 Mi - 2012 Ridership : 500 > 2030 Ridership : 3,900
Harlem line - 38 Stations - 82 Mi - 2012 Ridership : 43,200 > 2030 Ridership : 90,000
Hudson line - 29 Stations - 74 Mi - 2012 Ridership : 54,000 > 2030 Ridership : 84,000
I-287 Railway - 15 Stations - 28 Mi - Projected Ridership : 145,000
West Shore line - 18 Stations - 58.4 Mi - Projected Ridership : 45,000
Pascack Valley line - 18 Stations - 23 Mi - 2012 Ridership : 6,200 > 2030 Ridership : 18,400
Main line - 26 Stations - 96 Mi - 2012 Ridership : 20,100 > 2030 Ridership : 45,600
Bergen line - 8 Stations - 14 Mi - 2012 Ridership : 4,300 > 2030 Ridership : 7,400
Northwest Rail link - 9 Stations - 47 Mi - Projected Ridership : 15,700
Pompton Branch - 3 Stations - 6 Mi - Projected Ridership : 4,600

Western & Southern Suburbs
Morristown line - 26 Stations - 59 Mi - 2012 Ridership : 50,000 > 2030 Ridership : 95,000
Gladstone Branch - 12 Stations - 21Mi - 2012 Ridership : 4,500 > 2030 Ridership : 6,100
Montclair - Boonton line - 19 Stations - 27.4 Mi - 2012 Ridership : 21,300 > 2030 Ridership : 42,800
Lackawanna line - 4 Stations - 37 Mi - Projected Ridership : 9,300
Raritan Valley line - 20 Stations - 45.8 Mi - 2012 Ridership : 12,100 > 2030 Ridership : 25,400
Philpsburg Extension - 5 stations - 19 Mi - Projected Ridership : 7,900
Philpsburg Connection - 4 Stations - 22 Mi - Projected Ridership : 4,200
Northeast Corridor - 17 Stations - 61 Mi - 2012 Ridership : 53,800 > 2030 Ridership : 150,000
North Jersey Coast line - 28 Stations - 65 Mi - 2012 Ridership : 21,400 > 2030 Ridership : 50,200
 
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Northern New England & Eastern New York State Rail Ideas

The Main Trunk lines or High Speed Rail - 135-250mph
Coastal Northeast Corridor
New Inland Northeast Corridor
Knowledge Corridor
Empire line
Berkshires Express
The New Yorker HSL
The Montrealer HSL

Intercity or Long Distance Regional Rail
Downeaster
Vermonter
Lewiston Branch
Ethan Allen line
Northern Berkshires limited
Wildcat Branch

Commuter or Regional Rail
Greenfield/Fitchberg line
Newburyport / Portsmouth line
Rockport line
Concord/Lowell line
Lowell Connector
Malden line
Cross Hampshire Line
I-93 Rail Corridor
Portsmouth Connector
Rochester Branch

https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=215312482559953359515.0004ce220d503c5297992&msa=0&ll=43.100983,-71.531982&spn=5.414023,13.392334

Next we will cover the Detail of each line and Frequency of the service...
 
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