Crazy Transit Pitches

F-Line to Dudley said:
Not far-fetched? I want what they're smoking.
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Take a number and get in line. ;)

But honestly, the whole "we've got to do something because we're RUNNING OUT OF TRACKS OH NO!!" argument for expanding track space right now now NOW is starting to irritate me.

Has nobody even seriously looked at correcting the root cause of the problem? We aren't running out of track space, all our track space is being artificially consumed by a lack of yard space. Yeah, yeah, I know, nobody wants to hear the proposal to build a train yard of all things - certainly not in Downtown Boston, but why does it need to be right downtown?

There's plenty of dead space around Readville's yard as it stands, and if you wanted a perfect example of 'underserved communities,' look no further. It's not like the branch is a particularly long one, either - 9.2 miles, last I checked? That's just under 15 minutes at 45 mph and don't tell me we can't manage to deadhead a train at 45 mph on that line. Hell, we don't even need to deadhead them... change ends, brake test, shuttle every soon-to-be-out-of-service train down that line as one more Fairmount.

That means all the dead commuter rail trains wasting platform space waiting for clearance to go to the yard today are bulking up Fairmount's headways tomorrow, and all the dead commuter rail trains occupying Amtrak's yard downtown evaporate - leaving more than enough room to stash the extra Regionals and Acelas coming down the pipe.

And, hell, Ron Newman raised an excellent point in the UHub thread... subterranean intercity rail stations don't seem to be working out that well for New York, and I can speak with authority that they're not working out well for Providence or Back Bay. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any examples of a buried train yard - but something tells me that burying our yards is bound to work out better than burying our stations has. After all, the biggest gripe - that they're confusing, ugly and unpleasant - doesn't hold as much water when the thing you're burying is already confusing, ugly and unpleasant - and paying customers aren't expected to be there, besides.
 
My Brain is starting hurt with these Yale plans , first the horrid Milford plan and now this..... I thought Yale was supposed to pump out intelligent people with great ideas not stupid ideas....
 
Commuting Boston Student said:
Take a number and get in line. ;)

But honestly, the whole "we've got to do something because we're RUNNING OUT OF TRACKS OH NO!!" argument for expanding track space right now now NOW is starting to irritate me.

Has nobody even seriously looked at correcting the root cause of the problem? We aren't running out of track space, all our track space is being artificially consumed by a lack of yard space. Yeah, yeah, I know, nobody wants to hear the proposal to build a train yard of all things - certainly not in Downtown Boston, but why does it need to be right downtown?

There's plenty of dead space around Readville's yard as it stands, and if you wanted a perfect example of 'underserved communities,' look no further. It's not like the branch is a particularly long one, either - 9.2 miles, last I checked? That's just under 15 minutes at 45 mph and don't tell me we can't manage to deadhead a train at 45 mph on that line. Hell, we don't even need to deadhead them... change ends, brake test, shuttle every soon-to-be-out-of-service train down that line as one more Fairmount.

That means all the dead commuter rail trains wasting platform space waiting for clearance to go to the yard today are bulking up Fairmount's headways tomorrow, and all the dead commuter rail trains occupying Amtrak's yard downtown evaporate - leaving more than enough room to stash the extra Regionals and Acelas coming down the pipe.

And, hell, Ron Newman raised an excellent point in the UHub thread... subterranean intercity rail stations don't seem to be working out that well for New York, and I can speak with authority that they're not working out well for Providence or Back Bay. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any examples of a buried train yard - but something tells me that burying our yards is bound to work out better than burying our stations has. After all, the biggest gripe - that they're confusing, ugly and unpleasant - doesn't hold as much water when the thing you're burying is already confusing, ugly and unpleasant - and paying customers aren't expected to be there, besides.
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No, they aren't able to create more revenue runs out of thin air from Readville deadheads.

(1) Readville doesn't house any conductor crews. All of those, even on the northside, are based at the terminals themselves. On the northside there is a lot of employee shuttling between BET simply because that's commuter rail world headquarters where all the bosses and HR and payroll are. But on the southside Southampton Yard only has a tiny number of Amtrak-only offices and Readville is maintenance-only. The only trains that directly deadhead out of Readville without a crew-up at SS are a couple Stoughton trains that run empty Readville-Stoughton and run revenue back inbound. And those crews get picked up remote instead of in the yard (usually by grabbing the first available train that'll let them off at Readville or 128, or boarding at Stoughton). So those moves that are getting shuttled to/from Readville and Widett Circle are engineer/inspector-only and couldn't take passengers even if they wanted to. It's a poor location to try to stage crews...little parking or office space, poor road access through Wolcott Sq. residential streets, three different platforms to run to if they need to grab the next ride to SS, and too many cases where a Providence train would have to make a schedule-dragging flag stop to pick up or drop off an employee. All that empty space is crying for a full-service maintenance building and like twice as many storage tracks...but ultimately Readville is a gearheads' workspace, not a potential crew office or a headquarters like BET.

(2) The equipment staging distance you're talking about is Readville-Widett Circle, not Readville-SS. Fairmount trains share the same lead tracks into SS as the 3 Old Colony lines, and there's all sorts of criscrossing yard movements. The OC main is still going to be constrained by the single-tracking in Dorchester no matter how many platforms SS gets, and has to have a wider schedule margin of error through yard limits. Fairmount gets its headway bump via SS expansion by no longer having NEC trains bogarting its platform assignments during rush hour, allowing a more or less clock-facing (i.e. 20-25 min. headway) schedule the hours of the day it matters most. They could do that probably 20 hours a day today if they wanted...just not at 5:00pm or 8:00am, which defeats the purpose of doing it at all. But just because SS expansion eliminates the NEC conflicts all day doesn't mean total capacity through yard limits is changing. As long as the Old Colony still needs schedule priority to the platforms to compensate for its single track the traffic ceiling is still much too low to run a conga line of equipment from Readville straight-to-platform.



What an expanded Readville lets you do is get Widett Circle out of the business of being the southside's lifeboat for all-day ops, and having to plan shifts solely on the margins of what equipment they can cram into every nook and cranny there. What Widett should be is the short-term staging area for trains ready-to-run in and out of the platforms. Readville should be the storage yard where they house the equipment for the next shift in 6 hours. They'll have all the slots in the world in between Fairmount headways to rotate the rush hour sets stored at from Readville into position on the Widett turnouts. They don't have to cross a single conflicting movement for that. They'll also be able to have some dexterity at putting together ultra-long Providence and Worcester consists and much shorter Fairmount consists without worrying how they're going to store them on so few yard tracks or what order they'll wave them in. And they won't need to burn platform time as a de-facto layover much, if ever.

But all that flexibility comes from being able to stage small point-to-point sprints that avoid any schedule dependencies from crisscrossing revenue movements on more than 1 line. Once your yard moves are predicated on Old Colony schedules, or predicated on OC schedules + picking up all customers from Fairmount station-in...9+ miles becomes too far away for a primary yard. So this isn't a question about either/or between Readville and Widett Circle. It's about differentiating them so neither has to be all things to everyone. That's a lousy idea if the pendulum swings too far in Readville's direction too. The best, most flexible, and highest capacity arrangement is if they're playing off each other point-to-point.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
No, they aren't able to create more revenue runs out of thin air from Readville deadheads.

(1) Readville doesn't house any conductor crews. All of those, even on the northside, are based at the terminals themselves. On the northside there is a lot of employee shuttling between BET simply because that's commuter rail world headquarters where all the bosses and HR and payroll are. But on the southside Southampton Yard only has a tiny number of Amtrak-only offices and Readville is maintenance-only. The only trains that directly deadhead out of Readville without a crew-up at SS are a couple Stoughton trains that run empty Readville-Stoughton and run revenue back inbound. And those crews get picked up remote instead of in the yard (usually by grabbing the first available train that'll let them off at Readville or 128, or boarding at Stoughton). So those moves that are getting shuttled to/from Readville and Widett Circle are engineer/inspector-only and couldn't take passengers even if they wanted to. It's a poor location to try to stage crews...little parking or office space, poor road access through Wolcott Sq. residential streets, three different platforms to run to if they need to grab the next ride to SS, and too many cases where a Providence train would have to make a schedule-dragging flag stop to pick up or drop off an employee. All that empty space is crying for a full-service maintenance building and like twice as many storage tracks...but ultimately Readville is a gearheads' workspace, not a potential crew office or a headquarters like BET.
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Okay, fine. I'm not particularly attached to the idea of creating more Fairmount runs out of otherwise-deadheading trains, anyway - it was an idle thought. (For that matter, so was the suggestion to bury our train yards - I'm not particularly attached to that, either.) It's not like I oppose keeping Widett Circle around or anything.

The larger point that I'm trying to make, and the thrust of the argument which I think you agree with is that expanding Readville Yard and allowing that to become the primary layover space for southside commuter rail ops is a move which would be several times more beneficial to the MBTA/MBCR as well as Amtrak for several times less capital expenditure than any other suggestion to date.

Unfortunately, such a move would require more imagination and solution-oriented thinking than blindly slapping down another dozen platforming tracks at South Station, and then having a media circle-jerk of self-congratulating over Gettin' Things Done In Boston. Which is why we're still talking about the South Station Expansion and not quietly working towards building that maintenance facility you mentioned instead.
 
Commuting Boston Student said:
Okay, fine. I'm not particularly attached to the idea of creating more Fairmount runs out of otherwise-deadheading trains, anyway - it was an idle thought. (For that matter, so was the suggestion to bury our train yards - I'm not particularly attached to that, either.) It's not like I oppose keeping Widett Circle around or anything.

The larger point that I'm trying to make, and the thrust of the argument which I think you agree with is that expanding Readville Yard and allowing that to become the primary layover space for southside commuter rail ops is a move which would be several times more beneficial to the MBTA/MBCR as well as Amtrak for several times less capital expenditure than any other suggestion to date.

Unfortunately, such a move would require more imagination and solution-oriented thinking than blindly slapping down another dozen platforming tracks at South Station, and then having a media circle-jerk of self-congratulating over Gettin' Things Done In Boston. Which is why we're still talking about the South Station Expansion and not quietly working towards building that maintenance facility you mentioned instead.
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They need both. It's not either/or. Crossover city is a big traffic choke point. Traffic skews much heavier to the NEC leads and has to spread across about two-thirds of the station platforms to fit it all. If the crossovers are tied up, then that's less traffic you can send to/from the south. That means at peak hours where the NEC side is one train after another the access from Widett Circle is very constrained. The Old Colony gets by with a full schedule by hugging the Post Office wall and crossing through the fewest number of crossovers on the furthest platforms. Fairmount...constrained. Yard moves...constrained. And Amtrak gets priority on yard moves because it's their yard. So platform space gets burnt as a short-term layover for stuff that should be laying over at Widett, and Widett is overfull because it can't shuttle enough equipment around at the busiest times of day.

Too many trains, too many conflicting movements, through too few track switches. There's no single point of failure, but the whole operation gets plugged up. Expanding SS and fanning out the tracks from the south before they start blurring with NEC traffic allows for multiple simultaneous moves from different directions. It'll help with Fairmount to be able to go out every 20 minutes at peak with zero conflicts from the NEC side. But what it'll really really do is let an NEC come in and hug one of the Atlantic Ave.-side platforms at the exact same moment another NEC-assigned train is staging out of Widett to one of the middle platforms. THOSE are the ones that today have to layover on-platform and chew up slots instead of being able to shuttle quickly in/out. And those are the ones that buy all the new schedule flex for everywhere at an expanded station.

It's not too little yard space so much as too-constrained yard movement that's killing them. They don't have enough free moments in/out of the platforms from the layover yard, so the platforms become the layover yard, the layover yard becomes the storage yard, and the storage yard becomes the dead-storage yard. To make Widett work like it's supposed to they need to eliminate the conflicts with like 4 out of 5 NEC-originating tracks so they can send empties in/out all day whenever they want. Then let Fairmount, OC, etc. hug the Dot Ave. side in peace unaffected by any revenue moves off the NEC. Building out Readville doesn't help the Widett-to-platform flow that's the killer. If they spend the money out in Readville first it buys them some flex...but not flex they can apply during the very busiest hours when conflicting movements give them the most trouble shuttling empties to the platform.


Nothing else they do is going to matter as much as fixing the SS platforms. They can sort of hide around it no-build for a few more years if they diverted more or all Franklin trains over Fairmount to buff out that schedule while freeing up a couple NEC slots. And they can maybe borrow CSX-vacated Beacon Park Loop + carhouse for a few years to stuff Worcester equipment and Widett overflow, and maybe do some refueling and light maintenance. But that's about it. NEC ridership growth is going to quickly overwhelm any of those measures and put the Widett-to-platform bottleneck back at the forefront. At their best, the keep-away tactics punt the problem another 10 years before it's more acute than ever.


What they should be doing is build the SS tracks, THEN worry about what glass eye candy they want to put on top of it. Is anyone going to complain if the Dot Ave. side is open to the elements with prefab platform shelters for a few years? No. 'Cause that's sort of what it is now around Track 13. How long did North Station riders have to wait before they got a real waiting room? There's no reason this whole thing has to seize up on unreachable aesthetics when the aesthetics in question aren't even structurally related to the train tracks and platforms. Treat it as two separate projects: the transportation project, and the indirectly-related building project that may one day cloak the transportation project.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
There's no reason this whole thing has to seize up on unreachable aesthetics when the aesthetics in question aren't even structurally related to the train tracks and platforms. Treat it as two separate projects: the transportation project, and the indirectly-related building project that may one day cloak the transportation project.
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Is unreachable aesthetics really the problem? I thought the project was seized up on the USPS clinging to land far more central and valuable than they deserve...
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Nothing else they do is going to matter as much as fixing the SS platforms. They can sort of hide around it no-build for a few more years if they diverted more or all Franklin trains over Fairmount to buff out that schedule while freeing up a couple NEC slots. And they can maybe borrow CSX-vacated Beacon Park Loop + carhouse for a few years to stuff Worcester equipment and Widett overflow, and maybe do some refueling and light maintenance. But that's about it. NEC ridership growth is going to quickly overwhelm any of those measures and put the Widett-to-platform bottleneck back at the forefront. At their best, the keep-away tactics punt the problem another 10 years before it's more acute than ever.
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Every day we can push the deadline back is one more day we've got to find a solution to the problem that doesn't involve either making the track-switch bonanza you so lovingly refer to as crossover city worse by adding even more switches, or turning South Station into a sprawling wide expanse of platforms.

I'm sure everyone's sick and tired of going over the Rail Link debate, so instead of opening that can of worms (again) I'm just going to point out that in the event it ever gets built, the platforms for it are going to have to be built underneath the existing ones by geometric necessity and if we have to dig anything, that makes tons more sense than moving South Station ever would.

Equilibria said:
Is unreachable aesthetics really the problem? I thought the project was seized up on the USPS clinging to land far more central and valuable than they deserve...
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If we're going to argue about land being at a valuable premium and use that as the ruling metric by which we decide what we should and shouldn't do, I don't think that widening South Station is all that much better than USPS in the 'value-oriented land use' department.

I guess you could argue that we can always go back and build over the rails a la the bus terminal, or that it's not like developers are lining up with proposals to develop there, but meh. We can do better than this.
 
Equilibria said:
Is unreachable aesthetics really the problem? I thought the project was seized up on the USPS clinging to land far more central and valuable than they deserve...
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The USPS isn't clinging to that parcel. The problem is nobody can @#$% come to an agreement about what the new USPS building is going to look like. Because the BRA has its fangs sunk deep into the whole thing and has gummed up the works with a lot of Seaport District neighborhood 'synergy' navel-gazing. Which is ultimately a lot about aesthetic considerations that don't really matter. The new facility closer to Southie Bypass Rd. is going to be a lot more vertical...it's not going to deaden an entire city block. Even without a final design it's a massive aesthetic improvement to what it's replacing both at SS and in the windswept parking lots occupying the new location. The usual suspects dawdled so long on the plans and the price tag rose so much that when USPS hit its acute Congressional funding crisis the whole thing started to implode. They had a wide window of opportunity and totally fiddled it away.


Both of these outgoing and incoming USPS parcels are being ground to a halt by making straightforward transportation projects (USPS's main function also being transportation) into monument-building projects. Until the transportation functions become completely secondary and get chucked aside by the mission creep in the monument-building. S.S.D.D. with the suspects involved.
 
Commuting Boston Student said:
Every day we can push the deadline back is one more day we've got to find a solution to the problem that doesn't involve either making the track-switch bonanza you so lovingly refer to as crossover city worse by adding even more switches, or turning South Station into a sprawling wide expanse of platforms.
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Wait...you're misunderstanding something very fundamental about the expansion. It ELIMINATES most cross movements at the switches. That's the deal. It is more a traffic management project than it is a platform project.

You right now have a pronounced traffic skew in the NEC direction that takes up easily 2/3 of the platforms, so trains on the 5 NEC lead tracks heading into the station have to fan out over the switches onto the middle third of the station platforms. You then have 4 lead tracks from the Widett direction that are constantly choked because slots on the middle-third platforms are chewed up by crossing traffic fanning out from the NEC side. Only the OC trains that hug the wall throughout have anything resembling a clear shot in/out. This setup totally murders the ability to send deadheads in and out on-demand at peak hours. They have to grab whatever opening is available and hog a platform instead of timing their shot. This is unnatural traffic movement because the station is less-than half the size it used to be. And when it was halved in size there was no revenue traffic whatsoever in the Widett direction and much less traffic overall, so the deadheads could just wait in line behind crossover city and not worry about blocking anything. It's a station designed for the 1987 southside.

What the new platforms create are more wall space. The leads to the new platforms peel out in the parking lot behind the Pike ventilation building with switches staggered a couple feet behind crossover city so OC, Fairmount, deadheads going to the new platforms can get in and out without a single conflicting movement. NEC direction gets assigned 100% of the existing platforms, so when they bank across the switches to what's now the far side they aren't blocking anything from the Widett direction. (Although crossover city will get more total switches added in the rarer event that an NEC train needs to bank all the way across to Dot Ave. and discharge as an NEC inbound while re-loading as an OC outbound). The deadheads can essentially choose-their-adventure...take the conflict-free 'early-turnout' switches for the Dot Ave. side or have a wider spread of available platforms through the regular switches.

It's re-creating the traffic flow of the old 28-platform historic station, which could also do conflict-free movements from both directions and Southampton/Widett:
http://ia700301.us.archive.org/Book...nsactionsofam43amer_0135.jp2&scale=3&rotate=0
http://www.shorpy.com/node/7451?size=_original#caption
Not quite as grand a scale, but it restores traffic flow back to supporting two full directions of revenue traffic and constant yard movements...two things the southside didn't have to do when SS was half-demolished and which nobody in the 1970's thought it would ever have to do again.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Wait...you're misunderstanding something very fundamental about the expansion. It ELIMINATES most cross movements at the switches. That's the deal. It is more a traffic management project than it is a platform project.
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I get what you're saying, but I still see the potential for this to end up very, very badly simply because fundamentally, even if they're only rarely ever to be used, adding more switches creates more opportunities for things to go wrong - especially once the extra-large Worcester Line consists start entering the picture.

Based on what you're saying, the first four tracks would be all Worcester-west, and tracks 10-13 would go out to Widett Circle, thus creating a situation where we've got to block up six or more (perhaps as many as 10) tracks to get the 10-car consist into position. But maybe I'm missing something important, again.

It's not like we can somehow separate all the tracks anyway, at least, not without tanking our operational flexibility right to hell.
 
Knowledge region transit ideas​

Station Service levels

Regional Rail

-Express & Local , Service every 5-15mins during peak , and 20mins of peak. Connecting transit service like other regional rail lines , Light rail , express bus or streetcars available. Or can service an Important town or tourist destination....or Airport. TOD and Infill around these stations is common....

-Local , Service is every 5-15mins during peak and 30-60mins off peak , connecting transit Services can include buses and streetcars. Each station has some parking , and usually is attached to a large TOD.

-Commuter , Service is only during peak hours , these stations are often duplicate or in overlapping transit coverage areas yet they keep the local and main stations from becoming over stressed and allow for more Infill and TOD.

Tram-Train

-Express & local , these stations receive both services , every 2-10mins all day , and are located along street running segments and important stations near large developments....

-Local , these stations are located mainly in residential areas , they have limited parking and are often walk stations.... Service ranges between 5-15mins all day , connecting service is mostly in the form of a bus or taxi.

Knowledge Corridor
Brattleboro
Vermont Yankee
Bernardston
Greenfield
Deerfield
South Deerfield
Northampton
Holyoke
Willimansett
Chicopee
Springfield Riverfront
Longmeadow
Thompsonville
Enfield
Windsor Locks
Windsor
North End
Hartford Union
Parkville
Newington
New Britian Ave
Berlin
Meriden
Wallingford
North Haven
Fair Haven
New Haven State Street
New Haven Union

Hartford Metro
Williamantic
Bolton - I-384 Park and Ride
Vernon
Manchester
I-84 Park Ride
East Hartford
Hartford Union
Parkville
New Britian
Plainville
Forestville
Bristol
Pequabuck
Waterbury

North-South Metro (Tram-Train)

Windsor Locks
Bradley International Airport
Tunisx Ave
Woodland Manor
Bloomfield
South Bloomfield
University of Hartford - Blue Hills
Hartford Union Transit Center
Downtown Hartford
South Green
South End
Wethersfield
I-91 Park & Ride
Ferry Park
Rocky Hill
Cromwell
Middletown

East-West Link
Woronoco - I-90 Park & Ride
Westfield
Westfield Street
West Springfield
Springfield Union
McKnight
Indian Orchard
Palmer

What do you think?

https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=215312482559953359515.0004d29540779d127ed7b&msa=0&ll=41.902277,-72.342224&spn=1.38801,3.348083&iwloc=0004d295bc8f4092c1066
 
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Who would even use the I-84 park & ride east of Hartford to get to Hartford? It's picking up no population. Unless you're expecting to induce some sprawl (which will happen).
 
Are all the red links in the Hartford area light rail? Maybe the Airport link should be extended to the Windsor Locks station, so people going to the airport can transfer from the Knowledge Corridor in Windsor Locks instead of Hartford.

Edit: I agree with BostonUbEx, a Park and Ride should probably be closer in, maybe around the 291-84 junction area.

I also wonder if Middletown could be more cheaply served with a spur off the KnC line from Meriden, rather than its own line. Is Middletown big enough to justify its own line?
 
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I Extended the line to Williamantic and Extended the Airport line to Windsor locks. Yes the Red lines are LRT or Streetcars...
 
It really bothers me that the tracks and Six Flags are both on the wrong side of the river relative to each other, especially since you flagged a stop from which you could look over and see the park, yet have no way to get there.

What a waste...

Also, the East-West Link is totally devoid of an actual eastern anchor or really any reason to venture east of Indiand Orchard / Eastfield Station. Since you're already running as far as Palmer as it is, I really don't see any reason not to turn south and run to Stafford Springs or an I-84 Park and Ride somewhere out there.

Sure, it's not GREAT... but it's better than dead-ending in Palmer of all places.

Bonus Crazy Option: Run the whole damn thing out Pittsfield-Worcester instead, and have it making all the stops you wouldn't want a BOS - ALB train making!
 
Commuting Boston Student said:
I get what you're saying, but I still see the potential for this to end up very, very badly simply because fundamentally, even if they're only rarely ever to be used, adding more switches creates more opportunities for things to go wrong - especially once the extra-large Worcester Line consists start entering the picture.
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Switches are not some ticking timebomb waiting to fail at any moment. Terminals get the most overbuilt, highest MTBF equipment of anywhere on the RR; they are out there inspecting and servicing every single night when nothing's running except an occasional Amtrak red-eye hugging the Atlantic Ave. wall; there's an inspector hut literally next to the switches for instant manual assistance during a fault; and they don't get punished by cumbersome freights like junctions out in the field. How many times have you ever heard of the entire southside getting hosed in unison by a problem at SS? This is nowhere near the most complex track layout amongst union stations in the country. Penn, Grand Central, Washington Union, and Chicago Union immediately come to mind, but if you're talking lead track complexity...I bet there are 4 or 5 others that have a more dizzying maze of switches into the platforms.

This is a non-issue. And it was a non-issue from 1899-1970something when the station was at its fullest extent.

Based on what you're saying, the first four tracks would be all Worcester-west, and tracks 10-13 would go out to Widett Circle, thus creating a situation where we've got to block up six or more (perhaps as many as 10) tracks to get the 10-car consist into position. But maybe I'm missing something important, again.

It's not like we can somehow separate all the tracks anyway, at least, not without tanking our operational flexibility right to hell.
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The reconfigured switches would permit movements ANYWHERE to ANY PLATFORM. Look at the gigantic picture of SS from 1904 and how crossover city formed a neat-and-tidy X for the left-side (NEC) and center (Southampton/Old Colony) lead tracks. It would be something similar in the new station. And much like the old station (see surface tracks from right that miss most of the crossovers) there would additionally be early-turnouts from the south for Old Colony and Fairmount trains pulling out to the Dot Ave. side to avoid conflicting movements. The only major track (not platform) parts missing vs. the 1904 pic are the underground loop (which never got used), the coal fueling yard on the Dot Ave. side, and the baggage/mail car turnouts on the Atlantic Ave. side (which got shunted by yard switchers onto the backs of departing trains).

In practice your platform assignments would be all current platforms devoted to NEC direction, so they can simply divide and fan out to the right across the switches...but without movements from the south needing to be funneled onto the same platforms on conflicting movements. OC and Fairmount trains would continue hugging the wall on the new platforms, but using the early-turnout switches to avoid conflicting movements with anything from the NEC direction. And deadheads can choose any platform up the center...sometimes crossing traffic, sometimes not, but always having the option to go in during highest-congestion times to a non-conflicting platform. Say, if there's a Worcester deadhead coming out of the yard...when there's a non-conflicting slot it'll cross over to its usual spot on Tracks 1-3 (or wherever it's usually assigned), but when there's an active movement off the NEC you can send that Worcester deadhead to Track 12-14 and avoid the conflict. It'll mean you won't always board at exactly the same platform every single day and have to watch the schedule board and announcements more closely, but that's how it works at other union stations that aren't nearly as static with their platform assignments. At 5:00pm crush load you could probably have a half-dozen total trains crossing through simultaneously from the NEC, Widett, and Old Colony directions...whereas I doubt there's a way to do more than 2 or 3 simultaneous movements today with all conflicting movements protected, and definitely no way to have a Widett move mixed in with simultaneous NEC + OC. That is, in total, what opens up proper yard deadheading instead of hogging platforms as the de facto layover.

Everything's in/out, in/out, in/out with dizzying regularity. And that opens up 50+ years worth of new schedule slots for a clock-facing Fairmount schedule (with whatever combo of expanding Franklin/Foxboro thru trains get bootstrapped on), doubled Worcester, constantly expanding Providence and Amtrak frequencies, South Coast and Cape full schedules. And the original studies even said it would support some completely 'other' extensions like Northborough-via-Framingham or (probably not anymore) Millis-via-Needham.
 
Here's some technical docs on what track layout's proposed: http://www.massdot.state.ma.us/Portals/25/Docs/FRA_HSIPR/Attachment_1.pdf. Rather than having a single-point "X", they spread out crossover city with more crossovers downstream on each track and allow for redundant points across from every direction. NEC having by far the most options and the most redundancy. As expected, Worcester's going to cluster to the Atlantic Ave. wall side and OC is going to cluster to the Dot Ave. wall side. Anywhere can get to any platform. And deadheads have the easiest path into the middle platforms.

From the looks of it, this is how the platform assignments are going to cluster with the fewest conflicting movements:
Worcester/Amtrak LSL/Amtrak Inland - Tracks 1-7
Providence/Stoughton/South Coast/Needham/Franklin/Amtrak NEC - Tracks 8-16
Fairmount/Franklin/Foxboro - Tracks 15-16
Middleboro/Cape/Kingston/Plymouth/Greenbush - Tracks 17-20

Mix-and-match of course possible, so NEC's almost certainly going to fan out onto the Worcester turf with the lowest-frequency trains (Needham, Franklin, LSL) probably crossing furthest off-alignment.

One scenario (of several) that would net the max simultaneous number of protected moves:
Worcester (2) - Tracks 1/2/3 + 4/5
NEC (3) - Tracks 6/7/8 + 9/10 + 11/12
Fairmount (1) - Tracks 13/14/15
Old Colony (1) - Tracks 17/18/19/20

7 simultaneous revenue moves across Tower 1 interlocking. A Widett/Southampton deadhead would only have a conflict with the OC or Fairmount train if it needed to be the 7th simultaneous movement in/out, and that can be sitting at Broadway or Ft. Point interlockings ready and waiting to scoot across the first cleared path through Tower 1 interlocking instead of being stuck back in the yard.
 
2 New lines thought up are the Pittsfield/Worcester line & the Williamstown Branch...

Pittsfield/Worcester line
Pittsfield
Dalton
Chester
Huntington
Westfield
Westfield Street
West Springfield
Springfield Union
McKnight
Indian Orchard
Palmer
Warren
Rochdale
Webster SQ
University Park
Worcester Union

Williamstown Branch
Williamstown
North Adams
Shelburne Falls
Greenfield
 
It looks to me like there is easily enough room along the entire Grand Junction ROW and out on the Worcester tracks to Market St for a light rail line.

gjlightrail.jpg


The problems I see are that you'd need to work out with MBCR how to time-segregate non-revenue North-South moves. Also, the line wouldn't serve downtown and would only be a partial urban ring. Does it even make sense from a demand perspective?
 
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