Crazy Transit Pitches

[Riverside]

Don't overcomplicate. Straightest shot and least ops-compromised routing is Blue. Even the original Riverbank plan didn't try to fuss it that much.

Of course, the original plan brings up another crazy idea: Riverbank as a branch(?) of the Red Line.

I'm basically kidding (if it ain't broke, don't fix it), though the idea has the benefit of being, well, crazy. (Although I must admit that I can't really think of any other benefits!)

There's also the possibility of running a Riverbank service as a shuttle, between Gov't Center or Park (or Haymarket or Charles or whatever) and Kenmore or Allston or Longwood. I don't think it's a particularly great idea, but maybe if it were built as an HRT line on a partially reclaimed Storrow, between Charles and Kenmore, it could then later be linked up with a Blue-Red Connector.

Again, I'm not sure why you would do a Riverbank shuttle first, before a B-R connector, but sometimes politics makes things happen like that. *shrug*

When did Leverett Circle enter this conversation? Riverbank-as-Green doesn't even get close to Leverett.

Beacon Hill is age-old terra firma and we have a pretty good idea of everything potentially lurking in the dirt down there. Back Bay fill isn't touched, the Boston Common trap isn't touched, neither of the graveyards constraining Park-Gov't Center are touched.

Total amount of tunneling required, end-to-end, 3765 feet - about 1900 of that is under a one-way, low priority back street and another 600 is directly underneath state-owned land.

I should note that even if you don't like that routing (in fairness, it would require nontrivial reconfigurations to Park Street to connect the new platforms that would need to be built there), that's far from the only routing possible.

I like this alignment, though I agree that it's problematic in how you would need to reconfigure Park. (And I worry about digging under the State House!) It frees the Blue Line up to either terminate at Charles (or at a transfer station on the Riverbank subway), or do other crazy stuff, like head south to Huntington Ave (not super crazy about that idea), the South End (could be worse) or over to Cambridge, which I like best, though then you run into the problem of how to cross the Charles. Assuming you can run Blue on Red tracks (is the voltage the same and all that?), you still have to deal with reconfiguring Charles to serve both lines (limited platform extensions that only extend when a Blue train arrives? gauntlet tracks?). But I digress.

I decided to have some fun and expand on the repercussions of this alignment. See here.

The big points:
-Green converted to HRT partially south of Park, completely to the north
-Green HRT uses outer tracks between Park and Boylston, and then runs south through the old Tremont Street Subway to a transfer station at Oak Street, where LR from Dudley and points south (and possibly Southie) transfer (there is the possibility of a sub-subway between Oak and Boylston, allowing direct LRT access to downtown, though I don't know the feasibility of this)
-Green HRT shares trackage with Orange from just south of Oak to Back Bay, before skipping over to a newly extended Huntington Ave subway to Riverway; where it goes after that, I didn't decide
-Green LRT continues to run in Boylston Street Subway from Kenmore to Park, using the middle tracks between Boylston and Park, and turning at Park
-Green LRT also runs in a subway to South Station before surfacing and serving the Greenway, North End and North Station
-Green HRT continues north of Lechmere, probably in two branches (Porter and Medford Hillside-ish); a few LRT lines terminate at Lechmere Transfer (most unmarked on this map)
-Green HRT in the Riverbank subway runs to Kenmore Transfer; after that, I didn't decide
-Blue is extended to Charles/MGH-West*, and possibly down to the Riverbank**
-Instead of reconfiguring Park, I added a whole new station at Beacon Hill***
-"Transfer" in a station name indicates a major terminus for LRT lines and therefore a transfer point

*MGH is huge, geographically speaking (among other things) and I predict it will only get larger. Therefore, I've renamed Charles/MGH to Charles/MGH-West, and have created a newly relocated and renovated station to replace Bowdoin, named Staniford/MGH-East, located to better serve the eastern end of MGH's campus.

**Someone here (CBS? davem?), I believe, once proposed that the Blue Line should terminate downtown as a matter of principle, arguing that it has a unique purpose of connecting opposite sides of the Harbor. While this argument has its appeals, I'm not sure I agree with it. Still, I'm experimenting with some of its ramifications right now, so I've curtailed the Blue Line around Beacon Hill.

**I'm not crazy about this: I toyed with having "Park Street North" for the Riverbank line be somewhere around Bowdoin Street and then have a long walkway to Park Street. But that's still a looong pedestrian tunnel, and Park Street North wouldn't really serve any new areas. The Beacon Hill stop at least would serve more new people. (Though I hate to slow down the Red Line yet more.)

Hell, it probably isn't even the best routing! This alternative, which would require provisioning Red-Blue for four tracks but is otherwise Blue-eats-D in reverse, (and cuts the required tunneling down to 700 feet instead of 3700) de-emphasizes the extreme amount of transfer pressure in the downtown core by providing a nearby transfer nexus between Red, Blue, and HRT Green at Charles/MGH. (This might even validate Bowdoin's continued existence as a Blue/Green transfer to mitigate bypassing Gov't!) As an added bonus, it's great prep work for if we ever decide, some great many years in the future, to pursue a system closer to New York's in the sense that we can run branches and alt routings from one line to another without too much issue.

I'm less crazy about this alignment, though I admire its creativity. Part of my problem is that, while MGH is a huge employer and destination to be sure, this would seem to route the Green Line away from most of downtown. And I'm not sure that's such a great idea.

Although I suppose in some ways, it's the same model with have now, just with some of the locations changed around.

What route were you planning the Blue Line to have in this arrangement?

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

Of course, the original plan brings up another crazy idea: Riverbank as a branch(?) of the Red Line.

I'm basically kidding (if it ain't broke, don't fix it), though the idea has the benefit of being, well, crazy. (Although I must admit that I can't really think of any other benefits!)

There's also the possibility of running a Riverbank service as a shuttle, between Gov't Center or Park (or Haymarket or Charles or whatever) and Kenmore or Allston or Longwood. I don't think it's a particularly great idea, but maybe if it were built as an HRT line on a partially reclaimed Storrow, between Charles and Kenmore, it could then later be linked up with a Blue-Red Connector.

Again, I'm not sure why you would do a Riverbank shuttle first, before a B-R connector, but sometimes politics makes things happen like that. *shrug*

Riverbank isn't happening until 2040 at the earliest, and it's probably another 2050 project.

Meanwhile, Red-Blue is a higher priority project than anything else, and the MBTA isn't going to be able to fight doing it for very much longer. Either they'll do an about face and complete the study, then get the connector done in a year or two OR crush loads on the downtown core stations are going to force the issue in 2020. There aren't any other options.

I like this alignment, though I agree that it's problematic in how you would need to reconfigure Park. (And I worry about digging under the State House!)

In a place like Boston where the history of the city is measured in centuries but the records only go back decades, the overwhelming majority of logistical problems can be directly attributed to the preliminary work associated with tunneling. The actual tunnel itself isn't going to cost all that much when run up against the cost of clearing an actual path for the tunnel to run that doesn't have it bisecting, say, a vital underground power line. If you're deep-boring your tunnel, you can work around this to some extent by just dipping under the offending piece of miscellaneous infrastructure - but for obvious reasons, this requires you to actually know where the thing you're trying to avoid even is.

You also need to be sensitive to how your tunnel is going to actually effect the surrounding environment. Causing a change in the water table, or accidentally destroying a vital piece of building foundation would be... bad.

But none of these things are technically impossible. We have and we've had all the technology we'd ever need to cover the entirety of Greater Boston with tunnels if we really, really wanted to. The real problem, as it usually tends to be, is finding the money. (The other real problem is convincing people that it is in their best interest for you to come in, rip up their streets, and document everything you find underneath them. It's probably useful, then, to attach some kind of infrastructure component (and not necessarily a subway) to the project, tying the whole mess back to something more tangible than a bunch of comprehensive sewage maps.)

The original routing I had for Green Line HRT diverged off Storrow and on to Beacon Street, which got us about 200 feet closer to the existing Park Street station. Unfortunately, that also got us 200 feet closer to the historical impacts landmine clusterfuck-waiting-to-happen that is Boston Common, and ripping up Beacon Street has a much more noted impact on Boston traffic than ripping up Chestnut Street would.

Similarly, I imagine the biggest problem with ripping out the floor of the State House basement is that politicians might be unduly affected by the noise of Men at Work. (Then again, you might be the type who considers that an unsung bonus. I won't judge, I promise. )

Overall, it's a far more actionable proposal than you might think.

It frees the Blue Line up to either terminate at Charles (or at a transfer station on the Riverbank subway), or do other crazy stuff, like head south to Huntington Ave (not super crazy about that idea), the South End (could be worse) or over to Cambridge, which I like best, though then you run into the problem of how to cross the Charles. Assuming you can run Blue on Red tracks (is the voltage the same and all that?), you still have to deal with reconfiguring Charles to serve both lines (limited platform extensions that only extend when a Blue train arrives? gauntlet tracks?). But I digress.

You can run Blue anywhere in the system as long as there's some kind of physical track connection, or if you manually deposit a Blue train onto the tracks somehow.

The real problem is that there's exactly six elevated stations left in the system and one of them is Charles/MGH - and Red/Blue is going to put the Blue Line's terminus in the basement. The city of Boston hasn't yet woken up from it's El-based regional nightmare - so actually physically connecting Blue tracks to Red tracks at Charles/MGH is emphatically Not Happening. (Although the schadenfreude generated by the trauma of actually proposing a Riverbank El would be pretty amazing.)

I decided to have some fun and expand on the repercussions of this alignment. See here.

The big points:
-Green converted to HRT partially south of Park, completely to the north
-Green HRT uses outer tracks between Park and Boylston, and then runs south through the old Tremont Street Subway to a transfer station at Oak Street, where LR from Dudley and points south (and possibly Southie) transfer (there is the possibility of a sub-subway between Oak and Boylston, allowing direct LRT access to downtown, though I don't know the feasibility of this)
-Green HRT shares trackage with Orange from just south of Oak to Back Bay, before skipping over to a newly extended Huntington Ave subway to Riverway; where it goes after that, I didn't decide
-Green LRT continues to run in Boylston Street Subway from Kenmore to Park, using the middle tracks between Boylston and Park, and turning at Park
-Green LRT also runs in a subway to South Station before surfacing and serving the Greenway, North End and North Station
-Green HRT continues north of Lechmere, probably in two branches (Porter and Medford Hillside-ish); a few LRT lines terminate at Lechmere Transfer (most unmarked on this map)
-Green HRT in the Riverbank subway runs to Kenmore Transfer; after that, I didn't decide
-Blue is extended to Charles/MGH-West*, and possibly down to the Riverbank**
-Instead of reconfiguring Park, I added a whole new station at Beacon Hill***
-"Transfer" in a station name indicates a major terminus for LRT lines and therefore a transfer point

*MGH is huge, geographically speaking (among other things) and I predict it will only get larger. Therefore, I've renamed Charles/MGH to Charles/MGH-West, and have created a newly relocated and renovated station to replace Bowdoin, named Staniford/MGH-East, located to better serve the eastern end of MGH's campus.

**Someone here (CBS? davem?), I believe, once proposed that the Blue Line should terminate downtown as a matter of principle, arguing that it has a unique purpose of connecting opposite sides of the Harbor. While this argument has its appeals, I'm not sure I agree with it. Still, I'm experimenting with some of its ramifications right now, so I've curtailed the Blue Line around Beacon Hill.

The ideal ridership distribution on any given transit line isn't generated by a hub-and-spoke system where everyone is trying to get to the center. That creates a bell curve where you end up with crush-loaded trains through the middle but severely underutilized trains at the fringes. Going branch-crazy helps mitigate that by ensuring that the least-utilized fringes get the lowest level of service, but I'd rather try and avoid the problem altogether if there's no reason to introduce it.

The ideal ridership distribution is a mostly flat line, with even amounts of utilization in both directions. We can generate that kind of utilization pattern by having extremely strong anchors on both ends of our line but a comparatively weaker middle section. In the case of the Blue Line, extending it anywhere outside of downtown means the center of the Line moves closer to downtown, and it becomes more hub-and-spoke-like. One of the things I actually like about Blue-Salem is that it's a very strong outer anchor, and cutting Blue at Charles/MGH means that the entire Blue Line is a downtown-to-downtown style affair. Extremely strong at Downtown/South Salem, extremely strong west of Airport, with just as many people boarding the line to go in one direction as they are the other. Rather than having empty trains at either end and crush-loaded trains in the middle, we'd have comfortably full trains at every stop on the line.

**I'm not crazy about this: I toyed with having "Park Street North" for the Riverbank line be somewhere around Bowdoin Street and then have a long walkway to Park Street. But that's still a looong pedestrian tunnel, and Park Street North wouldn't really serve any new areas. The Beacon Hill stop at least would serve more new people. (Though I hate to slow down the Red Line yet more.)

500 feet isn't that long when you really get down to it. It's about 1/10th of a mile. (It's also about how long you'd have to walk to go from Gov't Center to Bowdoin today.)

I'm less crazy about this alignment, though I admire its creativity. Part of my problem is that, while MGH is a huge employer and destination to be sure, this would seem to route the Green Line away from most of downtown. And I'm not sure that's such a great idea.

Although I suppose in some ways, it's the same model with have now, just with some of the locations changed around.

Part of its draw to me is precisely that it does route the Green Line away from most - but not all - of downtown. (The other part is that we've gotten the tunneling down to about 300 yards after Red/Blue and confined it all to a single, well-documented area of the city. Not to mention, we've created a connection between Blue tracks and HRT Green tracks, which might be useful later.)

Red-Blue will go a long way towards mitigating the real problems we're having with crush loads at Park/State/DTX/Gov't, don't get me wrong. But I'm not so sure it's really going to do enough.

Routing the Green Line away from Park and Gov't creates more transfer opportunities, but doesn't come at the expense of people trying to get downtown - Charles/MGH, Bowdoin and Haymarket are all one stop away from Park, Gov't, and State respectively, and they're also reasonably close enough that you could walk the rest of the way if you so chose.

What route were you planning the Blue Line to have in this arrangement?

I'm not planning for the Blue Line to do anything. Red-Blue is a separate issue, Blue-Lynn and Blue-Salem are separate issues, and believe it or not, I am actually capable of recognizing when a project is getting too monolithic - as it would be if we were focusing on extending the Blue Line in both directions at the same time.

We can discuss Blue to somewhere else after Blue to Lynn and Blue to Charles/MGH are both done.

 

[Equilibria]

The ideal ridership distribution on any given transit line isn't generated by a hub-and-spoke system where everyone is trying to get to the center. That creates a bell curve where you end up with crush-loaded trains through the middle but severely underutilized trains at the fringes. Going branch-crazy helps mitigate that by ensuring that the least-utilized fringes get the lowest level of service, but I'd rather try and avoid the problem altogether if there's no reason to introduce it.

The ideal ridership distribution is a mostly flat line, with even amounts of utilization in both directions. We can generate that kind of utilization pattern by having extremely strong anchors on both ends of our line but a comparatively weaker middle section. In the case of the Blue Line, extending it anywhere outside of downtown means the center of the Line moves closer to downtown, and it becomes more hub-and-spoke-like. One of the things I actually like about Blue-Salem is that it's a very strong outer anchor, and cutting Blue at Charles/MGH means that the entire Blue Line is a downtown-to-downtown style affair. Extremely strong at Downtown/South Salem, extremely strong west of Airport, with just as many people boarding the line to go in one direction as they are the other. Rather than having empty trains at either end and crush-loaded trains in the middle, we'd have comfortably full trains at every stop on the line.

The logic here is valid, but I don't think it could possibly apply in this case. While yes, ideal utilization involves an equal demand going in both directions at all times of day, there simply is no way to place anything at the other end of the dumbell that would balance the demand of Downtown Boston. Maybe I could see this working in a place like Dallas-Fort Worth where there's a large CBD on both ends, but Salem? You're actually proposing this in reference to the more realistic Lynn extension, which really isn't a dumbell at all, but just half of a hub-and-spoke line, with the added disadvantage that there's no train storage on one end.

According to this logic, utilization on basically all the Commuter Rail lines should be ideal, since they have Boston on one end and Worcester/Providence/Lowell on the other. In fact, even the Fitchburg and Haverhill lines should see even utilization, since they're the same size as Salem.

In any case, if you really wanted a balanced system, why wouldn't you want to extend the Blue to Salem on one end and Waltham on the other? That would give you basically equal reverse commute demands on both ends with the mass of Downtown Boston in the center.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

The logic here is valid, but I don't think it could possibly apply in this case. While yes, ideal utilization involves an equal demand going in both directions at all times of day, there simply is no way to place anything at the other end of the dumbell that would balance the demand of Downtown Boston. Maybe I could see this working in a place like Dallas-Fort Worth where there's a large CBD on both ends, but Salem? You're actually proposing this in reference to the more realistic Lynn extension, which really isn't a dumbell at all, but just half of a hub-and-spoke line, with the added disadvantage that there's no train storage on one end.

According to this logic, utilization on basically all the Commuter Rail lines should be ideal, since they have Boston on one end and Worcester/Providence/Lowell on the other. In fact, even the Fitchburg and Haverhill lines should see even utilization, since they're the same size as Salem.

In any case, if you really wanted a balanced system, why wouldn't you want to extend the Blue to Salem on one end and Waltham on the other? That would give you basically equal reverse commute demands on both ends with the mass of Downtown Boston in the center.

I want a (more) balanced line. Trying to balance the entire system is impossible for a number of reasons.

In the case of the Commuter Rail lines, distance and frequencies and the fact that (especially in Haverhill's case) the line is absolute garbage from an operational standpoint all play a role in determining what your actual utilization is going to be.

In the case of the Providence Line, about half of your actual ridership is riding Amtrak instead, which explains why the pattern doesn't match in that case. Lowell looks pretty uniform, except for Anderson RTC (explainable) - same with Worcester with the exception of Framingham (explainable) and West Natick (what the hell?).

Salem is about the same size as Fitchburg, but Salem's 16 miles away and Fitchburg is about 50. That, and the fact that Salem has value as a destination from a tourism/travel standpoint, is why it will make a good outer anchor even if the demand distribution isn't going to be a perfect 50/50.

 

[Matthew]

In the case of the Providence Line, about half of your actual ridership is riding Amtrak instead

Is that really true? Seems like Amtrak's schedule is only good for a reverse commuter. And since South Station is the terminal, the schedule is more reliable going south in the morning anyhow.

 

[Riverside]

Riverbank isn't happening until 2040 at the earliest, and it's probably another 2050 project.

Meanwhile, Red-Blue is a higher priority project than anything else, and the MBTA isn't going to be able to fight doing it for very much longer. Either they'll do an about face and complete the study, then get the connector done in a year or two OR crush loads on the downtown core stations are going to force the issue in 2020. There aren't any other options.

Yes, of course, realistically, Riverbank is not far from pie-in-the-sky status and Red-Blue is a legitimate project that will eventually happen. I'm not disputing that.

What I'm saying is that a crazy idea would be to build a Riverbank shuttle first, taking inspiration from the original plan way back when. Let's say we could get some very wealthy Back Bay-ers to sponsor the line, the way the new Brighton Landing Station is going to be built. Blue-Red is tied up, already in process, but these donors could privately fund the necessary studies, and could then fund and solicit funds for the actual construction of the line. The hardest part would be obtaining the rights-of-way from the City, especially Storrow, but if the price were right, who knows? Maybe the City would take it.

Crazy? Yes. Unlikely to happen? Yes. Could work? I think so.

You also need to be sensitive to how your tunnel is going to actually effect the surrounding environment. Causing a change in the water table, or accidentally destroying a vital piece of building foundation would be... bad.

But none of these things are technically impossible. We have and we've had all the technology we'd ever need to cover the entirety of Greater Boston with tunnels if we really, really wanted to. The real problem, as it usually tends to be, is finding the money. (The other real problem is convincing people that it is in their best interest for you to come in, rip up their streets, and document everything you find underneath them. It's probably useful, then, to attach some kind of infrastructure component (and not necessarily a subway) to the project, tying the whole mess back to something more tangible than a bunch of comprehensive sewage maps.)

…

Similarly, I imagine the biggest problem with ripping out the floor of the State House basement is that politicians might be unduly affected by the noise of Men at Work. (Then again, you might be the type who considers that an unsung bonus. I won't judge, I promise. )

Overall, it's a far more actionable proposal than you might think.

I agree with most everything you said (including the bit about Men at Work ) (though I think you overstate your case about being able to tunnel everywhere; that seems to me to be true, but in the sense, as I believe F-Line said earlier, that we have the technology to build a colony on the moon) but, as you say, I worry about the potential (and imagined) risks to the State House itself. Considering the debacles with Old South Church and the BPL that occurred during the renovation of Copley, I'm not sure I really trust the T to safely tunnel under such a historic building.

You can run Blue anywhere in the system as long as there's some kind of physical track connection, or if you manually deposit a Blue train onto the tracks somehow.

Cool. Good to know. Though the logistical problems of the Blue Line rising three stories to reach Charles/MGH and/or the Longfellow Bridge remain.

The ideal ridership distribution on any given transit line isn't generated by a hub-and-spoke system where everyone is trying to get to the center. …

I agree with you in theory, but, like Equilibria, I think that the principle can't really be applied to Metro Boston. None of the anchors you suggest for rapid transit are really gonna balance out Downtown Boston. Sure, it's good to have them, to minimize your losses when your running off-peak-direction service, but I'm not convinced it's a practical Holy Grail to which we should hold ourselves.

500 feet isn't that long when you really get down to it. It's about 1/10th of a mile. (It's also about how long you'd have to walk to go from Gov't Center to Bowdoin today.)

That's true... it's also the distance between Park and Downtown Crossing, so we know it's feasible there. Still, it'd be a crappy location for a station itself, as I said, because it wouldn't serve any new customers to speak of.

Part of its draw to me is precisely that it does route the Green Line away from most - but not all - of downtown. (The other part is that we've gotten the tunneling down to about 300 yards after Red/Blue and confined it all to a single, well-documented area of the city. Not to mention, we've created a connection between Blue tracks and HRT Green tracks, which might be useful later.)

Red-Blue will go a long way towards mitigating the real problems we're having with crush loads at Park/State/DTX/Gov't, don't get me wrong. But I'm not so sure it's really going to do enough.

Routing the Green Line away from Park and Gov't creates more transfer opportunities, but doesn't come at the expense of people trying to get downtown - Charles/MGH, Bowdoin and Haymarket are all one stop away from Park, Gov't, and State respectively, and they're also reasonably close enough that you could walk the rest of the way if you so chose.

Fair points, all of them.

Does anyone have a link to a map or any set of data that shows how many "employment slots" there are in each part of the city? (ie. which block of the FD has the most jobs, etc.) Might be useful for deciding where to put stations.

I'm not planning for the Blue Line to do anything.

Sorry, I should have been clearer. Are you planning to have this Green HRT alignment replace or supplement Blue-Red to Charles?

EDIT: and I echo Matthew's skepticism about Amtrak and the Providence Line. (Though I'm not sure, Matthew, what you mean about Amtrak being good for reverse commuting– do you mean it's better suited to BOS-PVD trips than the reverse?) Do you have any numbers for this, CBS?

 

[Matthew]

There's hourly departures from BOS to PVD in the morning, but the other way has a big gap: nothing between 6:58am and 9:31am. And since those originate from DC or Virginia, they are somewhat more unpredictable. Amtrak has a tendency to insert a large amount of schedule padding to make themselves look better, but this is bad for predictability. Look at the scheduled times: going south it's between 33-40 minutes, going north it's between 48-62 minutes. There's no reason for the durations to be asymmetrical like that. In my experience, the trip from PVD to BBY is about 35 minutes, but it's scheduled at 48-62 minutes so Amtrak can make up for delays further south of PVD. Not good for someone trying to catch the one train from PVD to BOS in the morning for work.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

I can't find a breakdown for northbound/southbound traffic on the Northeast Regional, which is obnoxious, because I do actually have the FY2012 station ridership figures. PVD had 669,576.

So, absent that, I'm going to concede on this one because anecdotal evidence of traffic patterns isn't worth all that much.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

I agree with you in theory, but, like Equilibria, I think that the principle can't really be applied to Metro Boston. None of the anchors you suggest for rapid transit are really gonna balance out Downtown Boston. Sure, it's good to have them, to minimize your losses when your running off-peak-direction service, but I'm not convinced it's a practical Holy Grail to which we should hold ourselves.

Oh, no, don't misunderstand me. I don't think we should hold ourselves to the ideal ridership distribution pattern always/forever.

I just want/wanted to point out that right now, the Blue Line terminates in the core, and I think we should think long and hard about if we really want to introduce an extension any further westbound than Charles/MGH.

Even if it isn't going to be an even 50/50 split, ridership heading towards Lynn and Salem should be reasonably strong all day, helping to minimize losses.

Meanwhile, going any farther west than Kenmore (which would require Riverbank) is going to introduce a pretty severe drop off in ridership. If there's absolutely no other way to serve, say, Waltham, and Waltham really needs HRT service, than that's fine and we can do it.

But I'm not sure Waltham really is screaming for HRT the way certain other communities are - and even if they are I'm not sure Blue is the best way to do it.

Sorry, I should have been clearer. Are you planning to have this Green HRT alignment replace or supplement Blue-Red to Charles?

Supplement. Absolutely supplement. Red-Blue CANNOT BE REPLACED, it's too vital.

I should have been clearer, because now I just know that somebody is going to yell at me for "trying to replace Red-Blue" even though that's emphatically NOT what I want.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

When did Leverett Circle enter this conversation? Riverbank-as-Green doesn't even get close to Leverett.

Beacon Hill is age-old terra firma and we have a pretty good idea of everything potentially lurking in the dirt down there. Back Bay fill isn't touched, the Boston Common trap isn't touched, neither of the graveyards constraining Park-Gov't Center are touched.

Total amount of tunneling required, end-to-end, 3765 feet - about 1900 of that is under a one-way, low priority back street and another 600 is directly underneath state-owned land.

I should note that even if you don't like that routing (in fairness, it would require nontrivial reconfigurations to Park Street to connect the new platforms that would need to be built there), that's far from the only routing possible.

Hell, it probably isn't even the best routing! This alternative, which would require provisioning Red-Blue for four tracks but is otherwise Blue-eats-D in reverse, (and cuts the required tunneling down to 700 feet instead of 3700) de-emphasizes the extreme amount of transfer pressure in the downtown core by providing a nearby transfer nexus between Red, Blue, and HRT Green at Charles/MGH. (This might even validate Bowdoin's continued existence as a Blue/Green transfer to mitigate bypassing Gov't!) As an added bonus, it's great prep work for if we ever decide, some great many years in the future, to pursue a system closer to New York's in the sense that we can run branches and alt routings from one line to another without too much issue.

Hell, considering that Science Park is one of the very very last elevated stations we have, and that an approach from Leverett pretty much locks us on course to dump HRT right back at the same unfixable Park - Gov't tunnel... I'm not even sure how we got to talking about Leverett.

You know how riding between NS and Science Park the tracks diverge with the storage yard descending down an incline. That's a future flying junction provision for a branchline, should it ever be needed for any reason in the next 120 years. That's the only place you can comfortably fit a new branch right out of the Central Subway save for Boylston or reopening the Haymarket portal for a Greenway trolley. So Riverbank-as-Green is going to have to turn at Leverett Circle to fit at a flying junction. You can't do a merge into the Central Subway on Tremont. Zero room for a flying junction because of building pilings, so it would be an at-grade Copley Jct.-like clusterfuck with very sharp turns. Couple that with the very sharp turn at Boylston and the slow speeds are killer. Remember...when the original Riverbank was proposed there were no skyscrapers to dodge on the dig around the Tremont/Park/Beacon triangle, no Boylston subway, no traffic clog in the Central Subway, and the East Boston Tunnel was trolley and a nearby traffic dispersal option. None of that is doable anymore.

Charles Circle and Cambridge St. also can't support a 4-track subway. There aren't 4 tracks of width around the Longfellow pilings, the Red Line el pilings, and building foundations at Charles Circle. The rotary is only 2 lanes wide. And while Cambridge St. is wide out to Bowdoin, the buildable footprint for a tunnel is not much wider than the footprint of the old narrow street that existed before they ate a row of buildings to widen it in the 1920's. The widened EB side of it still supports the foot of Beacon Hill underneath (underground rock cliff that can't be shaved back without impacts), and when studying Red-Blue they determined they had to avoid veering any further south than the current road median, which pins it to 2-track max.

Just so we're clear that I'm on the right page here, you're saying that the Chelsea Station grade crossing isn't going to be any kind of issue even if/when trains are blowing through at 79+ MPH?

Because I can live with it if that's true. I can't live with it if it turns out that oops, no, we're still speed restricted even though we fixed Eastern and Everett, now that they're gone we can properly gauge the impact this grade crossing has on the line and it turns out it's still a big problem, just not nearly AS big.

Yes...it's totally unrestricted. Eastern and Everett are the only drags, and they drag far in every direction because of safe stopping distance requirements that the other crossings end up well inside their 'sphere of influence'. If those two bad ones were eliminated 2nd, 3rd, Spruce, and 6th/Arlington would all be unrestricted and max-speed. Keep in mind, though, 60 is about the best you're ever going to do on this stretch between the sharp Broadway Everett and Broadway Chelsea curves because there's so little acceleration space between them, and it'll never be higher than that even with DMU's, EMU's, HSR equipment, whatever. It'll never get any less safe in the future with that track speed ceiling and the low volumes at this minor residential intersection.

 

[Shepard]

Where is the actual Haymarket portal, and do those tracks come off the southbound side?

 

[George_Apley]

Somewhere in here I think. You can see the slop for the old incline in the building to the right.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Where is the actual Haymarket portal, and do those tracks come off the southbound side?

The new 2004 alignment to North Station hangs a hard left right after exiting Haymarket station. The old alignment onto the North Station el kept going straight for another 75-100 feet of tunnel before exiting the portal.

Portal's here behind those garage door-looking slots in the Big Dig ventilation building. The one with the red doors on it is an emergency exit from the subway. 1922 view from the former Orange Line platform. Same brick building on the right. Portal was 6 tracks total: (L-R) Orange outbound, Orange inbound, Green elevated outbound, Green Canal St. surface outbound, Green Canal St. surface inbound, Green elevated inbound. The Canal St. incline split was set up as a flying junction. The temporary El that got built during Big Dig construction closed the Canal St. incline and shifted the 2 elevated tracks through the old Orange portal. Vent building constructed after abandonment, with the slots roughly corresponding to the portal berths for Green elevated outbound and the 2 Canal St. tracks. The Orange portal's roughly where that loading dock is at far left of the vent building (partially obscured by the other 1970's-construction brick building at left), and Green elevated inbound was totally demolished to extend the alley.

So...yeah...this is where the Greenway trolley branch would spit out if they unsealed behind 2 of those building slots.

 

[Shepard]

But that would mean the Greenway trolley would be going northbound through the central subway, then exit the portal to come southbound down the Greenway? Not sure that routing would be at all popular and wouldnt connect north to south stations - unless I am wrong in my understanding...

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

But that would mean the Greenway trolley would be going northbound through the central subway, then exit the portal to come southbound down the Greenway? Not sure that routing would be at all popular and wouldnt connect north to south stations - unless I am wrong in my understanding...

Well...nobody's really proposed it, so right now doesn't matter. All I'm saying is the infrastructure is there to hook it into the Green Line somehow, so use your imagination. Even if it's just an itty bitty historic tourist trolley operation that pings back inbound to GC/Brattle Loop on a couple thousand feet of dual trolley/pantograph wire. I don't think anyone seriously considers a little street-running thing crossing all those traffic lights a serious solution for a direct NS-SS transit line. They need Silver Line Phase III as real light rail to accomplish that. At-grade Greenway option is little more than a semi-useful toy...probably only justifiable as a heritage operation the city--not T--pushes for.

 

[Shepard]

Probably more useful as a branch to charlestown navy yard...

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

Well...nobody's really proposed it, so right now doesn't matter. All I'm saying is the infrastructure is there to hook it into the Green Line somehow, so use your imagination. Even if it's just an itty bitty historic tourist trolley operation that pings back inbound to GC/Brattle Loop on a couple thousand feet of dual trolley/pantograph wire. I don't think anyone seriously considers a little street-running thing crossing all those traffic lights a serious solution for a direct NS-SS transit line. They need Silver Line Phase III as real light rail to accomplish that. At-grade Greenway option is little more than a semi-useful toy...probably only justifiable as a heritage operation the city--not T--pushes for.

Greenway Trolley has legitimate value in providing an ancillary Green-Blue transfer at Aquarium. Furthermore, a streetcar can get away with somewhat tighter and bus-like stop spacing than a grade separated line could - which is the only real way I can see a Rowes Wharf stop being justified, ever.

The Link is obviously a million times better at directly connecting NS and SS, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that the Greenway Trolley is a 'semi-useful toy' doomed to forever be a heritage tourist trap lacking in legitimate value.

 

[BostonUrbEx]

Just FYI, you can see one of the old inclines (I assume the temporary Big Dig one) when riding the Green Line northbound after Haymarket. Sit in the "railfan seat" way up at the front door and look out the window as you round the corner north of Haymarket.

Also, I'm not positive, but I believe there may be a connection between the Orange Line's southbound platform and the old inclines/new vent-substation-thingy building. At the north end of that platform, beyond the danger/no trespassing sign, the wall on the platform curves into the tunnel wall and goes down some passageway. You can sort of see it when leaving Haymarket on a northbound Orange Line train.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Just FYI, you can see one of the old inclines (I assume the temporary Big Dig one) when riding the Green Line northbound after Haymarket. Sit in the "railfan seat" way up at the front door and look out the window as you round the corner north of Haymarket.

Also, I'm not positive, but I believe there may be a connection between the Orange Line's southbound platform and the old inclines/new vent-substation-thingy building. At the north end of that platform, beyond the danger/no trespassing sign, the wall on the platform curves into the tunnel wall and goes down some passageway. You can sort of see it when leaving Haymarket on a northbound Orange Line train.

Yeah...there's still trace vestiges of the old OL incline because they didn't immediately tear it down after the switchover into the new North Station tunnel in '75. The Green level got ripped up pretty good for Big Dig construction in '97-98 when they had to shift everything over to the Orange portal and the temporary El segment, so there's not a whole lot of the original Orange-level alignment left. There's still wide, wide open space in the Green tunnel after the new tracks curve off. Before they sealed the portal about 7 years ago and it was blocked only by a chain-link construction fence you got blasted by broad daylight for a couple secs while making the curve.

The new alignment cuts directly across the pre-1971 original Haymarket station, which was abandoned for the new one because of its dangerously narrow platforms. That open area full of misc. electrical boxes that the tracks now cross to get into the new tunnel was the old platforms.

 

[davem]

Allright, I just had to redo all this so it would fit on one page.

EDIT (again): All the lines won't display on one page. I included a "page two" separate map, so if you want to save them both to your places you can view both maps at the same time using the layers panel in the upper right. Not ideal but it's the only thing I can figure out.

mass(T)ransit: 2050

Page Two

I completely did my fantasy map to include my new concept of the Teal "Turbine" Line. Essentially it runs from Waltham through the Boylston Street Subway, loops around the metro area, then runs back through the Boylston Street subway a second time before ending its run at Arborway. I love this because it combines the urban loop concept with rapid service through the Back Bay, eliminating the need for a second East-West line altogether. I even thought up a construction schedule that is independent of all other proposed extensions:

Phase 1:
-Construct Essex Street subway, connecting Post Office Square leads at Boylston to the South Station bus loop. Pedestrian concourse above connecting Boylston to Chinatown. The shortest new construction but the most logistically complicated due to the mess of tunnels in Dewey Square and utilities under Essex St.
-Extend silver line tunnel to Black Falcon Pier, station near Summer St Bridge.
-Sink Tunnel Sections beneath the Harbor connecting Black Falcon Pier to the pier at Logan.
-Construct an EL from the logan pier to Airport station (to be renamed). Elevated station on west side of Central Parking. Possible station at Logan Pier.
-Cut and Cover Comm Ave subway to Union Square, Allston (single station stop)
-Extend trolley service as new (A) branch along completed project.

Phase 2:
-Extend El across Chelsea Creek, descend to existing ROW between Eastern Ave and Cottage Street. Station in this area.
-Extend at grade, swinging north under RT 1 and west towards RT 16. Station at Chelsea Station.
-Ascend to an elevated over RT 16 , station at or near Ferry Street. Continue EL across Mystic River, descend to at-grade station at Sullivan Square utilizing abandoned western tracks.
-Cut and Cover Comm Ave subway to Brighton Landing (station stop)

Phase 3:
-Cut and cover beneath the inner belt to Brickbottom, connection to Green Line.
-Cut and cover beneath the Grand Junction to the MIT athletic fields. (cut an cover is paramount, as I believe the GJ should be reserved for commuter trains to north station.)
-Stations at Cambridge Street, Reardon Square (pedestrian concourse under Broadway to Kendall), Mass Ave and Cambridgeport (near the atheltic field terminus)
-Cut and Cover under N Beacon Street to the other side of the pike, ascend to an elevated to cross the Charles. Descend into pit under the Arsenal Mall with a station stop.
-Cut and cover beneath Arsenal St and the Watertown Branch to Watertown Square. Stops at School St and the square.

Phase 4:
-Cut and cover from Courthouse Station to Washington Street, beneath Haul Road, Mass Ave connector and Melnea Cass.
-Demolish and cut and cover beneath the projects near Ruggles
-Cut and cover beneath Ruggles Street
-Station stops at Channel Center, Dorchester Ave (pedestrian concourse to Broadway utilizing former trolley tunnel), Mass Ave, Washington Street, Ruggles, and Huntington Ave.
-Extend (C) service along this routing.

Phase 5:
-Construct TBM launch boxes at MIT atheletic fields and the Landmark Center.
-dig station caverns beneath BU Central and Fenway.
-Deep Bore to connect both sides of the loop.
-Cut and Cover from the Pleasant Street portal to Huntington Ave along Marginal Road. Reroute the (E) here.
-Cut and Cover Huntington Ave subway to Brookline Village, swinging through Mission Park and the Brookline Ave playground to avoid deep boring.
-(A) and (C) now both loop, forming the turbine.

-Phase 6:
-Begin conversion of Boylston Street subway to Heavy Rail. Disconnect the Boylston curve, send all Tremont St trolley traffic [(D) and (E)] via the Pleasant St portal to the Huntington Ave subway. Turn the (C) at Kenmore and the (B) at Packards Corner (or Kenmore if surface routing remains intact).
-As an open cut extend the watertown Branch to Waltham, with a small yard beneath the common.
-Cut and Cover from the Brookline Ave playground beneath the Jamaciaway to the Heath Street Loop. (station stop)
-Heavy Rail begins, terminals at Waltham and Jamaciaway (Heath St) Cars would be blue line equipment, allowing the existing overhead to be used for power until end of life requires conversion to third rail

Phase 7:
-Deep bore beneath S Huntington and Centre St to Arborway. Station Stops at Perkins St, Pond St, South St and Arborway.

Phase 8:
-Cut and Cover beneath Lexington St and Totten pond Road, stops at Waltham Highlands, Piety Corner, and Prospectville.
-New at grade ROW under power lines to Trapello Road. Park and Ride for I95 and RT 2 at or near Trapello Road.

Success!

I think phases 1-6 could be done in 25-30 years. Phase 7 and 8 are independent extensions that would be provisioned for, but not a part of the core project.