Crazy Transit Pitches

F-Line to Dudley said:
Heh. MassDOT's own GIS database has a built-in commuter rail Crazy Transit Pitches.
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Ehn.

Here's what I see:
-South Coast Rail via Stoughton: Yeah, no. Definitely crazy, at this point anyway.
-South Coast Rail via Attleboro: Marginally less crazy, especially if RIDOT decides to run trains to FR/NB via Taunton and/or if Amtrak resurrects the Cape Codder to dovetail with the CapeFLYER.
-South Coast Rail via Middleboro: This never made sense to me. At least the Attleboro routing has that much more already electrified (though I realize that leads to capacity concerns).
-Commuter Rail to the Cape: clearly not crazy, even if not full time.
-Commuter Rail to TF Green: already done. Surprising that Wickford isn't on here.
-Full service to Foxboro: Really, this is crazy? Especially routed over the Midland Route.
-Bellingham extension: Yeah, this is sorta nuts. But also irrelevant because I doubt it will ever happen.
-Millis: See Bellingham (but probably even less likely).
-Wachusett: Seems to be happening already.
-Gardner: Don't understand how or why this was done before, but it sure as hell looks nuts now.
-Agriculture Branch: I mean... unlikely, but not exactly crazy.
-Commuter Rail to NH: all three seem possible, with the Methuen extension being somewhat less so. It really seems that the greatest impediment are NH politics, and those are inherently ephemeral.

I mean, these are all crazy to some degree or another, especially because the T should not be expanding its commuter rail. But it's going to anyway. So now it's a question of what's crazy within the crazy.
 
Riverside said:
Ehn.

Here's what I see:
-South Coast Rail via Stoughton: Yeah, no. Definitely crazy, at this point anyway.
-South Coast Rail via Attleboro: Marginally less crazy, especially if RIDOT decides to run trains to FR/NB via Taunton and/or if Amtrak resurrects the Cape Codder to dovetail with the CapeFLYER.
-South Coast Rail via Middleboro: This never made sense to me. At least the Attleboro routing has that much more already electrified (though I realize that leads to capacity concerns).
-Commuter Rail to the Cape: clearly not crazy, even if not full time.
-Commuter Rail to TF Green: already done. Surprising that Wickford isn't on here.
-Full service to Foxboro: Really, this is crazy? Especially routed over the Midland Route.
-Bellingham extension: Yeah, this is sorta nuts. But also irrelevant because I doubt it will ever happen.
-Millis: See Bellingham (but probably even less likely).
-Wachusett: Seems to be happening already.
-Gardner: Don't understand how or why this was done before, but it sure as hell looks nuts now.
-Agriculture Branch: I mean... unlikely, but not exactly crazy.
-Commuter Rail to NH: all three seem possible, with the Methuen extension being somewhat less so. It really seems that the greatest impediment are NH politics, and those are inherently ephemeral.

I mean, these are all crazy to some degree or another, especially because the T should not be expanding its commuter rail. But it's going to anyway. So now it's a question of what's crazy within the crazy.
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I just find it amusing that they have all this together on the public record when they can't run fast enough from some of these. It must just be a collection of the official studies done in the last 20 years (although the Central Mass is absent and they did do that study in '93). As a records dump it makes sense.

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Milford/Hopedale IS a just-completed study that wrapped last year and is now awaiting publication. So that's real, even if unlikely. And we will in the next 6 months get a full report and numbers to chew on. The Hopedale tack-on on the Grafton & Upton RR mainline a last-second tack-on to the study, although that line is so compromised by curves and grade crossings it's almost certainly going to be infeasible to do past Milford. Half the rationale for doing it is that the T's layover in Franklin is so small and at-capacity that service increases to Forge Park are impossible without a new yard. The only parcel that is readily available for a larger layover is at Bellingham Jct. a good 3 miles past Forge Park, which necessitates doing a +1 extension. And if they're +1'ing, might as well take it all the way to Milford, which is very transit-isolated.

Problems that'll likely kill it: Milford is a one-of-these-is-not-like-the-others commuter rail terminus in being a much smaller town than any other. It's going to make a full Franklin schedule (which is pretty nicely brisk out on the mainline out to Franklin/Dean College) painfully long because the Milford Branch is slow, curvy, with a lot of grade crossings and a ridiculously sharp S-curve at ex-Bellingham Jct. where it actually has to go sharp-right/sharp-left onto a few hundred feet of ex-Needham/Millis main trackage that used to run through there en route to Woonsocket. See how slow the trip from Franklin to Forge Park is despite stop proximity. And as for the layover, doing much cheaper Foxboro with its $63M-$84M price range between minimum and maximum (full layover) builds doubles service on the Franklin from Dedham to Walpole where the bulk of the ridership is and sends boardings at Dedham Corporate, the Norwood stops, and Walpole (which is already one of the busiest non-NEC stops on the whole commuter rail) through the roof. It is not going to matter so much that Norfolk, Franklin, and Forge Park have little schedule room to grow when the greater population density on the inner half can grow its schedule a LOT. That more than anything else punts Milford to the back of the line.

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Millis and Salem, NH are laughers now that the rail trail has been approved for Needham-Medfield and rails have already been ripped out from Methuen to Salem with the rest to Lawrence in planning. I would say Orange + Green replacement of the Needham Line is far more important now than preserving rail access to Millis, so despite pretty nice ridership projections that one probably deserves to die. Losing the Lawrence to Rockingham Park ROW sucks because nothing Haverhill or Lowell Line poking across the border would ever trap I-93 traffic at the state line, and the racetrack offers immense parking capacity for weekdays. Plus this WAS a real-deal service scheduled to initiate in 1982 out to a Route 213 park-and-ride before the '81 budget cuts torpedoed it. Printed on the 1980 system map and everything.


The alt. SCR routings from Attleboro and Middleboro have already been spiked as infeasible, so it's Stoughton or bust. But...as a records dump it does make sense they'd retain it because all 3 routings were under consideration. The Middleboro Secondary is all active track anyway, so Providence-flank Cape Flyer, Amtrak Cape Codder restoration, and Stoughton-Middleboro-Cape express service/Old Colony Dorchester capacity relief are all very viable there at low cost.

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I've never seen the 2002 Ag. Branch study. Boston MPO doesn't have it PDF-archived. By all logic ridership between Framingham and Northborough/I-290 should be slam dunk with all the highway park-and-rides, but Leominster was such an odd study choice given the strong overlap with the Fitchburg Line north of Clinton and the extremely slow trip on such a twisty line. Plus there's no freight upside to reconnecting the last few railbanked miles (non-abandoned; CSX has at-will reactivation rights) to the Fitchburg. It's useless for freight with the Pan Am Worcester Branch handling all interchange traffic, and the need for southside thru-routing to Fitchburg on such a painfully long schedule is almost nil. It's nobody's idea of a frontburner extension, but when the Worcester schedule hits its max expansion those Framingham State U, Route 9, I-495, and I-290 stops are going to be useful post-2030 when the Worcester-area roads are too oversaturated for even Worcester Line park-and-rides to serve all needs. Maybe Clinton at absolute furthest extent as a transit justice thing for an underserved region...but West Berlin and Clinton hit the same small-town terminus problem as Bellingham and Milford.

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Gardner's only on the map because that service actually ran from 1980-88. It was only last year when they took down the T sign at the old station there. Guilford/Pan Am banned the T from its tracks past Fitchburg in petty retaliation for Amtrak stealing the commuter rail operator contract from them that year, so that was not a service loss the T ever wanted or intended to happen. It had pretty decent ridership despite the ulta-long distance and ass-hurting trip times. But that Ashburnham hairpin on the route is an insane schedule suck, so Wachusett park-and-ride right on 2 is the most equitable solution. Sucks a little because Gardner station was right downtown in walking distance to lots of residents, but they're siting the new station at the Fitchburg/Westminster town line on the last exit before 2 traffic jams and the sub-expressway portion with curb cuts starts through Leominster so it's a fast and uncongested drive from Gardner to hit Wachusett and the planned bus connections are going to be pretty good. Schedule is schedule, and the nice downtown station location is simply a bridge too far for the Fitchburg schedule.
 
BTW...that GIS site is amazing. Bookmark that thing and play around with it, because the data layers you can throw on it and export from all sorts of GIS and demographic databases are absolutely breathtaking and a godsend for half the stuff we talk about across ArchBoston. Especially the tax assessment, building foundation, and geological stuff (it actually maps out all that hard-to-build-on landfill mush under downtown). Can set the overlays on top of Google Maps (regular, satellite, and terrain views), Bing Maps, OpenStreetMaps, etc. Add your own data from external sources, export to KML, export to spreadsheet usable for any GIS application.


I mean...wow. Whatever IT staff deployed this tool and populated it with the data dump created just about the best one-stop mapmaker porn site ever.
 
Actually, Gardner ridership was pretty terrible. "Boston's Commuter Rail: The First 150 Years" has a 1984 ridership chart on the front flap. None of the outer Fitchburg had really rebounded in the first 4 years, but Gardner was averaging 24 daily riders.

Ridership on the Fitchburg is 2.66x what it was in 1984, and about 5x outside of South Acton. So that'd indicate about 125 riders or so for Gardner today. The 2004 MPO was even more pessimistic, saying just 50 riders per day. That's compared to 400 daily for Wachusett within a couple years of opening, and about 600 daily within a decade.

Gardner might be worth a couple rush hour trains a day as a general mobility solution (pending MART running buses to Wachusett as a test case) once times to Fitchburg drop after the double-tracking, but I don't think it'll be worth full service at any point.
 
Alright, here's my latest for "Hypothetical Full Build" maps.

Naturally I don't think all of this will be built, but this is as far as I think it's possible to build - particularly with regard to HRT/dedicated ROW builds.

The farthest extent that I think could feasibly be built before the N-S rail link comes to town is:

Red:
RLX to Arlington Center
RLX to Mattapan

Blue:
BLX to Charles/MGH
BLX to Lynn

Orange:
OLX to West Roxbury

Green:
Somerville/Medford GLX
Dudley GLX, Oak Square GLX
Forest Hills GLX
Northern half Urban Ring as Green Line GLX
Harvard Square GLX
Transitway connection to Green Line
Needham GLX
Porter Square GLX
Buried from Kenmore to BU Bridge
Buried from Symphony to Brigham Circle/Brookline Village D/E connection.

Indigo:
Westwood/128 Extension
DMU/EMU on Worcester Line to Riverside
DMU to Reading (OLX on my map)
DMU on Fitchburg to 128 in Waltham (GLX on my map)

Things like BLX to Salem, OLX to Reading, or Medford GLX conversion to HRT and extended to Woburn wouldn't make economic sense until the North-South Link traffic pressures the inside-128 Commuter Rail stops enough that conversion to rapid transit is the best option for maintaining service levels. Long way out.

Most of the other things are dependent upon NIMBYs and $$ (Lexington, Belmont, Dedham), future study of viability (Randolph), road reforms (Blue to Kenmore) or a big change of heart regarding street-car routes (all new street-cars aside from the A/E reinstatement)

Also, all the yards I drew in are hypothetical to the max. Just kinda tossed them in as a brainstorm.
 
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Can't argue with very much. That's almost exactly how my full-build map would look save for negligible/negotiable/approximate differences in the phasing.


-- I'm not real keen on Everett and downtown Chelsea streetcars simply because the street congestion there is going to be a bear to shove those schedules into the subway with all else that's going on on the north end. Those UR routes are going to be extremely heavy-use, and I think we have to conceptually limit the LRT system's expanded capacity to Ring-oriented and downtown circulators + the branches that fill the large due-western gap in HRT coverage. If a town is easily traversible with a short bus route and a rapid transit anchor, that's a decision against shoving an LRT branch up the gut. Everett and Chelsea are surrounded on 3 sides by very fast and frequent train service if the UR LRT and Blue-Lynn are built. They get very accessible very quick by stringing a net of Yellow Line routes between grade separated nodes. And that's a strike against consuming valuable subway capacity that needs to be rationed to terminal-to-terminal circulators and regions like the west where HRT coverage is too thin to spin a similar rubber-tire spider web.

-- Also not sure 28X streetcar--even at partial distance--is going to be possible into the subway with just how far it has to traverse on-street. That one's going to be a bigger bear to dispatch than the B, so that corridor past Dudley may need to make do with a more robust array of connecting buses tying together with Fairmount, Red, FH, and Dudley spider web-style.

-- UMass doesn't need a door-to-door streetcar. Shuttle bus is very efficient and more local bus routes making the loop will do it. Strains capacity a bit much to have to fork off a Dudley-Transitway ring route that has to navigate lots of crowded street-running. Need to draw some outer limits there.

-- Red to Randolph is impossible. The Old Colony ROW never exceeded 2 tracks after Braintree Jct. + freight yard. The part paralleling Route 37 in Braintree where it threads between street grid and Hollingsworth Pond + Cedar Swamp is very constrained. Delete that from any future consideration; gotta be DMU or bust (and only after you double-track the main in Dorchester and Quincy). The only reason the Braintree Branch was ever tossed around for possible future extension south along the OC or Plymouth ROW's was back when they pictured it totally displacing the RR. That is no longer possible, so HRT past Braintree is now in the same boat as the former 128 Worcester Line rapid transit proposal.
 
^ Thanks for your thoughts. Wasn't sure how crazy to get with the street-cars versus just keeping busses. Service around "underserved" communities could be better served by enhancing connecting bus service.

Would a 28x deal past Dudley to, say Franklin Park Zoo, or Columbia Road really be that bad? A restored E or A would be longer wouldn't it? Is it wholly longer than the current B? Honestly it's too bad that it's too far to get to Mattapan, if only because Blue Hill Ave is literally built for streetcars. I'd imagine you'd easily fit a median reservation along Blue Hill. But, I figure if Red gets to Mattapan, plus Indigo MUs running through Dorchester having a slow-ass Green streetcar down Blue Hill Ave would be redundant. I thought a shorter jog down Warren to Seaver Street or a few hundred yards further to the Park might be more useful.

Randolph and beyond is by far the wackiest thing that I've stubbornly kept on the map. I do concede that it's not happening ever. Definitely would cost more than any revenue would be worth, especially since my map would require tunneling under the demolished ROW to get to Route 24 and IKEA, which is my own stubborn "connect IKEA to the system and bag a Park&Ride on Route 24" OCD, rather than anything concrete.
 
bigeman312 said:
I love this. Especially the LRV Urban Ring Connector between Dudley and Huntington Avenue.
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Thanks. That connector between (what would then be a subway) Huntington Ave and surface level Dudley is a huge struggle to bridge if you're trying to hit both Brigham Circle and Dudley. Can't tunnel under Tremont to Malcolm X, it's too narrow/too historic. Another version I tried had it going down South Huntington after Brookline Village and splitting off as a streetcar up Heath Street to ride over an NEC deck to RoxXing and then up Malcolm X to Dudley, but it misses Brigham. I suppose you could always have two routings of UR, one that goes up Huntington, and one that ends up at Dudley or up Washington Street, but my transit OCD made me search for a routing that might work for tunneling.

I picked Ruggles Street because I think it got blasted for NEU urban renewal, so could be tunneled under (also gives a connection to Orange at Ruggles). I also assumed that Whittier, and the land behind the Madison School could be cut and covered. The positioning of the portal would be up for discussion, but I put it a little west of Dudley, although that street probably doesn't have the space for it. That might be the biggest issue for it, unless the T buys one of the vacant lots around Marvin or Vernon street for a portal. I also don't know if that underground river somewhere around NEU precludes the tunnel from Huntington. It was the best solution I had though, given my layman's knowledge of the underground environment.
 
BussesAin'tTrains said:
Thanks. That connector between (what would then be a subway) Huntington Ave and surface level Dudley is a huge struggle to bridge if you're trying to hit both Brigham Circle and Dudley. Can't tunnel under Tremont to Malcolm X, it's too narrow/too historic. Another version I tried had it going down South Huntington after Brookline Village and splitting off as a streetcar up Heath Street to ride over an NEC deck to RoxXing and then up Malcolm X to Dudley, but it misses Brigham. I suppose you could always have two routings of UR, one that goes up Huntington, and one that ends up at Dudley or up Washington Street, but my transit OCD made me search for a routing that might work for tunneling.

I picked Ruggles Street because I think it got blasted for NEU urban renewal, so could be tunneled under (also gives a connection to Orange at Ruggles). I also assumed that Whittier, and the land behind the Madison School could be cut and covered. The positioning of the portal would be up for discussion, but I put it a little west of Dudley, although that street probably doesn't have the space for it. That might be the biggest issue for it, unless the T buys one of the vacant lots around Marvin or Vernon street for a portal. I also don't know if that underground river somewhere around NEU precludes the tunnel from Huntington. It was the best solution I had though, given my layman's knowledge of the underground environment.
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If Marvin St were closed to traffic (at least the eastern half of that block, but maybe the whole block) could that be used as a portal?

Also, and this is tangentially related, what is the most crowded section of the T with regards to its current fleet's capacity? There are probably people on here who ride the T more than me, but I've always thought it is between Park Street and Government Center on the Green Line. Am I right or wrong?
 
bigeman312 said:
If Marvin St were closed to traffic (at least the eastern half of that block, but maybe the whole block) could that be used as a portal?
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Maybe? There's nothing really on Marvin that would require through traffic flow. That's one of the reasons I decided to put my portal there.
 
BussesAin'tTrains said:
Would a 28x deal past Dudley to, say Franklin Park Zoo, or Columbia Road really be that bad? A restored E or A would be longer wouldn't it? Is it wholly longer than the current B? Honestly it's too bad that it's too far to get to Mattapan, if only because Blue Hill Ave is literally built for streetcars. I'd imagine you'd easily fit a median reservation along Blue Hill. But, I figure if Red gets to Mattapan, plus Indigo MUs running through Dorchester having a slow-ass Green streetcar down Blue Hill Ave would be redundant. I thought a shorter jog down Warren to Seaver Street or a few hundred yards further to the Park might be more useful.
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The service levels required to Dudley justice are going to be the limiter more than length. For example, Arborway always had lighter headways than any other service to manage its length, and used to turn at very first opportunity at Park loop rather than continuing. Weekdays the E was doubled up with simultaneous Arborway-Park and Heath-Lechmere service to use the reservation to its higher capacity; Arborway-Park only ran solo on nights and weekends. And the A and B were a load-balancing pair with the BU 'school bus' stops getting the doubled-up service and the two branches getting lighter headways. The B suffers because it has to run the same number of trains to keep up with the crush-load ridership, but run them all the way up and down the hill where the schedule decays to spit and everything gets bunched. That's not a natural condition for the B, and one reason why they very badly need to install a short-turn turnback at Harvard Ave. whenever MassHighway puts the Comm Ave. rebuild back on the front-burner.

Washington St. is the analogue for the doubled-up service that used to exist on Comm Ave. and Huntington. Except in this case the Dudley demand is so high and there's no real reservation for traffic separation that the Dudley trunk alone is going to use most of that capacity by its lonesome. Maybe your southern-half Urban Ring routes have a couple thru runs (though I'd expect most of those streetcar service patterns to run strictly on the ring, or terminate at Dudley), but for the most part the Dudley branch is going to be a surface trunkline. It can handle it all with the short length, but that starts breaking down in a hurry when you significantly extend the length or start adding more branches. Given that you have to fight your way down quite a bit more street-running on Warren to even reach the reservation-capable Blue Hill Ave., it doesn't make much difference if it stops at Franklin Park or goes to Mattapan. It starts chewing into the capacity of the Dudley trunk to have to predicate those schedules and headways on making it 1.5 miles extra down Warren. That's about the equivalent distance of restoring the E from Heath to Child St...the second-to-last stop on the officially-proposed restoration and a scant quarter-mile from FH. It's a lot for a line with no reservation that projects to have as much service density as Dudley.


It's tragic the planning gods were so eager to tear down the El that they didn't see the golden opportunity here: sever the Orange Line, reconnect the El at the Pike to the Tremont St. tunnel and convert/rehab it to Dudley + the 2 intermediate stops as a Green Line branch. Demolish the structure in Chinatown and from Dudley-Forest Hills. Ultra-fast shot, near limitless potential for branching with its real subway-equivalent capacity, could've anchored the UR. But, alas, they only got one shot to make the right decision for the corridor and they chose poorly. Nothing grade-separated can ever come back to Washington because that's one of those old streets where a subway dig costs a Big Dig.
 
DominusNovus said:
Big Dig 93 north of the River Charles to the River Mystic.
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I could see the portion between the Inner Belt and the Fellsway going underground within the next 30 years, especially if Assembly Square takes off. Particularly after the McGrath comes down and Rutherford Ave gets downgraded, people are going to be staring at the last bohemith looming over them and wishing it gone.

Between the Fellsway and Medford likely has to remain at grade due to it's proximity to the water. From the Zakim to the Inner Belt will almost certainly have to remain above ground with the plethora of tracks it runs over. But that area will probably be industrial for ever because of the trains, so it's not that bad anyway.

I suppose IF the Tobin gets replaced AND they reroute RT-1 to follow the eastern railroad through Everett and tie into 93 near Sullivan, you could see that portion go underground. With all the ramps it's just not feasible, but if it's just I-93 + orange line going underground it might work. The costs might not be too bad compared to outright replacement either, as the new highway would go through an industrial area and would not require a high bridge since the Mystic locks are right at the river crossing. It would free up an enormous amount of land in Charlestown and Chelsea for development, and/or a subway or light rail ROW too. I don't know how much more life the ongoing repairs to the Tobin will buy it, but I doubt it's going anywhere anytime soon.
 
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I don't think anything's ever going to be tunneled. The entire decked portion passes over unmovable rail infrastructure its entire length. That has to be what it is. The raised 'wall' through Assembly and Somerville does have future potential to be sunk below-grade out to Shore Dr. before it has to stay as-is the rest of the way through Medford because of the abutting Mystic and abutting Fels. I doubt a Somerville canyon would have much air rights potential because East Somerville is mostly triple-decker residential. Maybe just a retail parcel or two across from Home Depot attached to Assembly, but that's about it because for most of that stretch in front of Assemblyland the road's actively inclining off the decks into the cut.

The main advantage is that a cut is better than a wall for the neighborhood. Less visually dividing, easier to soundproof, and on the new street overpasses you can sort of buffer the crossings with double-wide bridges and grassy side medians so it feels like less of a highway overpass. It would also significantly clean up the Fellsway/Mystic Ave. intersection + interchange and make for a more straightforward and traffic-calmed replacement overhead (safe assumption that McGrath will be downsized into a city boulevard by this point).


There's not a lot of urgency for this, though, because the air rights potential is pretty meager around so much 3-story-or-less residential. It really only clips the side of Assembly. It doesn't change road capacity. And 93's infrastructure is in pretty superb shape with retaining walls having much longer life than bridges and Fast 14 taking care of most of the bridges, and it absolutely does not need a capacity fix here. I can't see this happening before 2040-50. There's too much else better to do to improve the vitality of the north 'burbs with transit and smart development, too much other crumbling highway shit they need to fix when this stretch is in good overall condition, and too little economic development to hang on air rights making the change more cosmetic for East Somerville than substantive. I think those neighborhoods have far far more to gain with Assembly access, Mystic access, and the taming of McGrath/Fellsway...all stuff that can or will happen this decade.
 
Purple is Commuter Rail, Lavender is DMU:

2821539.jpg


This is mostly about a fare structure proposal with a DMU element, so I didn't make many changes to commuter rail stations except for ones which I though were obvious within the time frame of DMU being implemented. These are Wachusett being finished and the inaccessible West Medford being replaced by an ADA'd College Ave Station with a transfer to the GLX. The rest are related to DMU, and I figure most of the infill commuter rail stations will be flyover on many runs.

The purpose of this fare structure was to provided discounted low demand rides while adding premiums to peak trips.

Fares when traveling to/from Zone 1, peak times:
Zone 1: $4.50
Zone 2: $6.00
Zone 3: $7.50
Zone 4: $9.00
Zone 5: $11.25
Zone 6: $13.50
Zone 7: $15.75

Fares when traveling to/from Zone 1, off-peak:
Zone 1: $3.00
Zone 2: $4.00
Zone 3: $5.00
Zone 4: $6.00
Zone 5: $7.50
Zone 6: $9.00
Zone 7: $10.50

Interzone Fares are the same system as the current Interzone Fares. They are based on the number of zones that you travel through on your journey, only applies to travel between outer suburbs and not Zone 1:

Interzone Fares, Peak:
Interzone 1: $4.50
Interzone 2: $6.00
Interzone 3: $7.50
Interzone 4: $9.00
Interzone 5: $10.50
Interzone 6: $12.00

Interzone Fares, Off-Peak
Interzone 1: $3.00
Interzone 2: $4.00
Interzone 3: $5.00
Interzone 4: $6.00
Interzone 5: $7.00
Interzone 6: $8.00

DMU Fares work in the same manner as Interzone Fares:

DMU Fares, Off-Peak:
1: $2.50
2: $3.25
3: $4.00

DMU Fare, Peak:
1: $3.75
2: $4.75
3: $5.75
 
Shepard said:
Shouldn't all DMU service ideally be subway fare?
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Why? Ideally, I agree, but there aren't going to be fare decreases anytime soon, so I'm trying to find a system that benefits riders, yet doesn't lose the T any revenue. This DMU would be a hybrid between commuter rail and rapid transit. Why not make it's fares a hybrid?
 
To me the purpose of a DMU line would be to reuse existing rail corridors for urban rapid transit lines integrated as much as possible with the rest of the subway. That's why they made Fairmount subway fare and why they will likely soon recognize the need to integrate it with Charlie and show it as rapid transit on the subway map if they really want to boost ridership. (I know it's chicken and egg - its not exactly rapid transit yet but boosting the apparent demand will make the case for continuing improvements on headways and rolling stock upgrades.)
 
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