Crazy Transit Pitches

DominusNovus said:
Would there be enough room around Forest Hills to do such a turn?
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This is Red out of Mattapan bootstrapping onto extra Fairmount ROW space south of Blue Hill Ave. and the first Neponset bridge, not Orange out of FH. The only way to do Orange to HP is to steal a track from the NEC, which is a nonstarter. Not even Fairmount has enough capacity to absorb that much punted-over traffic at 2030+ volumes if the NEC gets its capacity reduced. W. Rox/Needham and displacing that half of the Needham Line is the only realistic Orange trajectory out of FH now.
 
Who are the A Line opponents? Brighton businesses? Brighton residents? Newton residents? Watertown residents? Soon-to-be-former Mayor Menino? I think Watertown Square-Newton Corner could be HUGE with some tune ups: the A Line, a Newton Corner Station on the Worcester Line, and a 71 extension to the Corner, along with various fine tuning. Seems like a huge thing to pass up. Of course it would come at a cost, but the development that could result... woah boy.
 
BostonUrbEx said:
Who are the A Line opponents? Brighton businesses? Brighton residents? Newton residents? Watertown residents? Soon-to-be-former Mayor Menino? I think Watertown Square-Newton Corner could be HUGE with some tune ups: the A Line, a Newton Corner Station on the Worcester Line, and a 71 extension to the Corner, along with various fine tuning. Seems like a huge thing to pass up. Of course it would come at a cost, but the development that could result... woah boy.
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Now that MassDOT owns the heavy rail tracks, we also have options for sending the A out via the yards on their way to Watertown. Could be / Should be awesome.
 
There's only one thing your typical Brighton NIMBY lives for: fighting about traffic and parking. They are VICIOUS.
 
^ Not to mention the Newtonites living on Tremont between Oak Square and Newton Corner. Do you think any of them need a street-running LRV? They all have 2 cars.
 
Arlington said:
Now that MassDOT owns the heavy rail tracks, we also have options for sending the A out via the yards on their way to Watertown. Could be / Should be awesome.
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They've owned the Worcester Line inside 128 since the day the Pike Extension was greenlit. Or rather, the Turnpike Authority owned it until they were dissolved a few years ago and the title title deed was finally transferred to the T. So they've been able to do whatever they've wanted with the land the ROW sits on for 50 years so long as it didn't mess with the freights into Beacon Park.

There is no physical room to lay side-by-side rapid transit tracks. That's why the Riverside line on the 1945 proposed extensions map is physically impossible. Couldn't build it if you wanted to without slicing more abutting rows of houses and streets that the Pike extension spared when it was tearing through Newton and Allston. There aren't enough strips of available land to shove 3rd and 4th tracks in. About the bestest that's possible in some hyper-dense MBCR+Amtrak service future is maybe shivving in a couple short lengths of 3rd track passing sidings so all the regional and intercity traffic can stay out of the way of the Riverside shuttles. Subwaying here under the tracks is senselessly expensive with all the Pike bridge abutments and retaining walls through the Newton cut that would have to be cleanroomed, and all the groundwater mitigation from the Charles basin and underground streams. This isn't a real proposal. Hasn't been since the Turnpike Authority ate the B&A canyon.


If we need a grade-separated, high-capacity subway line to Watertown Sq. that extremely badly, the Watertown Branch out of Porter and making a dozen light industrial property owners offers they can't refuse is the easier path for doing it now vs. plowing anything through Allston. And the H2O Branch is not an easy, or imminently feasible, stitch-up job. The inner B&A is like Fairmount now...the DMU's can't serve as a placeholder for parallel rapid transit buildout TBD like all the other decent-prospect DMU candidate routes can.

Find a way to get trolleys into the Square on the north flank, then a few blocks of street-running trolley tracks down Galen looping at Corner is no biggie. But I don't think there's much enthusiasm for that today with street-running required on a longish stretch of Arsenal to sidestep the part of the abandoned branch that's been segmented by private property. So your best bet for the next 30 years downtown Watertown is sorting its redevelopment situation out is shooting for a Corner-extended 71 that has more 'Silvery' fixins' under the wires.
 
You could get light rail to watertown yard again by running along the pike to nonatum road, which has space for a reservation now that it was cut down from 4 lanes to two. It doesn't get you a stop right at Newton Corner, but it would be pretty close.
 
I don't think there's any room next to the Pike for Green Line tracks west of Everett Street.
 
BussesAin'tTrains said:
I don't think there's any room next to the Pike for Green Line tracks west of Everett Street.
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Nope. Once you reach Everett abutting buildings, side streets, or the right lane of Pike EB become casualties for widening the ROW. This was the wrecking zone where the Pike Extension ate part of the neighborhood, so any construction here beyond short-length passing tracks for the RR reopens and worsens that scar.

And I don't think trolley tracks are a good idea in a flood zone like Nonantum. It goes underwater in too many Noreasters, and would create too many problems with rusted-out rails and trackbed weakening with street-running rail. And flooding is a 'feature' of the river roads here because they can absorb it without damage and it prevents an overtopped Charles from impacting anything of value nearby. Gotta stick to a few feet higher elevation than that for trolleys.


Really, there's no way to do this today except for the H2O Branch out of Porter. And that's not an attractive prospect if the dedicated ROW ends at School St. and it's 1.7 miles of street-running down Arsenal and Galen to get any further. That's equivalent to the amount of total street-running on an Arborway restoration, with a longer trip out the Union + H20 Branches to start the street-running portion than the E provides out the subway + reservation. It's at the moderate-difficult end of the scale for dispatching an on-time schedule end-to-end. You really have to get the H2O Branch stitched back complete to the Square before it becomes a realistic option. And that's going to take on the order of 25-30 years IF AND ONLY IF the town has perfect luck on its side redeveloping that industrial strip of Arsenal with flawless cooperation from every abutter on full-width ROW easements.
 
^ That or somehow re-laying the old "A"-Line as a streetcar through the NIMBYs in Brighton and Newton.
 
BussesAin'tTrains said:
^ That or somehow re-laying the old "A"-Line as a streetcar through the NIMBYs in Brighton and Newton.
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That's all street running, though. Apples-to-apples, it's worse than going all the way to Watertown Square down Arsenal St.

Also, I'm going to be against light rail sharing the Circle of Death as long as it exists in current configuration.
 
Equilibria said:
That's all street running, though. Apples-to-apples, it's worse than going all the way to Watertown Square down Arsenal St.

Also, I'm going to be against light rail sharing the Circle of Death as long as it exists in current configuration.
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Well right. I was only bringing it up as another physically possible way to get to Watertown.
 
Equilibria said:
That's all street running, though. Apples-to-apples, it's worse than going all the way to Watertown Square down Arsenal St.

Also, I'm going to be against light rail sharing the Circle of Death as long as it exists in current configuration.
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Oak Sq. was where all the restoration advocacy was pre-1994 when that was still being fought out. Tremont St. in Newton is largely flyover country, and the Pike more or less destroyed Corner as a destination square unto itself. While I think Oak is supportable, that hugely long a stretch of street-running all the way to H2O Sq. at today's traffic volumes probably isn't realistic.

Best way to make Corner a transit hub is refashion it as THE be-all/end-all bus terminal in the area. Supersize the 71 into a stop-consolidated, signal-prioritized, articulated bus key route and extend the wires to Corner. Fixed route DMU meeting a fixed route TT with a straightforward connection to Harvard is mega. That's the anchor route. Extend the 59 from Watertown Yard to Corner and the 64 from Oak to Corner. That'll turn it into a true bus terminal with every single route except the 70/70A meeting there. And you can play around with the 70A (or make up a 70B) to join both halves of it separately at Corner while keeping the regular 70 on its cross-Watertown route. Would take some substantial improvements to Galen for transit priority and taming the interchange from hell to turn that H2O Sq.-Corner pipeline into a load-bearing equivalent similar to Washington St. between Forest Hills and Rozzie Sq. But everything gets easier if the commute patterns on the Yellow Line get reshaped into a super-node centered on the CR station. That includes attacking the 57 side of the divide with improved service. Indirectly, I could even see this load-spreading some demand off the 86 as more Allstonites opt to head west rather than east to transfer to a Harvard-bound route.
 
Nothing but ground water and a water pipe somewhere. I recall Harvard did a geological survey and put it into one of their documents somewhere...
 
"The MBTA, in 3014" (not a typo) Happy new years!
https://mapsengine.google.com/map/u/0/edit?mid=zHBKbWS6THfI.kxSpnAUEdxzI

Most of it is pretty self-explanatory, but there are some odd things
- Brown lines: High speed lines. Mattapan HSL was expanded to Quincy,

- dark green lines: they're connected to the Green Line but are strictly streetcars (C line now ends at Kenmore)

- thin magenta lines: a semi-circular limited-stop bus system:
Watertown to Malden Center
Alewife to Malden Center
Malden Center to Chelsea

Commuter Rail (separate layer)
-With the exception of really long lines, the commuter rail either becomes DMU-run or EMU-run
Northside
-Fitchburg Line extended to Gardner with branches to Worcester and Sudbury
-Bedford Line restored as an underground EMU branch, expanded to Lowell.
-regular Lowell Line realigned slightly, and extended to Concord NH
-Haverhill Line eats the Vermonter, and extends to Portland ME, with a branch to Portsmouth NH
-Newburyport/Rockport Lines don't change a whole ton

Southside
-Old Colony Lines get electrified
-South Coast Rail gets a few more stops
-Pawtucket Station on Providence Line is restored
-Frankline Line extends to Milford
-Short line service runs from Framingham to Millis and Walpole on the Frankin Line
-Worcester Line extended as an express to Springfield, branch to Leominster added (intersects with Fitchburg Line's Worcester branch in Clinton
-I forgot to add all the stops for the springfield extension, but basically it follows the old B&A line
 
asap_mozart said:
"The MBTA, in 3014" (not a typo) Happy new years!
https://mapsengine.google.com/map/u/0/edit?mid=zHBKbWS6THfI.kxSpnAUEdxzI

Most of it is pretty self-explanatory, but there are some odd things
- Brown lines: High speed lines. Mattapan HSL was expanded to Quincy,

- dark green lines: they're connected to the Green Line but are strictly streetcars (C line now ends at Kenmore)

- thin magenta lines: a semi-circular limited-stop bus system:
Watertown to Malden Center
Alewife to Malden Center
Malden Center to Chelsea

Commuter Rail (separate layer)
-With the exception of really long lines, the commuter rail either becomes DMU-run or EMU-run
Northside
-Fitchburg Line extended to Gardner with branches to Worcester and Sudbury
-Bedford Line restored as an underground EMU branch, expanded to Lowell.
-regular Lowell Line realigned slightly, and extended to Concord NH
-Haverhill Line eats the Vermonter, and extends to Portland ME, with a branch to Portsmouth NH
-Newburyport/Rockport Lines don't change a whole ton

Southside
-Old Colony Lines get electrified
-South Coast Rail gets a few more stops
-Pawtucket Station on Providence Line is restored
-Frankline Line extends to Milford
-Short line service runs from Framingham to Millis and Walpole on the Frankin Line
-Worcester Line extended as an express to Springfield, branch to Leominster added (intersects with Fitchburg Line's Worcester branch in Clinton
-I forgot to add all the stops for the springfield extension, but basically it follows the old B&A line
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Haha, 1000 years and Waltham still just gets DMU? I am going to piggy-back this idea and create a 2114 Crazy Pitch tomorrow. I love it!
 
If you're going for 2114 on this timescale, the Blue Line still won't yet be connected to the red at MGH...
 
So the state has already announced that the Silver Line is getting extended to Mystic Mall. Assuming this already happens, it doesn't seem too insane to run buses a little further. There's plenty of room for the busway at the very least up to 2nd Street; if you move the power lines and shift tracks by a couple feet back and forth, you might even be able to get as far as the 16/99 interchange.

That puts you spitting distance from your choice of Wellington or Sullivan. Gives Chelsea better connectivity to Somerville (via Sullivan) and Back Bay (via Orange Line). Incredibly low barrier to entry - you could start it with a few hundred feet of asphalt even just to 3rd Street, plus a couple extra buses to support headways - and add busway sections and BRT elements as funds are available. If Wynn wins out, would be the cheapest way to get some form or transit to the casino. And I gotta say, it looks awfully ring-esque.
 
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