In Re: W. Med as choke point on Lowell Line.
Its good to know they could 3 track it for a mile or more (based on clearance under the Grove St Bridge). I'm happy to have the idea of a center clearance-express track and full highs on the side confirmed as workable. That, and about $2m worth of quad gates, and swag another $1m for short, smart signal blocks that'd let them go down "late" and spring up "early" and it seems it'd be ready for 2024 DMUs and twenty years of growth beyond, and keep avoiding the disruption of tunnelling.
Add a pedestrian outrigger on the upstream/Boston Ave side of the Mystic River Bridge and let folks walk to the GLX MVP/Rt16/UHaul "Phase 5" terminus
Then I'm wondering if that's as far "out" as the full-highs get on the DMUs. West Medford *is* a natural DMU stop: semi-dense, walkable, Zone 1A, CR Stop, and having the 94, 95, & 326 (rush-only express to Haymarket).
So West Medford seems "worth it", and able to accommodate transit growth through infill, modal choice, and connecting bus.
Then how about Wedgemere and Winchester Center? Back to 2 track and low platform, before terminating at Anderson at High Levels?
or wehther
Wedgemere would have to get its platforms moved off the overpass to be able to do a passing track. But given that
you can literally see the Winch. Ctr. platforms from the edge of the Wedgemere platforms and it's a trivia answer for one of two of the closest-proximity railroad stations in North America...that station probably shouldn't exist at all on DMU's either, let alone get rebuilt. It's got the mini-high. Short of fixing stuff when it crumbles that's the last upgrade it should ever get.
Winch Ctr. must be mini-high because it's up on a 2-track viaduct sandwiched by buildings and the street grid. And it's too dangerous up there for a gauntlet with the side platforms and the long drop to the street if a freight car derails and tips over. That was a mid-1950's grade crossing elimination when the area was already built up, so they used what little space was available. (Can see the construction in-progress with temp tracks at-grade on
Historic Aerials' 1955 view...prior to that the tracks used to split the rotary down the middle). It'll never be anything different, and were you to someday build rapid transit out here you're probably going to have to do a little 1000 ft. shallow-dig subway under the Laraway Rd. and Shore Rd. parking lots popping back up on either side of the viaduct, and subway station with underground platforms right under the rotary.
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Honestly, Lowell DMU's got some pretty awkward station issues. There's Wedgemere's spacing and the all-around uselessness of spending good money on something that duplicate. There's s Mishawum's spacing + absolutely nonexistent ridership that no amount of service frequency is going to rescue. There's the egregious 4-mile station gap that skips all of populated Woburn. Downtown Woburn hasn't had bus, bike, walking or trivial car drive access to a commuter rail station since the Woburn Branch was abandoned 33 years ago. There is no way the T can afford that sorely-needed infill at Montvale Ave. or Salem St. by 2024; no such proposal exists except for the town slamming its head against a wall saying "NO! Don't dump more money into Mishawum! Give us
something after 3-1/2 decades in the wilderness."
And then there's the fact that Anderson is a parking sink with no local bus connections and not so much as a station entrance on the New Boston St. side of the tracks, cutting it totally off from the
rest of Woburn's population center along Route 38 north of 128. Anderson hasn't got an off-peak anchor. It'll do fabulously well at rush hour and when there's a game or big event in town, but without connectivity it's just going to be full of cars and devoid of people in the midday. Given that the due-north service area got its buses chopped the hardest in the last round of service cuts, what are the odds they're going to introduce new routes out there?
We've got enough problems trying to figure out if they're even going to pull off DMU's anywhere but Fairmount and the South Station-West dinky. I think Lowell, for all its unused track capacity and attractive-seeming stop selection, can be better-served by other means.
This is what I'd do.
#1 - Institute a "94A" bus, Davis Sq.--College Ave.--West Med--Winch Ctr.
-- Follow the routes of the 94 to West Med, the 95 from West Med up Playstead to Main, and the 134 up Main to Winch Ctr. The stop at the Main/Bacon St. rotary is 1300 ft. from the Wedgemere station entrance. If that's not good enough, run it up Bacon and Mystic Valley Pkwy. across the damn street from Wedgemere. Rapid transit transfers at Red/Davis and GLX/College Ave.
-- 15 minute peak frequencies, 25 off-peak. The present-day 94 is about 20 on-peak, 30 off-peak...not a dramatic change.
-- Current travel times on these buses are 8 mins. Davis to West Med, 5 mins. West Med to Playstead/Main, 5 mins. Playstead/Main to Winch Ctr. So that's 18 minutes to ping between 3 commuter rail stops and 2 different rapid transit lines. Vs. 20 minutes for Winchester-North Station on the train at same headway. Dead-heat frequency, dead-heat travel time to rapid transit.
-- Bus + subway fare < Indigo + subway fare on the transfers. Red > Orange for the non-Green transfer option. And off-peak transit from Medford and Winchester is going to be more locally oriented to short trips to Cambridge and Somerville vs. commute trips to the CBD. So I think these 3 advantages together offset 90% of the 'uniqueness' of the DMU service. And, depending on how you rate the Somerville/Cambridge/Red access upside comparatively vs. North Station...is maybe the better all-day service period.
-- This "94A" has enough going for it to be
must-have the second GLX College Ave. opens. And if that's 2020
(or '22...*cough*) and Lowell is on the backside of the DMU rollout in 2024
(or '26) there may not be anything to debate here because the bus will have grabbed the reins and the ridership first. DMU or no DMU, I think this is essential enough to have that it won't be an either/or question. It'll be an "is there room for each to carve out its own independent demand profile?" I don't know the answer to that.
-- If there isn't a solution to the Woburn inaccessibility or the Anderson non-connectivity...it's too early to be reaching past Winch Ctr. Fix Woburn first and get a complete corridor before going Indigo. If this bus solution serves the density at the first 3 stops adequately in near-immediate fashion, focus the station investment on the Woburn infill and getting bread-and-butter bus and ped connections to Anderson.
Then implement Indigo. If there's still enough leftover demand on the whole corridor.
#2 - Move all thru Haverhill service back to Lowell. Boost Reading with the vacated slots.
-- Right now it's ~24 daily Lowell round trips at the non-Mishawum stops (23 IB, 26 OB mismatch). Thru Haverhill trains are 13 round trips cumulative on the Western Route locals and Anderson expresses. Lowell has no layover yard whatsoever, so those frequencies will increase dramatically if/when Nashua happens and they rent layover space in the adjacent freight yard. Haverhill's double-track project isn't done yet and Bradford layover is tapped out of space. The latest presentation to the ungrateful Plaistow NIMBY's offered an escape for the layover hostage-taking by decoupling the layover from the station site. One of the layover options is literally
20 ft. across the MA side of the state line. And if the T has to go it alone, they're prepared to purchase that industrial parcel, move out of Bradford, increase Haverhill frequencies, and not care if those clowns across the border ever get their station.
-- Figure a total relocation =
minimum 40 daily round trips most stops to Anderson, and probably 10 expresses that skip straight to Anderson. Right now Salem and Beverly are the king at 30 round trips per day, and Route 128 has only 28. That's a lot of trains.
-- Lowell has some of the highest potential on the system for decent off-peak ridership with better headways, so those hourlies should slim down to 45-50 mins. except late nights when hourly is fine. Haverhill has a schizo off-peak right now because of all the freight congestion on single track...90-150 mins. That stops soon and they can at least hit a consistent 90 mins. Not sure how much demand there is for hourly, but 80 mins. sounds like a good target. Average these together and you get headways varying from 30-45. Not clock-facing, but 80% of the way there.
-- Haverhill trades down from 7 intermediate stops on slow track to Reading track to 5 on the fast Lowell Line + maybe that merciful Woburn infill. Any super-expresses let's chalk up to above-and-beyond schedules from the capacity increases. So that's 40+ round trips stopping at Winchester, merciful Woburn infill, Anderson, and Wilmington. West Med you can throttle back to whatever best fits the crossing gates...but it can probably handle most of it. Wedgemere is a sometimes-skip. And Mishawum dies the death it should've 20 years and millions in sunk cost ago.
I don't know about you, but that tag team seems like 90% or better of what an Indigo-ed Lowell would serve, and doesn't cost nearly as much as a funding dump for level boarding at low-upside stops like Wedgemere while continuing to defer a Woburn stop, continuing to defer the missing Yellow Line feeders to Anderson, and continuing to believe Mishawum can be reinvented for a 4th time if we only spent more money on it. I know this is Crazy Transit Pitches, but we've got so many Indigo-colored question marks on
every line they want to do that on I wouldn't let perfect become the enemy of good here. Lowell is #1 with a bullet where rejiggered existing service can backstop nearly all of it and ration more resources to the other lines they committed to. Deal with DMU's to Anderson in 2030; focus on salvaging the 2024 target for the others first.
