Crazy Transit Pitches

I like it too, but that area is loaded with wealthy NIMBYs who have expensive lawyers.
 
But it does good job of running far from anybody"s backyard.
 
Yeah, but as we all know, NIMBYs aren't content to stop projects that are just near their back yards. The fact that this rail line concept is next to and spans a pond, and also in a wealthy suburb, is enough to set many a NIMBYs' heart on fire.
 
Charlie_mta said:
Yeah, but as we all know, NIMBYs aren't content to stop projects that are just near their back yards. The fact that this rail line concept is next to and spans a pond, and also in a wealthy suburb, is enough to set many a NIMBYs' heart on fire.
Click to expand...

Newton is much more pro-transit suburb than most wealthy suburbs. This owes in part to its existing, fairly extensive, public transportation, and moderate density. The rate of single car commuting in Newton is fairly low (relatively speaking).

EDIT: The biggest obstacle would be selling as a net-positive transit-wise (increased -MU service to Auburndale, West Newton, Newtonville, Newton Corner) to offset people who would be upset due to their loss of CR tips.
 
Meh. It's just not necessary to replace the Grand Junction anywhere inside 495 with an invented project or a kludge. Just put the money where it needs to go regardless--southside equipment and maint independence--then yank the thing off the RR network once the Worcester Branch gets tolerable non-revenue speeds. It really, truly is no loss.

Remember, there is no Worcester-North Station demand whatsoever if Orange out of Back Bay and Red out of South Station can be shored up enough to roll back the rush hour attrition in downtown dwell times that's killing everything on those two lines. North Station and Kendall on the transfers make near-equal time as a Worcester-NS direct. The only reason that project has to exist...and thus the only *thin* justification for the Worcester-Fitchburg connector along 128...is because subway service is collapsing under load.

Well...isn't that obvious where the big bucks need to be spent? Fix Red and Orange...don't blow a wad on tarting up a commuter rail connector that isn't needed if Red and Orange function properly. It's not like that thing along 128 is going to be of much use to the Indigo Line with no plausible intermediate stops (River Rd. NIMBY's will never allow one), and the bus coverage between the Pike stops in Newton and Waltham Ctr. is fast and has a dense net of local routes flanking the 3 current stops + Newton Corner. Just pump up the rubber-tire frequencies to bind Newton and Waltham tighter. It'll serve up lots more total options that way.
 
bigeman312 said:
Newton is much more pro-transit suburb than most wealthy suburbs. This owes in part to its existing, fairly extensive, public transportation, and moderate density. The rate of single car commuting in Newton is fairly low (relatively speaking).

EDIT: The biggest obstacle would be selling as a net-positive transit-wise (increased -MU service to Auburndale, West Newton, Newtonville, Newton Corner) to offset people who would be upset due to their loss of CR tips.
Click to expand...

That post is referring to Weston, where that 128-hugging line would spend almost all its time. Maplewood estates and River Rd. (both sides of the highway) are going to shriek like hell, and they've got a problematic weapons cache to use to defeat it with all the environmental concerns around Stony Brook. (And, yeah, them being dirty damn hypocrites for not saying a peep about the 128 add-a-lane isn't going to register.)

It's not meant to be because of Weston. And there aren't convincing enough cost/benefits for doing it to justify a battle of attrition with them. Going to be hard enough to get that all-critical Fitchburg Line 128 stop built on their side of the town line, and that's the build that really does some immediate and lasting good.
 
Blue Line to Kenmore

I may be new to posting, but I've been observing this board for a while. It seems that extending the Blue Line to Kenmore via Storrow is most posters' preferred routing in various transit discussions. I'm curious how you think it should be done, and what would it look like in the end?


What alignment do you think works best? Following Storrow, or ducking into the Charles for a bit (like the Red Line at Fort Point Channel)? What about at Kenmore and the Muddy River?

Tunneled or cut and cover where it's on land? Or what about grade-level portions, for example if it consumed half of Storrow's right-of-way, to save money? Would Back Bay residents accept something like this in exchange for a downsized Storrow and less motor vehicle traffic noise?

Where stations would you include? Obviously Charles and Kenmore. But what about a Hatch Shell station, or a station at Mass Ave to connect with the 1? Would you remove Bowdown, as the T has proposed? Is it possible to keep it?

How would Kenmore look? Would you work it into the existing station, converting half of the tracks to Blue Line, or would you have a separate station, for example under Beacon Street, that's parallel to the existing station and connected via a pedestrian tunnel?

Where would you position the tracks after Kenmore for a future extension?

Perhaps this could go in the Crazy Transit Pitches thread, but I'm looking for a more in-depth discussion about implementation.
 
nick said:
I may be new to posting, but I've been observing this board for a while. It seems that extending the Blue Line to Kenmore via Storrow is most posters' preferred routing in various transit discussions. I'm curious how you think it should be done, and what would it look like in the end?
Click to expand...

Preferred routing for a BLX beyond Charles/MGH perhaps. I don't of anyone here who's advocating it as particularly urgent or high priority.

Here's a roundup of F-Line's posts on the topic:

http://www.archboston.org/community/showpost.php?p=182425&postcount=1450

F-Line to Dudley said:
Going west under Storrow to Kenmore in a rehash of the Riverbank Subway proposal from 100 years ago is probably the most viable one. If we ever reach the point where we want to tear down Storrow or bust it down to a leisurely undivided street through parkland there's almost going to have to be a 1:1 trade-in with transit. And in that case the Storrow EB roadbed pack makes an ideal re-use for a shallow subway tunnel, and the Storrow EB tunnel an excellent re-use candidate for rail and an Esplanade station at its widest point by the exit ramp. West of the tunnel the roadbed's in a cut below Back St. so you can pretty much build the tunnel in a half- above-ground box up to the level of Back St. and acting as the retaining wall for Back St. Similar to how the Red Line is in a surface-level box between Fields Corner and Ashmont...it's literally just an air rights cover-over there. It wouldn't have to support the weight of anything except grass on top, would be cheap construction (esp. around Mass Ave. where the cut gets deep), it would be waterproofed by virtue of being so shallow, and the Storrow WB roadbed can be used for your quiet 2-lane parkland drive. The only standard tunneling required is getting on-alignment to Kenmore from Charlesgate, and getting underneath the Kenmore Green level.
Click to expand...

http://www.archboston.org/community/showpost.php?p=230965&postcount=1076
F-Line to Dudley said:
If you bust down Storrow to 2-lane country road on the westbound carriageway the eastbound carriageway + road tunnel would be the Riverway footprint. Dig down to the bottom of the roadbed pack (incl. inside the road tunnel because you need about a foot's more height clearance, but the concrete floor probably does go down that far before reaching the rock ballast so that's trivial) and pour a box tunnel with roof level with the Back St. retaining wall, and landscape a grassy knoll on top of it with no load-bearing structures except for the street grid interfaces with "Storrow Lane". Roadway tunnel at the exit ramp would fit "Esplanade" station, and the deep cavity under Mass Ave. would fit that station and start your descent for the tunnel shiv under the Muddy River (I'm guessing metal-shielded insert with additional waterproofing) and the cross trajectory from Back St. to Beacon St. avoiding building foundations.

Cut-and-cover tunneling would be under the Embankment Rd. EB exit to Charles Circle, where one of the Charles MGH tail tracks would reach in front of the CVS. Then slice up the Embankment EB carriageway for a cut-and-cover to the road tunnel. More invasive and deeper dig under Beacon to "Kenmore Under", though the 3-lane width of the street and ultra-wide Beacon/Bay State Rd. split provides adequate buffer for avoiding building impacts. "Kenmore Under" can stub out at the Beacon/Comm Ave. merge in front of U Burger so the full station width doesn't have to underpin the Green level (i.e. platforms would span the Beacon/Raleigh intersection to basically the entrance of Cornwall's bar). Only whatever pair of storage tracks go further would actually slice diagonal under the Green level to keep the load-bearing footprint minimal.

Only tough tunneling here is the diagonal slip under the Muddy (which is going to need above-and-beyond waterproofing for the sea level rise era where Charles Dam can't empty the Basin as fast), under Beacon, and where it nicks the footprint of Kenmore station. On the Storrow EB carriageway it's way above the water table and the box tunnel's retaining wall sticking what's now about 3 ft. above the Storrow pavement acts as a flood wall if the Charles spills its banks. Embankment Rd. EB can have the crap torn out of its guts to impunity; there's not much in the way of utilities under the pavement of a de facto expressway that claimed ex-parkland. The Mass Ave. underpass retaining walls and auto tunnel are recyclable. And the Charles MGH tail tracks avoid all Charles Circle impacts.

It wouldn't be hard to build at all if post-Storrow era were achievable. It's mainly the wait for achieving the post-Storrow era that puts this out of current planning scope.
Click to expand...
 
Re: Blue Line to Kenmore

nick said:
I may be new to posting, but I've been observing this board for a while. It seems that extending the Blue Line to Kenmore via Storrow is most posters' preferred routing in various transit discussions. I'm curious how you think it should be done, and what would it look like in the end?


What alignment do you think works best? Following Storrow, or ducking into the Charles for a bit (like the Red Line at Fort Point Channel)? What about at Kenmore and the Muddy River?

Tunneled or cut and cover where it's on land? Or what about grade-level portions, for example if it consumed half of Storrow's right-of-way, to save money? Would Back Bay residents accept something like this in exchange for a downsized Storrow and less motor vehicle traffic noise?

Where stations would you include? Obviously Charles and Kenmore. But what about a Hatch Shell station, or a station at Mass Ave to connect with the 1? Would you remove Bowdown, as the T has proposed? Is it possible to keep it?

How would Kenmore look? Would you work it into the existing station, converting half of the tracks to Blue Line, or would you have a separate station, for example under Beacon Street, that's parallel to the existing station and connected via a pedestrian tunnel?

Where would you position the tracks after Kenmore for a future extension?

Perhaps this could go in the Crazy Transit Pitches thread, but I'm looking for a more in-depth discussion about implementation.
Click to expand...

That one should be noted with an asterisk. The only way in which there would be a subway extension there is if. . .

1) Bostonians demanded that Storrow be torn down west of Charles Circle to re-claim riverfront access;

2) There had to be some sort of transit trade-in replacing the parkway serving trips displaced from the parkway across the same neighborhood as the parkway. You would expect a modest spike in Green Line trips with elimination of the highway redundancy, so Charles-Kenmore is the area needing the transit augmentation.


If those two conditions aren't in play, then Blue to Kenmore would get kicked pretty far down the list of most-wanted extensions. So it's strictly a circumstantial build driven more by Storrow elimination.



Boston Transit Commission way back in 1900 did propose a Riverbank subway from downtown along what is now Storrow. So it isn't totally an off-the-wall fantasy build...it just has somewhat all-or-nothing conditions attached.


The way you'd do it is (bolded the types of digging involved for each step). . .

  • Take the Blue Line extended to Charles/MGH as per the Red-Blue project...verbatim. Let's assume this gets built many years/decades in advance. As part of that build there would be storage tail tracks extending a couple car lengths past the wedge-shaped center platform: one curving a little ways around the MGH/Embankment Rd. side of the circle, one curving a little ways around the CVS/Charles St. side of the circle.
    • Bowdoin has to go, per the state's plans. Tunnel trajectory has to slice through the westernmost end of the platform to eliminate the sharp speed-killing curve just beyond the station. No real way to preserve it.

  • You would take the tail track on the Charles St. side, double it up, and start cut-and-cover digging under the Storrow EB exit ramp to Charles Circle. This would require enlarging the lower-level Blue Line station from a center island to side platforms.
    • Drop a new "inbound" side platform underneath that brick sidewalk in front of CVS.
    • Leave the old center platform as a somewhat absurdly large "outbound" platform. You'll no longer be using in regular service the side of the island that feeds the tail track wrapping around the MGH side of the circle. But, you can still short-turn trains there, stuff equipment there, and so on.
    • Tie in the new platform's egresses to the main station. Blue level is pretty deep underground here, so there's room under-street to connect everything together.
^^The modifications to Charles station and surface disruption on the CVS side of Charles Circle are probably the messiest parts of the project. There shouldn't be any historic building impacts, though. The CVS storefront is most definitely not historic Beacon Hill construction, and the tunnel extension's trajectory will steer clear of the Jeffries House.
​
  • Continue the cut-and-cover dig in the right lanes of what's now Storrow EB.
    • There will probably be a short parkway stub for reaching the Public Gardens exit, but instead of being 6 lanes + a 1-lane frontage road w/parking it'll probably be 4 lanes + a parking row.
    • The lane reduction frees up the space for the cut-and-cover dig, and you'd simply lane-shift during construction then lane-shift back after the tunnel is done to pack the road stub away from the river. Fairly non-invasive construction.

  • Feed the subway into the current Storrow EB auto tunnel. Verbatim...recycle the whole thing.
    • Re-waterproof it.
    • Tear down the roadbed to the bare pack, because you'll need to take out the pavement + concrete layer to fit Blue trains in the tight clearances.
    • In the space by the current Copley exit ramp where the tunnel is at its widest, create "Esplanade" station. 2 side platforms, straight upstairs to a headhouse. Everything should be wide enough to shiv in 6-car platforms here.

  • Feed the subway out of the tunnel onto what's now the Storrow EB carriageway.
    • Begin a box tunnel subway dig from here all the way to Mass Ave. A box tunnel is much shallower and cheaper to construct than cut-and-cover. With cut-and-cover, you're digging 20-25 below street level and keeping the under-street utility layer sandwiched between street and subway. More invasive, and tons of utility work. With a box tunnel, the 'sandwich' layer doesn't exist (and doesn't have to, because there are no utilities underneath Storrow) and the tunnel roof is the surface level. Best example in Boston of a box tunnel: the Green Line at Hynes where the tunnel 'rump' sticks out above the Mass Pike/Worcester Line cut at surface level.
    • The Back St. retaining wall sets the surface level for the Riverbank Subway. So you would rebuild that retaining wall as one of your tunnel walls, then dig down on the Storrow EB roadbed far enough to get your full tunnel dimensions. Basically, half of the tunnel height would be below the current pavement level of Storrow EB, and half of it would reach above up to the height of the Back St. wall.
    • ^^Bonus: the 'rump' that sticks 4-6 feet above the surface doubles as a flood wall from the river, so the portion of the tunnel that's a few feet below surface is protected from becoming a storm drain when the Charles floods.

  • Dump dirt on top of the tunnel roof and landscape the 'rump' that sticks out into a gently rolling hill down to the Esplanade. Basically like a less-steep version of the BU Beach.
    • You can even preserve Storrow WB alongside as a two-lane park access road with low speed limit, since the subway stays self-contained on ex- Storrow EB.
    • Note that because of the nearby lagoon you may be constrained at putting another intermediate stop in the Dartmouth/Exeter vicinity. And, I doubt the Beacon St. residential abutters want hordes of people pouring out of their alleys from the station entrances. Not impossible, but given the constraints and very heavy residential tilt you may just want to express through here without a station.

  • At Mass Ave., dip into the deep cut where all the ramps are on the eastbound side. Widen out this cut into a Mass Ave. station.
    • Maybe widen out the Mass Ave. bridge right at Back St. with bus turnouts for the 1/CT1 and various campus shuttles.

  • From Mass Ave. to Charlesgate, transition into a deep-bore tunnel. Or whatever type of shielded tunnel keeps it water-tight well below ground under the river silt.
    • ^^Most expensive per foot tunneling segment because of the depth and waterproofing. But at least it's short.

  • Curve at Charlesgate East diagonally under the Muddy River to reach the intersection of Charlesgate West and Beacon.
    • ^^Again, you're pretty deep underground so there shouldn't be surface impacts to very shallow Muddy riverbed. And, the Muddy was so destroyed in this spot by past road construction there's little in the way of environmental "preservation" to do here. You could take the opportunity while digging the subway to re-shape the mouth of the river for better water flow into the Charles and general environmental remediation.

  • Curve onto Beacon St., transitioning to cut-and-cover tunneling.
    • This would be pretty deep cut-and-cover because it's going to slot under the Green Line level at Kenmore.
    • Beacon is 3-1/2 lanes wide, and much much wider where Bay State Rd. splits off. Shouldn't be any building impacts around BU Myles Standish Hall or the back side of the funeral home.

  • Kenmore Station platform (center island) starts right at the corner of Raleigh St., extends about as far as the edge of the building that houses Cornwall's Pub.
    • Green Line travels directly underneath the bus station straight off the Comm Ave. Mall, so the Blue platforms end where the Green tunnel slips upstairs at a 45-degree angle.
    • Egress off far end of platform ties into existing fare lobby.
    • Possible Blue-only headhouse at far end of Square, but space limited so not sure where it would go (here at that sketchy little white-painted thing across the street from Myles Standish?).

  • 2 tail storage tracks pass underneath the Green tunnel and dead-end.
    • You absolutely have to be done with the Blue platforms and to have shrunk the tunnel dimensions back to running tracks before slipping under Green so it can underpin the Green tunnel in minimally invasive fashion.
^^Kenmore from in front of Myles Standish to end of the busway median is the next-most disruptive part of construction after immediate Charles Circle. No building impacts, but it might make a mess out of the bus station and far end of the Green platforms for a couple years while they underpin everything. Pricey.


​
Keep in mind, if you want to keep this relatively economical by recycling as much of the freed-up Storrow roadbed as possible you've got one and only one footprint to take to reach Kenmore (under Storrow EB + diagonal under the Muddy River + Beacon St.), one and only one location for Esplanade station (the auto tunnel), and one and only one location for Mass Ave. station (the cut right under the bridge where the maze of ramps are).

The only wiggle room to play around with is the exact configuration of Charles and Kenmore stations and how much of a mess it makes, headhouse placements, whether you bother with another intermediate stop between Esplanade and Mass Ave., and where exactly the tail tracks get positioned under Kenmore.

It's limited. But the attractiveness for a Storrow trade-in is that it's dirt cheap everywhere it sticks to the Storrow roadbed. The only invasive parts are slipping onto the roadbed from Charles, slipping off it at Charlesgate, and the final interface with Kenmore. That's like 2500 ft. of "hard" for 1.25 miles of "easy"...a pretty attractive ratio for a build of that length which has two lower-level additions to existing stops, 2-3 new intermediates, and enormous relief for the Green Line between Kenmore and Gov't Center so you rig up new routes on the west end like Urban Ring tie-ins and new branches.
 
Nice post. An important piece was missing, though. Where would you point the stub tracks after Kenmore: Brookline Ave or Commonwealth Ave?
 
nick said:
Nice post. An important piece was missing, though. Where would you point the stub tracks after Kenmore: Brookline Ave or Commonwealth Ave?
Click to expand...

You want to put the stub tracks oriented in a way that would allow a routing to Comm Ave (maybe through Lower Allston to Harvard?) or to assume the Riverside Line. Both of those would come with major tradeoffs, but that's the general directions you'd want the tail tracks in. Brookline Ave is an "oh hell no".
 
I think orienting the tracks to run down Comm Ave and to Watertown makes the most sense. Expensive, but that's why this is the "crazy" pitch thread.

I'm also curious about the Fairmount Line. I think the lack of rapid transit service through this section of the region is criminal. Would it ever be feasible to convert this to a branch of the Orange Line? Notwithstanding difficulties in tunneling between Newmarket and Tufts Medical Center and actually connecting this to the existing Orange Line tunnel, is a rapid transit conversion of this line feasible, or does commuter rail (and potentially Amtrak) rely on it too much to give it over to a subway branch? Or is the ROW wide enough to keep both?
 
Someone had talked about this before on a thread and the ROW is not wide enough and Amtrak relies on it for emergencies and the Franklin line will need it to keep service levels reasonable in the future because of capacity constraints on the NEC.
 
nick said:
I'm also curious about the Fairmount Line. I think the lack of rapid transit service through this section of the region is criminal. Would it ever be feasible to convert this to a branch of the Orange Line? Notwithstanding difficulties in tunneling between Newmarket and Tufts Medical Center and actually connecting this to the existing Orange Line tunnel, is a rapid transit conversion of this line feasible, or does commuter rail (and potentially Amtrak) rely on it too much to give it over to a subway branch? Or is the ROW wide enough to keep both?
Click to expand...

What you're looking for is more frequent/higher-capacity service in the corridor, not necessarily HRT. That is best accomplished by:

  • Step 1: Electrify the Fairmount Line
  • Step 2: Either South Station expansion, North-South Rail Link, or both, to provide additional capacity
  • Step 3: With electrification and added capacity, frequency can be greatly improved by running EMUs on the corridor.
  • Step 4: Possible infill stations. This is could be completed at any point in the process. Heck, Blue Hill Ave should be built before the line is ever electrified. Columbia Road has been proposed. River Street is another possibility. In the distant future, if Widett Circle or Cabot Yard is part of some kind of redevelopment, there could be the opportunity for an infill station there.
 
Before you even think about electrification or DMUs, just start running more service on the corridor! You could get down to 20-minute peak headways without running into too awful capacity issues at South Station.

Get to clock-facing half-hour every-day schedules, right now. Kludge together an ugly-but-works way to get free subway transfers at South Station, right now. Start coordinating bus schedules for good transfers, right now. You can do all of that for probably 2 million dollars a year, even with relatively inefficient loco-hauled trains.

The vehicle is not the service. The frequency, reliability, and transfers are the service. Jane Doe who lives on Morton Street isn't waiting for the line to be electrified to start using it; she's waiting for the knowledge that they'll always be a purple-colored thing waiting for her at :08 and :38 past the hour.

Once you have that minimum basic service, then you can start thinking about electrification, about using additional service and/or run-through capacity (which needs to be built for other lines regardless), about xMUs, about additional infills (Blue Hill Ave is definitely getting built - 100% plans are due this month for spring construction), about branding it as rapid transit lite, about using local buses as enhanced feeder services. But absolutely none of that should be talked about until the MBTA demonstrates an ability and willingness to run basic 30-minute-headway service with real transfer potential.
 
The EGE said:
Before you even think about electrification or DMUs, just start running more service on the corridor! You could get down to 20-minute peak headways without running into too awful capacity issues at South Station.

Get to clock-facing half-hour every-day schedules, right now. Kludge together an ugly-but-works way to get free subway transfers at South Station, right now. Start coordinating bus schedules for good transfers, right now. You can do all of that for probably 2 million dollars a year, even with relatively inefficient loco-hauled trains.

The vehicle is not the service. The frequency, reliability, and transfers are the service. Jane Doe who lives on Morton Street isn't waiting for the line to be electrified to start using it; she's waiting for the knowledge that they'll always be a purple-colored thing waiting for her at :08 and :38 past the hour.

Once you have that minimum basic service, then you can start thinking about electrification, about using additional service and/or run-through capacity (which needs to be built for other lines regardless), about xMUs, about additional infills (Blue Hill Ave is definitely getting built - 100% plans are due this month for spring construction), about branding it as rapid transit lite, about using local buses as enhanced feeder services. But absolutely none of that should be talked about until the MBTA demonstrates an ability and willingness to run basic 30-minute-headway service with real transfer potential.
Click to expand...

I agree completely!

What I didn't elaborate on (this being the crazy transit pitch thread), were the reasonable steps that should be taken before my "Step 1" of electrification even happens. Realistically, Step 1-3 should be:

Get to clock-facing half-hour every-day schedules...get free subway transfers at South Station...Start coordinating bus schedules for good transfers
Click to expand...

And then, the steps I spoke about above, once the ridership demands it.
 
The EGE said:
Kludge together an ugly-but-works way to get free subway transfers at South Station, right now.
Click to expand...

I could see a passageway being dug from the easternmost platform, which would become the designated Fairmount platform, with it's own fare lobby, under the little plaza between SS and the neighboring office building, right to the Red Line Station under Summer Street.
 
Scalziand said:
I could see a passageway being dug from the easternmost platform, which would become the designated Fairmount platform, with it's own fare lobby, under the little plaza between SS and the neighboring office building, right to the Red Line Station under Summer Street.
Click to expand...

The easternmost platforms are almost exclusive to the Old Colony lines so trains don't have to cut across many tracks to get to their destinations. Without some major rework, SSX, or NSRL, the Fairmount line will always be toward the middle, Worcester will always be closer to Atlantic Ave, and Old Colony will always be near the channel. This is to prevent crossing moves as much as possible.
 
Or the cheaper, easier solution: no build!

Equip conductors and/or passenger cars with Charlie Card/Ticket readers. Charge the same fare on the Fairmount Line that you do on the subway. The Card is already programmed with for timed transfers. Bam. Easy, workable solution.
 
You could put a minimalist faregate around *just* the Fairmount platform pair positioned three-fifths of the way to the Dot Ave. side of an expanded South Station. But only the expanded station; there's nowhere near enough room today to off-limits any one platform from use by other lines in a pinch. And it would have to be a faregate minimalist enough to disable in an instant and let wide open if some other route had to use it in a pinch, because track reassignments do happen in an instant when something gets out-of-sync. Can't tie dispatch's hands like that.


But I agree...you don't even need to do that. If hand scanners by staffers standing on-platform can do the job on the B Line when they occasionally trial that, it's even more natural to do that with Fairmount where a conductor is always going to be available on-train and many many more can scramble out of the break room at SS if there happens to be an unusually large platform crowd needing an extra scanner for some random train.

Think ops-only, and not far-future but today if they ever finished the necessary job of Charlie'ing commuter rail. And mid-term, rather than faregates and humans with scanners, think PoP and tap surfaces at every door. If the only thing preventing them from doing this on the Green Line is their unnecessary pathological fear of fare evasion at the rear doors, there's no reason other than pathological fear preventing it here. You wouldn't even have to wait for new vehicles. Just take some Bombardier or Pullman single-levels, install the tap surfaces, and do a 6-month trial. If the equipment gets assigned to a different route...big whoop, the tap surfaces are disabled. If other equipment happens to get intermixed on Fairmount...big whoop, the conductors pull hand scanner out of pocket and stand at the doors of the car(s) that don't have the tap surfaces. If the trial is successful, start installing the tap surfaces on more coaches when they get rotated in for regular shop inspection. If the trial isn't successful...disable them on the dozen or whatever cars involved in the trial and don't install any more of them. Easy-peasy.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top