Crazy Transit Pitches

[F-Line to Dudley]

Everything else you said makes perfect sense, particularly given the other freight customers that I didn't know about (and thanks for all the detail!). I also like your suggested reconfiguration around JFK/UMass, although I wonder if it might be simpler just to add a flying junction south of Savin Hill, at the location of the old Harrison Square station, where the Ashmont Line turns west, freeing up the Braintree tracks north of there?

1. Savin Hill is a very low-ridership station (2nd-lowest on all Red), so full-on mainline frequencies are a big waste there.
2. For taking ailing trains out-of-service from the subway you need crossover options and most conflict-free pick of empty platform berths at a location closest to the portal in order to dump passengers and/or minimize delays reversing to Cabot Yard. Busting JFK down to a single island platform is going to hurt recovery time from a disablement by lots vs. being able to pick which nearby platform berth will be unoccupied the longest.
3. Not a lot of room between Savin Hall and the Freeport St. bridge to split tracks and flyover. And extremely little lateral room in that stretch. Flying over closer to Clayton St. split is going to punish someone with an ill-advised slow zone by tacking on a graded incline in close proximity to a curve.

Of those #2 is the one that'll burn most frequently.

But the quoted above is interesting. I'm not surprised to hear in general, but if memory serves, the CTA in Chicago has a couple of heavy rail grade crossings -- I think on the Ravenswood Line? That was what I had in mind when suggesting the same here. How does Chicago make it work? (Or am I misremembering?)

All of CTA's remaining grade crossings are grandfathered. And they've been trying to get rid of their last remainders for years, but can't come to a consensus on how to do it. While there's no FRA-type body lording over rapid transit, the NTSB would have a field day with that so there'll never be any allowances for new-construction HRT to have public crossings. As late as the 70's they were still considering building the Orange Line to Reading with some of the Western Route's grade crossings retained...but that was several lifetimes ago for the phenomenon of distracted driving/walking.

Follow-up idea: in a post-Link (with an OC portal) Regional Rail world, what's the argument against converting the Red Line tracks on the Braintree Line to mainline, and running Regional Rail on them, through-running the tunnel downtown out to Porter and Waltham, or some other northside line? You still get the peak-express track, especially for south-of-Middleboro service, but get a lot more capacity overall, plus a faster ride downtown for Quincy and Braintree riders.

Quincy losing their one-seat to Kendall and Harvard is an immediate disqualifier politically, because nothing else can approximate ease of access to Cambridge. Forced transfer to a sardine can at JFK is an unacceptable substitute. Also...RER makes no assumptions that NSRL is getting built, so the wholly-future Porter possibility is irrelevant today. You must implement RER frequencies or the Link has no basis for getting built, and if RER frequencies must pre-date the Link to get it built then so must the fix for OC single-track. You can't sell RER or the track fix on the back of immediate transit loss to Cambridge or you'll get skinned alive in Quincy.

Also, in terms of raw frequencies...not all 3 OC lines qualify for the maximal 15-min. RER headway we call "Indigo" for the 128-turning lines. See my previous post for how hyper-dense service is differentiated from suburban service (or pull up the TransitMatters website where they make the same exact distinction in bullet form) while still following RER operating principles. It's probably only short-turns to Brockton can support all-day demand at 15-min. headways. The other two lines, and service past Brockton slot demographically much firmer in the 30-min. headway category. 30 minutes being pretty damn great in terms of feasible all-day demand from Greenbush, Plymouth, and Middleboro/Buzzards Bay. But it's not going to be Red frequencies, which'll be 3 minute headways to JFK and 6 to Braintree in 2021 after the signal upgrade + car procurement projects are complete.

And even if you could tweak those RER schedules to draw close to par, it's never going to be 6 mins. with a one-seat to Kendall, Harvard, MGH, and all the other big destinations inbound of JFK. That simply can't be done on any Purple Line routing current or future, and that is the be-all/end-all for (substantial!) Quincy/Braintree transit demand.

 

[datadyne007]

Hey there, I have a statement from Ethan Finlan, the TM Regional Rail Lead:

"I mentioned that in the context of something that would be worth studying long-term as an option, with a need to carefully study it. I certainly did not intend to suggest that it was an official TransitMatters consideration and am very sorry for the misunderstanding. I appreciate your feedback, F-Line."

Ethan Finlan
Regional Rail Lead
TransitMatters

This was not an official TransitMatters position and should not be construed as such.

Best,
Tim L.
VP of Operations
Communications Director
TransitMatters

 

[Wash]

Hey there, I have a statement from Ethan Finlan, the TM Regional Rail Lead:

This was not an official TransitMatters position and should not be construed as such.

Sorry I didn't make this clear in my original post.

 

[Riverside]

RER makes no assumptions that NSRL is getting built, so the wholly-future Porter possibility is irrelevant today. You must implement RER frequencies or the Link has no basis for getting built, and if RER frequencies must pre-date the Link to get it built then so must the fix for OC single-track. You can't sell RER or the track fix on the back of immediate transit loss to Cambridge or you'll get skinned alive in Quincy.

To be clear, as I said above, this is very explicitly only an idea floated for a post-NSRL world -- something that might be circled back to after many other things. But your point is taken about the sequence of dependencies (OC single-track -> RER -> NSRL), makes sense.

Also, in terms of raw frequencies...not all 3 OC lines qualify for the maximal 15-min. RER headway we call "Indigo" for the 128-turning lines. See my previous post for how hyper-dense service is differentiated from suburban service (or pull up the TransitMatters website where they make the same exact distinction in bullet form) while still following RER operating principles. It's probably only short-turns to Brockton can support all-day demand at 15-min. headways. The other two lines, and service past Brockton slot demographically much firmer in the 30-min. headway category. 30 minutes being pretty damn great in terms of feasible all-day demand from Greenbush, Plymouth, and Middleboro/Buzzards Bay.

So here is a question that I don't understand: you've outlined the following mainline rail services north of Quincy Center:

• 2 tph from Greenbush
• 2 tph from Kingston/Plymouth
• 2 tph from Middleboro/Buzzards Bay
• 2 tph short-turning from Brockton

which adds up to 8 tph, which would, if evenly distributed (and I'm guessing that's the kicker?) translate to headways of 7.5 minutes, which actually is better than the 9-minute peak headways the Red Line currently enjoys.

The way you framed your point here suggests that you think RER frequencies could never come close to Red frequencies, given how few of the OC lines actually qualify for 4 tph service. But this corridor is far enough upstream that it still would be 8 tph for most of it, so I guess my question is, am I missing something here? (Aside from the future Red upgrade to 10 tph.)

Is OC RER likely to be non-clock-facing, with clustering arrivals followed by 25-minute lulls? Is the assumption that the trains will be mostly full by the time they hit Quincy?

But it's not going to be Red frequencies, which'll be 3 minute headways to JFK and 6 to Braintree in 2021 after the signal upgrade + car procurement projects are complete.

This was something else I didn't know -- yes, that, particularly combined with one-seats to MGH, Kendall etc., clearly makes a mainline conversion of the Braintree Line a non-starter, that makes sense.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

To be clear, as I said above, this is very explicitly only an idea floated for a post-NSRL world -- something that might be circled back to after many other things. But your point is taken about the sequence of dependencies (OC single-track -> RER -> NSRL), makes sense.



So here is a question that I don't understand: you've outlined the following mainline rail services north of Quincy Center:

• 2 tph from Greenbush
• 2 tph from Kingston/Plymouth
• 2 tph from Middleboro/Buzzards Bay
• 2 tph short-turning from Brockton

which adds up to 8 tph, which would, if evenly distributed (and I'm guessing that's the kicker?) translate to headways of 7.5 minutes, which actually is better than the 9-minute peak headways the Red Line currently enjoys.

The way you framed your point here suggests that you think RER frequencies could never come close to Red frequencies, given how few of the OC lines actually qualify for 4 tph service. But this corridor is far enough upstream that it still would be 8 tph for most of it, so I guess my question is, am I missing something here? (Aside from the future Red upgrade to 10 tph.)

Is OC RER likely to be non-clock-facing, with clustering arrivals followed by 25-minute lulls? Is the assumption that the trains will be mostly full by the time they hit Quincy?



This was something else I didn't know -- yes, that, particularly combined with one-seats to MGH, Kendall etc., clearly makes a mainline conversion of the Braintree Line a non-starter, that makes sense.

It's the combination of these factors that make it a nonstarter:

• Red is evolving faster than the RER implementation, with those 6-min. headways coming in only 3 years...keeping it at king-of-heap on frequencies.

• Because East Braintree Jct. splits those Greenbush frequencies off before Braintree Station, Braintree Station sees a 4 TPH decrease.
  • ↑Maths Note↑: Make sure to multiply your TPH's by 2 to reflect track occupancy for bi-directional service. e.g. 30 minute frequencies going both directions = 2 TPH x 2 directions = 4 TPH. In reverse, factor half of the total TPH for figuring the headway, since headway reflects unidirectional frequency to a constant destination/direction. e.g. 4 TPH ÷ 2 equal-balanced directions = 2 TPH per direction = 30-min. headway each direction

• Quincy's commute orientation is to downtown and Cambridge, so the line-in-sand dealbreaker for them is anything that cuts them off from DTX, Park, MGH, Kendall, and Harvard. Since RER cannot make assumptions of an NSRL, transfer at JFK or South Station is acutely harmful to their commute patterns honed over nearly 50 years. And if NSRL ever does happen, transfer at Porter is no substitute for the lost one-seat destinations. That's a multi-municipality lawsuit right there drawing in many Legislators and a couple Congressional districts. A paper study has no ability to graduate to a build rec with all the opposition it'll stir up. In terms of showstoppers, loss of the one-seat job centers is bigger than raw frequencies.

• Quincy Ctr. is the South Shore's primary bus terminal, and most bus terminals of that size are attached to rapid transit. Shearing it off to another mode with destination (primarily) and frequency compromises risks another neverending quagmire like the "equal or better" debate after Dudley bus terminal lost its rapid transit anchor with the Orange Line relocation in '87. Quincy isn't nearly Dudley's heft in sheer size so the impacts may not dominate to the degree of that 3-decade festering sore in Roxbury, but the controversies and equity debates will rage...and will dovetail with the primary objection to loss of one-seat to key downtown and Cambridge stops. If the one-seat hornet's nest doesn't kill it dead by lonesome, then the Yellow Line coattails feeding to those same destinations are the clincher.

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

Red Line branch to Tufts University

What if a new deep bore tunnel were dug starting around where the Red Line crosses Summer St in Somerville, and continuing to the Tufts University station being built in Medford as part of the Green Line Extension project, in conjunction with a Tufts commuter rail platform being constructed?

http://amateurplanner.blogspot.com/2017/10/thinking-big-lets-think-realistic-first.html claims we can't have 3 minute headways on the Red Line if all the trains have to turn around at Alewife because of limitations of the crossover and curve at Alewife. Obviously we could address this by extending the Red Line past Alewife, either with the infrastructure under the park as proposed in that blog post, or with a Lake St and/or Arlington Center station extension; but having a second branch and sending only the Braintree trains to Alewife, and sending the Ashmont trains to Tufts (or vice versa) would also address the Alewife crossover capacity bottleneck.

Enabling Lowell Line commuters to transfer to the Red Line at Tufts / College Ave in Medford also might make them less likely to drive. (I'm aware of someone who several years ago was working near Alewife Station and living somewhere near the Lowell Line who found the transit commute to be too inconvenient and drove instead, though this would require transferring at both Tufts and Porter to get from Lowell to Alewife; but Lowell to Harvard / Central / Kendall would become a two seat ride.)

An infill station near the Powder House Square rotary would also be possible.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Re: Red Line branch to Tufts University

What if a new deep bore tunnel were dug starting around where the Red Line crosses Summer St in Somerville, and continuing to the Tufts University station being built in Medford as part of the Green Line Extension project, in conjunction with a Tufts commuter rail platform being constructed?

http://amateurplanner.blogspot.com/2017/10/thinking-big-lets-think-realistic-first.html claims we can't have 3 minute headways on the Red Line if all the trains have to turn around at Alewife because of limitations of the crossover and curve at Alewife. Obviously we could address this by extending the Red Line past Alewife, either with the infrastructure under the park as proposed in that blog post, or with a Lake St and/or Arlington Center station extension; but having a second branch and sending only the Braintree trains to Alewife, and sending the Ashmont trains to Tufts (or vice versa) would also address the Alewife crossover capacity bottleneck.

Enabling Lowell Line commuters to transfer to the Red Line at Tufts / College Ave in Medford also might make them less likely to drive. (I'm aware of someone who several years ago was working near Alewife Station and living somewhere near the Lowell Line who found the transit commute to be too inconvenient and drove instead, though this would require transferring at both Tufts and Porter to get from Lowell to Alewife; but Lowell to Harvard / Central / Kendall would become a two seat ride.)

An infill station near the Powder House Square rotary would also be possible.

Ari's wrong there. The Red Line vehicle + signal improvements program does indeed allow for an upper limit of 3-min. headways. See p. 2 of this PowerPoint file from an FCMB presentation. And also, the ruling limit on the line is not Alewife but rather Harvard curve. So assuming 3 min. (which is pretty damn good) is somehow not enough, you wouldn't be able to improve anything by making any touches out in North Cambridge. If it's anywhere north of the curve, its service is subservient to the curve.

But the 3-min. headways we're soon to get aren't a problem. The main threat to Red's vitality is that it's simply overloaded at peak by a far greater...and faster-growing...share than the other HRT lines. So tasking it to somehow carry even more of the gruntwork for the whole system is completely counterintuitive; we absolutely don't want it to become Boston's equivalent to the Lexington Avenue line where disproportionate share of the whole metro economy teeters on top of it. The major unbuilt rapid transit projects of consensus max-priority--Red-Blue, Transitway-Back Bay, Urban Ring Cambridge + Harvard spur, and even a completed GLX--all in some way directly address the areas of most acute Red Line congestion by spreading out rider distribution via more transfer options or (as in case of GLX-Medford flanking the Tufts/Powder House end of Davis) through alternate pathways.

Clear out that project backlog by getting some of those critical builds going and the city can continue growing without Red being so taxed that Harvard curve and 3-min. headways ever manifest themselves as real-world barriers to service.

 

[tysmith95]

Make it a $10 toll to go south through the Zakim and north south of the city during the morning rush hour, reverse the toll during evening rush hour. Add a toll to the Charlestown bridge to prevent people from cutting over there. Also one on Morrissey. Use the money to pay for the NSRL and electrification of the commuter rail.

That'll be an easier sell than taxing people in Worcester and Springfield to pay for transit improvements in Boston.

The big dig straddled the city in debt and hurt the MBTA, so these tolls would make sense. Also increase tolls on the pike during rush hour.

 

[stefal]

Make it a $10 toll

I know this is Crazy Transit Pitches, but you'll have riots.

 

[Arenacale]

Instead of tolling Morrissey, why not eliminate the ramps to/from it on 93? Make Columbia Road and Granite Ave the only two ramps in the area, and force people to commit to one or the other. Now you won't have people bailing off of 93 to cut through Southie as much, and you're not really losing much access to either road in the area.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Instead of tolling Morrissey, why not eliminate the ramps to/from it on 93? Make Columbia Road and Granite Ave the only two ramps in the area, and force people to commit to one or the other. Now you won't have people bailing off of 93 to cut through Southie as much, and you're not really losing much access to either road in the area.

Problem with that is the Morrissey exits are the access point to Neponset Circle, North Quincy (with all its exploding development), and Gallivan Blvd./Ashmont. Quincy would scream bloody murder over all they've got riding on N. Quincy taking off as a big commercial hub, and they'd be well-justified. There's no easy way to de-couple the UMass speed trap from all the mission-critical neighborhood linkage emanating out of the Circle because of the way the ramps are spread all around between Exits 12-14.

If it were possible to. . .

• ...do some property-taking of the car wash at Neponset Circle
• ...stretch the rotary somewhere in the area between the shopping center and the Red Line tracks
• ...make the rotary into a geometrically kosher half-rotary/half-frontage setup with new duck-unders of 93 for changing directions

. . .they might be able to revamp Exit 12 into a more functional single-point NB+SB interchange, delete Exit 13 (Victory Rd./Freeport St.) in total to get traffic off side streets, and put the whole length of Morrissey between Garvey Playground and Freeport St. on a great big road diet while redeveloping the hell out of that ugly stretch of plazas. Exit 14 to UMass is probably worth keeping, but with the overcapacity on Morrissey trimmed back all points south of there it can probably be compacted into a single-point traffic light at the Freeport intersection reflecting its lower volumes (with free offramp movements still permitted northbound to UMass via traffic-island turn). And then, obviously, extremely major road diet from Exit 14 to Columbia rotary so it's no longer the UMass Expressway.

If it no longer feels like a highway, tolls won't need to be a debate because it'll shed most of its induced demand and bottom-line itself around native demand. But to do that you've got to make some sense out of the distended ramp spaghetti and take care of the Neponset Circle locus which is a bona fide neighborhood-to-neighborhood diverging point of critical value. Compacting the setup so the Circle's in a separate realm entirely from the strip-mall and UMass Expressway portions of Morrissey is great place to start. Hopefully not too expensive, either.

------------------------------

What I really want to see is for the Frontage Roads to be extended south to Columbia Rd., swallowing Von Hillern St. on the northbound side to span the Columbia & Southampton ramps...and *delicately* extending the Boston St. connector frontage to meet up with the Columbia ramp 1800 ft. south. That would take a ton of traffic (especially trucks) off Dot Ave. and lower Mass Ave. while correcting the unfortunate jam-causing flow kink at the Southampton merge that the Big Dig left behind as a small daily-annoyance brainfart. A much more meaningful improvement than extending the HOV's from Savin Hill to the Pike exit, which I think is grotesquely overrated because of the rich bounty of directly parallel transit.

I think if you compact the Red Line track sprawl at adjacent Columbia Jct. to open up room on the east side (needed anyway to double-track the Old Colony through Dorchester) you can create just enough lateral room around the Boston St.-Dot Ave. block to shift things over for the SB frontage extension without blowing up the Polish American Citizens Club or any houses on Washburn St. I've got an MS Paint crayon drawing circulating here on how to do the Red Line compacting pretty elegantly. May have to do a slight concrete pour on the last 50 ft. of subway to shift the portal another 25-30 ft. further away from Von Hillern to create maximal space for packing in the frontage infrastructure, but that's a very minor detail.

 

[HenryAlan]

The main threat to Red's vitality is that it's simply overloaded at peak by a far greater...and faster-growing...share than the other HRT lines.

Slightly off topic, but I've seen many statements about Red Line congestion, and as predominately an Orange Line rider, I tend to scratch my head. When I look at ridership stats, the Orange Line carries more passengers per mile and per car than the Red Line, though slightly less passengers per station. My first impression of the stats I have available is that the Orange Line is more congested. I recognize that car capacity could impact things, but by my calculations, OL cars carry almost 500 more passengers per day, that seems like a lot, even if we adjust for capacity differences. Other possibilities are that OL riders are more evenly distributed across time and geography. Anyway, it's a curiosity that makes me wonder about the claims regarding Red Line ridership. If anybody knows what I'm missing or can point to my flaws, I'd appreciate gaining a better understanding.

 

[whittle]

Slightly off topic, but I've seen many statements about Red Line congestion, and as predominately an Orange Line rider, I tend to scratch my head. When I look at ridership stats, the Orange Line carries more passengers per mile and per car than the Red Line, though slightly less passengers per station. My first impression of the stats I have available is that the Orange Line is more congested. I recognize that car capacity could impact things, but by my calculations, OL cars carry almost 500 more passengers per day, that seems like a lot, even if we adjust for capacity differences. Other possibilities are that OL riders are more evenly distributed across time and geography. Anyway, it's a curiosity that makes me wonder about the claims regarding Red Line ridership. If anybody knows what I'm missing or can point to my flaws, I'd appreciate gaining a better understanding.

I think the important thing to note is the difference between the rather artificial current capacity based on the number of cars that are run and the maximum theoretical capacity based on the number of cars we expect we could possibly run if the number of cars available wasn't an issue. In the former sense, you are correct that OL is more crowded than RL, but this is not considered a long term issue since the solution is just to buy more cars (which we're doing). But in terms of theoretical capacity, RL is much closer to capacity since it has more riders and is limited by the Harvard curve (and the southern branches are limited to half of whatever we send through Harvard). So the point at which "buy more cars" is no longer a solution to crowding is much closer for RL.

 

[Lrfox]

Slightly off topic, but I've seen many statements about Red Line congestion, and as predominately an Orange Line rider, I tend to scratch my head. When I look at ridership stats, the Orange Line carries more passengers per mile and per car than the Red Line, though slightly less passengers per station. My first impression of the stats I have available is that the Orange Line is more congested. I recognize that car capacity could impact things, but by my calculations, OL cars carry almost 500 more passengers per day, that seems like a lot, even if we adjust for capacity differences. Other possibilities are that OL riders are more evenly distributed across time and geography. Anyway, it's a curiosity that makes me wonder about the claims regarding Red Line ridership. If anybody knows what I'm missing or can point to my flaws, I'd appreciate gaining a better understanding.

It's lack of perspective - the OL is more crowded at peak times. you're right on all counts. I am predominantly a Red Line rider (Davis), who sometimes utilizes the Orange Line (Sullivan). I regularly have difficulty squeezing on OL trains at Sullivan in the morning. Barring significant delays, this is rarely an issue at any point on the Red Line from Alewife or from Braintree (never commuted northbound on the Ashmont line so I can't speak to that). Yes, the Red Line can get crowded (it was this AM, but there were delays), but never to the extent the OL is on a regular basis.

The big thing is the headways. The Orange Line is just terrible on this front and it leads to big overcrowding issues. I don't know why, but I'm consistently surprised when I get to Sullivan at 8:00 and see that the next train is 7 minutes away and there are no delays.

The other thing for the Red Line, at least north of downtown, is that there's better two-way flow of passengers at the stations between the terminus and downtown. Lots of southbound commuters get off at Harvard, Central and Kendall which makes room for people getting on. The Orange Line builds and builds until you hit Back Bay (coming from Forest Hills) or North Station (coming from Oak Grove).

Finally, the case could be made for squeaky wheels. I know it's a polarizing opinion, but the Red Line handles a more affluent population. Those voices are often heard when other voices are not. So we hear a lot more about how congested the Red Line is, but the stats tell a different story. My personal experience echoes the stats. The Orange Line is more overcrowded in every sense of the word. Though as whittle pointed out, the fix for overcrowding on the Orange Line is easier (more trains) than the fix for the Red Line.

 

[HenryAlan]

Thanks both of you for the answers. Both affirming of my sense of things, and very clear about why it's a different issue on each line. I'm definitely looking forward to the OL fleet expansion!

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Per the 2014 Blue Book, Orange has only 324 scheduled one-way trips per day while Red has 438...a full 26% more. Even Blue, the lightest-ridership color line, beats Orange with 354 trips. That explains the per-car discrepancy in ridership.

So, yes, scarcity of service absolutely is the primary reason for Orange overcrowding. And that will be alleviated immediately by the new cars and signaling project dropping headways to 4.5 minutes. You should see most of that overcrowding dissipate. Red will get a slighter improvement in headways too from the order, but after that it'll be very nearly tapped out to the upper throughput limit of Harvard curve. Since the crowding is still moderate-severe and growth projections slam Red harder than any other, the small-scale upcoming tweaks are not sustainable relief. That's where the other top-priority rapid transit builds have to get moving so they can do their part.

-------------------------

Route miles explain the per-mile ridership discrepancy. Red + branches are 21 route miles, Orange only 11...a 47% difference. Number of stations, however, is pretty close: 19 for Orange, 22 for Red + branches. That works out to 1.7 stations per mile for Orange, and 1.0 per mile for Red. So Orange will end up coming on top of the per-mile ridership race because it packs more stops in a shorter length in a more centralized area. Red is physically much larger, but also has 9 stops on the branches running at half-mainline frequencies skewing the numbers somewhat. A top-ridership ranking of stops shows a stark difference in mainline loads, however.

Per the Blue Book, Top 25 ranking of Red & Orange stops, with totals at transfer stops separated out by their individual lines. . .

South Station - 23.7K
Harvard - 23.2K
Back Bay - 18.1K
Central - 16.5K
Kendall - 15.4K
Forest Hills - 15.2K
Davis - 12.8K
Malden - 12.7K
DTX - 12.5K (OL share)
Charles/MGH - 12.1K
Alewife - 11.2K
Park - 10.8K (RL share)
North Station - 10.8K (OL share)
DTX - 10.6K (RL share)
Ruggles - 10.4K
Sullivan - 10.1K
Ashmont* - 9.3K
JFK/UMass - 8.9K
Porter - 8.9K
Quincy Ctr.* - 8.7K
State - 8.2K (OL share)
Wellington - 7.6K
Haymarket - 7.0K (OL share)
North Quincy* - 7.0K
Oak Grove - 6.6K
* - branch stop

Every single RL mainline stop except Broadway & Andrew is represented here. Note how much South Station (Seaport + Regional Rail) and Cambridge are blowing it out for Red, and how shockingly high Charles/MGH ranks. Since Seaport, Cambridge, West End are #1/#2/#3 with a bullet on where the next 25 years of urban megagrowth is coming from, there's your festering congestion sore needing augmentation with projects like Transitway-Back Bay, Urban Ring + Harvard spur, Red-Blue, etc. On the Orange side it's a much shorter list of mainly Back Bay and Forest Hills that are in real trouble for overload. Well...FH needs that extension to Roslindale and/or West Roxbury to diffuse some of the crush-load bus transferees coming from lower Washington. And BBY needs Worcester Line Urban Rail soon then probably further out a proper Green Line platform via a new E tunnel routing replacing Copley Jct.

 

[HenryAlan]

Thanks for the comprehensive reply F-Line, I always enjoy learning from your strong knowledge base.

 

[tysmith95]

Instead of the South Station expansion, build a new smaller terminal station in the seaport using track 51. Route the Greenbush, Kingston, and Middleborough lines to this new station.

Downtown bound passengers could just get off at JFK/UMass and switch to the red line. Alternatively red line passengers could get off at JFK UMass and switch to a seaport bound train.

An ideal spot for the new station would be behind the PWC building. But a more likely spot would be next to or under the convention center.

Double tracking the lines might require the South Boston bypass road to be taken. However I think that's a decent compromise for better transit.

This would also set up space for increased service on the other lines that will continue to go to South Station.

As an alternative you could get rid of the bypass, route the Fairmount line to track 51. You could even upgrade the line to rapid transit via electrification and smaller vehicles.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Instead of the South Station expansion, build a new smaller terminal station in the seaport using track 51. Route the Greenbush, Kingston, and Middleborough lines to this new station.

Downtown bound passengers could just get off at JFK/UMass and switch to the red line. Alternatively red line passengers could get off at JFK UMass and switch to a seaport bound train.

An ideal spot for the new station would be behind the PWC building. But a more likely spot would be next to or under the convention center.

Double tracking the lines might require the South Boston bypass road to be taken. However I think that's a decent compromise for better transit.

This would also set up space for increased service on the other lines that will continue to go to South Station.

As an alternative you could get rid of the bypass, route the Fairmount line to track 51. You could even upgrade the line to rapid transit via electrification and smaller vehicles.

That would do absolutely nothing except worsen the whole of the South Shore's access to downtown, tank their service levels because such a constrained routing can't handle the schedules or equipment rotations, and punish those riders with more hoops to jump through to get to other critical services like Amtrak, intercity buses, and local buses. Transferring on a crowded JFK platform is no substitute. Now, if you want to get a sense of how much a nonstarter this is going to be...watch the fur fly when the 'till-now secret South Coast Rail Middleboro Alternative traffic modeling gets unveiled and ends up gapping the hell out of South Shore headways. Several towns are already ready to sue over that...and that damage to service from SCR projects relatively mild compared to the disruption of shearing them off to some Amshack of a terminal out by the Convention Center.

Prior to 1900 the 4 individual southside RR's--Boston & Providence, Boston & Albany, New York & New England, and Old Colony--all did have their own single-purpose separate terminals scattered about Back Bay/South End, the Seaport, and Ft. Point. The whole point of that quartet banding together to build South Union Station was location! location! location! and convenience. SS was at the crossroads of multiple neighborhoods and had superior intermodal transfer access to any site south of the old downtown. And the same is true today, even with the blocking presence of USPS cutting the Dot Ave. gateway to Southie from general traffic. There is literally no better place to run the trains.


Fairmount to Track 61 was already proposed by some BCEC flaks, and already violently opposed by Dorchester and Hyde Park commuters who would've lost many times more access than gained. Nonstarter for them, too. Amtrak had not yet weighed in on publicly on that proposal, but they were very likely to say nein to any service that crossed over their access to Southampton Yard. Conceptually kookier thru-routes to Track 61 have also been thrown around. The overwhelming conclusion is that one-seat commuter rail trips to the Seaport are NOT desired by any known segment of the suburban population. Southside CR riders also aren't the biggest critics of the Silver Line's problems, either, because that's generally not the crowd that's being passed like a kidney stone through both over-congested sides of the Red-Silver transfer...they're just going right downstairs to Silver.


What needs to be done is pull the unrelated cogs of SSX apart into separate projects...because too many chefs are stirring the pot with pieces that serve different masters. The bare platform construction and switch layout fixes for traffic conflicts are not all that controversial on their face. It's a major capacity expansion that also does more rapidly-turning RER ops a real solid by eliminating the cross-cutting movements that keep trainsets bottled up on the platforms. The switch fixes allow platform lengthenings so every berth can take on a crush-load crowd. That's all fixing a glitch induced by lopping the formerly symmetrical station in half in the late-1960's. It doesn't require anything more than fixed-cost rail engineering, and platform pours that have the requisite metal awnings. Track work did not cause SSX to sail to nearly a billion dollars or become an existential crisis for the Commonwealth. The real estate interests are what ended up confusing this project to a mess.

The real estate empire-building, bejeweled headhouses and expanded waiting rooms, grand reimaging of Dot Ave., recreational use of Ft. Point Channel, and all the other form-over-function stuff is somebody else's problem to fund. It doesn't impact the transportation essentials. All the transpo-centric base build has to do is get USPS moved, do its fixed-cost track/platform construction, and fashion air rights peg mounts between tracks exactly like the main station's 1989 renovation did for future uses that took 30 years to materialize. Shear all the empire-building nonessentials off for others to figure out. It might actually do the land-use planning some genuine good in the end to narrow and bottom-line its focus so it's not such a confused lump of conflicting interests.



As for Track 61...it's overrated in general for transit because it whiffs on any/all connecting transit starting in the Southampton/Widett wasteland, missing Broadway + Andrew at the midpoint, running on the wrong side of the Pike for a direct transfer to Silver, and failing to catch the 9 or 11 buses deep down in the very constrained pit. For no reason other than it happens to pass in front of BCEC it's become this shiny bauble of "potential" that officials and deep-pocketed investors think must be exploited...yet no one's ever been able to fashion a coherent transit best-practices argument (bread-and-butter stuff like frequencies, transfer utility, accessibility) for the various schemes floated about. At this point it's not that people haven't thought hard enough for an angle; if anything they've thought TOO hard. It's just a square-peg line to try to fashion anything out of...and being the first to push extremely hard enough to wedge the square through the round hole isn't going to suddenly make it good transit. Nor is getting rid of Haul Road and sacking Southie with a daily truckopalypse for their troubles.

 

[Java King]

Seaport-South Boston-Bayside Streetcar System

I posted this in the Bayside thread too.

What about a "starter" streetcar line that starts at South Station and runs on Summer Street all the way to L Street. It continues on L Street to William J. Blvd, where it continues to Bayside Development and JFK Redline Station. This could be a single line that hits HUGE commercial development in the Seaport, area around Drydock Avenue, Cruise Terminal, South Boston Powerplant redevelopment, South Boston residential heart, plus Bayside growth.

Additional lines could be added down Broadway to service the commercial and retail heart of South Boston.

Good examples:

https://portlandstreetcar.org/
https://www.dcstreetcar.com/
https://seattlestreetcar.org/

Am I crazy to think Boston could fund this and NOT MBTA?