F-Line to Dudley
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Bemis Branch (west half of H2O Branch) also isn't landbanked at all, with completely reverted property lines. It lasted at half-mile rump length to the second Charles crossing for customers on River St. in the 80's, but everything on the 1.3 miles east of there to Main St./US 20 was expunged ~4 decades ago before landbanking came about. The 1960 abandonment mid-Square between Main and Patten St. oddly got better attempted preservation than the next wave. So other than couple discrete block-length chunks property reversions have made it functionally impossible to fashion any additional path segments despite about 80% of it being intact in the form of telltale linear parking lots. They've never ever been able to get enough consecutive property owners willing to play ball with trail easements, so DCR long ago gave up and went all-in on the Charles paths instead. Because of the functional impossibility of stitching it all back landbanking was not pursued when the last rump was abandoned second Charles crossing early-90's, first Charles crossing mid-00's.
Take a look at this bad boy now utterly nuking the ROW on Elm immediately across the first Charles crossing in literal eyeshot of Waltham Ctr. Yeah...ain't ever happening. Add the other encroachment going up elsewhere and you're in the God-mode Transit Pitches thread long ago having left Crazy. Though I hesitate to say there was any missed opportunity here not going for toothier preservation. The odds of successfully nailing down enough easements for full corridor preservation is too many decimal places out rounded to zero, and the path connectivity is duplicated by the Charles paths so pursuit of hacked-to-pieces rail trail that's a block-to-block wayfinding nightmare would've been outright transit-counterproductive. The ROW, for all the reasons you cite, was of such lousy historical design to begin with due to formless meander and grade crossing hell that passenger service was deep-sixed in 1938 despite being the HEAVIER-patronage line than the less-dense main through Belmont. Full-on double-tracking, kind of Urban Rail-ish schedule density, and insane Wartime freight volumes to boot for the Arsenal (in other words not your prototypical Depression-era service cutback). It was too much of an OTP and crossing safety freakshow for B&M's insurance rates and late-tix discounts; they just threw up their hands and said "take the frickin' trolley; we're done."
So any rapid transit here must be a forked-branch out of Porter splitting @ Danehy Park running separate to Watertown on the '96+'08 landbanked branch, and Waltham via Fitchburg Main glom-on. You can safely call a time-of-death on the H2O Branch being any sort of contiguous corridor because of the impossible property reversion situation on the Bemis end. And, much like when B&M said "nuts to this!"...that end would've been an absolute traffic/schedule mgt. horror show on its own merits so was always a mirage as a transit corridor. Put it this way...all the Crazy Saugus Branch Pitches with the offset grade crossing hell in Malden are comparably sane compared to the Bemis Branch because Saugus at least traces a straight-line corridor out to US 1. Bemis is a total drunk's-walk of an anti-efficient meander.
We've discussed at length feasibility before for twin-fork H2O v. Waltham. Straightforward stuff o' builds, nothing of any average-or-higher difficulty. For the H2O Sq. branch, Cambridge DPW has swapped easements along Fresh Pond Pkwy. with the DCR bike path for the new reservoir-protecting earthen berms. That's all properly I.O.U.'d in the land-swap legalese with MassDOT that any 99-year reactivation considerations take the parkway path and shift the bikeway to the (functionally better) reservoir path...no issue there. Obviously assume a duck-under of the parkway grade crossing. Waterworks driveway to School St. on the Greenway extension is all cookie-cutter landbank...and you'll see from the path work and completed section how enormously wide it all is compared to the tree-choked single track that used to be there. Property line-wise this is all rail-with-trailable easy. School to Irving is 1980-ish abandonment caught in the pre-landbank era...shredded property lines and new encroachment. So last half-mile is:
- (A) streetscaping Arsenal for a reservation to a Cleveland Circle-esque transit platform remake of the Arsenal/N. Beacon traffic island that can take in-situ short-turns or run-thrus across the river to the Carhouse. At most 1 street-platforming spacer stop before the spacious terminal median.
- (B) flipping the lone Lexus of Watertown property to extend the ROW 1750 more feet to Gables Arsenal (Beechwood Ave. intersection) for an extra off-street intermediate then a shorter sub-1/3 mile of reservation'd Arsenal to same traffic island terminal and no in-street intermediates
- (C...let's get Crazy!)...something way high-concept like plowing a hole + indoor transit station straight through the glass facade of Arsenal across the School intersection and running via disconnected south end of School and more weapons-grade reservation separation on N. Beacon to the Square. Does this buy you any bona fides over boring street-running on Arsenal? No idea, but it's kewl as fuck in concept to work in an office building that's got a full weather-protected train station through the ground floor so I'm gonna daydream!
- Or...("+" suffixed to any of the above)...run-thru to Newton Corner RUR station loop if Galen can be transit-laned. That would be more traffic-amenable if you had a new set of Pike WB on/offramps @ Birmingham Pkwy. to direct thru-to-Watertown traffic along underutilized Nonantum instead of slamming Exit 17 into oblivion. Galen clears out nicely if it only has to be load-bearing for Pike EB travelers. YMMV.
For Waltham the Fitchburg Line was quad-track width through Belmont Ctr. for the West Cambridge Yard leads, tri-track to Beaver St. because competing Boston & Lowell payola'd itself a separate mainline track from the Fitchburg RR for running the Central Mass mainline out of Somerville Jct. + Fitchburg Cutoff when it leased that road. Only the 1955 B&M grade separation of Waverley pinches the dimensions inside the modern cut...so Waverley is the only place you have to sculpt a little extra width (and let's assume the LRT station just eats the CR station there). After Beaver St. split the Fitchburg ROW through Brandeis is only 2-track. Therefore you must reactivate the 1988-abandonment/T-landbanked Central Mass to 128 as the Fitchburg Line's re-route so LRT can take up the denser environs in Waltham Ctr. They meet back up at the 128 superstation next to New York Life HQ in Weston nice-n'-easy. Rail trail on the CM must go. However...the LRT ROW can trade on/off the Charles River and Riverview Cemetery paths between Center and Brandeis, easily rail-with-trail it Center-Beaver St. + Brandis-128. So the trail flippage is probably higher-utilization to begin with. Relocated Fitchburg Main (let's assume stationless--or at most one North Waltham spacer--since there's little transferrage you can accomplish here that can't be done at much higher frequency from a 128 superstation backtrack) will need some non-trivial $$$ sunk into grade separation because the Central Mass had 8 crossings between private Middlesex Circle and 117, some with very poor sightlines. And the NIMBY's will be bellyaching a bit about soundwall provision because it is snugly-fitting around abutters.
Belmont...yeah, NIMBY-town. But they have fuckall to complain about with how overbuilt/overbuffered the ROW is, so I honestly don't think if push comes to shove that they have the juice to turf it by their lonesome. I'm honestly a little more worried about the Central Mass abutters and what cost bloat comes there in all the concessions over crossing elimination and sound-proofing, though if City of Waltham at-large is gung-ho the citywide municipal support should override. Just make sure you're properly rating this one as one of the last of the linear-to-128 extension priorities, because :15 Urban Rail to 128 should be worth >25 years of rejuvenation at minimum before demand grows big enough to risk serious overtop of what new utility the RR can provide. Think of Waltham as a moving target with a high-speed overtake staged far down the line.
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