Crazy Transit Pitches

[lexicon506]

Last one in the series...just your basic A-Line restoration to Oak Sq. No warranties in case I missed one traffic signal that should be depicted on these renders.

F-Line, it would be great to have this entire series (and any other similar proposals that you've sketched out.. I remember one for LRT UR through Kendall) live somewhere where we can easily revisit. I find these to be incredibly well done and informative and know I would make good use of a dedicated website or thread.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

F-Line, it would be great to have this entire series (and any other similar proposals that you've sketched out.. I remember one for LRT UR through Kendall) live somewhere where we can easily revisit. I find these to be incredibly well done and informative and know I would make good use of a dedicated website or thread.

Check the Green Line Reconfig thread. They're all uploaded straight to the aB board host so the image links won't break.

 

[Riverside]

But this is a good place for us to raise an important question -- given the varying double vs quad tracking, etc, what is the theoretical maximum capacity of the various sections of the Central Subway? (Assume no F Line to Nubian or Huntington Subway)

• Kenmore-Copley Jct (assuming flat junction remains)
• Copley Jct-Boylston crossovers (north of the station)
• Boylston-Park Street
• Park Street-Government Center
• Government Center-North Station
• North Station-Lechmere/Brickbottom

Want to circle back to this. In theory, at rush hour, each branch of the Green Line runs 10 tph, meaning that Copley to Park Street sees 40 tph. Does that mean that any stretch of Green Line double track can support the same?

Once upon a time, I thought I read that Park-Gov't Center is a bottleneck because it drops down to 2 tracks. But why would that stretch of two tracks be different from that between Copley and Arlington? Is it because the stations are closer together and therefore can't fit as many signal blocks?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Want to circle back to this. In theory, at rush hour, each branch of the Green Line runs 10 tph, meaning that Copley to Park Street sees 40 tph. Does that mean that any stretch of Green Line double track can support the same?

Once upon a time, I thought I read that Park-Gov't Center is a bottleneck because it drops down to 2 tracks. But why would that stretch of two tracks be different from that between Copley and Arlington? Is it because the stations are closer together and therefore can't fit as many signal blocks?

Yes. Closer packed, so the signal system is nearly out of block-segmenting rope. Longer dwell times because of the wholesale ridership turnover at the transfers. Inability (for now...to-be-fixed for GLT) on the inbound side to wave thru trains ahead of short-turning trains in the queue @ Park for slotting back-to-back near vs. far GC platform berths, which means a mis-timed branch schedule at Kenmore starts progressively causing more trouble as it goes inbound until the festering sore bursts open @ Park/GC. It doesn't handle chaos well, and more chaos is what the current Central Subway features compared to the 1950's when it juggled many more trains from many more branches...but at night-and-day better predictability.

These problems are fixable by overall GLT-driven chaos taming, the enacting of Park inbound fence crossovers, and dwell-taming relievers like Red-Blue taking double-transferee loads off both GL stations and GL-Seaport taking a huge chunk off the stampedes to the Red stairs such that more riders are going to stay on at these stops rather than wholesale-turnover to longer dwells. You can add lots more service from those changes. We're already getting a majority share of them with GLT and (hopefully) Red-Blue even if Seaport connection is still a long gestation period away. Others such as E relocation off Copley Jct. gives the Kenmore mash-up luxurious # of signal blocks Kenmore-Boylston to settle out any bunching, so that's a key one when the Urban Ring patterns are fully grown.

As a final killshot, you can mod GC station to split tracks from the 2-track western approach and trench across the wedge to the separate Brattle Loop tracks making them thru-service platforms instead of loop-only bit players. That way only the 2-tk. running tunnel is double while all bookending platforms are quad, making it so that anything touching the 2-tk. tunnel is in constant motion and never needing to brake behind an upcoming stopped train. It would radically change ped flow across the GC wedge so is semi-invasive at nneding to do new egress tricks (like a catwalk crossing up by the skylight and widened up/down staircases to the Blue level for changing sides of the wedge) and having the dwell-relievers like Red-Blue pre-built...but the station is structurally up to doing it without needing to relocate load-bearing columns. That's kind of a final capper for the more 'exponential' expansions, so wouldn't be needed for a long time...but is a big trick to pull out of the hat when it gets to that point.

 

[Massachoicetts]

You see F LIne's proposals could never actually be implemented.. they make too much sense, and that's something the MBTA is not good at right now.

 

[Riverside]

snip

Nice. Yeah, I knew that a lot could be done just with that modification to the loop at Park Street.

It hadn't occurred to me that Gov't Center could be converted into a four track station, but you're not wrong -- it would indeed be transformative. And there certainly is the space.

So is the bottom line basically, "Most of the Central Subway (Kenmore to Lechmere) has a capacity of 40 tph; Park-Gov't Center is a bit lower at 30 tph today, but, with modifications at Park, can be brought up to 40 tph as well." Yeah?

 

[jklo]

Was thinking... how realistic would be digging in Grand Junction? Obviously it would bloat the cost sky high but then the Cambridge NIMBYs can't complain and get to keep their path. It also would mean that there wouldn't be that many stops but Kendall is the whole point anyway so I think it would be okay if there was only two additional Green stops, Kendall and West Station.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Was thinking... how realistic would be digging in Grand Junction? Obviously it would bloat the cost sky high but then the Cambridge NIMBYs can't complain and get to keep their path. It also would mean that there wouldn't be that many stops but Kendall is the whole point anyway so I think it would be okay if there was only two additional Green stops, Kendall and West Station.

We've covered this many, many times before. Extremely, extremely unrealistic because of the waterproofing issues in Charles landfill and risk of catastrophic "storm drain effect" where it underpins Red Line. And if you're Urban Ring'ing this thing you aren't passing up the intermediate stops at Cambrideport, Mass Ave., and Cambridge St. because of the Ring's critical bus transfers (1, CT1, 47, etc.).

Genuinely wretched idea when Mass Ave. is easily overpassed on LRT and trolleys can easily share signal phases @ Main/Broadway.

 

[Java King]

I was driving around the Seaport and South Boston on Monday, and this idea came to me.

If we EVER did get a North-South Rail Link, I've always seen a Back Bay tunnel alignment and approach to South Station plus an Old Colony/Fairmount alignment and approach to South Station. What if the Old Colony/Fairmount tunnel started MUCH earlier and was routed through South Boston & Seaport to ultimately hook up to the tunnel from the Back Back and then continues on to North Station? This would give a major urban rail hub accessible as a one-seat ride from all North Station service and Old Colony/Fairmount/South Coast service. Maybe some service from Framingham, Providence, Needham, Franklin could loop around and terminate at the new underground Seaport station instead of continuing to North Station? Or maybe there is a Newton-Fairmount alignment through South Station and Seaport Station that runs every 10-15 minutes like a major trunk line and all other regional rail services is 30 minutes via the South Station-North Station alignment. The Newton branch to Fairmount branch would act like a big U loop similar to the Toronto subway line through Union Station.

I know it's expensive and may be operationally difficult, but I was thinking how to solve the Seaport transportation problem. This would give Boston 3 major downtown rail stations with North Station, South Station, and Seaport Station. Plus, I threw in a South Boston station for good measure.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

1. Those curves are a huge performance bottleneck. It's going to take forever to get from one end of that thing to another, which dulls the utility of thru-and-thrus.

2. The Seaport is NOT hard to get to from SS in the slightest, so distorting the build for one-seat convenience really isn't wise allotment of resources vs. simply having a couple stations with maximal swath of easy transfers.

3. Waterproofing is harder with more tunnel feet under centuries-old fill.

4. The Seaport is big but it's not THAT big that the regional gravity well is screaming for a one-seat par with Downtown. Severe overrating not backed up by enough ridership ROI for the extremeness in extra expense.

5. Tunneling under property lines extremely more precarious for budget blowouts than tunneling under 95% extant RR tracks and pre-prepped Big Dig fill.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

One note from that build. . .

The current Fairmount Line diverges from its original 1855 NY&NE Midland Route alignment through Dorchester at roughly Norfolk Ave., where it passed through the current Eversource property and backlots of South Bay to merge in with the Old Colony main at Boston St. about a mile south of the current merge inside of Southampton Yard. A lot of that original ROW is still visible in the form of Allstate Rd. and the alignment of properties facing I-93 @ South Bay, which grew organically through multiple generations of redev to trace a vestige of the old-alignment tracks that have been gone for ~120 years. The line was realigned through Newmarket in prep for South Station's 1899 opening to move the junction inside newly-graded Southampton Yard and simplify ops in the last couple years of true southside RR competition before NYNH&H united the NEC/Midland/OC under one corporate roof.

Now...because of maximal allowable inclines vs. running room on a RR it isn't possible under any current NSRL plan to do a uni-portal for Fairmount + Old Colony. They have to split at shallow depth and pop up on either sides of the Amtrak Southampton building complex...much like the Fitchburg Line vs. Eastern/Western/NH Main have to fork in half just before their portals on either side of Boston Engine Terminal. Some very early NSRL scoping studies toyed with the idea of uni-portaling the Fairmount + Old Colony by reanimating the original 1855 alignment through South Bay (though note South Bay was a little less built-over 20 years ago when that re-use alignment was studied vs. now), merging there at Boston St., and having the lone OC portal at Southampton take the whole mashup underground. In the end it wasn't seen as necessary because the shallow-level forked portals underneath all-Amtrak property was flat-out cheaper than a 3000 ft. ROW re-realignment, complicated underpassing of 93/Southampton St., and flip-flopping of Red Line leads vs. Old Colony main alignments around Southampton to spatially maximize track layout. It's just not enough tunneling feet in total alongside Southampton Yard to bother with a more complex surface merge (ditto the shallow Fitchburg v. all-else Northside split around BET), so they opted for the shallow underground split.


Therefore that small part of your render was indeed true-to-life studied and vetted, albeit not for purposes of wild off-ROW'ing schemes that are certainly D.O.A. under the narrowish Southie residential street grid.

 

[Java King]

F-line, thanks for the interesting history! Well, it is a "Crazy" transit pitch! It just seemed to me the mainline OC and Fairmount were so close, yet so far from Seaport. I'm just trying to think of the best idea to solve some of the Seaport transportation issues, especially since I see a HUGE amount of lab proposals around the Marine Park/Southern Edge of Seaport near South Boston. Plus the whole redevelopment of the Power Plant on Summer street will spur more development. It seems clear to me that the Silver Line is overburdened now. I thought the idea of a small streetcar system might be beneficial, but I know you didn't like that idea. What's your best thoughts to improve transportation in that area between the Convention Center and the Reserve Channel that is a little too far to walk from South Station on a cold day?

I'm mainly thinking of this area that is Seaport South-East. I see SO MUCH lab and research development, and the Innovation & Design Building, Cruise Port, and Power Plant redevelopment.

 

[Riverside]

The Seaport really is an interesting set of problems. It's close to Downtown, but not quite close enough. It has a lot of transportation infrastructure (Transitway, Track 61, Mass Pike + Ted Williams, South Boston Haul Road), but none of it is quite "right". Plus, it is unusually three-dimensional for Boston, in that Summer Street is elevated above the levels of Congress St and Seaport Blvd.

Boston already has three mainline rail stations (North, South and Back Bay) -- I don't think it needs a fourth in the Seaport. Rather, the Seaport needs to be better stitched into the city overall. For my part, I think this can be done through three major projects:

1. Convert the Transitway to LRT and connect it to the Green Line (exact path TBD). This would address the crowding on the Silver Line, and would allow for faster service through the Transitway (as railed vehicles will be able to navigate those tunnels more rapidly than unguided tired vehicles). This would also reduce the transfer burden at South Station and open up one-seat rides to the Seaport from other parts of the city -- again, "stitching things together".
2. Aggressive bus lanes on Summer Street (and/or Congress St). I'm talking physical separation, signal prioritization, and serious enforcement. These would have two uses:
   1. Improve reliability on the 7 and enable it to be extended through the CBD along Congress St to Haymarket/North Station (and consolidate with the 4).
   2. Offer a faster route for South Station-Seaport-Airport buses, which would express from South Station to a new transfer location around World Trade Center/Silver Line Way before heading on to the Airport and beyond
3. Addition of BRT to the South Boston Haul Road, with an eye toward future addition of LRT tracks; run high-frequency service to Nubian (and optionally Longwood) via aggressive bus lanes on Melnea Cass Blvd

With these three projects, you'd get one-seat rides to the Seaport from the Financial District, North Station, South Station, South Boston, East Boston, Chelsea, Nubian and potentially Longwood, in addition to whatever locations the Green Line offers connections to.

But yes, specifically to your question about that stretch between South Station and the Convention Center: aggressive bus lanes on Summer St, Congress St or both, each of which have at least four lanes (including parking). Frequent bus service -- walk up and go.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

F-line, thanks for the interesting history! Well, it is a "Crazy" transit pitch! It just seemed to me the mainline OC and Fairmount were so close, yet so far from Seaport. I'm just trying to think of the best idea to solve some of the Seaport transportation issues, especially since I see a HUGE amount of lab proposals around the Marine Park/Southern Edge of Seaport near South Boston. Plus the whole redevelopment of the Power Plant on Summer street will spur more development. It seems clear to me that the Silver Line is overburdened now. I thought the idea of a small streetcar system might be beneficial, but I know you didn't like that idea. What's your best thoughts to improve transportation in that area between the Convention Center and the Reserve Channel that is a little too far to walk from South Station on a cold day?

I'm mainly thinking of this area that is Seaport South-East. I see SO MUCH lab and research development, and the Innovation & Design Building, Cruise Port, and Power Plant redevelopment.

View attachment 9411

That's mainly the area helped by bringing the Green Line into the Transitway. As primary service pattern SL2 would be terraformed from BRT to 2-car Type 10 'supertrains' (seating equivalent of slightly higher than 3-car train on the current GL roster) making the around-block Black Falcoln + Drydock Aves. superloop before heading back. Figure on an upgraded curb-bolted reservation for better traffic separation (likely with targeted parking reductions on one side of each street for fitting in LRT-caliber reservation), 1 unidirectional (if reversible) track plus flex turnouts for managing the super-loop, and side-street "crossovers" at the Design Ctr. Pl. midpoint. Keep similar or *slightly* consolidated stop roster as current SL2, and for the primary Downtown-Transitway pattern it ends up a ginormous capacity increase for handling all that growth.

This is in part why all those Shiny-ball Syndrome Track 61 proposals just don't have any 'there' there. In addition to the capacity constraints of getting on that ROW in the first place from its junction, the frequencies just don't compare to 6 min.-spec GL branch 'supertrains' and it's a way slower slog through a whole lot of the Seaport's lowest-density trajectory along Haul Rd. to even capture a slice of the growth area. And that's just wretchedly inefficient when the GL 'supertrains' can terraform SL2 out-of-box. For NSRL 'crazy' schemes...similar nonstarter because the South Station-to-Transitway transfer is too dead-on easy to make reaching the LRT'ified SL2 any tangible mobility challenge from anywhere on the whole of southside commuter rail. That's honestly the least of all concerns for augmentation. Just get the trolleys into the Transitway in the first place to:

1. transform SS-Transitway platform dwells, removing all the double-transferee crowds on that platform via Park/DTX who will now be staying onboard a thru trolley from Park/Boylston and/or making their Orange transfer at NS/Haymarket or South End/Tufts.
2. terraform SL2's surface superloop with vehicle capacity and reservation amenities befitting the area of maximal neighborhood growth
3. use the high-capacity trolleys as a 'psychological' re-wire for intra-Seaport transit...i.e. if you're traveling inside the Seaport you stick with the thru trolleys and leave the remaining SL1 buses alone. This segregates-via-behavior the baggage-carrying Airport transit from local transit more thoroughly, and dramatically slashes problematic SL1 dwell times on the platforms to the betterment of all co-mingled traffic.
4. build out other appendages accordingly. For example, northside CR to Seaport access pre-NSRL can be usefully augmented by building out the Urban Ring NW & NE quadrants, then running representative number of thru-Lechmere Ring frequencies via Boylston/Seaport. Most obviously as the eventual drop-in replacement for SL3 Chelsea buses in the Transitway, since those are at their intrinsic limit for frequencies & OTP run thru the Ted with few available tart-up options on its native busway; that service would probably be more overall-robust run the opposite direction as an interlaid 6 min. trolley headway doubling-up the overall Transitway rather than keeping it through the Ted as permanently brittle BRT.
5. Think holistically. Assume that a properly dwell-optimized Transitway can take 4 service patterns total: 2 interlaid LRT running thru from Downtown (6 + 6 = 3 min. frequencies on the 'trunk'), and 2 interlaid BRT looping @ SS. For the trolleys: your SL2 run-thru replacement probably gets paired to one of the GLX branches like Medford for starters as one 6-min pattern. The second interlaid 6-min. trolley pattern then gets initially sourced from available short-turn flotsam (Lechmere or North Station via Brickbottom Carhouse to Silver Line Way loop)...but eventually breaks out to take the subway run-thru Urban Ring NE 6-min. patterns to wholesale-replace SL3 with higher capacity and better schedule-keeping. You can then study a Seaport-side breakout like City Point streetcar distinct from the other SL2 run-thru as the corresponding Seaport-side piece of the extra 6-min. trunk pattern. And finally, with multi-directional junctions being spread across the reimagined Green Line system you can further augment the 3-min. 'trunk' with filet alt. patterns from a variety of places to enrich the diversity within service footprint. On the BRT side the much cleaned-up SL1 holds down one permanent slot. SL3 can then malinger until superior Urban Ring NE is built to replace it...and afterwards a new trunk BRT service like Urban Ring SE fileted from Nubian or JFK can take up residence as the permanent 'other' slot.

So simply following the incumbent service template offered up by some/any form of Silver Line Phase III replacement LRT build from Boylston-to-Transitway ends up perma-fixing Seaport transit access from any direction. You can co-run more service patterns than today in a dual-moded Transitway that cleans up its current station dwell problems via Downtown run-thrus whacking the SS double-transferee crowds and mode dilineation intra-Seaport vs. Airport audiences cleaning up the SL1 door dwells that make that one service pattern clog up so much of the current tunnel's throughput. Connect tinker toys accordingly and every conceivable audience will be able to quickly/cleanly get to the points of maximum ridership growth, while forging a new transit map that alleviates the need for any tactical nuclear strike projects of dubious value like off-center NSRL's or next week's futile exercise in Track 61 Shiny-ball Syndroming.

 

[The EGE]

One note from that build. . .

The current Fairmount Line diverges from its original 1855 NY&NE Midland Route alignment through Dorchester at roughly Norfolk Ave., where it passed through the current Eversource property and backlots of South Bay to merge in with the Old Colony main at Boston St. about a mile south of the current merge inside of Southampton Yard. A lot of that original ROW is still visible in the form of Allstate Rd. and the alignment of properties facing I-93 @ South Bay, which grew organically through multiple generations of redev to trace a vestige of the old-alignment tracks that have been gone for ~120 years. The line was realigned through Newmarket in prep for South Station's 1899 opening to move the junction inside newly-graded Southampton Yard and simplify ops in the last couple years of true southside RR competition before NYNH&H united the NEC/Midland/OC under one corporate roof.

That's not true - the Midland always ran through Newmarket (originally mudflats of the Bass River) and continued along what is now Track 61, then curved across the channel to a terminal near the modern South Station site. (See this 1865 map for example). I think you're probably confusing two separate relocations:

One, the Old Colony mainline was realigned several times. A realignment near Broadway took place around 1865 and is shown on that 1865 map. In 1897-98, the mainline was relocated substantially west from Columbia to Broadway for grade separation (including a bridge over the NY&NE); the old ROW became Old Colony Avenue.

Two, the Midland (NY&NE) terminal was closed in August 1896 to allow South Station to be constructed; trains were rerouted to the Old Colony terminal and then to South Station. The old Midland line in Southie remained in freight use, serving the huge yards there - hence the grade separation from the Old Colony mainline.

 

[Bananarama]

I love the effort and ideas in these posts.

But hot damn does this just highlight how absolutely stupid the rail layout is in Boston. Just look at all those roughly parallel lines... radiating into downtown as if it's the center of the universe. Way too East-West dependent. Good luck going north or south (let alone across the river) in any reasonable way.

And screw the Silver Line. Stuck in traffic way too much and possibly the bumpiest experience in a vehicle I've ever experienced. I'd love to know the break-down rate of those things having to deal with garbage roads (funnily enough, the last SL1 bus I took had engine start issues at Silver Line Way). -- which actually leads me to a separate question of why does the switch from electric line to diesel require a human attendant? Did the city really skimp on an automatic pole stowing/deploying mechanism? Is that just not physically feasible? Or is this a fleetwide malfunction they're just living with now?

Sorry this is devolving off-topic. This talk about a line along Essex is interesting and more sensible as a layout imo.

 

[George_Apley]

I love the effort and ideas in these posts.

But hot damn does this just highlight how absolutely stupid the rail layout is in Boston. Just look at all those roughly parallel lines... radiating into downtown as if it's the center of the universe. Way too East-West dependent. Good luck going north or south (let alone across the river) in any reasonable way.

And screw the Silver Line. Stuck in traffic way too much and possibly the bumpiest experience in a vehicle I've ever experienced. I'd love to know the break-down rate of those things having to deal with garbage roads (funnily enough, the last SL1 bus I took had engine start issues at Silver Line Way). -- which actually leads me to a separate question of why does the switch from electric line to diesel require a human attendant? Did the city really skimp on an automatic pole stowing/deploying mechanism? Is that just not physically feasible? Or is this a fleetwide malfunction they're just living with now?

Sorry this is devolving off-topic. This talk about a line along Essex is interesting and more sensible as a layout imo.

Copying this here so questions can be addressed without knocking the GLR thread off-course.

 

[jklo]

I love the effort and ideas in these posts.

But hot damn does this just highlight how absolutely stupid the rail layout is in Boston. Just look at all those roughly parallel lines... radiating into downtown as if it's the center of the universe. Way too East-West dependent. Good luck going north or south (let alone across the river) in any reasonable way.

Tunneling in the water is so expensive that it's too crazy for crazy.

 

[Bananarama]

Tunneling in the water is so expensive that it's too crazy for crazy.

There are 5 subway tunnels crossing the East River in NYC. There is plenty of precedent.

I wasn't talking about tunneling though. A tie-in to the Grand Junction/BU bridge underpass above ground is much more feasible.
Not proposing my own urban ring route here. Just a reaction to that map.

 

[HenryAlan]

All four of Boston's rail transit systems cross at least one body of water. Orange crosses the Charles and Mystic rivers; Red crosses the Charles and Neponset rivers; Green crosses the Charles river; Blue crosses the harbor. That's six water crossings, arguably five of them in a nort/south dimension. I'm not sure what you are looking for in terms of more.