Crazy Transit Pitches

[F-Line to Dudley]

An infill station in East Worcester is clearly out of the question, but is there any opportunity to speed up travel times on the Worcester Line? I seem to remember the East-West rail study mentioning the possibility of speed improvements between Worcester and Boston, but I don't believe it was ever specified exactly what improvements need to be made in order to accommodate faster service.

I think you have to look at recasting Worcester as more of a service layer cake, sort of like the New Haven Line.

• Hyper-local urban rail service every :15 to Riverside via Riverside spur: make all stops inside Route 128 including infills West Station, Newton Corner.
• Local regional rail every :30 to Framingham. Make select stops inside-128 (say...Back Bay + 3 of 6 from the West/BL/Newton Corner/Newtonville/West Newton/Auburndale grouping), all stops outside-128. EMU acceleration should let you strike a balance here.*
• Gateway city regional rail every :30 to Worcester. Make no more than one (maximum 2) inside-128 stop after Back Bay (slot rotation between West, Landing, Corner?), no more than one Wellesley stop (Square most of the time, rotation possible), Natick Center, Framingham. Add Millbury infill to outer portion of line.*
• Heart2Hub super-expresses to Worcester at select surge slots. Stop only at Back Bay, Framingham.
• Various assorted Amtrak, stopping BBY/Framingham/Worcester on all slots.

*Assume that if Fitchburg Secondary ever gets commuter rail that Northborough-turning slots conform to Framingham local stop selection on the mainline, and that Clinton and/or Worcester North wraparound service conform to Worcester inner mainline stop selection as general rule. If Fitchburg Sec. is diesel to start, strip out most of the 3-of-6 inside-128 stops for acceleration time-keeping.

Variances within and apart from ^these^ service buckets would require super-detailed deep-diving into the numbers to see if there are time-specific inflection points where the stop selection could/should be varied to accommodate demand surges. Those will be the only times to deviate from the set layer cake. I won't pretend this kind of analysis will be easy, because there will be compelling exceptions that turn up. You'll have to be flexible enough to accommodate justifiable exceptions but rigid enough to not let the 'buckets' get all strung-out on schedule from too many add-ons on too many slots.

 

[NoShJFK]

To be fair, Marblehead is close in density to Salem and twice as densely populated as Beverly, and Beverly has 5 commuter rail stops.

But the long lack of rail service has likely sorted North Shore commuters. People that want rail access choose towns like Beverly over Marblehead. One of the planning fallacies is to assume that turning service on will result in people naturally switching commute modes. But people really do factor in available commuting options in their choice of where to live, so there is a natural sorting of interest in rail service, based on the availability of rail service. And changing the interest level with new service will take years, perhaps decades to resort (because real estate turnover is slow).

That’s misleading because a portion of North Beverly, southern parts Centerville and most of the Farms (outside of Hale St) have plenty of forest. So the parts of Beverly where most residential/buisness are located are easily comparable to other North Shore localities (Salem, Peabody, Swampscott). I’d roughly estimate 80% of Beverly residents and buisness are located on 40% of the land in Beverly

 

[NoShJFK]

And you'd be correct.

According to the Better Bus Profiles for 441-442 and 448-449, they see the majority of their ridership in and around Lynn:

View attachment 14506

Though I will note that there is a nice pocket of ridership in downtown Marblehead. In a post-BLX-plus world that sees the Blue Line running to Salem or beyond, I can imagine these routes seeing better ridership with the better and more reliable headways that would be provided by curtailing the route at Lynn (or possibly even Swampscott).

I think the best and more reasonable scenarioto serve the relatively small T using populous in Marblehead would be if my proposal for a BLX was implemented with a Vinnin Square station - and from there implement an enhanced bus route (a “BRT LITE” if you will) feeding into that station. It would go into Marblehead via Atlantic to Washington - into the historic district, wrap around Abbot Hall, then go Mugford, Elm, Spring, then onto Pleasant theough town and back toward Vinnin.

 

[JeffDowntown]

That’s misleading because a portion of North Beverly, southern parts Centerville and most of the Farms (outside of Hale St) have plenty of forest. So the parts of Beverly where most residential/buisness are located are easily comparable to other North Shore localities (Salem, Peabody, Swampscott). I’d roughly estimate 80% of Beverly residents and buisness are located on 40% of the land in Beverly

OK, but three (3) of the Beverly commuter rail stops are in your defined relatively sparsely populated areas. (North Beverly, Beverly Farms and the closed Prides Crossing).

I am not suggesting Marblehead makes sense for rail, but rather that rail tends to attract rail commuters to live nearby, and over time people sort where they live to some degree based on transit availability.

 

[mass88]

Blow up the commuter rail system as it currently stands. Anything inside 128 is covered by the current, expanded subway system

Blue line goes to Salem
Orange line get two spurs to the north. One goes to Wakefield and the other Woburn.
Orange line goes to to Readville (cut and cover tunnel from Forrest Hills down Hyde Park Ave) and Dedham to the south (cut and cover tunnel from Forrest Hills down Washington to Dedham center)
Red Line line goes to Lexington to the north
Red Line gets a new spur from Central Square all the way to Waltham - cut and cover under Western Ave and Arsenal Street and then route 20 to Waltham center
Red Line has a new spur that replaces the existing Fairmont line. However, it runs cut and cover under Blue Hill Ave to Mattapan Square
Green line to the south has a spur that runs to Needham down Highland Ave


Commuter rail has 10 lines - central tunnel between north and south station gets built.

All lines run cut and cover beneath existing highways and major state roads. No stops once the lines hit 128. Smaller trains, more frequent service. True high-speed service. Where possible, rail lines will run between north/south and east/west highway lanes.

Plymouth to Boston under route 3 and then 93 (summer service May to October, extended to the Cape)
Fall River to Boston under 24 and then 93
Providence to Boston under 95 and then 93 (this would have a spur down route 1 to service Gillette Stadium)
Franklin to Boston under 109 to 95 then the Pike
Worcester to Boston under the Pike
Fitchburg to Boston under route 2
Rockport to Boston under 128
Lowell to Boston under 3 to 95 to the Pike
Haverhill to Boston under 93
Newburyport to Boston under route 1

All of these are existing commuter rail lines, just re-aligned and either put completely in tunnels, or running between highway medians. The only way you're going to convince more people to take the commuter rail is to have more frequent service, faster and more reliable service. Trains during peak periods should run every 20 minutes. For Amtrak, would removing MBTA trains from the lines benefit them?

 

[stefal]

^That's reaching into God-Mode

Alternative:

Keep CR on ROW as electrified, frequent, Regional Rail, with NSRL, - there's no need to abandon those ROW's and make people from Lowell travel to Burlington then to Weston then finally into Boston.

If we're going crazy on reaching people fast and frequently, at the same time all these stations are being updated with high-platforms, as well as the further-out subway stops, include spaces, lot configurations, and provisions for MBTA-owned, or MBTA-partnered, self-driving vehicles. (Hear me out here - by the time Regional Rail is up and running, FSD will likely be within reach. It'd just be a matter of the maintenance and management of these vehicles, which is why it's more likely they'd be MBTA partners and not MBTA owned.) These vehicles can cover the last-mile-traveled issues that busses or other modes of transit can't cover, and would come at an extremely high convenience for riders: no need to search for parking or worry about driving in rush hour, and fare can integrated with the rest of the MBTA (and can be incentivized to travel to or (not 'and') from transit nodes, hopefully eliminating unnecessary congestion).

 

[roy_mustang76]

Blow up the commuter rail system as it currently stands. Anything inside 128 is covered by the current, expanded subway system

Blue line goes to Salem
Orange line get two spurs to the north. One goes to Wakefield and the other Woburn.
Orange line goes to to Readville (cut and cover tunnel from Forrest Hills down Hyde Park Ave) and Dedham to the south (cut and cover tunnel from Forrest Hills down Washington to Dedham center)
Red Line line goes to Lexington to the north
Red Line gets a new spur from Central Square all the way to Waltham - cut and cover under Western Ave and Arsenal Street and then route 20 to Waltham center
Red Line has a new spur that replaces the existing Fairmont line. However, it runs cut and cover under Blue Hill Ave to Mattapan Square
Green line to the south has a spur that runs to Needham down Highland Ave


Commuter rail has 10 lines - central tunnel between north and south station gets built.

All lines run cut and cover beneath existing highways and major state roads. No stops once the lines hit 128. Smaller trains, more frequent service. True high-speed service. Where possible, rail lines will run between north/south and east/west highway lanes.

Plymouth to Boston under route 3 and then 93 (summer service May to October, extended to the Cape)
Fall River to Boston under 24 and then 93
Providence to Boston under 95 and then 93 (this would have a spur down route 1 to service Gillette Stadium)
Franklin to Boston under 109 to 95 then the Pike
Worcester to Boston under the Pike
Fitchburg to Boston under route 2
Rockport to Boston under 128
Lowell to Boston under 3 to 95 to the Pike
Haverhill to Boston under 93
Newburyport to Boston under route 1

All of these are existing commuter rail lines, just re-aligned and either put completely in tunnels, or running between highway medians. The only way you're going to convince more people to take the commuter rail is to have more frequent service, faster and more reliable service. Trains during peak periods should run every 20 minutes. For Amtrak, would removing MBTA trains from the lines benefit them?

So, some of those CR re-reroutes are actively worse than existing routings (sending Providence via 93 instead of SW Corridor is worse, Rockport via 128 instead of Rt 1 makes no sense unless you're going Rt 1 then 128 and there's no median to speak of, Lowell via the Pike is basically a middle finger to that whole routing). The idea of using highway medians isn't a bad idea, per se, but using them to the exclusion of anything else is crazy. The NH main I'm pretty sure can be quad-tracked to do CR and RT side-by-side, for example - no reason to route those trains via the damn Pike. Eastern Route up to Salem is 4-trackable at least to Lynn as well, if not Salem, so no need to reinvent that wheel either. Your pitch is Crazy enough just by extending all the RT termini to 128.

My concern is where you're branching all of these RT lines.

ORANGE NORTH: Where the hell are you branching Orange to send it to Woburn? Are you trying to use the NH Main to get up there? If so... are you branching at North Station? Because that's a great way to screw over transferring pax at Sullivan and Malden Center, since you can only pump so many trains into the Downtown pipe.

RED NORTH: Branching Red before Harvard is big-oops territory, because again you're whacking frequencies to a major bus terminal that is a major bus terminal because it's a major destination in and of itself. Red's already stupid overcrowded downtown anyway (in non-COVID times), this only worsens the issue. No argument with extending Red to Lexington, but... go with god on that one lol.

RED SOUTH: So we're branching at... South Station presumably to eat Fairmount? Interesting choice but alright. The main bus terminals are already on branches so that's not so terrible (though it's still a net loss and not one I'd like to see at all). But of course, now we've got three southern branches, and a whole bunch of questions on how to manage that balancing, considering that the existing Ashmont/Braintree branching can feel pretty wobbly at times. Also, why not simply have Red eat the MHSL to get to Mattapan instead? I know the aim is to get Fairmount off of CR and onto RT, but there's got to be a better way of covering Dorchester than this.

GREEN: This is fine, except for where it seems other plans (Orange to Woburn) might be overwriting things that are in the middle of being built, such as GLX (which runs up the NH Main).

EDIT because I completely forgot about the other Orange branching.

ORANGE SOUTH: Branching at Forest Hills isn't actually a death sentence, but I think going to Dedham via Washington misses the demand that is actually in the area, which has a stronger orientation to Belgrade Ave and Centre St. If you're going real crazy, find a way to re-acquire the Belle Ave ROW or tunnel under the houses and proceed to the Dedham Mall that way.

 

[Tallguy]

Because heaven forbid we take 10 houses by eminent domain..or even one

 

[luobo]

Some fun ideas here. One tricky thing about Red Line Fairmount is that HRT conversion means you can no longer use it as the "back up route" for the Northeast Corridor if the NEC is under construction or has any kind of blockage/accident. Fairmount deserves much higher frequency service but it's more likely to come in the form of electrified Regional Rail than a full subway conversion because of this.

 

[HenryAlan]

Because heaven forbid we take 10 houses by eminent domain..or even one

In this country, we consider it worth blowing up the cost by a billion dollars just to avoid such minimalist seizures.

 

[roy_mustang76]

Because heaven forbid we take 10 houses by eminent domain..or even one

In fairness, I'm totally fine blowing up the 10 houses to get the Belle Ave ROW back. If you're gonna go crazy, might as well do it in service of routings that go where the people and the demand are. After Rozzie Square, that demand is along Centre and Belgrade, not Washington (where density takes a flying leap off after Beech St thanks to the golf course and parkland on one side, and the quarry on the other).

I don't really feel like CTP is necessarily the place to nitpick property takings unless it's something truly wild that really belongs in God Mode (like forcing Harvard to surrender/blow up large amounts of Cambridge holdings or something). Besides, this proposal has got plenty to chew on before you get to worrying about property takings, such as how on earth you're junctioning Red at South Station in terms of, well, physical constraints given that you're ALSO building a very hand-wavy NSRL as part of the proposal.

 

[KCasiglio]

Commuter rail has 10 lines - central tunnel between north and south station gets built.

All lines run cut and cover beneath existing highways and major state roads. No stops once the lines hit 128. Smaller trains, more frequent service. True high-speed service. Where possible, rail lines will run between north/south and east/west highway lanes.

Plymouth to Boston under route 3 and then 93 (summer service May to October, extended to the Cape)
Fall River to Boston under 24 and then 93
Providence to Boston under 95 and then 93 (this would have a spur down route 1 to service Gillette Stadium)
Franklin to Boston under 109 to 95 then the Pike
Worcester to Boston under the Pike
Fitchburg to Boston under route 2
Rockport to Boston under 128
Lowell to Boston under 3 to 95 to the Pike
Haverhill to Boston under 93
Newburyport to Boston under route 1

All of these are existing commuter rail lines, just re-aligned and either put completely in tunnels, or running between highway medians. The only way you're going to convince more people to take the commuter rail is to have more frequent service, faster and more reliable service. Trains during peak periods should run every 20 minutes. For Amtrak, would removing MBTA trains from the lines benefit them?

I'll leave the rapid transit aside as others have already commented on it.

What are you trying to accomplish here? If you have mountains of money to burn then *some* of these make sense as express end-end routes (Fall River or Worcester for example) but you're sacrificing any value between end points. Sacrificing for example a downtown Stoughton station for a park-and-ride at 24/Harrison Blvd is further incentivizing auto-centric development. Or in Plymouth, instead of extending the existing line to downtown you're going to plop it on the outskirts along 3? I live in Quincy, I visited Plymouth last week and would loved to have taken the train but its destination is not convenient to actually -do things- there (same situation when I visited Portland, ME...I want to take the train! Let me!). This plan seems like a step in the wrong direction in terms of what types of land use patterns it encourages and actually allowing people to go about their lives with less car dependency. If the goal is simply to get more commuters off the highways at peak hours then..maybe? I think we should be aiming a little higher though, in CTP of all places.

 

[Tallguy]

In fairness, I'm totally fine blowing up the 10 houses to get the Belle Ave ROW back. If you're gonna go crazy, might as well do it in service of routings that go where the people and the demand are. After Rozzie Square, that demand is along Centre and Belgrade, not Washington (where density takes a flying leap off after Beech St thanks to the golf course and parkland on one side, and the quarry on the other).

I don't really feel like CTP is necessarily the place to nitpick property takings unless it's something truly wild that really belongs in God Mode (like forcing Harvard to surrender/blow up large amounts of Cambridge holdings or something). Besides, this proposal has got plenty to chew on before you get to worrying about property takings, such as how on earth you're junctioning Red at South Station in terms of, well, physical constraints given that you're ALSO building a very hand-wavy NSRL as part of the proposal.

I wasnt really advocating for the rest of the posters plans, I just like sending OL to Dedham.

 

[mass88]

I'll leave the rapid transit aside as others have already commented on it.

What are you trying to accomplish here? If you have mountains of money to burn then *some* of these make sense as express end-end routes (Fall River or Worcester for example) but you're sacrificing any value between end points. Sacrificing for example a downtown Stoughton station for a park-and-ride at 24/Harrison Blvd is further incentivizing auto-centric development. Or in Plymouth, instead of extending the existing line to downtown you're going to plop it on the outskirts along 3? I live in Quincy, I visited Plymouth last week and would loved to have taken the train but its destination is not convenient to actually -do things- there (same situation when I visited Portland, ME...I want to take the train! Let me!). This plan seems like a step in the wrong direction in terms of what types of land use patterns it encourages and actually allowing people to go about their lives with less car dependency. If the goal is simply to get more commuters off the highways at peak hours then..maybe? I think we should be aiming a little higher though, in CTP of all places.

Someone who lives in say Franklin should be able to get on a train at Forge Park and be at South Station in 45 or less. They also shouldn't have to wait an hour for the next train into town if the miss the one they intended to take. I also wouldn't worry about car centric development in a town like Stoughton - Cambridge and Somerville yes, but not Stoughton. Why does there need to be a 1 hour and 30 minute gap between trains going outbound? 6:45 to 8:15 pm. If we're ever going to get cars off the road, then we need rapid and reliable transit. I posted more of a general idea - thinking how can we have true high-speed train service into and out of Boston? Why can there be trains running every 20 minutes from 6 am to 9 am in the morning, and then from 4 pm to 8 pm at night?

Would it be remotely feasible to put in a line that runs between 93/95/128 from Quincy to Woburn so people who work along that corridor have legitimate transit options if they live in a play like say Marlborough.

What would you do to reduce cars on the road during peak times?

 

[themissinglink]

Someone who lives in say Franklin should be able to get on a train at Forge Park and be at South Station in 45 or less. They also shouldn't have to wait an hour for the next train into town if the miss the one they intended to take.

There are other, much more practical solutions for these issues. For one, full-time service to Foxboro would allow Forge Park trains to skip some of the lower-ridership stops (such as Islington or Endicott) thereby reducing travel times from Franklin. Once Foxboro service is operational, an extension to Milford from Forge Park could be constructed, with a larger layover site in Bellingham which would allow for increased service.

 

[KCasiglio]

I don't see how improving frequency and reliability requires anything to the scale you're suggesting. For example the ring line train came up very recently in this or another thread, and highway median tracks were studied when the 95 loop was built but there really isn't enough "there" there to support it. Too many huge pockets of dead space, specifically the type of dead space that isn't going to get infilled (see: Blue Hills). That doesn't mean there can't be or shouldn't be improved connections, just that we don't need a highway median running train there. Get me a bus!

The real answer to the problem is land use, throwing all the money in the world at transit isn't going to fix congestion if you don't address land use. Just look at LA! Want cars off the road at peak hours? Build the frig out of housing in places like this:

Look at all that surface parking within 100 yards of a train platform!

You do what Newton is doing, eliminating single family zoning near transit. You do what Hartford, CT did and eliminate parking minimums. Get rid of setback requirements and weird facade restrictions and basically let housing get built around stations where, yes, we need to be running more reliable, more frequent, and faster service. A "reasonable transit pitch" on how to get moving on that can be found with what TransitMatters is pushing.

There's certainly need for crazy transit pitches on how to continue improving, and I think there's some cases where highway medians make sense (personally I think the quincy/dorchester single track issue with the old colony lines should be gotten around by eating the zipper lane on 93, and the high speed rail to Albany via Worcester and Springfield along 90 might merit federal aid), but just the opposite of what you say I'm very worried about car centric development in the Stoughtons of this state, because those are the places where the cars come from. We need to be doing everything we can to encourage the downtowns and neighborhood villages of the suburbs, not rewarding bad development with more park-and-ride, unwalkable outskirts of town type stations.

 

[jklo]

There's certainly need for crazy transit pitches on how to continue improving, and I think there's some cases where highway medians make sense (personally I think the quincy/dorchester single track issue with the old colony lines should be gotten around by eating the zipper lane on 93, and the high speed rail to Albany via Worcester and Springfield along 90 might merit federal aid), but just the opposite of what you say I'm very worried about car centric development in the Stoughtons of this state, because those are the places where the cars come from. We need to be doing everything we can to encourage the downtowns and neighborhood villages of the suburbs, not rewarding bad development with more park-and-ride, unwalkable outskirts of town type stations.

That's the reality of suburbia. You need a car. If you build housing there they will want a car. People choosing to take the CR are going to want to drive to it. Don't want cars, you need to be building in the urban core.

 

[bigeman312]

That's the reality of suburbia. You need a car. If you build housing there they will want a car. People choosing to take the CR are going to want to drive to it. Don't want cars, you need to be building in the urban core.

You are missing the point. That poster is advocating for development like this, in Newtonville. These developments are complete and ended up at least as good, if not better than expected. The target audience for this urban / suburban development is someone who owns or has access to a privately owned automobile, but also rides mass transit by walking to the station that is right across the street from where they live. Eliminating single-family zoning near transit and encouraging the downtowns and neighborhood villages of the suburbs does not mean preventing residents from owning a car.

Another good example of this is Moody & Main in Waltham.

Your assertion that "people choosing to take the CR are going to want to drive to it," is disproven by negation in these instances. There is a market for people who may or may not own cars (the car ownership itself is secondary to this discussion at best), but want to live in a walkable pocket next to transit in the suburbs. This is exactly the type of development that should be happening around Stoughton Station. And, for a best-of-both-worlds solution, parking garages exist to allow for driving to the station without such inefficient land use.

Woodland is an example of replacing surface parking in the suburbs with transit-oriented development and a parking garage.

 

[KCasiglio]

That's the reality of suburbia. You need a car. If you build housing there they will want a car. People choosing to take the CR are going to want to drive to it. Don't want cars, you need to be building in the urban core.

I live and work in the suburbs! I own a car and my duplex has a nice backyard blessed with even a few trees. Across the street and one of my next door neighbors is a single family home.

I also have a station a 7 minute walk away, but sometimes have to drive into the city depending on the destination (again I'm not saying we don't need better transit connections, cross-town especially)

Another thing that hasn't been mentioned is that yes people will own cars, but not needing the car every time you leave the house or not needing a car for every adult in the house (we'll be going from 2 cars to 1 car and an ebike when my car lease is up) makes a huge difference.

 

[fattony]

The 0.25-0.5 mile radius around a CR station is a remote extension of the city. It should either be a walkable village/town center or a park-and-ride. Trying to mix the 2 is the worst of both worlds.