Crazy Transit Pitches

View attachment 40135

Extend the Red line to Arlington via Riverside.

  1. Existing Mattapan Line.
  2. Fairmount Line
  3. Dedham Branch all the way around to existing Needham Line
  4. Needham Line to Newton Highlands
  5. Existing D Branch
  6. I-95 ROW up to abandoned Waltham ROW
  7. Minuteman Bike Trail to I-95.

How about looping back from Riverside into Newtonville and Newton Corner, then go up the 57 bus to Watertown Yd./Watertown Sq., then Watertown branch to West Cambridge/Alewife/Porter, then Minuteman Bike trail

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How about looping back from Riverside into Newtonville and Newton Corner, then go up the 57 bus to Watertown Yd./Watertown Sq., then Watertown branch to West Cambridge/Alewife/Porter, then Minuteman Bike train

snip

Seems a little too practical.

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You can also use some of the Alewife Brook Parkway and tunnels through Medford to get over to the Northern Strand. I call it the Suburban Ring.
 
You guys aren't dreaming big enough:

From the studio that brought you “Project Blue-Lace”, now presenting the Milford-Medway-Millis-Medfield-Mattapan-Ashmont High-Speed Line (or “MMMMM Line” for short):

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(As the image says, to be clear, this is not a serious proposal. This is another exercise in crayoning gone awry, a lesson in not knowing when to stop.)

Heading west from Mattapan, the MMMMM Line tunnels under River St (as we’ve discussed when proposing Red Line extensions to Fairmount and Dedham) and joins the Fairmount Line’s ROW where it is wider and supports four tracks. At Readville, it flies over the NEC to pick up the abandoned Dedham Branch to run to Dedham Center.

From Dedham Center, the MMMMM Line enters a reconfigured VFW Parkway with dedicated transit lanes or a median, and heads north. Just south of the Needham Line ROW (converted to Orange Line), the MMMMM Line leaves the parkway and hooks into a Millennium Park transfer station to provide connection to the Orange Line.

Then we head west along the Hersey cutoff, now abandoned from mainline usage, to meet the Green Line at Needham Junction. (This also gives the MMMMM Line access to the Green Line maintenance facilities, albeit at some distance.)

From here, we turn southwest on to the abandoned Milis Line. Long stretches without stops finally give the “High-Speed” Line a chance to live up to its name. The view is gorgeous, as our trolley flies through the forest. Frequencies south of Needham Junction are significantly lower, meaning that there are some stretches of single track along here, which helps accommodate a mixed use trail alongside.

In some saner version of this “proposal” (a term I use here very loosely), the MMMMM Line terminates in Medfield, either at the historic Medfield Jct location, or a mile or two to the southeast in downtown Medfield, traversed either by street-running or by running alongside (not replacing) the Framingham Secondary tracks. But that would just make this the MM Line – why stop at two M’s when you can have five?

(Again, to be clear, I am not – in this post – seriously advocating running light rail from Ashmont to Medfield, to say nothing of Milford.)

We continue on southwest on the abandoned ROW until we hit West Medway, at which point this “proposal” required a little bit of creative planning, since the only ROWs to Milford from here are very roundabout. Thus we shift to street-running again, hopping over to Route 109 and riding it all the way in to Milford. In Milford proper, we make a couple of stops in town once the density picks up, before terminating at the Milford Medical Center. (Which I suppose could warrant calling this the MMMMMMM Line if we add “Milford Medical” at the front.)

End to end, the line runs around 30 miles.

~~~~~

So, as with “Project Blue Lace”, this is what you get when you take individual segments that each seem vaguely reasonable in isolation, and then keep stringing them together without recognizing when too much is too much.

And I think it’s worth recognizing that, if you were to pick any set of two or three sequential paragraphs from above, they would make a vaguely reasonable route – maybe not a good enough route, but not necessarily something to reject on sight.

I see this basically as three ideas on top of each other:
  1. Mattapan to Readville/Dedham/West Roxbury
  2. West Roxbury/Needham Junction to Dover or Medfield
  3. Interurban to Milford
Idea 1, especially if only to Readville or Dedham, is probably the most “conventional”, in that it would mostly use existing ROWs and, insofar as ArchBoston is “mainstream”, does reflect mainstream ideas that we’ve been batting around for how to bring rail to Dedham.

Is it a particularly compelling idea? I would not rank it high on my list, no. It’s pretty circumferential, and somewhat circuitously so, and not really along a corridor that seems to be screaming for it. Perhaps if Dedham wants some sort of rail service but doesn’t want Red Line heavy rail (and can’t justify siphoning away mainline trains), this could be a viable option, though I think if one was to create a “Dedham High Speed Line”, it might be better to feed it from Needham Junction: Needham - West Roxbury - Dedham - Readville.

Idea 2, if Dover got really excited about it, could be interesting. Light rail does not actually have to be “rapid transit” per se, and it would have the advantage of a smaller footprint. 30-minute headways could be perfectly reasonable here. Given the length of the line, I’d say it would be better to avoid through-running to downtown Boston most of the time, but perhaps a couple of peak runs could be scheduled inbound in the mornings. Hopping over to West Roxbury could help mitigate the lack of one-seat-rides by offering direct transfers to both the Green and Orange Lines.

Ironically, the relationship between the town of Milton and the current Mattapan Line makes me think that a low frequency light rail line could pass muster with the NIMBY crowd – it’s relatively unobtrusive, it can have a small footprint, and it can maintain some of the charming bucolic territory of those suburbs (which are amazingly rural, given their proximity to Boston).

Idea 3, even on its own, is a huge stretch. That is a very long route, and unlike Idea 2 would certainly require street-running, and street-running at 30 mph no less. (There is an alternate route that is more roundabout, but mostly reuses old ROWs, plus a powerline ROW.) I’ve written before how Milford is tough: it’s actually not far from Boston at all, but because of the enormous density cavity between it and Needham, it’s very hard to propose a direct commuter rail route – you have to go via Franklin, which makes it a significantly longer ride.

Light rail potentially could offer a compromise, offering low-footprint service to the low-density towns in between, while still providing direct service between Milford and the rapid transit system. The availability of a hook-in node at Needham Junction, combined with the lack of active railroads but presence of historic ROWs, opens up some unusual options.

One of the biggest drawbacks of an LRT interurban to Milford would be all the wiring you’d need to set up. There are a handful of diesel-powered light rail vehicles out there… and then at that point we’re literally just talking about restoring Budd Car service, but on light rail tracks rather than mainline tracks. And while the infrastructure impact would then be lower, the impact of the individual vehicles would be much more pronounced – louder and dirtier.

(If battery-powered light rail ever takes off successfully, then the calculus on this changes.)

And it’s worth asking what the benefit of a Needham-Milford LRT line would be over a commuter bus route, or a feeder bus route to a commuter rail station like Framingham (especially if timed to transfer to trains that run express on the mid and inner B&A). Given potential slowdowns from automobile traffic, perhaps an interurban line with a transfer could be faster?

Let’s assume that an extended Orange Line to Millennium Park takes 40 minutes to reach downtown. From Millennium Park to Milford, it’s about 20 miles. Google estimates about 30 min (on a bad day) to reach the Southborough commuter rail station by driving from Milford. Pre-covid, an express train from Worcester took just under an hour from Southborough, so our “time to beat” is 90 minutes. From Millennium Park, our interurban would need to traverse 20 miles in 50 minutes – an average speed of 25 mph.

That doesn’t sound too difficult, but let’s do some comparisons:
  • Riverside - Park St (18 stops): 11 miles in 44 min = 15 mph
  • Framingham - South Station (local, 12 stops): 21 miles in 55 min = 22.5 mph
  • Mansfield - South Station (local, 6 stops): 25 miles in 46 min = 35 mph
In my map here, I’ve (not very carefully) placed 12 stops after leaving Milford, though probably some of those could be eliminated. The stop spacing is around 3-5 miles, closer to the Providence Line’s 4-6 miles than the Framingham’s 1-3. The top speed of a light rail vehicle is lower than a mainline commuter rail train, although because it’s lighter and electric it’ll reach that top speed quickly, possibly faster than the train.

So… maybe? If all the variables work out just right, an interurban to Milford could provide competitive service? But it would indeed need to be just right.
 
My last comment on this topic takes the form of actually completing a proper Suburban Ring.

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Diverge from the Alewife Brook Parkway and proceed up the Lowell Line until the Stoneham branch branches off. Follow that until a segment of street-running along Spring/East/Forest St to the Haverhill Line, and then follow that until what OpenRailwayMap calls the Newburyport branch branches off. At I-95, turn and follow until the beautifully-straight-why-can't-we-use-this-for-HSR-somehow Wakefield-Peabody branch takes you to Peabody, and from there to some land takings to get to the Marblehead Rail Trail, which we follow all the way back around back to Lynn.

To bring this back to Crazy instead of God-Mode, I think there's a small amount of merit to pondering something like this. An I-95 LRT route is talked about often here, and this routing definitely overlaps with that demand. However, by diverting from the main highway to hit old rail ROWs, I think we both gain and lose something. We gain actually hitting centers of demand, rather than mostly-empty land around the highway (other than office parks). However, I feel confident in saying that this would be a much longer trip, since you're continually bouncing in and our of the city. That could be argued as a good thing, since all that bouncing is to get to proper HRT lines (Red in Dorchester, Orange in West Roxbury, Green in Newton, Red in Cambridge, Orange in Malden, and theoretically Blue in Salem and Lynn), but oh my goodness would this be a long trip from start to finish. Google quotes me at about 60 miles from Lynn to Ashmont via Alewife (what a couple of words that is). That's going to be slow no matter how you're making the trip. The best comparison I can come up with is the current D branch, which takes roughly half an hour to run it's 9 miles, which would give us a total runtime of more than 3 hours start to finish. Obviously nobody would ever do the entire journey out there, preferring to transfer to heavy rail and take the train through the city to transfer again on the other side. However, I can't even begin to understand how to price this out for a cost/benefit analysis. It mostly uses existing ROW and highways, which is good. But it goes through some incredibly nimby areas, which is bad. My best guess puts it on the same order of magnitude as NSRL, but with what benefit? It definitely connects the suburbs to Light Rail, with all the benefits that entails, but these areas area already connected to transit via light rail, subway, or commuter rail. I see a repeat of the Needham situation in this analysis, where we trade the benefits of increased frequency versus cost and loss of options. Maybe a purely I-95 routing is better because it brings entirely new riders to the world of rail transit? I don't know.

Major cost areas:
  1. Tunnelling under the Dedham ROW to West Roxbury.
  2. Alewife Brook Parkway environmental mitigation.
  3. Stoneham tunnelling/ROW aquisition.
  4. Salem tunnelling to reach Marblehead Rail Trail.

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On the Reasonable Transit Pitches thread, Henry Alan reported on a proposal to extend the Mattapan/Ashmont line to Readville. Since there is a fairly extant abandoned RR ROW from Readville to Dedham, I am thinking, why not extend it even further to downtown Dedham? Light Green would be surface (except for a flyover at Readville to get over the tracks and roadways), and red is tunnel. Stations are shown as a red tram symbol on this Google map.

Note: edited to correct the reference to Henry Alan
Wow, that's a great idea. It seems more suited to LRT than HRT too.
 
My shitpost of an absurd idea notwithstanding, I do legitimately think there is merit to a string of LRT lines running in pieces between Dover, Needham Junction, Millennium Park, Dedham, Readville, Mattapan, and Ashmont. Not run end to end, and not necessarily built all at once. But, particularly if combined with strong Regional Rail frequencies at Readville (via both Fairmount and the NEC), OLX to Millennium Park, and GLX to Needham (and RLX to Mattapan), I think it could be a compelling form of suburban transit.
 
Would the cost savings from full integration of high speed line operations with the green line be trivial?
 
View attachment 40135

Extend the Red line to Arlington via Riverside.

  1. Existing Mattapan Line.
  2. Fairmount Line
  3. Dedham Branch all the way around to existing Needham Line
  4. Needham Line to Newton Highlands
  5. Existing D Branch
  6. I-95 ROW up to abandoned Waltham ROW
  7. Minuteman Bike Trail to I-95.
And it could totally happen, too, if not for that damn ROW encroachment between the Dedham Mall and the Spring St. Star Market. That's totally the only reason it isn't under construction today.
 
And it could totally happen, too, if not for that damn ROW encroachment between the Dedham Mall and the Spring St. Star Market. That's totally the only reason it isn't under construction today.
Haven't people talked about how Dedham probably doesn't want transit to begin with given how NIMBY it is?
 
Haven't people talked about how Dedham probably doesn't want transit to begin with given how NIMBY it is?

F-Line likes to talk about that, and having lived there I think I can back that up a bit given how the rail trail vote went a few years ago (if people don't want bikes going by their house, they definitely don't want Mattapan people), but things are changing constantly, with new people moving in residents leaving. I don't think it's fair to say that any one community is going to be forever pro or anti transit. Especially not based on... what? The decision to sell an old rail ROW a few decades ago by people that don't run things anymore?
 
Haven't people talked about how Dedham probably doesn't want transit to begin with given how NIMBY it is?
Yes, there are many reasons why such a facetiously proposed route could never happen. But I like to harp on the stupidity of allowing a few houses to be built right on an available ROW between West Roxbury and Dedham.
 
I think there are outdated views about receptiveness to transit in certain towns as their populations have turned over, but Dedham isn't one of those places.
I agree, that's what I was trying to get at with the rail trail comments. I just think that, in the sense that we're talking about projects that won't happen for decades (or even centuries in some cases), current-day/past NIMBY-ism isn't that important to take into account because it becomes such an unknown.
 
I think there are outdated views about receptiveness to transit in certain towns as their populations have turned over, but Dedham isn't one of those places.
Do you have a sense of which cities and towns:
1. Have always wanted rail transit, but never gotten it, or never gotten it of the scale and mode they deserve,
2. Used to be NIMBY about transit, but have changed and are more open now,
3. Were and still are mostly NIMBY?

I get the sense that Lynn, Arlington, and Dedham are examples of each type I listed. Perhaps you could also say Somerville goes even before the first category, as a town that has lobbied hard for transit for a long time and finally got it. But I'm curious about other places where transit would clearly work and expansion trajectories exist, but they don't have it today - Watertown, Belmont, Needham, Medford... the long list of underserved towns goes on!

I ask in part because I lean towards prioritizing towns and cities in the first category for future expansion, partially because they deserve it and partially because I think the political calculus of actually getting something built is easier. If the stars aligned for Blue to Lynn for example, you'd have overwhelming support from the city and its legislative delegation that could potentially move some obstacles out of the way.
 
Do you have a sense of which cities and towns:
1. Have always wanted rail transit, but never gotten it, or never gotten it of the scale and mode they deserve,
2. Used to be NIMBY about transit, but have changed and are more open now,
3. Were and still are mostly NIMBY?

I get the sense that Lynn, Arlington, and Dedham are examples of each type I listed. Perhaps you could also say Somerville goes even before the first category, as a town that has lobbied hard for transit for a long time and finally got it. But I'm curious about other places where transit would clearly work and expansion trajectories exist, but they don't have it today - Watertown, Belmont, Needham, Medford... the long list of underserved towns goes on!

I ask in part because I lean towards prioritizing towns and cities in the first category for future expansion, partially because they deserve it and partially because I think the political calculus of actually getting something built is easier. If the stars aligned for Blue to Lynn for example, you'd have overwhelming support from the city and its legislative delegation that could potentially move some obstacles out of the way.

I don’t think it should matter what people who lived in the zip code 40 years ago thought. Transit expansion should be based only on factors that exist from this moment forward. Sometimes they are still relevant, but when they aren’t relevant anymore, they aren’t relevant anymore.

Let’s take your argument to a silly example. 60 years ago, pork was very unpopular in Mattapan, owing to its large Jewish population. So, obviously it would make no sense to open a restaurant selling pork ribs in Mattapan today. They don’t deserve it. Best to prioritize other areas.
 
I don’t think it should matter what people who lived in the zip code 40 years ago thought. Transit expansion should be based only on factors that exist from this moment forward. Sometimes they are still relevant, but when they aren’t relevant anymore, they aren’t relevant anymore.

Let’s take your argument to a silly example. 60 years ago, pork was very unpopular in Mattapan, owing to its large Jewish population. So, obviously it would make no sense to open a restaurant selling pork ribs in Mattapan today. They don’t deserve it. Best to prioritize other areas.
I agree that mistaken views from decades ago should not block transit expansion.

But there are also questions of economic equity. Lynn needs transit more than Arlington or Dedham. It is bigger, more dense and poorer. Honestly Lynn deserved rapid transit access before Quincy, but lacked the political power of the South Shore Irish political class. Right now Lynn is a city of 100,000 people (8,500 people per square mile) with zero rail transit access for the foreseeable future. (Quincy only has 6,000 people per square mile, and has 4 rapid transit and one commuter rail stop).
 
I agree that mistaken views from decades ago should not block transit expansion.

But there are also questions of economic equity. Lynn needs transit more than Arlington or Dedham. It is bigger, more dense and poorer. Honestly Lynn deserved rapid transit access before Quincy, but lacked the political power of the South Shore Irish political class. Right now Lynn is a city of 100,000 people (8,500 people per square mile) with zero rail transit access for the foreseeable future. (Quincy only has 6,000 people per square mile, and has 4 rapid transit and one commuter rail stop).
Lynn and Everett both are relatively low-income, very high density cities with no rapid transit.
IMO, the two highest priority projects should be BLX to Lynn and a GL branch from Lechmere to Everett via Sullivan. And of course the Red-Blue BLX connector right up there with them.
 
I don’t think it should matter what people who lived in the zip code 40 years ago thought. Transit expansion should be based only on factors that exist from this moment forward. Sometimes they are still relevant, but when they aren’t relevant anymore, they aren’t relevant anymore.

Let’s take your argument to a silly example. 60 years ago, pork was very unpopular in Mattapan, owing to its large Jewish population. So, obviously it would make no sense to open a restaurant selling pork ribs in Mattapan today. They don’t deserve it. Best to prioritize other areas.

Perhaps deserve was the wrong word to use. What I mean is that if a place has been pushing for transit for ages and the state and feds get together the capital for a major project, it feeds a narrative of distrust and permanent disinvestment in a place to pass it over yet again in favor of somewhere that has not been pushing for as long or may have even turned down the opportunity in the past. For example, if the Governor announced tomorrow that her highest transit priority were extending the Red Line to Arlington Heights, how do you think that would be recieved in Lynn, Salem, and other North Shore towns? They were put behind Somerville in the queue already. Do you think they would agree with this prioritization? Do you think the North Shore delegation on Beacon Hill would go along with the governor's proposal? As much as you want to look only at things from this point forward, the history of a community with transit enormously matters for how they view it today. I did some work in Roxbury last year, and it was clear that the shadow cast by the removal of the el and the failure to meet the promise of an "equal or better" replacement has created a permanent distrust in that neighborhood towards the MBTA and government more broadly, especially when compounded with earlier failures like urban renewal. You can't handwave away this context when it informs how people think about transit in their communities.

Some people draw a distinction between "technical" transit advocates who focus on what makes the most sense for network effects, optimization, etc. and "political" transit advocates who focus on what is achievable. But really you need both. A purely political approach produces boondoggles but a purely technical one will produce a lot of great plans that will never get built. That is why I bring up the question of the history of different places with proposed transit expansion.

(For what it's worth, I think the highest priority project in the region is a mostly technical one that has broad regional benefits rather than particular ones: the Red-Blue Connector. But after that, you quickly get into prioritizing projects that serve some communities more than others.)
 
a GL branch from Lechmere to Everett via Sullivan.
Are you suggesting, say, dedicated Urban Ring ROW to Sweetser Circle and then street-running on Broadway in Everett? (A flying junction for another branch to Chelsea and Airport later)

That sounds like a very natural, yet seldom mentioned idea. Seems like a northside counterpart to the Nubian branch, which IMO deserves to be on the priority list too.

However, the fact that Everett residents voted in favor of SL6 to Kendall over Haymarket makes me a bit more skeptical. An OSR Green Line ride further into downtown will hopefully do better.
 

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