Design a Better Boston Back Bay Station

[Nexis4jersey]

can we just blow up back bay and rebuild it as a huge megastation and route the nec through the orangeline to northstation and then eliminate south station completely

Eliminate North State by replacing it with Central Station but South Station is fine...

 

[BostonUrbEx]

You're replacing it with a worse curve AND a steeper grade to meet the Orange Line and follow its tunnels - assuming you even can follow the Orange Line (and I don't think you can.)

I guess you pick up 'Central Station' under DTX/State, which might inspire those two stations to be renovated, or it might just result in an even more confusing warren of tunnels under downtown.

Fairmount, Plymouth/Kingston, Middleboro/Lakeville and Greenbush all have no way of accessing Back Bay without a time-expensive reverse move, and assuming your new portal closes off access to the curve, they have no way of accessing Back Bay period. And, with Fairmount stub-ended like that, kiss RER-style service inside of 128 (Readville-Woburn) goodbye.

Oh, and you've also rendered the Southampton Yards totally inaccessible to Amtrak.

Wrong on all points.

https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msi...ll=42.364252,-71.067295&spn=0.151443,0.129776

Gotta use you imagination.

Yes, the Orange Line would be a worse curve (but I don't support such an alignment, I was only talking about removing South Station from the routes).

The Old Colony and Indigo CAN access Back Bay, there is a wye track.

Southampton would be accessible via said wye, as well as Fairmount.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

Wrong on all points.

https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msi...ll=42.364252,-71.067295&spn=0.151443,0.129776

Gotta use you imagination.

Yes, the Orange Line would be a worse curve (but I don't support such an alignment, I was only talking about removing South Station from the routes).

The Old Colony and Indigo CAN access Back Bay, there is a wye track.

Southampton would be accessible via said wye, as well as Fairmount.

That is one expensive tunnel under the harbor! I don't think an Amtrak Logan Airport Station is worth that kind of investment.

Also, it seems to me like your BBY - BON routing comes at the expense of the Green Line, and you're going to need half of the Common ripped up for the other parts of the tunnel, and there's probably a lot of nasty surprises waiting for you there...

This isn't worth it.

 

[BostonUrbEx]

That is one expensive tunnel under the harbor! I don't think an Amtrak Logan Airport Station is worth that kind of investment.

Also, it seems to me like your BBY - BON routing comes at the expense of the Green Line, and you're going to need half of the Common ripped up for the other parts of the tunnel, and there's probably a lot of nasty surprises waiting for you there...

This isn't worth it.

Who said anything about being worth it?

Also, the harbor tunnel wasn't for the airport, although that's actually a good call to have a station at Airport. I was thinking NYC - Hartford - Worcester - Boston - Portland for that. Regionals would be able to pick up Salem and Portsmouth.

Again, all pie-in-the-sky. But it's all 'possible' and 'better'.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

Who said anything about being worth it?

Also, the harbor tunnel wasn't for the airport, although that's actually a good call to have a station at Airport. I was thinking NYC - Hartford - Worcester - Boston - Portland for that. Regionals would be able to pick up Salem and Portsmouth.

Again, all pie-in-the-sky. But it's all 'possible' and 'better'.

Well, "better" for me doesn't come at the expense of keeping South Station stub-ended. And if I was going to argue for Boston Logan Airport Rail Terminal, I'd want it directly connected to North Station rather than South Station. That way, it's significantly more likely that we could bridge over the water rather than being required to tunnel under it, and LRT South Station - Greenway - North Station - Airport Station - AirTrain Airport Terminals seems eminently more doable than trying to run rails of any kind (including streetcar) direct from South Station to the Airport.

Why Hartford - Worcester? Why not Hartford - Providence?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

We can't do ANY of this for the same beating-dead-horse reasons:

1) Ripping the everloving shit out of South End/Back Bay/Chinatown under-streets is impossible with all the water table/landfill, building foundation, and historical impact problems. We can no more widen the OL tunnel than we can build Silver Line Phase III. It's the exact same problem. Move on from this fantasy. It's a physical impossibility.

2) RR grades are regulated. >1% is not recommended. >2% is seriously pushing it. The only path that gets you underground from the NEC and across town within regulation grades while avoiding obstructions is the N-S Link ROW as designed. Full stop.

3) You are pinned into a set path sandwiched between I-93/Pike ramps on the SS approach, a set path to NS, and a set path back to the surface to access any of the northside lines. You can't move it laterally, vertically, ease curves...anything. You're limited in the number of underground platforms between building abutments. This is THE wormhole the Big Dig left as a provision to connect the northside and southside. Nothing can change that short of blowing up the Big Dig from Dewey Sq. to South Bay and starting the fuck over. Like it or lump it...that's your connection, and we're lucky there was that much foresight to include it.

4) Central Station is crippled because of all of the above. It would sit on an incline with one end of the platforms sloping up. The maximum platform length would be 800 ft., too short for 10-car Regionals or what the average Providence and Worcester rush hour train will be after the new coach order is delivered. It's useless. You can't make it any better than that half-solution because its footprint is what it is. You can do a pretty generous North Station...there's more underground room available than SS, and it too can have its surface platforms re-doubled in the future.

5) BBY-NS is never going to be a fast trip. Ever. Because of the pinned-in grades and curves, because of the yard limits and close-spaced interlockings the trains have to pass through. Why are we getting hung up on billion-dollar solutions that aren't going to shave more than 1 minute off the trip through Boston??? You aren't making any of this last-mile track >35 MPH within the dimensional constraints. And it doesn't matter because the % of thru service onto the other side of Boston is paltry compared to terminating service. It's not apples-apples with NY Penn. At all. You make up that downtown time by getting 125 MPH between 128 station and the Ruggles area, getting 125+ on the NH Main out to Anderson, and fixing other speed limit kinks. All that matters for the terminals is that the flow moves in/out/thru smoothly.

 

[deh74]

people around here don't really understand sarcasm do they? south station is an integral part of this citys and regions transportation infrastructure. getting rid of it would be like demolishing penn station again.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

people around here don't really understand sarcasm do they? south station is an integral part of this citys and regions transportation infrastructure. getting rid of it would be like demolishing penn station again.

Don't make sarcastic suggestions.

As you can see, people take them seriously.

F-Line, is there room to bring a Green Line train up from where the Silver Line boards now to the start of the Greenway, and from the vicinity of Hanover Street back down to the existing Green Line after Haymarket for a North Station stop?

 

[deh74]

Don't make sarcastic suggestions.

As you can see, people take them seriously.

F-Line, is there room to bring a Green Line train up from where the Silver Line boards now to the start of the Greenway, and from the vicinity of Hanover Street back down to the existing Green Line after Haymarket for a North Station stop?

so if i said that all buildings should look like city hall or the pru, or that transit is a useless commodity that peoplke would take me seriously

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

so if i said that all buildings should look like city hall or the pru, or that transit is a useless commodity that peoplke would take me seriously

No, you would start landing on people's Ignore lists. Don't be a troll.

 

[deh74]

No, you would start landing on people's Ignore lists. Don't be a troll.

i'm sorry i wasn't trying to be a troll. would people on the south shore be interested in routing some old colony trains to back bay via the wye just before south station?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

i'm sorry i wasn't trying to be a troll. would people on the south shore be interested in routing some old colony trains to back bay via the wye just before south station?

This was done before from 1979-87 when the SW Corridor was closed for reconstruction and all NEC trains operated via Fairmount and they operated a BB-SS shuttle. The ridership was nonexistent; they only kept it for the full 8 years of construction for Amtrak's convenience. Various shuttles and whatnot have been studied since and are listed in the Boston MPO's Program for Mass Transportation, but every time it comes up a dud on ridership projections. Unless you're carrying heavy luggage it's usually faster to go Red-->DTX-->Orange.


It's also hard to turn back at BB without fouling Worcester trains. There just aren't enough platforms to keep everything humming while one train is reversing direction. This worked during the SW Corridor closure because only the Worcester side was still seeing any thru service while the NEC was detoured, but that would never work today.