I still have only your word that anyone actually wanted to keep the thing, against what you're claiming as a myth that everyone wanted it gone. I'll buy that a lot of people might have regretted ripping it down once it became clear that they weren't going to get real rapid transit back after that, but at the time, it was or seemed to be a damn near a unanimous consensus - 'this thing has got to go, go, go.'
And, if I was to go poll 100 random people in Dudley Square as to whether or not they'd support a new El being built down Washington Street, I'm pretty sure that I'd get a damn near unanimous 'hell no.' This despite that it's 2012 and we've gotten much better at building Els that don't end up being ugly eyesores.
It's been discussed ad nauseam on RR.net pretty much since the site's inception, and some of the more knowledgeable forum members and BSRA members who were there for the whole decades-long saga have written at length about it. It was nowhere near a black-and-white issue with "unanimous consent". That's simplistic framing. It was murky, very complicated, very contentious, and touched a lot of socio-economic and neighborhood fabric third rails. Roxbury didn't just wake up the day after the last girder was torn down and said "oh shit, we've made a terrible mistake"...it was controversial when proposed with the highway, controversial when being built, and that much more controversial when it became clear that they had bupkis in the works for "equal or better replacement". It was not nearly a strong enough majority to fight back against the pressure, but "unanimous consent" is a total misrepresentation of what the neighborhood went through.
The El was part of the neighborhood fabric. It was just there. Residents did not resent it. There was not decades of building public discontent to tear it down. Structurally...it wasn't even in bad condition because BERy built it twice as strong as it needed to be to last twice as long as it needed to (esp. the original Chinatown-Dudley segment). The stations weren't kept up all that well but it was not the decaying, rust-raining, speed-restricted deferred maintenance pit its Charlestown counterpart was at the end. Don't conflate that with NYC's Els in the 70's and 80's during the MTA's cesspit era.
Urban renewalists and wannabe urban renewalists inside and outside the neighborhood drove it. Both inside and outside the neighborhood. It was not citizen-driven. Why would inner-city citizens with no other transit options be advocating for transit loss? They knew damn well no replacement option would ever be as good as fully grade-separated heavy rail through the heart of the corridor.
Yeah, that's a cemetery path bridged over the tracks, which are still running on top of the burial ground. That's not a grade separated ROW at all.
What is your definition of grade separation? You can't access the fenced-off tracks by walking through the cemetery. The cemetery road is bridged over it instead of requiring a grade crossing. That's the dictionary definition of grade separation. It is.
Yes, that is the problem! They built it through the cemetery. The cemetery was not reconfigured around the ROW, they punched straight through. Maybe no bodies had to move - but it's still all the same burial ground, and it's certainly kind of A Big Thing.
Yes, the cemetery WAS configured around the ROW:
http://www.cedargrovecemetery.org/history/index.htm. 1 year after opening the cemetery they negotiated an easement with Old Colony RR through the middle of the then-empty land in exchange for putting a station (the current stop) there. Only the Milton St./Adams St. corner of the cemetery was even laid out at the time the deal was struck. The entire area the ROW bisects had to be drained of Neponset swamp and landscaped before a single body was buried there. They can thank the RR and Cedar Grove station for increasing the land value and the value of the burial plots enough to have the money to expand the cemetery.
The tracks predate the adjacent burial ground.
The tracks predate the adjacent burial ground.
The tracks predate the adjacent burial ground.
That is historical record. Ranting about it doesn't change the historical record. Find another cause because nothing was ever "desecrated".
Especially when, as I said, Red Line tracks are a fair bit more high maintenance than Mattapan Line tracks and electrifying for the Red Line by installing a third rail isn't an easy or minor job no matter where the tracks you're converting are located. That they happen to be located in a cemetery is the kind of thing that's bound to cause problems.
Bring on the mega-project to move the thing. The tunnel boring machines are already going to be present and good to go because they're necessary for Mattapan-outbound, and for the same amount of problems you cause by insisting that 'keeping it running through the cemetery is just fine to do,' we can instead relocate it out of the cemetery and not have to deal with the implications of running mass transit over (presumably) consecrated burial grounds.
I've said this before: one person's aesthetic OCD is no reason to build a megaproject. Seriously...step back from this enough to ask yourself how you are ever going to achieve consensus for these insanely complicated finesse jobs over WELL-PERFORMING existing transit corridors. There is at least 80 years of historical consensus that Red Line conversion to Mattapan is a palatable proposal. Maybe never critical-mass, but it's there and always has been. Nobody has ever ever ever proposed relocated it because of the frickin' cemetery whose land the tracks predate.
And what makes you think the Mattapan Line isn't maintained? There are maintenance-of-way crews out there every day inspecting and working the sides of the tracks next to the cemetery. The NTSB doesn't allow service to begin for the day without an early-AM inspection for track obstructions. They're out overnight. They do brush pickup, regular wire inspections on hi-rail pickup trucks, blowing leaves off the tracks to keep the wheels from slipping when wet, snow plowing in winter. Just because it's trolley-grade tracks vs. rapid transit-grade tracks doesn't mean T crews aren't there disturbing the dearly departed on the other side.
And yes...it is non-disruptive to do rapid transit through there. Replace ties, lay the same kind of welded rail that the D line was upgraded to for the Type 8's, firm up any weak spots in the railbed, signalize (which they'll likely have to do anyway if modern LRV's go out there), and switch the underground power cables from overhead feed to third rail feed. That's it. Nothing gets touched on the ROW footprint. The curve in the cemetery is less sharp than the one on the Ashmont Branch before Fields Corner. The major work is upgrading the power feed at Ashmont, grade separation at Central Ave. and Capen, and new station construction at Central Ave./Milton and upgraded Mattapan. Not a ROW makeover.
Granted it was a different era, but it took 1 weekend to convert the East Boston tunnel from trolley to heavy rail, and 1 year to convert the Riverside Line from commuter rail to trolley. It's not rocket science. They don't even have to shut down the trolleys while installing the third rail infrastructure...only when Central Ave. and Capen grade separation construction begins.
I said it had to go to 128, I never said it had to take the NEC to get there.
Although, since we are talking Els, even if it did there's always the option of running the Red Line/Orange Line in a viaduct built on top of the NEC, or vice versa. That'd be pretty neat and unique to Greater Boston, too - and elevating the NEC to sit on top of surface-level Rapid Transit might make it easier to expand to 4 tracks. Instead of having to widen the ROW itself, you just configure the bridge to have all its supports inside the existing ROW and convince the DEP that the added shadows from the viaduct aren't going to cause problems.
And how do you swing that with the 25 ft.+ tall overhead towers? That's one hella tall El requiring very high and strong girders to span 3 tracks underneath, and a very tough EIS in itself for laying the pilings at the edges of the ROW. It's still significant wetlands impacts that won't get approved. Practically speaking there is no way to fit commuter rail and rapid transit to 128 at Westwood or Dedham Corporate. But, really, do those destinations need 4-minute headways for their relative lack of density? The solution is getting 20-25 minute headways on the Fairmount Line with EMU's and terminating at Westwood with the expansion space on the east side for 2 additional turnout platforms. That doesn't mess with NEC headways at all with only 1.5 miles of 3-track shared running space from Fairmount junction to 128 turnout on EMU equipment rated 90 MPH. That's practical.
Don't forget...this was studied when the Orange Line was considered as an either/or on the Needham Line or NEC. Although at that time nobody thought Amtrak and commuter rail would ever need more than 2 tracks. The ridership projections just didn't wash on the Hyde Park alignment like it did through Rozzie and West Roxbury because it missed too many bus transfers and the densest part of Rozzie, and the Mt. Hope intermediate stop was too light. The 128 destination was even worse. Dedham Ctr. did study out with excellent ridership, moreso than either route's 128 stop. But the planners wanted 128-or-bust so the W. Rox-Dedham jog was never the T's favorite.
I do think Red paralleling Fairmount to Readville would bring the ridership to 3 consecutive stops. I think that's worth building some distant day via Mattapan even if it terminates at Readville. The yard space alone would be a big boon to headways on Red and further expansion of the line up north, and they could redevelop Codman Yard at Ashmont into something better. But I do think Dedham Ctr. via the Dedham Branch would knock the socks off the rapid transit ridership at Westwood or Dedham Corporate. The density is orders of magnitude better, the Mall is there for TOD and parking, and ex-Route 1 is a straight shot from 128. If you got to Readville in the first place it would be cheap on a well-buffered and grade separated ROW (better than the old Orange proposal), and...if that's the only non-nightmare EIS...quite likely the only choice for even sniffing rapid transit to 128 on the Braintree-Needham quadrant. So, yeah, process of environmental elimination perks that one up in a hurry.
