Re: Wynn Everett Casino | Everett
Yes, probably NSRL if the costs can be kept under $2 or 3 billion or so combined with conversion of Grand Junction from heavy rail to light rail or a busway to get to an Urban Ring type of service.
But it seems like converting the commuter rail to a higher frequency indigo service during peak periods is a much less expensive and potentially shorter term win.
Ultimately limiting growth in and around Boston and shifting growth to secondary urban centers should be on the table.
Converting commuter rail to higher frequency service would be accomplished by electrifying it (or large portions of it at least), and that'd be a pre-requisite to NSRL anyways, as that tunnel would have gradients too steep for diesel, and insufficient venting to boot.
Also, without NSRL, an electrification of the commuter rail system - or any other approach that dramatically increased train frequencies - would slam up against the bottle-neck constraints of the dead ends at North and South Stations. Very soon at North, pretty much immediately at South.
So NSRL and converting the commuter rail system is not an either / or situation, the two projects are intricately linked and mutually codependent. If we want a vastly better regional rail system, with better frequencies for existing customers and also opening up possibilities for the secondary centers as you suggest, we need to electrify, and if we boost the system that way, we cannot have everything dead-ending at the two termini, some good percentage of the trains will have to go through. And, conversely, if you want through-put, then they have to be electric.
So we should be getting started on electrifying a few lines of existing CR while scoping out and then building the NSRL, so that when the tunnel is ready, we've got a portion of CR ready to shift into the tunnel, AND we've gotten the kinks worked out on operating the new electric equipment (which won't be the same as Red or Orange vehicles). And as we work out the kinks on NSRL operations, we ramp up as many of the remaining CR lines as feasible over to electric.
If it all got going soon, and I'm lucky enough to reach geezer-hood, I MIGHT live to see it. I ain't holding my breath. But, as fattony notes, we ARE making improvements, and it DOES feel like momentum is abuilding.
