Everett Transportation (SL3 extension, potential OLX/GLX, Sweetser Circle infill station)

[Riverside]

So, the Orange Line does a whole lot of nothing between Assembly and Malden Center. After stopping at Wellington -- a park-n-ride with some nearby TOD, though not very much in walking distance -- it runs non-stop for 1.7 miles, one of the longest gaps between stations in the entire system. Meanwhile, just across the Malden River, sits Everett, the only municipality to directly border Boston (albeit barely) that lacks rapid transit service.

The Orange Line does strong ridership in Malden, so it doesn't make sense to divert trains away from there to serve a branch to Everett. But, this long gap between Wellington and Malden Center raises another possibility, in lieu of a branch: a diversion.

For example:

Crossing the river at/near the dam, just north of Assembly, the Orange Line could run along the Eastern Route ROW to a new stop at Encore (or could run on a viaduct through the Gateway Center parking lot, with a pleasant pedestrian bridge connecting to Encore). A new "Everett" station could make use of the space just north of the Revere Beach Parkway, and include a bus transfer facility, absorbing the routes that currently terminate at Wellington; with some clever overpass spaghetti, the routes to Sullivan could make a brief diversion to this new station before returning to Broadway. (The Orange Line would probably need to dip below grade here to achieve grade separation north at Spalding St and Wellington Ave.) From there, the Orange Line would take the largely grade-separated Northern Strand ROW north to an adequate river crossing point. One example is suggested above. Then it can return to the existing ROW to continue to Malden.

Whither Wellington in this scenario? It could turn into a commuter rail station, for one. Or it could receive a dinky shuttle service that pings back and forth to Assembly. Or it could receive a branch of the Green Line, running East Somerville - Sullivan - Assembly - Wellington. The Orange Line yard would stay in place, in any case.

A more modest, but also more tightly curved, alternative would be to double back to the current ROW more aggressively:

In the scenario above, a viaduct over Revere Beach Parkway brings the Orange Line back to its current ROW, with a relocated Wellington station located closer to residential areas and developments. The challenges here arise with "Everett" station; for one, fitting in a tangent platform will require relatively tight curves, which will exact a speed penalty, on top of the added stopping time for two new stations. Additionally, the Northern Strand @ Revere Beach Parkway location is already a difficult one for the Broadway bus routes to reach; moving the station further west (as probably required to achieve modest curves) would exacerbate that further.

In general, this is really just a rearticulation of the original vision for the Main Line Elevated, which originally had been planned to extend from Everett to Malden. Finding the right alignment would not be trivial, but it wouldn't need to be herculean either.

One of the things I've started paying a lot more attention to is the role transit plays in river crossings. In this particular situation, Everett gets dinged both by the Mystic River to the south and the Malden River to the west. Think about it: if the Malden River were filled in (or covered over), Everett's neighborhoods could have extended seamlessly into Malden's, with an infill at Rivers Edge providing at least some service to the city. As it is today, however, the river totally cuts it off. Even people who might be willing to do a long walk, or a bike ride... just can't.

This is why I think an "Everett diversion" could be more valuable than it looks. Even though it would not travel particularly deep into Everett itself, it would still provide a new river crossing, which would then open up a world of possibilities for the city to develop new points of access and development.

 

[TheRatmeister]

For example:

I don't think it's possible to make that curve. Not only do the platforms at Assembly go further north, ending around Foley St, but there is also the Earhart Dam to contend with, plus the need to get 30-ish feet of height clearance over the river necessitates some pretty steep gradients. That part is probably doable but it's certainly not making it any easier. All three of those factors combined make me think it's not possible for an Everett Diversion to also serve Assembly and avoid demolishing part of the Gateway Center.

In terms of benefits, I think it's hard to justify. You wouldn't be catching that many people in the walkshed of a potential Sweetser Circle station, so you'd be relying on bus transfers. Which then begs the question, what does this project do that the Alford St busway doesn't do? I'd argue that it's not much.

This seems like a case where you either build a subway line through Everett or you don't, there's no half-assing it.

 

[TheRatmeister]

But maybe an equally crazy idea, what if you did a diversion or possibly branch like this:

This would allow the Orange Line to serve new areas of Malden (and a tiny bit of Everett) without removing service to Malden Center. (although Oak Grove gets anywhere from 50%-100% shafted, depending on if it's a branch or diversion.)

 

[themissinglink]

This is the route Ive always thought makes the most sense. No new tunnels, no new right of ways. Youre right that it doesnt serve the densest part of everett… yet. East everett is exploding with development and still has tons of room to go which is going to be redeveloped. Then you have the whole “docklands” area proposal which is going to be everetts new downtown core with lab and office towers plus lots more residential. Plus the new revs stadium, existing casino, and casino expansion.

It would actually be a smart, forward thinking expansion where we build the extension first and then it catalyzes growth… you know the thing we would NEVER do here. It would be awesome though. It would be like those old pictures you see of Queens where theres an elevated line running through empty fields and then another picture next to it of 100 years later where its in the middle of a bustling nyc borough. We dont really do stuff like that anymore these days, but I definitely think some day in the future when the area is built out and weve hopefully knocked out a few of the higher priority projects that we could get around to building something close to whats drawn above.

Responding to this here since @Riverside mentioned the idea of an Everett transportation thread.

It'd be great if we could do both the Urban Ring northeast quadrant to East Chelsea and an Everett subway underneath Broadway. It would obviously be incredibly expensive, probably prohibitively so. It's still nice to dream, though.

 

[astroTrain27]

This is a great idea. Both in terms of spurring dense redevelopment and for Urban Ring incrementalism. Maybe I’m being overly optimistic, but this seems entirely too reasonable to have come from the “crazy transit pitches” thread.

I’m not too familiar with the ROW, but is the southern branch something that could co-exist with the commuter rail (similar to the southwest corridor) or would it need some sort of new FRA-rated rolling stock so that it could interline with commuter rail?

 

[samsongam]

There is enough space in the ROW for LRT tracks/stations for the southern branch of this because it would mostly take over the busway ROW which is planned to be extended up to Second St. There is the pinch under Broadway where the busway goes down to 1 lane here, how would this be addressed with rail?. Further West the ROW is pretty wide too with the tightest section being under the ramps for Sweetser Circle (looks like 75 ft, very comparable to the GLX+ NH Main ROW in Somerville).

I think the southern branch looks like a relatively easy Bus to Rail conversion, the thing that makes this crazy is how to get here.
- You'd need to protect space for wherever you can split the Everett Sq. subway branch, a new bridge to cross the Mystic that plays nice with the incoming footbridge,
- If you want an elevated stop at Assembly, how do you efficiently build that connection to OL?
- You'd need to rework Sullivan station, which has some space to the West but the OL platforms would have to be redone around the immovable piers that hold up i93 (and it would be even tighter if you're like me and want a regional rail intermodal hub here).
- And then you'd need tunnels/viaducts to plug into either GL or UR across the commuter rail ROW/Inner Belt.

 

[JeffDowntown]

There is enough space in the ROW for LRT tracks/stations for the southern branch of this because it would mostly take over the busway ROW which is planned to be extended up to Second St. There is the pinch under Broadway where the busway goes down to 1 lane here, how would this be addressed with rail?. Further West the ROW is pretty wide too with the tightest section being under the ramps for Sweetser Circle (looks like 75 ft, very comparable to the GLX+ NH Main ROW in Somerville).

I think the southern branch looks like a relatively easy Bus to Rail conversion, the thing that makes this crazy is how to get here.
- You'd need to protect space for wherever you can split the Everett Sq. subway branch, a new bridge to cross the Mystic that plays nice with the incoming footbridge,
- If you want an elevated stop at Assembly, how do you efficiently build that connection to OL?
- You'd need to rework Sullivan station, which has some space to the West but the OL platforms would have to be redone around the immovable piers that hold up i93 (and it would be even tighter if you're like me and want a regional rail intermodal hub here).
- And then you'd need tunnels/viaducts to plug into either GL or UR across the commuter rail ROW/Inner Belt.

I believe F-Line has also indicate there is some point in the ROW near the Everett/Chelsea line where the LRT would need to switch sides of the ROW -- creating the need for a duck under or something similar.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

I believe F-Line has also indicate there is some point in the ROW near the Everett/Chelsea line where the LRT would need to switch sides of the ROW -- creating the need for a duck under or something similar.

Yes. You have to accommodate the split of the freight leads from Everett Jct., so the busway on the southerly side of the ROW will have to duck-under or fly over to switch sides between 2nd St. and Paris St./outskirts-of-Sweetser to continue being bolted to the Eastern Route. And you'd have to relocate the tail freight storage tracks out to 2nd to inside Everett Terminal for cannibalizing the ROW space for the extension. That's why none of the SL3X proposals stayed on the ROW...the considerable expense of flyovers/flyunders wasn't going to be in the budget unless the full-on Urban Ring was being built.

 

[Riverside]

@vanshnookenraggen @BeeLine @George_Apley any chance you can move the Everett posts from Crazy Transit Pitches into this thread? I think it would be everything from:

Crazy Transit Pitches

My borderline crazy pitch: Extending the B line down Commonwealth Ave to Newton Center. Mostly crazy due to the NIMBY reaction.

archboston.com

through the latest, which is currently:

Crazy Transit Pitches

I think Broadway/Lynn is a good example of a challenge with an Everett Line: as strong as Linden/Northgate appears to be, it's not a strong enough anchor, nor is there a consistent enough corridor between it and "Square", for it to be "obvious" that an Everett Line should run all the way to it...

archboston.com

With the exception of these three posts that are about overall system expansion:

Crazy Transit Pitches

Wait, I'm sorry, can you clarify, are you suggesting that automating the Orange Line is the better deal, or building a Sullivan GJ Longwood service is better? I'm suggesting that the UR is the better deal.

archboston.com

Crazy Transit Pitches

Wait, I'm sorry, can you clarify, are you suggesting that automating the Orange Line is the better deal, or building a Sullivan GJ Longwood service is better? I'm suggesting that the UR is the better deal.

archboston.com

Crazy Transit Pitches

Wait, I'm sorry, can you clarify, are you suggesting that automating the Orange Line is the better deal, or building a Sullivan GJ Longwood service is better? I'm suggesting that the UR is the better deal.

archboston.com

 

[stick n move]

^ Try a direct message if you dont have any luck.


*Moving from crazy transit pitches thread*

An all-surface alignment like this is more realistic, but it doesn't directly serve the densest part of Everett, north of Route 16.

This is the route Ive always thought makes the most sense. No new tunnels, no new right of ways. Youre right that it doesnt serve the densest part of everett… yet. East everett is exploding with development and still has tons of room to go which is going to be redeveloped. Then you have the whole “docklands” area proposal which is going to be everetts new downtown core with lab and office towers plus lots more residential. Plus the new revs stadium, existing casino, and casino expansion.

It would actually be a smart, forward thinking expansion where we build the extension first and then it catalyzes growth… you know the thing we would NEVER do here. It would be awesome though. It would be like those old pictures you see of Queens where theres an elevated line running through empty fields and then another picture next to it of 100 years later where its in the middle of a bustling nyc borough. We dont really do stuff like that anymore these days, but I definitely think some day in the future when the area is built out and weve hopefully knocked out a few of the higher priority projects that we could get around to building something close to whats drawn above.

This also makes me think of another post in another thread about the people mover to logan where someone said that if theyre going to spend all that money on a people mover from the airport terminals to the blue line station wouldnt it make more sense just to build out the first part of the urban ring from the airport terminals to everett/chelsea.

My understanding is that in the past few years the rules were changed to allow airport fees/funding to go to mass transit projects, whereas previously they could only be spent on self-contained APMs. With that being the case now, wouldn’t it make sense to built the people mover as a REM-style automated light metro, and extend it along the SL route through Everett/Chelsea to Sullivan as the first leg of the Urban Ring?

So if instead of a people mover they built an elevated light rail line from the terminal to airport station youd get the “people mover” from logan to airport station, but it could also be the first phase of the urban ring (or whatever else you may want to call this project). Then in the future with a phase 2 it could be connected to missinglinks proposal above through everett and chelsea to assembly, sullivan, and glx. Then a phase 3 could be connecting it to the grand junction branch and to west station.


So instead of having multiple separate projects in the airport people mover, light rail extension to everett/chelsea, and the grand junction branch light rail line, this could all be seen as 3 phases of one larger project. When complete this would give you a 1 seat ride from logan to kendall via grand junction, or even a 1 seat ride from logan to west station.

 

[BosMaineiac]

I think the southern branch looks like a relatively easy Bus to Rail conversion, the thing that makes this crazy is how to get here.

Say in a Phase 1 urban ring world where the tracks are cut short at East Chelsea like depicted above, would it be beneficial to maintain a shared LRT/BRT ROW to Chelsea? I would think you want to maintain the SL3 right up until a TWT rail connection is built to connect to the transitway.

 

[ritchiew]

Responding to this here since @Riverside mentioned the idea of an Everett transportation thread.

It'd be great if we could do both the Urban Ring northeast quadrant to East Chelsea and an Everett subway underneath Broadway. It would obviously be incredibly expensive, probably prohibitively so. It's still nice to dream, though.
View attachment 59776

That's an interesting proposal. But what I keep wondering is how much of Everett's industrial space will/should be redeveloped? First, just factually, how much is planned to be redeveloped? There are a lots of proposals, for some squiggly chunks of land, and I can't keep straight the status or likelihood of any of them. But also, how much should be redeveloped? Cities do actually need industrial space to function. Maybe a lot of this area could be redeveloped, but a bunch of it is still active, busy, useful industrial space.

I'm mostly thinking about that after seeing the "East Everett" station on the map. That might be fine, but it is right next to valuable-but-low-density industrial space that probably isn't going anywhere soon. There's an Amazon fulfilment center, USPS facilities, and the New England Produce Center (basically all produce in New England goes through these buildings on their way to supermarkets and restaurants.) There's the flower wholesellers (recently moved from the South End), lots of electrical grid infrastructure that would be hard to move, and I don't know what else. Folks have compared this area to the London Docklands, but I'm not sure how accurate that is. All the dock infrastructure there was obsolete and the area was pretty thoroughly abandoned. That's less true here, I think.

Again, I don't mean to say any proposed station here is bad. But there might be less redevelopment potential around lower Everett/Chelsea than some people might be thinking. Being clear about that will be helpful for planning transit.

 

[stick n move]

That's an interesting proposal. But what I keep wondering is how much of Everett's industrial space will/should be redeveloped? First, just factually, how much is planned to be redeveloped? There are a lots of proposals, for some squiggly chunks of land, and I can't keep straight the status or likelihood of any of them. But also, how much should be redeveloped? Cities do actually need industrial space to function. Maybe a lot of this area could be redeveloped, but a bunch of it is still active, busy, useful industrial space.

I'm mostly thinking about that after seeing the "East Everett" station on the map. That might be fine, but it is right next to valuable-but-low-density industrial space that probably isn't going anywhere soon. There's an Amazon fulfilment center, USPS facilities, and the New England Produce Center (basically all produce in New England goes through these buildings on their way to supermarkets and restaurants.) There's the flower wholesellers (recently moved from the South End), lots of electrical grid infrastructure that would be hard to move, and I don't know what else. Folks have compared this area to the London Docklands, but I'm not sure how accurate that is. All the dock infrastructure there was obsolete and the area was pretty thoroughly abandoned. That's less true here, I think.

Again, I don't mean to say any proposed station here is bad. But there might be less redevelopment potential around lower Everett/Chelsea than some people might be thinking. Being clear about that will be helpful for planning transit.

This image and thread gives an idea of how much just this one section is going to be redeveloped.

https://archboston.com/community/th...istrict-52-beacham-street-everett.6957/page-5

 

[JeffDowntown]

This image and thread gives an idea of how much just this one section is going to be redeveloped.

View attachment 59850

https://archboston.com/community/th...istrict-52-beacham-street-everett.6957/page-5

One really has to wonder how much the Docklands and Commercial Triangle developments are going to shift the population center of gravity of Everett. There is a lot of concern that the rail corridor does not hit the population center of Everett, but will that be as true once these are all built out?

 

[737900er]

So if instead of a people mover they built an elevated light rail line from the terminal to airport station youd get the “people mover” from logan to airport station, but it could also be the first phase of the urban ring (or whatever else you may want to call this project). Then in the future with a phase 2 it could be connected to missinglinks proposal above through everett and chelsea to assembly, sullivan, and glx. Then a phase 3 could be connecting it to the grand junction branch and to west station

It probably has to be built in one go from Lechmere to Terminal A to make it worth it, which makes it unlikely. One of the big benefits to Massport of integrating with the UR is that they'd free up the 4.5 acres of land in the Logan footprint currently used by the bus garage to do something else with. Logan APM would need some kind of maintenance facility, which would probably be over in the Neptune Road area. Having the T do it means maintenance could be concentrated at the existing GL carhouses. The other options for Logan would be to plug into Orient Heights as F-Line has suggested before or extend to Eastern Ave/employee garage and eminent domain the private lots, but at that point you're building the UR.
LRT could presumably share a transitway with SL1, which APM can't do.
I'm personally of the opinion that Logan doesn't need 90-second landside headways. Green Line loading gauge would be tricky for a lot of suitcases though.

 

[Charlie_mta]

Responding to this here since @Riverside mentioned the idea of an Everett transportation thread.

It'd be great if we could do both the Urban Ring northeast quadrant to East Chelsea and an Everett subway underneath Broadway. It would obviously be incredibly expensive, probably prohibitively so. It's still nice to dream, though.
View attachment 59776

A subway underneath Broadway would be expensive, so how about an elevated above Broadway from Sweetser Circle to the Saugus Branch? Broadway is wide enough for center supports for the elevated, plus a travel lane and protected bike lane each way. No room for on-street parking of course. Southwest of Sweetser Circle the elevated structure would ramp down to tie into a GL or light rail urban ring from Sullivan Sq. Here's a typical section on Broadway:

 

[themissinglink]

A couple of days ago @jbray mentioned the lack of consensus among transit advocates and enthusiasts when it comes to the next extension or the order of extensions we build. I feel like the Urban Ring northeast quadrant should be the next extension after the Blue-Red connector since Everett and Chelsea have such poor transit options despite a ton of recent (and future) development.

 

[TheRatmeister]

A subway underneath Broadway would be expensive, so how about an elevated above Broadway from Sweetser Circle to the Saugus Branch? Broadway is wide enough for center supports for the elevated, plus a travel lane and protected bike lane each way. No room for on-street parking of course. Southwest of Sweetser Circle the elevated structure would ramp down to tie into a GL or light rail urban ring from Sullivan Sq. Here's a typical section on Broadway:

Viaducts on the 2 Line in Seattle are about 35' wide, Broadway is around 65' wide (building to building). This could be brought down to 30' like the Market-Frankford Line in Philly, but I don't see it going much narrower. What does a 30' wide viaduct look like on a 65' wide street? Like this:

Thats... not great. Granted it's not the worst thing in the world, but good luck getting that past even some pretty pro-transit locals. Granted, not all of Broadway, especially past Ferry St, is built up that densely. In areas where the buildings are one or at most two stories tall, the light issues can be mitigated somewhat. But there's still one glaring problem:

That 30 foot width ignores stations. For stations we can add 20' to that for an island platform, or ~30' for two side platforms. That means that next to stations, even if we can do an island platform which would require either taller viaducts and more station complexity or side-supports, which increase the width more and would interfere with sidewalks, bike lanes, or both. Best case scenario, the stations will need to be around 7' from peoples windows. And of course, we want stations where there's the most density, such as at 2nd St or at Ferry St, so those stations will be going next to existing 3-4 story buildings.

I just don't see how this possibly works out better than a subway, especially for an 'initial build' of 1-1.5 miles out to Glendale or Woodlawn. In that case the optimistic price difference between elevated and subway would be ~400m-700m, and that is likely with the more intrusive side-platforms. I don't see how that would:

1. Make or break the project
2. Be worth ignoring the massive local opposition that would inevitably arise

We don't build them like we used to and, for once, there is a pretty good reason for that.

 

[stick n move]

Concrete viaducts do look a lot better and you usually get them on center pillars which save some space. One thing that helps a lot with lighting underneath a viaduct is making it taller. When its just high enough for cars and trucks to pass under like the example above it makes it very dark underneath and claustrophobic. Taller viaducts allow more light to come in around the sides. You can also have each ROW seperated with light able to pass between like this sound transit example. Ether way though you definitely are going to get nimby pushback.

 

[TheRatmeister]

Concrete viaducts do look a lot better and you usually get them on center pillars which save some space. One thing that helps a lot with lighting underneath a viaduct is making it taller. When its just high enough for cars and trucks to pass under like the example above it makes it very dark underneath and claustrophobic. Taller viaducts allow more light to come in around the sides.

Even that height isn't enough to get over buildings in dense areas, guesstimating on Google Earth suggests the viaduct at Northgate is around 3 stories tall, there are a lot of buildings along Broadway that are that tall or slightly taller. (We call them triple-deckers for a reason after all.) Sure it might feel less claustrophobic but it will still be dark.

You can also have each ROW seperated with light able to pass between like this sound transit example.

The viaduct in the photo is 65 feet wide, so that would put trains literally next to windows on Broadway. That's probably not an option, and even if it was you've really just traded light in the middle of the street for light on the sides of the street. You could cut down the space in the middle to put it back out towards to sides, but again we're just choosing where the open space goes here, we can't magically make the street wider, so I'm not sure it would really make a big difference.