Fairmount Line Upgrade
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Re: Fairmont Line Upgrade
Probably so they can go through the intersection first and then drop people off? Probably slightly more efficient than the opposite. Just a guess though.
Probably so they can go through the intersection first and then drop people off? Probably slightly more efficient than the opposite. Just a guess though.
F-Line to Dudley
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Re: Fairmont Line Upgrade
Fitchburg Line is the king of screwy platform layouts. Waltham, Kendal Green, Hastings, Silver Hill, Lincoln, Ayer, Shirley. They all range from very unorthodox to just plain bonkers.
Waltham's going to be a bear. The Moody-Elm block is only 500 ft. wide. And the longer platform west of Moody is on a curve, so full-high platform is probably only possible on the mid-block unless they get very creative. Fine for the DMU's, but Fitchburg/Wachusett trains can only be 5 cars + a locomotive without overspilling one of the crossings. Meaning either they start immediately segregating 100% bi-level cars to this route to stave off for as many years as possible any need to run trains longer than that, or there's always going to be something bizarre about which train stops where and/or blocks what at this station.
Fitchburg Line is the king of screwy platform layouts. Waltham, Kendal Green, Hastings, Silver Hill, Lincoln, Ayer, Shirley. They all range from very unorthodox to just plain bonkers.
Waltham's going to be a bear. The Moody-Elm block is only 500 ft. wide. And the longer platform west of Moody is on a curve, so full-high platform is probably only possible on the mid-block unless they get very creative. Fine for the DMU's, but Fitchburg/Wachusett trains can only be 5 cars + a locomotive without overspilling one of the crossings. Meaning either they start immediately segregating 100% bi-level cars to this route to stave off for as many years as possible any need to run trains longer than that, or there's always going to be something bizarre about which train stops where and/or blocks what at this station.
The EGE
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Re: Fairmont Line Upgrade
Waltham:
The Fitchburg Line gets one less nasty grade crossing, two tracks, and two full-length high-levels. Waltham gets better traffic at rush hour, a chance for more service and possibly DMUs, and the east side of the Museum block to stop being an eyesore. Property taking would be about limited to that ugly industrial lot and the decrepit dentist's office on Elm.
The Watertown Branch ROW south of the extended River Street would be a nice place to put some additional parking.
Waltham:
The Fitchburg Line gets one less nasty grade crossing, two tracks, and two full-length high-levels. Waltham gets better traffic at rush hour, a chance for more service and possibly DMUs, and the east side of the Museum block to stop being an eyesore. Property taking would be about limited to that ugly industrial lot and the decrepit dentist's office on Elm.
The Watertown Branch ROW south of the extended River Street would be a nice place to put some additional parking.
F-Line to Dudley
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Re: Fairmont Line Upgrade
I'm pretty sure that warehouse/old freight house abutting the Elm crossing has already been sold to a redeveloper who's going to demolish it for tallish condos on that parcel, so reworking the street won't be an option.
A cross street on the behind block is definitely worthwhile for spreading the block. Traffic there is awful enough around Carter even when the gates are up, but that at least serves up an option to shorten the traffic queues if a 6+ -car Wachusett train has to overhang one of the crossings during a station dwell.
Until there's an unbroken string of full-high stations out to Littleton the T isn't going to be using the auto door coaches on the Fitchburg. So Waltham can persist for years more with the long mini-high before that becomes obsolete. It's going to take that long to flip the others. The Weston trio are obviously up for retirement when the 128 stop gets built. Lincoln is pretty logical with two 800 ft. platforms going west of the grade crossing, retiring the funky setup it's got now. But West Concord will take a bit more money and design care to modify on the station building side, and Concord is such a nightmare with the curve and close-abutting station building that's probably one they'd want to throw up their hands and punt to the end of the line for systemwide ADA mods out of sheer difficulty. With Fitchburg headways never being all that dense they can even leave the long Waltham mini-high platform as-is as a single-sided platform if appropriate crossovers are installed around it after Track 2 comes back and the mid-block gets its facing full-highs. They just may want to segregate all- bi-level trains to the line so they can use the full-highs as often as possible and cram as much seating capacity as possible into 5 cars without needing to add a 6th.
Waltham:
The Fitchburg Line gets one less nasty grade crossing, two tracks, and two full-length high-levels. Waltham gets better traffic at rush hour, a chance for more service and possibly DMUs, and the east side of the Museum block to stop being an eyesore. Property taking would be about limited to that ugly industrial lot and the decrepit dentist's office on Elm.
The Watertown Branch ROW south of the extended River Street would be a nice place to put some additional parking.
I'm pretty sure that warehouse/old freight house abutting the Elm crossing has already been sold to a redeveloper who's going to demolish it for tallish condos on that parcel, so reworking the street won't be an option.
A cross street on the behind block is definitely worthwhile for spreading the block. Traffic there is awful enough around Carter even when the gates are up, but that at least serves up an option to shorten the traffic queues if a 6+ -car Wachusett train has to overhang one of the crossings during a station dwell.
Until there's an unbroken string of full-high stations out to Littleton the T isn't going to be using the auto door coaches on the Fitchburg. So Waltham can persist for years more with the long mini-high before that becomes obsolete. It's going to take that long to flip the others. The Weston trio are obviously up for retirement when the 128 stop gets built. Lincoln is pretty logical with two 800 ft. platforms going west of the grade crossing, retiring the funky setup it's got now. But West Concord will take a bit more money and design care to modify on the station building side, and Concord is such a nightmare with the curve and close-abutting station building that's probably one they'd want to throw up their hands and punt to the end of the line for systemwide ADA mods out of sheer difficulty. With Fitchburg headways never being all that dense they can even leave the long Waltham mini-high platform as-is as a single-sided platform if appropriate crossovers are installed around it after Track 2 comes back and the mid-block gets its facing full-highs. They just may want to segregate all- bi-level trains to the line so they can use the full-highs as often as possible and cram as much seating capacity as possible into 5 cars without needing to add a 6th.
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Commuting Boston Student
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Re: Fairmont Line Upgrade
That would probably require this plan to be at all reasonable. And yet!
In addition to the total omission of rapid transit improvements, South Coast FAIL's continued and obnoxious inclusion, no mention of connecting services south of Providence, no extension to Kingston OR cutback to T.F. Green of the Providence Line, Buzzard's Bay still relegated to 'connecting service,' Hyde Park continuing to survive as a commuter rail stop, no extension of Fairmount to Westwood/128, no third/fourth track at or south of Westwood/128 (platforming or otherwise), Needham being set up for its thousand-cuts death by NEC, zero mention of electrification, and numerous other problems that have been discussed here and elsewhere...
The real elephant in the room as far as this plan is concerned is Readville itself, which desperately needs a second full track for the Fairmount Line and is the last thing standing in the way from what I can tell for tripling, maybe quadrupling, Fairmount Line frequencies. Readville also has a vital role to play in the continuing yard capacity crunch being experienced in Boston as a new source of medium-term/long-term/maintenance storage capacity - and taking the Fairmount Line to rapid transit levels of service is an excellent inroad to broaching that issue. Hell, there's no better place than Readville for World HQ of DMU Operations in Boston!
So... of course there's absolutely no mention of any of this in the plan! Why, that would make too much sense!
That would probably require this plan to be at all reasonable. And yet!
In addition to the total omission of rapid transit improvements, South Coast FAIL's continued and obnoxious inclusion, no mention of connecting services south of Providence, no extension to Kingston OR cutback to T.F. Green of the Providence Line, Buzzard's Bay still relegated to 'connecting service,' Hyde Park continuing to survive as a commuter rail stop, no extension of Fairmount to Westwood/128, no third/fourth track at or south of Westwood/128 (platforming or otherwise), Needham being set up for its thousand-cuts death by NEC, zero mention of electrification, and numerous other problems that have been discussed here and elsewhere...
The real elephant in the room as far as this plan is concerned is Readville itself, which desperately needs a second full track for the Fairmount Line and is the last thing standing in the way from what I can tell for tripling, maybe quadrupling, Fairmount Line frequencies. Readville also has a vital role to play in the continuing yard capacity crunch being experienced in Boston as a new source of medium-term/long-term/maintenance storage capacity - and taking the Fairmount Line to rapid transit levels of service is an excellent inroad to broaching that issue. Hell, there's no better place than Readville for World HQ of DMU Operations in Boston!
So... of course there's absolutely no mention of any of this in the plan! Why, that would make too much sense!
F-Line to Dudley
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Re: Fairmont Line Upgrade
Whoa, whoa. RIDOT service is not MassDOT's concern. That is total extracurricular activity from a budgeting perspective. State of RI buys in for more equipment and more staff when they increase their service, timed accordingly with vehicle procurement. Those service enhancements are off-books in Davey's budgeting world, with the only indirect dependencies being South Station expansion and southside storage/maintenance capacity. Which, if they don't happen, kisses all DMU's goodbye too.
Also, the NEC 3rd track expansion is Amtrak's bag. It has tons of commuter rail relevance, but Amtrak was the one that called for it first. And will be the one performing the installation. So that has national funding implications with the state's share of the tab being a separate negotiation hashed out with the feds. It's not within the purview of a MassDOT mission statement because of how many bureaucratic jurisdictions it crosses. As opposed to Inland Route, which is a project for wholly state-sponsored Amtrak service.
If the NEC gets a new funding dump planned that's going to be announced from the shadows first on USDOT or Amtrak letterhead with MassDOT as third wheel. And it could happen with some suddenness for that first Readville-Canton Jct. leg, so don't write off a Fairmount extension yet. It's just semi-extracurricular enough to be unwise for Davey to riff about prematurely on spider maps and PowerPoint slides. That doesn't mean wheels aren't turning or state-level cost shares for it aren't being calculated.
That's all implicit when they say they're pressing forward with saturation DMU's on the Fairmount. The only reason those stops were put off to last and are still subject to funding is because they're ADA-accessible and didn't need the extreme makeovers Morton St. and Uphams Corner got for the start of service. It is still a requirement on the follow-through to max service that both Fairmount and Readville get up to snuff on level boarding and track capacity. That's neither news nor something a statewide vision statement needs to spend much time dwelling on. Those are well documented to-do's.
Whoa, whoa. RIDOT service is not MassDOT's concern. That is total extracurricular activity from a budgeting perspective. State of RI buys in for more equipment and more staff when they increase their service, timed accordingly with vehicle procurement. Those service enhancements are off-books in Davey's budgeting world, with the only indirect dependencies being South Station expansion and southside storage/maintenance capacity. Which, if they don't happen, kisses all DMU's goodbye too.
Also, the NEC 3rd track expansion is Amtrak's bag. It has tons of commuter rail relevance, but Amtrak was the one that called for it first. And will be the one performing the installation. So that has national funding implications with the state's share of the tab being a separate negotiation hashed out with the feds. It's not within the purview of a MassDOT mission statement because of how many bureaucratic jurisdictions it crosses. As opposed to Inland Route, which is a project for wholly state-sponsored Amtrak service.
If the NEC gets a new funding dump planned that's going to be announced from the shadows first on USDOT or Amtrak letterhead with MassDOT as third wheel. And it could happen with some suddenness for that first Readville-Canton Jct. leg, so don't write off a Fairmount extension yet. It's just semi-extracurricular enough to be unwise for Davey to riff about prematurely on spider maps and PowerPoint slides. That doesn't mean wheels aren't turning or state-level cost shares for it aren't being calculated.
Because it's a relatively small detail. Individual station renovations weren't spelled out to the nines, and it's been an assumption ever since the initial Fairmount service plans that this stop would have to get upgraded by the time DMU's escalated to full service. Same as Fairmount's platforms needing to go full-high.
That's all implicit when they say they're pressing forward with saturation DMU's on the Fairmount. The only reason those stops were put off to last and are still subject to funding is because they're ADA-accessible and didn't need the extreme makeovers Morton St. and Uphams Corner got for the start of service. It is still a requirement on the follow-through to max service that both Fairmount and Readville get up to snuff on level boarding and track capacity. That's neither news nor something a statewide vision statement needs to spend much time dwelling on. Those are well documented to-do's.
Commuting Boston Student
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Re: Fairmont Line Upgrade
Which is why I wrote either/or on an extension or a cutback of the Providence Line. It's absolutely clear that RI's rail services have no business being treated as a conjoined part of the Providence Line in the way that Wickford Junction continues to be treated and, in fact, everybody suffers when you treat the line that way.
So the 2024 MBTA grand mission statement is absolutely the time to start drawing the line on all these nebulous outer-edge commuter rail services in a way that hasn't at all been done satisfactorily - both here and out by Cape Cod, where rail to the cape continues to be treated as a holiday tourism weekend service - which rail to Hyannis probably is for a long time yet, but Buzzard's Bay should be demanding a full commuter rail extension at least that far.
Where does the district actually stop? Which services are part of the core Boston commuter district, which are not? We apparently have absolutely no interest in answering this question, in fact, we don't appear to have much interest in taking substantial looks at things in our mission statements because just drawing arbitrary lines on a map is both easy and fun!
Half of this release was the mission statement. The other half was five-year budgetary targets.
Starting on Page 62 is a big, dry, boring list of every single project supposedly on the five-year expenses radar. This list is the kind of thing that itemized out eight separate phases to the Aeronautics Division "Residential Acquisition and Sound Insulation Program" and priced each of them individually. I didn't expect to find Readville Yard in big, glossy letters in the PowerPoint half of this project but I sure as hell expected it somewhere on Page 71, priced out individually in the same way projects in other categories were priced out individually but where rail and transit projects get lumped into 'implicits' and broad-strokes funding guesstimates that suggest MassDOT either doesn't know or doesn't care about the particulars or the little things like DMU implementation lives or dies on.
It's not enough to line-item "DMU Implementation" at $190,000,317 (or, maybe it's broad-categorized under the similarly nebulous "Fairmount Phase II," budgeted at $42,792,208) and then shrug and say 'well I'm sure that's good enough.' Show me that it's good enough, I want each individual piece of this thing chunked out and priced out the same way the highway division was able to cost sign replacement on each state road separately instead of tossing out a "Signage Replacement" line-item and calling that good enough for a budget. Otherwise, it gives me the impression that they don't know or they don't care what's going to be involved in any of this - perhaps because the entire DMU project is vaporware they have no intention of finishing?
Which is why I wrote either/or on an extension or a cutback of the Providence Line. It's absolutely clear that RI's rail services have no business being treated as a conjoined part of the Providence Line in the way that Wickford Junction continues to be treated and, in fact, everybody suffers when you treat the line that way.
So the 2024 MBTA grand mission statement is absolutely the time to start drawing the line on all these nebulous outer-edge commuter rail services in a way that hasn't at all been done satisfactorily - both here and out by Cape Cod, where rail to the cape continues to be treated as a holiday tourism weekend service - which rail to Hyannis probably is for a long time yet, but Buzzard's Bay should be demanding a full commuter rail extension at least that far.
Where does the district actually stop? Which services are part of the core Boston commuter district, which are not? We apparently have absolutely no interest in answering this question, in fact, we don't appear to have much interest in taking substantial looks at things in our mission statements because just drawing arbitrary lines on a map is both easy and fun!
Half of this release was the mission statement. The other half was five-year budgetary targets.
Starting on Page 62 is a big, dry, boring list of every single project supposedly on the five-year expenses radar. This list is the kind of thing that itemized out eight separate phases to the Aeronautics Division "Residential Acquisition and Sound Insulation Program" and priced each of them individually. I didn't expect to find Readville Yard in big, glossy letters in the PowerPoint half of this project but I sure as hell expected it somewhere on Page 71, priced out individually in the same way projects in other categories were priced out individually but where rail and transit projects get lumped into 'implicits' and broad-strokes funding guesstimates that suggest MassDOT either doesn't know or doesn't care about the particulars or the little things like DMU implementation lives or dies on.
It's not enough to line-item "DMU Implementation" at $190,000,317 (or, maybe it's broad-categorized under the similarly nebulous "Fairmount Phase II," budgeted at $42,792,208) and then shrug and say 'well I'm sure that's good enough.' Show me that it's good enough, I want each individual piece of this thing chunked out and priced out the same way the highway division was able to cost sign replacement on each state road separately instead of tossing out a "Signage Replacement" line-item and calling that good enough for a budget. Otherwise, it gives me the impression that they don't know or they don't care what's going to be involved in any of this - perhaps because the entire DMU project is vaporware they have no intention of finishing?
Equilibria
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Re: Fairmont Line Upgrade
I don't think state borders are "arbitrary lines on a map." You can take issue with the way MassDOT is doing it, but they are, by allowing RI and hopefully NH to buy into their system, providing cheap and fairly frequent rail links between Boston and nearby regional centers. Should RIDOT be planning to make TF Green and Wickford service a mere segment in their own RI-centric rail network rather than a grafted extension to Boston-based service? Sure. It's also completely counterproductive for MassDOT to use their 10-year plan to point a nagging finger at them.
Given that transportation folks (though perhaps not you personally) are continuously pushing for NH to wake up and greenlight a service to Nashua and Manchester nearly identical to the RI service, I think we should appreciate what the MBTA has done in RI.
I think if they have a figure like $190,000,317 they have some spreadsheet with additional sub-items feeding that figure. It's possible they just said "DMUs cost $190 million and something else associated with them costs 317 bucks, so we'll just add them up," but I suspect there's an analysis behind this they simply weren't ready to submit for public consumption yet.
You're making the assumption that every project in the statewide program is at the same stage of planning. The highway and airport projects are more mature efforts which have been in detailed planning for a decade in some cases. They're routine maintenance and (in the case of both signage and sound insulation) Federal or judicial mandates. DMUs are an elective effort for the MBTA in an area where the agency has no experience. While the topic has been studied to rough estimates there's never been an in-depth effort that would produce the minutae you're looking for. Now that the project is in a ten-year plan, that analysis can hopefully be funded and put out to bid.
There's a long way between "not as set-in-stone as routine highway sign replacement" and "vaporware they have no intention of finishing."
I don't think state borders are "arbitrary lines on a map." You can take issue with the way MassDOT is doing it, but they are, by allowing RI and hopefully NH to buy into their system, providing cheap and fairly frequent rail links between Boston and nearby regional centers. Should RIDOT be planning to make TF Green and Wickford service a mere segment in their own RI-centric rail network rather than a grafted extension to Boston-based service? Sure. It's also completely counterproductive for MassDOT to use their 10-year plan to point a nagging finger at them.
Given that transportation folks (though perhaps not you personally) are continuously pushing for NH to wake up and greenlight a service to Nashua and Manchester nearly identical to the RI service, I think we should appreciate what the MBTA has done in RI.
I think if they have a figure like $190,000,317 they have some spreadsheet with additional sub-items feeding that figure. It's possible they just said "DMUs cost $190 million and something else associated with them costs 317 bucks, so we'll just add them up," but I suspect there's an analysis behind this they simply weren't ready to submit for public consumption yet.
You're making the assumption that every project in the statewide program is at the same stage of planning. The highway and airport projects are more mature efforts which have been in detailed planning for a decade in some cases. They're routine maintenance and (in the case of both signage and sound insulation) Federal or judicial mandates. DMUs are an elective effort for the MBTA in an area where the agency has no experience. While the topic has been studied to rough estimates there's never been an in-depth effort that would produce the minutae you're looking for. Now that the project is in a ten-year plan, that analysis can hopefully be funded and put out to bid.
There's a long way between "not as set-in-stone as routine highway sign replacement" and "vaporware they have no intention of finishing."
Commuting Boston Student
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Re: Fairmont Line Upgrade
State borders are not arbitrary lines on a map.
Wickford Junction is an arbitrary line on a map. Middleborough is an arbitrary line on a map. Most of where DMU service is set to 'stop' is completely arbitrary. Why here? Why these terminals? That question hasn't been answered.
Also, RIDOT is already pushing for this as their own service in the RI State Rail Plan. Far from pointing a nagging finger, their partner MassDOT should be acknowledging that and changing their own plans to reflect it.
State borders are not arbitrary lines on a map.
Wickford Junction is an arbitrary line on a map. Middleborough is an arbitrary line on a map. Most of where DMU service is set to 'stop' is completely arbitrary. Why here? Why these terminals? That question hasn't been answered.
Also, RIDOT is already pushing for this as their own service in the RI State Rail Plan. Far from pointing a nagging finger, their partner MassDOT should be acknowledging that and changing their own plans to reflect it.
F-Line to Dudley
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Re: Fairmont Line Upgrade
That is not a concern of MA taxpayers. It's RI's taxpayers. Read their new State Rail Plan their taxpayers are on the hook for. That is what spells out the detail. None of that is pertinent to a Massachusetts capital investment plan that MA taxpayers are paying for. They don't need to say boo about it. You might disagree, but they drew the line on surplus-to-requirement at what the taxpayers are paying for. That's a valid choice on their part for this documentation.
The only thing the T cares about for its revenue and its expenses are what RI destinations maximize their MA boardings. To the extent cross-state stops are in-district constituencies, there are three: Providence/T.F. Green, Nashua, and Plaistow. Because stopping in South Attleboro, Tyngsboro, and parking-starved Haverhill leaves too much on the table for tying up the district's needs.
Anything beyond that is mercenary ops work they are happy to pick up because RIDOT or NHDOT paying in for RI intrastate or (if the day ever comes) Capitol Corridor expresses increases the economy of scale of the fleet, staff, and ops support without costing MA taxpayers. For example, the new RI State Rail Plan makes specific mention for the first time of DMU's on the highest frequency/highest demand stations in Greater Providence. That helps the T enormously in procuring a fleet because they will get RI's % pay-in. MassDOT very much cheers them on with that. But you won't see that mentioned here because RI's taxpayers who have to float that share, and it is transparent to the vehicle procurement.
As far as where to truncate the Providence Line...that decision can't be made for another 5 years because the intrastate service hasn't bloody begun yet. Nor have the intrastate service patterns, where they'll overlap, where they'll terminate been determined yet. There's nothing to say, nothing to write verbage on. Nothing for MassDOT to lead or take a stand with until they know what RIDOT's intrastate service patterns are going to be.
It's a valid debate for another thread, but it's outside the purview of a MA cap improvements plan. The only thing you can say for certain is that they will not drop MA stops and MA stop revenue over their dead body for the sake of running faster RI-centric service from Boston. Not when every stop Sharon-S. Attleboro individually clocks more boardings than Providence and Canton + 128 not far behind. Nor are they going to give RIDOT its future growth slots on the locals to pay in for for more Boston expresses. They don't have to say any more; when it's time to firm up the service plan, the parameters are clear.
Thankfully the Cape isn't waiting for somebody else to define them. That was an unsatisfactorily nebulous detail, but as this article makes clear there is NO question that all the regional heavies want Buzzards Bay as a full-blown Middleboro Line extension. As for shuttle service from the other side of the bridge...there lurks Cape Cod Central RR itching to run more passenger service, and now owned by a larger railroad with access to Budd RDC's and other passenger equipment from their other holdings. That part of the details could be fuzzy for a good reason if there's a potential private outsourcing partner to contribute across the bridge where it's a little bit of a reach for T ops. But the locals have made it very clear they are the ones defining where the dividing line is: nothing less than full-blown Buzzards Bay-terminating extension of the Middleboro Line is going to serve their basic needs. They are filling in that fuzzy detail right now.
That's the district. 65 towns in the fixed route division coverable by bus or rapid transit; 175 total in the catchment area of some MBTA service or another. Outside the inner 65 it's the Regional Transit Authorities that run the buses.
With commuter rail every town hosting the rail line (whether they have a stop or not) has to go in. And barring a ferocious protest every adjoining town in the station catchment area goes in. Sometimes 2 towns out go in if they're heavy users, but that's a lot more situational.
-- Fall River and New Bedford must get added for South Coast Rail. Acushnet, Fairhaven, Somerset, Dartmouth, Westport, and Dighton are the abutting towns. Swansea gets so close to Fall River it's very nearly an abutting town. These not being in-district is why we have the godawful unaccountable SCR Task Force being the intermediary negotiating with those towns and promising candy and unicorns on the T's back.
-- Bourne has to get added for Buzzards Bay. Sandwich also seems a likely one since it clips the mainland side of the Canal at Scusset Beach. Beyond that Cape is hard to pin because of the separation by bridges and Canal. I can absolutely believe Falmouth and Mashpee will strongly support going in because they're strongly advocating for the service. Marion...it borders Wareham but they probably like their isolation.
And that's it. Other than tiny Dunstable being users of the in-state intermediates on a Lowell Line extension to Nashua there's nobody else who needs to join for any service enhancement. As far as I know Gardner isn't being added for the Wachusett extension, but they technically will still be 2 towns out because the stop stays just a hair inside Fitchburg city limits.
Purple Line is never going to Springfield no matter how much Gov. Patrick covets the idea. There's no effing way to bureaucratically square that many new towns into the district. Western MA is Amtrak's realm or MassDOT subsidizing CTDOT operations on the Springfield Line the same way RIDOT subsidizes T operations. The same goes if they ever pay in more to coax NHHS further north to Chicopee, Northampton, and/or Greenfield.
We're right to be skeptical of that. I agree totally...it's scary thin on the implementation plan. While I think Fairmount Line is on very solid footing now, there needs to be a lot more coming on how they're going to pull this off elsewhere. For instance, there is no freaking way the Worcester Line can support DMU's when it's still that slow, still in the rear division of the commuter rail on on-time performance, and still has expensive infrastructure upgrades inside Framingham with the signal system and crossovers before it can support mixed service patterns passing each other fluidly. That's "Do not pass Go" territory until the track upgrades are fully substantiated with dollar figures. The line absolutely has that native capacity if firing on all cylinders, but that won't happen until they eat their peas on the unsexy upgrades currently holding it all back.
Not that this is a bad thing in the slightest if Fairmount still gets to realize its service plan and RIDOT's share is helping pay for the facilities to maintain these things. That's a deep long-term down payment put to good use. They just need to show the money on how they're going to get the infrastructure and stations on the other routes ready to take the cars. Otherwise there's nothing preventing them from structuring a Fairmount-explicit + RIDOT-implit "sure thing" base order with a shitload of option orders covering the other lines...then the options never being exercised if things stagnate.
That is not a concern of MA taxpayers. It's RI's taxpayers. Read their new State Rail Plan their taxpayers are on the hook for. That is what spells out the detail. None of that is pertinent to a Massachusetts capital investment plan that MA taxpayers are paying for. They don't need to say boo about it. You might disagree, but they drew the line on surplus-to-requirement at what the taxpayers are paying for. That's a valid choice on their part for this documentation.
The only thing the T cares about for its revenue and its expenses are what RI destinations maximize their MA boardings. To the extent cross-state stops are in-district constituencies, there are three: Providence/T.F. Green, Nashua, and Plaistow. Because stopping in South Attleboro, Tyngsboro, and parking-starved Haverhill leaves too much on the table for tying up the district's needs.
Anything beyond that is mercenary ops work they are happy to pick up because RIDOT or NHDOT paying in for RI intrastate or (if the day ever comes) Capitol Corridor expresses increases the economy of scale of the fleet, staff, and ops support without costing MA taxpayers. For example, the new RI State Rail Plan makes specific mention for the first time of DMU's on the highest frequency/highest demand stations in Greater Providence. That helps the T enormously in procuring a fleet because they will get RI's % pay-in. MassDOT very much cheers them on with that. But you won't see that mentioned here because RI's taxpayers who have to float that share, and it is transparent to the vehicle procurement.
As far as where to truncate the Providence Line...that decision can't be made for another 5 years because the intrastate service hasn't bloody begun yet. Nor have the intrastate service patterns, where they'll overlap, where they'll terminate been determined yet. There's nothing to say, nothing to write verbage on. Nothing for MassDOT to lead or take a stand with until they know what RIDOT's intrastate service patterns are going to be.
It's a valid debate for another thread, but it's outside the purview of a MA cap improvements plan. The only thing you can say for certain is that they will not drop MA stops and MA stop revenue over their dead body for the sake of running faster RI-centric service from Boston. Not when every stop Sharon-S. Attleboro individually clocks more boardings than Providence and Canton + 128 not far behind. Nor are they going to give RIDOT its future growth slots on the locals to pay in for for more Boston expresses. They don't have to say any more; when it's time to firm up the service plan, the parameters are clear.
http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20140117/NEWS/401170316/-1/NEWS06
Thankfully the Cape isn't waiting for somebody else to define them. That was an unsatisfactorily nebulous detail, but as this article makes clear there is NO question that all the regional heavies want Buzzards Bay as a full-blown Middleboro Line extension. As for shuttle service from the other side of the bridge...there lurks Cape Cod Central RR itching to run more passenger service, and now owned by a larger railroad with access to Budd RDC's and other passenger equipment from their other holdings. That part of the details could be fuzzy for a good reason if there's a potential private outsourcing partner to contribute across the bridge where it's a little bit of a reach for T ops. But the locals have made it very clear they are the ones defining where the dividing line is: nothing less than full-blown Buzzards Bay-terminating extension of the Middleboro Line is going to serve their basic needs. They are filling in that fuzzy detail right now.
http://www.mbta.com/uploadedfiles/A...sals_2012/Map of MBTA Service District(1).pdf
That's the district. 65 towns in the fixed route division coverable by bus or rapid transit; 175 total in the catchment area of some MBTA service or another. Outside the inner 65 it's the Regional Transit Authorities that run the buses.
With commuter rail every town hosting the rail line (whether they have a stop or not) has to go in. And barring a ferocious protest every adjoining town in the station catchment area goes in. Sometimes 2 towns out go in if they're heavy users, but that's a lot more situational.
-- Fall River and New Bedford must get added for South Coast Rail. Acushnet, Fairhaven, Somerset, Dartmouth, Westport, and Dighton are the abutting towns. Swansea gets so close to Fall River it's very nearly an abutting town. These not being in-district is why we have the godawful unaccountable SCR Task Force being the intermediary negotiating with those towns and promising candy and unicorns on the T's back.
-- Bourne has to get added for Buzzards Bay. Sandwich also seems a likely one since it clips the mainland side of the Canal at Scusset Beach. Beyond that Cape is hard to pin because of the separation by bridges and Canal. I can absolutely believe Falmouth and Mashpee will strongly support going in because they're strongly advocating for the service. Marion...it borders Wareham but they probably like their isolation.
And that's it. Other than tiny Dunstable being users of the in-state intermediates on a Lowell Line extension to Nashua there's nobody else who needs to join for any service enhancement. As far as I know Gardner isn't being added for the Wachusett extension, but they technically will still be 2 towns out because the stop stays just a hair inside Fitchburg city limits.
Purple Line is never going to Springfield no matter how much Gov. Patrick covets the idea. There's no effing way to bureaucratically square that many new towns into the district. Western MA is Amtrak's realm or MassDOT subsidizing CTDOT operations on the Springfield Line the same way RIDOT subsidizes T operations. The same goes if they ever pay in more to coax NHHS further north to Chicopee, Northampton, and/or Greenfield.
Yup. Because the funding sources aren't identified. This is a great big "Ehh...my successor's problem" from Patrick, and an assumption that Davey is going to want to stick around in the next admin. That is worrying, because there's been no change in the lack of urgency to reform the funding from previous times big reform has been publicized but never followed through on. Patrick still hasn't explained how to close all the gaps in the projects he proposed in Transit Bill vs. the funding he was handed in the passed Transit Bill after DeLeo and Murray gutted it. And he hasn't got much motivation to as a final-year lame duck with Legislators all busy running for reelection. If he spends half his year doing promo...then the calendar doesn't leave much room for supplying nuts-and-bolts funding.
We're right to be skeptical of that. I agree totally...it's scary thin on the implementation plan. While I think Fairmount Line is on very solid footing now, there needs to be a lot more coming on how they're going to pull this off elsewhere. For instance, there is no freaking way the Worcester Line can support DMU's when it's still that slow, still in the rear division of the commuter rail on on-time performance, and still has expensive infrastructure upgrades inside Framingham with the signal system and crossovers before it can support mixed service patterns passing each other fluidly. That's "Do not pass Go" territory until the track upgrades are fully substantiated with dollar figures. The line absolutely has that native capacity if firing on all cylinders, but that won't happen until they eat their peas on the unsexy upgrades currently holding it all back.
I would say more solid than vaporware at this point. But given the scenarios I outlined above with the legwork needed to get the track ready on pretty much every non-Fairmount Line...I have to wonder if it moving to near-certainty has something to do with RIDOT telling them they want to go all-in on a pool order for the 2020 start of their instate service. And that's what's ensuring enough of a base order to go for...not the non-Fairmount lines being in any way/shape/form ready or paid for. But if RIDOT said that, it's not going to show up on these reports because it's outside the scope of these reports.
Not that this is a bad thing in the slightest if Fairmount still gets to realize its service plan and RIDOT's share is helping pay for the facilities to maintain these things. That's a deep long-term down payment put to good use. They just need to show the money on how they're going to get the infrastructure and stations on the other routes ready to take the cars. Otherwise there's nothing preventing them from structuring a Fairmount-explicit + RIDOT-implit "sure thing" base order with a shitload of option orders covering the other lines...then the options never being exercised if things stagnate.
Commuting Boston Student
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Re: Fairmont Line Upgrade
I'm assuming that Avon falls under the 'heavy protest' category because its non-inclusion is frankly bizarre.
Well, except for a Franklin Line branch extension to Blackstone, which would require Blackstone, Millville, and Mendon to enter the district.
This is why I anticipate that MassDOT/RIDOT/CTDOT's relationships with each other vis a vis rail services are probably going to be drastically altered within 15~25 years.
The mutually symbiotic relationships can only go on so long before the various cross-state ops agreements result in the whole thing getting folded into a Metro-North-style permanent partnership, particularly if and when MBTA-style rail networks for Worcester (-New London, -Providence, -Springfield, etc.) and Springfield (-New Haven, -Greenfield (Brattleboro?), -Worcester, etc.) enter the picture in a far more substantial way than just NHHS.
It's 30 years before either of those networks come online but it's probably 5 years or less before they stop being stray dreams of Gov. Patrick and people posting on internet forums and start being seriously talked about/planned for.
I'm assuming that Avon falls under the 'heavy protest' category because its non-inclusion is frankly bizarre.
Well, except for a Franklin Line branch extension to Blackstone, which would require Blackstone, Millville, and Mendon to enter the district.
This is why I anticipate that MassDOT/RIDOT/CTDOT's relationships with each other vis a vis rail services are probably going to be drastically altered within 15~25 years.
The mutually symbiotic relationships can only go on so long before the various cross-state ops agreements result in the whole thing getting folded into a Metro-North-style permanent partnership, particularly if and when MBTA-style rail networks for Worcester (-New London, -Providence, -Springfield, etc.) and Springfield (-New Haven, -Greenfield (Brattleboro?), -Worcester, etc.) enter the picture in a far more substantial way than just NHHS.
It's 30 years before either of those networks come online but it's probably 5 years or less before they stop being stray dreams of Gov. Patrick and people posting on internet forums and start being seriously talked about/planned for.
Randomgear
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Re: Fairmont Line Upgrade
The MBTA issued an RFP for the DMU's on the fairmont line the other day.
Sorry I don't have more info; I forgot to copy the legal notice I saw in the Globe.
The MBTA issued an RFP for the DMU's on the fairmont line the other day.
Sorry I don't have more info; I forgot to copy the legal notice I saw in the Globe.
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Re: Fairmont Line Upgrade
Deadline for the DMU RFP responses is 12/30/2014. From the MBTA procurement page
Deadline for the DMU RFP responses is 12/30/2014. From the MBTA procurement page
Unfortunately the "public" notice requires login as a supplier. Hurrumph.
FitchburgLine
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Re: Fairmont Line Upgrade
High floor! Sanity prevails!
High floor! Sanity prevails!
winstonoboogie
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Re: Fairmont Line Upgrade
They haven't issued the actual spec and RFP yet, they are giving notice to suppliers that they are developing a spec and will be issuing an RFP (which tells us they have decided not to go with a sole-source procurement with Nippon-Sharyo)
Here is the notice:
The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) is in the process of developing a Technical Specification and Request for Proposals (RFP) to purchase multiple High Floor Diesel Multiple Unit (DMU) vehicles in support of the Fairmont Line Service Improvement Project.
The DMUs will operate primarily on the nine-mile long, mixed-traffic commuter line between Readville and South Station in Boston; they must be capable of operating over the entire MBTA Commuter Rail System and be fully compliant with all governing laws, rules and regulations.
The intent of this notice is to notify as many potential contractors and subcontractors as possible of the MBTA's intentions and to encourage industry-wide participation during the upcoming competitive RFP process.
This notice is also intended to solicit DMU information from DMU manufacturers and suppliers for the MBTA's review and use in developing the RFP and Technical Specification. Comments regarding design, technologies, configuration, operations, maintenance, and regulatory compliance are welcome. Input from interested parties may be emailed to:
All documentation submitted in response to this notice may be subject
to disclosure pursuant to the Massachusetts Public Records Law (M.G.L. c. 66 and M.G.L. c. 4, section 7, cl. (26)).
The RFP and related information are issued through the MBTA's Materials Procurement Advertisement System located at This System gives all vendors the opportunity to receive automated email alerts and download an electronic copy of the RFP and any addenda as soon as they become available. Firms interested in receiving a copy of the RFP for this project when it is released should register at
They haven't issued the actual spec and RFP yet, they are giving notice to suppliers that they are developing a spec and will be issuing an RFP (which tells us they have decided not to go with a sole-source procurement with Nippon-Sharyo)
Here is the notice:
The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) is in the process of developing a Technical Specification and Request for Proposals (RFP) to purchase multiple High Floor Diesel Multiple Unit (DMU) vehicles in support of the Fairmont Line Service Improvement Project.
The DMUs will operate primarily on the nine-mile long, mixed-traffic commuter line between Readville and South Station in Boston; they must be capable of operating over the entire MBTA Commuter Rail System and be fully compliant with all governing laws, rules and regulations.
The intent of this notice is to notify as many potential contractors and subcontractors as possible of the MBTA's intentions and to encourage industry-wide participation during the upcoming competitive RFP process.
This notice is also intended to solicit DMU information from DMU manufacturers and suppliers for the MBTA's review and use in developing the RFP and Technical Specification. Comments regarding design, technologies, configuration, operations, maintenance, and regulatory compliance are welcome. Input from interested parties may be emailed to:
All documentation submitted in response to this notice may be subject
to disclosure pursuant to the Massachusetts Public Records Law (M.G.L. c. 66 and M.G.L. c. 4, section 7, cl. (26)).
The RFP and related information are issued through the MBTA's Materials Procurement Advertisement System located at This System gives all vendors the opportunity to receive automated email alerts and download an electronic copy of the RFP and any addenda as soon as they become available. Firms interested in receiving a copy of the RFP for this project when it is released should register at
F-Line to Dudley
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Re: Fairmont Line Upgrade
They have to. There is not a single route on the system that doesn't interact with mission-critical daytime freight. Actually, there really isn't a single New England state where plausible passenger rail territory could be run under NJ RiverLINE time separation rules using those battle-tested Stadler GTW's. It takes a particular set of ideal traffic conditions meshing with an ideal passenger corridor to get a candidate corridor for time separation ops, and by luck-of-draw there just isn't one anywhere near here.
-- Readville has CSX backing in from the Franklin Line past the platform to get into the yard. Midday moves so the customers can get their deliveries in the yard during business hours.
-- All northside trains have the Boston Sand & Gravel siding directly abutting the North Station drawbridges. Largest single freight customer in Massachusetts, and the deliveries from the sand quarries in Ossippee, NH have to run inbound at daybreak to time it with the mid-morning off-peak on the Haverhill and Lowell Lines. Can't run overnight because the graveyard shift is when the quarries up north are loading up the freight cars.
-- Worcester Line and Grand Junction have the daily Everett produce train. Perishable goods coming by ship...gotta get those to Framingham by the evening and loaded onto supermarket trucks so the stores can stock the next day's produce at night.
Plus...I don't think you can intermix push-pull passenger locomotives and non-compliant DMU's at the same terminal. Slow-speed yard collisions are the most common type of mishap because the signal system by design doesn't enforce stops below 5 MPH and human error goes into play. Those kind of scrapes will still cause significant damage to a non-compliant DMU when it gets dinged by a large push-pull, even when it's slow enough that you can jog faster. Especially bad on a route like Track 61 that has to go through the heart of Southampton Yard and all those cross-cutting movements in revenue service. There was just such a fender-bender 2 weeks ago when an Amtrak non-revenue move coming out of Southampton crossed over to the wrong track and bumped an empty T trainset at slow speed.
Also...if these things are being specced to run system-wide they must be looking for a build that can do low boarding. Not that they'd actually run system-wide unless some dire emergency sent the nearest available DMU outside 128 as a rescue train. But to use them at all on the Lowell Line requires low boarding because of the freight-clearance mini-highs at all of the non-Anderson stops. It was either go with universal platform compatibility despite the tougher vehicle design job, or never run them to Anderson. It was always more likely that they were going to push for universal compatibility because of Lowell's status as the lone clearance route that runs inside 128 all the way to Boston.
They have to. There is not a single route on the system that doesn't interact with mission-critical daytime freight. Actually, there really isn't a single New England state where plausible passenger rail territory could be run under NJ RiverLINE time separation rules using those battle-tested Stadler GTW's. It takes a particular set of ideal traffic conditions meshing with an ideal passenger corridor to get a candidate corridor for time separation ops, and by luck-of-draw there just isn't one anywhere near here.
-- Readville has CSX backing in from the Franklin Line past the platform to get into the yard. Midday moves so the customers can get their deliveries in the yard during business hours.
-- All northside trains have the Boston Sand & Gravel siding directly abutting the North Station drawbridges. Largest single freight customer in Massachusetts, and the deliveries from the sand quarries in Ossippee, NH have to run inbound at daybreak to time it with the mid-morning off-peak on the Haverhill and Lowell Lines. Can't run overnight because the graveyard shift is when the quarries up north are loading up the freight cars.
-- Worcester Line and Grand Junction have the daily Everett produce train. Perishable goods coming by ship...gotta get those to Framingham by the evening and loaded onto supermarket trucks so the stores can stock the next day's produce at night.
Plus...I don't think you can intermix push-pull passenger locomotives and non-compliant DMU's at the same terminal. Slow-speed yard collisions are the most common type of mishap because the signal system by design doesn't enforce stops below 5 MPH and human error goes into play. Those kind of scrapes will still cause significant damage to a non-compliant DMU when it gets dinged by a large push-pull, even when it's slow enough that you can jog faster. Especially bad on a route like Track 61 that has to go through the heart of Southampton Yard and all those cross-cutting movements in revenue service. There was just such a fender-bender 2 weeks ago when an Amtrak non-revenue move coming out of Southampton crossed over to the wrong track and bumped an empty T trainset at slow speed.
Also...if these things are being specced to run system-wide they must be looking for a build that can do low boarding. Not that they'd actually run system-wide unless some dire emergency sent the nearest available DMU outside 128 as a rescue train. But to use them at all on the Lowell Line requires low boarding because of the freight-clearance mini-highs at all of the non-Anderson stops. It was either go with universal platform compatibility despite the tougher vehicle design job, or never run them to Anderson. It was always more likely that they were going to push for universal compatibility because of Lowell's status as the lone clearance route that runs inside 128 all the way to Boston.
DigitalSciGuy
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Re: Fairmont Line Upgrade
Whatever happened to the 2015 change of FRA regulations permitting purchase of stock off the international market without requiring absurdly expensive retrofitting to comply with overbearing safety standards? Is the FRA not going to permit 'unsafe' trains until everyone has some approved PTC system in place?
Sumitomo's DMU looks disappointingly ugly, but we have yet to hear much on performance from Toronto on their acceptance testing. Meanwhile, I can't find any reference that US Railcar has even made a prototype of their gen 2, PRIIA-compatible DMU. Both look nearly unacceptably ugly; I know this doesn't really affect performance, which is really our bottom line, but is it really so expensive to build a train that doesn't look like someone designed it in the dark or at the 11th hour?
I know the MBTA submitted a waiver/request to the FRA to be exempted from the 2015 PTC deadline - did that ever go anywhere? Would freight DMU/EMU or full electrification make it more feasible to operate freight at tighter schedules? Surely this isn't an unsolvable or impossible problem...
Whatever happened to the 2015 change of FRA regulations permitting purchase of stock off the international market without requiring absurdly expensive retrofitting to comply with overbearing safety standards? Is the FRA not going to permit 'unsafe' trains until everyone has some approved PTC system in place?
Sumitomo's DMU looks disappointingly ugly, but we have yet to hear much on performance from Toronto on their acceptance testing. Meanwhile, I can't find any reference that US Railcar has even made a prototype of their gen 2, PRIIA-compatible DMU. Both look nearly unacceptably ugly; I know this doesn't really affect performance, which is really our bottom line, but is it really so expensive to build a train that doesn't look like someone designed it in the dark or at the 11th hour?
I know the MBTA submitted a waiver/request to the FRA to be exempted from the 2015 PTC deadline - did that ever go anywhere? Would freight DMU/EMU or full electrification make it more feasible to operate freight at tighter schedules? Surely this isn't an unsolvable or impossible problem...
F-Line to Dudley
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Re: Fairmont Line Upgrade
The calendar says it's 2014, so. . .bit too soon.
To be honest it's probably wise to tack on a +2 year contingency to that given how molasses-slow the FRA is at issuing a policy change. And to only expect 70% of what you were hoping for on the new regs (but...that's still a hell of a lot better than what we've got!). So it's just too early to make predictions on what the final ruling is going to look like.
Keep in mind as well, nobody issuing an RFP on the week of September 18, 2014 has any possibility in hell of getting a new vehicle built and on the property in less than 5 years...so it's not even physically possible to jump the gun on these regs. The timetables for a start-to-finish procurement are way longer than that, and half of it is just paperwork. It's a little curious that they're issuing the RFP before the new regs...but this stuff is so arcane that doesn't necessarily mean one thing or the other viz-a-viz the upcoming FRA ruling.
For example, Caltrain's got a waiver on their new post-electrification EMU's, which are going to be bi-level and high-boarding. But their electrification is still in design and years away from shovels-in-ground. And, the buildout will be in stages so even when the wires go live it's going to be a slow draw-down of push-pull service (maybe even with them short-term leasing some electrics or dual-modes from elsewhere to make use of the partial build with their existing coaches). By the time they actually have to pick their vehicle the "exemption" may not need to be "exempt" anymore.
It's chasing a moving target. And that target is a bunch of engineering-speak minutia that can't really be described in broad strokes. So it's just too early to talk about with any degree of certainty.
US Railcar is a defunct holding company for Colorado Railcar's intellectual property. They don't have the staff or internal resources to advance any of the old CRC designs, and they have no manufacturing capability. For all intensive purposes they exist today only as a P.O. box, an office secretary, and a couple executives who have other day jobs. Their last attempt at finding manufacturing partners failed, and the initial CRC DMU design was funded by so much federal money that it's unlikely they could design a paper bag without someone else's charity.
Given that their design is 10 years old and has never evolved...and has been a steaming piece of crap in revenue service...they are past-tense. They did the demonstrator that started the modern FRA-compliant DMU conversation in the country, but that's just about all they did. Westside Express has the last operating fleet of them, and they're just holding their noses until they hit the next procurement window and can replace them with something new. Historical curiosity like the Budd SPV-2000 was, and no more.
PTC is what you configure it to be. On the NEC Shoreline where it's been in use for 13 years they can pack the trains a lot closer than before to increase frequencies. But that's the NEC, and nothing runs the gamut in overlapping schedules like the NEC. Fairmount's signal system today can handle the 15-minute headways in the Indigo implementation plan, so there's no radical reimagining here.
Keep in mind, though, the freight schedules aren't a problem. There's very little freight inside 495 now...pathetically little, in terms of what this region could economically generate if it weren't for NIMBY's and decades of freight de-investment in Eastern MA. The only places on the T where freight creates schedule-limiting congestion is Ayer-west on the Fitchburg Line and Andover-north on the Haverhill Line. 2 places that obviously are never going to have more than conventional commuter schedules (albeit more of the same). So this is a non-issue. We are fan-fucking-tastically free of freight congestion in this commuter region compared to what most other commuter rails in the country (esp. the non- East Coast ones that run on near-total freight owned tracks).
The only relevance there is to DMU's is that it is not safe to mix those Stadler GTW things on the RiverLINE and other time-separated lines with conventional railroad stock. Those are basically well-built diesel trolleys; you can't equate them with railroad equipment. The "DMU" category really should be split in half: "DLRV's" and "railroad DMU's" (FRA-compliant or Euro-exemption whatever). It's not all about FRA bureaucracy...those RiverLINE tincans don't meet anywhere close to 'real world' crashworthiness. The signal system won't save you from a 5 MPH whoopsie in the yard; it's manual override when going that slow (yards would be impossible to practically administer if it took a dispatcher's signal to move 10 feet). PTC eliminates nearly all possibility of train-on-train collisions at 10 MPH and above...including every speed where serious injury or fatalities are inevitable. But a Stadler GTW crossing Southampton Yard from Track 61 that gets bumped by an Acela yard move going 5 MPH is still going to dent that kind of DMU severely enough to cause minor injuries. No government edict will ever make it safe to ride one of those very-very non-compliant things around conventional T and Amtrak trains. Nevermind the freights that once or twice a day will slide at 5 MPH past the Readville platform into the yard. It's a rough analogy for why we don't mix commuter rail and Red Line on the same tracks...pure common sense. The weight differential is just too big to intermix...and there's waaaaaaaaaaaay more of the heavy stuff everywhere than you can feasibly segregate even if what pittance of local freight we had left went away.
To the degree where "exemptions" come into place...that's where off-shelf rolling stock in other countries meets every real-world standard of crashworthiness but don't hit the FRA's obsessive-compulsive "buff strength" regs. The stupidity of the FRA regs is sort of like applying automobile crashworthiness metrics from the 1960's to cars today. 50 years ago you drove a "safe" car if it had so much steel in it you were ensured to do more damage to the other guy in a crash than he would do to you. That's why so many cars were built like fuckin' boats back then. It's not real-world crashworthiness. A Prius is more real-world survivable in an accident than some 1971 Buick boat...that's common sense. All these exemptions and agonizingly slow FRA reforms are only to ensure we aren't living by the 1971 Buick boat standard of train crashworthiness. Not 'relaxing' the safety regs to get cheaper trains only so you have to cross your fingers you don't crash. That's where the distinction between RiverLINE DLRV's/time separation and "railroad" DMU's still matters your life in the real world. There's plenty of foreign stock that will never be safe enough for the latter given what traffic (incl. Amtrak and commuter push-pull) it has to mix with here. We just want the stuff that's as safe as your Prius when it gets rear-ended by a '71 Buick boat at a red light. Of which there is plenty to choose from worldwide.
The calendar says it's 2014, so. . .bit too soon.
To be honest it's probably wise to tack on a +2 year contingency to that given how molasses-slow the FRA is at issuing a policy change. And to only expect 70% of what you were hoping for on the new regs (but...that's still a hell of a lot better than what we've got!). So it's just too early to make predictions on what the final ruling is going to look like.
Keep in mind as well, nobody issuing an RFP on the week of September 18, 2014 has any possibility in hell of getting a new vehicle built and on the property in less than 5 years...so it's not even physically possible to jump the gun on these regs. The timetables for a start-to-finish procurement are way longer than that, and half of it is just paperwork. It's a little curious that they're issuing the RFP before the new regs...but this stuff is so arcane that doesn't necessarily mean one thing or the other viz-a-viz the upcoming FRA ruling.
For example, Caltrain's got a waiver on their new post-electrification EMU's, which are going to be bi-level and high-boarding. But their electrification is still in design and years away from shovels-in-ground. And, the buildout will be in stages so even when the wires go live it's going to be a slow draw-down of push-pull service (maybe even with them short-term leasing some electrics or dual-modes from elsewhere to make use of the partial build with their existing coaches). By the time they actually have to pick their vehicle the "exemption" may not need to be "exempt" anymore.
It's chasing a moving target. And that target is a bunch of engineering-speak minutia that can't really be described in broad strokes. So it's just too early to talk about with any degree of certainty.
They're in testing. From what posters in-the-know on RR.net say, there's been some teething issues on certain components they went a little overboard on customizing...and were previously warned as such before they did the customizing. But nothing atypical, and it's still way early to tell. Odds are no major drama's going to erupt. It's new tech, but it's not like they bought new tech from a bunch of amateurs like Hyundai-Rotem or something crazy like that.Sumitomo's DMU looks disappointingly ugly, but we have yet to hear much on performance from Toronto on their acceptance testing. Meanwhile, I can't find any reference that US Railcar has even made a prototype of their gen 2, PRIIA-compatible DMU. Both look nearly unacceptably ugly; I know this doesn't really affect performance, which is really our bottom line, but is it really so expensive to build a train that doesn't look like someone designed it in the dark or at the 11th hour?
US Railcar is a defunct holding company for Colorado Railcar's intellectual property. They don't have the staff or internal resources to advance any of the old CRC designs, and they have no manufacturing capability. For all intensive purposes they exist today only as a P.O. box, an office secretary, and a couple executives who have other day jobs. Their last attempt at finding manufacturing partners failed, and the initial CRC DMU design was funded by so much federal money that it's unlikely they could design a paper bag without someone else's charity.
Given that their design is 10 years old and has never evolved...and has been a steaming piece of crap in revenue service...they are past-tense. They did the demonstrator that started the modern FRA-compliant DMU conversation in the country, but that's just about all they did. Westside Express has the last operating fleet of them, and they're just holding their noses until they hit the next procurement window and can replace them with something new. Historical curiosity like the Budd SPV-2000 was, and no more.
They are not exempt at all from PTC. All of the commuter rail has to get it, with only the Cape Flyer falling below the frequency threshold (for now) to get out of it. They're going to need an extension of several years for sure, but that's damn near every railroad in the country. The U.S. Senate has had legislation stalled in committee for 2 years now to extend out the deadline to 2020 and spread $2B in funding to railroads straining like hell to self-fund their implementations. It's dysfunctional Congress's own fault the 12/31/2015 deadline has been rendered meaningless. They severely underestimated how difficult the radio spectrum acquisition would be for designing these systems when issuing that 2008 edict, then sat on their hands and threw the railroads to the wolves to figure it out themselves. It's 2014 and final design and construction schedules are only beginning in most of the country because it took that long to clean up the design mess the feds left them...when the feds should've been taking the lead on that. But that's Your Tax Dollars at Work in the hands of Congresscritters. It'll get done because the whole rail network is too far along into the process, but 2020 (with some performance milestones in-between) is the only national finish date that's realistic at this point. The T's not exactly coated itself in glory in proactive PTC planning, but they're in the same boat as everyone being screwed on the deadline whether they planned ahead or not.
PTC is what you configure it to be. On the NEC Shoreline where it's been in use for 13 years they can pack the trains a lot closer than before to increase frequencies. But that's the NEC, and nothing runs the gamut in overlapping schedules like the NEC. Fairmount's signal system today can handle the 15-minute headways in the Indigo implementation plan, so there's no radical reimagining here.
Keep in mind, though, the freight schedules aren't a problem. There's very little freight inside 495 now...pathetically little, in terms of what this region could economically generate if it weren't for NIMBY's and decades of freight de-investment in Eastern MA. The only places on the T where freight creates schedule-limiting congestion is Ayer-west on the Fitchburg Line and Andover-north on the Haverhill Line. 2 places that obviously are never going to have more than conventional commuter schedules (albeit more of the same). So this is a non-issue. We are fan-fucking-tastically free of freight congestion in this commuter region compared to what most other commuter rails in the country (esp. the non- East Coast ones that run on near-total freight owned tracks).
The only relevance there is to DMU's is that it is not safe to mix those Stadler GTW things on the RiverLINE and other time-separated lines with conventional railroad stock. Those are basically well-built diesel trolleys; you can't equate them with railroad equipment. The "DMU" category really should be split in half: "DLRV's" and "railroad DMU's" (FRA-compliant or Euro-exemption whatever). It's not all about FRA bureaucracy...those RiverLINE tincans don't meet anywhere close to 'real world' crashworthiness. The signal system won't save you from a 5 MPH whoopsie in the yard; it's manual override when going that slow (yards would be impossible to practically administer if it took a dispatcher's signal to move 10 feet). PTC eliminates nearly all possibility of train-on-train collisions at 10 MPH and above...including every speed where serious injury or fatalities are inevitable. But a Stadler GTW crossing Southampton Yard from Track 61 that gets bumped by an Acela yard move going 5 MPH is still going to dent that kind of DMU severely enough to cause minor injuries. No government edict will ever make it safe to ride one of those very-very non-compliant things around conventional T and Amtrak trains. Nevermind the freights that once or twice a day will slide at 5 MPH past the Readville platform into the yard. It's a rough analogy for why we don't mix commuter rail and Red Line on the same tracks...pure common sense. The weight differential is just too big to intermix...and there's waaaaaaaaaaaay more of the heavy stuff everywhere than you can feasibly segregate even if what pittance of local freight we had left went away.
To the degree where "exemptions" come into place...that's where off-shelf rolling stock in other countries meets every real-world standard of crashworthiness but don't hit the FRA's obsessive-compulsive "buff strength" regs. The stupidity of the FRA regs is sort of like applying automobile crashworthiness metrics from the 1960's to cars today. 50 years ago you drove a "safe" car if it had so much steel in it you were ensured to do more damage to the other guy in a crash than he would do to you. That's why so many cars were built like fuckin' boats back then. It's not real-world crashworthiness. A Prius is more real-world survivable in an accident than some 1971 Buick boat...that's common sense. All these exemptions and agonizingly slow FRA reforms are only to ensure we aren't living by the 1971 Buick boat standard of train crashworthiness. Not 'relaxing' the safety regs to get cheaper trains only so you have to cross your fingers you don't crash. That's where the distinction between RiverLINE DLRV's/time separation and "railroad" DMU's still matters your life in the real world. There's plenty of foreign stock that will never be safe enough for the latter given what traffic (incl. Amtrak and commuter push-pull) it has to mix with here. We just want the stuff that's as safe as your Prius when it gets rear-ended by a '71 Buick boat at a red light. Of which there is plenty to choose from worldwide.