Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail (South Coast Rail)

Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

wicked said:
What's the estimated cost for a Taunton expansion?
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There's the problem. The T has always pitched this as an all-or-nothing proposition. No thought or estimate given for phasing.
 
Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

For what it's worth, these are the inbound boarding figures they've been going with as of the 2011 EIS report.

Canton Center: 600 (per 2010 Blue Book)
Stoughton: 1,008 (per 2010 Blue Book)
North Easton: 580
Easton Village: 290
Raynham Place: 510
Taunton: 400
Taunton Depot: 390
----------FR Branch----------
Freetown: 170
Battleship Cove: 170
Fall River Depot: 650
----------NB Branch----------
King’s Highway: 390
Whale’s Tooth: 520



Here's how these boardings compare to other southside stations from the 2010 Blue Book. . .

North Easton <--most similar to--> Greenbush (Greenbush), Westborough (Worcester), Campello (Middleboro)
Easton Village <--most similar to--> Highland (Needham), Endicott (Franklin), West Newton (Worcester, limited service)
Raynham Place <--most similar to--> Needham Heights (Needham), Holbrook/Randolph (Middleboro)
Taunton (Dean St.) <--most similar to--> Roslindale Village (Needham), Cohasset (Greenbush), Weymouth Landing (Greenbush)
Taunton Depot <--most similar to--> Cohasset (Greenbush), Weymouth Landing (Greenbush), Needham Center (Needham)

Freetown and Battleship Cove <--most similar to--> Islington (Franklin, limited service), Morton St. (Fairmount), Bellevue (Needham), Uphams Corner (Fairmount)
Fall River Depot <--most similar to--> Whitman (Kingston/Plymouth), Grafton (Worcester), Montello (Middleboro)
King's Highway <--most similar to--> Cohasset (Greenbush), Weymouth Landing (Greenbush), Needham Center (Needham), Roslindale (Needham)
Whale's Tooth <--most similar to--> Needham Heights (Needham), Holbrook/Randolph (Middleboro), Wellesley Square (Worcester)


Note how many of those are Greenbushes, Needhams, and limited-service stops in there. Note how the two big-city termini don't outslug the most anonymous spacer stops on the other lines. And almost 30% of the total boardings on the entire two-branch, 12-station line come from the existing Canton Ctr. and Stoughton stops.

$2 Billion.


I take it back...I'm not even sure there's enough ridership to anchor this as far as Taunton.
 
Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

F-Line to Dudley said:
I take it back...I'm not even sure there's enough ridership to anchor this as far as Taunton.
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I've always wondered why the Commonwealth doesn't take this money and build a streetcar system within these cities to actually move people around the local area instead of vainly hoping that enough people commute from NB and FR to Boston to support a hub/spoke service. It's Boston-centric thinking, IMO. Probably not the best idea to have the Commonwealth's only state-level transit operator be based and focused only on Boston.
 
Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

F-Line to Dudley said:
I take it back...I'm not even sure there's enough ridership to anchor this as far as Taunton.
Click to expand...

There would be, if headways were solid. 24 starts getting backed up at 106 these days. The commute to Boston is not a fun one. I think upgrading to Taunton and upgrading the Middleboro Secondary for alternate routings makes it worthwhile, just for the routing options that can be used to avoid bottlenecks, etc.
 
Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

F-Line to Dudley said:
For what it's worth, these are the inbound boarding figures they've been going with as of the 2011 EIS report.

Canton Center: 600 (per 2010 Blue Book)
Stoughton: 1,008 (per 2010 Blue Book)
North Easton: 580
Easton Village: 290
Raynham Place: 510
Taunton: 400
Taunton Depot: 390
----------FR Branch----------
Freetown: 170
Battleship Cove: 170
Fall River Depot: 650
----------NB Branch----------
King’s Highway: 390
Whale’s Tooth: 520

I take it back...I'm not even sure there's enough ridership to anchor this as far as Taunton.
Click to expand...
I appreciate the numbers and the humor, but that's not entirely fair: if the line were cut back to Taunton and had good frequencies, we could expect two things:
1) Denser use from residents along the line (between Taunton and Canton)
2) At least some of the 2000 riders from "beyond" Taunton would use either bus or car and would boost Taunton's numbers, even as we think happens at Middleboro from points South.

Still, for that same $500m that we've guesstimated for a line with a Taunton terminus, I'd electrify the locos (or even MU) on the Providence line complete with some additional tracks/sidings and really make one high speed, high frequency line worth everyone's driving to.

But since people assign extra special value to shiny rails (even if few trains run on them, and slowly), I'd take a new line to Taunton, if I must.
 
Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

Just to brainstorm, would a FR/NB rail connection to Providence be any more workable than to Boston?
 
Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

DominusNovus said:
Just to brainstorm, would a FR/NB rail connection to Providence be any more workable than to Boston?
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No. The ROW from Warren, RI to Somerset is completely and utterly obliterated without a trace, the Slades Ferry Bridge over the river was demolished 45 years ago, and the Wattupa Branch from New Bedford was always a stub line that had a 1/3 mile gap in downtown Fall River from the FR mainline. The bridge's rail upper deck had strict weight limits, so it could only carry post-Civil War wooden coaches and, later, these rickety interurban EMU's that the Old Colony ran out of the Providence tunnel under generic trolley wire on its primitive electrification system. All intercity traffic going to Newport had to go the long way around via Attleboro and Taunton because that was the only route that could support the weight of baggage cars, sleepers, and all-steel coaches. By WWI it was functionally obsolete for carrying "modern" equipment, and was limited to just the EMU shuttle. Ridership collapsed in the 20's, line got abandoned by 1935. All gone.


Today it's physically impossible to connect the cities east-west. FR and NB can't be direct-connected unless FR City Hall were demolished and the 195 tunnel widened to bridge the gap. And there is no trajectory that can get you west because so many neighborhoods have been built over the ROW in the 75 years it's been gone, and there's no room to graft tracks onto 195 and make it through East Providence.


They can still go the long way around, if the Middleboro Secondary were upgraded to commuter speeds. RIDOT is sort of thinking of doing just that for Providence-Newport if the FR branch gets opened and they pay to build a new Sakkonet River bridge to re-tie the active Newport tracks back onto the mainland. But the long way only works if it's a "Newport FLYER" type thing. Fall River alone won't float ridership out of Providence, and there is still no way to hit both FR and NB in a string.
 
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Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

I understand all stations have to be ADA-accessible, but why should a relatively short extension from Stoughton to Taunton cost a half-bil?
 
Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

wicked said:
I understand all stations have to be ADA-accessible, but why should a relatively short extension from Stoughton to Taunton cost a half-bil?
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Well, very roughly, that's what these things cost. Its some number between $200m and a billion.

Two very nice stations and some additional track and signal upgrades at Providence Airport and Wickford Junction (with structured parking at both) cost $336m. If you can sprint for a few miles alongside and existing ROW, you save yourself a lot of permitting processes and consultants and don't have any neighbors to pay off, so you can build some sweet stations.

More "typical" is Middleboro and Lakeville that cost $500m (together).

And at the extreme you had the Greenbush Line which involved reactivating an unused route through skeptical towns. Now you've got NIMBYs who want tunnels and payoffs, wetlands that are being freshly "compromised", and a whole lot of consulting and so Greenbush cost $534m (all by itself)

Sadly, Taunton is looking a lot like Greenbush here.
 
Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

Stations should not cost $200 million. Glass palaces, maybe.
 
Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

The entire Middleborough/Lakeville and Plymouth/Kingston lines cost $500 M, together. That consisted of:
  • Restoration of 54 miles of freight-only track (half of it OOS)
  • Rebuilding of 5 miles of abandoned track (South Bay -Neponset)
  • Construction of 1.5 miles of completely new track
  • Construction of 1600 feet of tunnels under an active highway and an active interchange
  • Construction of a new high-level double-track Neponset River bridge
  • Addition of a signal system and ten controlled sidings
  • Construction of 16 stations (3 additions, 13 new stations) totalling 18 full-length high-level platforms
  • Reconstruction of 41 grade crossings
  • Construction of 11 parking lots
  • Construction of 2 layover facilities

That's largely similar to South Coast Rail. More abandoned miles through the Easton swamps (and more double track needed if you're going to support actual headway), but about 15 less track miles and no horrendous bridges and tunnels.

The majority of the T.F. Green and Wickford Junction $336M was not directly for commuter rail. The expensive skywalk and garage at T.F. Green are for rental car use; the commuter rail station was largely an add-on. The Wickford Junction garage was intentionally overbuilt to handle any possible future demand without an asphalt desert.
 
Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

According to one inflation calculator I punched up, $500 million from c.1997 equates to about $730 million today.

(And in the initial project there were only 2 station additions, as JFK/UMass opened several years later.)
 
Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

Semass said:
The Final EIS/EIR for South Coast Rail was released today.
http://www.nae.usace.army.mil/Missions/ProjectsTopics/SouthCoastRail.aspx
Click to expand...

Yes and no. The final draft was released in 2011. This just signifies the final revision after the conclusion of the nearly 2-year comment period. The response to comments document is a little laughable...basically everything is just "No, we were right. Your concerns are baseless, and you should feel bad." and then re-issuing what they did in the draft verbatim, with more descriptive copy in a couple parts of the draft that were clumsily worded and a couple data error corrections to cited ancillary demographic statistics.

About the only changes are dismissal of some of the candidate layover sites from consideration, dismissal of the Route 24 Rapid Bus alternative, and formal expunging of the Attleboro and Middleboro routing alternatives (which were already rejected in the original document). All of it stuff we already knew long ago.

I haven't parsed it to see if they snuck in any more ridership reductions or travel time increases under-the-radar. I suspect not, because the Army Corps doesn't give a flying fuck about whether those numbers are accurate and likely just reissued its 2011 figures verbatim whether the numbers have privately changed from the state's perspective or not.


The Gov.'s office is just repeating its grand celebration from when the draft was released and taking another transparent opportunity to say "South Coast Rail is underway!" when not one cent of funding has been allocated, his Transportation bill has been gutted so that it can't possibly fund it, and not one opponent on the Stoughton route has yet been appeased. Same shit, different day.


The comments reply document (don't read it all...it's 741 pages) is hilarious for how stacked and cherry-picked the deck is around proponents gushing hyperbole about its awesomeness while asking for yet more free candy. And they are still hyping full electrification of this turd.

So, yes, it's just as cynical a rip-off as it was yesterday and the sky is just as periwinkle polka-dot colored in the grifting pols' eyes as it was before.
 
Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

Check out the last few pages where it shows the proposed single and double tracking segments.

That's a lot of single tracking.
 
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