Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail
It will not be 75 minutes. That requires electrification. Do you see the MBTA operating any other electric trains? Do you really expect the MBTA to purchase and operate a special fleet of electric trains, with associated maintenance facilities and staff, just for SCR?
The run times will be 85 minutes at a minimum as projected for the diesel alternative, and probably worse in practice.
It's worse than that. Here's what the Army Corps DEIR says:
In order to support headways on both branches at rush hour, these expresses have to be run to keep the trains out of the way and/or pass each other on the passing sidings.
-- Fall River peak: express from North Easton to Freetown, skipping Easton Village, Raynham, Downtown Taunton, Taunton Depot.
-- New Bedford peak: express direct to North Easton, skipping Canton Jct., Canton Ctr., Stoughton.
-- All stops made by each branch off-peak.
-- The reason for all of this is the single-track capacity. They cannot do linear bi-directional running with the crippled native track capacity. And nearly all passing sidings are at the station platforms themselves. Therefore, the only trick they can pull to shiv om a peak hour schedule is passing on-platform and skipping whole strings of stations entirely. North Easton is the only mainline station being built as single track/single platform, so that's why it's the only one getting doubled-up service.
-- Due to above, all mainline stops are divided between the branches at branch-only headway. This kills 100% of the Taunton<-->FR interzone commute potential, which undoubtedly has some demand. Overall harm to the reverse-commute potential. And the schedule can never expand beyond this until the full 2-track is added, so it is capped from Day 1 everywhere except Canton and Stoughton where full double-track would still support supplemental short-turns.
-- NO service will stop at Route 128 station. It's a total Back Bay-Canton express. While Ruggles and Hyde Park are arguably welcome drops, this kills off all 128-belt commute potential from South Coast and access to any business shuttles that set up shop in Westwood.
Travel times:
Fall River (electrified): 1:15 peak, 1:18 off-peak
New Bedford (electrified): 1:17 peak, 1:16 off-peak
Note how similar the peaks and off-peaks are. Skipping all those stops isn't a speed-up maneuver; it's a congestion maneuver. Peak service will require long dwells for schedule adjustment on the branch that is making the 3 stops north of NE or 4 stops south of SE in order to facilitate meets and passes. A double-track line making all stops would have near-identical travel times with much more ridership because it could trade those long schedule adjustments for more stops.
The Army Corps did not chart out diesel schedules because it of course is betting the farm on electrification. All they said is +20 second penalty per station. Past a certain level of starting acceleration it's pretty much identical to electric push-pull. But that +20 seconds has to factor further degradation at peak for all those on-platform schedule adjustments to oncoming trains. So you may be talking a much larger penalty and several additional minutes to the schedule when meets and passes are factored.
Averages (both branches)
Electric: 77 mins.
Diesel: 82 mins.*
*See above paragraph, and why I think it'll be >5 minute penalty when it knocks all the schedule adjustments out-of-sync. That has nothing to do with power source or electric's awesomeness vs. diesel's suckitude. On a double track line it would be +20 secs. per stop and that's it (for your $1B in savings). I think mandating electrification has all the world to do with the Army Corps trying to sweep under the rug just how defective the single-track ops are going to be than it does vehicle type. And if their margins are THAT small on the assumptions, then if actual conditions turn out any less favorable it could be >82 mins. on electric too. And greater than 90 minutes if the line's daily on-time performance isn't flawless enough for these expresses vs. expresses to hit their respective on-platform passing dwells with perfect timing. That's how much these train meets and schedule adjustments on the single track can trip over each other.
Between this report and the final engineering is where the schedule has the most chance of degrading further, as these meets get refined. The worst is probably yet to come.
Bus connections per station (local RTA's only, not the FR/NB commuter buses):
Canton Ctr. (MBTA): 1 route (716, Mattapan-Cobbs Corner), 60 min. headway peak- and weekends-only.
Stoughton (BAT): 1 route (downtown Brockton-Cobbs Corner), 60 min. headway
North Easton (BAT): none
Easton Village (BAT): 1 route (downtown Brockton), 40 min. headway
Raynham (GATRA): none
Downtown Taunton (GATRA): 1 route (downtown Taunton to Route 44 Raynham), 30 min. headway
Taunton Depot (GATRA): 1 route (East Taunton, Silver City Galleria, Route 44 Raynham), 60 min. headway
Freetown (SRTA): 1 route* (Freetown/FR industrial parks to City Hall via N. Main St.), 30 min. headway
Fall River Depot (SRTA): 1 route* (Freetown/FR industrial parks to City Hall via N. Main St.), 30 min. headway
King's Highway (SRTA): 1 route (Mt. Pleasant St. to Downtown), 45 min. headway
Whale's Tooth (SRTA): 2 routes (Lund's Corner to Downtown; Ft. Rodman to Downtown, 20 min. headway
*same bus route at both CR stops
NO changes proposed to bus frequencies. Some of these would get minor extensions to loop at the stations. Fall River is only served by 1 route because the station location is too far from the downtown terminal. Whale's Tooth is about 1/3 to 1/2 mile from the SRTA terminal, so walking distance to all 11 of SRTA's regular NB routes plus some of the express shuttles.
NB looks good on car-free connections. FR looks very bad. Easton Village--the highest frequency stop--has zero. The BAT routes all pool towards their terminal at Brockton station on the higher-frequency Middleboro Line so that's only on the outskirts of the routes where Easton Village is going to be more convenient. Taunton...OK, but suffers from branch-only peak frequencies. And that TOD paradise in Raynham has no connecting transit whatsoever.
Problems? Yeah, you bet. Outside of New Bedford which has a nicely laid-out system the car-free connections are a total afterthought and this has to sustain itself on park-and-riders paying high Zone fare and high parking rates. The Army Corps based its parking capacity metrics on Providence Line utilization, which is why Stoughton station is getting its lots nearly doubled and the others (except Easton V., which will have none) all have extreme over-capacity far outstripping the projected ridership. See any basic flaws there?
Ridership projections (total, all new stations and branches, excluding Canton/Stoughton ridership because it will likely get supplemented with short-turns):
Electric: 4570 daily, 1100 pre-existing riders diverted from express bus, +3470 increase in all-new transit riders
Diesel: 4430 daily, 1250 pre-existing riders diverted from express bus, +3180 increase in all-new transit riders
2035 projected daily station boardings (electric) + adjustments from prior publicly released models. The original metrics assumed construction proceeding as planned of Urban Ring Phase II, Silver Line Phase III, and Red-Blue and 2030 projections; the re-calculation drops all canceled rapid transit projects from the models and extends out projections 5 years.
North Easton: 460 daily, -290 reduction (~38% reduction)
Easton Village: 150 daily, -170 reduction (~54% reduction
Raynham: 430 daily, -120 reduction (~21% reduction)
Downtown Taunton: 510 daily, -160 reduction (~23% reduction)
Taunton Depot: 400 daily, -10 reduction (~3% reduction)
Freetown (FR branch): 180 daily, -140 reduction (~43% reduction)
Fall River Depot (FR branch): 840 daily, +100 increase (~11% increase)
Battleship Cove (FR branch): 240 daily, +30 increase (~12% increase)
King's Highway (NB branch): 520 daily, +60 increase (~11% increase)
Whale's Tooth: 680 daily, +80 increase (~11% increase)
The inside-495 stops get absolutely hammered by the lack of mobility around downtown Boston and constrained rapid transit with increasing severeness the further in you get. That's no surprise; every commuter rail line suffers like this. The 4 intracity stops in FR and NB get about an 11% increase by adjusting the projections out to mid-2030's. That's encouraging for trending, but also not at all unexpected. And Freetown is just an all-around dog that needs a closer look as to why it's imploding.
But pull up the Blue Book and look where these boardings land in the greater picture. Fall River Depot, the highest-by-far ridership stop, is most similar in boardings to luminaries like Bridgewater (Middleboro), Forge Park (Franklin), Swampscott (Newburyport/Rockport), and South Acton (Fitchburg). Whale's Tooth is most similar to Hanson (Plymouth), Grafton (Worcester), and West Medford (Lowell). Downtown Taunton, the only mainline stop that tops 500 boardings because of the crippled peak schedule, is most similar to North Scituate (Greenbush), Needham Heights (Needham), West Concord (Fitchburg), Wilmington (Lowell), and Haverhill (Haverhill). The others are all meandering around the mean for the Greenbush intermediates.
Does this sound like a problem in light of the downtown Boston mobility issues, the car-free mobility issues from lack of connecting buses, and the skip-stop peak schedules preventing reverse commutes and adequate headways?
This thing is a fucking mess as-designed. I would love to hear how this is going to serve all needs. And for those who zero in on the modest growth rates for FR and NB...how exactly are you going to sustain that when the service patterns are so messed up the frequencies can't grow? How is this salvaging something "owed" to build a service this crippled at the outset. Don't you HAVE to build it with enough capacity to take that forecast demand and kick it up a notch with reverse commutes, 128-belt commutes, and lifting the ceiling on car-free connections for full car-free commutes?
And furthermore, there is some pretty stark evidence about what the drag effect is for not investing in Boston transit when mobility around downtown job destinations kills off that much forecast ridership. Just as food for thought for anyone in an "I got mine" mood about their favorite city.