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

Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

AmericanFolkLegend said:
How is the design contract for this worth $210M???? Aren't design contracts typically 5-8% of budget. So should we now expect this boondoggle to cost $4B?
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Probably at the rate it's going up.

The project with a current estimated total budget of $2.3 billion will reconstruct 44 rail crossings and 34 bridges, in addition to four bridges and five crossings already in design as part of separate projects
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Now the $2.3 billion figure is official. I had found it in a newspaper article from March, but I wasn't quite sure if it was true or just a misquote. But no, this fucking ridiculous boondoggle is now officially at $2.3 billion. Holy fuck.

Last month I wrote up a post detailing the various ways that South Coast Rail boosters have been lying about details -- contradicting the FEIR. For example, the only substantial rail simulation analysis provided in the FEIR pegs the actual running times closer to 85 minutes with the "Stoughton Electric" alternative -- not the 75 minutes claimed in the popular articles.

South Coast Rail is a scam, plain and simple.
 
Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

Matthew said:
For example, the only substantial rail simulation analysis provided in the FEIR pegs the actual running times closer to 85 minutes with the "Stoughton Electric" alternative -- not the 75 minutes claimed in the popular articles..
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Which FEIR are you reading? Mine says 77 minutes for "Stoughton Electric" on page 1-47. Not that it's a substantial difference, but since you're claiming that the boosters are liars, it's relevant...
 
Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

Matthew said:
Appendix 3.1-D Network Simulation Analysis, Table 6.

http://www.nae.usace.army.mil/Porta...lIV/Appendix3.1DNetworkSimulationAnalysis.pdf

In the main text it makes a claims of 72-77 minutes or so, but the only reference is a footnote to a mysterious study that is not included in the FEIR nor could be found on the Internet.
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And in the paragraph above: "It is clear that these running times are longer than the unimpeded Train Performance Calculator (TPC) train simulations which were reported in 2008 (and reported again in the appendix to this document). These results reflect longer dwells than those assumed for the TPC runs and delays under Network Simulation en route due both to congestion on the NEC and also due to single-track constraints on new SCR infrastructure. It is likely that continued refinement of the SCR operating plan to better “tune” its performance to the single-track constraints will lower these running times."

In other words, however "mysterious" the TPC study may be to you, it was well-enough known to the consultant who produced this alternate analysis to compare the inputs and explain the variance. Basically, the models used different assumptions. I don't have the time to dig deeper and find the justification for longer dwell times in this model or why the prior model assumed better operating protocol on single-track lines.

I can say that the FEIR was published in 2013, four years after the study you found. I'm not sure what it's source is (I only have the Executive Summary handy), but I consider it a safe bet that the Army Corps of Engineers isn't going to flat out lie or invent numbers for the benefit of Massachusetts State politicians. They also don't remotely qualify as "boosters" of the project.

Again, models can disagree. That's fine. I have no horse in this race with regard to what the actual travel time will be. Regardless, don't call people liars when they're quoting the official EIR produced by about as trustworthy a source as you can get.
 
Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

Appendix 3.1-D is part of the FEIR: it's Appendix 3.1-D of the FEIR. The link I gave is part of the official FEIR website. As far as I can tell, this Rail Simulation is the only realistic accounting of actual train performance for South Coast Rail so far published. I would be happy to examine a newer analysis if someone knows about one.

I saw this quote too:
It is clear that these running times are longer than the unimpeded Train Performance Calculator (TPC) train simulations which were reported in 2008 (and reported again in the appendix to this document). These results reflect longer dwells than those assumed for the TPC runs and delays under Network Simulation en route due both to congestion on the NEC and also due to single-track constraints on new SCR infrastructure. It is likely that continued refinement of the SCR operating plan to better “tune” its performance to the single-track constraints will lower these running times.
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Bolded for emphasis. From what I can tell (the old report is not included) it seems that the old report was an approximation that did not include the effect of signal delay or congestion. Those two effects are extremely important in establishing realistic runtimes, especially on a project like SCR which mingles with the busy Northeast Corridor in addition to its long sections of single-tracking. It is not enough to make a hand-waving claim that "continued refinement of the SCR operating plan" would result in faster runtimes. We all know just how bad the single tracking on the current plan is. I need to see some hard evidence that they have found a way of overcoming that kind of constraint.

You might also find something of interest in the Appendices to the Rail Simulation report: proposed timetables for all the trains using the Northeast Corridor in 2030. Start on page 123 for the Stoughton Electric Alternative (page 123 of the report, not the PDF). The South Coast Rail trains are labeled with series 1900.

For example, train 1902 leaves Fall River at 05:43 and arrives at South Station at 07:02, for a decent 1:19 trip time. Train 1904 leaves Whale's Tooth at 06:01 and arrives at South Station at 07:25, for a more typical 1:24 trip time.

Further down, train 1906 leaves Fall River at 07:03 and arrives at South Station at 08:32, for a trip time of 1:29. And train 1908 leaves Whale's Tooth at 07:34 and arrives at South Station at 09:00, for a 1:26 trip time. Those are in the heart of the morning rush hour.

(I appreciate the criticism, you are helping me strengthen my argument. Please let me know if I missed anything else.)

P.S. The full SCR FEIR is available from http://www.nae.usace.army.mil/Missions/ProjectsTopics/SouthCoastRail.aspx

That is a link I obtained by following a link from the http://www.southcoastrail.com/ website.
 
Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

Matthew said:
Appendix 3.1-D is part of the FEIR: it's Appendix 3.1-D of the FEIR. The link I gave is part of the official FEIR website. As far as I can tell, this Rail Simulation is the only realistic accounting of actual train performance for South Coast Rail so far published. I would be happy to examine a newer analysis if someone knows about one.

I saw this quote too:


Bolded for emphasis. From what I can tell (the old report is not included) it seems that the old report was an approximation that did not include the effect of signal delay or congestion. Those two effects are extremely important in establishing realistic runtimes, especially on a project like SCR which mingles with the busy Northeast Corridor in addition to its long sections of single-tracking. It is not enough to make a hand-waving claim that "continued refinement of the SCR operating plan" would result in faster runtimes. We all know just how bad the single tracking on the current plan is. I need to see some hard evidence that they have found a way of overcoming that kind of constraint.

You might also find something of interest in the Appendices to the Rail Simulation report: proposed timetables for all the trains using the Northeast Corridor in 2030. Start on page 123 for the Stoughton Electric Alternative (page 123 of the report, not the PDF). The South Coast Rail trains are labeled with series 1900.

For example, train 1902 leaves Fall River at 05:43 and arrives at South Station at 07:02, for a decent 1:19 trip time. Train 1904 leaves Whale's Tooth at 06:01 and arrives at South Station at 07:25, for a more typical 1:24 trip time.

Further down, train 1906 leaves Fall River at 07:03 and arrives at South Station at 08:32, for a trip time of 1:29. And train 1908 leaves Whale's Tooth at 07:34 and arrives at South Station at 09:00, for a 1:26 trip time. Those are in the heart of the morning rush hour.

(I appreciate the criticism, you are helping me strengthen my argument. Please let me know if I missed anything else.)

P.S. The full SCR FEIR is available from http://www.nae.usace.army.mil/Missions/ProjectsTopics/SouthCoastRail.aspx

That is a link I obtained by following a link from the http://www.southcoastrail.com/ website.
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It's hand waving to wave away their argument by saying its hand waving. I recognize that we just read these things differently and I'm not going to convince you, but the FEIR postdates the simulation report by half a decade. When I read that paragraph in the context of the far more recent report, I see a contractor to the USACE admitting that their numbers need further refinement before being conclusively published, as indeed occurred by 2013 to give the shorter times. The simulation report is outdated, and is a technical memorandum which was produced while the project was still in the early design phase.

Again, these are not times projected by the pro-SCR lobby, they are impartial estimates by a Federal agency with no horse in this race.

Honestly, for all I know the 85-minute times will be proven correct. That was never my point. My point was that as you refine your argument I just don't think it's valid to pull the "dirty lies" language on USACE models in the published FEIR when all you have to contest them is a preliminary tech memo from 2009.
 
Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

The person trying to claim something has the burden to prove it. They want to claim mid-70s travel times, they need to prove it. I have pointed out that they did not substantiate their claim. They want $2.3 billion to build this thing, they need to come clean with us.

It seems that I'm not being clear: I am not picking out some random technical memorandum.

I am quoting directly from the FEIR.

The FEIR includes the 2009 RailSimulation report as an essential piece of data.

And the FEIR data say that the trip will be in the mid 80s, not the mid 70s. If you are only reading the executive summary of the FEIR then you are missing out on the bulk of the information.

The FEIR data that I cite come from a technical study done in 2009 and included in the FEIR. However, the optimistic claim that the FEIR makes in the executive summary comes from a study done in 2008, i.e., even older.

There is nothing, nothing at all, cited to justify a mid-70s running time with a date more recent than 2008.

This discussion reminds me of a phenomenon in the scientific world, by the way. Oftentimes, a scientific paper is published and makes certain claims about the world based on a set of data. Now, it is the job of peer reviewers to go over that data and make sure that those claims are truly backed up by the data. Scientists are not perfect and sometimes the data contradicts the claims. So while that paper's claims might be rejected, the data is still useful, and researchers can draw their own conclusions from it. That's why good scientists always publish their data as well as their claims: because they are humble enough to recognize that somebody else might be able to do better with it.

So what we have here is a claim from 2008 of mid-70s running times, but with no data backing it up I cannot do any checking of that claim. I do have another claim from 2009 that pegs it at mid-80s running time, and that claim is backed up by simulation results with extensive documentation. Both of these claims are included in the FEIR, but only the first one is highlighted. I find that suspicious, and I think it is a case where the FEIR text is making a claim that it cannot substantiate.
 
Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

Matthew said:
The person trying to claim something has the burden to prove it. They want to claim mid-70s travel times, they need to prove it. I have pointed out that they did not substantiate their claim. They want $2.3 billion to build this thing, they need to come clean with us.
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But this is the problem with your argument. The "they" you refer to here is not consistent. The USACE is performing the analysis in FEIR, whereas the MBTA (and until today, MassDOT) is promoting, funding and building the project. I agree that the USACE is under the burden of proving their data, but they also have absolutely no incentive to BS this.

It's possible that the travel time figure slipped through the cracks for them. It's also possible that the 2008 study was the ruled the more trustworthy, or that some new information was developed in the intervening years which resolved the discrepancy between the two.

I agree that, if you asked them, the USACE should be able to explain their figures to you. I don't agree with your characterization that they need to "come clean" about anything. Honestly, the difference between 77 and 85 minutes is not terribly meaningful - your motive here is to nitpick their numbers to try to build a narrative that people (entirely unrelated people who reasonably trust the US Army's analysis) are lying about this project. That's what I object to. You can disagree with the models all you want, and you might be right.

By the way, I don't think this is a good project. It's bloated and, in my opinion, won't have anywhere near the impact advertised. No one is lying about it, though.
 
Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

When a commuter rail trip starts to take over an hour, every minute extra has, I think, a bigger impact on ridership than before. Worcester already has a ~75-minute trip on a ~45 mile line. SCR is over 50 miles long to each destination. Even with the electric alternative that's projected to be a mid-80 minute trip. And the idea that the MBTA is going to somehow start using electric locomotives is another one of those wacky fabrications. They will probably end up falling back on diesel, which means a 90 minute trip. At which point you have to start asking: what are you getting for these billions of dollars? Because it sure isn't faster travel times. With the mid-80 minutes projection, you're getting to nearly an hour and a half spent in a seat to get to South Station, and it might even get worse. I just don't see that working very well.

I think you have a problem with the way I'm calling it a "lie" here, mostly. When I say that someone is lying, I mean it is the promoters of SCR that are lying, and I'm using the USACE FEIR as evidence against them. And maybe it is a strong term, but I think that if they're going to suck $2.3 billion from us using made-up numbers, they deserve it. SCR promoters are claiming in the popular press that the trip will be 73-76 minutes. The USACE FEIR has solid evidence that the trip will in fact take more than 80 minutes and closer to 90 minutes in many cases. SCR promoters claim that it will use electric locomotives. The MBTA does not have electric locomotives and has no plans to ever buy them. So that claim is, at best, disingenuous.

The promoters of SCR want $2.3 billion of taxpayer money and they have every incentive in the world to make claims that are overly optimistic, and I believe that they have veered into the territory of lying about the benefits of the project in order to receive the money.
 
Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

I happened upon this population density map, and it strikes me how the density at Taunton, Fall River and New Bedford is similar to Fitchberg/ Fitchberg line.

 
Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

Ok, but at the same "rough cut" level of "it is dense 'enough'", please also consider this map, which shows cellular market areas, which are something of a proxy for daily interactions:
NortheastCellMktAreas.gif


Taunton is a "border town" on the frontier between Market #6 ("Boston") and Market #76 ("Providence"), and as most folks here would say, Taunton should get a functioning CR connection for itself, or get better service along the Attleboro or Middleboro lines. Fitchburg is similarly a border town between "Boston" and "Worcester".

The FCC in drawing this and similar maps drew its boundaries to try to put people who called each other in the same calling market. If you view the whole map and zoom in, you'll see that the conclusion was that people in Fitchburg were/are "more attached" to Boston (market #6) and that people in FR/NB were "more attached" to Rhode Island.

When people on the South Coast call "the office" or "home" or a customer, or try to reach them in a media market, it isn't Boston they're connecting with.

Telephony isn't destiny, but its a pretty good correlate of there just not being the demand for daily commuting from FR/NB to Boston.

Or as complaining mothers might formulate it: You never call, you never visit.
 
Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

I don't know if Fitchburg Line is an apt comparison. FR/NB cities themselves are quite large. But there are some huuuge density cavities between them, a lot of it conservation land descended from a lot of those old colonial-era private land deeds...not off-limits, but so choppy nothing came to fill the gaps except a few quarries and cranberry bogs. The surrounding towns are physically very large by land area because of this, which makes the total population of a Dartmouth look pretty good in the Bristol County stats until you see the pop density figures and extreme skew of the town's density clustered along the New Bedford border. By contrast that cavity in Plymouth and Carver is Myles Standish State Forest and only Myles Standish State Forest, and the cavity in Bourne is Otis AFB and only Otis AFB. Everything else there stays in the lighter and darker oranges.


Unfortunately that entire triangle bounded by Routes 24 and 140 east-west and I-195 to the south ends up being the biggest density cavity of consequence in the state east of Worcester, and contains the largest number of track miles (25 miles between 2 branches) on the entire construction project. That long and lonely jog through Freetown on each branch is where the cost-per-rider on cap and operating totally loses the plot (the other being the single-track constriction through the Easton/Raynham swamp cavity that destroys the headways to all the populated areas).



As for Fitchburg, a lot of the growth potential that line has is reverse-commutes to Devens in Ayer...which is inside a density cavity in terms of people living there but a massive commercial job growth site. That's not going to show on a density map. There are no such job supersites in the south-of-Taunton cavity.
 
Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

Bridge replacements step toward South Coast rail

Monday, November 24, 2014

State officials are announcing another step toward bringing commuter rail to the South Coast region of Massachusetts.

Gov. Deval Patrick and acting transportation secretary Frank DePaola (Dee-POH'-la) said Monday it was awarding a $42 million contract to Cardi Corporation to replace three rail bridges in Fall River and one in New Bedford.

Patrick says the new bridges will help facilitate construction of South Coast rail.

The Massachusetts Department of Transportation earlier announced a $210 million contract for the early stages of the project, including design development and environmental permitting.

The governor says South Coast residents have been waiting decades for a reliable transit system that connects the region to Boston.
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Boston Herald
 
Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

Phases, phases, phases! I hope Baker gets the memo.
 
Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

These contract also includes 5 crossing renewals besides the
bridges..

D
 
Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

The bridge work and the crossing work is on a currently-active freight line (owned by MassDOT and operated by CSX) and make sense as freight infrastructure, and at $60m it is 3% of the whole project's $2b costs.

The painfully expensive stuff is reactivating the abandoned lines to and through Easton and Taunton.

Good phasing might see weekend summertime "New Bedford Flyer" service from New Haven on the freight line, and a full double track only as far as Taunton with a big park-and-ride and frequent service.

The worst parts are the wetland, reactivation, and electrification parts that connect/extend the phases above. These should be penciled in for the year 2060.
 
Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

I'd really like to see this project be axed. Or built in a more sane fashion. However, if it does happen, why the hell is it not being combined with Fall River/New Bedford to Providence service?! It would be a bit round-about for anyone going from end-to-end, but for others it may seem appealing. It wouldn't even require new stations. It would run exactly on what you'd get out of this project. You may need some upgrades between Taunton and Attleboro, but it is all pennies in comparison.
 
Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

BostonUrbEx said:
I'd really like to see this project be axed. Or built in a more sane fashion. However, if it does happen, why the hell is it not being combined with Fall River/New Bedford to Providence service?! It would be a bit round-about for anyone going from end-to-end, but for others it may seem appealing. It wouldn't even require new stations. It would run exactly on what you'd get out of this project. You may need some upgrades between Taunton and Attleboro, but it is all pennies in comparison.
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This has kind of been my take on the system. As much as I would rather it be an extension of the middleboro line, I know that train has sailed. But, why does this system not extend to providence? Traffic flows in both directions, and I'm sure folks in fall river and north would love a short ride to providence or tf green. The commuter rail is designed maybe a bit too much with boston in mind as the ultimate destination. There is also the very real potential for development in the smaller cities that have cr running through them. Somone in Staunton might have a job in north easton. Someone in Worcester might work in Framingham. Not all roads lead to the hub.
 
Re: Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail

I believe that most of the small towns the line runs through have made it clear that they don't want major development.
 
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