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

Is that Marty McFly circa 2015 via 1985 in the Fall River Depot render? He's even got the almanac.
 
This is actually happening?

I stopped reading threads like this and the MLS stadium one because I assumed it would be the same endless game of nothing forever
 
HelloBostonHi said:
Bids are in for Fall River Secondary Construction, goal is to have it awarded at Monday's FMCB if all the paperwork can be ironed out in time. $6 million below budget: https://bc.mbta.com/business_center/bidding_solicitations/bid_responses/?cnumber=K78CN03

This bid includes 11 Miles of Track ▪ 2 New Stations ▪ 1 Layover Facility ▪ 8 Bridges ▪ 10 Grade Crossings ▪ 10 Culverts ▪ Systems ▪ Infrastructure

View attachment 5094View attachment 5095

Bidding is due to start on the New Bedford Main Line and Middleboro Secondary portion this month, and close in June
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Contract for Fall River Secondary approved at FMCB meeting today, Skanska JV. RFP for the New Bedford Main Line is supposedly live.

Bid award: https://cdn.mbta.com/sites/default/...b-17-south-coast-rail-contract-accessible.pdf

General project update and station renders/layouts: https://cdn.mbta.com/sites/default/files/2020-05/2020-05-11-fmcb-17-south-coast-rail-update.pdf
 
$403.5 million contract was awarded today. Middleborough Secondary and New Bedford Secondary track work, bridge work, New Bedford (Watuppa) Layover, and 4 stations: New Bedford, Church Street (nee North New Bedford, nee Kings Highway), East Taunton, and Middleborough.

The 2017 DEIR indicated a possible shuttle platform at Middleborough station, but claimed that only 15-20 people walk or bike to the station during peak hours. That seems rather questionable given the amount of TOD. The Summer 2020 fact sheet doesn't mention the shuttle platform, so presumably they're planning to close Middleborough/Lakeville and have a shuttle from there to the new station. Classic MassDOT "why pay to build it once when you can pay twice as much to build it twice?"
 
The EGE said:
$403.5 million contract was awarded today. Middleborough Secondary and New Bedford Secondary track work, bridge work, New Bedford (Watuppa) Layover, and 4 stations: New Bedford, Church Street (nee North New Bedford, nee Kings Highway), East Taunton, and Middleborough.

The 2017 DEIR indicated a possible shuttle platform at Middleborough station, but claimed that only 15-20 people walk or bike to the station during peak hours. That seems rather questionable given the amount of TOD. The Summer 2020 fact sheet doesn't mention the shuttle platform, so presumably they're planning to close Middleborough/Lakeville and have a shuttle from there to the new station. Classic MassDOT "why pay to build it once when you can pay twice as much to build it twice?"
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And build it in a place that will be useless once phase 2 and Buzzards Bay starts buzzing;)
 
Just for fun, I attended the Virtual New Bedford Listening Session tonight. Nothing new. 3 AM and 3 PM trains planned. I asked about the TransitMatters vision for Regional Rail and single level coaches, and they kind of brushed off the question. However, they did say the issues brought forth by TransitMatters should continue to be discussed. (That's positive!) I got the feeling, "Let's just get this thing running no matter what, and then we can think about it actually being useful." Of course, that's my own loose interpretation of the conversation. :) To be fair, the conversation was mostly about current construction contracts, however I see Greenbush all over again. Half a billion dollars spent on terrible headways and inconvenient schedules. Believe me............I'm the biggest fan of train transportation if done correctly. I just worry this won't produce the patronage they anticipate.

 
I'm honestly surprised we haven't seen more about the rail connection to Fall River Regional Airport given how fervent the discussions here used to be about new air-rail connections to keep up with Logan growth.
 
Java King said:
Just for fun, I attended the Virtual New Bedford Listening Session tonight. Nothing new. 3 AM and 3 PM trains planned. I asked about the TransitMatters vision for Regional Rail and single level coaches, and they kind of brushed off the question. However, they did say the issues brought forth by TransitMatters should continue to be discussed. (That's positive!) I got the feeling, "Let's just get this thing running no matter what, and then we can think about it actually being useful." Of course, that's my own loose interpretation of the conversation. :) To be fair, the conversation was mostly about current construction contracts, however I see Greenbush all over again. Half a billion dollars spent on terrible headways and inconvenient schedules. Believe me............I'm the biggest fan of train transportation if done correctly. I just worry this won't produce the patronage they anticipate.

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God, every time I see slides like this and I'm reminded that they're gonna build a brand-new Middleboro Station, it bums me out. I mean, I understand why it's being done, and look, I get it -- agreeing to Middleboro Station enables construction to proceed on the rest of the route. And it's not like Middleboro/Lakeville will be forever useless -- any expansion toward Wareham will travel that way.

But, damn.
 
The new station location itself isn't terrible. It's still walkable from downtown, and it's closer to the apartment complexes on West Grove Street. Given that Middleboro is always going to have higher frequency than Cape Cod service (it was always a major short turn point), it makes sense to have a park-and-ride lot at the 495 interchange rather than off narrow downtown streets.

However, the design of the station - with a provision for a Cape Cod shuttle service platform on the southwest leg of the wye - tells two important stories. One, the state doesn't give a damn about Buzzards Bay/Cape Cod commuter rail service. Two, the state doesn't actually intend to ever build Phase 2 of South Coast Rail. With Fall River/New Bedford service shifted to the Stoughton route, there would be no need for Cape Cod service to be a shuttle - so they should be provisioning a full-length platform on the east side. Planning only for a shuttle platform means the state expects for SCR service to permanently run via Middleborough.
 
The EGE said:
Two, the state doesn't actually intend to ever build Phase 2 of South Coast Rail. With Fall River/New Bedford service shifted to the Stoughton route, there would be no need for Cape Cod service to be a shuttle - so they should be provisioning a full-length platform on the east side. Planning only for a shuttle platform means the state expects for SCR service to permanently run via Middleborough.
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That would sure be a massive mistake! I don't see how any meaningful all-day service can be scheduled with the SINGLE track Old Colony Mainline.
 
I think that would be a feature, not a bug, with the Baker Administration.
 
Who do they think theyre benefitting by punting as much as possible on rail? Wouldnt it benefit them to have less gridlock? Nothing says Boston automatically stays desirable forever. Its great right now but if we dont plan for the future that can turn around staggeringly fast. I dont see the benefit to them by refusing red-blue etc. Can someone fill me in?
 
stick n move said:
Who do they think theyre benefitting by punting as much as possible on rail? Wouldnt it benefit them to have less gridlock? Nothing says Boston automatically stays desirable forever. Its great right now but if we dont plan for the future that can turn around staggeringly fast. I dont see the benefit to them by refusing red-blue etc. Can someone fill me in?
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It's a political fundraising tool...little more. Everyone who's been campaigning on this issue for 20+ years is going to be rewarded in kind with a surge of donations for "getting the job done", but hardly any of them will be in office when the complaints mount that the thing isn't usable for any real-world mobility at those frequencies and that the over-touted economic development coattails are absent. If there was actually any plan for follow-thru, you'd have seen some/any movement right now to troubleshoot all manner of Fall River buses still being offset at a City Hall loop omitting Fall River Depot altogether, giving the CR station near-nonexistent SRTA access. Unlike New Bedford where the bus terminal and the CR terminal are within 2 blocks of each other, Fall River transit is functionally broken unless there is 'a' knit-together action plan for the geographically off-center transit modes.

To which the corruption-special local pols say: "Plan? LOL...I'm just getting paid. That's some future generation's problem."


I guarantee that the Fall River Branch is going to underperform so badly because of that missed integration that it ends up a perpetual service cut threat in any budget shortfall. And absolutely no one will put 2 and 2 together at what major multimodal planning work was simply never undertaken because "LOLwhocares, campaign donations & I'm outta here". New Bedford at least, by virtue of being multimodally mostly-integrated out of box, should show enough pulse to make a case for growth if only supplied with more frequencies. FR is going to be an absolutely infuriating case of bleeding red while the bleedin' obvious gets willfully ignored.
 
The EGE said:
However, the design of the station - with a provision for a Cape Cod shuttle service platform on the southwest leg of the wye - tells two important stories. One, the state doesn't give a damn about Buzzards Bay/Cape Cod commuter rail service. Two, the state doesn't actually intend to ever build Phase 2 of South Coast Rail. With Fall River/New Bedford service shifted to the Stoughton route, there would be no need for Cape Cod service to be a shuttle - so they should be provisioning a full-length platform on the east side. Planning only for a shuttle platform means the state expects for SCR service to permanently run via Middleborough.
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I'm not entirely sure I agree with this. For one, I don't think they're planning to abandon Middleboro/Lakeville wholesale, are they? With a minimal amount of upkeep, the station would continue to be usable by CapeFlyer service from Boston, eventual Wareham/Buzzards Bay commuter rail service, and by any RIDOT or Amtrak services that might eventually arrive from the west.

Similar logic holds for the shuttle platform. A shuttle platform -- intended only for CapeFlyer shuttle service during Phase 1, to later be replaced by returning through-service at Middleboro/Lakeville -- built inexpensively and not at full length. Also, in looking at a satellite image, you wouldn't want to put the shuttle platform on the eastern leg because it's a much farther walk from the new platform on the northwest leg. The southwest leg would give you something pretty close to a close-platform transfer. (I mean, not really, because you'd have to go up and over, but still.)

Also -- at a more general level: I'm not entirely sure how "not intending to build Phase 2" would look any different from "intending to build Phase 2 but recognizing that delays may occur and needing to make sure Phase 1 is feasible for more than the currently-planned 8 years". Like, running FR/NB via Middleboro seems insane to me, but they've clearly committed themselves to doing it, so they need to, you know, do the best they can to make it work. They can't treat it like an interim service.

At this point, the whole damn thing is a miracle if it actually gets built and sees trains running at all.
 
Java King said:
That would sure be a massive mistake! I don't see how any meaningful all-day service can be scheduled with the SINGLE track Old Colony Mainline.
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It can't, you're going to have garbage headways from both terminals. And as F-Line pointed out, they're screwing up the FR end so badly that when it comes time to actually build Phase II, no one is going to want to shovel money at an already underperforming line.

I do get the argument that FR and NB have been waiting for rail for ages, but at the same time, giving them fundamentally broken rail in Phase I runs the risk of making it easy to conveniently "forget" about Phase II, or just outright refuse to pay for it under a different Speaker/Gov combo with the argument of "we gave you your train and you don't use it, so why should we spend more now?"
 
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