Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail (South Coast Rail)
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Correct and thank you.
Does anyone know where I could find station-by-station ridership projections? The MassDOT documents library is... not super easy to use.
EDIT: Nevermind, found it, slide 13 in this presentation (Capital Programming Committee, South Coast Rail Phase 1 Service Project Briefing, February 6, 2018).
EDIT: Nevermind, found it, slide 13 in this presentation (Capital Programming Committee, South Coast Rail Phase 1 Service Project Briefing, February 6, 2018).
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These numbers aren’t new, but provide an opportunity to once again say, I just can’t fucking believe we are spending such a vast amount of money for such a tiny number of new riders. Billions of dollars could’ve been spent on much, much, much more utilitarian projects that would’ve benefited many more people than this.
HenryAlan
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I keep wondering what would have benefited New Bedford and Fall River more -- this really lame rail connection to Boston vs. a south east coastal light rail system for better local transit. I tend to think the most transit dependent folks there aren't likely to ride commuter rail to Boston very often, but might well benefit from a better RTA option for getting to their actual job.
While I don't necessarily think that LRT is the best choice for these two cities, given that I don't think there's an SRTA route with the ridership to justify it to a funding committee, it would have cost less than SCR. I will say that the SRTA can stand some bus service and route improvements; running on Sundays, for one.
And why are Seekonk, Swansea part of Gatra anyways? Especially now that RIPTA is running a weekday peak only Newport - Fall River - Providence, I think the SRTA can extend it's intercity Express to Providence, and maybe a parallel local on 6 to the state line, especially since that would neatly pass by the new CR station site. Or, work some sort of funding formula via Pilgrim Agreement where payment for RIPTA service into MA, since they have the waivers in place to cross state lines, offsets against RI funding for MBTA CR.
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I can’t remember exactly but somewhere in the threads there’s discussion with usual weigh ins from the transit geeks about light rail — my fantasy was to run a light rail exactly as you envisioned, but among other comments it was shredded in minute detail by F Line. And the critiques were valid, as they usually are.
Thinking about it now, probably the most effective use of money to benefit the south coast cities would be BRT, but real BRT that didn’t add bus lanes to those empty stretches of overly wide 1960s highways only to let the buses get stuck in the same old choke points, but truly build out a BRT network that worked. And since NB and FR aren’t that dense, you could probably execute this pretty handily. Getting to providence might be a later phase since that would be trickier but It doesn’t take a genius to know that most people don’t wanna travel 80 miles to work and providence is way closer than Boston.
From a broader view of what really is equitable on a regional level, I also think it’s both arrogant, unfair, and unrealistic to assume that every low income employee is breaking down the door to get into the Boston markets. Why does Boston have to be the hub for every line? How about we actually build a network of cities and employment hubs that looks at the actual geography of the population and transit needs, and accelerates those patterns with transit? We could accomplish the south coast network and it would build jobs and resiliency and save people a 2 hour expensive train ride, too.
Brattle Loop
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That's an excellent point. I find myself wondering if this'd be a much easier solve if transit to Providence wasn't so much of a jurisdictional minefield compared to transit to Boston. Though I suppose the state doesn't have nearly so many incentives to help people get to jobs in other states as they do to make all roads lead to Boston, unfortunately.
themissinglink
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They really should have just extended the Stoughton line to Taunton as Phase 1 from the start and waited to see if ridership was high enough to justify a later Phase 2 to Fall River/New Bedford, but instead we're left with the ass-backwards Middleborough routing which will only introduce more problems due to the single track Old Colony mainline.
Oh well.
The EGE
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Stoughton to Taunton is the expensive and politically difficult portion. It requires reactivating abandoned ROW, some of which hasn't seen passenger service for over a century, and is the section that the Army Corps put ridiculous requirements on. Stoughton, Raynham, and Easton are the most vocal opponents of the project. Fall River and New Bedford is all existing freight trackage (save for the new connecting track at Cotley Junction), and those cities have been the principal support for the project. Fall River and New Bedford have a combined population just under 200,000, to Taunton's 59,000.
While the project as it's being built is an operational nightmare, I understand the political calculus that led to it.
While the project as it's being built is an operational nightmare, I understand the political calculus that led to it.
In general, my feeling is that I'm in favor of any capital improvements to and expansions of rail infrastructure, full stop. Despite everything else, in most cases I really do believe that building something bad is better than building nothing at all.
There are a very few exceptions to that personal policy -- for example, the original disastrous proposal for rebuilding the CR platforms in Newton. For a while, even despite the underwhelming ridership projections, I still felt that SCR was worth building, under my general rule. But over the last few years, I'd started to feel that it crept over the line into the "Rare Exception" category, in particular with the decision to build a whole new station at Pilgrim Junction.
However, recently I've swung back around to the other side. Building rail is a generational project. Fall River and New Bedford are among Massachusetts' top 10 largest cities (by a comfortable margin) and are among New England's top 20; on both of those lists, FR & NB are alone in lacking rail service (aside from Nashua and Manchester, New Hampshire's libertarian tendencies coming home to roost). In the New England I want to see in the future, intercity rail service is commonplace and is the backbone of the region. That vision will likely not be met in my lifetime, but that transformation also is not the work of one lifetime. The work must be started now, wherever we can.
And there just isn't any way to get there from here without building South Coast Rail. Bringing the Southern Triangle up to passenger rail standards, and building the train stations, will mean that there is a way for passenger trains to serve the South Coast. We don't currently have a great way to get trains to the Southern Triangle, but there are solutions to that problem.
It's like planting trees: the best time to (re)build a rail line was yesterday; the second best time is today.
And to be clear -- I actually think very little of the current SCR plan is "bad". I think Pilgrim Junction is a waste of a station, but I think the track upgrades to the Middleboro Secondary are good, as they will provide extra redundancy to the full-build network (and would help accelerate any future Amtrak service to Cape Cod). Yes, as usual I am unhappy about the seas of parking around these stations, but that's par for the course these days and I'm not going to cut off my nose to spite my face. I wish the plan was bigger -- more double-tracking, for example. But "not big enough yet" does not equal "bad". The service plan is lousy. But service plans are a lot less permanent than concrete.
As for what the money could've been used on instead... I'm not indifferent to that argument, and there clearly is a utilitarian case to make that monies should be spent where they will help the most people the soonest. But think about it on a 100-year timescale. By 2121, we need SCR built, plus NSRL, plus subway extensions to 128, plus any number of things. But they all need to happen by then (if not sooner). The money to build SCR will need to be spent, one way or another. And we all know that, sadly, the public monies for this kind of thing aren't fungible -- trying to redirect these funds to other projects would essentially mean giving the money away and trying to recapture it.
So, we've got the money now, and we've convinced enough people to build a key part of the expansion. Is it going to be "successful"? I dunno. Are we no doubt going to see lots of Globe articles talking about "underwhelming ridership"? Oh probably.
But the stations will be built. And the tracks will be upgraded. And no number of Globe editorials or MassDOT ridership powerpoints or even service suspensions will undo that progress.
So, suffice it to say, I've come back around.
There are a very few exceptions to that personal policy -- for example, the original disastrous proposal for rebuilding the CR platforms in Newton. For a while, even despite the underwhelming ridership projections, I still felt that SCR was worth building, under my general rule. But over the last few years, I'd started to feel that it crept over the line into the "Rare Exception" category, in particular with the decision to build a whole new station at Pilgrim Junction.
However, recently I've swung back around to the other side. Building rail is a generational project. Fall River and New Bedford are among Massachusetts' top 10 largest cities (by a comfortable margin) and are among New England's top 20; on both of those lists, FR & NB are alone in lacking rail service (aside from Nashua and Manchester, New Hampshire's libertarian tendencies coming home to roost). In the New England I want to see in the future, intercity rail service is commonplace and is the backbone of the region. That vision will likely not be met in my lifetime, but that transformation also is not the work of one lifetime. The work must be started now, wherever we can.
And there just isn't any way to get there from here without building South Coast Rail. Bringing the Southern Triangle up to passenger rail standards, and building the train stations, will mean that there is a way for passenger trains to serve the South Coast. We don't currently have a great way to get trains to the Southern Triangle, but there are solutions to that problem.
It's like planting trees: the best time to (re)build a rail line was yesterday; the second best time is today.
And to be clear -- I actually think very little of the current SCR plan is "bad". I think Pilgrim Junction is a waste of a station, but I think the track upgrades to the Middleboro Secondary are good, as they will provide extra redundancy to the full-build network (and would help accelerate any future Amtrak service to Cape Cod). Yes, as usual I am unhappy about the seas of parking around these stations, but that's par for the course these days and I'm not going to cut off my nose to spite my face. I wish the plan was bigger -- more double-tracking, for example. But "not big enough yet" does not equal "bad". The service plan is lousy. But service plans are a lot less permanent than concrete.
As for what the money could've been used on instead... I'm not indifferent to that argument, and there clearly is a utilitarian case to make that monies should be spent where they will help the most people the soonest. But think about it on a 100-year timescale. By 2121, we need SCR built, plus NSRL, plus subway extensions to 128, plus any number of things. But they all need to happen by then (if not sooner). The money to build SCR will need to be spent, one way or another. And we all know that, sadly, the public monies for this kind of thing aren't fungible -- trying to redirect these funds to other projects would essentially mean giving the money away and trying to recapture it.
So, we've got the money now, and we've convinced enough people to build a key part of the expansion. Is it going to be "successful"? I dunno. Are we no doubt going to see lots of Globe articles talking about "underwhelming ridership"? Oh probably.
But the stations will be built. And the tracks will be upgraded. And no number of Globe editorials or MassDOT ridership powerpoints or even service suspensions will undo that progress.
So, suffice it to say, I've come back around.
Brattle Loop
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Interesting analysis. The problem I have with SCR is that it gives a big whiff of either being designed to fail, or at least designed with a near-total indifference to whether or not it fails.
The problem is that the single-track Old Colony main (which the state resolutely refuses to do...anything...about) can only handle so many trains. FR/NB are never going to get the kind of robust schedules that make transit/rail really useful, and sparse schedules are even more of a problem when the travel times are as long as those routes are going to be. So while it's being done, and being done by the cheaper, faster, and easier route, that choice means a trade-off in terms of usability.
I think that's a problem for two reasons beyond the fact that it's poor service for FR/NB. The first reason is that it comes at the expense of headaches for efforts to bring the CR to Buzzards Bay because it eats up so much of the Old Colony's remaining capacity. FR/NB could be served by an alternate routing that doesn't touch the OC, Buzzards can't be, and I don't like that they (and potential Cape service) get screwed by this when it didn't have to happen.
The other reason, and the big one why I can't really agree with your thesis in its entirety, is that by building it on the cheap the way they are, and particularly because of the poor schedules that will inevitably result because of the main line's capacity crunch, they're at the very least running a huge risk of artificially suppressing ridership. Globe articles about underwhelming ridership might not undo infrastructure improvements, but they sure as heck give Baker & Company all the cover they need to never touch the idea again, leaving it permanently broken (and potentially taking Buzzards/Cape with it), or even killing it off next time there's a budget crunch and it needs to be "temporarily suspended" only to never restore it because we tried it and know that the ridership isn't there, even if that's only because it was done wrong.
I am entirely in agreement that it's usually a good idea to build even if the project is less than ideal. I'm not convinced that that's true in this case, between the trade-offs and the elevated risk that getting it wrong dooms the entire prospect of ever doing it right.
Lots and lots of agreement here, and all excellent points.
Yes, I agree with this. I think it's worth examining our definition of "failure" though, and I'll come back to that below.
I agree 100% -- the routing via Middleboro is disastrous for both of these reasons.
So I don't actually disagree with you here. I think what you describe is entirely possible, and even to some extent likely.
However, Baker won't be king forever. And even the current "Massachusetts Republican Governor" vogue won't last forever. On a hundred-year timescale, eventually someone will come along and be willing to "unbreak" this mess -- particularly since advocates will have had plenty of time to narrow their focus to something like "Double track the Old Colony Main" or "Build the Taunton Rail Connector" or "Build the new Mansfield Junction".
Now, I do worry about service suspension and then a lack of maintenance. That is a gamble here, I agree. If the stations or rails are left to deteriorate completely, then we're back to square one. (Although can you imagine the optics?)
But, to my knowledge, no commuter rail service in the US or Canada has been indefinitely suspended in the last... 20 years? The most recent one I can think of is the Lower Boonton Line on New Jersey Transit, but that was replaced by a service just a mile or two away and so doesn't really count. Shore Line East, Wickford Junction, Greenbush... once (mainline) trains start running somewhere, it seems extremely rare that they get eliminated outright.
(I will grant that there have been one-off suspensions: Gardner, Plymouth, Foxboro. But I think that's different than shutting down an entire subnetwork. I may be splitting hairs here, but I'll stand by it.)
(And I could be wrong about the lack of large suspensions -- my knowledge is not exhaustive. That being said, I think I'm pretty familiar with systems on the scale of South Coast Rail, so I feel modestly confident.)
So Baker or his successors just shutting down the service due to low ridership seems unlikely to me. Yes, there will be artificially depressed ridership for certain, and it will be up to advocates to continue holding the state's feet to the fire.
And I'll say that I am very sympathetic to this view, as it's the same way I had felt for a number of years. I could very well be wrong -- 20 years from now, I might look back and shake my head at my naïveté. But I think it goes back to the question -- what do we mean by failure? And the more I think about the long view, the more I feel that the short-term negatives are outweighed by the long-term positives -- and certainly outweigh the do-nothing alternative, which I truly believe is the only other option at this point. If we have to wait til the Stoughton alignment is squared away before doing the Southern Triangle, I firmly believe this will never get built.
Yes, I agree with this. I think it's worth examining our definition of "failure" though, and I'll come back to that below.
I agree 100% -- the routing via Middleboro is disastrous for both of these reasons.
So I don't actually disagree with you here. I think what you describe is entirely possible, and even to some extent likely.
However, Baker won't be king forever. And even the current "Massachusetts Republican Governor" vogue won't last forever. On a hundred-year timescale, eventually someone will come along and be willing to "unbreak" this mess -- particularly since advocates will have had plenty of time to narrow their focus to something like "Double track the Old Colony Main" or "Build the Taunton Rail Connector" or "Build the new Mansfield Junction".
Now, I do worry about service suspension and then a lack of maintenance. That is a gamble here, I agree. If the stations or rails are left to deteriorate completely, then we're back to square one. (Although can you imagine the optics?)
But, to my knowledge, no commuter rail service in the US or Canada has been indefinitely suspended in the last... 20 years? The most recent one I can think of is the Lower Boonton Line on New Jersey Transit, but that was replaced by a service just a mile or two away and so doesn't really count. Shore Line East, Wickford Junction, Greenbush... once (mainline) trains start running somewhere, it seems extremely rare that they get eliminated outright.
(I will grant that there have been one-off suspensions: Gardner, Plymouth, Foxboro. But I think that's different than shutting down an entire subnetwork. I may be splitting hairs here, but I'll stand by it.)
(And I could be wrong about the lack of large suspensions -- my knowledge is not exhaustive. That being said, I think I'm pretty familiar with systems on the scale of South Coast Rail, so I feel modestly confident.)
So Baker or his successors just shutting down the service due to low ridership seems unlikely to me. Yes, there will be artificially depressed ridership for certain, and it will be up to advocates to continue holding the state's feet to the fire.
And I'll say that I am very sympathetic to this view, as it's the same way I had felt for a number of years. I could very well be wrong -- 20 years from now, I might look back and shake my head at my naïveté. But I think it goes back to the question -- what do we mean by failure? And the more I think about the long view, the more I feel that the short-term negatives are outweighed by the long-term positives -- and certainly outweigh the do-nothing alternative, which I truly believe is the only other option at this point. If we have to wait til the Stoughton alignment is squared away before doing the Southern Triangle, I firmly believe this will never get built.
The EGE
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Gardner and Plymouth were both extremely low ridership - Gardner averaged 24 daily boardings in the mid-1980s, and Plymouth 21 in 2018 - and Plymouth is supposedly reopening next July. Foxboro was a trial service to begin with, and is supposedly suspended during the pandemic.
Overall, the era of commuter rail cuts in the US ended pretty sharply in the mid 1980s; the last viable lines to be cut were the Woburn Branch (1981) and SEPTA's massive cutbacks. The only cuts I can name since then were a couple of marginal services in Pittsburgh (ended 1985 and 1989), Syracuse (1994-2007), and Burlington (2000-2003), plus a couple SEPTA Main Line stations switching to Amtrak-only.
Even if SCR is an utter failure, you're still talking in the realm of a thousand riders a day. It'll limp along like Greenbush, too much a political football to kill, with heavily padding schedules to prevent the rest of the Old Colony riders from complaining.
It's worse than that. The assumption on past studies for Buzzards Bay commuter rail is that the service would be an extension of the existing Middleborough/Lakeville service, so passengers would have a one-seat ride to South Station. Now if Buzzards Bay happens, it will be a crappy shuttle service. And full service would have been at a fraction of the capital cost per passenger than either phase of South Coast Rail. Look at the most recent study that has just been released, and this one is based on a cross-platform transfer at the new Middleborough station.
Never mind how SCR phase 1 eliminates commuter rail service to the existing Middleborough/Lakeville station, with hundreds of residential units (Kensington Court and Sterling Place) built next to the station since it opened in 1997. So much for the Commonwealth's BS claims it's committed to transit-oriented development.
These are not "short-term negatives." Look at the history for the push for South Coast Rail--it started at the latest in the 1990s, when progress on the Old Colony Middleborough/Lakeville and Kingston/Plymouth was well along. Does anyone really think Buzzards Bay or full SCR service will quickly fare better after Baker is out of office?
Pittsburgh and Syracuse I didn't know about (and Syracuse is interesting!), though I should have remembered about Burlington. But you're right -- those are all pretty marginal services.
(And, to emphasize this point, there are an astounding number of piddly little commuter rail systems that do continue to putter along, despite daily ridership under 10,000, including in Albuquerque, Austin, Dallas, Dallas again, Minneapolis, Nashville, Orlando, Portland, San Diego, Stockton and San Jose, and Sonoma-Marin.)
Right, this is my thinking exactly. Which is still disastrous. But the stations will be there, and the system will be, as one of our fellow board members once colorfully put it, "unfuckable".
Brattle Loop
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I may have gone a little overboard in implying that service would necessarily be on the chopping block, though I still think it's a possibility depending on the economics, even if not a very likely one.
Absolutely fair. If the question is "build it badly, or don't build it at all", then I agree that if the collateral damage isn't too severe, building it badly is better than nothing. The problem I have is that the state didn't even bother to try to revive the Stoughton-Taunton alignment that would make the most sense operationally. I'd have fewer objections if it had come down to Stoughton being actually impossible or if they'd tried their hardest and it was just not feasible. They didn't try to fix any of the issues that originally screwed up that route. So some of my annoyance comes from the fact that they're picking the worse, more-collaterally-harmful option out of (at least it appears this way) a combination of cheapness and laziness.
I'll believe Plymouth and Foxboro coming back when I see trains on the line. "Temporarily suspended" because reasons is a favorite of the T, to the chagrin of Arborway proponents, among others. (Not saying that they're lying about these being pandemic suspensions, just that their history gives good cause to not give them the benefit of the doubt.)
I seem to recall someone (probably F-Line) saying that Gardner getting cut was literally because Guilford was upset at not getting the CR contract and kicked the T off their tracks out of spite? (It sounds ridiculous, yet also exactly like something that particular railroad would absolutely do)
Most likely outcome. I don't like it, I especially don't like that it screws with Buzzards Bay, and I worry that if an expansion this high-profile dramatically underperforms it'll put a damper on other, better expansion proposals. Those hysterical Globe stories about how the ridership is terrible won't lead with the problem being routing-induced bad schedules, after all.
Well, what if they need SS capacity? Killing SCR would be the easy solution. Baker being gone makes that even easier.
Like I said, I think Pilgrim Junction is a waste of a station, in large part because of the damage to the TOD.
Emphasis mine. To answer your question, no, I don't think it's gonna quickly improve after Baker leaves. To be frank, I believe full SCR service and direct Buzzards Bay-Boston service is a full generation away. I'm not kidding when I'm talking about a hundred-year timescale here.
@Brattle Loop, pretty much agree with everything in your last post, cheers.
EDIT: @Old Colony, thanks for linking the study -- interesting read.