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

F-Line to Dudley said:
The north-of-Cotley station siting at Mozzone Blvd. at least would've had the adjacent big-box shopping center for some TOD potential. But that assumes that the locals are capable of executing on TOD. The 2009 Corridor Plan tried to do ambitious mixed-use infilling with housing, new sidewalk buildouts, and greenspace...but all of that disappeared from the plans by the 2013 FEIR. While there were/are still empty lots around the shopping center ripe for infilling, the environs are car-centric to the max with seas of parking, poor sidewalk coverage, the same disconnection from Plains St. residential, and the same inferior bus connection. Either site makes the Kingston sand pit look borderline progressive on TOD. So I doubt the ridership needle moved much with the flip to the sparser surroundings south of the junction. It would be 90% park-and-rides at either site, and that's all the locals seem to be shooting for nowadays.

The 2013 FEIS for Phase II projected 400 daily boardings for East Taunton and 670 daily boardings for the downtown stop at Dean St. At Phase I frequencies the East Taunton boardings are likely to suffer a little.
Click to expand...
Commonwealth has blown several opportunities to push back against Army Corps. Phase II without a viaduct becomes reasonable.
 
OldColony said:
Project Manager Jean Fox presented an update on status during the Cape Cod Chapter, NRHS banquet last June. I noted her presentation then did not include a planned opening date, so I asked during the Q&A. She said it was hoped to be late "this year" (2023), but it was dependent on PTC testing. Any defects found could lead to a delay of months, so early 2024 was more likely she said last June. Slip sliding away...
Click to expand...
Per Keolis employees on RR.net, the signals on SCR are still not operational. There's a freight bulletin out for CSX and Mass Coastal to outright ignore the signal readouts and continue operating as if it were dark territory given that field techs apparently have a lot of debugging left to do with the system. No T test trains are operating for the foreseeable future; they haven't even started signal tests, let alone crew qualifications.

If they haven't even started live testing reps as of June it's almost impossible that they're going to make service starts by Fall 2024. This is increasingly looking like Winter 2025 or later.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Per Keolis employees on RR.net, the signals on SCR are still not operational. There's a freight bulletin out for CSX and Mass Coastal to outright ignore the signal readouts and continue operating as if it were dark territory given that field techs apparently have a lot of debugging left to do with the system. No T test trains are operating for the foreseeable future; they haven't even started signal tests, let alone crew qualifications.

If they haven't even started live testing reps as of June it's almost impossible that they're going to make service starts by Fall 2024. This is increasingly looking like Winter 2025 or later.
Click to expand...
Yup. Slip sliding away. But I'm sure the project management team is being held accountable. :ROFLMAO: :ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO:

I wonder how much the cost overruns have been with these delays...
 

"MBTA general manager to break agency’s silence on South Coast Rail Thursday​

"Phil Eng will speak at Bristol Community College in Fall River and later at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, two months after the MBTA delayed the project without announcing a new timeline.

"The general manager of the MBTA is taking the unusual step of visiting New Bedford and Fall River on Thursday to make an announcement about South Coast Rail..."

Full New Bedford Light article here.

And from a project email received yesterday:

Please Join General Manager Phil Eng at
South Coast Rail Public Meetings

Thursday, June 13, 2024

FALL RIVER - 5:30 PM
Bristol Community College

NEW BEDFORD - 7:30 PM
Whaling Museum​

You are invited to join MBTA General Manager Phil Eng and the South Coast Rail (SCR) team at a public meeting on the project. Please join us on Thursday, June 13, in Fall River or New Bedford. The same update will be presented at both meetings.

The Fall River meeting will be held at 5:30 PM at the Bristol Community College campus, building G, located at 777 Elsbree St, Fall River, MA 02720. Parking is available in Lot 12.

The New Bedford meeting will be held at 7:30 PM at the Whaling Museum, located at 18 Johnny Cake Hill, New Bedford, MA 02740. Free parking is available at the Elm Street Parking Garage at 51 Elm Street.

Visit the Fall River event page or the New Bedford event page.
 

"New South Coast Rail timeline: May 2025​

"The MBTA’s general manager and project manager provided the first update in months: Tracks are certified, testing to begin Monday and the agency is confident it can meet its new deadline.

"Editor’s note: This is a developing story and will be updated following the public meeting in New Bedford.

"South Coast Rail will start in May 2025, the MBTA announced on Thursday in the first update since the project was delayed for the second time two months ago..."

Full New Bedford Light article here.
 
From The New Bedford Light Facebook page:

"Join The New Bedford Light for a Community Conversation about what's next for transit on the South Coast at 6 p.m. on June 18 in the third floor meeting room at the downtown branch of the New Bedford Public Library. Admission is free, but please register here: https://forms.gle/EKkGfyvRWNxaLhj97

"Participants include: The New Bedford Light transportation reporter Grace Ferguson, State Rep. Bill Straus, officials from the SRTA, the City of New Bedford, South Coast Rail, and the Realty Association of Southeastern MA."
 
www.heraldnews.com

'MBTA owes this region an apology': South Coast Rail start is delayed another year

The MBTA said South Coast Rail is now going to open next year, unveiling a new timetable and the ticket price — but no daily schedule yet.
www.heraldnews.com

The MBTA also revealed the ticket cost to the public, but would not say what the daily train schedule would look like and would not guarantee weekend service.
Click to expand...
Eng said the MBTA determined that based on distance from Boston, the entire South Coast Rail project would be in Zone 8 in terms of fare structure.
Click to expand...

I'm surprised (but glad) that South Coast Rail will be Zone 8. I expected Zone 9 for East Taunton and Zone 10 for Freetown, Fall River, and both New Bedford stations.
 
themissinglink said:
I'm surprised (but glad) that South Coast Rail will be Zone 8. I expected Zone 9 for East Taunton and Zone 10 for Freetown, Fall River, and both New Bedford stations.
Click to expand...
I am also glad that it will be Zone 8. The only Zones 9/10 stations are the ones south of Providence, which seem like special cases to me, given Providence's size. (If the Worcester Line were extended to Palmer or Webster, I'd expect its additional stations to also be in Zones 9 and 10.)

TF Green Airport's Zone 9 station is about 47 miles from Boston, compared to Fall River's 45 and New Bedford's 47. Wickford Junction's Zone 10 station is 58 miles from South Station; there's no way you could justify FR/NB paying that fare.

Wachusett is 43 miles and in Zone 8, which creates precedent for Fall River being in Zone 8, in my opinion. New Bedford is harder to justify based on distance alone, but the way this whole thing has gone down... yeah it seems reasonable enough to cut them a break. FR/NB are anchor cities, akin to Providence, Worcester, Lowell, Haverhill -- they aren't +1 suburbs like Warwick; every other anchor city is in Zone 8 or lower.

So, it seems reasonable enough to me.

but would not say what the daily train schedule would look like and would not guarantee weekend service.
Click to expand...
The weekday schedule is something I raised two years ago. The earlier iterations of the SCR proposal simply extended the then-existing Middleboro/Lakeville runs, alternating between Fall River and New Bedford. That would have meant headways of 70-100 minutes:

1718366005608.png


Simply extending today's trains would/will result in even 120-minute headways (clockfacing in the AM, a little skewed in the PM):
1718366238694.png


(Also worth noting that both schedules will provide exactly 1 peak direction train from each city arriving/departing Boston during 7:45am-9am and 4:45pm-6pm.)

Riverside said:
The bottom line is that, applying the same logic to the current schedule as was used to create the original "3 trains per peak, 3-3.5 hours off-peak" number now gives us something more like "2-3 trains per peak, 2.5 hours off-peak" or "2 hours peak, 2.5 hours off-peak."
Click to expand...
As I've explained previously, this sucks:
Riverside said:
The Phase 1 proposal calls for 6 trains to/from the South Coast during each peak period -- 3 from New Bedford, 3 from Fall River. Now, first of all, let's compare how many inbound peak trains cities of similar size had before covid:
  • Lowell: 8
  • Brockton: 5
  • Lynn: 8
  • Lawrence: 5
Historically, 5 inbound peak trains has been the minimum on branches going to cities. Greenbush and Kingston usually had 4.
Click to expand...
If I were Phil Eng (who apparently earlier "changed" the team managing the SCR project -- I doubt he fired anyone, but sounds like a shakeup), I would have sat the team down, showed them the above numbers and told them this wasn't acceptable, and note that the DSEIR's "just extend the existing schedule" logic was obviously done as a reasonable effort to simplify planning -- refactoring the entire Old Colony system's schedule would have been well out of scope of the DSEIR. "But," he/I would say, "it's not out of scope for us." And directed the team to investigate refactoring the entire Old Colony schedule to create something more reasonable for South Coast Rail. Based on other changes he's made (e.g. single track service at South Attleboro), I am guessing he would have told them to get creative and try to squeeze as much juice out of this goddamn lemon as possible.

The need for creativity is my guess for why they aren't announcing a weekday schedule yet. Getting maximally creative will depend on the eccentricities of the moment, including knowing exactly how many locomotives are being used across the system, exactly how many coaches are available, and potentially even how many conductors and engineers are available. Given, you know [gestures broadly at everything at the T], planning at that level of detail for a full year from now seems dicey enough that I wouldn't want to announce anything yet.

(I do wonder if the current flirtations with transfers at Readville are an experiment for testing OCR cross-platform transfers at Braintree or something similar. And it would not shock me if Eng is investigating supplementing FR/NB through-runs with shuttles doing transfers at East Taunton, which would suck but maybe suck less than do-nothing.)

That all being said, the evasiveness about weekend service is concerning. That seems like it should be more managable to swing.
 
The T posted it's presentation from the Thursday meetings; selected slides below, including the expected schedule of milestones. It looks like all ATC/PTC testing was pending an FRA inspection & approval to operate at the new track speed, likely recently issued given the corridor clipper was filmed here a couple of weeks ago. The delay was likely compounded by the FTA SMS process, which resulted in in the T issuing a new safety certification plan, dated 2/27/24, which SCR had to go through prior to the FRA process.

1000033977.jpg

1000033967.jpg
1000033969.jpg
1000033975.jpg
1000033973.jpg
 
Last edited:
TheRatmeister said:
Or make the subway transfer suck less, fix the Braintree branch, and integrate fares and then CR->RL becomes actually reasonable.
Click to expand...
The T would have to make up a lot of ground to make this feasible. The current schedules put CR at about 23 minutes from Braintree to South Station.

In 2016, the Red Braintree -> South Station journey took about 28 minutes (maybe closer to 30 during peak).

1718385247533.png


Yesterday, it took an average of 43 minutes.

1718385274586.png


(With literally four trains within each hour.)

If brought back to 2016 journey times, frequencies, and reliability, supplementary Old Colony shuttles transferring at Braintree might well be viable. The transfer is still a bit hostile, but not unworkable.

But that's a lot of ground to make up between 2016 and today.

(In some alternate universe, the Old Colony or some vestige thereof kept all lines continuously operating, terminating at a rapid transit transfer station at Quincy Adams. Like the Mattapan Line, but, you know, bigger. The southern Red Line was, after all, designed as a trunk line for a distributed system of branches out across southeastern Mass.)
 
Stlin said:
The T posted it's presentation from the Thursday meetings
Click to expand...
It really does look like the T should have known (or, more precisely, likely knew and therefore should have announced) a while ago that Summer 2024 wasn't going to happen. If PTC testing is 6-8 months, and then New Starts brings an additional 3 months, then presumably they would have known at least by January of this year, if not earlier. Very disappointing.
 
Do we predict that a RIPTA route (maybe 24L) will be re-routed or added to serve the Fall River Station <-> Newport market?

I regularly transfer between the RIPTA 60 and the Providence Line and there is a healthy amount of people who do the same on every trip.
 
bigeman312 said:
Do we predict that a RIPTA route (maybe 24L) will be re-routed or added to serve the Fall River Station <-> Newport market?

I regularly transfer between the RIPTA 60 and the Providence Line and there is a healthy amount of people who do the same on every trip.
Click to expand...
The problem with Fall River buses is that the bus terminal is centered on City Hall Plaza, while Fall River Depot is nearly a mile away and only served by SRTA bus #2. The transfer integration is really weird unless you gerrymander the route off-course to meet both.

I would say it's not in the cards with Phase I frequencies being so poor. You really need Phase 2 with Regional Rail to get the frequencies on each of the branches up to hourly all-day, and who the hell knows when or if that's going to happen.
 
South Coast Rail will have weekend service, since trains already service Middleborough to begin with on weekends (I guess weekend service is just simply extending the Middleborogh line further south?).

www.heraldnews.com

MBTA: South Coast Rail will run on weekends. Here's why it's important and what it'll cost

South Coast Rail’s schedule is a little bit clearer, with a confirmation of weekend service. Here's why that's important and what it will cost riders.
www.heraldnews.com

Article quote:

“Seeing as ... South Coast Rail is an extension of the Middleborough line commuter rail service, on which weekend service is already scheduled and offered, it is not a question of whether weekend service will be provided, but rather at what levels,” said Maya Bingaman, MBTA communications manager.
Click to expand...
 
Delvin4519 said:
South Coast Rail will have weekend service, since trains already service Middleborough to begin with on weekends (I guess weekend service is just simply extending the Middleborogh line further south?).

www.heraldnews.com

MBTA: South Coast Rail will run on weekends. Here's why it's important and what it'll cost

South Coast Rail’s schedule is a little bit clearer, with a confirmation of weekend service. Here's why that's important and what it will cost riders.
www.heraldnews.com

Article quote:
Click to expand...
FWIW, the current Middleborough/Lakeville Line runs every 1.5 hours on weekends. If we simply take these trips and extend to Fall River and New Bedford alternatingly, that gives 3-hour weekend headways.

Weekday headways range between 1 hour (rush hour peak direction) to 1.5 hours (midday), so it's not that much better.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top