Aww hell yeah. This is a gorgeous map -- awesome job! And welcome to the board!
Various scattered comments:
This is a really interesting idea! I have a mini side project I'm working on that sketches out corridors that could potentially support targeted light rail lines; Mt Auburn St is on the list, as is the Minuteman Trail (which, to your point, I agree is a better fit for LRT than HRT). I'm curious, what made you choose Mt Auburn St as the "winning candidate" here?
Very simple. Mt Auburn Street is stupidly, ridiculously wide for where it is, and going down to one car lane per direction, which is already planned as part of a redesign, would allow enough space for light rail without eliminating car traffic, very much street parking, or making dedicated bike lanes as significant problem. There's really not that many places where that works. You can see in Everett that even the limited bus lanes they have now are combined bike/bus lanes with giant carveouts for street parking. I don't think it's impossible, but it's not really in a state of: "We could start building this, like, today" in my opinion.
Also very interesting! The current endpoint of the B Line, as I understand it, actually dates waaaaaay back, to the old boundary between BERy territory and the territory of the Middlesex and Boston Street Railway. (@The EGE would know more about that.) Which is to say, that endpoint is somewhat arbitrary and really just reflects the municipal border between Newton and Boston, and doesn't necessarily reflect the conditions "on the ground". So I like the idea of considering a short extension! Where were you thinking of putting the "New Boston College" station?
This is some pretty aggressive stop consolidation and while I'm not opposed, I'm also not quite convinced In particular, it looks like me like you've dropped several higher-ridership stops in favor of lower-ridership stops located in between higher ones (e.g. Englewood Ave and Tappan St being consolidated to Dean Rd). More recent data is available through the MBTA Blue Book portal but I still find the PDF version from 2014 to be a useful quick reference.
The principles for the stop consolidation were to target a 600m stop spacing, trying to make a middle path between good streetcar stop spacing (~300-400m) and subway stop spacing (~1km). But I'll happily admit that it's not perfect, and I didn't get through a ton of revisions with that like I did for some other parts of the map. I still need to look over the ridership data, but I might consider using some weight system or something to try and get the stop consolidation really nailed down.
Yes, this is something I've thought about as well. See here, in particular this subsection. Needham Junction <> West Roxbury-ish is definitely a reasonable proposal. One small challenge of using PCCs specifically: they aren't double-ended, so you would need to install loops at both ends. Not insurmountable, but add that on top of the increasing age of the PCC fleet, and I think probably the "heritage" line would need to be Type 7s or Type 8s. (In fact, if memory serves, the eventual plan once the Type 10s arrive is to use the current shiny Type 9s on the Mattapan Line.)
I know, and you're 100% correct, I just really like the PCCs and I'm not ready to let go. I do think you might be able to find enough volunteers to keep those PCCs running a while longer, especially with some kind of Streetcar museum or something. But again, the Type 7s or Type 8s would be 1000x more practical.
I've written elsewhere as to why I think a full surface LRT line from Park St to Mattapan wouldn't work very well -- I should consolidate that and toss it on to my site, maybe I'll try to do that later today. While I'm not convinced that a full length line all the way to Mattapan is the right answer, I think it's definitely trying to answer the right questions.
Blue Hill Ave is the busiest bus corridor in the region by a mile, it definitely needs something, and being so close to the Fairmount Line, I think it's better to focus some on local connectivity, not just having a fast ride into downtown. That is necessary, and that's why the Indigo Line and Red Line to Mattapan are on the map, but I think that leaves a pretty clear space open for a more local form of transit on the southern part of the line. Once you start getting up towards Nubian, the ride time penalties compared to a faster mode start to decrease quite a bit and I'm less worried about that section.
For what it's worth, I think your Aqua Line concept could be interesting to apply here: a standalone LRT line radiating out from a transfer hub. Swap out Harvard for Ruggles, and Watertown Square for Mattapan... if you extend your Aqua Line to Newton Corner and add a regional rail station there (which I'd definitely recommend), then you'd have a similarity there as well, with Newton Corner being equivalent to Indigo's Blue Hill Ave.
Yeah, as mentioned above I think that the Minuteman corridor beyond Arlington is definitely the realm of LRT, not HRT. To me it probably sits somewhere between your Aqua Line corridor and the heritage trolley you propose in Needham, which makes it tricky to find the right fit.
There's a reason I keep pointing to the River Line in NJ, I think it does a very good job of navigating this niche, kind of like a modern interurban line.
Reading probably doesn't need its own 25 kV substation being so short, so the Purple Line electrification costs are pretty low. You're pretty much just paying for the OCS and circuit breakers, much like Fairmount. And it's already got Plate F clearances (but no clearance protection clauses), so there'd likely be no cost associated with raising clearances anywhere except for the Sullivan Square area shared with the Eastern Route. Where it gets messy is that the stupid BEMU "discontinuous electrification" concept for the Eastern Route leaves the terminal district un-wired, depriving Reading of access to a substation...so any which way you have to build a sub somewhere inbound of Revere to ever provide enough juice to conjoin Reading. The plan is a hot mess.
The 1970's study for OLX-Reading was going to retain some of the grade crossings and switch from third rail to overhead at Oak Grove. The Hawker-Siddeley 01200 cars being electronically identical to the Blue Line's 0600 cars meant there were unused pantograph mounts already on the roofs to slap pantos on and plug in if Reading ever advanced. Even though the current cars aren't designed that plug-and-play, it's fairly trivial to pipe some electrical conduits to the roof during midlife overhaul for pantographs. Seashore Trolley Museum does exactly those electrical mods skunkworks-style so all of its third-rail rolling stock can run on trolley poles.
But any which way the electrification scheme for OLX is going to be completely different from Commuter Rail, being 600V DC rather than 25 kV AC. A bunch of DC substations would have to be built, and all of the circuit breakers would need to be replaced even if the Commuter Rail OCS stayed. So in the end it's not exactly a lot of value saved. Since the corridor nowadays would be FTA-required to be 100% grade separated, there's no reason why they wouldn't replace the OCS with third rail all the way out to Reading. It's really not going to affect cost all that much, especially when considering that NSRL is probably far enough away that the OCS would be nearing some significant midlife replacement milestones.
They did RLX all the way to 128, no Arlington Heights like the 1975 study. West Roxbury also went all the way to 128, even though the Needham-rather-than-Dedham alignment had never been subject to a more granular study ever before. They also did OLX-Westwood, RLX-Weymouth, BLX-West Medford. No OLX-Everett/Chelsea branch (Mystic working group proposal), no BLX-Kenmore (recent BDPA proposal), no RLX-Mattapan (relegated to the appendix), and no purely crayon stuff.
I will say I significantly disagree with the PMT study in a lot of places, it definitely feels like they're riding the BRT trend a little too much in a lot of places. It's also almost 20 years old now, and especially after COVID, travel patterns have changed quite a bit. I think it's useful to look at and use as a guide, but I wouldn't be super happy making actual decisions based on it.
I will say I significantly disagree with the PMT study in a lot of places, it definitely feels like they're riding the BRT trend a little too much in a lot of places. It's also almost 20 years old now, and especially after COVID, travel patterns have changed quite a bit. I think it's useful to look at and use as a guide, but I wouldn't be super happy making actual decisions based on it.
The populations of Melrose, Wakefield, and Reading have only increased in the last 2 decades, and so did Commuter Rail ridership until COVID when comparing the 2004 Blue Book to the last pre-COVID counts in 2018. And that's saying nothing about how Commuter Rail would perform at :15 minute frequencies proposed by the Rail Vision. The Program for Mass Transportation may be a document of its time (I certainly would not rely on it at all for cost benchmarking given how out-of-control transportation construction inflation has gone), but the corridors it identifies as rapid-transit (or at least Urban Rail) caliber are only moreso...not less so...in the 2020's. None of them have collapsed as prospects, and the general ranking of prospects hasn't changed much with growth.
Put it this way: you want to rapid-transitize Fairmount in your proposals. Reading ridership chunks out to the same degree as Fairmount's once those frequencies are applied. It may not be the top HRT extension consideration any more than it was 20 years ago, but it's definitely still a Top 5'er by any rational measure and swinging well above the next-in-class on the list (Arlington/Lexington et al.).
Blue Hill Ave is the busiest bus corridor in the region by a mile, it definitely needs something, and being so close to the Fairmount Line, I think it's better to focus some on local connectivity, not just having a fast ride into downtown. That is necessary, and that's why the Indigo Line and Red Line to Mattapan are on the map, but I think that leaves a pretty clear space open for a more local form of transit on the southern part of the line. Once you start getting up towards Nubian, the ride time penalties compared to a faster mode start to decrease quite a bit and I'm less worried about that section.
I'll respond to some of your other points later, but wanted to address this one first.
First, I think it's great that you are thinking of Indigo as the fast way to get downtown. Turning all of the Fairmount stations into reliable transfer points from the bus routes will really open up new possibilities, which is why it's so important.
As for light rail: I think there is a distinction to be made between "should there be LRT on Blue Hill?" and "should the Green Line run all the way from Park to Mattapan via Blue Hill?"
Should there be LRT on Blue Hill? Maybe? If people want it. It's true that Blue Hill is a monster corridor, but it doesn't exist in isolation -- all six pairs of Forest Hills & Jackson Sq & Nubian/Ruggles and Mattapan & Ashmont see very high frequencies and very high ridership. Does the 28 outstrip all of the others? I'm not sure.
That leads us to "should Blue Hill LRT be a branch of the Green Line?" One major difference between the current bus network and an "F Line to Mattapan" is the access/lack of access to Ruggles, and in turn to Longwood (and to a lesser extent, Back Bay). Looking at residents of the Blue Hill walkshed, we can see that all of those are significant employment centers:
To me, that points to a light rail line that terminates at Ruggles (or carries on to Longwood to provide additional access). Downtown and Back Bay commuters can transfer to Orange, while Longwood commuters can either walk from Ruggles or take a company shuttle. A Green Line branch, by contrast, would likely require the commuter to disembark at Nubian and transfer to a bus to get to Longwood, or, for Back Bay commuters, double-back from Tufts Medical Center.
The other problem I have with a single line running all the way from Park St to Mattapan isn't just the length/speed -- it's reliability. That's nearly six miles of high-density street-running, with intersections, cross streets, and all the unpredictability of running in the public ROW. Even in the heyday of the Boston Elevated Railway Company, they stopped running streetcars from Mattapan north of (then) Dudley -- it was just too far, and the transfer was speedier and more reliable.
Look at it this way: the Aqua Line you propose is 3.5 miles of median-running, which is roughly equivalent to the distance from Mattapan to MLK Blvd. From there, it would be another 2.5 miles until the portal. This would be equivalent to extending the Aqua Line down Cambridge Street to join the Green Line at Lechmere. Even with a dedicated median on Cambridge St, that's still a loooooong route.
But yeah -- if one is going to propose a local LRT service on Blue Hill, for the sake of having a local LRT service to handle the stuff that the Indigo Line can't, I think it makes more sense to run it to Ruggles and/or Longwood, maintaining the existing OSR, maintaining the existing transfer opportunities, and keeping it out of the Central Subway where unpredictable delays can't cascade to the rest of the system.
Mt Auburn Street is stupidly, ridiculously wide for where it is, and going down to one car lane per direction, which is already planned as part of a redesign, would allow enough space for light rail
Hi all! I've got my own fantasy map to share here. This map was designed to show a lot of the "low hanging fruit" IE: Projects that mostly or entirely take advantage of an existing ROW and/or have provisions already built. Fair warning, this is all copy-pasted from elsewhere, formatting is going to get a little funky.
Are you the guy that had been posting the WIP maps on Reddit? Fantastic job, and welcome to archBoston! Lots of very innovative ideas here, in addition to the great work making the map itself.
My comments below may be a bit too harsh for what's supposed to be a fantasy map, so apologies in advance if it does turn out that way:
That should remind us of the proposed SL6 that MBTA is studying, likely from Everett (or Chelsea) to Kendall. Did you omit it because it would require too much changes to the existing map?
While I do think Mt Auburn St in Watertown likely have enough width for dedicated LRT lanes - and it's a really interesting idea - I'm not sure if the same can be said to Cambridge, particularly east of Fresh Pond Pkwy. Most sections there are like this, which require eliminating street parking, and probably still not enough to keep both travel lanes and bike lanes. And it gets worse the further east you go - good luck with this.
An LRT line that has dedicated lanes west of Fresh Pond Pkwy (3/4 of the entire route) and mixed street running further east is certainly doable, but sections like these do give you some challenges.
I know this is a very popular suggestion and it's obvious why, but a large portion of this route is even narrower than those I linked above. Mixed running for that much of the branch will almost certainly affect reliability of the Central Subway.
A much more realistic and lower-impact option is a short extension to Hyde Park, and there seems to be some momentum for it.
Wow. Just wow. That was literally my first impression when I first read this.
@Riverside has discussed challenges with running PCCs there, but I do think it's a very clever way to maintain service on a Needham-West Roxbury GL-OL connector with a single track, without needing to widen the ROW. This also retains (some) service at Hersey, which has surprisingly good ridership (likely due to P&R).
Another common proposal, but FYI, I'm not sure if it's feasible for Fairmount to become proper rapid transit instead of mainline rail, even though everyone wants it to. F-Line (the user) gave an explanation here:
The Fairmount Line cannot be taken off the RR network and changed over to rapid transit. It is the last southside freight route into Boston, hosts Readville freight yard, and has its status on the FRA network protected from encroachment by the MassDOT-CSX deal for Beacon Park. You must use FRA-compliant vehicles on it...now and forever. Amtrak also has trackage rights over Fairmount for work equipment and alt-routing past any NEC service outages with a diesel locomotive, so they are another co-signee.
But yeah, rapid-transit-level regional rail service on Fairmount is more than necessary and should have been done yesterday. In such a world, branding it as a rapid transit line on the T system maps makes sense, too.
I do support this, but I think it's less likely to happen in a world with Fairmount offering rapid-transit-like service (and thus in real life). Blue Hill Ave station is very close to Mattapan station and offers a faster ride to South Station.
This one, however, is a nonstarter. It would maim Red Line ops by making shift-change deadheads from Cabot Yard enormously harder to stage by not being able to slot into halved branch headways on one of the JFK platforms, staging the line splits so close to the foot of the Savin Hill platforms, and introducing more failure modes with the simplified junction that you will feel regularly when delays due to "switching problems" or disabled trains needing a deadheading escort through the overlap cascade over your commute X many times per month.
Savin Hill also wouldn't make up very much ridership with the outright doubling of frequencies because combo of lower-density neighborhood and zero connecting buses means that the coming RLT improvements to 6 min. branch frequencies pretty much attract all the riders it'll ever possibly attract. Lumping it on the Braintree Branch schedules at such little added benefit also complicates the alternating-headway math if you try to shiv a Neponset/Port Norfolk infill on the branch. It would take more run-as-directeds to plug the discrepancy, and that's not going to be worth the added ops cost for how few add'l riders the saturation frequencies bring to Savin Hill.
I personally don't agree entirely with this, as I'm not sure if the operational flexibility of easier access to Cabot Yard is worth the massive sprawl and redundancy of tracks between the yard and Savin Hill (which also limits Old Colony tracks). But there is a tradeoff to be kept in mind.
IIRC, the current Red-Blue design examined options for both removing and retaining Bowdoin station. Keeping the old station is pretty much a no-go, so even if BL was to stop at Bowdoin, the station would have to be rebuilt. There was also quite a bit of elevation change in that vicinity, which makes keeping the stop not worth it especially given its closeness to Government Center.
Complete rejiggering of the Silver Line, with SL1 replaced by an Airport Link bus, SL2 replaced by a surface bus route, SL3 bypassing Silver Line Way, and a regular SLW service running all day.
I like making SL1 a surface bus directly between South Station and airport terminals, and @Riverside has also done some analysis earlier that supported this proposal (by showing that Airport-Seaport demand is relatively low).
Having a separate SL2 and SLW may be worse than just through-running SL2 from Design Center through Transitway, though, at least IMO.
For a metro line to make sense a certain number of people must live within the area of a stop, or at the very least be able to live within the surrounding area of a new stop. Unless we plan on bulldozing Lexington, this is not really the case. This is not to say Lexington doesn’t deserve rail transit. Something like the River Line in New Jersey could work along the Minuteman corridor.
IIRC, when RL to Lexington almost got built, the plan was to extend it to 128 with a P&R. That could still work today.
In an ideal world, there should also be a lot of TOD surrounding a Lexington extension to boost ridership from existing levels. And given that the town was supportive of the RL extension last time (unlike Arlington), that actually has some chance of playing out.
Same reason as the RL to Lexington. Density falls off dramatically between Malden and Melrose, and that probably isn’t going to change enough to warrant heavy rail in the near future. Regional rail with a wider stop spacing makes more sense here. I'm aware this is one of the more controversial exclusions, although I could probably be swayed towards a shorter extension into Melrose. Reading shouldn't happen though.
Just a brief addition to what others have discussed: I think the existing stop spacing on the Haverhill line is actually great for rapid transit, and likely also for EMUs. Even Wyoming Hill to Melrose-Cedar Park, the closest on the line, is similar to southside OL stations and GLX, and puts large parts of Melrose within their walksheds. If Melrose wasn't as NIMBY as it actually is, OL to Melrose would have definitely been a great candidate (and at that point you pretty much have to extend it to Reading given ROW constraints). And you always have the option of short-turning some trains at Malden Center or Oak Grove.
So yeah, it’s no secret that capacity in the GL trunk is… how should I put it… constrained. I don’t necessarily think that a second tunnel is the only solution though. Through newer signalling and train control systems there is certainly additional capacity to be had, and service on the branches could be increased through additional trips that terminate at Kenmore. Ultimately though a second GL tunnel, likely connecting to the Huntington Ave subway, should be planned for the future. I’ve seen Stuart Street argued for, but I think a good enough case for St James Ave could be made that I don’t think it’s an easy choice. I'm also concerned about what grades a new tunnel would need to navigate around Boylston and Tufts, subsequently how deep it might be. From my limited understanding this was part of what killed Phase 3 of the Silver Line.
Check out the Green Line Reconfiguration thread, which I think is one of the gems of this forum. I gave a summary of the "modern" proposals here, and have tried advertising it on Reddit before.
As for where the second tunnel should go, most of the recent proposals call for a Marginal St subway next to the Pike, with an interchange station at Bay Village that connects to OL's Tufts Medical Center station. One of the biggest advantages is that it allows you to use the Pleasant St portal that's still intact, without the heavy modifications that killed SL3 (F-Line gave a list of the project's issues here). The subway will then reverse-branch from there, with some trains heading to Park St via Pleasant St portal, and some continuing east to South Station's Silver Line level (using Phase 3's provisions) and to Seaport.
Re: LRT on Blue Hill Ave, I'll quote another opinion from The EGE on this topic:
Not a half measure - bus lanes are more useful than rail on BHA. They allow overlapping services (22, 28, 29, 31) which can run to different terminals for connections. Buses are faster than trains when running at street level, even in dedicated lanes. The only advantages of rail on a surface corridor are capacity (nah, 60-foot buses every 5-10 minutes are fine here) and ability to run onto off-street rights of way (nope - no use through-running with the Mattapan Line, and it's far too long a surface route to go into the subway).
Also keep in mind that anything on Warren St between MLK and Grove Hall will almost certainly require mixed street running, unless you're willing to build a short tunnel.
Also very interesting! The current endpoint of the B Line, as I understand it, actually dates waaaaaay back, to the old boundary between BERy territory and the territory of the Middlesex and Boston Street Railway. (@The EGE would know more about that.) Which is to say, that endpoint is somewhat arbitrary and really just reflects the municipal border between Newton and Boston, and doesn't necessarily reflect the conditions "on the ground". So I like the idea of considering a short extension! Where were you thinking of putting the "New Boston College" station?
Yes, Lake Street was the meeting point between the BERy and the M&B. There hasn't been service on Comm Ave west of Lake Street since 1975, when the MBTA dropped the ex-M&B route 535. I do think a one-stop extension to the western edge of the BC campus could be valuable, albeit not the highest priority until BC is willing to push for it (and perhaps pays in a bit, at least for planning.)
The median west of Lake Street dates from the streetcar era. It should be wide enough to require basically no land taking. The obvious place for the station would be east of College Road, with entrances from College Road and Linden Lane.
That should remind us of the proposed SL6 that MBTA is studying, likely from Everett (or Chelsea) to Kendall. Did you omit it because it would require too much changes to the existing map?
I've omitted it because it's probably going to look more like the Washington St routes than SL3, which is just a bus with fewer stops, not a rapid transit line. Maybe they'll prove me wrong, but I'm not terribly optimistic.
While I do think Mt Auburn St in Watertown likely have enough width for dedicated LRT lanes - and it's a really interesting idea - I'm not sure if the same can be said to Cambridge, particularly east of Fresh Pond Pkwy. Most sections there are like this, which require eliminating street parking, and probably still not enough to keep both travel lanes and bike lanes. And it gets worse the further east you go - good luck with this.
An LRT line that has dedicated lanes west of Fresh Pond Pkwy (3/4 of the entire route) and mixed street running further east is certainly doable, but sections like these do give you some challenges.
That is indeed the main problem spot for this route. I don't think it's unmanageable though. There seems to be enough space to widen the road somewhat between Fresh Pond and Hawthorn St, which would leave a ~1000ft section of street running. By reducing through traffic on this section I think it's doable.
I know this is a very popular suggestion and it's obvious why, but a large portion of this route is even narrower than those I linked above. Mixed running for that much of the branch will almost certainly affect reliability of the Central Subway.
A much more realistic and lower-impact option is a short extension to Hyde Park, and there seems to be some momentum for it.
You're right, and without making Centre and South Streets mostly car free (See Market St in SF for an example of how this might look on a slightly larger scale), it's basically a non-starter. However I truly think this has the chance to make one of the greatest urban spaces in Boston, and should be pursued regardless of NIMBY outcry. Start by holding longer open streets events, then start closing sections off for use exclusively by local traffic and the #39.
Another common proposal, but FYI, I'm not sure if it's feasible for Fairmount to become proper rapid transit instead of mainline rail, even though everyone wants it to. F-Line (the user) gave an explanation here:{/QUOTE]
I'm aware of the challenges that stem from the line being the SW Corridor backup route. Rapid transit doesn't just need to look like a subway line, it can also look more like an S-Bahn, which uses larger mainline-compatible rolling stock.
RC, the current Red-Blue design examined options for both removing and retaining Bowdoin station. Keeping the old station is pretty much a no-go, so even if BL was to stop at Bowdoin, the station would have to be rebuilt. There was also quite a bit of elevation change in that vicinity, which makes keeping the stop not worth it especially given its closeness to Government Center.
I'm pretty firmly on the side of keeping it. Yes, it's not the most useful station, and it is close to Gov. Center, but given that the tunnels already extend under Cambridge street part of the way, a cut-and-cover job that just extends the line and leaves Bowdoin basically as-is (With some elevators put it) is a much better solution than a bored tunnel from Gov. Center, regardless of what a report says. I quite frankly don't believe them and think the goal was to inflate costs.
The goal is to have an "SL2" which is not constrained by the ridiculous speed limit of the Transitway, and an SLW that is not constrained by the mixed traffic running of SL2.
Also keep in mind that anything on Warren St between MLK and Grove Hall will almost certainly require mixed street running, unless you're willing to build a short tunnel.
Widen the street to allow for both types of traffic.
I'd obviously prefer #2 or #3, and I think #2 has some chance of working. Cross streets could be retained with transit signal priority, and the couple dead-end streets could be joined to nearby streets on the other side of Warren St.
For all the fantasy map lovers here, Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library just opened a "Transportation Dreams" contest that's open through December 19:
For all the fantasy map lovers here, Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library just opened a "Transportation Dreams" contest that's open through December 19:
It would be great if we had a spider map with all of the proposals from the Green Line Reconfiguration thread, similar to Van's map in the link. That plus other heavy rail extensions would definitely win, it'd at least have my vote! It would also be really cool to communicate our ideas to the general public in an easy to digest system map, one where there's a stark difference between existing and proposed. Then you could really get people's imagination swirling on what the system could be! Although it may be difficult to fit everything onto the current map.
It would be great if we had a spider map with all of the proposals from the Green Line Reconfiguration thread, similar to Van's map in the link. That plus other heavy rail extensions would definitely win, it'd at least have my vote! It would also be really cool to communicate our ideas to the general public in an easy to digest system map, one where there's a stark difference between existing and proposed. Then you could really get people's imagination swirling on what the system could be! Although it may be difficult to fit everything onto the current map.
I might give it a go as well, I'll definitely submit my "Quick, easy action list" as well. I'll probably make a couple quick changes, Bowdoin will get removed since that's what's happening and I might finally add OL to Reading because of the weird CR situation there. Still conflicted because of all the grade separations needed though, it's a lot more than anything else on my immediate wish list.
I might give it a go as well, I'll definitely submit my "Quick, easy action list" as well. I'll probably make a couple quick changes, Bowdoin will get removed since that's what's happening and I might finally add OL to Reading because of the weird CR situation there. Still conflicted because of all the grade separations needed though, it's a lot more than anything else on my immediate wish list.
I'd assume no, but maybe they don't anticipate how dedicated some people are and they haven't thought of that. Either way it sounds fun so I'll do it anyways.
View attachment MBTA Fantasy Map FIXED.png
I've made a new fantasy map, somewhat less tethered to reality this time. Fitting everything onto the map was surprisingly difficult. Here's a full list of everything featured on this map:
New Lines
Yellow Line: City Point-Wonderland via Nubian, Longwood, Cambridge, Charlestown, and Chelsea
Pink Line: West Station to Community College via Grand Junction RR. All stations named after Nobel Laureates.
Aqua Line: Brandeis/Roberts to Harvard via Mt Auburn St and Watertown Branch RR
Indigo Line: Just the Fairmount Line but better
Needham Trolley: Connection between Needham and West Roxbury as well as a retirement home for the PCCs.
New 4 stop Green Line branch to Needham Junction via the Charles River Branch RR
New Green Line Branch to Mattapan via Washington St, Warren St, and Blue Hill Ave, replacing the 28 bus.
Logan Airport People Mover (In our hearts, it's pretty much impossible to show on the map)
Extensions
Red Line extended 2 stops from Ashmont to Mattapan, taking over the Mattapan Line.
Red Line extended 3 stops to Arlington Heights
Orange Line extended 5 stops from Forest Hills to VFW Parkway
Blue Line extended 1 stop to Charles/MGH
Blue Line extended 7 stops to Old Salem
Green Line B Branch extended 1 stop to new Terminus on the BC campus
Green Line D Branch extended 2 stops from Union Sq to Porter
Green Line E Branch extended 2 stops from Medford/Tufts to West Medford
The Green Line
Huntington Ave Subway extended south to Mission Park and connected to the Tremont St Subway via I90 and the Pleasant St Portal.
Silver Line Transitway and current SL2 branch converted to light rail. The Silver Line is then extended along the Huntington Ave Subway before surfacing after Mission Park and running along Centre/South Streets to Forest Hills
D branch trains rerouted along an extended Huntington Ave Subway, bypassing Longwood and Fenway.
E branch trains rerouted along the Highland Branch to the new Needham extension.
Infill Stations
River's Edge (OL Between Malden Center and Wellington)
Morrissey (RL between Savin Hill and North Quincy)
West Station (CR between Landsdowne and Boston Landing)
Columbia (IL between Uphams Corner and Four Corners/Geneva)
River St (IL between BHA and Fairmount)
Widett Circle (IL between Newmarket and South Station)
Station Renamings
Gilman Sq renamed to Winter Hill
Longwood Medical Area (GL/SL) renamed to MassArt/Wentworth
Current River Works station renamed to Lynnport
Other Things
SL1 replaced with express bus (Airport Link)
Stop Consolidation on the B/C branches as well as the current street running segment of the E branch
CR Service is electrified and fares make sense (Not visible)
"Providence/Stoughton Line" changed to "Providence/New Bedford/Fall River Lines"
Removed the Twitter handle from the legend
Added "All MBTA stations and services are accessible" to the legend
Things I've removed from the map:
Fenway/Longwood: Replaced by St Marys St and Longwood Medical Area (YL). Branch still used for special event service to Fenway.
Bowdoin: Axed as part of the Red-Blue connector.
SL1: Replaced with express bus
SL3: Downgraded to regular bus service and rerouted out of the Transitway. The Chelsea busway is opened up for other local bus services to use.
Hingham/Hull Ferries: These were never rapid transit why were they ever on the map?
Charlestown Ferry: Maybe still around, but more as a novelty/replacement service. It's never faster.
Bus routes: Many key bus routes are made obsolete by electrified CR service, the Indigo Line, the Yellow Line, and various extensions. The rest are removed because this is a rapid transit map, not a bus map.
View attachment 45809
I've made a new fantasy map, somewhat less tethered to reality this time. Fitting everything onto the map was surprisingly difficult. Here's a full list of everything featured on this map:
New Lines
Yellow Line: City Point-Wonderland via Nubian, Longwood, Cambridge, Charlestown, and Chelsea
Pink Line: West Station to Community College via Grand Junction RR. All stations named after Nobel Laureates.
Aqua Line: Brandeis/Roberts to Harvard via Mt Auburn St and Watertown Branch RR
Indigo Line: Just the Fairmount Line but better
Needham Trolley: Connection between Needham and West Roxbury as well as a retirement home for the PCCs.
New 4 stop Green Line branch to Needham Junction via the Charles River Branch RR
New Green Line Branch to Mattapan via Washington St, Warren St, and Blue Hill Ave, replacing the 28 bus.
Logan Airport People Mover (In our hearts, it's pretty much impossible to show on the map)
Extensions
Red Line extended 2 stops from Ashmont to Mattapan, taking over the Mattapan Line.
Red Line extended 3 stops to Arlington Heights
Orange Line extended 5 stops from Forest Hills to VFW Parkway
Blue Line extended 1 stop to Charles/MGH
Blue Line extended 7 stops to Old Salem
Green Line B Branch extended 1 stop to new Terminus on the BC campus
Green Line D Branch extended 2 stops from Union Sq to Porter
Green Line E Branch extended 2 stops from Medford/Tufts to West Medford
The Green Line
Huntington Ave Subway extended south to Mission Park and connected to the Tremont St Subway via I90 and the Pleasant St Portal.
Silver Line Transitway and current SL2 branch converted to light rail. The Silver Line is then extended along the Huntington Ave Subway before surfacing after Mission Park and running along Centre/South Streets to Forest Hills
D branch trains rerouted along an extended Huntington Ave Subway, bypassing Longwood and Fenway.
E branch trains rerouted along the Highland Branch to the new Needham extension.
Infill Stations
River's Edge (OL Between Malden Center and Wellington)
Morrissey (RL between Savin Hill and North Quincy)
West Station (CR between Landsdowne and Boston Landing)
Columbia (IL between Uphams Corner and Four Corners/Geneva)
River St (IL between BHA and Fairmount)
Widett Circle (IL between Newmarket and South Station)
Station Renamings
Gilman Sq renamed to Winter Hill
Longwood Medical Area (GL/SL) renamed to MassArt/Wentworth
Current River Works station renamed to Lynnport
Other Things
SL1 replaced with express bus (Airport Link)
Stop Consolidation on the B/C branches as well as the current street running segment of the E branch
CR Service is electrified and fares make sense (Not visible)
"Providence/Stoughton Line" changed to "Providence/New Bedford/Fall River Lines"
Removed the Twitter handle from the legend
Added "All MBTA stations and services are accessible" to the legend
Things I've removed from the map:
Fenway/Longwood: Replaced by St Marys St and Longwood Medical Area (YL). Branch still used for special event service to Fenway.
Bowdoin: Axed as part of the Red-Blue connector.
SL1: Replaced with express bus
SL3: Downgraded to regular bus service and rerouted out of the Transitway. The Chelsea busway is opened up for other local bus services to use.
Hingham/Hull Ferries: These were never rapid transit why were they ever on the map?
Charlestown Ferry: Maybe still around, but more as a novelty/replacement service. It's never faster.
Bus routes: Many key bus routes are made obsolete by electrified CR service, the Indigo Line, the Yellow Line, and various extensions. The rest are removed because this is a rapid transit map, not a bus map.
First: I redesigned my redesign of the MBTA system diagram from earlier this year. Two versions included at the link, but the "latest and greatest" (which I may have already posted upthread in here, not sure if it was this specific one though) is:
After my experience working on the Transportation Dreams submission (below), I would almost certainly redesign this one from the ground up. And there definitely are decisions I made earlier this year that leave me scratching my head (like the stop spacing on the B). But, overall, I think this iteration comes reasonably close to capturing what I had originally been going for. Whether that approach was successful is a separate question, but I'm glad to at least have this.
Second: as mentioned in the Green Line Reconfiguration thread, one of my submissions for the Transportation Dreams contest really is a classic Fantasy T Map.
Most of these proposals have been discussed in the Green Line Reconfiguration thread or Crazy Transit Pitches. I'll put a rundown of services and relevant extensions in a spoiler box below.
One of the things that was interesting, from a map-making perspective, was the simplifying choices required to make a diagram of this style. Probably the best example of this is the interface between the Bronze Line and Silver Line in Chelsea. In the past, I've favored some level of interlining between the two here -- e.g. an SL3 service extended to Everett or maybe even Sullivan, plus an LRT line from Kendall running through to Eastern Ave or Airport.
But indicating that on a diagram like this would've been, I think, either confusing or distracting. The kind of visual language needed to indicate that extended interlining doesn't really exist; I've done the "parallel lines trick" with the Green & Gold between Boylston and North Station, but I feel that's the exception that proves the rule -- the only reason that doesn't look overwhelming is because it's in the core of the map. To do similar in Chelsea would've required making that corner of the map much busier.
The thing is... having now thought about it for the purposes of the map, I'm also now rethinking whether the interlining really makes sense in the first place. I do think there are benefits to the approach mapped out here, which I hadn't considered before. Forcing myself to approach that part of the network from this new perspective elicited new insights, and I think that's cool.
Regarding the Green Line Reconfiguration topology and colors: this is one of the major differences between my map and @Teban54's -- I've used two colors and he used four, and we didn't even use Gold for the same purposes! For his map, I think the extra colors make sense for the details he wanted to convey, but in mine, again there was some pressure toward simplification. I disliked the idea of a long set of parallel lines along Huntington, but then I realized that I could bring the two Nubian branches into the Green Line, and that would allow me to simplify things down to these two colors.
Again, this is where the diagramming process was helpful: I'd previously thought that the Nubian lines needed to be the same color as the Huntington lines, because they'd all be using the same outer tracks at Boylston + Park. And if this system ever gets built, then it may well be that the wayfinding will be much clearer if that separation is maintained. But from the perspective of a fantasy map, drawn decades ahead of this thing ever being real, the visual clarity is more valuable.
This simplification also avoids needing to hash out exactly which branches will short-turn where -- I've basically assumed that the B & C will turn at Park/Gov't Ctr, the F at Gov't Ctr/North Station, and the G all the way at North Station -- but that seemed more complicated to visualize than it's worth. It also would suggest a greater level of confidence and/or rigidity than I actually have on this particular points.
Finally, the background: originally I designed this with a white or off-white background. The problem is that several of the new colors I wanted to introduce, most particularly the Gold, had very poor contrast against a light background. So I took a cue from Montreal's map (which has lines of similar color) and experimented with a dark background. The existing colors do indeed slightly poorer against the dark background, but I think are still workable. And the new colors work much better. So I decided to lean into it as a stylistic choice.
Services list:
1 (orange): Oak Grove - Millennium Park
OLX thru West Roxbury
Infills at River's Edge and Edgeworth
2 (blue): Lynn - West Station
BLX to Lynn
Riverbank Subway
Comm Ave + Mass Pike Subway to West Station (provisioned for further extension to Newton Corner, or perhaps Watertown)
Not shown are other routes that operate within this BRT infrastructure, including from Charlestown, Woodlawn, potentially Revere Broadway, and City Point
If you wanted to read this as indicating an LRT line, I would not object
B (green): Boston College - downtown
Plus-one to BC campus
Commonwealth Subway
C (green): Cleveland Circle - downtown
I think this literally might be the only line with no changes
D (gold): Riverside - Porter
Porter extension with infill
D-E reroute
E (gold): Hyde Sq - Mystic Valley
Plus-one to the Route 16 stop
Plus-one to Hyde Square
Where is the portal into the Huntington Subway? Take your pick
F (green): MLK - downtown via Washington
Green Line conversion
Plus-two to MLK Blvd
Some stop consolidation on Washington
G (green): Nubian - North Station via BU Medical Center
Uses a subway/el/something along I-93 (ish) for a speedy ride into downtown
H (pink): Harvard - Ruggles
Dedicated ROW (mostly at surface level) through Allston
Hops between Comm Ave and The Fens somehow -- several options there
Realistically this would need to run to Mystic Mall to use the turnaround there, but simplification prevailed
I think that's all of them!
I'll also note, as I put it in my technical statement accompanying my submission: A small number of stations have been renamed on this map, for ease of wayfinding and to celebrate a fuller array of figures from Boston’s rich history.
Finally, I took my Transportation Dreams submission and gave it a spin to see how it would do with the current system. Overall, not bad, though it definitely cannot handle the key bus routes, and some of the walking transfers included on the map above would look a bit wonky.
(And the Silver Line loops, oh why oh why, always the bane of any T map...)
In particular, it looks like me like you've dropped several higher-ridership stops in favor of lower-ridership stops located in between higher ones (e.g. Englewood Ave and Tappan St being consolidated to Dean Rd). More recent data is available through the MBTA Blue Book portal but I still find the PDF version from 2014 to be a useful quick reference.
