Fantasy T maps

A slight (and imperfect) refresh. I do have some problems with this one (in terms of hierachy of transit modes and stops, figuring out the Worcester Line/Riverside mess, etc.) and am working on a much more intensive revamp, which will take... a while.

Edit: Sorry, van, didn't realize how large the file was. This should be better:
b38Dy6i.png
 
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That looks fantastic.
Orange line to Hersey or Needham Jct using 1 track??
Isn't the Northern Avenue Bridge w/ no trains is the next (likely) tragic case.
What about TOD along the Fairmount Line w/ EMU spur to the Seaport?
 
odurandina said:
That looks fantastic.
Orange line to Hersey or Needham Jct using 1 track??
Isn't the Northern Avenue Bridge w/ no trains is the next (likely) tragic case.
What about TOD along the Fairmount Line w/ EMU spur to the Seaport?
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Needham ROW was historically double-track to VFW Parkway. Historically single between VFW and Needham Jct., but that segment (called the Needham Cutoff) was designed with 2-track roadbed and bridge abutments everywhere except the 128 overpass, so it's doable.

Orange probably doesn't have enough demand to cross the swamp past W. Roxbury and chew costs building the extra running miles, though. Needham's local travel orientation is north-south where the Green branch runs. East-west duplication isn't as big a deal as it seems. Nor is a 128 parking sink when the Green Line stop is 1 exit up at Highland Ave. and Dedham Corporate fortified with 15-minute headways is 2 exits down.


NO, NO, NO on Fairmount-Track 61!!! That was already floated like a lead balloon by BCEC flaks, and Dorchester + Hyde Park revolted because they don't want their one-seat redirected somewhere they can't easily transfer to the whole rest of the system. Just...no. Track 61 is not going to become a 'thing' no matter how many times someone tries to jury-rig a routing.


What train line could possibly go on the Northern Ave. Bridge revival? The Silver Line--and future LRT conversion therein--runs underground on the same block. There's no available routes and no available demand for an inferior surface duplication of the Transitway.
 
Downburst said:
A slight (and imperfect) refresh. I do have some problems with this one (in terms of hierachy of transit modes and stops, figuring out the Worcester Line/Riverside mess, etc.) and am working on a much more intensive revamp, which will take... a while.

Edit: Sorry, van, didn't realize how large the file was. This should be better:
b38Dy6i.png
Click to expand...

I'd bring the seaport light rail up to L Street in southie.
 
Downburst said:
A slight (and imperfect) refresh. I do have some problems with this one (in terms of hierachy of transit modes and stops, figuring out the Worcester Line/Riverside mess, etc.) and am working on a much more intensive revamp, which will take... a while.
Click to expand...

In a world with all that, there should be something on the Grand Junction...
 
Downburst said:
A slight (and imperfect) refresh. I do have some problems with this one (in terms of hierachy of transit modes and stops, figuring out the Worcester Line/Riverside mess, etc.) and am working on a much more intensive revamp, which will take... a while.
Click to expand...

DB, are the different shades of green used to increase clarity or indicate a different type of service? (D2, E, F, G vs. B, C, D1)
 
stefalarchitect said:
DB, are the different shades of green used to increase clarity or indicate a different type of service? (D2, E, F, G vs. B, C, D1)
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Not DB, but it looks like Boylston st subway vs Pleasant street incline/Huntington ave.
 
Equilibria said:
In a world with all that, there should be something on the Grand Junction...
Click to expand...

Yes, I'm still figuring out what to do with it. In past editions of the map, I had set up DMU/EMU service along the ROW, but I see light rail as the better option now. I need to figure out how I'm going to represent it (and where to take it) on the map here.

stefalarchitect said:
DB, are the different shades of green used to increase clarity or indicate a different type of service? (D2, E, F, G vs. B, C, D1)
Click to expand...

Clarity. My idea was to differentiate the lines by color based on the "trunk" line they use, similar to the color-coding used in NYC. Lighter green makes use of the Boylston Street tunnel, dark green uses the Tremont Street tunnel. Type of service (light rail) is identical.
 
Charlie_mta said:
Also Blue Line to Kenmore Sq.
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That or Ive seen a good argument for extending blue to mgh then continuing on across the charles to kendall as well seeing that volpe is going to be a massive hole thatd be the perfect time to build a below grade station, turnaround etc... below all the buildings and connecting them all below grade to eachother and the station.
 
stick n move said:
That or Ive seen a good argument for extending blue to mgh then continuing on across the charles to kendall as well seeing that volpe is going to be a massive hole thatd be the perfect time to build a below grade station, turnaround etc... below all the buildings and connecting them all below grade to eachother and the station.
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Yeah, except that Volpe is gonna get blown up and redeveloped way faster than the state could imagine planning a Blue Line river crossing and alignment to the north or west
 
BussesAin'tTrains said:
Yeah, except that Volpe is gonna get blown up and redeveloped way faster than the state could imagine planning a Blue Line river crossing and alignment to the north or west
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Blue to Volpe was Ari Osevit's acid dream. In that blog post he was not listening to any counterarguments whatsoever about degree of difficulty reaching the site in the first place, nor the likelihood that Volpe would be so built out by that point there may be no landing site left to speak of for a station, nor ops critiques that his wastefully real estate intensive loops and supersize underground yards were not in fact necessary to run the service levels...which in our wildest growth dreams for Kendall never needed to approach New York levels. It simply 'had to be so' according to him.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Blue to Volpe was Ari Osevit's acid dream. In that blog post he was not listening to any counterarguments whatsoever about degree of difficulty reaching the site in the first place, nor the likelihood that Volpe would be so built out by that point there may be no landing site left to speak of for a station, nor ops critiques that his wastefully real estate intensive loops and supersize underground yards were not in fact necessary to run the service levels...which in our wildest growth dreams for Kendall never needed to approach New York levels. It simply 'had to be so' according to him.
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There certainly is and will continue to be demand here. The Red Line can't do it all. But every route I've plotted through Kendall and Cambridge has so many problems. I still hate using Grand Junction too (which will most likely end up being a seldom used CR shuttle that will eventually be axed for costing too much). There isn't going to be a cheap and easy way to do this and I'm not sure there exists a plan which is worthy of the high costs.
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
There certainly is and will continue to be demand here. The Red Line can't do it all. But every route I've plotted through Kendall and Cambridge has so many problems. I still hate using Grand Junction too (which will most likely end up being a seldom used CR shuttle that will eventually be axed for costing too much). There isn't going to be a cheap and easy way to do this and I'm not sure there exists a plan which is worthy of the high costs.
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I dunno. An LRT branch on the Grand Junction can pretty much do 7/8ths what Blue to Volpe does at 1/8 the cost. Ari wasn't exactly in a mood for gap analysis as to what was missing there.

Consider also: Blue cars are really small at 35 seats each. 35 x 6 cars = 210 seats. A two-car Type 10 LRT consist is supposed to have the same seating capacity as 4 current Green Line cars. 44 x 2 x 2 = 176 seats. So, yeah...7/8ths the seating capacity on an Urban Ring train vs. the BL-Volpe supermegaultraproject. I've got an idea: 3-car LRV's on the Ring and Central Subway. I bet we could do that for considerably less than the cost of the time machine required to reverse Volpe's redevelopment that blocks any/all tunnel paths, and then the cost of doing a new water-tight Charles and landfill crossing.


What am I missing? If we're that terrified of Kendall overgrowth killing us all and don't think the Urban Ring will save us, shouldn't we be really freaking concerned that the Volpe supermegaultraproject--at one-eighth's difference in capacity (except if 3-car trolleys)--falls cosmically short of delivering comparable value-for-money?
 
That's fine. But will that really handle the Kendall development? Personally I prefer a more Harvard based UR since there you can really siphon off ridership from the Red Line, buying Kendall some time. More costly for sure but also more areas served already with exiting demand. Kendall is so close to Park St that no one would ever take some Green Line branch the long way round. This is really the only good argument for the Blue Line... and probably not worth the cost unless there is some grand plan for a new western line... which I also don't really see the need for.
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
That's fine. But will that really handle the Kendall development? Personally I prefer a more Harvard based UR since there you can really siphon off ridership from the Red Line, buying Kendall some time. More costly for sure but also more areas served already with exiting demand. Kendall is so close to Park St that no one would ever take some Green Line branch the long way round. This is really the only good argument for the Blue Line... and probably not worth the cost unless there is some grand plan for a new western line... which I also don't really see the need for.
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You're got the Harvard spur for connecting the campuses, and you've got the filet options at both the BU and Brickbottom junctions for sending the trains to Kenmore (cross-platform transfer to Longwood for the CT2 crowd), Lechmere-GC for Purple/Orange/Blue, or Sullivan for fewest possible stops to Orange. Then figure that once both the NW quadrant, NE quadrant, and Harvard spur are all complete the mix/match service patterns of alternating routings that keep any one Green Line segment from getting bogged down end up layering the service equivalent of 2 branch schedules--or 3 min. headways--through Kendall at all times. That's a headway equivalent to the Red Line mainline, at a seating capacity that's 7/8ths of a Blue Line.


How much are we overrating Kendall's ceiling here that ^^this^^ kind of service addition--simply for completing a for-real proposed project--somehow isn't enough to stave off nuclear meltdown-level gridlock? I get it...Kendall's going mega. But it's not Midtown Manhattan mega, where any transit solution less than the Lexington Ave. Line is too little too late. There is a growth cap for Kendall, and it won't be higher than the region's basic ability to support it all. Green/UR in all its varied service patterns + an upgraded Red buffeted by Red-Blue, Seaport-Downtown, GLX-Porter load relievers ends up a metric shitton of frequency and capacity. If that doesn't strike anyone as nearly enough, then maybe first move is to double-check "Just how big a Kendall can Cambridge functionally support, anyway?" That upper-bound is not infinite, and definitely not Manhattan-level. If the transit has to be Manhattan-level to not make one queasy, then maybe those practical upper-bounds need to have some firmer numbers hung on them.
 
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