Re: Fend Funds for South Station Expansion
F-line, do you think it would be worth it for them to just do an initial base build on the NS link, for example only one portal north and south, and only dig 1 tunnel (2 tracks)?
Just curious if the benefit of the base build would be justifiable relative to cost. I'm sure its possible (even likely) that they just do an initial base build and save the add-ons for later, just wondering if in your opinion they should go all in if they're gonna do it at all (minus central station, which seems dumb and unnecessary).
I think they have to make some serious cuts or punts to surplus-to-requirement stuff for this to have a snowball's chance of advancing. The kitchen sink is just too much all at once, some parts are arguably not needed at all, some parts lose absolutely nothing by being deferred until later, and the growth of service and ridership is going to be on a multi-decade curve that's far from instantaneous.
-- Central Station as envisioned seems defective-by-design, for reasons discussed at length. That's an obvious cut. I would be willing to place bets on that getting a not-recommended rating in the final studies.
-- The extra portals serve such a small % of the CR audience for the very large % of the total project cost that I don't think they'd be able to do those in a monolith. Doing a single NEC+Worcester to NH Main+Western Route+Eastern Route single shot serves all of the following destinations:
* Newburyport/Portsmouth, NH
* Rockport
* Reading
* Lowell/Concord
* Haverhill/Downeaster
* Fitchburg via Lowell and Ayer
* Providence and all NEC Amtrak
* Worcester and all Inland Amtrak
* Needham
* Franklin
* Stoughton/South Coast/Newport
* Middleboro/Cape Cod via Stoughton-Taunton-Middleboro
Simply leaving tunnel cut provisions and deferring the Old Colony/Fairmount lead tunnels and the Fitchburg portal till later only precludes these CR destinations:
* Fairmount
* Greenbush
* Kingston/Plymouth
* Holbrook/Randolph to Bridgewater
* Belmont Ctr. to Littleton
I don't see how the Old Colony and Fitchburg inside 495 float the extra $1B+ up front, especially when Ayer-Wachusett and Middleboro-Cape Cod are accessible on similar schedules by doing expresses down available alt routes. Not having Fairmount kinda sucks, but at $1B does that buy more mobility for the corridor than doing Urban Ring BRT from Dudley down Melnea Cass intersecting with one of those stations, a true Red Line Ashmont-Mattapan extension displacing the trolley, and a generally thicker net of east-west bus transfers and express buses? At a fraction of the total cost? Dorchester and Hyde Park have much more to gain from better intra- and inter-neighborhood transit than they do going one-seat to the northside 'burbs, so I wouldn't get too obsessed with pretty contiguous lines on a map. They can get that later, but they need connections connections connections sooner.
Besides, if you just leave the tunnel cuts in place where the tracks merge absolutely nothing prevents adding these on later when demand justifies appropriating the money for a separate, more easily digestible extension project. The digging for these extra portals is all under no-man's land train tracks @ Southampton Yard and the southwest side of Boston Engine Terminal, so it doesn't require abutter re-engagement, NIMBY fights, or contentious neighborhood debate to build later. If this extra cost burden is the difference between swallowing the base build at all, don't bite off more than the state can possibly chew when the single portals and no Central Station serve 80% or more of the ridership. That's a no-brainer.
-- As for the main tunnel bore, I do think they need to do both caverns (i.e. one footprint underneath I-93, but a thick center wall separating a 2-track tunnel berth from a 2-track tunnel berth) because passing up that opportunity locks them into only 2 tracks forever. But if they really need to squeeze costs they can only lay 2 tracks and leave the other cavern vacant for the time being. Adding the extra track capacity in a completed tunnel shell is fairly trivial. So are adding new platforms to NS and SS later if the station shells are complete. After all, North Station today has 2 expansion platforms that have never been used. It's not going to be saturation thru ridership from Day 1 when the entire region has been oriented for 150 years into halves. 2 tracks is arguably all you're going to need for the first decade until the electrification network starts to fill in more and the demand crests. The surface terminals are not going away...not by a longshot. If they digest the base build then come back in 8-10 years to expand track capacity it'll track fine with growth. And it offers up more time to ponder whether rapid transit on the other half has higher upside (something they didn't study in the initial scoping, but would want to crunch some numbers on for the second go-around). That's another consideration to debate carefully, but not one they necessarily have to decide before they construct the main tunnel and open it for business. No pressure here.
-- Electrification scope. If you read the DEIR they explicitly state that in no way, shape, or form is it feasible to electrify everything from Day 1. They only specced doing the Lowell Line out to Anderson RTC as a base requirement because that would absorb the sharpest increases in volume. Other lines would only need short segments of wire out the portals, and definitely no further than 128. Thru-running will be
heavily dependent on dual-mode push-pull locomotives, simply because there isn't enough time to engineer system-wide electrification. And also no need to with duals being capable, mature technology.
Theoretically it can work just like the Empire Tunnel @ Penn works where the diesel engine gets fired up the very second the train exits the tunnel, meaning the Eastern/Western Routes and Fitchburg can switch modes inside yard limits right outside the portals, Worcester can switch at Back Bay when it diverges from the NEC, all the NEC routes can switch as they peel off the NEC, and Old Colony + Fairmount can just have short lengths of wire ending soon after the portals.
So, basically, electrification priorities can sort themselves wholly on their own merits with few to no outright dependencies on the Link. That helps a lot. There's no need for Transit OCD completism...you can simply have a separate, de-coupled discussion on which ones merit it most. No different than the discussion you can have today about things like electrifying the Fairmount or Worcester. They don't really belong with a Link debate.
