General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

The needham heights line could just get a 3rd rail installed and a new connection to the mainline orange tracks and put into service correct? With platform amendments obviously.

Also is there enough time between trains that run up the fairmount line vs the back bay where you could just go through the back bay instead and electrify the whole fairmount line throwing on whatever cars you choose and ending at readville? You would obviously have to separate the tracks from all others at the rail yards, but it may be doable? Maybe just tunnel from newmarket to broadway and connect to the red?
 
Let a branch off the D Line handle most of the Needham Line service, not Orange Line. But preserve the CR to Needham Jct and continue out to Millis, Medfield,or wherever.
 
whighlander said:
CEO -- F-Line -- This is what is called a Gedanken Experiment -- i.e. conceptual -- of course without modifications you can't drive a Ferrari that runs at the Grand Prix of Monaco

on Boylston St. -- for one -- it has no headlights

The point about the "run on commuter rail tracks" is that as opposed to the other T Line options -- the Green Line is too low, the others are large and run only with third rail -- the Blue Line has height above the ground, is compact because it was forced to fit a tunnel designed for trolleys and can use a pantograph
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Did you read a single thing I said? Weight differential, weight differential, weight differential.


  • A Green Line Type 8 weighs 87,000 lbs. (<-- morbidly obese for an LRV!)
  • The new Orange Line cars weigh 110,000 lbs.
  • The new Red Line cars weigh 125,000 lbs.
  • A freight car weighs 263,000 lbs. 286,000 lbs. allowed on most heavier-rated lines (including the NEC from Mansfield to Bronx, NY), and 312,000 lb. rating on the Worcester Line Albany to Allston. One single freight car (never mind the locomotive and all the other cars lashed-up into a train) can and usually does weigh more than a 4-car Green Line train, and two 312K freight cars by their lonesome can weigh as much as a 6-car Orange train.
Laws of physics...how do they work??? I already mentioned the signal system isn't going to save you at 9 MPH inside yard limits, because no amount of Jetsons Shit automation can make for 100.000% non-human controlled yard shunting that doesn't eat up so much extra time it chokes off the car supply to the trains that should be running. A 9 MPH sideswipe between a 1200-ton freight consist making a reverse move onto the Franklin Line connector out of Readville and a 6-car, 330-ton consist of miracle-solvent everymode passenger train pulling into Readville station is going to kill several dozen people. A friggin' single loaded freight car left parked all by its lonesome is an instantaneous fatality event in a rear-ender. This is not hard stuff to figure out. FRA end- buff strength regs are stupid and retrograde compared to more progressive regs that account for aggregate crashworthiness...but physics is still the law of the universe. You cannot--anywhere in the world--toss aside the weight differential of what's sharing the ROW any more than driverless cars can coexist on an icy SE Expressway morning commute with this thing:

2012_0731-Cat797_06.jpg


It can't be made 100.000000% fail-safe, because the weight differential is as extreme as it is.


The mainline rail network is a common carrier. And it's gonna stay that way because North America's a pretty goddamn big continent to move goods across and we probably don't want to crash 3 countries' economies by banning freight trains in a 50-mile radius of the cities where those goods need to go. Euroland agrees with that, so any transpo blogger who omits the existence of a pretty goddamn massive metro vs. mainline weight differential over there is smelling his own dogma farts. If it were possible to stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night and Jetsons Shit a way around this on common carrier mainline rail, it would've been done 30 years ago by one of our intrepid first-world rail Euro pals.

Sorry...the Innovation Economy™ is not going to cook up some Disruptive Innovation™ that Changes Everything™ tomorrow. That's not how continental transpo common carriers work...not in the 20th century, not 2000 years ago on a Roman wagonway.
 
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stick n move said:
I was just saying orange because the heavy gauge rails are already there.
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Orange to West Roxbury, Green to Needham Heights. That's been a settled argument for 70 years:

1024px-1945_BERy_extensions_map.jpg



Millis is never happening because Dover was rebelling against commuter rail when the commuter rail was still running, and has only gotten more hysterically NIMBY in the decades since. Millis-proper and Medfield can recover the knife wound almost as effectively by running a Route 27 shuttle bus to Walpole station and doubling Franklin frequencies to Walpole by building the Foxboro spur. With that happening in 5 years for 8 figures instead of 50-or-never in 8 figures worth of PDF studies. Not the worst outcome in the world for them.

The NEC is too choked to allow a branch schedule worth its salt to Forest Hills, so the outer neighborhoods are forever consigned to the Needham schedule as it is now regardless of what happens--truncation or extension--at Needham Jct. There's only one way around that chokehold: trade modes. Heavy rail on the grade separated east-west ROW directly fed by a heavy rail line. Light rail on the not grade separated/hard to grade separate north-south ROW directly fed by a light rail line.

Anything other than following in Captain Obvious's footsteps is a waste of mental energy here. The complete solution to the transit issues here has been agreed-upon since before our troops all came home from the Pacific Theatre.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Did you read a single thing I said? Weight differential, weight differential, weight differential.


  • A Green Line Type 8 weighs 87,000 lbs. (<-- morbidly obese for an LRV!)
  • The new Orange Line cars weigh 110,000 lbs.
  • The new Red Line cars weigh 125,000 lbs.
  • A freight car weighs 263,000 lbs. 286,000 lbs. allowed on most heavier-rated lines (including the NEC from Mansfield to Bronx, NY), and 312,000 lb. rating on the Worcester Line Albany to Allston. One single freight car (never mind the locomotive and all the other cars lashed-up into a train) can and usually does weigh more than a 4-car Green Line train, and two 312K freight cars by their lonesome can weigh as much as a 6-car Orange train.

It can't be made 100.000000% fail-safe, because the weight differential is as extreme as it is.



Sorry...the Innovation Economy™ is not going to cook up some Disruptive Innovation™ that Changes Everything™ tomorrow. That's not how continental transpo common carriers work...not in the 20th century, not 2000 years ago on a Roman wagonway.
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F-Line -- Of course you have a valid point with respect to weight -- in particular "interacting with freights" -- No argument there

Still there are unused ROW's [unfortunately many only one track] where such a solution could contribute and measure the demand for more permanent "digging-based" rail expansion]

Specifically I was thinking about the unused track going to South Boston from near Widett Circle and Broadway and passing by the BCEC and ending up near Black Falcon. There are some parts where most of the ROW is gone -- but there are other parts where its still 2 tracks wide

Since "UltraBlue" is only as long as two mated Blue Line cars -- the platforms can be short and yet fully ADA compliant

There are probably other similar ROW's where there will never again be be freight trains where the FRA can go to hell in a handbasket

BY the way -- Yes the Innovation Economy is going to keep changing everything -- and for those wedded to the ideas from the "Age of Steam" that you need to connect everything together and pull it from the front stopping and starting at every way point along your trip -- well take a lesson from Telecommunications -- its called "Packet Networks" -- 802..... -- aka WiFi in common parlance
 
Trains don't have the option of just being resent if something happens to them in transit though. Unlike Wifi, the loss of a train 'packet' is unacceptable.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Orange to West Roxbury, Green to Needham Heights. That's been a settled argument for 70 years:

[I
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The 1966 PMT changed the master plan to include Orange Line to Needham
https://archive.org/stream/comprehensivedev00mass#page/n75/mode/2up/search/needham

The 1969 PMT continued with plans for Orange Line to Needham
https://archive.org/stream/revisedprogramfo00mass#page/7/mode/2up

The 1978 PMT (not archived) continued with plans for Orange Line to Needham

The 1994 PMT (not archived) anticipated improvements to Needham Commuter rail service as a possible long-term expansion and no longer mentioned an Orange Line extension.

The 2003 PMT reviewed the potential both for an Orange Line extension to Needham and a Green Line branch to Needham. The first master plan to seriously consider a Green Line branch since the 1940s.
https://web.archive.org/web/20050213093559/http://www.ctps.org/bostonmpo/pmt/pmt.htm

The 2010 PMT mentions the possibility of a Green Line branch to Needham, but also looks at double-tracking opportunities on the Needham commuter rail line
http://www.ctps.org/data/pdf/studies/transit/pmt/PMT_Ch6.pdf

What will the next PMT consider?
https://www.massdot.state.ma.us/focus40/Home.aspx
 
Scalziand said:
Trains don't have the option of just being resent if something happens to them in transit though. Unlike Wifi, the loss of a train 'packet' is unacceptable.
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Scalziand -- Well Not Really -- of course the "packet" is not going to vanish -- yet we here daily about such and such service temporarily replaced by buses

The key point is that it makes no sense whatsoever to haul 10 empty cars in a reverse commute if only one car will be needed

That was one of the great benefits of taking the Downeast from Woburn to UNH when I was teaching some courses there -- there never was a shortage of seats to spread out my papers and lap top and still have room for my coffee and breakfast

Occasionally on the trip home from Durham a lot of seats were taken and once there was a near capacity crowd wearing Celtic Green heading in for a basketball game
 
whighlander said:
F-Line -- Of course you have a valid point with respect to weight -- in particular "interacting with freights" -- No argument there

Still there are unused ROW's [unfortunately many only one track] where such a solution could contribute and measure the demand for more permanent "digging-based" rail expansion]

Specifically I was thinking about the unused track going to South Boston from near Widett Circle and Broadway and passing by the BCEC and ending up near Black Falcon. There are some parts where most of the ROW is gone -- but there are other parts where its still 2 tracks wide
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Accessing that track requires cutting clear across the Amtrak and T yards while switching activity is going on all day. That thing I said about weight differential inside a yard at <10 MPH: smoosh. This is the single most dangerous spot on the whole system for weight differential causing catastrophic damage.

Also, Track 61 is still on the common carrier network. CSX serves the cold storage warehouse inside of Widett Circle and has active freight rights to the port...to be used anew when Massport builds the rail spur to Marine Terminal.

Engage a common carrier, play by the common carrier's rules.
 
tysmith95 said:
The MBTA could privatize its bus driver labor and maintenance labor in order to save money. The MBTA is the fourth out of the country's 344 bus systems in maintenance costs per mile. The Boston Herald also states that T bus drivers are the highest paid in the country at $35.86 (gasp) an hour.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/20...bs/FGgShhgOEfydZTBosD96HJ/story.html#comments

I agree with the Baker administration on this. Lets hope that he also supports more expansion and improved services along with cost cutting.
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^I also support expansion/improvements/cost cutting. But does anyone really believe that outsourcing the drivers and maintenance labor will accomplish this? I would love to believe this will happen, but as we usually see these days, the "cost savings" will probably translate into huge bonuses for those at the top, and not much else.....But maybe not...Baker does seem genuine as he strives to make the T better for all of us.
I want to see hard numbers, as in: A:We outsource X number of jobs, which translates to X numbers of dollars saved, then, B:The newfound "wealth" will be used for:(name each project to be improved)


We deserve to have a modern, efficient transit system.
 
A bus system is considerably easier to privatize than rail. It naturally invites competition. There are places where bus service has been successfully privatized and bus networks were originally private in many places.

One method of doing it is to sell to sets of geographically proximate routes to separate operators. Let more efficient operators take on more routes up to a certain point. The key is to keep some set of gov't run routes to pick up the slack in case any operator goes out of business. Similarly, you prevent one operator from monopolizing the system. This kind of scheme can have the benefits of market driven competition without the usual drawbacks of privatization of monopolistic municipal services, which, frequently is a disaster.
 
curcuas said:
A bus system is considerably easier to privatize than rail. It naturally invites competition. There are places where bus service has been successfully privatized and bus networks were originally private in many places.

One method of doing it is to sell to sets of geographically proximate routes to separate operators. Let more efficient operators take on more routes up to a certain point. The key is to keep some set of gov't run routes to pick up the slack in case any operator goes out of business. Similarly, you prevent one operator from monopolizing the system. This kind of scheme can have the benefits of market driven competition without the usual drawbacks of privatization of monopolistic municipal services, which, frequently is a disaster.
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We all KNOW what bus outsourcing in Massachusetts is going to look like. Just look at our commuter rail crony capitalism mess.
 
JeffDowntown said:
We all KNOW what bus outsourcing in Massachusetts is going to look like. Just look at our commuter rail crony capitalism mess.
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Uh, just look at our actual buses... Paul Revere operates MBTA-numbered (712/713) service in Winthrop via Orient Heights and they don't even accept CharlieCards (but will honor a LinkPass on a CharlieTicket).
 
Does Suffolk Downs station allow pedestrian through access? Or is access over the tracks a paid fare area only?
 
underground said:
Can you cite a major city that's done that?
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Decent results in municipal waste haul privitization which works this way, where each town is a "group of geographically proximate routes" I can't think of a big city that has a mixed private/municipal system, but they must be out there.
 
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