Silver Hill + Hastings are down to 63 combined riders per day (down from 139 in 2012). I have to believe it makes sense to cut a couple of the
scheduled flag stops from those stations to speed up commutes for the (overwhelming majority of) riders that are passing through. At first glance, it would seem reasonable for trains 414 and 427, for example, to remove the scheduled flag stops at these stations. This could shave a few minutes off of those runs for anyone traveling from the outer stations (Lincoln and beyond).
I think the state has been trying to play eight-dimensional chess with the Weston stops, possibly to their own detriment.
- They want to reconfigure Exit 26 and provide frontage access to MA 117 for the Polaroid development so residential Stow St., Waltham no longer gets slammed with traffic it can't handle. The western tip of the Route 20 rotary is on the Weston side of the city line, so they can tangentially slow that project down.
- All manner of private biz is agitating for that Route 128 Fitchburg Line stop connected to Polaroid via the Central Mass trail overpass and tied into the 70 bus terminus. Such a stop would sit in Weston on the Biogen access road off US 20, and come with an ironclad stipulation that Kendal Green station (whose privately-owned station building makes the platforms unmodifiable for level boarding) be closed. Far too many Operation Chaos vectors there.
- They want the Central Mass trail completed, and Weston was the NIMBY central that's still holding out in a cliffhanger.
My guess is that they don't take any action on Hastings and Silver Hill until they've secured commitments for the 128 stop, which has new urgency now in the RER study. Weston is absolutely petty enough to hold those two nothingburger stops...and Kendal Green...over their heads in a game of chicken. The interchange reconfig is less consequential, but they can certainly piss and moan loudly at that to stir up trouble on the Waltham side of the border.
If Kendal Green gets traded in and Hastings in an outright deletion, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to barter Silver Hill as a keep for hostage releases, as at least that's grade-separated unlike all-world dangerous Hastings and at least can be theoretically ADA'd if its gravel ramps were paved/lit/railing'ed and a 1-car mini-high were installed.
Riverworks is also down to 45 daily riders (from 129 in 2012). Does anyone know why they continue to schedule
28 flag stops at that station? That's an average of less than two passengers per scheduled flag stop. I'd imagine the vast majority of those get next to no utilization at all and add unnecessary complication to operation. On runs where the flag stop is not scheduled, the trip is scheduled to be 1-2 minutes faster. Especially with this being such an inner station, wouldn't it be in nearly everyone's best interest to find the couple round trips with the most passengers and cut every other scheduled flag stop from the schedule?
They're still haggling with the private proposals to open this stop to the public on a trial basis. GE's workforce has certainly stagnated enough to explain the drop, but that apartment developer in front of the station still has big plans for it. The ridership decline for GE should be added impetus for the state to actually consider this trial and the temp ADA waiver for it, as it would give them some actionable data for the future instead of just concern-trolling the proposal in the local papers once every few months and assuming GE would oppose when they haven't actually opposed. Don't forget, that apartment guy still has an offer on the table to build a full-on "Lynnport" ADA station with public egress through his property. There's serious potential here at low price point. If only they would stop stonewalling the public trial with the as-is platform.
West Gloucester now has just 82 daily riders, which appears to be the lowest full-service station in the system. Given that it's on the outer part of the Rockport Line, it doesn't seem like a huge opportunity cost, but it still may make sense to explore which runs could be scheduled to run express between Gloucester and Manchester, if they get next to no ridership presently. Fewer West Gloucester and Riverworks stops to serve a passenger or two (or even not slowing down a bit for the flag stop check only to see there is nobody there) could result in real, measurable time savings for Rockport and Gloucester to Boston commuters.
As long as Beverly keeps clutching Prides Crossing with its cold, dead hands there's never going to be an optimization opportunity here. WG at least is ADA-compliant. Unfortunately Town of Rockport torpedoed any/all opportunity to expand the layover yard, leaving the line artificially over-capacity and presently unable to expand service...which would probably be a better test of the small stops' utilization than more expressing. Also think time savings on the branch are less realistic looking at the (non- Prides) stop roster than all the completely redundant grade crossings on the line, a solid half-dozen of which could be outright closed to curb some speed restrictions. Every town on the branch has fought crossing closures tooth-and-nail for 60 years now. As long as this corridor continues being a NIMBY house of horrors measurable improvements are going to be incremental at best and take outsized effort for their gains. Rockport even screamed bloody murder at full-high platforms, because reasons; I have no doubt Beverly, Manchester, and Gloucester would pull the same.
Newmarket, at 163 daily riders, is real disappointment too. Don't know what else there is to say or do there. South Bay mixed-use development should help. North-South Rail Link would help. Charlie Card use (has this happened yet?) on the Fairmount Line would help.
Frequencies, frequencies, frequencies. Newmarket ain't a pretty destination for TOD yet--that'll take time--but it does have a solid bounty of bus frequencies at or nearby. By all logic its projected ridership should weight a little heavier to transfers, but if that's not happening it's a flagrant sign that Fairmount frequencies are just too useless to matter for any Yellow Line riders.
Ruggles is now the highest ridership CR station, outside of North Station, South Station, and Back Bay. There are now 4,937 daily riders, up from 3,120 in 2012. The
new platform is a key, unheralded project right now. Any proposal to increase service would be a good idea.
Interesting dilemma since Hyde Park has anemic service, the future looks bleak for it because all South Coast Rail-via-Stoughton proposals would drop HP from Stoughton schedules, Providence is overloaded enough as is, and Amtrak can't expand the Forest Hills-Readville NEC to 4 tracks without blowing up/rebuilding HP on an inferior track layout. Since doing due diligence on Fairmount frequencies would effectively replace HP down the street with a superior-service station, it would seem that there's a neat-and-tidy solve here of adding more high-leverage Ruggles runs and not rebuilding HP at all when it's time to expand track capacity (or reanimating the Readville NEC platforms instead).
Salem and Beverly have a combined 7,756 riders. Imagine the ridership if a N-S Rail Link was constructed and the North Shore had a one-seat ride to South Station and Back Bay. In the meantime: more Beverly short-turns for increased frequency? Beverly-Salem-Lynn-Sullivan-North Station Regional Rail? Beverly-Salem-Lynn-North Station DMU/EMU? Electification + Regional Rail? Beverly <-> Waltham service?
This is where the single-track Salem platform hurts, and where gorging on that garage to the exclusion of double-track platforms was short-sighted. RER service levels are going to be hard to swing with platform occupancy blocking the tunnel...even if a Salem State U. infill station to the south allows mildly better staging around the tunnel. They should've done the hillside excavation and retaining walls across from the current platform when they had the opportunity, because as a single tack-on project it's probably going to be twice as expensive than it would've rolled into the whole station package.
Easiest way to address this for Urban Rail is to do a Peabody Branch-side 450 ft. platform, since the turnout is inside the tunnel and would allow for free movements while the mainline platform is occupied. Even as just a single-point construction project that does not include a Peabody Sq. extension that would dramatically increase service levels, and open up access to 3-track North St. freight yard as a mini-layover (Pan Am can be compensated for storage by adding a 2nd-track runaround on the South Peabody Branch). Cheap, ROW space is already provisioned. You'd just have to close the tiny 75-space auxiliary lot to run the full-high across the exit grade crossing.
Note that so long as Swampscott and (TBD, as above) Riverworks/Lynnport had their platforms raised you would have level boarding and be able to use automatic-door railcars on this Salem urban rail route. Beverly Depot's platforms are a considerably bigger P.I.T.A. to raise because of the historic depot building...hardly impossible, but much more expensive than average. And also: Beverly Draw opens to rec boat traffic a lot during the summer because of the yacht clubs on the Bass & Crane Rivers. Not enough to seriously disrupt rail traffic, but there would be a few hiccups in the 15-min. frequency churn of urban rail if that were overlaid with 30-min. regional rail to Rockburyport. Unless more traffic modeling is done around bridge openings it's probably a safer assumption to draw the line on intra-128 service at Salem and/or Peabody and do a cleaner plot of regional rail over the bridge. (Note: Saugus Draw, on the other hand, is much sparser for boat traffic and shouldn't disrupt anything.)
Providence, Attleboro, Mansfield, Route 128, and the Providence Line as a whole continues to serve a huge chunk of the Commuter Rail ridership. Any increased service would be a good use of resources. Electric locos serving a Providence-Mansfield-128-Ruggles-BB-SS Regional Rail would be a great step. DMU/EMU service to 128 would also be awesome and welcome.
NEC would need to be quad-tracked from Forest Hills to 128, and 128 Station turned into twin-island platforms to suit. There's actually room there to add up to 6 platform tracks, a configuration that would only be needed for the NSRL where northside trains would be terminating at Westwood on some pairings.
The RER study considers some Westwood turns, including possible extension of the Fairmount Line to 128. Problem with that is the need to re-engage Amtrak dispatch at Readville on the NEC connector, which has potential to hiccup some 15-min. headways when Amtrak has priority. We won't really know if the modeling adds up there until Amtrak says so. An alternative would be extending to Dedham Corporate instead, since that would stay under unified T dispatch. Only challenges are that the inner Franklin Line is a freight clearance route with mini-high platforms. Dedham Corp. can easily be spread wide with a center passing track (which in turn can be used as a pocket for turnbacks) to go full-high because the adjacent Route 128 bridge is generously wide. But to do the same at Endicott to raise those platforms requires chopping down a swath of trees on the outbound side and potentially enflaming Dedham's notorious NIMBY's. Maybe float a Fairmount-128 trial balloon benchmarking either/or routings, and see how loud they scream???
