Green Line Extension to Medford & Union Sq

Are they going to use 3 car trainsets on glx? I would think so as its all grade separated and passing through some equally dense neighborhoods as ol and rl, I cant see how 2 would be enough.
 
stick n move said:
Are they going to use 3 car trainsets on glx? I would think so as its all grade separated and passing through some equally dense neighborhoods as ol and rl, I cant see how 2 would be enough.
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The 'stretched' Type 10's will run as two-car trains at all peak and near-peak service hours...at more or less the length of three-car Type 7/8/9 trains...but have the seating and standee capacity of a four-car Type 7/8/9 train. That should be enough to keep Somerville overgrowth fed for a good long time.

So even at 9:00pm at night way past peak when they're busted down to running singlets for the rest of the night, you'll still be getting as many seats to Medford as today's 100% two-car train rush hour period.
 
Do we know what routes will do Union Square and Medford/Tufts respectively? Iirc, I heard Riverside was going to Union Square; and Heath Street was Medford/Tufts?
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
The 'stretched' Type 10's will run as two-car trains at all peak and near-peak service hours...at more or less the length of three-car Type 7/8/9 trains...but have the seating and standee capacity of a four-car Type 7/8/9 train. That should be enough to keep Somerville overgrowth fed for a good long time.

So even at 9:00pm at night way past peak when they're busted down to running singlets for the rest of the night, you'll still be getting as many seats to Medford as today's 100% two-car train rush hour period.
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The type 10s wont be here when glx opens though so will they run 3 car trainsets at first until the type 10s come?
 
stick n move said:
The type 10s wont be here when glx opens though so will they run 3 car trainsets at first until the type 10s come?
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It won't be that big a lag since they're already beginning to shop around. D and E, which are pair-matched to Medford and Union, are the first two lines that'll have all platforms upgraded for the stretched trains.


With the current roster, you won't see triplets E-Union...might, D-Medford. It all depends on whether the repair line is tolerably low when it opens. Right now they have enough rostered cars with incoming Type 9 deliveries to entertain pushing triplets to the D pretty soon. Maybe even by later this year. But it's unpredictable whether conditions will stay that way by the time GLX opens given how often Type 8's are starting to crap out.


It's not a big deal. Year 1 GLX ridership isn't going to be the complete stampede that Year 5 ridership will be. They still have to revamp the Somerville bus routes around it before trips are aligned in a way that the swells are really going to be storming the gates. And that revamp is not going to be complete for Opening Day because they still have to know the status of Route 16 funding and opening schedule to know every last bus schedule they need to touch.
 
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Wait I thought Medford completely blocked the line going to RT16 anytime soon because of traffic woes. Is it definitely happening just delayed til after the line opens to "Medford/Tufts?"
 
guitarguynboston said:
Wait I thought Medford completely blocked the line going to RT16 anytime soon because of traffic woes. Is it definitely happening just delayed til after the line opens to "Medford/Tufts?"
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Route 16 is the slotted Phase II follow-on. Detached from the main build to College Ave. so project starts are still a TBD dependent on how the rest of the main build keeps to its schedule/budget. It has an initial funding dump and TOD planning involvement from institutional heavies like Tufts, so it's quite a bit firmer than vaporware. They're just waiting to pin a calendar date and final funding backfill on it until after the see how the first year of main-thrust GLX construction handles itself in the wild. You'll probably see final loose ends tied up in some dump of GLT-related news over the next year-plus. First task is picking up the final design review and locking down their build Alternatives: either a cheaper revised at-grade station in the parking lot (that may have to be demolished and rebuilt on the embankment if the line is ever extended) vs. the original one-shot deal embankment station design.

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West Medford is the one that got tossed 13 years ago in the first scoping study. Most of it was not opposition per se but simply a case of it being kind of fugly to stub out the GLX platform across the street from the CR station grade crossing then traffic-managing the pedestrian swells at the grade crossing every 6 minutes. There are very legitimate concerns about ped safety and general awkwardness with that setup. Plus for all its awkwardness it involved extra costs in doubling the width of the Route 16 + Mystic River stone arch bridges, and offsets for outright closing the Canal St. grade crossing.

West Med is one they're better off trying again after they come up with a Lowell Line grade separation plan to sink the 4-track width ROW under Route 60 in a cut. That resolves all the ped flow awkwardness, and the dimensions of such a cut end up more ideal for an LRT station outright eating the more space-intensive CR station.

The hysterical NIMBY opposition in Medford didn't even come from the project area. That was all a bunch of lunatics from Mystic Lakes and the Fells who stormed the town meetings 'Operation Chaos'-style. They were loud and obnoxious, but not all that impactful in the end.
 
guitarguynboston said:
Wait I thought Medford completely blocked the line going to RT16 anytime soon because of traffic woes. Is it definitely happening just delayed til after the line opens to "Medford/Tufts?"
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Route 60 (High Street in West Medford) was the sticking point (as F Line explains, above).

R16 "Mystic Valley" is the Tufts-owned U-Haul site at Boston Ave & Mystic Valley Parkway (and technically in a little peninsula of Somerville) and is funded though 30% design if I remember correctly.
 
Arlington said:
Route 60 (High Street in West Medford) was the sticking point (as F Line explains, above).

R16 "Mystic Valley" is the Tufts-owned U-Haul site at Boston Ave & Mystic Valley Parkway (and technically in a little peninsula of Somerville) and is funded though 30% design if I remember correctly.
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I think there might be an IOU for another funding dump stuffed somewhere in unfinished Legislature business that DeLeo punted to the Jan. session with all the other unresolved transpo stuff after they ran out of time in Dec. But since 16 is a detached phase they only thing they need active monies for right this second is advancing final design from where they last left off. As long as it's committed as a quick follow-on (and it pretty much is) they can keep fishing piecemeal for the rest of the funding package.

Yeah...Medford becomes Somerville again at the corner of Boston Ave. @ Stoughton St., so 16 was never Medford's bag. Very very early on the town thumbs-downed an intermediate stop between College Ave. and 16 at Winthrop St. citing concerns about drop-off traffic in that heavily residential neighborhood and land-taking for a 96 bus turnout at the station when the route makes its boomerang down Winthrop between Boston Ave. and George St. There might've been the faintest whiff of NIMBY'ism in that, but Winthrop St. was always the weakest-ridership and most surplus-to-requirement of the GLX stop roster so it was a take-it-or-leave-it from Day 1. Probably would've been deleted any which way when it came time to reining in the project budget. Station-spacing really isn't all that much off-scale. It's a wee further than average College Ave. to 16, but it would've a wee closer than average College Ave.-Winthrop St.-16. The only tangible after-effect from it is that the 96 is one of the routes they will need to re-draw in some form or another so it's optimally balanced on where it starts meandering off Boston Ave. There's arguments to be made for either cutting out the George St. leg entirely by routing up College Ave. or taking it on a wider sweep of that residential neighborhood up to 16 and back with consolidated Boston Ave. stops on the lengthened segment.
 
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^ Looks like they've finally got the big drain pipes buried on the future CR side, which means they can soon (?) move the CR ops over to permit the real GLX-side work to start.
 
There was no active "site" for excavation, and the was being placed on top of the line near Rogers Foam (which was the original target for the work), so I believe the critical path has advanced.
 
(Asking for a friend 😳) Maybe this has been asked before but, how many billions would it take to complete the Circle Line from Medford/Tufts to Riverside through Arlington/Belmont/Waltham????????
 
shmessy said:
(Asking for a friend 😳) Maybe this has been asked before but, how many billions would it take to complete the Circle Line from Medford/Tufts to Riverside through Arlington/Belmont/Waltham????????
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All of the billions.

I'm going to move this question (or clone it) to the Crazy Transit Pitch thread hashes out continuously (where the other way out to Belmont/Waltham is by extending the GLX from Union to Brandeis via Porter
 
On station naming - as someone who lives close by: the neighborhood is generally more in favor of East Somerville over Brickbottom - East is the neighborhood. Brickbottom is one building, who's residence already have overinflated egos and think they speak for everyone when they do not.
 
Arlington said:
All of the billions.

I'm going to move this question (or clone it) to the Crazy Transit Pitch thread hashes out continuously (where the other way out to Belmont/Waltham is by extending the GLX from Union to Brandeis via Porter
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Evidently my fear/reticence of asking the question for a friend was well-founded :(

Apologies, I was thinking like a European for a moment there......I'll go check out that other thread.
 
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And I think you want the realtors on your side. That puts Lechmere as the "inner belt/Brickbottom" station because it is at least on the right side of the tracks.
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