Every train will stop at every stop. There is really no operational reason to prohibit grade crossing. The safety risk is less than minimal. There's just this mantra that grade crossings must always be avoided.
Tangentially related. I happened to be looking at a random, tiny, commuter rail station in NJ with low platforms and two tracks. It has a pedestrian underpass. Turns out, it was 1930's stimulus bloat! So it's not a new phenomenon.
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"Operational reasons" have nothing to do with it. It's entirely a legal matter. Massachusetts has the toughest state-level accessibility regs in the nation, and that was by Legislative fiat 15 years ago to toughen the Mass Architectural Board's oversight. The T has no say in any of this. Operational demerits don't matter. The M.A.B. follows the strictest above-and-beyond accessibility standards, and tends to rule on the severe end for upholding them when waivering or loopholage is brought up. The only way to adjust the regs if they're out-of-balance is through subsequent Legislative action, with the caveat that the SJC is likely to strike down any loosening done transparently for shortcutting's sake because there's now 15 years of affirmed legal precedent. If there's something inherently over-draconian and unfair (i.e.
inhibits aggregate accessibility via too high/perfect a target for building in some exceptional cases) that's one legit cause for corrective Legislation. But if it's simply running through a bill to means-to-end loosen for making the state's budgeting life easier...the SJC is going to tell them to pound sand. MassDOT ultra- slow-walking the budgeting for accessibility isn't legally going to pass muster. So right then and there the 'practicality' argument is sidelined and relegated to a bunch of alternate universe what-ifs. We can't what-if the M.A.B.; it is what it is.
Now, since LRT is the biggest 'superset' of all modes in running conditions it's already been established that there's no legally possible one-size-fits-all policy because "rules of the road" auto-preempt in any mixed-traffic situation (incl. any dedicated ROW's that have individual street grade crossings, like Mattapan or would-be's like a Needham Branch off the D). And indeed on GLX there are new-construction track crossings...which shocks me because I thought the M.A.B. would be going unilaterally severe on that for prepayment stations, but apparently not. So clearly there is more than one-size-fits-all leeway being applied at the top level and the what-if's are already more nuanced and thus we can't be debating this as if it truly is all-or-nothing. I'd like to know more about how they ruled the way they did because it can inform future projects, but it's clear some forms of LRT station track crossings are indeed A-OK for the toughest accessibility regs in the country so that much is settled.
Now, in terms of whether there should be
more track crossings on GLX as a cost saver...I dunno, the evidence really isn't there for that. These are nearly all pit or embankment stations, relatively high percentage of island platforms for fitting in the pit or on the embankment, and Community Path is way up high above the pit where it co-runs so the side access isn't applicable in most cases. Configuration-wise you're not doing most of these stations as anything other than physical vertical-access, with no consequential cost-saving potential for additional track crossings. But it also needs to be duly noted that where this project
was audited for lethal cost blowouts, state-level accessibility regs had almost nothing to do with where costs were sailing. Contractor corruption and all-world wretched project management oversight were the main culprits. The rebooted design, even where it shrunk down some of the station excess, really didn't change the baseline accessibility because the up/down physical access was what it was. The redesign required zero change requests to the M.A.B.
Systemwide I don't think you can point to too many troubled projects where accessibility got fingered as the main reason for a cost blowout. For example, the violently rejected plan for ADA'ing Waverley Station on the Fitchburg Line--with its farcial eleventy switchback ramps into the sky--was literally a combo of the state trying to sandbag closure of Belmont+Waverley in favor of a midpoint-combo parking sink station on Route 60, plus hiring the most incompetent design vendor imaginable who misread the linear project limits so badly that they went all-in on the absolute worst possible design. It ended predictably: state getting shamed into copping to the tankapalooza, and the design vendor getting fired. While the lack of further action is a different sort of bureaucratic problem, adherence to the M.A.B. had nothing to do with such a pants-on-head stoopid design being pursued in the first place as there were literally a half-dozen cheaper/lower-profile and arguably less self-mockery means of achieving same rote accessibility. Similarly, the absolute tortured process with Winchester Ctr. Station rebuild has little to do with accessibility (only mild re-grading of the existing ramps required to square up/down access) and rather lax project management continuing to uncover more structural deficiencies with the viaduct very late into the game coupled with needy community input (where too much additional community input has been needed because they keep having to go to the well). The lessons with those are much simpler: "Tighten your project mgt. the fuck up". The
potential for above-and-beyond accessibility touches turning into
actual source of blowouts largely hasn't manifested itself.
So it's not like the T--which would have to direct-lobby the Legislature to have any choice on the matter in the first place (which I'm pretty sure the charter places limits on)--has evidence to point to that the M.A.B.'s onerous accessibility interpretations are bleeding them dry. Their bosses not honestly funding a comprehensive accessibility closeout like they mean it is the problem. Rampant self-owns on project management oversight is the problem. But the regs themselves? It's tracking more like fixed-cost of doing business than any major exploit waiting to upend them, so the
potential for that being an inefficiency has to be duly graded on a steep curve. It's not paralyzing them at all. Shit, they're year-in/year-out lapping the MTA in pace of new accessibility projects and New York doesn't have anything close to the M.A.B.'s toothiness above fed regs, so the national evidence for MA's toughest-in-nation regs tying one hand behind back is also severely lacking.
