Question for the people who know:
Would it make sense to move the West Medford commuter rail station to Rt.16 (once GLX also gets there) so that people coming in from north on CR can get onto the greenline for points in between here and North Station? Otherwise, CR riders will have to go all the way to north station and then jump on the greenline to double back. I'm sure there are buses but just curious if there are any plans for this.
For a time, of course, the plan was that the GLX would meet the CR at West Medford, but the residents of West Medford of 2005 - 2007 freaked and almost immediately it became clear that it'd get pushed back to (at least) Rt 16, or, indeed, Tufts/College Ave where it will now terminate.
You might say that the GLX got to 80% consensus in favor at College, would have been 50% at Rt 16 and only 35% at West Medford. A lot, though, has changed in 10 years, but a lot more has to change (give it another 10 of inflow of families from Arlington and Somerville)
The other issue was that in the absence of a pro-GLX consensus, the cost of a big new 2-track bridge across the Mystic (or potentially an all-new 4-track) was just way too much $.
The idea is to have a GLX-LowellCR connection *somewhere*, Right? but, so far the best they've been able to do is to float the Lowell Line for DMU conversion (giving W. Medford to Anderson/Woburn rapid-transit style headways), but STILL no GLX connection (it is clearly some kind of "Us" (Car&CR&Express Bus people) vs "Them" (Bus & GL people)
How needed is such a connection? (I like the idea, but is it needed) One place for it is to put a new CR stop at Tufts (by their ball fields) That'd probably get you your connection by 2020 and for less $, rather than wait for GLX to Rt 16.
I think it would make sense to move the West Medford stop to the south side of Rt 60 (it is currently northside) and then connect it by a pedestrian bridge back over the Mystic to the GLX@MVP station. Frankly, when it comes time to build the GLX@MVP, that would be the time to push for a pedestrian bridge.