F-Line to Dudley
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To clarify: the ghost ramp was originally part-and-parcel part of the GLX carhouse design, allowing trains going in/out-of-service at North Station or Lechmere to proceed straight on to the carhouse. Being *both* in and out directions for non-revenue to Lechmere was the reason it was designed for 2-track width and partial flat-junction. That primary objective just happened to be serendipitously compatible with future revenue-service branching off Lechmere to run to Sullivan and Chelsea as the Urban Ring NE quadrant...but the original intention was simply straightforward non-revenue moves. S.T.E.P. scrutinized it and made sure that it got baked in at double-track width and didn't get VE'd down to single-only late in the game to salt over the UR, but that's about the entire extent of the "future-proofing" consideration afforded. The UR, to this day, has not been advanced anywhere beyond the Major Investment Study that was conducted 16 years ago and was itself indecisive about what mode the full-build thing was even going to be (that of course being from the height of the BRT-overhype era). A lot more prelim work--starting with study refresh of the aging MIS data--is needed before we're anywhere close to shovel-ready there. Somewhat easier grab-n'-go would be just +1'ing the trolley from the carhouse to Sullivan and grabbing formerly North Station-terminating C trains to end there in revenue service instead...worrying about the grander trans-Mystic crossing way later. That might become a greater point of advocacy after Sullivan Sq. is redevved and traffic-calmed to support new job centers there. But right this second that isn't front-burner...so it's all just "happens-to-be" plug-compatible.
The ramp design stayed put while the Brickbottom NIMBY's bickered for years with the T over the carhouse siting. As-designed the flyovers could fit any of three different parcels they were haggling to park the yard on, and that was the driving factor that sort of contoured it to having built-in "anywhere to anywhere" routing flexibility. It was very late in the game before they had any consensus which slab of land on which side of the neighborhood that yard was actually going to sit. Late in design when the ops plan was finalized the ramp started looking less and less like it was going to get lots of regular use, as shift changes proved easier to stage at the ends of the branches rather than cutting revenue runs short at NS or Lechmere. And when the final carhouse parcel selection got locked in, it freed up some strips of land on the East Somerville Station approach, which allowed them to cheaply tri-track the first segment of Medford Branch with a pocket track before the to/from-Medford yard lead forked off. When Baker threatened to kill the whole project over the cost overruns, they figured that instead of shuffling a handful of trains per day direct from Lechmere they could save some easy-grab construction $$$ reversing out of the way on the East Somerville pocket...and that was deemed "good enough" for ops to VE out the ramp and net the savings. But the ramp was already designed, so they simply chopped it off at an "Evil Knievel" stub rather than slimming the whole profile of it down to just the single-track Union outbound flyover. That was simply straightest-line means of cutting the surplus-to-requirement without squandering additional cost chew on a change order to redesign the ramp, so they left it alone. It also conveniently kept S.T.E.P. off their backs because the Urban Ring plug-compatibility was still provisioned and sleeping dogs could be left alone.
I wouldn't say a lot of hard and/or visionary work was put into the UR provisioning by any stretch. They had enough on their plates just getting this project to shovel-ready, and fighting off the hysterical Brickbottom NIMBY's on the slab of land for the yard. It was mainly just a happenstance to how the design progressed through the years and what allowances they had to build in because of the years of siting uncertainty about where the VMT facility was going to get plunked. S.T.E.P. merely happened to be *just* persistent and annoying enough at demanding written proof--same as they were browbeating for assurances that Union-Porter future extension is fully provisioned off the Union Sq. Station stub--to make sure no one at MassDOT pulled a fast one ratfucking the design at the last minute on pure malice. That's about it. The rest was all following path-of-least-resistance.
