I-90 Interchange Improvement Project & West Station | Allston

[riptide]

• 1 center express track. No crossing conflicts between locals and expresses.

This brings a two-part question to mind:

1. Why is it sometimes ok to have a center (bi-directional) express track, rather than one express track for each direction? Milford Station is set up the same way, and being in Metro-North territory on the Northeast Corridor, it no doubt handles much more traffic than West Station would. Is it mostly a matter of having universal crossovers right near the station?

2. Since West Station doesn’t seem to have any ROW width constraints that would make a four-track station design wildly more expensive than a three-track design, why choose the bi-directional express track? Why subject yourself to the inbound/outbound schedule dependencies if you don’t have to?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

This brings a two-part question to mind:

1. Why is it sometimes ok to have a center (bi-directional) express track, rather than one express track for each direction? Milford Station is set up the same way, and being in Metro-North territory on the Northeast Corridor, it no doubt handles much more traffic than West Station would. Is it mostly a matter of having universal crossovers right near the station?

2. Since West Station doesn’t seem to have any ROW width constraints that would make a four-track station design wildly more expensive than a three-track design, why choose the bi-directional express track? Why subject yourself to the inbound/outbound schedule dependencies if you don’t have to?

There's not really going to be any inbound/outbound schedule dependencies on an express track that short. Minimum thru-Worcester headways are going to be :30 bi-directional, meaning there will only be an expressing train passing one direction or another every 15 minutes. Amtrak's tippy-top schedules are 8-10 round-trips per day, which interspersed with the thru-Worcesters is likewise too little traffic to saturate a passer that short. The track will get cleared by any movement in less than a minute, so even a sub-5 minute meet wouldn't have any conflicts. The universal crossovers do keep everything nice and elegant, and having the passer in the center keeps the conflicting movements to an absolute minimum.

The reasons for choosing a bi-directional express track instead of two unidirectional express tracks are:

• It's excessive infrastructure for the traffic levels. It's one thing if you're the New Haven Line and you've got 4 contiguous tracks the whole way to mix frequent local and express patterns...eliminates nearly all crossover moves and keeps things running fast from the lack of little performance hits while crossing over. Worcester express and Amtrak service will already need to play a couple sets of crossover games on the Regional Rail service layer cake to hop over the Newton stations on the unexpandable 2-track ROW, so an extra set of crossover moves in Allston is not meaningfully going to slow down inside-128 express service more than it already (not much) is.
• It simplifies the complicated interlockings. The crossovers will already be spanning 4 tracks on the east end for allowing universal movements on/off the Grand Junction and to/from any West platform berth, and will be merging 4 tracks into 3 to the west and shifting the express traffic from the center to the outlying Grand Junction track for passing Boston Landing station. Adding additional complexity to both ends with an extra express track will slow down the trip a little bit further, create lots more maintenance complexity, and drive up cost while ^above^ the traffic levels don't quite merit it. You could *possibly* consider it if the Grand Junction were LRT from Day 1 since that would eliminate half the complexity of the interlockings (even then it would be excessive-to-task), but not while it's already one of the most complex mainline interlockings on the system.
• The extra space is put to better use provisioning for the future LRT island platform and extra LRT track berth, correcting the lack of provisioning in MassDOT's hot-mess plan.
• The Pike is tantalizingly close to being arrow-straight with the compacted works even with the LRT provision left, so it's better all-around to keep the bulb-out to a minimum especially when it doesn't affect rail capacity in any tangible way.

 

[The EGE]

View attachment 60991

View attachment 60992

You physically cannot have a switch next to a high-level platform. Any train making the diverging move (using the orange track) will hit the platform.

A correction: it is physically possible - here's a (rare) example at New York Penn:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/02/Crossover_in_Penn_Station_NY_between_Tracks_9_and_8.jpg

But you have to move the platform edge back, and thus deal with a larger gap, to make it work. Maybe worthwhile in rare cases like Penn Station where you need the flexibility, but absolutely no justification here.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Wait a minute...I wasn't even paying attention to the new renders of the upper level. Somehow those wasteful busways increased in capacity from 6 to 10 simultaneous bus berths in the latest redesign.

Before:

After:

Again....the only buses that are actually going to use that piggish waste of space are 3 private jitneys: a Ruggles/LMA shuttle, a Harvard U. shuttle, and a Kendall shuttle. No MBTA routes (the 64 stays on-street). No general-public boarding...only open to member institution passholders. 3 jitneys that couldn't hope to saturate 6 simultaneous berths with their frequencies now can't hope to saturate 10 simultaneous berths with their frequencies. And the jitney circulation seems to have gotten a little bit worse with the flip of the deck from the east side of Seattle St. to the west.


What are we even doing here???

 

[Tallguy]

The whole point of West Station and Regional Rail is to drive ridership to the rails by creating a reliable, clean, frequent service. Every MBTA train should be stopping, with dedicated ROWs to Harvard and Kendall. This setup is the opposite of that, with provisions for suburban coaches and car access. GJ(at least the part south of Kinney) will never see FRA service. Three tracks, two center platforms should be enough, with provisions for LRT

 

[fatnoah]

Only somewhat related, but does anyone know how well used the CSX yards in Framingham are?

FWIW, it's in the "rumor" category, but there's talk in some more rail-oriented forums of CSX eliminating road freights on the Boston & Albany east of Worcester in favor of a routing north to Clinton, and then to Framingham on the Agricultural Branch. I'm not sure how that would impact yard usage in Framingham, but it does seem like there's lots of room in the CP Yard and "extraneous bus deck" money would probably fund a lot of work in that area.

 

[BeansTheCat]

Again....the only buses that are actually going to use that piggish waste of space are 3 private jitneys: a Ruggles/LMA shuttle, a Harvard U. shuttle, and a Kendall shuttle. No MBTA routes (the 64 stays on-street). No general-public boarding...only open to member institution passholders. 3 jitneys that couldn't hope to saturate 6 simultaneous berths with their frequencies now can't hope to saturate 10 simultaneous berths with their frequencies. And the jitney circulation seems to have gotten a little bit worse with the flip of the deck from the east side of Seattle St. to the west.

Just because there aren't concrete plans to run MBTA busses through here doesn't mean it won't happen. I'd be stunned if the 64 and 66 weren't rerouted through West Station once it's built, and it is well within reason for even the 57 to get diverted. Also, the highway reconfiguration will likely last for generations, especially if the decking plans go through. Who knows what bus demand or service will look like 50 years out, and building some extra capacity now is completely reasonable.

Do I think that's why the bus deck is getting built? No, this is almost certainly being done at the request of Harvard and business groups for their shuttles. Even if MassDOT is doing this for dubious reasons, a broken clock is at least right twice a day. Does that justify 10 berths? Probably not, but it certainly justifies some.

 

[Longfellow]

This came up a year ago. A lot of commenters here are of the opinion that those routes can/should not be rerouted.

 

[Charlie_mta]

Regarding the large size of the proposed bus area at West Station, could it possibly be shared in the future with light rail trains from an LRV converted Grand Junction RR? If for whatever reason an LRV line can't be wedged into the proposed surface trackage and rail station area, this might work.

 

[KCasiglio]

My guess is there's envisioning many private shuttles to Harvard/Kendall areas as well.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

I'd be stunned if the 64 and 66 weren't rerouted through West Station once it's built, and it is well within reason for even the 57 to get diverted.

The 66 was discussed at length over the last decade, and the T concluded that it would be much much too disruptive to divert a Key Route the degree to which it would have to divert to loop at West. The BNRD only reaffirmed that decision. There will never be a 66 stopping there. It's simply too load-bearing as a crosstown route to redraw to that degree, and upgrading it to a Frequent Route means the headway adherence is simply too important to ever risk. The T has pretty stiff standards for OTP on Key Routes and considers it a crisis if a Key Route is not meeting their weekday OTP. They will not be risking the 66's OTP. The 64...much poorer on schedule efficiency, frequency, and on-time performance...was controversial in its own diversion, because it already makes a serpentine route with a Boston Landing diversion and suffers from abysmal OTP overall. But it's something, I guess.

The 57??? That doesn't trace a corridor nearly close enough to West to do a punitive re-route. The 57 is one of the busiest buses on the whole system, and it narrowly avoids disastrous bunching with an OTP that's on-the-button at the minimum standard for Key Routes. That OTP tanks if you try to re-route it on the narrow BU street grid and looping around the block at West. Rest assured they will never consider that.

There are no other T buses within reach to draw here. Not now, and not likely ever. The 64 is it. And the 64 doesn't even use these busways because it has to stay on-street not loop to even have a puncher's chance at meeting its schedule.

Also, the highway reconfiguration will likely last for generations, especially if the decking plans go through. Who knows what bus demand or service will look like 50 years out, and building some extra capacity now is completely reasonable.

No, it's not. Not when the project is literally DROWNING in cost overruns and design decisions that don't fit. The excessive bus berths are just ONE symptom of the chaos that is threatening to tank this project. The whole station is going to need a serious VE'ing at both the upper and lower levels to work at any cost worth paying. When so-called "reasonable" extra capacity is a key contributor to netting a project that can't be built in any form, we all lose. The whole works is teetering on the brink of collapse. To un-teeter it, you must right-size. 10 berths vs. the still-excessive 6 in the previous render is going further in the wrong direction and pushing it ever harder towards collapse. Do we want a station that's usable in our lifetimes? If so, we have to rationalize some of these nonsensical decisions with...sensical-er decisions. Stat!

Do I think that's why the bus deck is getting built? No, this is almost certainly being done at the request of Harvard and business groups for their shuttles. Even if MassDOT is doing this for dubious reasons, a broken clock is at least right twice a day. Does that justify 10 berths? Probably not, but it certainly justifies some.

Harvard and the business groups can feel free to submit their service plans and future growth projections for using all the berths if they are "requesting" so many of them. They have all failed to do so. Based on route profiles of Harvard's other shuttles, the LMA shuttles, and the MIT/Kendall-institution shuttles...the math didn't add up before for 6 simultaneous berths, and that's all the information the state had for guessing at the number of berths. It didn't add up for 6, and it damn sure doesn't add up now for 10. So how many does it truly justify, so we can save this imploding project with a proper VE? Do any of the stakeholders even care enough to say? Doesn't appear so.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

My guess is there's envisioning many private shuttles to Harvard/Kendall areas as well.

It's not "many" private shuttles. It's 3 routes:

• Harvard campus shuttle, for Harvard I.D. holders
• LMA campus shuttle, for Longwood Collective I.D. holders
• Kendall+Lechmere shuttle, for MIT I.D. holders and a so-far unspecified (Charles River TMA???) Kendall biz collective

That's it. The state's project documentation doesn't even attempt to quantify the frequencies of said shuttles, nor quantify any other use of the bus berths like the extremely unlikely event that Mass Pike coach buses would rather stop here in addition to/instead of expanded South Station Bus Terminal. The 6 previous berths and 10 current berths are merely a crayoned wild guess unsupported with evidence.

 

[Tallguy]

It's not "many" private shuttles. It's 3 routes:

• Harvard campus shuttle, for Harvard I.D. holders
• LMA campus shuttle, for Longwood Collective I.D. holders
• Kendall+Lechmere shuttle, for MIT I.D. holders and a so-far unspecified (Charles River TMA???) Kendall biz collective

That's it. The state's project documentation doesn't even attempt to quantify the frequencies of said shuttles, nor quantify any other use of the bus berths like the extremely unlikely event that Mass Pike coach buses would rather stop here in addition to/instead of expanded South Station Bus Terminal. The 6 previous berths and 10 current berths are merely a crayoned wild guess unsupported with evidence.

Shouldn't Lansdowne be the station for LMA shuttle connection?
And Kendall should be LRT(as well as Harvard Sq IMHO)

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

FWIW, it's in the "rumor" category, but there's talk in some more rail-oriented forums of CSX eliminating road freights on the Boston & Albany east of Worcester in favor of a routing north to Clinton, and then to Framingham on the Agricultural Branch. I'm not sure how that would impact yard usage in Framingham, but it does seem like there's lots of room in the CP Yard and "extraneous bus deck" money would probably fund a lot of work in that area.

I wouldn't read too much into that rumor. The CSX employee on RR.net has already walked back the additional rumor that CSX was going to be installing an engine turntable at recently-cleared Barbers Yard in Worcester, so either the sources aren't too reliable or CSX is still brainstorming a bunch of things while simultaneously culling the loopier ideas. He's already sorta backtracked on this with a probably-not-immediately clarification.

It would make very little sense to re-route the Selkirk-Framingham job.

• It doesn't empty the outer Worcester Line of freight. There's still a mandatory daily transfer move from Framingham that backtracks to Westborough Yard to the Grafton & Upton junction, so they don't get to avoid T territory. It's literally one yard-stocker round-trip that would be re-routed via Clinton, not any serious kind of traffic. The employee on RR.net says this is because they want to get out from under having to have cab signals and ACSES PTC leading locomotives on their road jobs, but you can't get anywhere from Framingham without running in T-spec signal territory (this also includes the Portland road jobs that have to trawl the Fitchburg and Haverhill Lines after doing Worcester-Ayer) so they have to stock the properly signal-equipped locos all the same.
• The Worcester Main between Worcester Union and Clinton still has bottlenecks in the form of the shared P&W segment, and everything from the station to Barbers Jct. being 10 MPH yard limits. They're brainstorming ways to get a second track of their own to mostly do what they please apart from P&W, but the most it'll conceivably buy them is 10 MPH on half the current distance.
• The Fitchburg Secondary would need a LOT of work. It would have to be uprated to GOOD condition Class 2 track to make the trip from Selkirk, NY within crew hours. It's teetering on a mix of Class 1 and Class 2 right now. The B&A also has a 315,000 lb. weight rating; the Fitchburg Sec. has a 263,000 lb. weight rating, so there'd need to be a lot of bridge, tie, and rail work...even if they split the difference at a 286,000 lb. uprate. That investment isn't going to amortize for 1 RT that already has a far faster and completely up-to-spec existing lane.
• MassDOT will throw a @#$%-fit at the Route 9 Framingham grade crossing being blocked for minutes on end by 75+ car freights crawling at 15 MPH to/from the nearby yard. And given that they and CSX have to work together on a lot of projects current and future I doubt this is a hill anyone's willing to die on. Yeah, CSX could say "tough nuts...it's our property, we'll do what we want"...but that's probably not a good expenditure of political capital on their part.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Shouldn't Lansdowne be the station for LMA shuttle connection?

Harvard seems to think that the functions of what they build there will have a built-in audience for a one-seat instead of two-seat to the LMA. And that's a reasonable assumption if what they build there indeed does (biotech?), because it's not that long a route and should have decent schedule adherence despite the constipated BU-side grid it has to traverse. Of course, Harvard isn't saying publicly what it wants to build there so that's a problem...but it doesn't mean they don't have an idea privately. I doubt it would have particularly dense frequencies compared to other LMA jitneys like the Harvard Campus-LMA ones, but if the demand projects there it definitely has its place in the mix.

The problem is simply the number of berths. It's a rail station first and foremost, so the jitneys are only bit players in the transit shares. And the Pike coach buses probably aren't players at all. 4 berths...one assigned berth for each jitney + a 'flex' berth to sop up any late-running conflicts...is probably well enough for the frequency profiles of the member-institutions' other jitneys. 4 berths can be done with a whole lot less decking, and probably even on-street instead of on a busway deck. The design is trending badly in the wrong direction from the VE that will net the only buildable station for the money, so the state is simply wanking off harder by digging in further on both levels of this hot-mess of a design. They're totally flailing on the design progression, and getting publicly defensive about it so are bunkering in towards more flailing instead of admitting that the design simply doesn't work. It's a waste of time and money, and the already badly-designed station ends up chewing even more time, money, and "WTF?!?"-unworkable design choices the harder they keep @#$%ing the chicken instead of raising the white flag and starting over with something more sanely laid-out and right-sized for capacity.

 

[CBCArch61]

For all the talk about the busway and bus connections at this location, I completely agree with F-Line that it seems like a giant waste of money. Looking at the T provided map, the 64 is the only one that makes any form of sense and yes, it is gonna be very serpentine to get there. It almost feels like one of the many "looping" bus routes between the D and E Branch of the Green Line wants to straighten out to maybe dead end at West, but again, not really sure any of that makes sense.

The only real reason I would see for including so many bus berths is if the MBTA intends to operate some stops along the Peter Pan/Greyhound services coming out of South Station to serve BU/Harvard directly. Presumably that has been discussed? Even if this service has been discussed I would presume you have two berths for coach/charter buses, possibly two for shuttles (more like one) and only one MBTA Bus stop. So more realistically we are looking at most four berths really being needed. I guess you could get to 6 berths for redundancy purposes, but I have no idea why 10 would be shown. And if the 64 would not turn off the street that removes 1 and/or 2 berths are not required for the MBTA (and their redundant spot) which brings the total berths down to 4 as F-Line stated.

On another note....
Another thing that is driving me nuts about this is the use of two separate off ramps for Seattle Street and Cattle Drive. Is there a massive grade change that I am missing in between these two streets? They connect at the four-way intersection so why not just provide a single collector/distributer road to allow seamless exit/entering of the Pike to the Street grid?

I would go as far as saying to delete the entire "deck" for Cattle Drive and make it a one-way street from the proposed collector up to the first east/west road of the new grid layout. IF there was a direct connector across the train ROW, maybe just a pedestrian/bike connection (straight connection to cycle track on Cattle Drive).

Lastly, can someone fill me in on what this seemingly random curb cut is at the western end of the bus deck? Am I missing something in the slides that would have parking here that this is providing access to?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Lastly, can someone fill me in on what this seemingly random curb cut is at the western end of the bus deck? Am I missing something in the slides that would have parking here that this is providing access to?
View attachment 61163

Looks like it's supposed to be an access road to the layover yard below, given that there appears to be pavement on the ground level continuing from the same trajectory after the deck ends. Though I have no idea how it descends below-deck because there's nothing but station tracks underneath it. It would have to practically drop out of the sky to reach the layover in time. Probably another design FAIL they'll have to revisit with another iteration because it's physically impossible. Endless change orders are a great way for contractors to skim more sweet MassDOT cash, no? Helps also when the state employees overseeing the project have no @#$% idea what they're doing and are choking on the bigness of it all.

 

[Blackbird]

The only real reason I would see for including so many bus berths is if the MBTA intends to operate some stops along the Peter Pan/Greyhound services coming out of South Station to serve BU/Harvard directly.

I’m totally not well-versed on any of this, but this was my first thought on seeing the big busway increase.

Beyond “adding a stop” to serve BU and Harvard, why not have all NYC bus routes originate/terminate at West rather than trekking all the way to South?

Even better (in crazy town) extend the Blue Line to West so it’s a single transfer from regional coach buses at West to Logan.

 

[TheRatmeister]

I’m totally not well-versed on any of this, but this was my first thought on seeing the big busway increase.

Beyond “adding a stop” to serve BU and Harvard, why not have all NYC bus routes originate/terminate at West rather than trekking all the way to South?

Even better (in crazy town) extend the Blue Line to West so it’s a single transfer from regional coach buses at West to Logan.

Coach station on the edge of town is certainly not a new concept, but as long as the South Station bus terminal and highway connection exist downtown, I don't think there's much reason to relocate them. The bus station is built on top of the tracks, so it's not like there's valuable land being wasted by a bus station that could otherwise be highrises.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Beyond “adding a stop” to serve BU and Harvard, why not have all NYC bus routes originate/terminate at West rather than trekking all the way to South?

Because South Station has direct road and transit connections to just about everywhere, including BU and Harvard and including all of the rest of the urban universities not named BU and Harvard. It's the densest connecting node in the whole city with the superset of demand, and that's why the bus station there is expanding instead of the bus companies looking to add edge stops elsewhere in the city. It's a pain in the ass for any bus that's using 93 to get into town to go off-course to serve West, and there's no direct rapid transit connections there. Even with Urban Ring LRT you're further from the nearest line transfers than SS, which matters a lot when carrying luggage. And the bottom-barrel discount carriers are not going to be attracted to West over South on cost savings reasons, either, because the T is still going to charge them a nominal fee to use the busway. Those carriers will continue looking for a random street corner to pick up and discharge for free rather than paying rent at any station berth.

West is not where regional bus riders most need to go. Not as a final destination, and not as an intermediate stop that adds 15 minutes to the trip when they're only 5 minutes from final destination. That's why, despite the 'attraction' of luring some coach buses to West played up during some of the community meetings (though notably not in the last couple years), the state so far has come up with zero supporting evidence that any bus companies would actually use it.

It's just the 3 bit-player jitneys and the non-busway 64. Now and probably forever. The notion that West was going to become some sort of bus mecca was always fatally flawed and unsupported with evidence. It's a potentially significant rail node depending on how it develops around the Urban Rail/Indigo stop and whether the Urban Ring ever gets enacted, and that's fully well and good. But it's never going to be Nubian-on-the-Charles for surface transportation.