Charlie_mta
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Everett definitely should be the alternative route selected. Revere already has the Blue Line, but Everett has nothing, and is a very densely populated city.
If You Were God/Goddess | Transit & Infrastructure Sandbox
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Teban54
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While Blue Line does enter the City of Revere, most parts of the city are still quite far from the stations.
A bus ride to Everett City Hall takes 7 minutes from Wellington, or 10 minutes from Sullivan. A bus ride to Revere City Hall takes 9 minutes from Wonderland on the shorter 117 bus (10 minutes from Revere Beach factoring in the walking), or 12 minutes on the longer 116. If we're using the city centers as a proxy, I'd say they're about equidistant from existing rapid transit stations, and both are outside the walkshed.
Charlie_mta
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As you say it is close. But, just out of a sense of fairness, social justice, and value to the city's image and economic future, Everett is the choice in my opinion.
kingofsheeba
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Behold! The Mt. Auburn Tunnel. Knock down the Spiral Alewife Garage Entrance that people rarely use and bury it to Soldiers field Road.
What I experienced today on this road was the result of abject policy failures. In short, I was disgusted at how long it took me. No rhyme or reason either. Maybe too many happy locals crossing the street one after another. What should take forty-minutes TOPS from Lowell area took me 1:15. No rhyme or reason. And this stretch was the culprit.
If I ever get that Elon/Zuck money, one of the first things that I’m doing is I’m building this. Because this can’t keep happening. That stretch of Alewife and Soldiers Field is pitiful. There’s no other nice way of putting it.
What I experienced today on this road was the result of abject policy failures. In short, I was disgusted at how long it took me. No rhyme or reason either. Maybe too many happy locals crossing the street one after another. What should take forty-minutes TOPS from Lowell area took me 1:15. No rhyme or reason. And this stretch was the culprit.
If I ever get that Elon/Zuck money, one of the first things that I’m doing is I’m building this. Because this can’t keep happening. That stretch of Alewife and Soldiers Field is pitiful. There’s no other nice way of putting it.
Charlie_mta
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Many years ago, someone posted here on aB a very detailed and elegant tunnel proposal in about the same corridor you show. If anyone here has access to it, I'd love to see it.
kingofsheeba
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Ditto. Send ‘em my way.
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This really sparked my imagination. As I think I've said before, crayoning radial service to Chelsea and Everett creates a really interesting challenge -- even in God Mode -- because it's entirely greenfield. No abandoned ROWs for us to stick to; it's entirely open-ended.
Some individual comments:
Yeah, I tend to think of this as the domain of the Red X. The northside corridor I pairmatch Fairmount with on my crayon maps changes every day, which I think reflects the practical reality that there are pros-and-cons to each mainline corridor, and it will just depend on the eccentricities of the moment.
(These days, I tend to sketch Fairmount <> Waltham due to excess capacity on the Fitchburg Line. But in the past I've also favored Fairmount <> Lynn/Peabody, depending on how high the Fairmount frequencies are.)
That being said... particularly in God Mode, there's no reason why your new northeast tunnel couldn't be built to accommodate mainline vehicles. I mean, the main reason, I think, that you couldn't would be that it puts limitations on the grades you can use (and to a lesser extent how tight you can make your curves). But if you're planning to TBM the whole thing and you're willing to live with deeper stations, then I don't see why not?
This is how I crayon a Congress St subway too, though I think it's worth noting that you could potentially get away with a consolidated State + Post Office Square. Some diagrams:
The current situation (platform positions etc are approximate):
A two station alt, with a Post Office Sq station centered on Franklin St with a southern headhouse at or south of High Street:
A one station alt, with a platform spanning Post Office Square and a southern headhouse around Franklin St; the connections to Devonshire and Milk stations are a bit on the longer side, but still in line with the Winter Street Concourse and the Blue <> southbound Orange connection; the connection to northbound Orange would be the longest, but it would be offset by a connection at Haymarket:
In terms of the southern end of the station, the difference between a Franklin St and High St headhouse is not huge in terms of filling the walkshed gap.
The current gap of 5-min walksheds:
A Franklin St headhouse fills most of the gap:
A High St headhouse only shifts the walkshed slightly (layered on top in reddish-pink):
So there's clearly a tradeoff -- the two station alt definitely provides a better transfer to Blue (although honestly the transfer to Orange isn't much better than the one station alt), but the one station alt would be that much less expensive and ultimately provide faster service.
This is probably a scenario where tunnel depth would impact station placement: if the thing's gonna be buried super deep, then I say we leverage long diagonal escalators to spread out the walkshed as much as possible.
Attachments
[continued]
Three miles from the system center, the radial corridor spacing is generally about 2 miles, but there are cases where it's closer to 1 mile (depending on where you define your corridors to be):
One thing I'll note from the examples above: the spacing between heavy rail corridors tends to be about 3 miles, with light rail corridors interspersed. So I think the question of how many corridors and where they go is impacted in part by the kind of service that is provided -- which brings me to the next point.
First, the 111 -- the closest thing to a blueprint for radial service -- actually adheres pretty close to Route 1:
The biggest deviation is to Cary Square, which doesn't get covered well by a Route 1 alignment -- but I'll note also doesn't get served by a Broadway alignment either.
Now, the first thing to point out here is that the northern half of the 111 runs parallel to Route 1, but does so on a proper city street, as opposed to a highway ROW with that much less accessibility. And this is a good point!
But, at the (very reasonable) three-quarter mile stop spacing you are proposing, a Route 1 alignment would probably only have stations at Woodlawn and Revere Beach Parkway-ish -- both locations where a highway station walkshed would overlap pretty well with the bus route's walkshed (particular with concurrent pedestrian access improvements). The local stops along Garfield and Sagamore Aves aren't gonna be replaced by a rapid transit line either way. (What would happen likely is the 111 getting cut back to a transfer station in Chelsea, a la Dudley in the days of old, which would improve reliability on the route as a feeder service.)
And it's a similar story to the south: after Revere Beach Parkway, you probably aren't going to have any intermediate stops until you hit the commuter rail line (at which point the Route 1 alignment probably provides the best access to the current Bellingham Sq station, and affords a slightly long, but still viable, connection to the Chelsea commuter rail station).
So, yes: much of the Route 1 ROW is located away from density and development. But at key locations along the Route 1 corridor -- the places where you'd put a station -- its access is relatively favorable.
And this is where we come back to what kind of service this is: if it's a Cambridge Subway-style route that is designed to link up transfer stations (e.g. to local routes along Park Ave, Revere Beach Parkway, Washington Ave) at high speeds, then I think the Route 1 alignment is a reasonable contender (and potentially one that could move this proposal out of "God Mode" and into "Crazy Transit Pitch" territory).
If, on the other hand, this is meant to be more of a Blue Line/Green Line-style route, where the radial service itself is providing the "local" service -- akin to the Revere section of the Blue, or the Ashmont Branch -- then I think you're looking at closer stop spacing, and the Broadway routes become more favorable.
If we're in true God Mode, though, I'd suggest an HRT line along the Route 1 corridor, with a pair of LRT lines along each of the Broadways. No idea where I'd connect the LRT lines to the south, but that's an exercise for another day.
Finally: you could also reroute the Orange Line through Everett, and use electrified Regional Rail service to keep modest frequencies to Wellington. You can keep service to both Sullivan and Malden Center, and you can even continue the Orange Line north to Reading if you want. If the Chelsea subway is a Red-X extension, express service to Sullivan + Wellington + Malden Center could be the pair-match for high-frequency Fairmount service.
A rough sketch from last year (where Fairmount service gets divided between Lynn and Malden, but obviously you can play around with that):
Yeah, this is where the fun begins. This is indeed the transit desert, and I think you could argue in favor of multiple radial services through here: from Wellington to Orient Heights is 4 miles; Wellington to Harvard is 3 (which of course is halved by the GLX), while JFK/UMass to Jackson Square is about 2.5. (Even Jackson Square to Harvard -- skipping over multiple radial corridors covered by the Green Line -- is only 3.5 miles.)
Three miles from the system center, the radial corridor spacing is generally about 2 miles, but there are cases where it's closer to 1 mile (depending on where you define your corridors to be):
- JFK/UMass <> Uphams Corner: >1 mile
- Jackson Square <> Huntington Ave/Brookline Village: 1 mile
- Brookline Village <> Packards Corner: 1.5 miles
- Packards Corner <> Harvard: 1.5 miles
- Harvard <> Union Sq: 1 mile
- Harvard <> East Somerville: 1.5 miles
One thing I'll note from the examples above: the spacing between heavy rail corridors tends to be about 3 miles, with light rail corridors interspersed. So I think the question of how many corridors and where they go is impacted in part by the kind of service that is provided -- which brings me to the next point.
I agree that both Broadways make for strong corridor candidates. But I think you may be too quick to dismiss Route 1.
First, the 111 -- the closest thing to a blueprint for radial service -- actually adheres pretty close to Route 1:
The biggest deviation is to Cary Square, which doesn't get covered well by a Route 1 alignment -- but I'll note also doesn't get served by a Broadway alignment either.
Now, the first thing to point out here is that the northern half of the 111 runs parallel to Route 1, but does so on a proper city street, as opposed to a highway ROW with that much less accessibility. And this is a good point!
But, at the (very reasonable) three-quarter mile stop spacing you are proposing, a Route 1 alignment would probably only have stations at Woodlawn and Revere Beach Parkway-ish -- both locations where a highway station walkshed would overlap pretty well with the bus route's walkshed (particular with concurrent pedestrian access improvements). The local stops along Garfield and Sagamore Aves aren't gonna be replaced by a rapid transit line either way. (What would happen likely is the 111 getting cut back to a transfer station in Chelsea, a la Dudley in the days of old, which would improve reliability on the route as a feeder service.)
And it's a similar story to the south: after Revere Beach Parkway, you probably aren't going to have any intermediate stops until you hit the commuter rail line (at which point the Route 1 alignment probably provides the best access to the current Bellingham Sq station, and affords a slightly long, but still viable, connection to the Chelsea commuter rail station).
So, yes: much of the Route 1 ROW is located away from density and development. But at key locations along the Route 1 corridor -- the places where you'd put a station -- its access is relatively favorable.
And this is where we come back to what kind of service this is: if it's a Cambridge Subway-style route that is designed to link up transfer stations (e.g. to local routes along Park Ave, Revere Beach Parkway, Washington Ave) at high speeds, then I think the Route 1 alignment is a reasonable contender (and potentially one that could move this proposal out of "God Mode" and into "Crazy Transit Pitch" territory).
If, on the other hand, this is meant to be more of a Blue Line/Green Line-style route, where the radial service itself is providing the "local" service -- akin to the Revere section of the Blue, or the Ashmont Branch -- then I think you're looking at closer stop spacing, and the Broadway routes become more favorable.
If we're in true God Mode, though, I'd suggest an HRT line along the Route 1 corridor, with a pair of LRT lines along each of the Broadways. No idea where I'd connect the LRT lines to the south, but that's an exercise for another day.
Finally: you could also reroute the Orange Line through Everett, and use electrified Regional Rail service to keep modest frequencies to Wellington. You can keep service to both Sullivan and Malden Center, and you can even continue the Orange Line north to Reading if you want. If the Chelsea subway is a Red-X extension, express service to Sullivan + Wellington + Malden Center could be the pair-match for high-frequency Fairmount service.
A rough sketch from last year (where Fairmount service gets divided between Lynn and Malden, but obviously you can play around with that):
Delvin4519
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Alright, I went back to this map to try to wrap my head around how to interline these routes. So I came up with this extremely messy map showing the minimum number of branches that form each main trunkline on this map.
-1s appear since I used the Park St, Gov't Ctr, North Station terminals for the GL tunnel, and Charles MGH is set as a terminal with a -1 since the Alewife junction hurts my brain if I sent 2 branches up to Davis (the same goes for the GLX so that's why 3 branches end in W Medford instead of Davis; 4 branches feed into the GLX from East Somerville). Silver Line Way is a dead end at South Station.
This map is mostly for running metro/subway level freqencies in the dense inner core. Intercity rail is irrelevant to this map.
The segment between Assembly and Sullivan has the most lines feeding into it. There are at least 6 different routes that need to feed into the trunk minimum in this location. So headways under 6 min on the branches are <1 min in this trunk, 12 min branches = 2 min in the trunk.
Also fascinating how north of Sullivan divides cleanly into 3 branches to Wellington and 3 branches into Everett. There's a lot of service needed on the east side of I-93 north of downtown, that is sorely lacking.
The segment between Tufts Medical and Back Bay has at least 5 branches feeding into it from the southwest.
Would be nice to see if the routings on this map could be optimized (only note is not to add more lines onto this map, use as many existing lines as possible). Through running hurts my brain since one has to decide who has to transfer and who gets the single seat ride, or add more branches to make service patterns cumbersome). Plus, there's folks who can optimize wayyy better than me. Mostly I just wanna have somewhere to put this down with the number of branches in each trunk. I'm sure there might be some junctions in Alewife, Kenmore, South Station, or Sullivan that are redundent and don't really serve a useful purpose, or a branch line in East Boston or Neponset that aren't that valuable, but I wouldn't know which ones are unneeded.
Aprehensive_Words
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@ritchiew's post about the Cape bridges reminded me of a cross-canal rail scheme I doodled a few years back after a weekend trip left me spending way too much time stuck in bridge traffic. This is more for illustrative purposes (for example, it makes liberal use of highway medians and there are a couple points at which I suggest driving trains through the Back 40 of Richie Rich's property, or on an elevated guideway across a corner of conservation land likely visible from multiple mansions) vs a thoroughly thought-out plan, but it lets me raise a couple ideas that I suggest should inform ideas to improve Cape train travel.
- It's not sufficient to think about Hyannis<>Boston. Given the Cape's labor struggles and the seemingly-insatiable appetite to vacation there, we need to think about giving workers car-free mobility options, in addition to tourists.
- .This covers folks in places like New Bedford and Fall River, but also people in Plymouth, Middleboro etc. where you're still close enough to the Cape to drive but home prices aren't nearly so awful if you're making Cape Cod money and not Boston money. The Globe highlighted this earlier in the summer, but the region's resistance to housing development and water quality problems from all those septic tanks means it's going to be wicked hard to build the housing needed in Barnstable, Falmouth, etc.
- The Cape is big enough and local roads narrow enough that a Hyannis-only focus for rail projects, while a great first step, is limited in its ability to create mode-shift even with a beefed-up Cape RTA.
- I don't have a sense of how frequent shipping traffic on the canal is, but IIRC isn't it kept open most the time, only being lowered for scheduled trains? That suggests that it's worth debating the trade-offs between using a Bourne Bridge replacement project to build a combined rail-and-road bridge. Is enabling more frequent and reliable train service on-Cape worth being forced to nuke walk-up stations in downtown Wareham and Bourne, and restrict how you can feed off-Cape train service to Falmouth and Pocasset?
Yeah, that's right. But the bridge goes up and down quickly, and went through a good refurbishing in the early 2000's. The railroad bridge has lots of spare capacity.
F-Line has explained some other problems with getting more trains over the bridge. Sounds like Mass hasn't put up money to maintain the rail bridge, so the ACOE paid the bill and now is being slow about coordinating more rail traffic
Cape Cod Rail, Bridges and Highways
Which is why the abandonment of the line to Woods Hole pains me so much. A train to Hyannis doesn’t give a tourist (or resident) access to much of what the cape has to offer, but a train to the island ferry terminal becomes a much more attractive service by at least an order of magnitude. The...
archboston.com
What you really should be complaining about is that they are spending $2B to upgrade the Sagamore so Billionaries can have an easier time going to and from their third home, while things like the Lynn CR station get ignored.
JeffDowntown
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I am fully supportive of prioritizing the Lynn Commuter Rail station...
But to be fair, the Billionaires do not sit in traffic on the Sagamore Bridge. They take their private jet to Hyannis, P-Town or the Islands. The people who earn a living off of the billionaires' spending while on Cape sit on the bridge.
bigpicture7
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Along with the people in the top-25th to top-5th wealth percentiles choosing to vacation on the cape. Dramatic dichotomies rarely tell the full story, in either direction
JeffDowntown
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True, but also a lot of working class people who work, but cannot afford to live, on the Cape.
F-Line to Dudley
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The problem is getting the trains TO the Canal in the first place. The Old Colony is tapped out because of the Dorchester-Quincy single track, and South Coast Rail Phase I is vulturing all the south-of-Middleboro slots leaving the Cape S.O.L. except for the meager Flyer schedules. There's no give with current conditions. The state is planning to study a double-tracking of the main, but it's already calling that a "megaproject"...which usually means something that at least rounds up to a $B. You have to increase Old Colony capacity enough that the Middleboro Line can see full Regional Rail schedules and spare another branch to the South (and/or build South Coast Rail Phase II to get those trains out of there, which is easily going to be another $2B job).
So Cape trains, while good, are not frictionless by any means even though that particular bridge isn't any constraint.
I continue to find this to be a fascinating exercise. I'm reminded of something I thought of when you posted your first version of this map: the subway tunnels are the original North-South Rail Link. The Highland Branch, the BRB&L, the Old Colony branches, the New Haven to Forest Hills, and maybe to a lesser extent the B&M Western Line to Malden, these were all mainline branches that ran modestly high frequencies and terminated at a stub-end terminal before their conversion to rapid transit enabled through-running. But yeah.
Which to me prompts a question about trunks and branches. Kenmore and JFK/UMass are both about 3 miles-ish from the core, so let's assume for a minute we want dedicated trunklines within that radius to avoid branching. The circumference of a 3-mile radius circle is just under 19 miles. Corridor spacing varies; building a radial route every 3 miles, you get six trunklines, which is similar to what we have today (where the Green and Blue form a pair of "half"-trunk lines, GLX notwithstanding), while at 2 miles you get either nine or ten trunklines, which would require five crosstown subways to pair-match.
Maybe more ramblings on this topic later, but those are some initial thoughts I had.
More thoughts on this whole idea later, but based on the map, the suggestion is to provide additional trains originating from Plymouth (I think on a greenfield ROW?) and Taunton/beyond, which would avoid the capacity constraints you are (rightfully) pointing out.
I feel like there are two distinct but interrelated problems at play here:
- Getting people across the canal
- Getting people around the Cape
But that brings us to the second problem. It's true that there are job concentrations in both Hyannis and Falmouth, but that still leaves a lot of jobs that are heavily dispersed, which makes transit planning that much harder:
This again makes me think about the niche for "suburban light rail", where you can use rail vehicles to get higher capacity and utilize the rail bridge, while still being able to more closely interact with cars and pedestrians for, e.g., limited street-running to provide better access to destinations, and more permissive curve radii.
But that in turn means that you can't reuse the existing rail ROWs (unless you are willing to completely forgo the OSR to Boston as well as any freight access, or unless you manage to do a River Line-style timeshare), at which point we're just talking about building a greenfield light rail network for a region where the density barely exceeds 1,000 people/sq. mi. in all but its densest regions:
Which is what brings me back to an off-Cape PnR + rail shuttle + transfer hub in Bourne. (Could be a good use case for pulse scheduling too.) I like the idea of the shuttle being supplemented by an OSR from Boston via the Cape Flyer, and I think some sort of Cape Codder v2 originating in Taunton or Providence (if not beyond) could be a good thing to add to the mix.
JeffDowntown
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Reminder, your population per square mile does not reflect tourist density in summer months (as far as I know). That would present a very different picture, I suspect.