Delvin4519
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99 mainline trains entering the city between 8 and 9 a.m. (doesn't even include trains departing the city).
Seems like it's counting both northbound and southbound side for 99 inbound trains (39 at the north and 55 at the south), and 4 tracks to get from one side of the city to the other, which is pretty close to the maximum of 44 tph through a quad track mainline tunnel. (If the B & RB & L RR was counted on the northside that'd reduce the north-south imbalance to 45-55)
I'm kinda surprised that the Fairmount Line (Midland division), and the B & A each carried 10 tph. Waltham also similarly sees ~ 10 tph, but is split between north and south Waltham. The Eastern RR and Saugus also had 10 tph.
This means Allston-Brighton once had trains every 6 minutes during rush hour, and the decline of the B & A plus the rise of the Mass Pike has left Allston-Brighton with a slow, clunky, dinky bus shuttle that connects to a snail rail tunnel downtown.
Here's my unusual hot take, the B & A subway to Newton Corner isn't a rapid transit extension. The B & A subway is a rapid transit restoration. A restoration of high frequency rapid transit to Allston-Brighton not seen since the early 1900s. This time, with signficantly expanded off peak service and new service to Boston Landing and Beacon Yards that did not exist back then.
I'm also seeing a historical proposal for 160 tph on page 117 (page 132 of the viewer), which is a roughly 60% increase of the levels had at the time.
On another related note, I've also made a handful of changes to the fantasy frequent network map that was initially in the fantasy T maps thread, that accompanies this absurd "mainline rapid transit network" concept (still relies on a huge capacity expansion on top of the 1908 NSRL concept, since it's just that absurd/insane --- so many railroad branches radiating out from a single point or two in downtown, plus the fantasy to send 11-12 tph to all BERy stations and Lynn/Quincy/Waltham). I mostly made it in response to the post in the General MBTA thread that said how "15 minutes isn't good enough, bad by international standards" , and the fact that the Nubian terminal was literally the only terminal without a rapid transit hookup). The maps essentially explore the "transit land grab", "mainline railway ROWs" vs. "surface routes", and the "excess bus running to rapid transit terminals" vs. "cutting buses back to outlying rapid transit terminals" concepts and tinker around with them quite a bit.
Ah yes, the ultimate "ideas so bad they're good" post. It's literally the "transit land grab" era of the time to grab (unclaimed) land to build out rapid transit between 1835 and 1935, whether it's through mainline railroad ROWs or rapid transit tunnels, which is essentially the rapid transit infrastructure we are mostly stuck with today. Places like Brighton Center and Vinnin Square are essentially stuck with local bus connections to connect with rapid transit, since the transit ROWs were never claimed in order to serve areas like these with front door service. (There was a 2nd post from F-line I wanted to quote (something to do with a BLX wild detour from Lynn terminal around Lynn, unrelated to Vinnin Square IIRC) but I can't find it right now, I'll edit this post if I find it again).
Just imagine if a subway was built to Nubian Square instead of an El back in the early 1900s (as my fantasy map was edited to add). Perhaps there would still be rapid transit to Nubian like how Harvard still has its rapid transit today,
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