Infrastructure to Nowhere (The Vestigial Infrastructure Thread)

[393b40]

Here's another (somewhat morbid) one:

I think this one is closet to the intent of this thread so far.

I guess this doesn't really count by being vestigial, but this old connection between Foster St. and Summer St. in Worcester that just kind of...stops. Rather than cut it off at both ends, they cut it off just at Foster, leaving a ramp that no one should ever take: https://goo.gl/maps/YLNJrBk6G26bkATb8

Thread title updated. I think you nailed what this stuff is... it's not abandoned per-se... it's in theory functional... it's vestigial. I think the distinction between vestigial and abandoned can be a little fuzzy at times though.

 

[stick n move]

Electric T has no need other than the occasional Game Night special. Amtrak should find two platforms sufficient. Opinions from the past are based on "feelings" and not data

Im still not convinced either.

 

[Tallguy]

Im still not convinced either.
[/Q
Northside has historically run 25 trainsets vs 38 on the Southside and the ratio should not change that much. Even if every Southside train went into NSRL the two tunnels could handle the traffic, and a number of them are not strong candidates ridershipwise.

 

[StillInTheHood]

Tallguy, the question isn't "are two platforms sufficient if everything is running perfectly on a given day and all of the new infrastructure, north and south, miraculously comes on line on the same day." The question is, "will two platforms be sufficient in a world where a) equipment occasionally breaks and needs to be repaired, and has to be sidelined, hopefully in a place where people can deboard and transfer to other forms of mass transit and b) where track needs to periodically be repaired and fewer riders will be inconvenienced if trains are short-turned, not canceled and c) where all of the build-out that we are talking about is going to come on line in phases and d) where intelligent system operators will demand the flexibility to accommodate potentially different north and south side balances and combinations other than the one that you are hypothesizing, many, many years before any of this gets built.

The real world looks like the latter. You have no idea how infuriating your simple calculator math comes across to a degreed engineer. I gather from past posts that you are connected with TransitMatters, and this has always been the Achilles heel of TransitMatters: absolutely zero allowance in any calculation to address necessary redundancy or prudent flexibility, and zero analysis of contingency plans for all of the many likely failure scenarios. In the real world, if systems were built that way, you'd find that one little glitch causes a cascade effect that messes up ops on every branch, not just one. The question isn't whether there are 25 or 28 or 32 trainsets on the Northside ... the question is, when there's a problem (say an issue in the tunnel) and I NEED to turn a bunch more trains at North Station during rush hour, how am I going to ensure that people aren't stuck on trains for ages as the operators scramble to clear the problem unit? This isn't "feelings," this is the fact that DATA that works perfectly in your static spreadsheet is subject to stochastic variability in real life.

 

[Tallguy]

Tallguy, the question isn't "are two platforms sufficient if everything is running perfectly on a given day and all of the new infrastructure, north and south, miraculously comes on line on the same day." The question is, "will two platforms be sufficient in a world where a) equipment occasionally breaks and needs to be repaired, and has to be sidelined, hopefully in a place where people can deboard and transfer to other forms of mass transit and b) where track needs to periodically be repaired and fewer riders will be inconvenienced if trains are short-turned, not canceled and c) where all of the build-out that we are talking about is going to come on line in phases and d) where intelligent system operators will demand the flexibility to accommodate potentially different north and south side balances and combinations other than the one that you are hypothesizing, many, many years before any of this gets built.

The real world looks like the latter. You have no idea how infuriating your simple calculator math comes across to a degreed engineer. I gather from past posts that you are connected with TransitMatters, and this has always been the Achilles heel of TransitMatters: absolutely zero allowance in any calculation to address necessary redundancy or prudent flexibility, and zero analysis of contingency plans for all of the many likely failure scenarios. In the real world, if systems were built that way, you'd find that one little glitch causes a cascade effect that messes up ops on every branch, not just one. The question isn't whether there are 25 or 28 or 32 trainsets on the Northside ... the question is, when there's a problem (say an issue in the tunnel) and I NEED to turn a bunch more trains at North Station during rush hour, how am I going to ensure that people aren't stuck on trains for ages as the operators scramble to clear the problem unit? This isn't "feelings," this is the fact that DATA that works perfectly in your static spreadsheet is subject to stochastic variability in real life.

Tha Downeaster runs 6x per day. Amtrak (or MBTA diesel service to Concord, were it to happen, would probably be approximately as frequent. How much redundancy do you need? One train per hour needs how many platforms? I don't care if they keep recycling F40s for another 40 years, if 1 in 6 trainsets are catastrophically broken every day, no one would be effected as ridership would drop to nil. And, yes, there may be a problem in one of the tunnels. A four track NSRL should provide sufficient redundancy.
And I m sure TM has no degreed engineers in it's membership. And never works with transportation programs at academic institutions.
And of course, this 1000 per cent redundancy you seem to crave will have no maintenance or opportunity costs. Oh wait, the drawbridge replacements and upgrades alone are costing well north of $.5B. But hey, it's just money.

 

[Tallguy]

And it's too bad we can't compare an NSRL with any other EMU system in Metro Boston that involves tunnels. Oh wait, the Red Line! The OL! The Blue!

 

[jbray]

And it's too bad we can't compare an NSRL with any other EMU system in Metro Boston that involves tunnels. Oh wait, the Red Line! The OL! The Blue!

@Tallguy this is a terrible example to make your point. The double tracking of the rapid transit lines through the city center is almost a daily issue (certainly a weekly one) when the trains break down and service stops until they can clear away the disabled train(s). This issue has been further exacerbated by the deteriorating fleet to the point where track speeds plus train failures have rendered the system unusable for anyone other than the desperate or those so keen on proving that transit can be an alternative that they suffer through it. I don't live in Quincy anymore, but QC to Porter used to average about 40-42 minutes not including branch line wait times and now I'm reading people talking about their commutes from QC to Central or Harvard being an hour to an hour and a half not including the wait times that went up from 8-15 minutes to 30-45 minutes? Untenable. Standard practice has established that redundancy is key for successful transit. Why would we kneecap the future of the N/S link by building more of the same? Especially because we are not talking about the current status quo of trainsets but an expanded one that handles 4 times as many trips per hour. If we want to encourage more people to utilize the northern system, it cannot just be on the back of, "well at least the trains arrive on time despite the fact that there is only about one per hour."

 

[Tallguy]

@Tallguy this is a terrible example to make your point. The double tracking of the repaid transit lines through the city center is almost a daily issue (certainly a weekly one) when the trains break down and service stops until they can clear away the disabled train(s). This issue has been further exacerbated by the deteriorating fleet to the point where track speeds plus train failures have rendered the system unusable for anyone other than the desperate or those so keen on proving that transit can be an alternative that they suffer through it. I don't live in Quincy anymore, but QC to Porter used to average about 40-42 minutes not including branch line wait times and now I'm reading people talking about their commutes from QC to Central or Harvard being an hour to an hour and a half not including the wait times that went up from 8-15 minutes to 30-45 minutes? Untenable. Standard practice has established that redundancy is key for successful transit. Why would we kneecap the future of the N/S link by building more of the same? Especially because we are not talking about the current status quo of trainsets but an expanded one that handles 4 times as many trips per hour. If we want to encourage more people to utilize the northern system, it cannot just be on the back of, "well at least the trains arrive on time despite the fact that there is only about one per hour."

The Three lines ran fine until systematic failure to maintain the infrastructure brought us to now. Using this as your argument is transit Stockholm Syndrome.

 

[Brattle Loop]

The Three lines ran fine until systematic failure to maintain the infrastructure brought us to now. Using this as your argument is transit Stockholm Syndrome.

If by "ran fine" you mean that they had little to no redundancy to handle any of the myriad problems that crop up on transit systems. That things didn't melt down so frequently (and recovered more quickly) when there were more, and more reliable, vehicles in operation doesn't mean that they didn't have sometimes-significant problems. The HRT lines have to live with that lack of redundancy, given the difficulty if not outright impossibility of expanding their infrastructure (particularly in the core), but that is a very different thing from saying we should remove or avoid possible redundancy in a new/expanded system.

If you provided data and analysis rather than snark and sarcasm to explain why and how (to a general audience) your preferred system/level of redundancy is better, rather than simply stating as though it's obvious and anyone who doesn't see it is implicitly wrong and/or stupid, you might wind up actually convincing some of the skeptical.

(Note for the moderators, seems like this discussion is veering in a direction more suited for the NSRL or another thread.)

 

[Riverside]

I agree that this has drifted off-topic and should be moved. I'll reply here just to keep things in one place for now. I want to draw additional attention to this:

And, yes, there may be a problem in one of the tunnels. A four track NSRL should provide sufficient redundancy.

In the latest design, the "four-track NSRL" concept does not provide the redundancy you are describing here. It isn't a NYC Subway-style 4-track tunnel, but rather is essentially a pair of two track tunnels that have a single crossover between them, north of North Station.

Right off the bat, that means that inbound Southside trains will be SOL if there is a blockage in their particular tunnel in the core section -- simply no way for them to access the other tunnel. Northside trains won't be much better off either -- rerouting Tunnel A Northside trains into Tunnel B means that the pairmatched Southside routes need to be able to receive all that extra traffic, which is no guarantee.

(On my skim through the 2003 DEIR, I also did not see reference to the necessary switches/flying junctions at the southern end of the tunnels.)

The "debate" over whether North Station and South Station would still be needed post-NSRL has always seemed like putting the cart before the horse to me. The reality is that NSRL is going to be one piece of a much larger transformation, that will include an almost-certainly gradual electrification of the commuter rail system line by line -- it's not going to be a binary "pre-NSRL"/"post-NSRL" dichotomy. So there will be plenty of time to see how things actually work in practice, at which point we can have an informed conversation about whether North Station Upper is still needed.

(The damn thing is going to be hard enough to get build as is -- we don't need to add more Day 1 requirements to the NSRL, e.g. "needs to be able to replace all terminating traffic at North Station.")

In my dream scenario where the 4 tunnel NSRL is complete, the dead head parking at North Station gives way to a new neighborhood, that rail bridge is open to local traffic and that walkway is an at grade connection from the North End to the Esplanade.
However, as with most of our incomplete infrastructure, right now we have to be content with something suicide inducing.

Going back to this -- this sounds like a pleasant idea. Could it be achieved instead with a modest level of decking over the existing North Station platforms?

 

[Charlie_mta]

Going back to this -- this sounds like a pleasant idea. Could it be achieved instead with a modest level of decking over the existing North Station platforms?

I'd like to see the current pedestrian bridge proposal over the tracks scrapped and replaced with air rights development over the tracks that would include an elevated pedestrian promenade along the river. Also some skyscrapers in the parking lot and Spaulding building area.
North Station is ripe for development similar to the South Station tower and air rights development.

 

[Tallguy]

If by "ran fine" you mean that they had little to no redundancy to handle any of the myriad problems that crop up on transit systems. That things didn't melt down so frequently (and recovered more quickly) when there were more, and more reliable, vehicles in operation doesn't mean that they didn't have sometimes-significant problems. The HRT lines have to live with that lack of redundancy, given the difficulty if not outright impossibility of expanding their infrastructure (particularly in the core), but that is a very different thing from saying we should remove or avoid possible redundancy in a new/expanded system.

If you provided data and analysis rather than snark and sarcasm to explain why and how (to a general audience) your preferred system/level of redundancy is better, rather than simply stating as though it's obvious and anyone who doesn't see it is implicitly wrong and/or stupid, you might wind up actually convincing some of the skeptical.

(Note for the moderators, seems like this discussion is veering in a direction more suited for the NSRL or another thread.)

I have on numerous occasions provided data and analysis on the matter. That doesn't seem to matter to the true believers who "know" that NS will be permanently necessary. The T has spent or proposed to spend upwards of $6B on outdated diesel related infrastructure. When will this madness end? How long will we ignore the examples of the many other systems where they have embraced the 21st century?
And if SSU is designed properly, the two tunnels could be used interchangeably.

 

[Tallguy]

From page 72 of the above referenced study.
"Central Artery Four-Track – This alternative adds
two more tracks to the downtown segment of
the Central Artery Two-Track alternative, with
the existing Fairmount Line tracks descending
into a second 41-foot-diameter bored tunnel,
straightening out directly east of the tunnel from
Back Bay, and serving the same South and North
underground stations (plus an additional Central
Station connecting to the Blue Line at Aquarium).
Connections between the tunnels are at grade,
and flying junctions allow all possible inbound/
outbound origin/destination pairs. This alternative
is similar to the 2003 DEIR’s four-track alternative
and is described in more detail in Section 5.8"

 

[Brattle Loop]

When will this madness end? How long will we ignore the examples of the many other systems where they have embraced the 21st century?

Now that's a question for the state legislature (whose madness, unfortunately, has long proven particularly incurable).

 

[Riverside]

@Tallguy, I'm glad you are willing to provide data and analysis to back up your claims.

I have on numerous occasions provided data and analysis on the matter. That doesn't seem to matter to the true believers who "know" that NS will be permanently necessary. The T has spent or proposed to spend upwards of $6B on outdated diesel related infrastructure. When will this madness end? How long will we ignore the examples of the many other systems where they have embraced the 21st century?
And if SSU is designed properly, the two tunnels could be used interchangeably.

Can you please elaborate on this? As mentioned, in the Reassessment Study does not include any sort of switches or interchanges at South Station.

The switches visible north of North Station (from here, page 24):

No connections shown at South Station:

And in fact the 2003 study (page 14) specifically calls out the constraints of the area where such a junction would need to be:

"The Four-Track Option proposes twin 41-foot diameter two-track tunnels, except in the area of the new CA/T I-93/I-90 South Bay interchange where space is very constrained. ... These tunnels would descend at grades approaching three percent and pass below the I-90 tunnels with very little clearance to spare."

From page 72 of the above referenced study.
"Central Artery Four-Track – This alternative adds
two more tracks to the downtown segment of
the Central Artery Two-Track alternative, with
the existing Fairmount Line tracks descending
into a second 41-foot-diameter bored tunnel,
straightening out directly east of the tunnel from
Back Bay, and serving the same South and North
underground stations (plus an additional Central
Station connecting to the Blue Line at Aquarium).
Connections between the tunnels are at grade,
and flying junctions allow all possible inbound/
outbound origin/destination pairs. This alternative
is similar to the 2003 DEIR’s four-track alternative
and is described in more detail in Section 5.8"

From page 23:

The four track alternatives provide capacity, and access to a South Bay portal, but I don't see anything that would point to them providing redundancy.

 

[Tallguy]

@Tallguy, I'm glad you are willing to provide data and analysis to back up your claims.


Can you please elaborate on this? As mentioned, in the Reassessment Study does not include any sort of switches or interchanges at South Station.

The switches visible north of North Station (from here, page 24):

View attachment 36718

No connections shown at South Station:

View attachment 36719

And in fact the 2003 study (page 14) specifically calls out the constraints of the area where such a junction would need to be:

View attachment 36726

"The Four-Track Option proposes twin 41-foot diameter two-track tunnels, except in the area of the new CA/T I-93/I-90 South Bay interchange where space is very constrained. ... These tunnels would descend at grades approaching three percent and pass below the I-90 tunnels with very little clearance to spare."


From page 23:

View attachment 36720

The four track alternatives provide capacity, and access to a South Bay portal, but I don't see anything that would point to them providing redundancy.

"A grade separated switch area, at or near the North Portals" implies being able to move trains to or from each line.

 

[Tallguy]

Now that's a question for the state legislature (whose madness, unfortunately, has long proven particularly incurable).

There seems to be more interest in electrification in the Legislature than in the Ts management

 

[Brattle Loop]

There seems to be more interest in electrification in the Legislature than in the Ts management

I'd consider that a good thing, or, at least, better than the reverse. The T ultimately answers to the state, and even if the T was highly interested, if the legislature (cough*the Speaker*cough) wasn't on board, it'd do no good. Obviously if the legislature were to mandate an electrification plan/process, it would be important to ensure that management was on board or at least not going to stonewall/slow-walk it, but on the whole if we have to choose which of the two is more interested at the moment, I'll happily take the one that the other one answers to and is funded by.

 

[JeffDowntown]

I'd consider that a good thing, or, at least, better than the reverse. The T ultimately answers to the state, and even if the T was highly interested, if the legislature (cough*the Speaker*cough) wasn't on board, it'd do no good. Obviously if the legislature were to mandate an electrification plan/process, it would be important to ensure that management was on board or at least not going to stonewall/slow-walk it, but on the whole if we have to choose which of the two is more interested at the moment, I'll happily take the one that the other one answers to and is funded by.

It is sad how few people really understand how the power structure of MA really works. This is spot on. The person you need on board is the Speaker. Without that it is not happening.

 

[BeyondRevenue]

I'd consider that a good thing, or, at least, better than the reverse. The T ultimately answers to the state, and even if the T was highly interested, if the legislature (cough*the Speaker*cough) wasn't on board, it'd do no good. Obviously if the legislature were to mandate an electrification plan/process, it would be important to ensure that management was on board or at least not going to stonewall/slow-walk it, but on the whole if we have to choose which of the two is more interested at the moment, I'll happily take the one that the other one answers to and is funded by.

I totally agree with JeffDowntown's Post. I'd add the legislature is almost all Dems, but it is nowhere near unified by shared ideology. For every firebrand progressive Cambridge Rep D, there's a greedy DINO from a monied enclave, or a crypto-Trumpian D somewhere Westawoostah.
So, there are many powerful ol' school tightwad budget conservatives, very few Keynesian-esque investors, and a slight majority of social progressives (who are often as cheap as the conservatives). Nearly all of them are afraid to even entertain the notion of raising taxes so they hobble themselves and their ability to fix anything in a necessary way. Put together, that lazy group votes for something with the largest ego and historically earned power (a Speaker) who then appoints a small leadership cadre (Committee heads) who really get things done ...mostly for themselves and their ability to keep their power positions, and sadly, sometimes, to line their pockets.
And that's just the House (the most powerful branch here). The Senate historically follows the House tide. The Governor is the weather vane of public mood at best, and the scapegoat when things go wrong.... because people don't understand how things actually work.
Want infrastructure to get fixed? Tell your rep to raise your taxes. Maybe they'll grow a pair.