If that's a lot of typing, then WTF did we do E-W for when it's upended--even if we wanted to spend for it--by Amtrak's plain-stated refusal to operate any Pittsfield-terminating Boston service due to it whiffing on their Albany shop base? That's $1M in typing right there predicated on a lie!I can’t see any of it working economically until you show the total passenger numbers and how much it costs. This is all just a lot of typing until we see the numbers. What is the ridership and what is the cost. Add in the AlbanyToronto, etc. Thrown away MassDot was looking at 762-~1,400 per day for $2.4-4.6 billion. Then you put forth the NNERI full spoke of 2,397 for $1.1-1.2 billion plus $52 million per year. Now you are mentioning another option. What’s the cost of that one?
Fine.If that's a lot of typing, then WTF did we do E-W for when it's upended--even if we wanted to spend for it--by Amtrak's plain-stated refusal to operate any Pittsfield-terminating Boston service due to it whiffing on their Albany shop base? That's $1M in typing right there predicated on a lie!
On pure "Dig UP, Stupid!" grounds they have no choice but to study Albany if anything is to venture west of Springfield. Inland Route + Montrealer are NEC-shopped equipment from NYC-Sunnyside and New Haven. The Downeaster's equipment is sourced from Albany Shops, passes to/from Boston on rotation via Lake Shore Ltd. There are no touches to these equipment pools with a Pittsfield short-turn; Southampton Yard in Boston doesn't have enough bandwidth, and MassDOT already chose to reneg on its Hartford Line commitment to build a combo AMTK/CTrail layover facility/shop at Springfield. These ops realities Amtrak had to sternly clarify this Fall are readily available in their glossy general-consumption Blue Book-like publications.
You either start over with NNEIRI hubbed at Springfield, or start over with a joint NYSDOT Albany study (like our neighbors asked for and the Albany media was gobsmacked about when the ovature was refused). Those are the only choices. Short-turn at Pittsfield as *any* build option, much less "preferred" one, is based on a bald-faced lie. Whether it's worth it or not is moot; Amtrak has already refused to operate it.
I'm not mentioning "another..." option here. I'm mentioning one of two only options. Either you chop off everything west-of-SPG and go *completely* back to NNEIRI's service base that Amtrak is capable of running from NYC/NHV...or you go whole-hog to Albany in concert with NYSDOT, tap that service base, and do a whole lot of added-dimensional hub studying (at NY's behest if MassDOT can't be arsed to care). There is no third option...just lies.
No...those numbers do not currently exist. That also proves no one's point about levying a value proposition over Western MA's head...because the only option we've been presented is the one that cannot be because it has no willing operator amongst a field of 1 jurisdictionally qualified operators. It's ALL conjecture till you come up with a proposal that can functionally be! We expect reality-defying conjecture in a Crazy Transit Pitches hottake-gone-awry; we don't expect to be fleeced of $1M so it can be vomited all over official MassDOT letterhead.
So either dial back exclusively to NNEIRI or take some educated guesses on Albany. Sorry...it's all much more work down in the weeds for much less instant-gratification pinata-bashing than a Pollack soundbite and apples-vs.-kumquats strawmen arguments about transpo projects that couldn't possibly have less to do with each other (really...straight-line "Hot-or-Not" vs. GLX??? We're really going there?), but it's the only reality we have to usefully judge from when E-W lives in total unreality.
These comparisons do not make any sense. "I don't thinkIf we were to spend a few billion dollars on rail for Worcester and Springfield, wouldn't they be better served by building both cities an LRT system? In an ideal world, of course, they would have that and we'd also have a strong and efficient rail line connecting the two with Boston. But if it's just one, I think better municipal transit for both cities would be a bigger value proposition.
Then you address the need vs. scope on its merits head-on...not start a diversionary debate about something not in the slightest relevant to the need. "We need better intercity-regional travel but can't agree how to do it, so let's build hyper-local instead" does not follow. The enumerated needs are already way more specific than "need to spend on heavily-subsidized rail somehow/somewhere". No effing way is the question THAT generic. Rolling it back to that reductionist a level completely unmoors the debate from any place, time, and need. E-W is a rancid study alright, but it was still way more specific than pure strawmannery comparisons.The connection lies in the idea that some sort of heavily subsidized rail project needs to happen for political reasons. I'm suggesting that this is not the correct project if we want to both satisfy the politics and build something useful. Nobody thinks they are an apples to apples comparison, so nobody asked that question.
From the East-West direction? No...not really. That's probably the very smallest NSRL constituent audience of all, with the least potential buy-in. Not a lot of Albany-Portland demand, CT-NH, or so on. Those places are going to be reached as run-thru Northeast Regionals off the NEC, not the Inland (regardless of whether NYC-POR first gets a toehold via the Inland + Grand Junction). The Pike corridor pretty clearly dumps its lion's share of demand at Boston, with any splatter north and south spread around so diffusely there's no clear intercity service patterns to fashion out of those that can't be better-accommodated by cross-tix transfers. Worcester will get run-thrus as a purely Commuter Rail feature (likeliest to the North Shore/Eastern Route, as that's the hardest radial reach of all from MetroWest). But Springfield not being any greater than sparse "super-commuter" audience doesn't show the same directional bias.Maybe I missed it while skimming the thread but has anyone pointed out that, if we expand rail service to SPG, that is a whole lot of new territory that now benefits from NSRL?
I was thinking there may be some upside for transiting through Boston from points west, even if it is just being able to one seat to points in Boston north of South Station - a one seat ride from Springfield to a Bruins game is something.From the East-West direction? No...not really. That's probably the very smallest NSRL constituent audience of all, with the least potential buy-in. Not a lot of Albany-Portland demand, CT-NH, or so on. Those places are going to be reached as run-thru Northeast Regionals off the NEC, not the Inland (regardless of whether NYC-POR first gets a toehold via the Inland + Grand Junction). The Pike corridor pretty clearly dumps its lion's share of demand at Boston, with any splatter north and south spread around so diffusely there's no clear intercity service patterns to fashion out of those that can't be better-accommodated by cross-tix transfers. Worcester will get run-thrus as a purely Commuter Rail feature (likeliest to the North Shore/Eastern Route, as that's the hardest radial reach of all from MetroWest). But Springfield not being any greater than sparse "super-commuter" audience doesn't show the same directional bias.
It's not absolute-zero, but whatever demand there is totally lost in the noise. Western MA arguably has little to nothing to gain from the routing options of NSRL. Its payout is more related to the frequency proliferation that the project enables across-the-board in "rising tide lifts all boats" fashion. I don't think the NSRL advocates have given nearly enough thought to how they're going to package the "It's the frequencies, stupid!" angle to Western MA legislators, but that's how it's going to have to be because the local-district benefits of the NSRL project aren't going to be swayed by run-thru from out there. You can make a winning argument...but it's got to be laser-liked focused on the aggregate service levels with zero stray filler.