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?
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.
If 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.
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.
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?
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.
Take a look at the two maps from the wikipedia article on the rust belt. View attachment 13569 View attachment 13570 All of Massachusetts lost manufacturing jobs in a dramatic and devastating way but only the three counties of the Pioneer Valley are relatively stagnant in income growth (I suspect the Berkshires are buoyed by seasonal New Yorkers). Our friends in Connecticut (I can't believe as a Western Mass. resident that I'm saying it but I wish they would annex us) published a study(WAMC) saying that lack of rail service has lost us 130,000 jobs since the '90s. That is people's futures! Enough of this undeserving idiots in Western Mass. are happy being morons with pick-up trucks nonsense. That's that kind of attitude that turned Ohio into a red state.
*Edit - Green on the maps are good, other tones are not as positive.
Or at least change the type of manufacturing focus (still needs retraining, but more easily done than wholesale retooling of people). High tech manufacturing sectors like medical devices, biotech, renewable energy will also be in demand. Need to make those carbon fiber composite wind turbine blades somewhere! Why not here?Actually, I think you hit on something with that CT-Western Mass annexation idea.
In the meantime, what future do you see with manufacturing jobs? You actually answer many questions when you point out that Mass dramatically lost manufacturing jobs but economically came out very well overall. To me, the term Buggy Whips comes to mind. AI is inevitable. Skate to where the puck is heading, not to where it just was. There is a reason why the regions stubbornly clinging to yesterday’s factories are hurting. It will only get worse. My advice is RETRAIN for the future because you cannot eat soup with a fork......large scale human manufacturing is slipping away.
That certainly doesn’t mean humans will not be needed for non-tech jobs. Quite the opposite. Given the aging population and longer life spans, we will need MORE human labor in health services, tourism/hospitality, etc. Much of it will actually become better paying jobs.
The particular focus on large-scale manufacturing jobs, however, is misguided. We will need large scale manufacturing, however the body count to do it will be far less due to robotics.
Or at least change the type of manufacturing focus (still needs retraining, but more easily done than wholesale retooling of people). High tech manufacturing sectors like medical devices, biotech, renewable energy will also be in demand. Need to make those carbon fiber composite wind turbine blades somewhere! Why not here?
We are in total agreement on this.Exactly. Which is why I carefully wrote “large-scale” manu jobs. The days of 4000 folks filing into a factory to do repetitive labor is going going gone. The type of jobs you mention are not the large scale type that the rust belt lost in the above diagrams. Best to plan for the AI world where, yes, there will be a need for technicical folks in some small teams but not the thousands and thousands of line workers. Those will be robots for the most part, and growing. Better to ditch the nostalgia from the planning.
Manu jobs, will be around just at a much lower scale and much more tech type.