MassDOT Rail: Springfield Hub (East-West, NNERI, Berkshires, CT-Valley-VT-Quebec)

[bigeman312]

Alon Levy of the opinion that the Inland Route is a bad idea, and that New York-Boston should always go through Providence, never Worcester: https://pedestrianobservations.com/...ty-trains-into-boston-enter-from-springfield/

Discuss.

I disagree with him. He is too caught up in it being "a competitive end-to-end service" with the Northeast Corridor. That misses the point, in my estimation. He talks about through-running, without defining a southern terminus, then rails against the poorly defined straw man he sets up.

Long, (very long) term, let's imagine there is a high-speed rail service, via the Inland Route, that "through-runs" past NYC and along the Northest Corridor. That would provide a one-seat ride for the following valuable pairs (or groups of pairs) of cities that the Northeast Corridor does not provide:

• Hartford <-> NYC, Philadelphia, etc.
  • Northeast Regional, Vermonter
• Hartford <-> Bridgeport/Stamford
  • Northeast Regional, Vermonter
• Springfield <-> NYC
  • Northeast Regional, Vermonter
• Springfield <-> Boston
  • Lake Shore Limited
• Springfield <-> Hartford
  • Hartford Line, Valley Flyer, Northeast Regional, Vermonter
• Springfield <-> Bridgeport/Stamford
  • Northeast Regional, Vermonter
• New Haven <-> Hartford
  • Hartford Line, Valley Flyer, Northeast Regional, Vermonter
• New Haven <-> Springfield
  • Hartford Line, Valley Flyer, Northeast Regional, Vermonter
• Worcester <-> Boston
  • Lake Shore Limited, MBTA Commuter Rail
• Worcester <-> Hartford
  • _
• Worcester <-> Springfield
  • Lake Shore Limited
• Worcester <-> New Haven
  • _

I could go on and on, but these 11 groupings are the ones with the most merit, in my estimation. Some already have some service, as noted above.

I listed all of the services to demonstrate that many pairs have multiple options that serve different needs and markets and/or branch to different destinations. This is a feature, not a bug. For example, the New Haven - Hartford - Springfield corridor is served by the Hartford Line, the Valley Flyer, the Northeast Regional, and the Vermonter. The presence of the Hartford Line doesn't somehow eliminate the need for the Vermonter. The Vermonter provides infrequent service to/from Vermont, while the Hartford Line serves a more frequent, shorter-distance market. Both of these needs can exist and be served seperately over the same corridor.

It's also worth noting that some of these pairs have technical service, but are not actually having their needs met. For example, Springfield - Boston has the very infrequent and unreliable Lake Shore Limited, which is insufficient for that pair of cities.

Let's add another layer to the bulleted list to describe what value an intercity Inland Route would provide:

• Hartford <-> NYC, Philadelphia, etc.
  • Northeast Regional, Vermonter
    • Inland Route would be a lateral service to the Northeast Regional, and could easily replace it for operational efficiency.
• Hartford <-> Bridgeport/Stamford
  • Northeast Regional, Vermonter
    • Inland Route would be a lateral service to the Northeast Regional, and could easily replace it for operational efficiency.
• Springfield <-> NYC
  • Northeast Regional, Vermonter
    • Inland Route would be a lateral service to the Northeast Regional, and could easily replace it for operational efficiency.
• Springfield <-> Boston
  • Lake Shore Limited
    • Inland Route would be a significantly better, more approrpriate service than the Lake Shore Limited.
• Springfield <-> Hartford
  • Hartford Line, Valley Flyer, Northeast Regional, Vermonter
    • Inland Route would be a lateral service to the Northeast Regional, and could easily replace it for operational efficiency.
• Springfield <-> Bridgeport/Stamford
  • Northeast Regional, Vermonter
    • Inland Route would be a lateral service to the Northeast Regional, and could easily replace it for operational efficiency.
• New Haven <-> Hartford
  • Hartford Line, Valley Flyer, Northeast Regional, Vermonter
    • Inland Route would be a lateral service to the Northeast Regional, and could easily replace it for operational efficiency.
• New Haven <-> Springfield
  • Hartford Line, Valley Flyer, Northeast Regional, Vermonter
    • Inland Route would be a lateral service to the Northeast Regional, and could easily replace it for operational efficiency.
• Worcester <-> Boston
  • Lake Shore Limited, MBTA Commuter Rail
    • Inland Route would provide a needed layer of service that is faster than the Commuter Rail and more frequent than the Lake Shore Limited.
• Worcester <-> Hartford
  • _
    • Inland Route would serve an unserved market.
• Worcester <-> Springfield
  • Lake Shore Limited, MBTA Commuter Rail
    • Inland Route would be a significantly better, more approrpriate service than the Lake Shore Limited.
• Worcester <-> New Haven
  • _
    • Inland Route would serve an unserved market.

That all seems fairly straight forward and without any need to contend with the Northeast Corridor. In fact, I've explicitly left out any city pair that is served by the Northeast Corridor to demonstrate that point. It stands on it's own without that comparison.

EDIT: Accuracy. I corrected an error in the bulleted list.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

The politicians of New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts want to link the cities on the Inland corridor with a one-seat (NOT timed transfer), and the studies have shown there's sufficient demand to go for it. But in another post earlier this month, apparently following the will of local sentiment is bad and we should feel bad that all decisions aren't being made by a perfectly decoupled and omnipotent expert. Apparently that's enough straw to make a man out of, so we arrive in a universe where the Inland is direct-competing with the NEC trunk...something no one advocating for it has ever assumed.

An all-around terrible blog post by Levy's standards.

 

[WarpedReality]

My takeaway from Alon Levy's blog post is a much narrower point that the Inland Route should not cater to the Boston-NYC end-to-end passenger. The Inland route is all about people with origins or destinations between New Haven and Framingham. Anyone going all the way to Boston from New Haven or points further south ought to be taking the Shore Line.

They go on to discuss how it is impossible for one train arriving in Springfield from NYC to through-run to both Boston and Vermont. Their point is that timing the connection in Springfield is more important than the through-running. They even mention the asymmetric demand between Springfield and points south/east as a reason to use separate train-sets for each service.

 

[AndrewOnTheMBTA]

As of right now, is it impossible with the tracks and schedules to run a once a day round-trip trial commuter rail train from SPG to BOS? With the proper adjustments and projects is it feasible? Just an MBCR train, nothing more.

 

[Tallguy]

As of right now, is it impossible with the tracks and schedules to run a once a day round-trip trial commuter rail train from SPG to BOS? With the proper adjustments and projects is it feasible? Just an MBCR train, nothing more.

Physically, yes. CSX is the problem

 

[bigeman312]

As of right now, is it impossible with the tracks and schedules to run a once a day round-trip trial commuter rail train from SPG to BOS? With the proper adjustments and projects is it feasible? Just an MBCR train, nothing more.

A direct SPG-BOS Commuter Rail is technically possible today. However, given the current duration, comfort becomes an issue. Commuter Rail trains are designed for shorter rides, prioritizing capacity over comfort. For a journey of 2.5 hours, intercity-style seating and amenities would significantly enhance the passenger experience. The East-West Rail Project aims to improve infrastructure, potentially reducing travel times to a level more suited for Commuter Rail. So, we can either run an inappropriate service today (which isn’t necessarily a bad idea), or wait for an appropriate service (short enough duration for Commuter Rail trains or bring in intercity trains).

 

[WarpedReality]

How difficult are the logistics of a 3-way timed transfer between trains going to Vermont/Boston/New York at Springfield?

 

[Tallguy]

Why wouldn't you have two of them be a one seat ride?

 

[WarpedReality]

Due to the assymmetrical demand, a trainset ideal for Springfield and points south will not be ideal for points north or east. I guess there is the option of having Worcester-Springfield trains continue north to Greenfield and Vermont, but there would still be the desire to do a 3-way timed transfer using trains headed towards both Worcester and Greenfield.

 

[Tallguy]

Due to the assymmetrical demand, a trainset ideal for Springfield and points south will not be ideal for points north or east. I guess there is the option of having Worcester-Springfield trains continue north to Greenfield and Vermont, but there would still be the desire to do a 3-way timed transfer using trains headed towards both Worcester and Greenfield.

You assume asymmetrical demand, or do you have data?

 

[Tallguy]

While the Springfield to Worcester section might have less demand at first, Worcester -Boston I would expect to be significant. I think that the NNEIRI study suggests otherwise. Are you familiar with it?

 

[Tallguy]

Otherwise than your statement, not mine. Sorry, awkwardly worded.

 

[AndrewOnTheMBTA]

A direct SPG-BOS Commuter Rail is technically possible today. However, given the current duration, comfort becomes an issue. Commuter Rail trains are designed for shorter rides, prioritizing capacity over comfort. For a journey of 2.5 hours, intercity-style seating and amenities would significantly enhance the passenger experience. The East-West Rail Project aims to improve infrastructure, potentially reducing travel times to a level more suited for Commuter Rail. So, we can either run an inappropriate service today (which isn’t necessarily a bad idea), or wait for an appropriate service (short enough duration for Commuter Rail trains or bring in intercity trains).

A summer pilot to spur tourism to Boston from SPG wouldn't be bad, like the CapeFlyer, and the distance and fleet is the same. I wonder if ridership would be over 100? For Friday/Sat/Sunday service

 

[Riverside]

Alon Levy of the opinion that the Inland Route is a bad idea, and that New York-Boston should always go through Providence, never Worcester: https://pedestrianobservations.com/...ty-trains-into-boston-enter-from-springfield/

Discuss.

Nonetheless, plans for restoration remain. These to some extent extend the plans for in-state Boston-Springfield rail, locally called East-West Rail: if trains run from Boston to Springfield and from Springfield to New Haven, then they might as well through-run. But some plans go further and posit that this should be a competitive end-to-end service, charging lower fares than the faster Northeast Corridor. Those plans, sitting on a shelf somewhere, are enough that Massachusetts is taking them into account when designing South Station.

Citation please, @Alon. Where has it been asserted that NYP-SPG-BOS will be seen as competitive to the existing Northeast Regional? And where has there been discussion of ticket prices?

And even with citation, you're using some faulty logic here. The crux of your argument is that NYP-SPG-BOS is a bad service and shouldn't be considered as an alternative to NYP-PVD-BOS. But as others have pointed out (e.g. @bigeman312's set of destination pairs), there are numerous benefits to an Inland Regional service beyond the NYP-BOS market, which you don't seem to be accounting for.

You criticize the idea that an Inland Regional ticket should cost less than a Shore Line Regional ticket. That's certainly a valid criticism, but as you are fond of pointing out, organization before electronics before concrete, the corollary of which makes clear that any problems with the ticket costs can be corrected after the service is implemented. So ticket price doesn't really seem like a convincing counter-argument.

The closest -- I think -- that you come to arguing against a specific capital project is your stray remark that plans for East-West Rail "are enough that Massachusetts is taking them into account when designing South Station," which I interpret as thinly veiled criticism of South Station Expansion (which, IIRC, you have loudly opposed in the past). But you are overstating the impact here: insofar as there is an impact on SSX, it comes from East-West Rail, not from an Inland Regional service. And East-West Rail absolutely is a valid and urgent project; whether it merits SSX is a separate discussion, but it certainly does not seem to me that it's the Inland Regional proposal that is driving the project either way.

If there’s room in the timetable to include more express trains then these can be the trains to Springfield, but if there’s any difficulty, or if the plan doesn’t have more than a train every half hour to Worcester, then trains to Springfield should be making the same stops as Boston-Worcester trains.

Your focus on the viability of the Inland Route for a Boston - New York journey seems at odds with the (frankly, nuts) suggestion that Springfield trains should make commuter rail stops inside of Worcester. In the case of the former, you imply that the within-corridor (non-end-to-end) demand is not worth the drag on end-to-end travel times, while in the case of the latter, you suggest that an 80 mile service can be viable with commuter rail stop spacing on the inner half. If there is a comparable service elsewhere in North America (outside of NYC), I'd love to hear about it because this seems unprecedented.

And returning to the point about through-running: we know there is demand for NYP-SPG service, and we are reasonably assuming that there is BOS-SPG demand. As @bigeman312 described, there are any number of reasonable pairs that a through-run service would benefit, including:

• MetroWest (Framingham + Worcester) <> New York
• Boston + Metrowest <> Hartford
• MetroWest <> New Have + Stamford etc

Taking the train from Worcester to Hartford should not require a cross-platform transfer, and it should be an easy and reasonable alternative to driving. And Worcester's catchment covers a wide swath of Massachusetts for whom it would be out-of-the-way to board a train at either BOS or Route 128.

I mean, look at it this way: BOS <> SPG <> NYP has a significant urban center roughly every 40 miles or fewer. NYP <> PVD <> BOS has a significant density gap between Providence and New Haven: yes, you have New London/Norwich halfway between, but that's about half the size of either Springfield or Worcester's equivalent urban areas. There's a compelling argument to make that the BosWash metropolis travels via Worcester and not via Rhode Island.

So... yeah. An Inland Regional would not be competitive for CBD <> CBD NYP <> BOS trips. But that's not really what it's for -- except according to those studies sitting on a shelf somewhere that you mention. So, citation please.

A summer pilot to spur tourism to Boston from SPG wouldn't be bad, like the CapeFlyer, and the distance and fleet is the same. I wonder if ridership would be over 100? For Friday/Sat/Sunday service

Yeah, to me personally I actually see a CapeFlyer-style pilot to Springfield as one of the top priorities in the short-term for Gov Healey. Even if the trains are slow, even if the trains are infrequent... just. Start. Running. The. Trains.

I actually think it would be well-worth running a pilot that turns north after Springfield to hit Northampton. Even just one peak direction train per day would boost "commuter rail" frequencies into Springfield (supplementing the Valley Flyer), and Northampton <> Boston seems like a reasonable super-commute (and increases the constituency potentially supporting the service).

 

[Arlington]

Circa 2003, a friend from UK felt tricked when he accepted rebooking from a Regional to an Inland. I see no need for end to end.

NHV-HAR-SPG-WOR-FRA-BOS seems a sufficiently awesome set of cities to be worth it just for online demand an a little bit of connectivity at NHV and BOS,

With a few Virginia-extended NERs (that currently terminate at SPG) maybe extended in the bargain.

If Connecticut/MNRR will give Amtrak the slots through run all the way to NYP then that is great—and if they don’t, I think New Haven to Boston sufficiently awesome to launch

 

[Riverside]

Circa 2003, a friend from UK felt tricked when he accepted rebooking from a Regional to an Inland. I see no need for end to end.

NHV-HAR-SPG-WOR-FRA-BOS seems a sufficiently awesome set of cities to be worth it just for online demand an a little bit of connectivity at NHV and BOS,

With a few Virginia-extended NERs (that currently terminate at SPG) maybe extended in the bargain.

If Connecticut/MNRR will give Amtrak the slots through run all the way to NYP then that is great—and if they don’t, I think New Haven to Boston sufficiently awesome to launch

Yeah on reflection I think the need for BOS-SPG-NHV seems more straightforward (though it seems to me that Alon is also arguing against even that in their piece). AFAIK, there aren't actually that many NER's terminating at SPG -- in 2020 it was something like one or two a day. So, extending those to Boston does seem reasonable enough (and I assume that in the short-term there aren't going to be a lot of slots to give up, so I wouldn't push for that anyway). And then probably it would be a matter of super-extending some of the Hartford Line slots, I guess.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Yeah on reflection I think the need for BOS-SPG-NHV seems more straightforward (though it seems to me that Alon is also arguing against even that in their piece). AFAIK, there aren't actually that many NER's terminating at SPG -- in 2020 it was something like one or two a day. So, extending those to Boston does seem reasonable enough (and I assume that in the short-term there aren't going to be a lot of slots to give up, so I wouldn't push for that anyway). And then probably it would be a matter of super-extending some of the Hartford Line slots, I guess.

The NNEIRI study pretty much assumed that a repurposing and general expansion of the non-Valley Flyer shuttle slots were going to form the backbone of the service (and Valley Flyer could of course go away entirely if MassDOT instituted Knowledge Corridor commuter rail, freeing up those slots). It would make sense to extend whatever Springfield Northeast Regionals were on the schedule to Boston as an additional benefit, but it was always assumed that those would be a minority of the total Inland slots. Though Levy seems to be in agreement that a robust expansion of Springfield Regionals is a good thing; they just disagree on the continuation-to-Boston part.

It reasons that with Gateway un-bottlenecking Penn Station there'll be many more opportunities for additional Springfield slots on the Connecticut service layer cake, so in the real world the supply of extended Regionals vs. Shuttles could be a pretty substantial % of the overall schedule.

 

[Riverside]

The NNEIRI study pretty much assumed that a repurposing and general expansion of the non-Valley Flyer shuttle slots were going to form the backbone of the service (and Valley Flyer could of course go away entirely if MassDOT instituted Knowledge Corridor commuter rail, freeing up those slots). It would make sense to extend whatever Springfield Northeast Regionals were on the schedule to Boston as an additional benefit, but it was always assumed that those would be a minority of the total Inland slots. Though Levy seems to be in agreement that a robust expansion of Springfield Regionals is a good thing; they just disagree on the continuation-to-Boston part.

It reasons that with Gateway un-bottlenecking Penn Station there'll be many more opportunities for additional Springfield slots on the Connecticut service layer cake, so in the real world the supply of extended Regionals vs. Shuttles could be a pretty substantial % of the overall schedule.

Yeah, fair points. I still just don’t see, in a world where, for example, there is sufficient rolling stock and there isn’t an acute shortage of trains (which does not seem to be a framing Alon is arguing based on), why you wouldn't run the Springfield NER's all the way to Boston. And I mean, sure, there will be less demand for BOS <> NYP. But there will be turnover, and demand among the intermediate station pairs, which is, you know, the defining characteristic of passenger rail.

 

[bigeman312]

With a few Virginia-extended NERs (that currently terminate at SPG) maybe extended in the bargain.

This is the crux of the discussion. Nobody is arguing against the utility of a New Haven - Boston service. Rather, it would be more useful, and more efficient, to merge this service with the Springfield terminating NERs. And that doing so doesn’t mean it needs to compete for end-to-end riders.

I’d honestly be very much in favor of a Boston - New Haven introductory service. That would be awesome. No argument here. Certainly better than what exists today. But what’s the argument for keeping these services separate? In the same vein, why not have Boston - DC NEC service, Boston - New York Inland service, Hartford - Philadelphia service, and have all trains on the NEC that terminate south of DC terminate in NYC? This setup ensures that all of the highest priority station pairs have one-seats rides. It just seems needlessly inefficient, IMO.

 

[Koopzilla24]

How out there of an idea would it be to do like the Lake Shore Limited or some medium-long distance trains in Europe and run two separate trains from Vermont and Worcester that then meet in Springfield to combine to DC? Opposite in the reverse direction. Working it off the current Vermonter schedule it’d depart Worcester at ~1:20pm. There’s already a 15min stop in Springfield anyway so the schedule adjustment to accommodate coupling another train shouldn’t be too much.

EDIT: I feel like the fact that the Vermonter needs to turn the train around in the wye anyway would facilitate this. Maybe schedule the Worcester train to arrive earlier than the Vermonter connects up to the front of it.
Also I say from Worcester rather than Boston only because if I’m basing it off the current Vermonter schedule it’d depart Worcester only 45min before the Lake Shore Limited which wouldn’t really offer anything new for BOS<->SPG