MBTA Commuter Rail (Operations, Keolis, & Short Term)

[Java King]

It's really too bad about Plymouth, but the schedule was horrible as other people have mentioned. I just hope the MBTA learns something about Station placement moving forward. Another perfect example is Cohasset. It has a beautiful and vibrant village center, but they chose to build the Greenbush Line station on the edge of town surrounded by a sea of parking lots. There is a new TOD village near the new Cohasset Station, but it can't generate the activity of the village center a few miles down the track.

Plymouth Station was located in a very unwalkable area that used to be a Walmart if I remember correctly. It should have been extended more into the downtown of Plymouth to be viable. However, the MBTA tends to like vast parking lots for new stations and lines rather than the traditional town center or village that has served the system well for over a 100 years. Salem seems to be a good recent example of a renovated station that is located within easy walking of the Village Center but has a new parking garage.

In Hingham, they've built huge solar array canopies over the vast sea of parking lots on the Greenbush line. Now, it's like driving under some abandoned post-apocalyptic science fiction scene when I was at Nantasket Junction on Sunday.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Is this all because Kingston has some layover tracks and Plymouth does not? Or is it about Route 3 access and parking? Because it sure feels like all Kingston does as a terminus is generate auto trips (albeit local).

The latter. It does take a backup move to get into the layover from Plymouth, but that's hardly unique as many layovers on the system are not precisely past their termini. Chalk this one up to auto-centrism, and the ability to lie with statistics re: ridership v. service levels.


Plymouth should not be a long-term closure. It absolutely doesn't belong in with the pure flag-stop Plimptonvilles of the world. The TOD sucked here for the first 20 years, but is finally starting to come around. And meanwhile Kingston sits in a sand pit next to a dead-end enclosed Mall with extremely volatile tenancy that's probably going to the way of lots of similar Malls very soon. Kingston is the one that 10 years from now is going to be making the giant *splat* sound, not Cordage Park. The mix that's developing around Cordage at least has legs, if very late in coming.


Perma-fix if they ever fix the Old Colony single-track bottleneck is/was always:

• uni-branch extended 1 mile from Cordage to Downtown Plymouth/Ferry Terminal.
• infill Kingston Depot on the mainline at the old station location, actually in the walkable part of Downtown
• close current Kingston, reverse-order the bus pinging from Plymouth to (what's left of) the Mall, keep Kingston Branch just for the layover
• real RUR frequencies end-to-end

 

[jass]

In the short term, it makes a lot more sense to keep Plymouth, which has walkable housing, and can be a day trip destination, than Kingston, which caters to office suburban SUV drivers that are working from home.

 

[The EGE]

The MBTA's decisions were forced by local politics basically from the beginning. Original plans were for a Kingston station where the line crosses Route 3, and Plymouth station downtown. But the Plymouth NIMBYs wouldn't let them reactivate past Cordage Park, putting the station awkwardly there. The politically-connected beer distributor wouldn't sell for the Kingston site, but another connected guy had a sand pit to sell - so we got the Kingston branch. Kingston being more convenient to Route 3 led to it being the preferred park-and-ride sink, so schedules quickly shifted to favor it.

I agree with F-Line's endgame, other than that I would put Kingston at the beer warehouse site. (You can thread an access road parallel to Spring Street to avoid overwhelming the residential streets.) The line needs a park-and-ride serving Route 3, and that's the most viable spot. There's not enough of a downtown in Kingston to pull very good walk-up numbers.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Should also be noted re: extension to Downtown Plymouth...the rail trail does not preclude that. The trail is offset to the side of the former ROW such that the original rails are still in the ground next to it...and that was intentional. The Cordage tail tracks are already double-track forming a passing siding (with space for DT platforms conspicuously left there for future double-up). So if you bust back down at Hedge Rd. to single-track and run for 1 mile there, then fan out into a DT island with bumper posts at Downtown framing the muni parking lots around Lothrup St. you will have absolutely no problems clearing the single-iron at :30 RUR frequencies. It's too short a segment too close to the end of the line to cause any issues with in-service reverses or deadheads to the layover on the Kingston Branch while running those service levels.

 

[DominusNovus]

Plymouth should not be a long-term closure.

Just asking for clarity: when you say “should” do you mean in the sense of “it isn’t likely” to be closed for long or “if they had any sense” they wouldn’t close it for long? And what is long-term in your opinion?

I’m moving to Kingston within the year, and having 2 different stations to pick from was a perk. Having just 1 isn’t ideal (one at Kingston depot right in downtown would be great) but its still better than nothing.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Just asking for clarity: when you say “should” do you mean in the sense of “it isn’t likely” to be closed for long or “if they had any sense” they wouldn’t close it for long? And what is long-term in your opinion?

I’m moving to Kingston within the year, and having 2 different stations to pick from was a perk. Having just 1 isn’t ideal (one at Kingston depot right in downtown would be great) but its still better than nothing.

We don't know what they're actually thinking because they're being opaque-as-fuck about what the cuts even mean now.

 

[DominusNovus]

We don't know what they're actually thinking because they're being opaque-as-fuck about what the cuts even mean now.

Right. Just trying to get your sense of what you think is going on, best guess.

 

[bakgwailo]

Should also be noted re: extension to Downtown Plymouth...the rail trail does not preclude that. The trail is offset to the side of the former ROW such that the original rails are still in the ground next to it...and that was intentional. The Cordage tail tracks are already double-track forming a passing siding (with space for DT platforms conspicuously left there for future double-up). So if you bust back down at Hedge Rd. to single-track and run for 1 mile there, then fan out into a DT island with bumper posts at Downtown framing the muni parking lots around Lothrup St. you will have absolutely no problems clearing the single-iron at :30 RUR frequencies. It's too short a segment too close to the end of the line to cause any issues with in-service reverses or deadheads to the layover on the Kingston Branch while running those service levels.

Yeah looking on the map I had about the same reaction. I agree with The EGE moving Kingston up onto the mainline, so still could have rt 3/parking access, but at least also somewhat near a populated area. Plymouth stays up, and then extend it down to the municipal lot in Downtown Plymouth. Seems like a no-brainer to have an actual destination at the end of the line. Given the historical draw (Plymouth Rock, Mayflower II, etc.), plus restaurants/beach/etc all within a mile walk it would see a pretty large reverse commute crowd from tourists, schools, day trips, etc. Provided reasonable 30 minute (or faster) headways and around 40-60 minute trip time (or less) from South Station it would be a hit if advertised correctly.

 

[Riverside]

I’m moving to Kingston within the year, and having 2 different stations to pick from was a perk. Having just 1 isn’t ideal (one at Kingston depot right in downtown would be great) but its still better than nothing.

So, I mean, I think it is worth pointing out that you didn't meaningfully have two stations to pick from. It depends on what exactly you were planning to use the train for, but even at its high water mark before the pandemic, service to Plymouth station was abysmal. 4 trains per day on weekdays, almost all off-peak, most which being a reverse move from Kingston (at which point it would almost be faster to walk from one station to the other -- and certainly faster to bike).

You can see the October 2019 schedule to see what I mean (courtesy of Dave Perry's invaluable schedule archive).

It's clearly Not A Good Thing that they are closing Plymouth, but in some ways it is more honest than keeping it on the map. Like Silver Hill, Hastings, and Plimptonville, it simply is (was) a barely usable station.

 

[jklo]

Good call on the archive. Didn't find any time when Plymouth had a Peak AM train and there is a 2007 one. Definitely looks like something they've been wanting to kill for some time.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

It's clearly Not A Good Thing that they are closing Plymouth, but in some ways it is more honest than keeping it on the map. Like Silver Hill, Hastings, and Plimptonville, it simply is (was) a barely usable station.

No...the honest thing would be asking self "WTF is our strategy here?" with eyes open instead of treating it as a forever sunk cost because every regime preceding them did. Kingston is so eye-poppingly unsustainable in its environs that status quo simply can't be the long-term answer unless they're simply hoping the whole outer half of the line up and dies when South Coast FAIL wrecks everybody's OTP inbound of Braintree.

No sidewalks. Barely usable walkup connections to the nearest residential. Barely usable walking connections to the bunkered-in Dead Mall Walking. No densification opportunities in the immediate vicinity because of no sidewalks, thousands of feet of asphalt from nearest structures, and sand sediments keeping all area structures to single-story. Just pure foreboding parking sink at a time when we're rethinking the meaning of the 9-5 shift. And we're supposed to treat as fait accompli that this will be the only thing ever anchoring end-of-line service when the bottom is falling out of the surrounding sprawl-bomb economy?

Why is this an officially endorsed inevitability? Unless killing off everything outbound of Whitman is some implicit end goal we're all supposed to shrug and roll over for. Since Cordage itself has no lack of striped asphalt acreage reasonably near the highway to go along with its now belatedly upswinging dev fortunes you almost couldn't fail to do better outright inverting the service closures (i.e. straight-up no-Kingston/all-Cordage and invert the bus shuttles). Literally...could not do worse the way those sites' relative fortunes are diverging.

There's nothing "honest" about the decision. It's 100% defectiveness by design to force a pre-ordained outcome of more South Shore service cuts when the Old Colony's respiration chokes on those untenable SCR schedules, because that'll all be happening just in time for the Mall being boarded up in 2-3 years underscoring the sand pit's terminal (sic) outcome as a supportable station site.

 

[DominusNovus]

Anyone know what the original plan that took some land from L Knife (the beer distributor) was? Did it just take all their land, or part? Being so close to the highway exit, it looks perfect for a location for a station like the actual Kingston location, even before the disruption of the spur is taken into consideration. It could even have direct access to the highway, to avoid congestion on 3a.

And if anything like that were done in the future, what would be done with the Kingston spur? Used to house sets in off hours?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

And if anything like that were done in the future, what would be done with the Kingston spur? Used to house sets in off hours?

Just keep it for the layover, because there really isn't anywhere else good to put that. And even if you are rapid-rotating sets for :30 service you're still going to have to swap sets every few trips for basic cleaning, which will necessitate a layover trip. The backup move from Cordage or Downtown would be somewhat annoying, but isn't off-scale disruptive relative to other layover locations on the system. Deadheads could easily clear the junction switch within the headways of :30 all-day service.

 

[Riverside]

No...the honest thing would be asking self "WTF is our strategy here?" with eyes open instead of treating it as a forever sunk cost because every regime preceding them did. ...

Maybe I didn't make this clear, but, like I said,

It's clearly Not A Good Thing that they are closing Plymouth

My point is that it was barely a station to begin with. The platform and tracks were there, but the train almost never was (by any reasonable standard). Having it "on the map" makes it seem like there are, as Dominus put it, two stations to choose from, and the reality is just that that was never actually the case. My point about "honesty" was rhetorical for effect, as I think you realized.

Yes, the long-term future here is to build a proper Kingston station, extend the branch from Cordage Park, and actually run trains on it.

~~~~~~

On a different note.

I was taking a look at the passenger counts for the Fitchburg Line (and, by the way, if you are not familiar with that resource at that there link, I highly recommend it; but be forewarned, many rabbit holes await you), and noticed that there are huge spikes at Littleton/495 and at South Acton.

Most of the rest of the line outside of 128 (aside from the ridiculous stops in Weston) average very roughly 250 passengers a day (give or take ~100). Littleton/495 is a bit less than twice that, and South Acton is closer to four times that.

Now, Littleton/495's 200% spike makes sense because every train stops there -- most other stops are only served by half of the trains. South Acton can also be partially explained away for the same reason, but even considering the doubled trains, it's still notably higher than anywhere else.

I'm not super familiar with the area, so I'm curious: what's special about South Acton?

 

[jklo]

I'm not super familiar with the area, so I'm curious: what's special about South Acton?

Express Train.

 

[malabari]

Other than Waltham, other stops in the Fitchburg line are sparse - Weston, Lincoln, and Concord/Carlisle. Acton also serves Maynard and parts of Westford, and Littleton is easily accessible from 495. The ridership on both these stops would be even higher if more parking was available. Acton used to get full after the first inbound express, Littleton was a bit better but not much.

 

[Riverside]

Express Train.

Doesn't quite tell the whole story. The Excel spreadsheet is a little hard to wrangle, so forgive the loss of the train numbers:

Even on those all-stop locals -- particularly notable on that second train, which I believe was a 6:30am departure -- you still see a spike at South Acton. You also have a smaller but still noticeable one on the 5:30am before it, and on the 8:53am one, where 65 riders board (second only to Littleton).

I mean, you're not wrong -- probably most of the effect is driven from that pair of express trains, with 292 and 202 boardings respectively. But I guess I'm still surprised, especially since the South Acton station is relatively isolated:

Littleton/495 is at least right off of its eponymous highway.

 

[The EGE]

Littleton has very limited parking, while South Acton has more (albeit usually full pre-pandemic). If you're coming from anywhere east of Leominster, South Acton is the biggest park-and-ride available. There's also probably some inertia at play: before short turns were extended to Littleton, it had the most service on the line.

 

[malabari]

Concord Rotary also plays a part - if you dont have to cross it, driving to Alewife is a more flexible commute. South Acton is just on the other side of that.