I’ve been curious about this as well. South Attleboro is the superior siting for a park and ride, and it existed before Pawtucket-Central Falls, so there’s no doubt in my mind the former’s full reopening will put a dent in the latter’s (seemingly?) impressive ridership stats. The big questions are A) how large will that dent be, and B) how long will it take for the TOD to generate enough ridership to replace the “lost” park and ride contingent?
Are there financial implications for those riders being in RI vs. MA?
This thing got some use out in the field today on a joint MBTA-NNEPRA office car special trip to Portland, with the cranberry-scheme GP40 leading. They wyed it in Portland for the return trip.
Relieving pressure on existing stations (in this case Providence and South Attleboro, where parking capacity was regularly maxed out for both) can be a perfectly legitimate reason to build an infill station, and I think that was always kind of understood to be a big part of the value proposition in Pawtucket’s case, in addition to the TOD potential.
I’ve used the mall garage instead of the station garage for the same reason. That claim about the station lots being full wasn’t my own justification; that was RIDOT’s at the time. They focused on official station parking availability and a license plate survey at South Attleboro to show how many R.I. residents were parking there. So yeah, functionally the mall greatly expands the amount of parking for Providence Station, but as far as I recall it wasn’t framed that way. And clearly Pawtucket got built, so it’s fair to say that whether the framing was as accurate as it could have been, “the powers that be” were receptive to a pitch where a good amount of the value proposition was loading relief for nearby stations.
There should be no time needed. Much of the new Pawtucket TOD residences should already be in place well before S Attleboro is ever rebuilt. 500 new housing units have either just opened or are presently in the construction phase. A few hundred more are in the planning stage, and if built, would likely come on line before a S Attleboro station renovation was completed. In the end, the S Attleboro station rebuild may be needed to relieve the pressure on the Pawtucket station.
www.wgbh.org
Ive long held the opinion that the real key to increasing regional rail ridership, reducing highway traffic, and decreasing pollution in the city of Boston is rather than making buses free, using the same money the state would need to allocate to that to instead subsidize much reduced regional rail fares. Making the train fare be more comprable to what the gas cost is of the driving commute of the same distance would attract a lot of people to not bother with the traffic and save the gas money, as it is the only cost associated with driving that most drivers percieve.
The commuter rail is already the most, by far, subsidized form of transit on the MBTA (ignoring the Ride and Ferries/etc) - at already $5-6/rider. Any money put into further subsidizing that should instead be put into electrification and moving to real EMU based regional rail, which will actually transform the commuter rail system and bring significantly more ridership and lower operating costs substantially.
The best my work will do is the pre-tax pass. I don't use the CR enough to justify even that, but if they covered a bit more than pre-tax I'd consider using it more.
Even if they spend billions of dollars to electrify the regional rail system, that doesn't change the fact that people still need to pay hundreds a month on a car to be able to access their basic necessities in most of the state. Keeping the cost of the regional rail the exact same won't move the needle too much if it's still out of budget for suburbanites to use regularly. If the goal is to get more people riding the train more regularly then they need to actually be able to afford it for more than just a trip or two a week. And if the subsidy is already so high then the additional subsidy needed in order to reduce fares isn't much of a financial hit that diminishes as it gets more buts in seats and fills the existing capacity.
Peak trains are already running very full. Taking the Fall 2024 passenger counts in the morning inbound direction, the first trains to fall below 800 passengers are Worcester Line trains 508/584 (now 1516/518). Which I have no idea what sort of consist they were running but if it was one of the 3 single-levels flanked by 2 bi-levels then thats exceeding their full seating capacity. Trains still have in excess of 300 passengers on the early pre-6am trains and the post-peak arriving into Boston well after 9am ones. Many midday trains have more than 100 passengers now that clockface service is a thing. Start selling tickets at reduced off-peak rates like Metro-North does and that should see the already healthy off-peak ridership further fill up those empty seats. With the South Station fare gates coming then the lack of midday conductors for ticket checking across multiple coaches is also less of an issue.
I think this is a good idea for trying to get lower fares with less public subsidy (not that I have a problem with public subsidy for something that'd bring a lot of public benefit). If the MBTA can work in some better CR subsidy agreements with employers beyond simple pre-tax that could have a large effect, especially with how many office workers are now able to come and go off-peak with WFH. Many healthcare workers also work off-hours where they likely currently drive since their commute times are outside rush hour, but could take the train if it was financially incentivised.