MBTA Construction Projects

Re: T construction news

p. 15. MassDOT board unanimously votes to purchase Framingham Secondary from CSX for $23M (all of it,

The whole secondary? All the way from Leominster?


Also, you didn't mention it, but someone, be it Kraft or the T, was interested in a Patriots Train from Worcester to Foxboro via this line. This could potentially aide in such a venture, though I hardly think it was a driving force at all.
 
Re: T construction news

The whole secondary? All the way from Leominster?


Also, you didn't mention it, but someone, be it Kraft or the T, was interested in a Patriots Train from Worcester to Foxboro via this line. This could potentially aide in such a venture, though I hardly think it was a driving force at all.

No. That's the Fitchburg Secondary, which the state has no immediate interest in. Unless CSX HQ in Jacksonville just decides it wants all remaining east-of-Worcester ownership off its books and makes the first move phoning up MassDOT (in which case, of course they'll pounce and make a deal).

Framingham Secondary is Framingham to Mansfield. And the only passenger considerations are Walpole-Foxboro and a teensy bit Foxboro-Mansfield. But it's an extremely important freight conduit to Boston and South Coast, and CSX hasn't been well-motivated to put more than the barest minimum upkeep into it, so the whole end-to-end thing is a valuable pickup to the state for things like growing port revenue...or growing any new freight revenue inside the industrially decimated south half of 495.


I strongly suspect state asked about the south half for commuter rail and CSX said no-deal unless they bought the whole thing. Hard not to see CSX's motivation: they want to retract their entire permanent presence to Worcester-west and run ultra-lean ops remotely to all that's left east, focused square around the major yards Westborough, Framingham, and Readville; the interchanges with the Fore River (Braintree), MassCoastal (Middleboro), and Grafton & Upton (Grafton) shortlines; and whatever port business the state wants to giftwrap to them. That's why they outsourced South Coast to MassCoastal RR and paid off one of their 2 remaining Stoughton customers to relocate to Middleboro, that's why they're getting off the lower Franklin Line altogether by outsourcing all the Franklin-Milford customers to Grafton & Upton RR in 6 months and paid one of their Beacon Park customers to relocate to G&U's yard in Hopedale. Slash operating costs, encourage the shortlines to put the elbow grease into developing the door-to-door business they don't have time for, reap higher profits at the interchanges. Within 10 years I bet the only non-interchange, non-transload locals they keep are the stuff that has no other carrier to outsource to: the Foxboro/Mansfield/Attleboro daily local that hits a dense cluster of NEC customers, the Northborough/Leominster daily, and the little short runs out of Readville to the lucrative Home Depot warehouse behind 128 station and the tiny scraps left at Norwood industrial park on that stubby branchline that forks off Norwood Central. And maybe Everett Terminal if they don't trust Pan Am to deliver a fair cut of the produce train proceeds back to them in Worcester.


MassDOT knows this...that's why funding appears out of nowhere every time a line is available for sale. That $18M for the Berkshire Line would've appeared out of nowhere all the same even if the Patrick admin had zero interest in that quixotic passenger project out there. Active rail lines, especially ones that have thru connections and sustained traffic, amortize themselves over time by default. Whether there's any big plans for them or not. All 6 New England states pretty much will drop everything they're doing and write the check if a line goes for sale at non-gouged price.




From what the T employees on RR.net said, the non-revenue test of the Worcester-Foxboro run didn't even complete its test run before they threw in the towel. That's how much slower it ran than whatever line in the sand the T drew for the maximum allowable WOR-FXB travel time it would even entertain the notion of reserving a crew shift for. I know there was some sort of 495-area business coalition pushing the idea, but they weren't willing to put a dime of their own money behind it.

Maybe when they get the upper Framingham Sec. creaking along at >25 MPH (i.e. more than double what it does now), or somebody else fronts money to subsidize a majority of the cost, they'll revisit this. But not even full-time Foxboro CR and 60 MPH speeds south of Walpole is going to open up Worcester game train opportunities if it takes 90 minutes in hell just to get between Framingham and Walpole.
 
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Re: T construction news

MBTA just received $20 million in federal TIGER grant funding for the Ruggles Platform project-construction of a new 797-foot long, 12-foot wide high-level passenger platform between the Ruggles Station headhouse and Northeastern University's Columbus Avenue parking garage. This will allow all commuter rail/Amtrack trains to stop at Ruggles.

http://www.dot.gov/tiger

http://www.mbta.com/about_the_mbta/t_projects/default.asp?id=25059
 
Re: T construction news

MBTA just received $20 million in federal TIGER grant funding for the Ruggles Platform project-construction of a new 797-foot long, 12-foot wide high-level passenger platform between the Ruggles Station headhouse and Northeastern University's Columbus Avenue parking garage. This will allow all commuter rail/Amtrack trains to stop at Ruggles.
Why would AMTRAK ever stop at Ruggles?
 
Re: T construction news

Why would AMTRAK ever stop at Ruggles?

Not the point. Read it more like "allowing commuter trains more flexiblity in stopping at Ruggles when mixing in traffic on a track they share with Amtrak" and "allowing all CR to stop at Ruggles".

TIGER puts it this way:
Currently, due to space limitations, only a portion of inbound trains stop at Ruggles station, requiring passengers to transfer from the commuter rail to the MBTA’s Orange Line at Back Bay Station, then travel back to Ruggles Station. The addition of a second platform will eliminate this capacity constraint. Furthermore, the second platform will increase accessibility, permit easier egress in the event of an emergency, and eliminate train crossovers, which slow down operations and increase conflict potential.

F-Line has pointed out that the other thing Amtrak & the T may want for flexibility in the future is electrification of the Fairmont corridor for non-rev and emergency moves (like if a storm takes the wires down on the existing corridor)
 
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Re: T construction news

MBTA just received $20 million in federal TIGER grant funding for the Ruggles Platform project-construction of a new 797-foot long, 12-foot wide high-level passenger platform between the Ruggles Station headhouse and Northeastern University's Columbus Avenue parking garage. This will allow all commuter rail/Amtrack trains to stop at Ruggles.
http://www.dot.gov/tiger
http://www.mbta.com/about_the_mbta/t_projects/default.asp?id=25059

Thanks for posting this so quickly! There is also a Second Ruggles CR Platform thread at RR.net about this (to which I've cross-posted your news)

For Tiger fans, here is a "2014 only" link:
http://www.dot.gov/tiger/14awards
 
Re: T construction news

This was going on around the Copley emergency exit:

IMG_20150522_124406.jpg
 
Re: T construction news

Cross-post for those of you not on railroad.net:

These are a little old - from August 24 - but South Acton station is coming along nicely. My photos, copyrighted but free to reuse with proper attribution to my Wikimedia username.

640px-South_Acton_station_from_Main_Street%2C_August_2015.JPG

640px-South_Acton_station_construction_from_parking_lot%2C_August_2015.JPG

640px-South_Acton_station_construction_from_temporary_platform%2C_August_2015.JPG

640px-South_Acton_station_south_parking_lot_construction%2C_August_2015.jpg
 
Re: T construction news

Yes it is. That's not the first report on the issue. Quite a shame if it comes to fruition, as those stops are by far the best locations in Belmont.
 
Re: T construction news

Sadly so. The numbers appear to be complete fabrications because someone at the MBTA wants to drop the stations entirely. I don't always agree with Ari, but he's got an excellent skewering here.
 
Re: T construction news

Odd that I haven't heard more information about this... got in touch with Belmont's state legislators to find out more. Brownsberger's looking worse and worse to me. A shame that the local media just parrots the numbers.
 
Re: T construction news

The town has a vocal minority that opposes all public transportation and non-automobile transportation. The same folks that have "No Trail on the Live Rail" lawn signs protesting the Belmont Community Path. They vote and they go to meetings. They are generally older, wealthy, and white and fear all change.
 
Re: T construction news


No. Because to-date Transpo Planning Supergenius Sen. Brownsberger is the only source flapping his gums. Publicly. Privately there may be a few at the T who want this, but they're more than happy to let the Senator take the fall on their behalf. They can't close the stations; those are the only 2 locations with bus connections, and Waverley is walking distance access to McLean Hospital. If they combined them into a nowheresville shit sandwich halfway between on the stretch of Route 60 behind Cityside Subaru they'd have a perfectly accessible platform...and zero buses, a 2 ft. wide single sidewalk chopped up to all hell by high-speed curb cuts, and lost access to the hospital. Aggregate accessibility gets worsened for all, and Town of Belmont has a nearly airtight legal case to defeat any machinations to close or consolidate the stops.

The only reason Wile E. Brownsberger is the sole official saying this on-record is because he's the only person too stupid to not know what the score is here if somebody files a lawsuit.


Besides, Belmont Ctr. is silly-easy to ADA. 4-track width ROW makes raising the platforms in front of the historic station building zero-impact construction. And the planned extension of the Fitchburg Cutoff path requires mandatory ramps down to street level augmenting the stone staircases, so they have their idea ready beforehand on how to non-invasively do the egresses wrapping gently around any original structures at low enough cost to swing on bike path money. This shouldn't even be a debate about "I can's" / "I can't's" at this location.

Waverley...yes, the pit configuration makes that one legitimately more expensive. But building any full-highs means building them to full regs and extending the platforms to a full 800 ft. That means the embankments on both sides past the edges of the red retaining walls are going to be re-manicured or get extensions of said retaining walls. The slopes of the hillsides make it not engineering-difficult at all to ride a ramp up the retaining wall from its extensions to both the Trapelo and Lexington ends, because the embankments fizz out very quickly after the station. That was a 1950's grade crossing elimination when B&M was feeling ambitious about pruning a bunch of Fitchburg and Lowell remainders inside of 128. The earth-moving to create the cut is all recent historical origin. They want the Cutoff path to go here too; they have to have some idea of how tackling the embankments is doable on bike path money.

The platform extensions do make it pricier in quantity of concrete to do up Waverley, but the requirement is ADA'ing one station in town...not both. If Waverley is the harder one and Center is way easy...well, Senator, what do you think?

acme.jpg
 
Re: T construction news

I don't always agree with Ari, but he's got an excellent skewering here.

Actually, Center's way easier than Ari posits. The curve at the west end is very slight, with Weymouth Landing and East Weymouth on Greenbush both being sharper-angle curves in far tighter-fitting single track confines without causing any platform gapping or requiring the precision-precast panels that Yawkey required for its unusual side platform setup crammed in along the Pike. See here at E. Wey:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yMKhGlp7jk

You could start the 800-footer at the same spot on the curve and drag the extension east on the tangent part...or add a few more feet west onto the curve for a secondary outbound egress behind the police station and still keep the full thing centered on the station house. You might save a couple bucks re-centering it tangent, but Ari can safely group this one at the low end of the costs comparison...cheaper than Littleton, probably same as Morton or Uphams if they aren't lumping any Fitchburg Cutoff path project costs in beyond what strictly overlaps inside of the platform extension project limits. But even if they did stick the price tag for the full Blanchard Rd. to Waverley bike path on "Belmont Center station ADA" it would be almost impossible to arrive at Yawkey's price tag, much less an absurd $18M.
 
Re: T construction news

Fitchburg line would benefit from stop consolidation (Weston & Belmont). Part of a consolidation should include the extension of the trolley bus from Waverley to the new stop on Pleasant Street. I could even see that the consolidated stop would have Waverley at one of its ends and the new accessible entrance somewhere along Pleasant Street that would also be a location good for transit oriented development.

isn't the real solution for Belmont that the greenline come out from Union Square to:
California St
Porter Sq
Sherman St
Fawcett-Cambridge Park Drive
Brighton St (still in Cambridge!)
Belmont Center
Waverly
Beaver Brook
 
Re: T construction news

Fitchburg line would benefit from stop consolidation (Weston & Belmont). Part of a consolidation should include the extension of the trolley bus from Waverley to the new stop on Pleasant Street. I could even see that the consolidated stop would have Waverley at one of its ends and the new accessible entrance somewhere along Pleasant Street that would also be a location good for transit oriented development.

isn't the real solution for Belmont that the greenline come out from Union Square to:
California St
Porter Sq
Sherman St
Fawcett-Cambridge Park Drive
Brighton St (still in Cambridge!)
Belmont Center
Waverly
Beaver Brook

Replied here
 

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