MBTA "Transformation" (Green Line, Red Line, & Orange Line Transformation Projects)

[The EGE]

As long as it's light rail, I think Central Avenue and Milton stay separate. As seen above, Central Avenue actually outslugs Milton on ridership (I'm not quite sure why), and something like 50-100 riders a day transfer from the 240 there (see 2019 profile). Merging them seems like it would inconvenience passengers, while only saving the relatively small cost of rebuilding Central Avenue.

If it's ever converted to a Red Line extension, then merging makes sense given the higher per-station cost. The longer station would reduce some of the walking distance, and it would be worth rerouting/terminating bus routes there.

 

[TheRatmeister]

There's going to have to be a hard look at Capen Street, Valley Road, Butler, and Cedar Grove. They collectively account for 178 daily boardings (4.6% of ridership), yet are estimated to account for $45M in renovations. Even if that number is massively slashed (as it should be), you're still looking at a lot of money for a very small number of riders.

As Beans notes, Capen Street and Valley Road in particular seem likely to be cut. They're the lowest ridership, have the lowest ridership recovery, and serve low-density suburban areas with million-dollar homes. Valley Road will be very expensive and difficult to make accessible. I could maybe see the case for a station at Francis Street, with accessible paths from Capen Street and the Harvest River Bridge, but that would be doubtful on actually meeting accessibility regs.

Butler has the best ridership of the four, but it's only 1,600 feet from Milton. Cedar Grove has the best actual catchment area; its ridership is probably suppressed by only being one stop from Ashmont. If there were better timed and less convoluted transfers at Ashmont, I bet it would nearly equal Milton in ridership.

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In particular you'd need to do some serious mental gymnastics to justify spending $20,000,000 on Valley Road and its 10 daily riders. But as long as it's light rail operating on a request stop basis there isn't really a major time penalty to keeping the lower ridership intermediate stops, so if Milton wants to cough up $8 million to keep Capen St they should be able to do that if they want to.

In terms of the other stops, Butler is close enough to Milton that I don't think it makes sense to keep, especially with the Neponset trail right there. Cedar Grove should be kept though, and as you said it would probably do a lot better if the transfer at Ashmont sucked less.

 

[jbray]

In particular you'd need to do some serious mental gymnastics to justify spending $20,000,000 on Valley Road and its 10 daily riders. But as long as it's light rail operating on a request stop basis there isn't really a major time penalty to keeping the lower ridership intermediate stops, so if Milton wants to cough up $8 million to keep Capen St they should be able to do that if they want to. Butler is close enough to Milton that I don't think it makes sense to keep, especially with the Neponset trail right there. Cedar Grove should be kept though, and as you said it would probably do a lot better if the transfer at Ashmont sucked less.

I agree. In a red line conversion it would also work well as a link with a 203 BRT/BRT lite ring from Forest Hills to a hypothetical Neponset/Morrisey station on the Braintree Line.