North Station-South Station Rail Link

Freight can't handle the grades, plus it would require electric locomotives to even be thinkable.

If you are really worried about cost, the cost of supporting freight (in terms of track/right-of-way geometry) would far outweigh any benefits, or the cost of building 4 tracks.
 
Heavy rail metro stock and full-size passenger rail equipment should never share tracks. Metro stock and multiple units, or multiple units and Amtrak equipment, is one thing. But making Red Line cars that could remotely survive a collision with an ACS-64 pulling 10 cars would make the Red Line cars far too heavy for rapid transit use.

The Link is provisioned for four tracks; the second pair won't cost too much more than the cost for the first pair alone.
 
The overweight ACS-64 with ten overweight passenger cars is a ridiculous oddity due to American NIH syndrome, stubbornness and stupidity. In sane parts of the world, they run lightweight passenger trains, and build safety systems that avoid crashes. Period. The fact that we build rolling tanks here is because of corruption and incompetence. There are no excuses for it.

But I do agree that the NSRL should have 4 tracks, and that it should not be running Red Line cars. It should be running lightweight EMUs which fan out and provide quasi-rapid-transit express service over a wider area. Eventually.
 
Why EMUs? Focus electric build out in areas where speeds or frequency justifies it, not in places where a few bilevels every hour does fine, which knocks out:
1: All old colony lines
2: Fitchburg
3: Probably the Western Route
4: Needham
What does that get you above electrifying Worcester and Providence with DMUs everywhere else, beyond billions on billions of money that can't be used improving track conditions?
 
Why EMUs? Because climbing the grades out of the NSRL will be very painful with a locomotive (which would have to be electric, btw). I can see it happening (all the more reason to have 4 tracks) but it makes me wonder: the kind of travel that is best served with bilevels+locomotive is probably going to continue terminating at South or North station, and may continue to run as diesel under the wires anyhow.

The kind of quasi-rapid-transit I was describing though is a very long term plan. It won't be the initial, or even subsequent, phase. It would be built out in stages: over sections of the lines which need denser service. But it's the kind of goal which makes the NSRL worth contemplating. Otherwise, why bother? As you say, better to put that money into track upgrades.
 
My idea was for rapid transit DMU service to terminate at the surface terminals, with longer 495 trains powered by dual modes, possibly as an option order on the P32 replacements. The idea would be to provide time competitive service for longer trips compared to driving large sections of 128, while the DMU lines would provide quasi rapid transit service from one specific line to one of the core terminals, with the rationale being "through core" trips are a smaller fraction of transit trips than simple Inbound/Outbound service, and would require enormously expensive electrification (unless someone makes a freaking dual mode DMU, but that's ridiculous.
 
If "through core" trips are a small fraction of trips then it's pointless to build the NSRL.

In my thinking, the NSRL is predicated on its ability to provide frequent, fast, "through core" trips. Dual-mode locomotives are heavy and expensive. They may be the right choice for some trips. But, at least in my vision, the bulk of the frequent service has to be provided by EMUs that are capable of rapidly navigating the Link and providing near rapid-transit level of service.

If there isn't a market for that kind of inner density of service, then the NSRL won't be cost effective. If there is, it will only happen because of frequent service.
 
If "through core" trips are a small fraction of trips then it's pointless to build the NSRL.
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Rapid transit length/type trips, which unless I'm seriously misunderstanding commuting patterns are not primarily "through core". IMO, opening the GJ ROW for light rail alone justifies NSRL, with Amtrak and 495 length through running as add-on benefits and rapid-transit-on-CR as a distant third priority. I think we'll be, barring a few exceptions (like Fairmount, which isn't even in the base NSRL build), better served building out light and heavy rail.
 
Matthew said:
If "through core" trips are a small fraction of trips then it's pointless to build the NSRL.

In my thinking, the NSRL is predicated on its ability to provide frequent, fast, "through core" trips. Dual-mode locomotives are heavy and expensive. They may be the right choice for some trips. But, at least in my vision, the bulk of the frequent service has to be provided by EMUs that are capable of rapidly navigating the Link and providing near rapid-transit level of service.

If there isn't a market for that kind of inner density of service, then the NSRL won't be cost effective. If there is, it will only happen because of frequent service.
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NSRL would at least get you:
1) North people commuting 1-seat to Back Bay and South Station
2) South people commuting onward to Lechmere and North Station
3) TOD at Anderson (Lowell Line) and Norwood (NEC)
4) The NEC extended to Anderson (where electrification would likely end)
5) The Downeaster through-running to NYC

To me, that's a good 50-year case for a 2-track NSRL, and by 2070, we'd have other needs, and other technology for which NS might not be the right answer. Perhaps by then, what we'd really want is Worcester-BackBay-South Station Crossing-Seaport-Airport.
 
If the goal is only to get people to a CBD, then what we have will suffice and the $5 billion (approx) NSRL won't make sense. The Downeaster to NYC is nice but is just a trickle.

I should probably write an article about my thinking on this issue. I'll try to sketch it out briefly.

This proposal might be considered a fundamental restructuring of commute patterns in the region. The goal is to strengthen the MBTA's service to secondary business districts. Back Bay, Longwood, Yawkey, Kendall, UMass, Brighton, Lynn, Ruggles, Malden, Porter, Newmarket, etc etc. Places that have or could germinate near or around commuter rail stations. It's impossible to create 1-seat rides from all the commuter rail lines to all those places. Instead you are going to ask a significant proportion of people to make a connection. And for that you need frequent, rapid transit-like service.

1) North people commuting 1-seat to Back Bay and South Station
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We already determined that we could only send a limited number of the big loco-hauled bilevels through the link, so what do you do with the people dumped at North Station? What about people coming into South Station who want to go west or south along a different radial? You need frequent service.

2) South people commuting onward to Lechmere and North Station
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Same issue, flipped.

3) TOD at Anderson (Lowell Line) and Norwood (NEC)
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TOD, great, but if you want to attract riders from all over the region, you need frequent, connecting service. One seat rides from everywhere to everywhere won't work.

5) The Downeaster through-running to NYC
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That's a bonus, IMO. Maybe an excuse to get additional Federal funding, and some from Maine.

For some trip pairs, CR+subway already works (e.g. North side/Back Bay). For others, not really (e.g. South side other than Worcester/Yawkey). Also keep in mind ever-increasing crowds on the subway, in crucial connection stations such as Park Street, which cannot be expanded (it seems). The Urban Ring may help for some trips, but it won't help for going north to south side. Fast radials can easily beat it out, too.

Getting it built is difficult: no doubt. Lots of phases. NSRL, electrification are biggies. Maybe getting people used to the idea of dense service on the inner sections, with DMUs, will be a start. Maybe not.

But this is the kind of "big vision" that I think is necessary to justify the NSRL. Not just running the same old service one more station. Not just for the NEC. It's the idea that the commuter rail is more than just a shuttle from parking lot to CBD, but rather, a cross-regional rapid transit system that means you don't have to live and work/school/play on the same line.

Crazy, I know.
 
The #1 reason to build the Rail Link doesn't have anything to do with passenger throughput, really. Passenger throughput is the sexy reason to build the thing, and a great selling point. The tremendously unsexy reason that far less people care about but which is no less important is the ability of the Link to allow for a couple of dedicated electric locomotives to do nothing but haul out-of-service trains through to and from BET all day long, which doesn't give you that sexy rapid-transit like EMU corridor from Readville to Anderson but does solve your long-standing problem of a mismatch between storage capacity on the northside and the southside rather permanently. Another solid bonus is that the Grand Junction is no longer a critical load-bearing point of failure in terms of ops, which means any proposal to take the Grand Junction offline for, e.g., the Urban Ring suddenly has traction that it will never have until the Link is up and running because look what had to happen when the thing went offline previously.

(And also, having 100% through operation from Providence and Worcester even just to North Station would have stopped the madness with regards to the existing South Station terminal and track expansion because those trains would no longer be overwhelming the existing terminal and crowding out all other lines. Regrettably, it's too late for that now - but it would've been nice.)

Sexy, shiny, new hotness french import EMUs shuttling people around the core at rapid transit like frequencies are huge and great and absolutely keep on that as the selling point - but even if the number of revenue service runs through the Link is 0 it's worth building for what it buys you in terms of ops.
 
Nobody builds a $5 billion tunnel just to shuttle out-of-service equipment around. Not even in the most overpriced, boondoggle-y agencies.

Passengers are not just "the sexy reason" or a "great selling point." They are the reason, period.

Sometimes it feels like the MBTA believes that its mission is to shuffle pieces of metal around, and the human transportation component is just an unwanted side effect of that. But you've actually articulated that point of view.
 
There's a lot of things with the Link that you can't do well otherwise, and there's a lot of non-obvious trips. Through trips are not the only reason for the Link; trips connecting at North and South station that take the load off the downtown subway transfer stations are a huge component as well.

As an example: I travel from Kenmore to Porter several times a week to visit a partner of mine. At rush hour, the trip can take a full hour or more. If I plan ahead a bit, I can take a Worcester Line train from Yawkey to South Station and cut off 15 to 20 minutes of that. If I could change at South Station to a Fitchburg Line train, even with transfer time the trip would get even shorter.

The Green Line (W), Red Line (NW, not as much SE), and Orange Line (N, maybe S) are paralleled by commuter rail lines that have excess capacity, with direct (Porter, Malden, Forest Hills, Ruggles, Back Bay) or close (Yawkey, soon Allston/Brighton/New Balance) connections. With a SEPTA-style through-running system, those parallel lines are actually useful as express transit routes for people going in many directions, not just for 9-5 commuters going to/from the CD.
 
The EGE said:
There's a lot of things with the Link that you can't do well otherwise, and there's a lot of non-obvious trips. Through trips are not the only reason for the Link; trips connecting at North and South station that take the load off the downtown subway transfer stations are a huge component as well.

As an example: I travel from Kenmore to Porter several times a week to visit a partner of mine. At rush hour, the trip can take a full hour or more. If I plan ahead a bit, I can take a Worcester Line train from Yawkey to South Station and cut off 15 to 20 minutes of that. If I could change at South Station to a Fitchburg Line train, even with transfer time the trip would get even shorter.

The Green Line (W), Red Line (NW, not as much SE), and Orange Line (N, maybe S) are paralleled by commuter rail lines that have excess capacity, with direct (Porter, Malden, Forest Hills, Ruggles, Back Bay) or close (Yawkey, soon Allston/Brighton/New Balance) connections. With a SEPTA-style through-running system, those parallel lines are actually useful as express transit routes for people going in many directions, not just for 9-5 commuters going to/from the CD.
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This is an incredibly important point. The time factor and load factor multiplier effects of effectively providing "express route" connections can be huge. We need to be looking at the commuting and transit patterns enabled by the RER in Paris, or the S-Bahn in many Germany cities. These are the models we need to be striving for.
 
Nobody builds a $5 billion tunnel just to shuttle out-of-service equipment around. Not even in the most overpriced, boondoggle-y agencies.
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You're right. People don't build it for those reasons, they build it so the single most important load spreader and congestion reliever after Red/Blue can get built, and also for decreasing surface terminal congestion, and also for more efficient set use, and also for less pressure on connection stations. While none of those reasons come close to justifying the link by itself, they sure do help.
 
Matthew said:
Nobody builds a $5 billion tunnel just to shuttle out-of-service equipment around. Not even in the most overpriced, boondoggle-y agencies.

Passengers are not just "the sexy reason" or a "great selling point." They are the reason, period.

Sometimes it feels like the MBTA believes that its mission is to shuffle pieces of metal around, and the human transportation component is just an unwanted side effect of that. But you've actually articulated that point of view.
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Then it never gets built, period. Even in the universe where our commuter rail runs like the RER we cannot put enough people onto those trains through that tunnel to justify $5 billion and that's why cutting the Link's capacity in half to run Red Line trains through it is gaining traction.

A significant portion of the through-Link traffic is going to be capacity-redistributing in nature. The impact it has on our ability to better manage rolling stock and yard space is huge and cannot be ignored or dismissed or undercut.

I stand by my previous comment. The Link has tremendous merit if several trains run through it empty - and a sizable portion of the Link capacity is likely going to be used by empty trains or very lightly used but still technically revenue service trains.

We can staple S-bahn-like operation into the infrastructure once it's there, but the Link is coming long before that, and the importance of having this thing to better shuffle all our huge pieces of metal around is going to be a significant reason to get this done.

I'm sorry if articulating the fact that passenger throughput isn't the #1 reason to build the Link (it's the #2 reason) is offensive to you. Note that I said it wasn't the #1 reason, not that it wasn't a reason at all.

And, indeed, as I said - the Link has merit even if 0 passengers utilize it. Does it have $5 billion worth of merit? No. But, to be frank, all of the reasons together probably don't have $5 billion worth of merit and the biggest question ought to be "if there's still a provision in place for the Link, and if most of the heavy lifting of ensuring there was a path forward was already done during the Big Dig, then why does this cost $5 billion when it should cost, at worst, $3 billion?"
 
Yeah, I've only heard F-Line advocate that model.
 
Then it never gets built, period. Even in the universe where our commuter rail runs like the RER we cannot put enough people onto those trains through that tunnel to justify $5 billion and that's why cutting the Link's capacity in half to run Red Line trains through it is gaining traction.
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Wait, what? So you say that we cannot put enough people through to justify $5 billion, but we can run empty trains to justify it?

What I'm advocating is basically what The EGE and Jeff are talking about. An express overlay of the rapid transit network, that you can also send longer distance commuter trains through. A model based on the RER, or the Munich S-Bahn. That is easily worth spending $5 billion. (I'm just picking an order-of-magnitude cost, btw).

I agree with you that I don't think it will happen because American railroaders are ideologically opposed to providing good quality, frequent service.

Stepping back a bit: it's not that I find it offensive that you put passengers as #2. I find it offensive when the MBTA and MassDOT do that. You can do whatever. But the whole purpose of transit -- the reason for its existence -- is to help move people around, to help them get where they're going and do what they want to do. So if people are no longer #1, then what's the point? Serving the needs of people is supposed to be the primary objective here. For all of what the MBTA and MassDOT do.

This is why I took such umbrage to the "weMove MA" plan, which introduced performance metrics that had very little to do with the effect of transportation on people's lives.
 
Matthew said:
Wait, what? So you say that we cannot put enough people through to justify $5 billion, but we can run empty trains to justify it?
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The ability to move trains back and forth goes a long way towards normalizing the relative capacity imbalances in the system today where Maintenance World HQ and all the heavyweight lines are on the "wrong" side of the divide relative to each other. That's definitely worth something because we talk about adding maintenance capacity to Readville and we regularly talk about the capacity crush as the layup platforms at South Station turn into short-term storage because short-term storage turned into long-term storage because long-term storage is effectively unusable by southside trains during the peak. In fact, I'd wager it's worth the entire cost of South Station Expansion plus maybe half of the cost of a Readville Maintenance Facility (only half because it's a long term need anyway) and now we're already at least $1 billion of the way towards justifying that price tag with exactly 0 projected passengers - remember, the current figure du jour for SS Expansion is $850 million.

It doesn't get us all the way there but it gets us well on the way towards justifying the expense.

So, no, running empty trains alone doesn't justify the Link but neither does any service pattern for through-running that we can dream up alone justify the Link. Both are important, and talking about the "unsexy" things like the operational advantages (which still exist even at zero ridership) is important.
 
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