Stopping at Pawtucket and not Attleboro/South Attleboro is incredibly stupid if any commuter service is running this. Stopping at Attleboro and not South Attleboro and/or Pawtucket is also stupid, but slightly less so - and only then if it's MBCR at the helm and not RIDOT.
Incredibly stupid for whom? This is a service paid for by RIDOT and serving the RI commuter market. All decisions about that service are going to hinge on how to maximize its advantage for the RI commuter market. Attleboro, MA's needs are not RIDOT's concern. And if RIDOT ponies up the subsidy within its MBTA contract to run a RI-centric service...like they are doing elsewhere...the T will go where they tell it to go. The T is slap-happy to run its trains on somebody else's money...that's how we're getting from Boston to Hyannis in 2013, no?
What I can say is that you have 10 years of Cape Codder data from 1986-96 to chew on and make educated guesses about the Providence-Cape ridership subset from the CC's original D.C.-Hyannis run. The Cape Codder went: Providence,
Taunton, Wareham (M'boro didn't exist back then), BB, Sandwich, West Barnstable, Hyannis. No NEC stops. This is the most recent regular service run to the Cape, and the most reliable template for any new service.
OK...establishing that, if RIDOT is picking up the tab it is a reasonable assumption that they are going to want to pick up tix and parking revenue on this run from Pawtucket to max their intake and help fund this thing. Amtrak wouldn't want that, but this isn't Amtrak: it's a home-state service with a vested interest in serving Pawtucket station. Add that to the schedule as basic cost of doing business. Yes, it's a few minutes of schedule burn...on a stretch of NEC between Providence and Central Falls where you're only hitting 40-50 MPH to begin with. Not the end of the world.
Where's that leave the Attleboros? I don't know, but if you're working off the known-knowns from the Cape Codder service template and have to ration in-state revenue collection needs with your choice of possible NEC intermediates...this service map doesn't
start with both of them included. It may
end with one or more of them *earning* their way onto the schedule, but you don't start kicking numbers around that far removed from the known-knowns in the baseline. We aren't reaching here with a speculative market or a megaproject...it's re-initiating a recent service for a more narrowly-defined local market than the old D.C. intercity direct, and doing it with gradual upgrades that work Cape-backwards and overlap areas-first (i.e. Middleboro Jct. south). Nobody is doing this for NEC corridor development. That comes last when RI starts wrapping all its overlapping commuter rail dreams around a Providence hub. If Boston-Hyannis is a limited service that can gingerly start in 2013 and meet or exceed modest projections right from Season 1, Providence-Hyannis is a limited service that can gingerly start in 2015 on modest and easily exceedable projections when the T has more pooled equipment available and there's been a couple years worth of incremental speed improvements south of Middleboro.
That's it. Known-knowns, sharply defined market, conservative reach...build it up from there with the demand cresting at their backs. Even the T's not going to bother with the fully ADA'd and well-maintained Sandwich and West Barnstable intermediates for Season 1 until it gets more 40 MPH track to run on. There's no way it's going to be zippy enough east of Attleboro for Season 1 from Providence to consider stopping at any of the current or pending NEC intermediates. If South-frickin'-Attleboro's place in the pecking order is giving ANYONE indigestion...may I suggest not overthinking this so much at least for the first few seasons of service?
What's actually going to happen is you're going to see trains make both/all three stops, killing your 'optimal' diesel speeds. The only way you're getting around that is if you turn the service over to Amtrak to run, full stop, which gets you 110/125 but loses you Pawtucket, South Attleboro, Attleboro and probably Middleboro for a Providence - Taunton(?) - Wareham - Buzzards Bay direct. Frankly, I don't see Amtrak wanting any part of this for a long, long time, because each and every "Cape Codder" is one less Regional on the schedule. One of these two services has a much higher demand than the other one... no points for guessing.
Still, all three stops are only going to cost you 15 minutes - if that - and it's not like nobody living in Pawtucket or Attleboro is ever going to want to go to the Cape. Stopping the trains there also represents a headway bulk-up for the commute between Attleboro - Pawtucket - Providence, which is definitely worth a few riders, and there's no rule that You Must Be Going To Or From The Cape To Board This Train On Pain Of Death. The schedule's going to have to be staggered with Providence Line trains anyway. Since anyone for whom 15 minutes is going to be the deciding factor on boarding this train is probably going to keep driving anyway, why throw away free money like that? Like you've said to me before, perfect is the enemy of good enough.
If I had to guess, if all the Cape speeds rounded into nice enough shape and it got time to consider adding new intermediates...South Attleboro is still going to be the more likely skip. The station was built in the first place to offset the subsidy-loss induced closure of the original Pawtucket stop, and it sits on 150 MPH-rated straightaway that T diesels could blow through at 90 MPH. If it's a choice of one or the other, Pawtucket's the much lesser drag on the schedule because nothing is moving at full track speed through there. Easy decision. Attleboro-proper...it sits at the junction, so wouldn't burn much 90 MPH territory to plunk a stop there. But I'm still of the mind that you start conservatively, get the end-to-end service cooking, THEN *graduate* new intermediates on their merits.
And, no, this isn't going to impact Providence Line headways or make a measurable difference in service levels in Attleboro. Assigning the 90 MPH-rated locos and coaches in the fleet to the Providence pool alone creates far more new schedule slots in Attleboro and S. Attleboro than any Cape service ever would. RIDOT upgrading the freight track to passenger duty from Providence to Central Falls in prep for the new Pawtucket stop creates more schedule slots. 3rd track Readville-Canton, 4th track Readville-Forest Hills, passing tracks at Sharon and Mansfield, wiring up the extra tracks around Attleboro, level boarding at all stops...all of that creates more new schedule slots through Attleboro. There is nothing a Providence-Cape run would add that wouldn't be dwarfed by the regular Providence Line schedule expansion already in the works. Moreso after RIDOT South County is running at full load if the T decides to draw a line in the sand at T.F. Green for one-seat rides to Boston.
Schedule fluffing to Providence is an utterly unimportant consideration for this service vs. the quality of life in Attleboro. If Attleboro generates enough demand to the Cape to *graduate* into this narrowly-targeted RIDOT-run service, so be it. But let's see some study numbers first, because we're working from a service template here and aren't grandfathering intermediates by default. And yes, agencies that study these things, please do study...we don't know, and it would be beneficial to know.
As for Amtrak...they make a good mint catering to premium-class customers. That's their NEC meal ticket, and that's what got the Cape Codder goodish ridership on the first go-around. I agree that there's a local need that can more immediately be served from Boston or Providence and that the locals are going to have to make the first move on track improvements before Amtrak starts sniffing around. MA didn't exactly have their back in '96, so they'll want to see the commitment. But bottom-line is that if their NEC business class regulars show enough demand for reinstatement of D.C.-Hyannis, that's probably going to be one of the very first routes they revive. Robust Downeaster and Vermonter numbers during tourist season make it a low-risk/high-reward thing to try, and they can get away with charging high fares for it. And equipment, scarce as it perpetually is, is a lot less difficult to come by on warm-weather weekends than it is in the dead of winter or during peak business/school travel periods in Fall or Spring. We aren't talking big equipment needs...the old CC was 2 trainsets total for a Friday and a Sunday. That's barely a drop in the bucket for the NEC equipment pool. It's basically taking a New Haven-terminating Regional, sending it on thru to Providence...then "off-roading" it for a couple extra hours.
With Dean Street before the merge and Silver City Galleria after the split, there's simply no way to have both routes stop in the same place, unless you're willing to axe one or both of them and put Taunton Station
somewhere around here or around here instead.
Well, considering what's happened with South Coast FAIL so far, I could actually see them keeping Dean Street ("Taunton Center") and Silver City Galleria and shoving in the Target / Erika Drive stop as "Taunton Depot" for the Amtrak transfer or to pay off Taunton NIMBYs with a potential single-seat ride to the Cape. Three stops for Taunton, baby! Why not?
South Coast FAIL website has the "latest" Taunton station proposals at Dean St. and the "Depot"/Target parking lot, so Silver City doesn't have a direct stop. Today. It has on previous documents. Depends on who's getting a pony now vs. last week. If they're going to put a park-and-ride at the 24/140 interchange, the Target side is going to be vastly easier to build parking and access roads for than the Silver City side. It makes some degree of cost control sense to put it there. Silver City's valuable enough and that interchange is rough enough for cross-traffic that there's some future value in connecting the shopping access roads together over (i.e. spur off the Galleria perimeter road on a bridge over 24 to hit the ends of Industrial Dr. and Mozzone Blvd.). But that could be a future MassDOT project on its own merits totally disconnected from commuter rail and/or driven by whatever casino action may or may not be happening in the area.
The true insanity was X many proposal revisions ago when Taunton DID have 3 stops: downtown/44, Weir Jct. near 138, and Silver City-proper. Yuck. Dean and Target at least get the stop spacing right and offers up 1 walkable downtown stop and 1 highway park-and-ride without totally precluding road access to the Silver City side. The three-headed monster plan would've hosed the Cape stop AND plonked a completely superfluous 'tweener at Weir.
This is a tenfold improvement. And that, in the scope of this project, is a truly terrifying thought to ponder.
