This person may be on the board (the reference to Van's track map suggests he's at least been here), but the light rail Needham substitution from the Forest Hills side is a notion I don't think I've seen before.
This is the first of three posts about MBTA commuter-rail stations I went to see on the weekend of March 13–14: on Saturday I saw all of the Needham and Greenbush lines, and then on Sunday I …
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It's a fun thought exercise, and I appreciate the detailed review of the options, but to me the solution has always seemed obvious: Green to Needham Junction (I don't think the travel time costs will be nearly as forbidding as he seems to think), and Orange to West Roxbury-ish.
And they could be accomplished largely independently. Green to Needham is the easier swing (I think), and you could continue to run the Commuter Rail either to West Roxbury or Needham Junction in the meantime.
I suppose you could create a Needham Junction-Forest Hills light rail shuttle... that would require stringing up wires, but could probably get away with major platform rebuilds at first (though those will be needed at some point anyway), and possibly could be workable without any new double tracks.
But that hardly seems feasible long-term -- it faces the same problems as the commuter rail shuttle concept but with more upfront costs.
I think you are probably right, but maybe we shouldn't be seeing this as replacement Needham Line service (which the vast majority of people in Rozzie and Westie don't use), but instead as an upgrade to bus service. I don't recall whether I posted the idea on here or on the crazy pitches, but I've definitely thought about the concept in the past. I think a lot of people would switch from bus to an LRT shuttle that connects to Forest Hills.
I think this would be an "and also" proposal, rather than an "either/or" proposal. LRT feeder service into FH along the 36's corridor is an interesting idea, but I think you'd be better off first implementing bus lanes on Belgrade Ave, with a possible long-term eye toward streetcars. But I can't see an LRT short-turn service taking over the ROW that is currently used for downtown-destined service.
Just for some points of comparison. These are the 2018 morning inbound peak passenger counts on the Needham Line (color-coded by me):
East of 128 (not including FH) saw 1451 boardings; west of 128 saw 1219. Clearly there's ridership on both segments. Moreover, the
36 bus, which parallels the commuter rail line on Belgrade Ave and other streets, sees some 3,000 daily riders, plus another 3,000 on the 35 and 37, which overlap for a lengthy segment, and then split to serve corridors also near the commuter rail line (except for the 35, which ends up at the Dedham Mall).
As far as I can tell, the vast majority of stops on the 35, 36 and 37 would each be no more than a 10-minute walk (max) to a new Orange Line station (except for the segment along Washington St); most stops are more like 6 minutes away. The Orange Line would likely have even better headways than the three combined bus routes currently do along Belgrade Ave, and would almost certainly be faster to Forest Hills, and obviously would offer a one-seat ride to Ruggles, Back Bay, Downtown and Sullivan.
The ROW is already grade-separated, there's generally enough space for double tracks with minimal land-taking, there's a reasonable level of density in the surrounding area, there are multiple walkable villages near each station, and there are virtually no wetlands nearby or other environmental concerns.
Orange Line to West Roxbury is literally the most reasonable HRT expansion proposal in the entire system. No rail expansion is ever easy, but Orange to W Rox would provide better service on that corridor, and would best for the Boston transit network overall.
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