Reasonable Transit Pitches

[jklo]

and move Auburndale to Weston at 128.

There's much more of a population at it's current location and it starts to get really close to Wellesley Farms.

 

[jms13]

The northside neighborhoods are almost a 50/50 split on most of the local political issues in Newton; I think you might actually manage to get full unification and the rich-person version of riots with that plan. (And more practically, there are something close to a thousand TOD units either built in the last 5-10 years or currently planned/permitted for that stretch between West Newton and Newtonville, on top of the fact that the population is concentrated around the historic village centers.) You'd lose 80+% of the current riders at all three stops as well as the NIMBY development battle on the northside in one fell swoop. Gotta just stick with electrification and adding a Newton Corner stop once there's less of a penalty for doing so (bonus if it's part of the :15 Riverside UR approach).

 

[Tallguy]

500 pax between the two station, of whom nearly 100 drive there. The western half of Auburndales walkshed is park and river. 6000 people take 5xxs. They could be feeding the RR. Several of them cover significant amounts of Washington St and your TOD folk could take the bus if they aren't that close

 

[Tallguy]

500 pax between the two station, of whom nearly 100 drive there. The western half of Auburndales walkshed is park and river. 6000 people take 5xxs. They could be feeding the RR. Several of them cover significant amounts of Washington St and your TOD folk could take the bus if they aren't that close

Newton Corner needs a station but unless the hotel gets torn down the likeliest location would be to the west.

 

[Tallguy]

There's much more of a population at it's current location and it starts to get really close to Wellesley Farms.

The walkshed is non existent west and the new W Newton station would be more centered to the density. The Weston station would be more of a P&R and TOD prospect. . Wellesley Farms is over 1.25 miles west

 

[Tallguy]

The walkshed is non existent west and the new W Newton station would be more centered to the density. The Weston station would be more of a P&R and TOD prospect. . Wellesley Farms is over 1.25 miles west

And Massport would kick in as a Logan Express node

 

[jklo]

The walkshed is non existent west

That's what I mean. Recreation Road borders 10+ million dollar homes and a golf course.

 

[737900er]

Newton Corner stop sort of has to go in Newton Corner to kill the 501/502/503/504 and be fed by the 57 and 71. Just the ridership on those 50x routes would be a top-10 Commuter Rail stop.

 

[Delvin4519]

Also would replace the long lost A branch with a rail connection. Newton Corner station is the closest to Watertown Square, a stone throws away.

 

[Tallguy]

Newton Corner stop sort of has to go in Newton Corner to kill the 501/502/503/504 and be fed by the 57 and 71. Just the ridership on those 50x routes would be a top-10 Commuter Rail stop.

So, a station at Church St would be about 600ft from the present rotary pattern of NC. That's about as close as you can get it to the hotel.
A Fanuiel station would disrupt the express bus patterns of the Brighton 5xxs. The key is to stop thinking of the 57 as the main mover of people and, while not completely replacing it, moving much of the ridership to Newtonville/NC, Fanuiel and BL. The same about the 70

 

[Koopzilla24]

Add a new one Fanuiel infill and provide a Brighton-Watertown Sq pinger and you get good coverage for a lot of people. Might even put a passing track east of the Pike tunnel.

An infill station around the Riverview Road access would also have catchment with Arsenal Yards and the various bike infra around the river. Though a bus route connecting Watertown Yard with Central Sq via rt 20 and Cambridge St. would also extend Boston Landing's catchment and supplement the infrequent 64 in Allston.

 

[Aprehensive_Words]

We were talking in the Crazy Pitches thread about 128-area circumferential transit and Burlington's big (4.4 million square feet of new development, 1,800 new housing units) in-process rezoning, and that made me start wondering: Since that Burlington rezoning appears pretty clearly premised on having to serve the entire thing via cars, what could the T or MassDOT throw together in a hurry (relatively speaking -- this is still transit infrastructure, after all) in order to try and a) help the town reduce parking requirements in zoning regs and b) offer some kind of connection to regional rail services while something better gets worked out?

I came up with a three-line, bus-on-shoulder BRT system that links Anderson and Reading to Burlington Mall and the Middlesex Turnpike corridor. Not shown below, but assumed, new feeder bus routes that expand the catchment area to include the main roads of Bedford, Burlington, Reading, Stoneham, Wakefield and Woburn.

This takes advantage of the new-ish ability to run buses in the breakdown lane during rush hour, but does rely on at least Burlington, Woburn, Stoneham and Reading (or, at minimum, Burlington and Woburn) allowing the addition of center-running BRT infrastructure on major local arteries like Burlington Mall Road.

The main intermediate stops are Trade Center 128 and its nearby multifamily node plus (for lines 2 and 3) the former Woburn Mall development/Mishuwam train station.

Line 1: Anderson to Middlesex Turnpike (terminus uncertain)

Line 2: Reading to Burlington Mall

Line 3: Stoneham Center to Burlington Mall

Since this would create a transit corridor along Main Street in Stoneham and Reading, it'd also be easy enough to add a route that runs up and down there, too.

As I said above, this would be partly about making car-lite living easier in these new Burlington developments, but could it also serve existing residents? I think so! The Census' On the Map data suggests that while the overall universe of people who work in and around the Burlington Mall is next to impossible to serve primarily with transit, there are sizable groups of people living in communities along this who work here and in the industrial parks around Anderson that could be lured into some mode-switching.

Here's where folks who live in the census tracts that would be directly served by this work (Reading and Wakefield tracts omitted to remove most of the slant generated by the existing Haverhill Line connections):

And here's where folks who work in the Woburn industrial parks live:

 

[AndrewOnTheMBTA]

I am riding the D line to my office now, with my commute from Eastie to Newton being severed by the Sumner closure, and boy am I impressed by the speed of the D branch. I think I fully see how much inspiration to build a GLX there was from the D branch being a functioning light rail in Boston. Easy to construct and easy to ride too!

Thinking about how nice non-street-running green line branches are, what could be the next extension to be built in the GL light rail network?

 

[AndrewOnTheMBTA]

This might belong in crazy. But is the red line test track a viable right of way to be used for anything? A short link between Seaport and Andrew Square? In the long term there could be some type of cut n cover connection with a futuristic GLX extension that existed in the current SL tunnel. For now, my pitch is converting the red line track along (63?) along S Boston Bypass.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

This might belong in crazy. But is the red line test track a viable right of way to be used for anything? A short link between Seaport and Andrew Square? In the long term there could be some type of cut n cover connection with a futuristic GLX extension that existed in the current SL tunnel. For now, my pitch is converting the red line track along (63?) along S Boston Bypass.

Track 61 is non-abandoned on the RR network, with the RL test track only temporarily taking advantage of its Out-of-Service designation. The T will have to revert it back to RR status when they're done using it for testing. CSX still has active freight rights on it, and Massport is a co-signee since they own the Running Track portion east of Pumphouse Road and have tentative (though stalled) plans to bring freight to Marine Terminal with a spur along Tide St. So everything rapid-transit is off the table unless MassDOT, Massport, and CSX all co-sign on an abandonment/landbanking filing with the feds...and that's pretty unlikely to happen since the Port freight futures are a quantifiable thing.

It was proposed during the Olympics bid to do a Back Bay-BCEC DMU dinky along the track as a value-added for the neighborhood (and band-aid for Silver Line's sucky performance). And later a crackpot scheme to divert the Fairmount Line away from South Station to BCEC, but that was met with howls from Dorchester and Hyde Park over the loss of the SS one-seat and was quickly withdrawn. Ultimately, the numerous traffic conflicts of having to cross over the Old Colony main and Amtrak's Southampton Yard leads turfed it. Amtrak would not give the go-ahead, frequencies were more or less capped at a not- Urban Rail definition 30 minutes tops, and there were questions about whether it could run at all during the peak period because of Old Colony interference. So nothing is ever likely to happen under the Purple Line banner, either, because it just wouldn't net practical frequencies amidst all the conflicts.

The BDPA's recent South Boston Seaport Strategic Transit Plan floated a bunch of medium-term and long-term plans that tried to make use of Track 61 for various purposes. It recycled the BBY-BCEC dinky proposal, the Fairmount diversion proposal, and a JFK-UMass-BCEC shuttle along with infill stations on the corridor. But it's unclear how those would end up doing better than the failed Olympics bid amidst all the traffic conflicts. Only the lower-leverage JFK shuttle avoided the crossing conflicts, but the single-track on both the Old Colony and Track 61 imposes a big frequency limiter and vultures OC slots to South Station so is probably a nonstarter. And it's questionable whether there's even room down in the Haul Road pit for putting intermediate station platforms; they would be maximally narrow if they'd fit at all. The biggest laugher from the BDPA was their long-term proposal to divert the Braintree Branch of the Red Line down Track 61...which is (1) impossible as long as it's still part of the RR network; (2) would not sustain the frequencies along the single-track; (3) runs into the same problems as the RR plan for fitting intermediate stations, and most glaringly (4) DEPRIVES Quincy and Braintree of their access to Downtown and Cambridge at great consternation to those communities.

If you're crayoning LRT hook-in schemes the spaghetti ramps for the Haul Road and I-93 around Widett Circle are a big impactor for doing any flyover action. Tunneling around the RR junctions risks blocking the NSRL lead tunnels. Fitting inclines and sharp turns into the pit are a problem if you're doing anything from one of the cross streets. The single-track is probably not doable for acceptable frequencies. And the pinched intermediate stations rear their ugly head. While absolute technical feasibility can probably be proven on some mode if you thread the needle perfectly, collectively the odds are so low for a fit that it's not worth thinking about. Better use for the corridor would be BRT on the Haul Road, since the truck-only restriction keeps traffic levels pretty manageable. I'm still not sure what you'd be able to do for intermediate stations since the Haul Road+Track 61 cut is so snug, but that was actually a candidate ROW for bringing the Urban Ring's SE quadrant into the Seaport so there are viable rubber-tire options on the Haul Road.


Bottom line: Track 61 is this maddening planning obsession with various lobbies trying to make it a 'thing' for transit. But it's a very compromised routing with its need to cross the nerve center of the southside Terminal District on any RR routing, its single-track pinch with almost no room for infill stations, and its destination that skips the South Station center of the universe. Plus, we can make the Silver Line better if we only had the will to do so...so the reasons are faulty for grasping at straws for something/anything on Track 61 instead of applying that planning energy to common-sense Silver Line improvements.

 

[bigeman312]

I am riding the D line to my office now, with my commute from Eastie to Newton being severed by the Sumner closure, and boy am I impressed by the speed of the D branch. I think I fully see how much inspiration to build a GLX there was from the D branch being a functioning light rail in Boston. Easy to construct and easy to ride too!

Thinking about how nice non-street-running green line branches are, what could be the next extension to be built in the GL light rail network?

The next, most logical one, in my opinion, is an extension past Union to Porter, with an infill stop halfway (that I like to think of being called “Duck Village”). Like the existing segment of the Union branch, it could follow alongside the Fitchburg Line.

 

[Riverside]

I am riding the D line to my office now, with my commute from Eastie to Newton being severed by the Sumner closure, and boy am I impressed by the speed of the D branch. I think I fully see how much inspiration to build a GLX there was from the D branch being a functioning light rail in Boston. Easy to construct and easy to ride too!

Thinking about how nice non-street-running green line branches are, what could be the next extension to be built in the GL light rail network?

100% I think the likeliest next extension will be to Needham. If the stars align, maybe a short extension of the E to Hyde Square might come first, but I think that's less likely.

 

[AndrewOnTheMBTA]

100% I think the likeliest next extension will be to Needham. If the stars align, maybe a short extension of the E to Hyde Square might come first, but I think that's less likely.

That wouldn't be a bad length of a commute for Needham residents. I wonder if there's more support or nimby from them at the moment?

I wonder if there's a demand for light rail connecting Newton and Needham? Or is it more car-centric and seen as promoting multi-unit developments.

The Needham and Newton Lower Falls Area is pretty quiet and not too dense/busy.

All that said - great commute corridor for locals into Boston.

 

[Riverside]

This might belong in crazy. But is the red line test track a viable right of way to be used for anything? A short link between Seaport and Andrew Square? In the long term there could be some type of cut n cover connection with a futuristic GLX extension that existed in the current SL tunnel. For now, my pitch is converting the red line track along (63?) along S Boston Bypass.

I did a kind of "rabbit hole analysis" (as in, "diving down a rabbit hole") of specifically where one might put a Seaport LRT station on a line coming up Track 61. In addition to the problems @F-Line to Dudley lays out in terms of the western end of the line (at Widett Circle), the eastern end poses a lot of problems too: Track 61 is great, right up until Summer St, at which point you have a few different options, all of them varyingly bad.

Of relevance to your question is my discussion of whether you should put an Urban Ring LRT station in the Seaport in the first place. Some key points:

One thing this exercise illustrates is that the Seaport is not very wide. This sounds obvious and trivial, but one result is that there isn’t really space nor need for a “crosstown” service. The Piers Transitway and Summer St already form strong “east-west” transit corridors (whose elevation difference reduces their overlapping walksheds slightly). But they’re still close enough that a perpendicular service between/across them wouldn’t make much sense (particularly since both originate at South Station and come very close to connecting again at World Trade Center).

So a Track 61 LRT service basically needs to choose a particular point along the “linear Seaport corridor” to terminate. That increases the pressure on that station to be located optimally to maximize access to jobs as well as to transfers. World Trade Center does reasonably well on that front, but both the eastern Seaport (e.g. Design Center) and western Seaport (e.g. Courthouse) would require transfers for short last-mile journeys. But this need to choose lies at the heart of why siting an Urban Ring LRT station in the Seaport is difficult in the first place.

A Track 61 LRT service will likely reach the Seaport in part by passing near Broadway station. Regardless of origin point beyond there, a service near Broadway likely could instead be aligned to pass through South Station instead — and then continue to Seaport along one of the east-west corridors. ...

Sending an “Urban Ring” LRT service down one of the east-west corridors would provide better access to the entire Seaport, and reduce/eliminate the need for transfers. Running LRT service via Track 61 may in fact be unnecessary.
...

• The problems I’ve outlined here will impact any Track 61 proposal; Track 61 will always be on the wrong side of the Mass Pike between Summer and Congress Streets, so you’ll always need to figure out a way to bridge that gap
• This conversation becomes radically different if an LRT connection between Seaport and Logan is built — although even then, Track 61 will still be on the wrong side relative to the Transitway
  ...
• The Seaport is centered on two east-west corridors, and there’s an argument to make that almost all services, even circumferential ones, would do well to feed into or otherwise align with those

Track 61 looks so tempting on the map, but ultimately I just don't think it's viable; it seems to me like it creates more problems than it solves.

 

[AndrewOnTheMBTA]

The next, most logical one, in my opinion, is an extension past Union to Porter, with an infill stop halfway (that I like to think of being called “Duck Village”). Like the existing segment of the Union branch, it could follow alongside the Fitchburg Line.

This will have a demand for ridership. The area around it is open to TOD. It's an area that's less car-centric. This is well connected to other highly trafficked areas. And I could even see people visiting Porter for leisure. I think Porter could grow from this.

Also, this provides a great alternative to get to Davis without the red line. For example, I live in East Boston and would rather take this to Porter than Blue to Green to Red to Davis. I assume the Red Blue connector would come first, but this route provides plenty of good alternatives to Red to Davis/Porter.