Perhaps, but the fund could help to pay for things that would reduce operating costs and are already on the T radar screen. New Orange Line cars already cost a lot. This concept would not pay for them by any stretch but could knock down the amount that is financed as well as reduce the constant repairs of the existing fleet.
Commuting Boston Student
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Metro-North's non-revenue Beacon Line is, for the most part, a pile of hot garbage east of Hopewell Junction (and, frankly, west of Hopewell Junction isn't anything to write home about either) - but the section of it east of the Harlem Line that runs out to Danbury actually looks fit for revenue service with some minor improvements. With electrification of the Danbury branch line presumably moving forward again, now seems like a good time to suggest using the Beacon Line to connect Danbury to Wassaic.
This would provide better regional connectivity and allow for the same number of trains to be run using less equipment, as the Wassaic Branch and Danbury Branch shuttles both use the same diesel equipment, and the schedules for each branch are close enough that only some minor re-jiggering would be needed to connect them.
West Danbury Station would provide a useful park-and-ride option, garage or otherwise, absorbing a lot of the increased demand for the Danbury Branch that will come with service improvements. East Brewster Station is mostly about fostering a more walkable environment and keeping consistent stop spacing - it's entirely optional. I was going to add a third station at the state line, but I couldn't make the positioning work.
When the Danbury line finally goes electric, this connection could be electrified as a Phase 2 for the project, and this would also provide an impetus to wire the Upper Harlem Line in two more phases - Southeast to Pawling, and Pawling to Wassaic.
This would provide better regional connectivity and allow for the same number of trains to be run using less equipment, as the Wassaic Branch and Danbury Branch shuttles both use the same diesel equipment, and the schedules for each branch are close enough that only some minor re-jiggering would be needed to connect them.
West Danbury Station would provide a useful park-and-ride option, garage or otherwise, absorbing a lot of the increased demand for the Danbury Branch that will come with service improvements. East Brewster Station is mostly about fostering a more walkable environment and keeping consistent stop spacing - it's entirely optional. I was going to add a third station at the state line, but I couldn't make the positioning work.
When the Danbury line finally goes electric, this connection could be electrified as a Phase 2 for the project, and this would also provide an impetus to wire the Upper Harlem Line in two more phases - Southeast to Pawling, and Pawling to Wassaic.
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Nein. Danbury's newly minted cab signal system is incompatible with electrifiication. The low-volt DC power track circuits don't work when the return current from overhead AC wire is dumped back into the track. Signaling for electrification would require a modified voltage akin to what the NEC and New Caanan branch use for their signals. Since MNRR is under the gun to get this branch PTC'd by deadline and the cab signal installation is happening simultaneous with the Port Jervis Line, they bought generic hardware for non-electrified track.
Blame this on cognitive dissonance in the state. MNRR is under the PTC gun...there was little funding for this, and they had to combine the Danbury and Port Jervis jobs for economy of scale to get either line in spec. State pols and officials were up in la-la land funding these cushy studies about how awesome it would be to ride M8's to Danbury, Waterbury, and Hartford that they forgot to give any direction--or money--on what to provision for with the signal install. And so MNRR said: "Fuck it...we ain't getting fined for non-compliance, we've only got this much grant money to spend, and the only way we can make it work is to pool costs with Port Jervis. Hey you guys...speak up now or it's your problem."
They didn't speak up. Hard to blame MNRR for doing what they did...they have a railroad to run. CTDOT...apparently not so much. But it'll be entirely their project if these signals have to get replaced by duplicate equipment so the wires can go back up. That blunder is all on them.
For what it's worth, though, electrification would perform poorly on the branch. The line is hilly, curvy, and leafy. The one place EMUs' nimbleness becomes a disadvantage is maintaining speed up hills where wheel slip becomes an issue on wet/icy/leafy rail. Big, brute force push-pull just laugh at the terrain and power through but an EMU starts straining and takes a perceptible performance hit. Whereas they're clearly the kings on flat land like the Shoreline, Hudson...or even somewhere like the flat, valley-dwelling Springfield Line. (Caveat: DMU's have similar issues, so you wouldn't be deploying those either unless MNRR threw all its outer diesel shuttles into a shared DMU equipment pool). And given that there are few places where track geometry allows much more than 50-55 MPH the studies gamed it out that there's almost no difference between a current Danbury push-pull and an M8. The Waterbury Improvements Study turned in a two-minute schedule difference with electrification on that also-hilly/curvy branch, and caveated that with inexpensive minor curve improvements the difference could be reduced--in diesel's favor--to a literal match.
MNRR knows this, and the hard numbers are there. The only reason this line was electrified a century ago is that Danbury was such a huge transfer station for continuing steam service from north, west, east, northeast, southeast...some from competing RR's that didn't have direct rights into NYC. It was much easier to consolidate all those engine changes at one suburban node and herd everyone cross-platform onto a GCT shuttle. Once the interstate traffic disappeared, the need for true electrified density ceased. That's not coming back at necessary density even if the Berkshire Line gets regular passenger service again. Too many other pieces are gone: Danbury-Waterbury direct, Danbury-New Haven direct (the Derby-NHV track is long gone), west-of-Hudson direct, the Central New England direct to Springfield out of Caanan, the Harlem direct to Chatham/B&A, a half-dozen other Westchester and Fairfield County branchlines. Every steam train between Hartford, the Hudson, the Shoreline, and the Berkshires being in easy reach was the whole raison d'etre for the original electric shuttle.
CT pols are making the noise/fumes argument and the 'minty-freshness' of the expensive new M8's to justify passing nonbinding show votes in the Legislature calling for electrification. But it isn't rooted in anything real other than: "M8 new/pretty!<-->diesel old/unsexy! NO OLD UNSEXY!"
I mean, it's not like there are many places out there where diesel conclusively meets-or-beats the best EMU's on the market. Danbury and Waterbury are just about the only such asterisks of consequence between NYC and Boston. But those geniuses somehow managed to make a cause out of it all the same.
Nexis4jersey
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Sigh I don't where to start...
1. They recently agreed to do full build on the Branch System. Electrification , Signal upgrades , Curve and Grade realignments , grade separations , Track replacement , Extensions , New Yards and New infill stations. The Port Jervis was to be electrified if the I-287 Rail Corridor was ever built , as part of the Stewart Airport Express.
2. I agree the CTDOT dropped the ball on PTC , just look at how long the New Haven Line upgrades are taking and the fact that the Knowledge Corridor won't be full build till 2030. But the Junk Busway to nowhere got to be full build.
3. Electrification would not perform poorly on the Branch , with the Full build plan certain curves and grades would be lessened or eliminated so thats not a problem. SEPTA , NJT and MNRR have Electrified Curvy and steep lines and the EMU's do fine , Push-Pulls struggle. As for the leaves and ice , every line is affected by that so I don't know why your trying to say the Branches are affected any differently. They spray the tracks once every few days to prevent wheel slippage. The Full build Plan would increase speeds to 80mph , and reduce travel times by 15-20mins...
4. With all the redevelopments , general and congestion growth , I think the full build is warranted.... Electrification aside from reducing travel times , also reduces costs. The Full build is estimated to add 50,000 daily riders to the system , an estimated 20,000 drive down or over to Harlem and New Haven lines which clog up local stations and roads. Forcing people to drive to lines that offer more service isn't sustainable. I don't know how anybody can for that...
5. People pay an arm and leg and shit service , the branches should be Electrified and upgraded...it would be a huge economic boost to the Route 7 & 8 Corridors. Both of which are craving projects...and developers...it would most likely be the M8As.
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No, they did not. All of that west-of-Hudson stuff is dependent on a rail link over the replacement Tappan Zee Bridge. There is no funded replacement for the bridge, no agreed-upon design preserving a rail link option, or anything close to a consensus on how to proceed. The scoping studies done years ago about the electrification 'possibles' are moot without it.
http://www.danburybranchstudy.com/d...nch Tech Summary Report_FINAL_for website.pdf
There is no "full-build" alternative. p. 16-20 of the PDF. What you are citing as "full build" was the all-of-the-above lump sum of the original 12 build options selected for preliminary study. That was tossed from the mix on first look, and the further study alternatives this study produced are down to 2 no-build and 3 build options. All 3 build scenarios top out at 60 MPH, do not do any double-tracking except for short passing sidings, and do not realign track except for zapping three short 30 MPH restrictions. And listening (with grain of salt) to what some MNRR employees were saying in the RR.net forums disseminating this, the improvements to a more-or-less continuous 60 MPH seemed a tad optimistic on some of those restriction eliminations. At any rate, your available options do not exactly turn this thing into a real mainline-caliber stretch of tangent track. It's still laid out like a glorified interurban. And will always be.
Furthermore, it is very unlikely that electrification to New Milford on the Berkshire Line is going to be possible because of the freight clearances. Housatonic RR or any other carrier that may inherit their freight business will not consent to height restrictions tighter than what they have today. So is electrification to Danbury worth the price of kneecapping Brookfield and New Milford with permanently inferior diesel dinky-off-an-EMU-dinky transfers and needing to assign 2 types of equipment and extra staff to the line? No. That does the complete opposite of unifying CTDOT's rail fleet, it makes for a very inefficient/expensive/labor-intensive operation, and the excessive segmentation and vastly poorer schedules in diesel territory hurts ridership on both modes and works against the branch getting allotted more precious thru slots into GCT. They do much better keeping it all-diesel to New Milford and banking on an end-to-end ridership growth that nets them a couple hard-earned extra GCT slots.
If there isn't a convincing value-added for it, what's the justification? "Full-build" got cut down in the first round of elimination in the study, and doing it might make things worse for trying to integrate a New Milford extension. Point to a cost/benefit that is not Transit OCD perfectionism. The numbers don't bear it out here.
...and the full build was deemed infeasible and unnecessary. So that's the end of that dream.
Says...who? Who says that? The official study didn't say that. Do you have hard numbers you can give to CTDOT contradicting the giant mass of data they put through this study and giving a convincing argument that "full-build" should and must be put back on the table? Or is this personally held belief of the same "electrification is shiny...no old, more shiny!" canard the local Legislators are using as fuel for vanity votes?
Make the case that the benefits are exponential instead of incremental before blowing a megaproject's wad on a mode change for mode change's sake on a branchline that's always going to be crowded out by far higher-impact mainline projects. This study doesn't show eye-popping difference between EMU's and diesels (and maybe negative difference if wires to New Milford are total no-go). But all diesels it does show in the alternatives are about twice as useful as the crap service that runs there today. Why is that a bad thing?
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Here's a reasonable transit pitch: MBTA buses run on MDC parkways with "circumferential" legs on the end of runs. Eg. buses out Broadway in Somerville wouldn't terminate at the ancient BERy yard (now coop apts) but would turn left and go to Alewife T. Repeat until there are no dangling ends.
This is probably a dumb question, but what do you mean by "MDC parkways"?
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Sorry for using the old name of the DCR and making you ask. If its called a Parkway it is probably a MDC-now-DCR Parkway, things like:
Jamaicaway
Riverway
Mystic Valley Parkway
Revere Beach Parkway
Alewife Brook Parkway
Fresh Pond Parkway
Memorial Drive
Storrow Drive
I hated the old name but cant stop using it(MDC = Metropolitan District Commission) and I love the new name (DCR = Dept of Conservation and Recreation).
There's a crazy-outdated idea that since streetcars ran in streets and parkways were built for cars, that the MBTA avoids operating buses on Parkways--and feels bound to keep running buses as if they were rubber-wheeled streetcars. Not that the DCR is any better with its view that parkways are recreational things.
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cozzyd
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CT2 already goes on Memorial for a bit
F-Line to Dudley
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If they don't fix that rotary the return trip from Alewife to Somerville is gonna take 25 minutes at rush. You could almost walk faster.
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Well, yes, here and there there are problems, the real transit pitch is freeing the MBTA's mind to use Parkways when they are better, and particularly when they permit routes unimagined in 1920...in particular, multimodal connections with heavy rail or other more-natural termini
Aha, yes, that would make sense. Yes, I've long wondered why the buses always avoided those roads. Though I suppose it would only really make sense for medium- and long-distance routes, since you wouldn't want to be stopping every five blocks on those parkways.
I mean, I can think of a few...
- no place for stops, so local routes are out
- for most longer-distance routes, you're better off using the Mass Pike due to traffic volumes, etc
Aren't there clearance issues on Storrow as well?
It's also just not a very good route. You could use it to connect Allston to downtown more directly, but you have the Green Line doing a not-too-shabby job with that, and whatever else you'd need is better served by speeding down the MassPike.
Yikes. I guess I never thought of non-coach buses as being as tall as trucks or coaches. Which is dumb, I suppose. But yeah, that would preclude Storrow, I guess.
F-Line to Dudley
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CRUNCH!
I can't find height specs on the current bus fleet except for the 90's-era RTS's. Those things have less than a foot's clearance. Whether they can technically fit or not, just picture what would happen in winter if the bus had snow/ice pack on the roof. Bye-bye windshield, next car behind the bus.
Yeah, that sounds right.
Since I've already put my foot in my mouth, I might as well put it to good use and learn: are there any other clearance problems? What's stopping them, theoretically, from running buses from Charlesgate to Downtown?