Would Faneuil be worthy of a stop do you think?
Might be a little tight for a line that's also got to carry commuter rail. New Balance + Newton Corner are the essentials if you're doing a Riverside short-turn. Anything else you can wait and see where demand is and what capacity can handle after the line's electrified with EMU's.
This could eventually be converted to Red/HRT if they ever convert Mattapan to HRT right?
Dedham? Yes...that's what I was thinking if you could ever reach Red to Readville from Mattapan. You can't bring rapid transit to Westwood/128 or Dedham Corporate because the NEC and Franklin trackbeds are surrounded by small streams and ponds in protected areas, and you can't take any NEC capacity. So Dedham Ctr. is the closest you can get to 128 on the subway from that general vicinity, and hits all the nice urban density and the Mall to boot.
If you also got HRT from Mattapan on that corridor, would both Fairmount and Readville transfer between Commuter Rail and HRT, or would one of them drop the Commuter Rail?
Well, since the ROW's don't touch now Mattapan station and Blue Hill Ave. station are a few blocks' walk up Cummins from each other. So there'll never be a direct connection. And if you were to subway the Red Line to meet the Fairmount ROW your only trajectories are a bit south of Blue Hill station, because south-of-Cummins or south-of-River are the only places you can widen the ROW to 4 tracks. So if Red were extended it would go Mattapan-Fairmount-Readville and skip all the Fairmount stations north of there. Fairmount and Readville could be done as CR + RL superstations (recommended at Fairmount because of all the bus transfers and because the 2 lines would serve very different local traffic patterns).
This would need to be done in tandem with Orange to WRox to avoid prolonged loss of transit to either community right?
Yes. Except for OL-Rozzie because the Needham Line has 3-track width old stone arch bridges there. If you cannibalize the Needham Line's double-track passing siding here for a new siding past Rozzie it works with no schedule impacts, and the Rozzie CR station can be flipped to the other side of the bridge to fit the OL. Forest Hills OL storage tracks could just be lengthened 1-2 trainsets to fit the stub. This would not cost all that much if they didn't build a glass palace for a Rozzie OL station and would help the bus transfer situation down there immensely.
To stage the rest the best bet is to Phase I the Green Line to Needham Heights first. Then do some prep work like double-tracking through West Roxbury and building high platforms that can be encased later into prepayment stations. And then blitz the conversion of the midsection in one rapid construction project. Separate funding commitments for each stage so it's manageable.
So you think that critical potential ridership mass will overwhelm the Arlington "urban elements" NIMBYs? The first phase to the Center will be the most sure thing, since the demographics of East Arlington/Arlington Flats are screaming for service. Maybe the Heights will want their "shiny new toy" once the Center gets service, but there will be a mini-civil war in Lexington between the NIMBYs and those pushing for development and transit to 128/Hanscom. Anyone living near the bike path will put up a huge fight over any rail, especially above ground.
I think Arlington Center wants it well enough now, and can accept the construction disruption because the Minuteman comes back intact. Heights...they can warm to it eventually, but I think there'll be enough resistance that you want to break this build into separate funding phases. It won't happen if you try Heights as a monolith, because it will take time to deal with those NIMBY's.
Lexington is anyone's guess, and I would definitely wall off that funding commitment from the Arlington segments. But the bus situation for getting through that town and to Hanscom gets worlds better if you can get as far as Heights and don't have to rely on Alewife for an excruciating "express" bus.
Will there be political will in Melrose/Wakefield/Reading to support this? Do you think that Wyoming Hill and Cedar Park should be consolidated at Wyoming were Orange to push north? Looking at the numbers in the 2010 service stats they would both have anemic ridership. Also plop a park and ride at Quannapowitt for sure, there's a perfect spot for it.
Wakefield and Reading supported it wholeheartedly in the 70's. Melrose is where there were NIMBY's. I don't see any reasons to stop-consolidate with Orange. They may want to re-space them sooner with commuter rail, and if they can push that through it'll kind of be a moot point by the time rapid transit comes through.
As for community opposition...remember, what's forcing this is the N-S Link and Reading getting the Needham-esque squeeze on the schedule when thru-running dumps a lot more traffic on the Eastern Route through congested Somerville, and Haverhill has to get moved back to the Lowell Line. They'll be staring down their schedule ceiling at that point. And are going to be odd man out on getting thru-running service to downtown. In those circumstances Orange is their only way to further growth, and these towns are transit-accustomed so I bet they'll warm to it.
You're not talking for a long time, though. Those grade crossing eliminations push this a lot further down the priority list, so wouldn't be a consideration until the Link rewrites the book on Greater Boston commuter rail.
Would a route that long work as Green for LRT dispatch, or would it have to be converted to HRV before moving beyond West Medford?
I'm thinking HRT is probably needed. Less for dispatching than because those trolleys would fill up so fast the crowds would be unbearable in Somerville. Multiple options: could branch Orange out of NS across BET to meet up at Lechmere, could bend Blue around like a boomerang from Charles (this was actually one of the study options for GLX), or could feed Red through half of the N-S Link and cross BET to meet Lechmere (i.e. turning Red into a 4-pronged "X" that feeds all directions at Columbia Jct.).
This wouldn't need to be done until Link traffic is slamming the NH Mainline with Northeast Regionals to Concord and futuristic whatnot. The Lowell Line has plenty of capacity to spare today.
How about a "Fairmounting" of Fitchburg to 128? Or is even that too much for the Belmont "rip out the Trackless Trolley overhead" NIMBYs?
No, that'll probably work. Other than Reading, Waltham/128 is the best northside candidate for DMU's. Fitchburg has a lot of excess capacity, and there are former (closed 1978) stations at Beaver Brook and Clematis Brook to study for reopening.
IF GLX gets subsumed by heavy rail and IF the branch out of Porter ever forked to Watertown, THEN it starts making some economic sense studying Green to Waltham where that big big bus terminal has no other possible rapid transit anchor. You would still have to relocate the Fitchburg over the Central Mass ROW, but the rest of it is plenty wide and you would not need to eliminate any grade crossings for trolleys.
It's worth a study post-2030, if that's all they can do. "Fairmounting"...damn right, I would do that much sooner. Right after we get that on the Worcester Line.
I've always thought Green was more feasible for Watertown/Waltham than Red. Is potential Green Line the ROW between Watertown and Waltham intact, or is there there stuff in the way like the dealership on Arsenal Street? Is the length an issue? It's about as far as Riverside. Or does being on a dedicated RoW mitigate those issues?
The Watertown ROW is intact to School St. The problem's not that one dealership (which can be moved), but the fact that the ROW past there was abandoned in 1960 and is pretty constrained through those industrial backlots. Watertown wants to redevelop Arsenal by flipping those scuzzy properties, and in doing so get easements to continue the path behind those properties. If they succeed at that then you've got an ROW pieced back together to Watertown Sq. that is potentially usable in the future. And there are some people in Watertown who are thinking exactly that.
Problem is, it's very speculative. They have to execute each property flip and each trail easement 100% perfect to get the corridor back. And there is zero way of predicting whether the trail easements they end up with will ever be wide enough to fit 2 tracks. It's an ambitious plan...but it requires a lot of luck.
There is no way you could take transit between Watertown Sq. and Waltham Ctr. on that ROW, however. There's more encroachment and the grade crossings on that stretch are insane...frequent, and at sharp angles. If you ever considered rapid transit to Waltham, forking the Watertown and Waltham branches at Porter and using the Fitchburg is going to be a shitload easier. (But...has to deal with Belmont.)
Where would the transfer between CR and Blue be, since Blue would terminate before the tunnel? Lynn?
Lynn. Or maybe a South Salem CR station depending on where they put that. Although I doubt there is going to be much demand at all for Blue-CR transfers except for from the Peabody branch, so Lynn is probably appropriate to keep as the lone "superstation" (a la Malden Ctr.).
Only way to get rapid transit to Dedham right? Although they would probably prefer your Commuter Rail deal. Dedham really seems to enjoy pretending to be much farther away from Boston than it really is...
Yes. Although if you bring Red to Readville that's primarily Hyde Park's bonanza. And would allow the T to sell off and redevelop Codman Yard at Ashmont with the branch's storage yard moving to Readville. Dedham's just easy from there because of the grade separated ROW and CR-ops convenience of shoving such a short stub onto rapid transit instead.
