Reasonable Transit Pitches

[Equilibria]

I still believe that you'd have 10x the ridership on Red -> Fairmount than you would under DMU/EMU/Whatever.

Sure you would! That's not the problem, though...

 

[cozzyd]

On a different subject, given the headaches inherent to even the current operation of GJ, could the whole line be trenched, as opposed to just at the intersections? It looks like plenty of lead-up on each end, and the line's so old there can't be anything too crazy under there.

You'd have to duck under the red line, and also some of the land is reclaimed, which may be problematic.

My home town of Reno dug a train trench relatively recently:

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ipd/project_profiles/nv_retrac.htm

 

[Equilibria]

You'd have to duck under the red line, and also some of the land is reclaimed, which may be problematic.

Good point. Probably not worth it, then.

 

[George_Apley]

MIT would pitch a major fit if you did any sort of digging around their hypersensitive labs as well.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

MIT would pitch a major fit if you did any sort of digging around their hypersensitive labs as well.

Whoa! I just got hit with some major deja vu. Hypersensitive labs, you say?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

I don't buy that MassDOT has zero interest in how the Downeaster makes it through MA en route to NYC beyond what it's going to cost them/us particularly considering that MassDOT has a tremendous interest in serving MA passengers and is almost certainly going to be more engaged in the routing process because of that. "We" / MassDOT / Massachusetts stands to gain something they wouldn't have otherwise from the Worcester-Lowell-Haverhill routing - I don't know how much value is actually tied up in potentially being able to move people across the 495 corridor that way, but it's at least worth looking at on a level beyond "this costs us more than that, forget it."

Oh, I wasn't suggesting they didn't have an interest. But in terms of capital motivation for rehabbing the Grand Junction NYC-Portland doesn't even register when the first several years of it are unlikely to be more than 1 daily round trip. Operating on assumption that DMU's are a nonstarter, they'd be most intrigued by 1) dusting off the Worcester proposal for 5 round trips, 2) North Station Inland Regionals at +2 more round trips. Because those are pumping multiple round trips per day from Day 1. That's what'll move the $45M in funding to rehab the line.

So...it's not that they aren't interested in the revenue. I have no doubt they are. But it doesn't contribute in any way to the trigger for doing the upgrades. Not even in the "well, one more round trip helps" sense. The baseline go/no-go decision is all based on getting that commuter rail baseline and attracting just enough Amtrak/NEC interest to score a funding grant. There's most definitely other stuff they could come up with to run across it once they've got it, and NYC-Portland is an insta-add. But that stuff doesn't factor at all in the capital decision.

You're forgetting that there's two moving components here and we can adjust the elevation on either or both of them.

Mass Ave (as a state highway) can be permitted to experience a grade of as much as 8% - but we only need 4% and 400 feet of running room on either side to get it 16 feet under the tracks. If you're able to sustain a 2% grade over the 360 feet of running room on the Grand Junction, then you're already 7.2 feet above pavement and the Mass Ave 'dip' only needs 160 feet of running room at a 5.5% grade for the rest - or, just about the distance between the Grand Junction and the next crossing streets on either side. You wouldn't have to 'dip' the sidewalks either, because I don't believe the 16 ft. elevation would apply to them and a 320 foot pair of sidewalk bridges with 7.2 feet of clearance beneath the Grand Junction is the lesser of two evils compared to a 5.5% sidewalk grade.

I have no idea how much 640 feet of sidewalk bridge and 640 feet of 'dip' in Mass Ave. would cost... but it's surely less than the hilarious expense of a rail underpass here.

It doesn't matter if Mass Ave. gets some megaproject. The combination of the remaining the Broadway, Main, and Cambridge St. crossings still has car/ped/bike traffic LOS impacts too high to swing minimally viable 25 min. DMU headways either-direction. That's all laid out in that Worcester study's traffic counts. 4 or 5 TPH instead of 2 is still hugely far away from cutting it, especially with at least 4 hours of the day having 1 TPH vultured by non-DMU users.

You can't get a useful DMU here. You can't eliminate enough of the crossings without spending at Urban Ring levels, and if spending at Urban Ring levels...spend for the Urban Ring. The costs will never wash on this mode. And there's no dancing around FRA regs on stuff like the gate timings to mitigate all the crossings as if they were a trolley stopping at a traffic light.

I went back and looked at a Fairmount-Red Connection more closely. Assuming that the Red Line rolling stock can handle 2% grade sustained over 1000 feet, there's more then enough wiggle room to sever Fairmount just north of the overpass at I-93 and get it underground without fouling up Widett/Cabot or the OC Lines, and once it's 20 feet underground there's a wealth of options for connecting to the Red Line south of Broadway even if I'm wrong about the track depth/platform positioning and therefore the junction I depicted isn't possible.

The Fairmount Red Line Conversion is probably a $1.5 billion project and 23.83% of that price tag is deliberate budget padding anticipating cost overruns.

What part of THERE WILL NEVER BE RED LINE ON THE FAIRMOUNT is so hard to understand here? You're doubling down on an immovable object. It's not going to happen no matter how far in denial you put yourself on this point.

Whether that's the best use of $1.5 billion is besides the point. I don't consider $1.5 billion to be 'impossible' levels of expense. CSXT's perpetual rights to run over Fairmount (if they actually have perpetual rights to Fairmount and not just everything Franklin southwest of Readville) can be negotiated for, freight can still come into Boston and the Port of Southie via the Old Colony Lines - it works. It can be done.

Yes. They do have perpetual rights. Perpetual. Until CSX voluntarily files with the Surface Transportation Board to abandon their freight rights, they hold them forever. Even if they are never used...so long as CSX and any successor companies who inherit the rights are paying their fees it's theirs forever. For example, they never abandoned their Worcester Line rights east of Beacon Park even though it hasn't seen a freight move ever since the Boston Herald stopped getting newsprint deliveries. Despite allowing the T to clip their clearances at new Yawkey if they have good enough reason to run something down there and it can fit around that curved full-high and low Beacon St. bridge nobody can tell them no. That is how the interstate commerce laws work for railroads. It trumps local interests from bullying around a common-carrier national network, and the law compensates the RR's for the extreme regulation the gov't puts on them by giving them lifetime security on these rights.

There's a big difference between letting the state pay CSX $100M so they redirect nearly all (and eventually 100% all) freight schedules from the Worcester Line east of Framingham, and paying them off to drop their rights entirely so they can never return. Or drop their rights so the tracks can be taken off the FRA network. They will never drop their rights; as Boston & Albany's, Boston & Providence's, NYNH&H's, and the Old Colony's freight successor they have had freight rights into downtown Boston since 1835 on each of the southside commuter rail mainlines. We're way beyond "what could happen in 100 years?" considerations here with their motivations for keeping those rights (not only on the preferred freight route, but on one or more backup routes). The only reason their predecessors did drop rights on the Riverside Line, or why Pan Am would drop rights on the Reading Line for an Orange Line extension...is because that still leaves at least 3 other ways in or out north and south in-hand for the year 2200.


And before you say "well, pay them a billion dollars to fuck off and voluntarily abandon their rights!"...Massport and the state DON'T WANT THAT. The port revenue and ability to easily get shipping containers to Worcester for regional distribution is worth billions in potential taxable commercial revenue to the state over the course of several decades. Revenue that's kind of useful for paying for our transit system. A 50-mile detour around the Old Colony...and the Old Colony's height restrictions in Quincy and Braintree...doesn't cut it for exploiting that revenue. The state is not in its own self-interest going to seal off the last high-capacity freight route into Boston. Fairmount is a "mixed use" economic development corridor for exactly this reason.

Your campaign for getting elected Planning God is going to have to steamroll over not only 150 years of interstate commerce law and the profit motives and asset portfolio of a multibillion-dollar corporation, but also steamroll the state's revenue self-interest in keeping this shipping lane open.

Move on. This is a waste of time and energy.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

Oh, I wasn't suggesting they didn't have an interest. But in terms of capital motivation for rehabbing the Grand Junction NYC-Portland doesn't even register when the first several years of it are unlikely to be more than 1 daily round trip. Operating on assumption that DMU's are a nonstarter, they'd be most intrigued by 1) dusting off the Worcester proposal for 5 round trips, 2) North Station Inland Regionals at +2 more round trips. Because those are pumping multiple round trips per day from Day 1. That's what'll move the $45M in funding to rehab the line.

So...it's not that they aren't interested in the revenue. I have no doubt they are. But it doesn't contribute in any way to the trigger for doing the upgrades. Not even in the "well, one more round trip helps" sense. The baseline go/no-go decision is all based on getting that commuter rail baseline and attracting just enough Amtrak/NEC interest to score a funding grant. There's most definitely other stuff they could come up with to run across it once they've got it, and NYC-Portland is an insta-add. But that stuff doesn't factor at all in the capital decision.

The thing is that the capacity over the Grand Junction is so low (and the impact of using it so relatively huge) that I don't believe they can just come up with other things to run across it whenever fancy strikes them after the capital decision is made.

As you've said yourself, there's at least three hugely-critical streets (I don't think Main and Broadway are both critical in the context of the other's existence and therefore you could screw up one - BUT ONLY ONE. If you agree, it's three critical streets; disagree, it's four) that get blocked for a non-trivial amount of time every single time a train rolls through on this thing. Part of the capital decision is going to have to be mitigating that and the agreement is almost certainly coming with a "you shall not ever run more than this number of trains through these grade crossings" clause attached to it. Until those grade crossings get separated (if ever), it's not going to be as easy as saying "well we've got this online for 5 Worcester-North CR roundtrips and 2 Amtrak Inland Regional-North roundtrips and they've all been popular, let's go ahead and add another round-trip or two or three..."

If we want the Downeaster to NYC running via the Grand Junction we are going to need to establish that before regular service begins, and we're probably locking ourselves into exactly one trip if we say that's what we want.

It's all politics, sure. But I'd be fascinated to find out how Maine feels about spending more money now to make the prospect of adding a second (or third or fourth) Downeaster to NYC later only a matter of negotiating for operating rights over freight trackage in the wilds of central MA instead of having to negotiate and mitigate with well-to-dos in Cambridge including MIT.

Maybe they decide it's worth it to them to sign up for having to do business with Cambridge! I don't know. But it's not as straightforward as 'Grand Junction open for revenue service now, worry about Downeaster later.'

It doesn't matter if Mass Ave. gets some megaproject. The combination of the remaining the Broadway, Main, and Cambridge St. crossings still has car/ped/bike traffic LOS impacts too high to swing minimally viable 25 min. DMU headways either-direction. That's all laid out in that Worcester study's traffic counts. 4 or 5 TPH instead of 2 is still hugely far away from cutting it, especially with at least 4 hours of the day having 1 TPH vultured by non-DMU users.

But... we've just spent the last several days going back and forth about how I don't believe 5 TPH is going to cut it on Fairmount and you've been yelling at me to stop trying to throw increasing amounts of money at the problem to get to the point where we can have more than 6 TPH through Fairmount.

The Grand Junction certainly has a lower demand than Fairmount - if 4 TPH (with an extra TPH vultured by Amtrak/Commuter Rail/Whoever) is good enough for them, why isn't it good enough if we can get to 4+1 TPH here?

You can't get a useful DMU here. You can't eliminate enough of the crossings without spending at Urban Ring levels, and if spending at Urban Ring levels...spend for the Urban Ring. The costs will never wash on this mode. And there's no dancing around FRA regs on stuff like the gate timings to mitigate all the crossings as if they were a trolley stopping at a traffic light.

I don't know of anywhere that a combination raise/dip like what I suggested for Mass Ave has actually been done, but even assuming it's a $250 million project - none of the other grade crossings are state highways and therefore getting to 16 ft beneath the rails isn't necessary, making separating them a relatively straightforward case of simply dipping underneath the tracks with no elevating of the Grand Junction required. Unlike the combination raise/dip, I can point to multiple examples of dip-only grade separation. We can easily deal with Broadway and Cambridge Street this way and only Main Street might pose some difficulties - but even figuring $100 million (which might be seriously overbudgeting) for the two we can deal with easily and saying 'not worth costing out' for the one we can't, we're only up to $450 million. (Last I checked, the Urban Ring was priced at $2.4 billion or more than 5x the cost.)

Separating one of the grade crossings for $250 probably isn't worth it. Separating three of four for $450 probably is.

Of course, the real problem with spending the money on the real-deal Urban Ring is that the North-South Rail Link still doesn't exist - and as long as the Rail Link doesn't exist, the Grand Junction is a load-bearing critical piece of conventional rail infrastructure for rail operations in Boston, because the next best way to shuffle equipment between the south-side and the north-side is 100+ route-miles away.

So, even assuming that it costs the same to just get the Urban Ring operational, the real problem is that the Rail Link probably doesn't open until 2045 (at least) and until that happens, waiting for the Urban Ring is paying in both the actual cost of the project and a 30-year delayed start because necessary load-bearing infrastructure elsewhere in the city needs to be completed first.

Assuming 360 ft of 2% grade in two shots is doable by any and all non-DMU interests operating over the Grand Junction, it's probably worth paying once now to get 4+1 TPH in five years even though we might end up paying again in 30 years for the Urban Ring.

 

[cozzyd]

MIT would pitch a major fit if you did any sort of digging around their hypersensitive labs as well.

Many of those labs already only operate in the dead of night to avoid impacts from the Red Line running... not to mention they all lived through the digging of the Stata Garage and the giant hole for Novartis.

I think the real problem with trenching would be that there isn't really a good place for a temporary track (Albany St? LOL) and everything would have to detour.

 

[cozzyd]

But if you were able to trench the GJ, the surface could be used for a transitway without giving up the NS-SS connection:

https://mapsengine.google.com/map/viewer?mid=z6_kdT6WZbbY.kK7n1ts9HOhU

 

[davem]

It's 100% doable to trench the GJ. Since it's a freight route I believe you need 22' of vertical clearance, plus the four feet or so of bridge structure above. Let's just say it needs to dip down 30' for a round number.

From the Mem Drive underpass to Mass Ave is ~4100', more than enough to get you down 30 feet. There are also not many structures of great significance here, and the ROW appears to be a good three or four tracks wide. AWESOME for digging.

From Mass Ave to Broadway is the big pain here, because the ROW is narrower (still appears to be two tracks though). Careful digging around new buildings (particularly the two that are on air rights) is going to drive up costs and time, but it's not infeasible, just difficult. Yeah MIT is going to make a stink, but they built right on an active railroad, and once it's buried everything will be a zillion times better.

From Broadway to Medford Street is ~3100', again, more than enough to ramp back up to grade. Binney Street would need an overpass, but only about five feet high, so that's no issue. Cambridge Street would need a pretty substantial overpass (the railroad would still be a bit below grade), but thanks to the GJ being there for ever there aren't too many structures of significance that would be tremendously effected by the construction of a bridge. Medford Street could either cross at grade or get an overpass, it doesn't much matter either way, but there is plenty of room for construction here.


The big unknown here is the Red Line. If it's right under the surface you might be okay, because you can get down a max of 40' if the train keeps descending instead of leveling out where it hits Mass Ave/Broadway. That might be enough. If its deeper though...the project gets a zillion times more expensive. I imagine the only thing you could do would be to tear out the red line and rebuild it lower in that section. The only plus in this scenario is it would give the opportunity to build an underground connector between a commuter rail stop and Kendall. Although at that point, it might just be worth it to build a whole new station at Albany St and call it a day.

For future proofing, and enhancing a woefully underutilized asset, I think this project would be worth its cost ten fold. Being able to throw a full passenger schedule through there would be transformative, and as mentioned it also allows the surface to be reused for light rail while retaining the N-S link. Not to mention Cambridge would get it's own version of Back Bay Station, and if the Inlands/Downeaster stopped there intercity service as well.

 

[cozzyd]

I think the red line is very close to the surface pretty much everywhere on Main St.

Binney St could also be severed without too much of a problem, IMO (a pedestrian crossing would be good, but it doesn't really see much vehicle traffic).

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Yep. Red Line's directly under Main. And of course the air rights are directly over the tracks at Main. So let's look at what that screws up.


Main St.
Red Line cut-and-cover blocks trenching unless it goes 50 ft. deep here. Must underpin the RL, with and per-foot construction costs on par with the North-South Link lead tunnel's costs. Hugely extensive ventilation required for a tunnel at that depth. Mass Ave. to Main is only 1400 ft. The crossing requires some safe level running for safety and can't be on the tippy top of the incline. Factor in the curve and you probably lose 200-250 ft. 1200 ft.: not gonna cut it.

No trench or lowering of tracks from Mass to Main. No possibility of raising Main over the crossing with the abutting buildings. No possibility of an overpass over Main with the air rights. No possibility of a super-long trench covering all the nearby crossings with the ventilation requirements banning all diesel equipment (freight, push-pull revenue, push-pull non-revenue, DMU) and requiring electrics or electric escort. Cost of a super-long deep tunnel better applied to N-S Link where it'll do more good, or a real subway tunnel that has real rapid transit headways and no need for stupid-big tunnel clearances.

Main crossing must remain. On ANY mode, including BRT and LRT. Unless building an LRT/HRT subway. Super-trench options meet or exceed costs of true rapid transit build, flunks any and all value proposition on RR mode. The end...any "but, but. . .!" would be Transit OCD run-amok with the modal alternatives.


Broadway
Since Main has to be on the surface, 750 ft. to Broadway + the same exact considerations of safe level distance from the crossing coupled with the curve at Main crossing makes both trenching under Broadway and elevating over Broadway impossible. Half-and-half raising Broadway while sinking tracks also impossible because would require raising Galileo Galilei Way through the intersection and abutting buildings don't allow that.

Broadway crossing must remain. Unless it's BRT or LRT. Pressing any further with super-trench ideas flunks any/all value proposition on RR mode. The end.


Binney
Binny is 730 ft. from Broadway. Subtract the safe level crossing penalty and there's not enough runup to get underground or elevated. Or opportunity to do a combo track sinking + Binney elevating with the close-abutting office buildings.

Binney crossing must remain. Unless it's BRT or LRT. Pressing further with super-trench ideas flunks any/all value proposition on RR mode. The end.


Mass Ave.
Due to all of the above, trenching the tracks from Mass to Main not possible. Super-trenching all crossings flunks the RR mode value proposition. Elevating the tracks not possible because of the power plant overhang. Half-and-half changing grades of both road and rail very unlikely unless the Metro Storage Warehouse building gets blown up...and gets progressively more difficult if the parking lots at the Vassar and Albany intersections get any new MIT-commissioned buildings right at sidewalk level. EXTREMELY unlikely all those conditions would be met to allow half-and-half.

The only alternative for Mass Ave. is burying thru traffic in an underpass under Vassar and Albany, leaving nothing but a ped plaza and between-block turn lanes as minimal-volume car traffic. MIT did sketch up some concepts in a past campus plan (sorry...can't find it) of a Harvard/Mass Ave.-style underpass to anchor the campus. This could easily work.

HOWEVER, since it has no impacts to the property lines, layout, or existence of a grade crossing (since sidewalks and Vassar turn lanes are still there) on the Grand Junction, this is not a transit project. It's outside the scope of a transit project. It's a MassHighway + MIT project. So you're barking up the wrong tree expecting the MBTA to take the lead spearheading this, even if there is potential of plunking a stop there. It's de-coupled, and they are the trailing stakeholder.

Mass. Ave. crossing must have the assumption of remaining. Unless BRT or LRT. Pressing further with super-trench ideas flunks any/all value propositions on RR mode. Until other parties move independently on any ideas of sinking Mass Ave. there is no action the T can initiate. Initiating such action is outside the scope of whether and how you can run DMU's on the Grand Junction, because there is no control over those conditions until MassDOT and MIT jointly initiate (emphasis on the private university's involvement).


Cambridge St. + Medford St.
Yes, you can do these. More than enough runup space from Binney to go over or under at Cambridge, then stay over or under at Medford. Cambridge not a candidate for half-and-halfs because of abutting buildings, but Medford is. However, since these are the 2 crossings of least concern the cost isn't worth it. They do not buy 1 more DMU slot when Main/Broadway/Binney are ironclad un-eliminables that set the headway ceiling (or Mass Ave. unless it's sunk). Proceeding with eliminations here is little more than Transit OCD aesthetic perfectionism. It doesn't improve the service.

Yes, both can be eliminated. But unlikely to have any effect or be worth attempting unless BRT or LRT.




And there you have it. You can keep wasting time trying to squeeze blood from stone here on a DMU mode, or you can consider the actual value proposition of why/how/what is money well- or poorly-spent and turn attention to Urban Ring. Because if you're buying that infrastructure regardless for the sole sake of grade separation, you've really got to have an unnatural love for DMU's as the sort of magic bullet they are NOT in reality to still keep pushing those diminishing returns over a git 'r dun on the BRT/LRT Ring. Shape your expectations accordingly because what's engineering-possible is a lot less important than how the costs rate mode vs. mode.

 

[Riverside]

The clear solution, then: ban cars and trucks from the City of Cambridge.

Oh wait, wrong thread...

 

[davem]

F-line, I have to disagree with your assumption of costs to trench the whole GJ. Why does it need to be cut and cover? An open cut would require no ventilation, and the only place there is any truly complicated construction is between Mass and Main due to abutters. Less than a third of a mile, everything else is pretty simple with plenty of room, especially between the BU Bridge and Mass Ave. This is a two track railroad, a 30' cut; not the big dig.

As for undercutting the red line, that is the hardest part. However, its not impossible (the numbers to get that deep do work). You may not even have to get 50' down: a traditional underpinning of the tunnel structure may require it, however replacing the red line tunnel in that 30' section with a simple bridge, while it would require a weekend shutdown or two, is not beyond the realm of possibility, and would reduce the depth of the cut substantially.

I agree with you that individual grade separation of each crossing is impossible and/or impractical. However, I disagree that trenching the entirety of the GJ would be as prohibitively expensive as you propose. A considerable expense, yes, but the ROI with the ability to throw half the Worcester trains, Amtrak through-routing, and a DMU line through there, in addition to eliminating the traffic jams from when an equipment transfer rolls through during rush hour outweighs it. (Hell, eliminating the traffic jams as they are now may be enough on their own if you add up all the lost time of every person sitting in traffic while a train rolls by, not to mention air pollution.) If/when the N/S link gets built (a BIG if), the ROW can be instantly converted to an urban ring line with minimal investment necessary. I don't see trenching the GJ as competing with the N/S link, but complimentary to it.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

The thing is that the capacity over the Grand Junction is so low (and the impact of using it so relatively huge) that I don't believe they can just come up with other things to run across it whenever fancy strikes them after the capital decision is made.

As you've said yourself, there's at least three hugely-critical streets (I don't think Main and Broadway are both critical in the context of the other's existence and therefore you could screw up one - BUT ONLY ONE. If you agree, it's three critical streets; disagree, it's four) that get blocked for a non-trivial amount of time every single time a train rolls through on this thing. Part of the capital decision is going to have to be mitigating that and the agreement is almost certainly coming with a "you shall not ever run more than this number of trains through these grade crossings" clause attached to it. Until those grade crossings get separated (if ever), it's not going to be as easy as saying "well we've got this online for 5 Worcester-North CR roundtrips and 2 Amtrak Inland Regional-North roundtrips and they've all been popular, let's go ahead and add another round-trip or two or three..."

If we want the Downeaster to NYC running via the Grand Junction we are going to need to establish that before regular service begins, and we're probably locking ourselves into exactly one trip if we say that's what we want.

It's all politics, sure. But I'd be fascinated to find out how Maine feels about spending more money now to make the prospect of adding a second (or third or fourth) Downeaster to NYC later only a matter of negotiating for operating rights over freight trackage in the wilds of central MA instead of having to negotiate and mitigate with well-to-dos in Cambridge including MIT.

Maybe they decide it's worth it to them to sign up for having to do business with Cambridge! I don't know. But it's not as straightforward as 'Grand Junction open for revenue service now, worry about Downeaster later.'

First off, that kind of mission creep is not really in the scope of WHY the Worcester Line and Amtrak Regionals would want to run into North Station. The proposal was for 10 Worcester movements...5 in the A.M. peak, 5 in the P.M. peak. Plus the usual off-peak freight round trip (2 movements) and non-revenue north-south equipment swaps (4 max, usually less) also on the off-peak. So this is a forecast 16 movements per day as the 'trigger' for a build. So if Amtrak wants in with 2 Regional round trips that tops out at 20 movements per day.

Worcester-NS is never going to be the type of service that expands much at all into the off-peak or weekend except maybe on Garden game nights, because the subways just aren't congested enough to make enough travel time difference. Orange from BBY-NS is a 1:1 match in travel time off-peak, Red SS-Kendall probably not much different. The justification for doing this is that the subways and transfer times at SS/BBY suffer enough at peak to merit it. So this is quite unlike any other commuter rail extension in that it's really not supposed to have any off-peak demand. Or has such slow-growing off-peak demand that 2030 projections will beget the actual Year 2030 before there is any just cause to introduce off-peaks (don't believe it...don't just say so, offer evidence as counterpoint to the study's spelled-out evidence).

If they hit the ceiling for allowable peak-hour moves...that's it. That's as far as it's going to go. And since demand at NS is a little smaller, they'll grow by adding seating capacity not slots. The off-peak demand isn't there and never will be because the subways aren't overstressed, and the GJ is so limited in capacity there is no goal beyond just using its natural capacity. That's why all these Crazy Pitches for eliminating the grade crossings totally miss the point. That's money to spend when it's converted to the Urban Ring. This is interim use. If the interim use and demand for the interim use has to give way to the UR, then a requirement of it is going to be speeding up and adding capacity to the Red and Orange Lines so they run as fast/frequent at peak from BBY/SS as they do on the off-peak.

That's it. This was never intended to be a permanent thing, or a Big Freakin' Deal.

As for Amtrak, the Regionals are pretty much in the same boat. They'll take their couple slots for PM departures and AM arrivals in the peak, but everything else off-peak works just fine at BBY and SS with the transfers. So they aren't going to be looking to add many more. They can run all the Inlands they want to their heart's content on the Worcester Line and an expanded SS. The NS diversion over 2-1/2 miles of Grand Junction track is an extremely time-specific niche. No more.


As for NYC-Portland...I never suggested it was for lack of interest. It's just the Worcester plan as outlined was the 'trigger' for goin' for it on the GJ. Because that's all they can really do to max out its use. A couple Regionals round trips with some token fed funding would additionally be the goin' for it trigger if Amtrak wanted to contribute proportionately to the track improvements. NYC-Portland isn't a dependency for that, or really factors in. The "goin' for it" trigger is much much below what they'd need to put it over the top. So it's not that NYC-Portland doesn't matter...it's that it's not time-sensitive. NNEPRA can take as long as it needs to coordinate that; nobody has to await their decision to crest momentum for doing the GJ upgrades. They'll have been underway without.

Not dependent ≠ not important. Maine couldn't pay for track in Massachusetts if it wanted to; its only capital contribution can be more track improvements within its borders. So outside funding to make it worth MA's while is going to come straight from the feds. And the feds are going to justify it with the Regionals and the core NEC network. It's not that people are ignoring NYC-Portland...it's that the decision is clinched way before they get to the "NYC-Portland" bullet point on the sales pitch.


As for viability vs. GJ capacity...with the running time for NYC-Portland and Boston being in the middle, that's a total off-peak schedule. Anybody needing to depart or arrive Boston during rush hour is going to do it on a regular Downeaster slot because that's what they're for. Quasi-LD services running thru Boston pretty much have the whole empty swath of the Grand Junction's day to get through here to arrive at their origin's or destination's peak hours. Another reason why it's a non-dependency to building the line vs. the peak slots. Thru-running passengers aren't shaped by peak or off-peak subway transfers like terminating/originating trains are. Hell, if they just gated the grade crossings and fixed the shittiest of shit track just to get it passenger-rated at all--let alone passenger-rated good--they could probably do one NYC-Portland right now if it fetched a market right now on the slow travel times. 2.5 miles on a multi-hundred mile journey is hardly a blocker.

But... we've just spent the last several days going back and forth about how I don't believe 5 TPH is going to cut it on Fairmount and you've been yelling at me to stop trying to throw increasing amounts of money at the problem to get to the point where we can have more than 6 TPH through Fairmount.

The Grand Junction certainly has a lower demand than Fairmount - if 4 TPH (with an extra TPH vultured by Amtrak/Commuter Rail/Whoever) is good enough for them, why isn't it good enough if we can get to 4+1 TPH here?

I think we're crossing up our "TPH" terminologies, which maybe is my fault for not being clear.

I'm referring to "train movements per hour", unidirectional variety, on the Grand Junction. So...one inbound, one outbound...there's your 2 in the hour. Not exactly useful. Which is why the Worcesters are all peak-direction only...5 inbounds in the A.M. peak, 5 outbounds in the P.M. peak. They're not wasting those precious slots on empty reverse-commute runs.

With Fairmount "TPH" is the headway. 4 trains per hour on the inbound track and 4 trains per hour on the outbound track = 15 minute headways either direction. And 8 train movements per hour for that service (not including anything else thru-routed down Fairmount). 4 TPH-->train movements would mean 30 min. Fairmount headways @ 2 inbound, 2 outbound. Clearly not what they're doing. Applying the headway metric to the GJ gets you...1 TPH both directions.

I don't know what's the dictionary definition or proper usage of TPH. That might be my bad for mixing that up. But, you get the idea. The train movement metric is x2 the headway metric and vice versa. But as far as grade crossings and traffic load are concerned...train movements per hour is the only one that matters. Because gates go down no matter what direction the train's traveling. And that's where the study data puts the Grand Junction in a big vice grip eliminating any practical DMU usage.

I don't know of anywhere that a combination raise/dip like what I suggested for Mass Ave has actually been done, but even assuming it's a $250 million project - none of the other grade crossings are state highways and therefore getting to 16 ft beneath the rails isn't necessary, making separating them a relatively straightforward case of simply dipping underneath the tracks with no elevating of the Grand Junction required. Unlike the combination raise/dip, I can point to multiple examples of dip-only grade separation. We can easily deal with Broadway and Cambridge Street this way and only Main Street might pose some difficulties - but even figuring $100 million (which might be seriously overbudgeting) for the two we can deal with easily and saying 'not worth costing out' for the one we can't, we're only up to $450 million. (Last I checked, the Urban Ring was priced at $2.4 billion or more than 5x the cost.)

Separating one of the grade crossings for $250 probably isn't worth it. Separating three of four for $450 probably is.

See my last post on that. The problem is the blockers to eliminating any one crossing are in conflict with the blockers to eliminating any other crossing. And thus lowering the cap on traffic levels requires spending half an Urban Ring and flunking the value proposition for the DMU mode entirely. Mass Ave. I did outline has some options...but they aren't ones the T can take a lead on. And Main and Broadway have pretty stiff limitations in their own right, so frequency improvements per dollar spent on Mass Ave. are still pretty unsatisfactory as long as this is on a DMU. So, again, if this requires pouring most of the concrete and spending most of the cost for this segment of the Urban Ring, why are we still talking about DMU's instead of the Urban Ring?

Also...eliminating one crossing like Cambridge St. or Medford St. doesn't matter when the other un-eliminables are the limiter. So it's not worth spending the money at all on something that does not buy you 1 more train slot. On a line this short, punting on the worst ones abdicates the value of taking care of the others. It's similar on the Eastern Route in Chelsea. Eastern Ave. and Everett Ave. are the only ones causing the speed restrictions and limiting the capacity...so why would anyone want to focus on 2nd Ave., Spruce St., etc. like checking names off a list when that does not one iota for speeding up the line, improving OTP, or buying one more train slot? Zap the worst one and then the next-worst one becomes the limiter on that stretch of traffic. On the Eastern Route, that means turn attention to 2nd Ave. or something after the big two are whacked. On the GJ...Cambridge and Medford are irrelevant until something gives on the others.

Of course, the real problem with spending the money on the real-deal Urban Ring is that the North-South Rail Link still doesn't exist - and as long as the Rail Link doesn't exist, the Grand Junction is a load-bearing critical piece of conventional rail infrastructure for rail operations in Boston, because the next best way to shuffle equipment between the south-side and the north-side is 100+ route-miles away.

So, even assuming that it costs the same to just get the Urban Ring operational, the real problem is that the Rail Link probably doesn't open until 2045 (at least) and until that happens, waiting for the Urban Ring is paying in both the actual cost of the project and a 30-year delayed start because necessary load-bearing infrastructure elsewhere in the city needs to be completed first.

Not necessarily. The problem isn't lack of options for equipment swaps or freight, because the Pan Am Worcester Branch can do it. It's that it's going to take a lot of investment on a bunch of uncoordinated things that can't realistically happen all at once before they can reduce their dependency on the GJ and make Worcester viable. And because the revenue services run over the GJ are so niche-oriented around peaks where the subway transfers don't equal it on time, you do not necessarily have to build the Link to have any hope of replacing it. Just get the subways and transfer stations swallowing and distributing the crowds better like every study has been warning them to do or else. The only service that gets lost is NYC-Portland via Boston. And I wouldn't exactly consider that a must-have when stacked up against the Urban Ring.


The to-do list for making cannibalizing the GJ possible:

-- Southside maint facility. Full-blown, at least able to service all coaches and DMU's, and day-to-day locomotive stuff. Locomotive repairs and regular inspections are probably still OK to send north if there's reduced need to send coaches over, and BET can still be the long-term and specialized heavy repair shop of choice. But the southside's got to have facilities to be totally self-sufficient week-to-week. BET cost $285M in 1995 dollars to construct, so...ain't cheap. And then of course you have to do mass hiring to staff it.

-- Sufficient storage space. (But they already need that.)

-- More equipment so each side of the system has full contingent of reserves without needing to share or day-to-day load-balance. This can only be timed with equipment procurements, so it'll take a few cycles to even up the numbers.

-- More work equipment, because right now it all lives on the northside. That means new switcher and work locomotives, matching pairs of the most oft-used equipment, southside space equivalent in size to the work storage yard at Alewife, plus more staff.

-- (all of the above) Enough reduced reliance on swaps that they can be limited to 1 regularly scheduled trip per week over the Worcester Branch, plus as-needed emergencies. They can't be burning crew shifts and fuel to do all that every day, or even as much as 3 times a week.

-- Contingency agreements. For example, if BET is still home base for the southside push-pull locomotives as the only remaining cross-system dependency...and a loco breaks so bad it's risky to tow...who can they rely on to help them patch it up? P&W's shops in Worcester do some outsourcing work on T equipment on as-needed basis. They would probably need to go on full retainer for bringing dire-case stuff over to them before it swaps sides, or even bringing in their help for a house call on equipment that can't move.

-- Upgrades of the Worcester Branch. At least 35 MPH passenger and not the small stretches of 20 MPH amongst large stretches of 10 MPH. It takes 3 hours to do this, and at that speed there's only a couple times during daylight where they can make the trip without conflcting with the freights. Needs to flow better to be a primary-use line.

-- Relocating the freight. If Pan Am took over CSX's Everett produce job and delivered the goods to them in Worcester, CSX would still get its produce and there'd be no need to fetch themselves. But right now they're not motivated to share; there's a give/take involved with outsourcing. Not a hard one to solve, but the state will have to make it worth their while.

-- Service agreements with Amtrak. Right now Downeaster is maintained at their own Southampton Yard. The T has to cut a deal with them to maintain it for Amtrak at BET. Likely necessitates MA paying up for more Downeaster reserve equipment. And getting the Worcester Branch upgrades set so Amtrak can swap out when it needs to. Not hard.

-- Major upgrades to the Red and Orange Line frequencies. This is the only revenue consideration for cutting it. If the whole rationale of running Worcester Line and NE Regional service to North Station at peak is because the subways and the transfer stations are too congested, the T's gotta eat a whole lot of peas on congestion mitigation. CBTC signaling for 3 min. headways, Red-Blue and downtown-Seaport rapid transit to load-spread the crush load from SS/DTX/Park, pedestrian flow improvements. At least a couple of those in place and all of them back on the planning forefront so the general flow at peak in the future is about as fluid as it is off-peak now, and more importantly so the escalating decay in the level of service gets stopped. That's a couple $B's in mandatory improvements that precede UR Phase II. That's the whole reason why UR Phase I existed as a buildout of the Crosstown (CT#) express buses.


You get the picture. Lot of disconnected priorities on disconnected timelines that are either slow-build stuff like padding the fleet, busywork like upgrading freight lines, or dependent on other rapid transit-serving megaprojects. But yes, with follow-through on enough RR ops stuff in the mid-term and enough downtown rapid transit fixes in the long-term the GJ is claimable. It's easier to get started on the Lechmere-Chelsea-Airport leg since that doesn't disrupt an existing mode and have the Grand Junction be Phase II linking the two builds into a complete north-half Ring. So it's not like we're necessarily sitting on our asses waiting for a bunch of other stuff to finish up. The Ring can get kicked off whenever they want if they choose that eastern segment as the first one to tackle.

Assuming 360 ft of 2% grade in two shots is doable by any and all non-DMU interests operating over the Grand Junction, it's probably worth paying once now to get 4+1 TPH in five years even though we might end up paying again in 30 years for the Urban Ring.

I can't wrap brain around this logic. You want to pay for something twice over? Why not just build one thing once? Not only is that a waste of money, it's a waste of time spending all those years of planning for one mode only to have a do-over immediately follow. It's like the T's own UR phasing lunacy with BRT giving way to rail on dedicated ROW's overbuilt for busways when they'd be cheaper doing from Day 1 as LRT.

I don't think the Great White BRT Hope is what we want to be replicating here with DMU over-hype. It's the same snake oil trying to sell a mode as something its not while privately acknowledging it's not and willfully going along with it anyway knowing it'll have a short shelf life and cost twice as much to do-over correctly for the service they're pitching. There's plenty of upside for DMU's and plenty of upside for BRT. Just not in every situation. This is one of those not-situations. Do it right or don't do it at all, because you're spending the same to do something whether it's right or half-assed.

 

[davem]

Regarding Amtrak and the GJ, if it were made a more viable passenger route, would it not make sense to combine the Downeaster (perhaps just the Portland south segment) and the Springfield shuttle? It's not quite the full inland route, but getting to New Haven gives you a million options to get to NYC, doesn't eat up slots through Metro North, and also gives Springfield a dandy connection to Boston (plus there is no required engine change, so equipment can stay separate).


---Upon further thought, if the GJ were made viable, I wonder if select trains from the northside could be routed out to Worcester or Framingham, allowing a one seat ride to Kendall and New Balance from Lowell, Newburyport, etc. This would be contingent on how fast they could turn a train at North Station.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

F-line, I have to disagree with your assumption of costs to trench the whole GJ. Why does it need to be cut and cover? An open cut would require no ventilation, and the only place there is any truly complicated construction is between Mass and Main due to abutters. Less than a third of a mile, everything else is pretty simple with plenty of room, especially between the BU Bridge and Mass Ave. This is a two track railroad, a 30' cut; not the big dig.

I meant ventilation in the deep tunnel under the Red Line. If you're 50 feet or more under there's a long way up on each side before you can get into an open trench. Active air circulation is going to be required. Smoking out Kendall Station and the steam heat sources feeding all the area buildings when CSX crawls underground isn't going to cut it. No, it's not a subway line. But it is expensive enough that it has no business being done for anything other than the Urban Ring.

As for undercutting the red line, that is the hardest part. However, its not impossible (the numbers to get that deep do work). You may not even have to get 50' down: a traditional underpinning of the tunnel structure may require it, however replacing the red line tunnel in that 30' section with a simple bridge, while it would require a weekend shutdown or two, is not beyond the realm of possibility, and would reduce the depth of the cut substantially.

See above. You can't blast diesel fumes into the Red Line, and any construction on a common-carrier RR has to assume that any RR traffic (excepting Hazmat in a tunnel) could use it. Including long freight trains hauled by 3 lashed-up locomotives belching simultaneously. Nor can you have a new tunnel built that intentionally compromises the old such that a firey freight derailment in the RR tunnel puts everyone's lives in danger on the Red Line and forces its evacuation all the way to Alewife. That would never get approved in an EIS.

Again...why are we wasting our time trying to push this boulder up an ever-steeper hill on a RR mode? You don't have to build ANY tunnel with light rail. The cost convergence between doing it on RR mode and doing it on BRT or LRT flunks the logic all these invasive grade crossing solves.

All of them.

I agree with you that individual grade separation of each crossing is impossible and/or impractical. However, I disagree that trenching the entirety of the GJ would be as prohibitively expensive as you propose. A considerable expense, yes, but the ROI with the ability to throw half the Worcester trains, Amtrak through-routing, and a DMU line through there, in addition to eliminating the traffic jams from when an equipment transfer rolls through during rush hour outweighs it. (Hell, eliminating the traffic jams as they are now may be enough on their own if you add up all the lost time of every person sitting in traffic while a train rolls by, not to mention air pollution.) If/when the N/S link gets built (a BIG if), the ROW can be instantly converted to an urban ring line with minimal investment necessary. I don't see trenching the GJ as competing with the N/S link, but complimentary to it.

See my last post. The demand isn't all-day for Worcester and Amtrak. ONLY the peak hours where the subway suffers under load. Otherwise the demand is always greatly higher to South Station, the Orange Line gets you to North Station from Back Bay in equal time off-peak, and the Red Line gets you from SS to Kendall in < 5 minutes of equal time off-peak. With improvements to the performance of those two lines like re-signaling for tighter headways decreasing the difference further.

So...the only unique users you're serving spending megabucks trying to increase its frequencies as a RR line are the DMU's and long-distance trains like NYC/D.C.-Portland that are only going to run once a day. So why are we spending so much tarting it up in ever more exaggerated fashion on this mode instead of the Urban Ring? Yes...you could run frequent Worcesters or frequent Regionals if the capacity were there. Probably would fetch some riders too. But not many new riders...these would just be diversions from South Station where people either board inbound not caring where the terminal destination is or take the perceived-laziest route to the terminal instead of an equal-time subway transfer. It's the commuter rail form of induced demand. And similarly superfluous.

So, you have to justify plunking this extreme a level of cost on real DMU demand, not induced long distance demand. And I don't think the mode comes even close to justifying it when there is no other must-have user (except NYC-Portland...oh, well) who can't be accommodated equally well or better on travel time by Red and Orange mitigation. This isn't Fairmount where the freights can't be displaced and DMU's are the best you've got in lieu of a Red Line branch. They can be re-routed, and the T can reorient its north vs. south ops around more infrequent use of an upgraded Worcester Branch as alternative.

So this all comes down to a DMU vs. Urban Ring value proposition with any degree of 9 figure capital investment at any one crossing X multiple crossings. I don't think there's a sane argument for willfully going to the mat @ nth degree for the not- rapid transit mode over the rapid transit mode. And the study data seems to back that up on the demand forecast.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Regarding Amtrak and the GJ, if it were made a more viable passenger route, would it not make sense to combine the Downeaster (perhaps just the Portland south segment) and the Springfield shuttle? It's not quite the full inland route, but getting to New Haven gives you a million options to get to NYC, doesn't eat up slots through Metro North, and also gives Springfield a dandy connection to Boston (plus there is no required engine change, so equipment can stay separate).


---Upon further thought, if the GJ were made viable, I wonder if select trains from the northside could be routed out to Worcester or Framingham, allowing a one seat ride to Kendall and New Balance from Lowell, Newburyport, etc. This would be contingent on how fast they could turn a train at North Station.

Probably not. Because this is the terminal for Regionals and the Downeaster, so the travel times for those slots are predicated on arrivals/departures from the terminal. At the midpoint of the trip Boston's an afterthought. Yes...they could marry together an Inland and a Downeaster. But doing so is more coincidental by grabbing slots from each (any slot...I'm assuming this is an otherwise ho-hum South Station Inland that you opportunistically divert north) that just so happen to coincide enough to combine. It's not likely to happen more than once or twice a day since of course a midpoint stop in Boston is going to put it a little bit outside the bounds of our peak hours, and thus at a time of day when there's less Inland Regionals to be had.


Also don't think you'd be talking a fully seamless run. That's way too many stops. A Portland run from D.C. or NYC would probably cut a lot of CT intermediates and NEC intermediates of originating south of NYC. Probably would go New York-->Stamford-->New Haven-->Hartford-->Springfield-->Worcester-->North Station-->Anderson, etc. Skip the highway park-and-rides, skip Framingham, skip everything non-essential, and maybe skip some less-esssential Downeaster stops to make travel times tolerable for its target audience. Target audience for this is different from the folks who ride a Springfield Shuttle or an Inland. I'm thinking those needs and the scheduling dance of expressing through the nonessential intermediates probably means this has to be a unified run and not a happenstance coordination of two trains.

But that doesn't really matter specific to the Grand Junction. If it uses that 2.5 mile speck in the middle of its schedule it's overwhelming likely to hit a slot either just outside or well outside peak when the Worcesters and regular Regionals have no need to run there, so they can pretty much go whenever. It's transparent to anyone in Boston. Maybe even 100% transparent if there ends up being a limited-stop Downeaster Express or Inland Express infilling a particularly high-demand slot on the regular, non-GJ schedule. A lot of people getting from D.C. to Springfield or New Haven to Springfield don't care if they happen to pick up a Vermonter instead of a NE Regional or Shuttle. The only stop the Vermonter skips on the Springfield Line that the others don't is tiny Windsor, so it prices the same or very nearly the same for people using it as a same-destination substitute.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

I can't wrap brain around this logic. You want to pay for something twice over? Why not just build one thing once? Not only is that a waste of money, it's a waste of time spending all those years of planning for one mode only to have a do-over immediately follow. It's like the T's own UR phasing lunacy with BRT giving way to rail on dedicated ROW's overbuilt for busways when they'd be cheaper doing from Day 1 as LRT.

I don't think the Great White BRT Hope is what we want to be replicating here with DMU over-hype. It's the same snake oil trying to sell a mode as something its not while privately acknowledging it's not and willfully going along with it anyway knowing it'll have a short shelf life and cost twice as much to do-over correctly for the service they're pitching. There's plenty of upside for DMU's and plenty of upside for BRT. Just not in every situation. This is one of those not-situations. Do it right or don't do it at all, because you're spending the same to do something whether it's right or half-assed.

Let me try and explain the pay-twice logic a little bit better, because I get how it can seem obtuse.

You've done a very good job in outlining all the separate projects/enhancements that need to be completed and open for business before we can actually take over the Grand Junction. Some of these projects can be lumped together under a single unified banner and most of them are all things that needed to happen 15 years ago, but the fact of the matter is that there's absolutely a rather frighteningly long checklist of stuff to get done with before the Urban Ring can proceed.

Now, I'm not calling for the full trench like some other posters because it is a massive overbuild and more trouble than its worth, in the context of a half-assed Diet Urban Ring to replace the satisfying full-bodied taste of an Urban Ring Classic.

But undertaking comparatively smaller projects to zap the Mass Ave, Cambridge St, and Medford St crossings (and, if possible, Binney by just dead-ending Binney) gets rid of three (or four) out of six grade crossings and improves the situation substantially. You're down to two (okay, the worst two) crossings, but they're both within close proximity of each other. You might then be able to run an extended glorified passing siding through here in such a way that two trains can move through the crossings going in the opposite direction at the same time, and you can then time it out so that the crossing is only blocked for 30~60 seconds, every 15 minutes or so. Not great, but a fraction of the cost of the megatrench and will last us 35 years.

We want it to last us 35 years - because that's how long it's going to take us to get through the laundry list of railroad projects pre-requisite to Grand Junction closure - at which point, we pay again to upgrade this thing to the full-fat Urban Ring. Sure, we paid twice when we didn't have to. But in paying the first time, we got a stop-gap measure to extend "good enough" transit over this thing and hold us over for the next 35 years. It isn't worth paying for if stop-gap patch-ups are what the Grand Junction gets as transit forever, but I'm arguing that it's worth paying extra to have the appetizer 35 years ahead of the main course.

Who knows? Maybe, against all odds, it takes off like a rocket to the moon and causes everything else to fall into place just a little bit faster, greased by proven demand.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

Regarding Amtrak and the GJ, if it were made a more viable passenger route, would it not make sense to combine the Downeaster (perhaps just the Portland south segment) and the Springfield shuttle? It's not quite the full inland route, but getting to New Haven gives you a million options to get to NYC, doesn't eat up slots through Metro North, and also gives Springfield a dandy connection to Boston (plus there is no required engine change, so equipment can stay separate).

Even if it does (or did) make sense to combine runs this way, the life expectancy of the Springfield shuttles is short, and quickly running out. The minute NHHS Commuter Rail opens (and I think we're on track for 2016, but I would need to confirm) - all of those runs probably evaporate. Amtrak (operating as a mercenary for CTDOT) will be the operator for NHHS and I very much doubt they're going to be interested in keeping any of the Springfield shuttle runs around as Amtrak Springfield shuttle runs and not CTDOT NHHS Commuter Rail when it benefits them in absolutely no way to do so.

Remember, those trains have no business class, no cafe car, and the slightly-better seating that might command a token surcharge akin to Economy Plus is not at all worth what is given up in the ability to have more seating under otherwise-equivalent commuter trains. And since Amtrak remains the operator, they can easily schedule trains and hold them as required to preserve the cross-platform transfer - not to mention, it's quite easy to enter into a technology-based cross-ticketing agreement between you and yourself. There's no need for the commuter trains to have the Amtrak logo and be ticketed as Amtrak four-hundred-who-cares to Springfield: they can be listed and ticketed as a Thruway service.

(These are, of course, the Springfield shuttles - NOT the Vermonters, which stay, nor the Regional through-round-trips which also stay. It's just the eponymous shuttle that's going to be cannibalized for more CTDOT commuter trains and to free up those control cars to be used as either reserves for or expanding the Keystone service. Or, perhaps ironically, facilitating a Downeaster which operates over a completed wye in Portland and would then therefore have to end-change on the platform in Portland if proceeding to or originating from Brunswick.)

Besides, if you can get the Downeaster into New Haven, the only thing stopping you from getting it the rest of the way to New York City is Metro-North politics. Politics are surmountable. NNERPA is, at least seemingly, very good at political operation and deal-making. I have full faith and confidence in their ability to get the Downeaster the rest of the way into New York once they've gotten it as far as New Haven.