F-Line to Dudley
Senior Member
- Joined
- Nov 2, 2010
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Hersey's a poor rapid transit candidate because the wetlands prevent you from building any accompanying TOD on Great Plain Ave. or Greendale Ave. You'll have a parking sink with OK 6:00-9:00am and 4:00-7:00pm ridership...and nothing the rest of the day because the surrounding residential will all be at work/school. Far and away the most dramatic drop-off on the system and a loss leader. For nearly half the extension mileage I don't think that's going to float it. Your would-be Gould/128 stop is going to take disproportionate share of the park-and-ride crowd because there's more stuff to do there (I don't even see how you're getting a Dunkies built near Hersey), and if service levels on the Franklin Line @ Dedham Corporate get surged you'll have P&R's spaced at roughly 1 every 3 exits on that whole quadrant of 128 from Quincy Adams to Riverside: 3 rapid transit, 2 commuter rail. That should be plenty if the 2 commuter rail ones get stiffened up. I'd curtail at West Roxbury, rail-trail between Needham Jct. and VFW Parkway, and wrap the 59 bus from Needham Ctr. down Great Plain Ave. to St. Sebastien's School upon opening of the Green branch to Needham Junction.
Rivermoor might not be necessary, since W. Rox station would work much better if positioned behind the Shaw's 3 blocks west. Traps several more bus routes than the current location at Lagrange. Close enough to bring in the 35, 36, 37 for an orderly loop and to draw in the 52, which does a useful Newton Corner-Newton Centre-W. Rox-Dedham Mall jog...but which misses the W. Rox station node. Plus you've got better TOD with a redev of the Shaw's.
Don't bother extending Green to Alewife if that's as far as you're going. Porter traps the lion's share of Red transfers because of the Red + Green + CR station with common lobby and the 77 upstairs. Alewife is too long a walk between stations, and you sacrifice all ability to go further towards Belmont or Waltham if you deviate off the Fitchburg ROW across Summer Shack into the busway. It's low-return. Put your past-Porter energy into making Watertown a GL branch instead.
No way DMU's run on the H2O Branch. The speeds would be crap, they'd waste too much fuel maintaining a 20-25 MPH crap speed, you'd shoot your chance to eliminate the Fresh Pond Parkway grade crossing, and the environmental protection around the reservoir for running frequent-headway fossil fuel vehicles is going to drive up the cost higher than you want. That's an ideal Green branch out of Porter: electric; steep climbing lets you overpass the parkway; ability to institute some high-value local stops @ Fresh Pond Mall, Huron Ave., Mt. Auburn St., Arlington St. and throttle headways flexibly; ability to do street-running on Arsenal from School St. to H2O Sq. for the early years until you can cobble the grade separated ROW back together through the industrial backlots; pre-existing trolley-equipped carhouse, pre-existing electrical feed with the B Line-to-71 interconnection using the old A Line under-street feeder. Relatively cost-effective as LRT builds go, especially because of the pre-existing carhouse and electrical plant. Those are always pricey items for bringing rapid transit a linear distance into new territory, and you can skip a lot of that electrical and substation cost by only needing to span the existing Red/TT feeder at Porter substation and the existing Green/TT feeder at H2O carhouse...fewer substations and some of the power boosting being able to originate from elsewhere on the system thanks to the trunk interconnections. Decent bang-for-buck to be had there.
Medford Ctr. is not happening. The Medford Branch is G-O-N-E past Amaranth Ave. It was gone before Orange even showed up in the neighborhood. I don't know why this keeps appearing on fantasy maps; you can't so much as trace where it used to go past that first set of backyards with above-ground pools on Gibson St. There will never be anything there except a walking path between Gibson and Middlesex Ave. whenever Pan Am abandons it. There was never any there there.
Rivermoor might not be necessary, since W. Rox station would work much better if positioned behind the Shaw's 3 blocks west. Traps several more bus routes than the current location at Lagrange. Close enough to bring in the 35, 36, 37 for an orderly loop and to draw in the 52, which does a useful Newton Corner-Newton Centre-W. Rox-Dedham Mall jog...but which misses the W. Rox station node. Plus you've got better TOD with a redev of the Shaw's.
Don't bother extending Green to Alewife if that's as far as you're going. Porter traps the lion's share of Red transfers because of the Red + Green + CR station with common lobby and the 77 upstairs. Alewife is too long a walk between stations, and you sacrifice all ability to go further towards Belmont or Waltham if you deviate off the Fitchburg ROW across Summer Shack into the busway. It's low-return. Put your past-Porter energy into making Watertown a GL branch instead.
No way DMU's run on the H2O Branch. The speeds would be crap, they'd waste too much fuel maintaining a 20-25 MPH crap speed, you'd shoot your chance to eliminate the Fresh Pond Parkway grade crossing, and the environmental protection around the reservoir for running frequent-headway fossil fuel vehicles is going to drive up the cost higher than you want. That's an ideal Green branch out of Porter: electric; steep climbing lets you overpass the parkway; ability to institute some high-value local stops @ Fresh Pond Mall, Huron Ave., Mt. Auburn St., Arlington St. and throttle headways flexibly; ability to do street-running on Arsenal from School St. to H2O Sq. for the early years until you can cobble the grade separated ROW back together through the industrial backlots; pre-existing trolley-equipped carhouse, pre-existing electrical feed with the B Line-to-71 interconnection using the old A Line under-street feeder. Relatively cost-effective as LRT builds go, especially because of the pre-existing carhouse and electrical plant. Those are always pricey items for bringing rapid transit a linear distance into new territory, and you can skip a lot of that electrical and substation cost by only needing to span the existing Red/TT feeder at Porter substation and the existing Green/TT feeder at H2O carhouse...fewer substations and some of the power boosting being able to originate from elsewhere on the system thanks to the trunk interconnections. Decent bang-for-buck to be had there.
Medford Ctr. is not happening. The Medford Branch is G-O-N-E past Amaranth Ave. It was gone before Orange even showed up in the neighborhood. I don't know why this keeps appearing on fantasy maps; you can't so much as trace where it used to go past that first set of backyards with above-ground pools on Gibson St. There will never be anything there except a walking path between Gibson and Middlesex Ave. whenever Pan Am abandons it. There was never any there there.