Reasonable Transit Pitches

odurandina said:
Q for Mr FLtD;

if the Feds came to your office and said we'll bore deep and give you a single continuous run of 3 tracks for 25 mi anywhere
you desire including doing 6-8 new underground stations..... where would you have them build it; start-route-finish?
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"Crazy Transit Pitches" thread, dude.
 
tysmith95 said:
We should change the name to ambitious transit pitches. Only in Boston is the idea of tunneling new subway lines "crazy".
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No. Having an idea where a line needs very badly to be laid isn't crazy at all, even when it's expensive. We have the missing Seaport-Back Bay link reminding us of that every day. We have North-South Rail Link sketched out with a fully-functional build.

"Here's 25 tunnel miles, carte blanche" isn't even asking a question of transit demand. It's height fetish gone subterranean...dig for digging's sake because steel-and-concrete is 'totes kewl. That's not how a city builds things. Where do the people need to go, and what's the sanest way to get them there?
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Actually, yes, Greenville Branch does have an anchor customer that gets wide cars...so that is a buzzkill for using the northerly track as a platform track.
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Not sure what customer that would be. I never had an extra-dimensional move to the Greenville Branch. It was all tankers and centerbeams to the two remaining customers. If there was ever an extra-dimensional move, I'd had to have requested someone to raise the flaps at North Leominster.

F-Line to Dudley said:
Also...like it or not, freights and passenger traffic can't be segregated on most of the 20 miles between Willows Jct. and Wachusett. There's thickets of customer sidings on both sides of the ROW, including inside East Fitchburg Yard.
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I forgot about Plastican. That is the only active customer on the north side of the ROW with a mainline switch. The only other three customers are F&M Tool on the Rocky Lead accessed via CPF Derby and the two customers on the Greenville Branch. Hands down, the majority of active customers are on the south side and I don't think a single customer between Willows and Gardner that receives wide loads, on either side of the ROW.
 
Add a lane on 128 from Reading to Beverly. Of course the 93-128 interchange could be rebuilt alongside of this.
 
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tysmith95 said:
Add a lane on 128 from Reading to Beverly.
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Has anyone ever suggested snow sheds over the T tracks where above ground, to help avoid snow-related issues?
 
DominusNovus said:
Has anyone ever suggested snow sheds over the T tracks where above ground, to help avoid snow-related issues?
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Not sure how effective that would be. Unless you fully enclose them, you would still get drifting. The supports might become drift concentration points, creating even more problems.

I don't know of their use in transit situations. Historically they were used in mountainous rail areas prone to avalanche, but that was a much more severe/acute issue. I think others in this forum have advocated for limited use of snow sheds to protect lines out to important outdoor stations (but not the entire outdoor line). (Example Blue Line, portal to Airport)
 
DominusNovus said:
Has anyone ever suggested snow sheds over the T tracks where above ground, to help avoid snow-related issues?
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The Fields Corner-Ashmont tunnel on the Red Line is a de facto snowshed. The old Shawmut Branch cut through Dorchester was notorious for having a wind angle facing the direction of the Neponset River which collected monster snowdrifts that routinely suspended Old Colony commuter trains during and after big storms. When Red was built there 90 years ago they replaced some partial metal snowshed sections from the RR era with a full air rights roof to lick that drifting problem forever. But that was the one perfect-storm ROW in the whole city that was unusually susceptible to that phenomenon, so a big outlier not found anywhere else. We have ROW's with a nasty wind-facing side and track-level flood risk like the Blue Line in Revere, but that's why they chose overhead lines instead of third rail out there: pantographs make for much better ice-cutters than third-rail shoes, and the electrical plant is pole-mounted instead of in ground conduits. The only snowdrift considerations are maybe a well-placed retaining wall opposite an ocean-facing platform that's got particularly nasty windward side. Which might be a good addition to Assembly Sq. sooner or later because that blow from high off the Mystic is rather unpleasant in February.


You don't need snowsheds unless you're going to be literally buried in drifts taller than a train or face an avalanche risk off the side of a mountain. Neither of those conditions are in-play on the generally slushy (and warming) Southern New England coast. The only reason the system melted down in 2015 was state-of-repair. Too many third rail heaters and switch heaters were inoperable on all 4 color lines so the above-ground rapid tracks failed en masse under what was historically-speaking not unusually difficult snow dumps (i.e. light-and-fluffy, not heavy waterlogged Blizzard of '78 snow). And the vehicle fleets--rapid transit + commuter rail--were so worn out with so many traction motors living on borrowed time with so little manpower resources for staying on top...that all it took was pressure and time for those old motors to suck in enough snow to short out en masse. Well-maintained fleets would not do that.

This is how much New England snow should have fazed a well-maintained systemwide fleet: https://vine.co/v/OP9YFebzX27 (<-- That would be an oldest-of-old F40PH-2C locomotive making complete mincemeat of post-Blizzard snowdrifts at full 60 MPH on a Worcester Line rush hour train in West Newton in Feb. 2015 within hours of one of the blizzards). The PCC's were the first vehicles back on the streets after the Blizzard of '78:

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(^re-opening the D Line in '78 with a snowplow-converted Type 3 trolley from 1907)



This winter resiliency stuff the FCMB funded was to catch up on the deferred-maint Achilles heels that specifically exploited the system in 2015: the third rail heaters on Red and Orange, switch heaters on all 4 color lines (but Blue in particular), and fragile traction motors on the oldest Orange and Red cars that have to last another 5 years (Green getting help via the Type 7 rebuild program hitting halfway point, and commuter rail now having the full HSP-46 fleet in-service). And they've beefed-up the supply of snowplows so they aren't so S.O.L. for accumulations that pile up after the "snowbuster" non-revenue trains can no longer run mid-storm. More of the same licks the remaining problems. It's just a very big SGR hole to dig out of. That's the only reason why the system got so much more crippled in 2015 than much worse and more paralyzing storms in decades past. The same shit that fails every single day on a deferred-maint system, just subject to more pressure-over-time by icy conditions. We don't have to fortify the system for snowier conditions when the annual snow was there centuries of local civilization before the first transit line, and we definitely don't have to fortify it for snow in a climate change era that's getting warmer (floods from sea level rise...different story). General-purpose systemic disrepair can just never be allowed to get as bad and as threadbare as it was in 2015, or proverbial perfect-storm conditions (any such conditions...not even 'storm-storm') can take out the whole works. That's the lesson we learned bitterly in 2015.
 
Right on.

My only quibble (and it is very much, 100% a quibble) is that climate change could and might mean more snow - at least some of the time and in some places.

But I completely endorse the argument that even a higher frequency of crazy-white and persistently frigid februaries shouldn't be a real problem if we fix state of repair (and continue to develop good habits like parking the trains underground on the coldest and snowiest nights)
 
So, I'm presently walking along Quincy Shore Dr. Its quite nice, there's some parks, some wetlands, the beach, some small businesses on the northern end... and a giant busy avenue, two lanes in each direction, with a comstant stream of traffic.

Besides just 'make it narrower,' what would you do to make this strip more pedestrian friendly and lively?
 
Not sure about the street itself, but I'm always amazed that it didn't end up much more built up. Today, it's generally single family homes with some scattered multi-family and standalone retail. I imagine things would have been different had the T veered off in that direction.
 
Shepard said:
Not sure about the street itself, but I'm always amazed that it didn't end up much more built up. Today, it's generally single family homes with some scattered multi-family and standalone retail. I imagine things would have been different had the T veered off in that direction.
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Was the T ever planned to go that way?
 
Adding an Amtrak stop at TF Green Airport in Providence to go along with the runway expansion and a possible Norwegian base there.
 
DominusNovus said:
So, I'm presently walking along Quincy Shore Dr. Its quite nice, there's some parks, some wetlands, the beach, some small businesses on the northern end... and a giant busy avenue, two lanes in each direction, with a comstant stream of traffic.

Besides just 'make it narrower,' what would you do to make this strip more pedestrian friendly and lively?
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You'd think Hancock St., being 3A, would be where the Neponset River Bridge connects directly to, but it turns to dump everyone onto Quincy Shore Drive. And I can only imagine that it's on purpose to try to route traffic around the neighborhoods rather than through them. If that's the case, then you'd have to address the traffic flow as a whole for the city to achieve the goal of reducing cars on QSD. Slow that road down, the unintended consequence becomes Hancock St. going to the dogs.
 
Arenacale said:
You'd think Hancock St., being 3A, would be where the Neponset River Bridge connects directly to, but it turns to dump everyone onto Quincy Shore Drive. And I can only imagine that it's on purpose to try to route traffic around the neighborhoods rather than through them. If that's the case, then you'd have to address the traffic flow as a whole for the city to achieve the goal of reducing cars on QSD. Slow that road down, the unintended consequence becomes Hancock St. going to the dogs.
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I mean... the bridge does connect directly to Hancock St - it just also forks to Quincy Shore Drive, with pretty good signage explaining where each side goes.
 
Google always routes me along Quincy Shore Drive rather than staying on 3A when traveling between the Neponset and Weymouth. It's usually a few minutes faster despite the extra length since it acts as a de-facto waterfront expressway.

I could see a Quincy that actually embraces its urban status trying to clean up and enhance Quincy Shore Drive, but they would definitely get pushback trying to deal with the cut through traffic from Weymouth and Hingham trying to get into Boston.
 
tysmith95 said:
Adding an Amtrak stop at TF Green Airport in Providence to go along with the runway expansion and a possible Norwegian base there.
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It's under very real medium-long term consideration as an ID'd state-level priority. Not soon because RIDOT's got bigger fish to fry than writing checks to entice Amtrak, but the station is constructed such that it can eventually end up a 4-tracker with 2 side commuter rail platforms and a center Amtrak-only island for the NE Regionals.

It'll probably happen some time after:
1) commuter rail gets built out for the additional RIDOT infill stations and Green + Wickford get their matching northbound CR platforms added...fulfilling RIDOT's top capital priorities.
2) ConnDOT extends Shore Line East to Westerly to meet up with RIDOT/Purple Line, enabling Amtrak to completely scrub Mystic from all schedules and skip commuter rail -fattened Westerly on many more schedules. That trade-in frees up the schedule bandwidth to add Green in their place.
 
Scipio said:
Google always routes me along Quincy Shore Drive rather than staying on 3A when traveling between the Neponset and Weymouth. It's usually a few minutes faster despite the extra length since it acts as a de-facto waterfront expressway.

I could see a Quincy that actually embraces its urban status trying to clean up and enhance Quincy Shore Drive, but they would definitely get pushback trying to deal with the cut through traffic from Weymouth and Hingham trying to get into Boston.
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Well, if it upsets commuters from other towns, thats not directly Quincy's problem.
 
DominusNovus said:
Well, if it upsets commuters from other towns, thats not directly Quincy's problem.
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I'd say it's Quincy's opportunity. Reclaiming local roads as a local amenity is the right way to go, and pushing longer trips--particularly commuter trips--to transit is the way to go.

Somerville has come out the winner as it has calmed its streets for local, short, transit, and non-car trips. Quincy would be the south-shore analog of a place that should do the same.
 
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