495/90 was proposed about 15 years ago by the MPO.
- CSX yard was looked at back when it was only partially used. That's since changed bigtime as part of the whole Beacon Park relocation, as CSX built the very busy Transflo (i.e. transloading of liquids & loose aggregates) terminal maxing out the yard property lines and generating heavy truck traffic through the industrial park to 495.
- Cumberland Farms HQ has a trackside pond inconveniently between it and 495. There's room for a platform sandwiched between 495 and the Pike, but the wetlands would leave a driveway kiss-and-ride awkwardly wedged at questionable accessibility and the parking would have to be carved into the Pike embankment at considerable cost in tall retaining walls.
- Fruit St./Old Flanders Rd. would require considerable property takings, and probably be opposed by Westborough over the need to widen narrow, rural, meandering Flanders Rd. Heavy traffic on that street stays NW of the Pike overpass by the industrial park, so they have a self-interest in not letting a town-control street become some sort of state turnpike between 495 and MA 85.
So the properties aren't physically available. But even if you could force-fit, the inability to do a direct offramp from the Pike was a buzzkill that severely depressed calculated ridership for the MPO. It's wetlands, wetlands, wetlands from the Pike side in the entire area. CSX is too far a reach and requires crossing the river. Cumbys is too constrained for ramps being surrounded by retention ponds. And Flanders Rd. is blocked by ponds and a tributary of the Sudbury. No direct access meant a solid third of the ridership would never materialize.
Rather, all traffic would have to funnel through the tortured 495 interchange, go up to MA 9, then backtrack on the industrial park connector road. Or, add a slim-profile 495 exit at Flanders Rd. which would be very difficult to keep from backing up at peak park-and-ride usage.
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Chalk it up to anti-location, anti-location, anti-location. No non-wretched sites, no non-wretched access.
Also, the Worcester Line's ridership profile has not been one aligned in actual practice to parking sinks despite the incredible loads put on it. Ashland and Westborough stations, sited far from their traditional downtown centers, have been ridership failures since opening from '00-02 doing only a fraction of the boardings of adjacent stops. Southborough, sited right at a crossroads where the historic train station had been, has been the biggest winner of the outer-Worcester intermediates despite the Cordaville village being sparser than the real downtown a couple miles north. Grafton is sort of half-and-half, eschewing the traditional center at North Grafton 1.25 miles west but anchoring itself to TOD via Tufts campus.
As a do-over, Ashland should've gone at the historic depot at the corner of Main & Homer instead of the desolate parking sink 3/4 mile west. Westborough should've been squared at its historic depot on E. Main St. in the heart of downtown. And Millbury, which the town unwisely turned down when offered in the late-90's, should get an infill straddling the US 20 overpass where the easy Pike access from MA 122 would give it both walkup and Pn'R patronage.
Not sure how you can undo the Ashland and Westborough mistakes today. Current Westborough Station is plausibly far from downtown that infill could be done while retaining the parking sink, although that's going to tank the utilization of the parking sink. But Ashland is a 'tweener; current stop must be abandoned if it gets re-centered on downtown. I don't know what would compel an outright abandonment, other than if/when they do grade separation of the Main & Cherry St.'s grade crossings with rail overpasses it could be mashed into some grand downtown revival scheme.
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For MetroWest parking sinks, the place to look is the Fitchburg Secondary. There's a local blogger who's on the RER study public advisory committee who's crunched the numbers and sees much more serious upside for that branchline than most folks relegating it to the long-term bin have, and sees RER as the catalyst for expediting a Framingham-Northborough build over the ones actually being prioritized (South Coast FAIL) which won't tap the higher all-day frequencies nearly as well. For the life of me I can't remember the guy's name even though I commented on some of his Fitchburg Sec. posts not 2 months ago
confused
. Anyway...not sure I'm totally sold because he doesn't have much company in his strong advocacy for this particular expansion, but the arguments made were compelling and worth some additional analysis.
- Framingham State U.
- Pike/MA 9 at the industrial park with all the corporate HQ's
- Southborough Center (MA 30 @ MA 85)
- Marlborough/495...at the industrial park with major TOD and adjacent offramps. 2 exits up from Pike/495.
- Northborough Center (US 20)
- Northborough/290...by industrial park and adjacent exit. TOD and parking.
Basically an alternating series of local vs. big-biz/commuter parking the whole way up, and definitely superior to the Worcester Line for car commutes even though they'd have to keep the inbound stop selection from Framingham lean to balance out speeds on all the curves. I would've thought this would just be a 9-5'er line, but that blogger makes a compelling case that it's got a balanced mix of both worlds on local walkup and corporate HQ's that staff multiple shifts that it would rake in all-day ridership.
At any rate, MetroWest highway relief via transit frequencies directly correlates to priority level for doing something with the Fitchburg Secondary...so I guess if we ever did break our worlds-destroying addiction to South Coast Rail, RER-ified service to Northborough probably deserves a detailed second look in study.
