Reasonable Transit Pitches

BussesAin'tTrains said:
Seems like GLX terminating at Rt 16 is the furthest it will likely go for a long while. Bridging the Mystic doesn't seem to make sense for a +1 West Medford extension. The farthest afield that probably makes any sense for GLX would be to Wedgemere to replace the Commuter Rail stop, but I wonder if there would ever be enough ridership demand from the neighborhood to justify that. Can't easily go farther than that because a tunnel under Winchester Center would be needed.

Looking wayyyy off there could be a complete hrt takeover of the Medford GLX branch that takes over all/most Commuter Rail stops up to Anderson, but that's getting into "choose your own adventure" territory.
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When it's time to grade separate West Medford there'll be opportunity to consider extending. The ROW would be sunk in a 4-track width cut coming off the Mystic bridge, with Canal St. overpassing the descending cut on a new bridge, High St. passing over the point of maximum depth, and a slow rise back up through Playstead Park after the platforms. If everything from the side of the Ride Aid building to the Playstead Rd. sidewalk (75-80 ft.) were framed by retaining wall, there would be room down in the pit for both modes side-by-side and any one mode (but not both) to have a platform. Even if only doing it for Lowell Line RER the cut wouldn't be any narrower than this, since any opportunity to build 100-year allowances non-invasively within existing property lines is going to take full advantage of all available width to bank TBD track expansion regardless of which mode uses it.

If that gets built, then it's really not that large a cost justification to consider widening the Route 16 and Mystic River arches to hook it up. Though in this case the extension may as well keep going to Winchester Ctr. because the ROW room is readily available and the wooded areas bordering the tracks through Playstead Park and Mystic Lakes are non-wetlands and easy to widen out. GLX tracks would be traveling along the westerly side of the ROW. To go further you'd need to:

  • Cut trees and track-shift within the property lines.
  • Widen Grove St. overpass.
  • Widen Aberjona River and Bacon St. overpasses @ current Wedgmere Station. Note on Google how the Aberjona bridge has ancient footings for expanding >2 tracks, so shouldn't be a big EIS'ing deal to rebuild within that footprint.
  • Keep widened tree cut on ROW on Ginn Field side north of Bacon St. to stay away from adjacent homes. At start of Winchester Center incline, keep CR on viaduct as today and send GLX stubbing out into the west parking lot. Install pocket track on approach for mini-yard.
Stations would be West Medford, Wedgemere, "Winchester Under". Spacer by Mystic Lakes can be considered if the walking route over the Mystic Boat Club locks can be improved on the Arlington side of the lake to capture the residential catchment...though obviously that's going to be a spartan, low-use station and probably not most folks' idea of an essential get.

That's pretty much all of the buildable segments of the 1945 GLX plan, since the Woburn Branch forking off Winchester Center is now obliterated. Winchester Ctr. wasn't grade separated until the mid-50's, either; the Lowell Line used to just split through the middle of the rotary with grade crossing hilarity. So stubbing out in the parking lot and calling it a day without considering Woburn at the moment is perfectly fine.


Basic, non-invasive, and single-most expensive piece of infrastructure is the non-optional grade separation of West Med that is going to have to be done anyway just for the Lowell Line. So while getting GLX through Somerville was an exercise in torture, further progress--so long as it follows in the footsteps of an RER-initiated grade separation--isn't a big deal. There's also some benefits for CR in eventually whacking all stations south of Winchester, in that under future electrification it's plausible that an EMU could hit 90 MPH on the 3.5 miles between Somerville Junction and Mystic Lakes without West Med being on a stop schedule. And then there might be another short stretch of >80 MPH possible to hit if they played some curve-straightening and/or superlevation games between the Lakes and Winch Ctr.
 
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If you extended the green out to West Medford, I'd honestly consider keeping the commuter rail stop. Would provide a good transfer spot.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
The whole reason why the RER study proposes interlining Lowell + Haverhill is that. . .

  1. Vacating the outer half of Haverhill from Reading schedules is the only way you can feasibly swing :15 bi-directional Urban Rail headways to Reading.
  2. Interlining two :30 bi-directional schedules on the inner Lowell Line achieves de facto :15 headways Wilmington-inbound (though in reality it's a little more variable than that because Haverhill has to schedule around some midday freight slots).
Now, in terms of how you accomplish all these schedules, here's the upgrade bucket list.


Reading Line

  • Full-high platforms at all stops enabling auto-door coaches. Reading station is going to be complicated for that because of the historic depot building, but you can flip the single track to a full-high on the currently empty #2 berth opposite the depot to buy some time for figuring out how to do the depot side.
  • Change Reading Jct. (Eastern/Western Routes split in Somerville) from a 2 x 1 to a 2 x 2 track split by re-grading the Western Route approach.
  • Upgrade Wellington-Malden passing track for full service and extend it through Medford St. bridge to hit 3/4 mile length (requires some light embankment landscaping just north of the bridge).
  • Extend double-track 1/4 mile through Reading station so multiple trains can be stopped there at once (deadline for finishing depot-side high platform mods).
  • Crossing protection upgrades Melrose-Wakefield for higher-density service. Quadrant gates at Greenwood to eliminate staffed crossing tender position.
  • Close New Crossing Rd., Reading (needed for layover yard); upgrade industrial park driveway access to Ash St. Close Ash St. grade grossing, rework street to snake through Burger King/Jiffy Lube lots to Route 28; synchronized signals on 28 @ Ash & Bolton St.'s adjacent to each side of the remaining crossing.
  • Install layover yard behind 128 Marketplace plaza.
  • Add Quannapowitt/128 infill stop.
  • Close North Wilmington stop. Any few/far-between Haverhill remainders that may or may not still get scheduled for the inner-Western just proceed straight to Ballardvale.
  • [optional] Melrose-Wakefield-Reading community path behind fence on side of ROW (currently proposed by towns...ROW side space mostly available with little effort).

Lowell Line
Note that Lowell is a freight clearance route, so full-high platforms take more invasive mods. To get complete level boarding, you have to be willing to close Wedgemere and Mishawum.

  • West Medford -- Town acquires land strip from Rite Aid parking lot. Rebuild as full-high side platforms w/ center passing track (Downeaster and freight) stretching from north of Canal St. grade crossing to Maintenance-of-Way siding across from Playstead Park. Install quad gates, DTMF switch, signal-prioritized traffic lights at Harvard Ave. & Playstead Rd. Note that ridership here is probably going to adjust way way down when GLX reaches Route 16, so this is probably the one to consider skipping on Haverhill (but not Lowell) trains.
  • Wedgemere -- Close. Curve + water crossing + embankment means can't be made full-high. Extend 95 bus to Winchester Ctr., institute "94A" bus to Winchester Ctr. via Davis/College Ave./West Med to compensate. Make path improvements (lighting, etc.) through Ginn Field to Winchester Ctr. station entrance.
  • Winchester Center -- Stet, except for augmentation for absorbing Wedgemere. Already getting full-highs w/ freight gauntlet track. Presence of GLX a couple stones' throws away may beckon substantially increased bus coverage and frequencies here, making this stop much more of a multimodal center than it is today.
  • Add Montvale Ave. infill stop. Full-highs w/ passing track. Connections to downtown Woburn via 354 bus, Stoneham via Stoneham Branch trail.
  • Mishawum -- Close. Poor ridership, poor accessibility on surrounding streets from any residential areas, embankment makes widening for passing tracks excessively difficult.
  • Anderson RTC -- Complete west-side entrance. Redraw 134 bus terminus to end there.
  • Wilmington -- Relocate offset platforms to both be entirely south of MA 62 overpass; rebuild as full-highs. Needed for 1) providing access to both platforms for Wildcat-Haverhill trains; 2) creating room under bridge for center Downeaster/freight passing track; 3) incorporating passer into interlocking for Lowell/Wildcat split.
  • North Billerica -- Restore missing Track 3 bridge deck over Mt. Pleasant St. Spread out platforms, add center freight passing track. Tie passer into revised interlocking just south of station for Billerica Branch.
  • Lowell -- Extend half-length high to full length.
The re-spacing solves a lot of the problems with whether some places are oversaturated and some are under-served.

outer Haverhill Line + Wildcat Branch
Note that everything here is a freight clearance route, and some stops without the room will simply have to be mini-highs.

  • Double-track Wildcat Branch from north of MA 38 grade crossing to merge w/ Western Route @ Wilmington Jct.
  • Add Salem St. station as replacement for N. Wilmington. Probably will have to be low + mini-high platforms due to lack of room.
  • Ballardvale -- Stet w/ planned second mini-high platform. Maybe some road safety improvements to square up the intersection of Tewksbury & Andover St.'s.
  • Andover -- Stet w/ planned second mini-high platform.
  • add South Lawrence infill @ S. Union St. & 495 (by the ice rink) as replacement for former Shawsheen stop. Full-high island on Tks. 1 & 2.
  • Lawrence -- See if 2nd platform needed, track-shift as appropriate.
  • add Ward Hill infill @ Industrial Ave. & 495 in North Andover. Full-highs w/passing track. Serves TOD in adjacent industrial park, 495 + MA 213 park-and-rides, and load diversion from Lawrence & Haverhill off 495.
  • Bradford -- Close layover yard. Rebuild as 4-track station w/ full-highs and 2 passing tracks for the bridge approach, swallowing layout of disused yard.
  • Haverhill -- Stet. Can't be made full-high because of curve on viaduct.
  • add Rosemont Ave. infill. Added because en route to new layover yard, and acts as replacement for canceled Plaistow stop for residents in northern Haverhill. T still owns property from canceled 1981 station. Full-high side platforms w/ center passing track at grade crossing. Loop MVRTA bus 13 from N. Main St. to stop there. Redevelop adjacent junkyard for TOD. Enhance accessibility to adjacent residential neighborhoods (sidewalks on all of Rosemont + Hilldale Ave.)
  • new layover yard at state line on Hilldale Ave. Necessary because closing Bradford layover (in a long-suffering residential neighborhood) is an environmental justice target, and service cannot substantially expand without a bigger yard. A modified version of "Option 3 Layover" from the Plaistow proposal, the only one of the layover options from that canceled extension that sits on the MA side of the state line, is where they need to look. T was looking at a parcel immediately bordering the state line on the easterly (northbound) side of the tracks bordering the Little River, with driveway egress poking about 200 ft. into Atkinson, NH. Since NH is going to scream holy hell about this, it must stay completely on the MA side of the state line where their lawsuits won't stick. Chances are they want to avoid creating a new driveway grade crossing if they can avoid it, so one of the parcels on the other side of the tracks from "Option 3" would be in-play. Reith Industrial Truck on the other side of the tracks w/ egress direct onto Hilldale Ave. would be an option. A little further south off Fondi Rd. would also be an option. City of Haverhill is supportive of any sites that stick out by these industrial park hinterlands. As noted ^above^, the Rosemont infill is somewhat of a gimme because the trains would be going out here any which way and having one last stop with a bus connection, unique residential walkup catchment, and nearish 495 exit + shopping plugs an otherwise deadhead run with just enough revenue to justify its existence.


STOPS (8-9) - Reading

  • NORTH STATION
  • [Sullivan Square]...TBD if they can figure out how to build it in very tight confines
  • Malden Ctr.
  • Wyoming Hill
  • Cedar Park
  • Melrose Highlands
  • Greenwood
  • Wakefield
  • Quannapowitt
  • READING
STOPS (13-14) - Haverhill

  • NORTH STATION
  • West Medford [skip?]
  • Winchester Center
  • Montvale
  • Anderson RTC
  • Wilmington
  • Salem St.
  • Ballardvale
  • Andover
  • South Lawrence
  • Lawrence
  • Ward Hill
  • Bradford
  • Haverhill
  • ROSEMONT
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For a South Lawrence stop i'd think something a little bit further north, maybe near Haffners, would work better.

Anyway, how do you know so much. Just curious, do you work for Keolis or in railroad operations?

My familiarity with the Haverhill line is from growing up in Andover and using the line. But you seem to have a wealth of knowledge everywhere.
 
tysmith95 said:
If you extended the green out to West Medford, I'd honestly consider keeping the commuter rail stop. Would provide a good transfer spot.
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The original GLX plan would've had the light rail stub platforms south of the High St. grade crossing (with some property takings)...CR platforms unmodified north of the crossing. With full grade separation of the ROW down in the cut you don't have the option for a modal transfer. Both modes can coexist side-by-side, but there's only enough room for one to have platforms. That means a GLX +1 either eats the CR platforms, or you just don't extend Green past Route 16 and the grade separation cut just sets aside 4 tracks of width for rainy-day considerations.

I'm guessing if GLX proves worth bringing across the river into the grade separation few people are going to care that it ends up bumping the CR stop aside. Route 16 ridership patterns should foretell a local migration away from West Med CR long beforehand, anyway.
 
tysmith95 said:
For a South Lawrence stop i'd think something a little bit further north, maybe near Haffners, would work better.
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That was right by the location of the original B&M South Lawrence stop, which went away when passenger service on the Manchester & Lawrence Branch went kaput around 1960 +/- 2.

The freight yard, flanking power lines on both sides of the ROW, and crowded interlocking switches make that an unnaturally tight location for trying to shiv in a platform, and access would be nonexistent from South Union St. because of the width of the yard. Nearest point with equal access to both sides is the derelict Boyd St. ped overpass, which whiffs on the Social Security/RMV complex a little too far south on a back residential street to be non-P.I.T.A. to reach from the east.

Reasons for choosing the ice rink site are:

  1. Equitable access from both S. Union and S. Broadway.
  2. Ability to directly loop a bus from either thoroughfare.
  3. Ability to do unpinched full-highs while still leaving space for up to 2 freight yard lead tracks (+1 more than today)
  4. Serves old Shawsheen Station (closed 1980) catchment 2/3 mile south. Shawsheen has seen a lot of TOD development on its front steps meriting consideration for a reopening, but the historic depot can't be done with full-highs and has an extremely pinched driveway for constipated kiss-and-ride access. MVRTA routes cover the TOD there out of Lawrence & Andover, but a modern stop in the Shawsheen catchment would help out a lot for shortening work trips. If it can't be at Shawsheen-proper because of problems with the old depot, then up the street is the next-best thing. Also: 1500 ft. of side path going south from ice rink station's egress, under the 495 overpass, and to the tip of the Bright Horizons driveway puts Shawsheen TOD in direct walking distance.
  5. More or less exact midpoint between Andover Station and Lawrence Station for spacing's sake. Same role Shawsheen used to fill, only the stakes are slightly larger being on the Lawrence side of the city line and just north of 495 where the population density is much higher.
  6. Room for parking near 495 and more TOD on the Enterprise Rent-a-Car lot and the trucking company behind the ice rink. More developable TOD real estate here than points north (residential backlots + active freight yard) or south (Shawsheen mostly built out).
This isn't a grand production by any means. It's taking advantage of the location, the multi-thoroughfare access + bus connections, finishing unfinished business @ Shawsheen that can't be done at Shawsheen-proper, and taking a load off Lawrence with a properly-spaced flanking stop. Highish-leverage for low construction cost, and the only prerequisite is shearing off Haverhill from Reading and making that new layover yard so the schedule has room to breathe.


Anyway, how do you know so much. Just curious, do you work for Keolis or in railroad operations?
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Nope...no industry connections, unless you count shooting the shit with Purple Line conductors to find out what's breaking this week on their shiny new locomotives. I'm actually an editor in the academic publishing industry...though I work from home so I have plenty of time to irreverently indulge arch-urb obsessions on the Interwebs. Over 20 years I just managed to voraciously read a lot of really boring transpo & demographic factoids...and remembered with enough precision where I found them so they can be dug up and re-verified again on moment's notice when the convo calls for it.

After all, if I had a railroader's pension coming I wouldn't be shadowbanned from RR.net...but I'd probably be muttering "foamers...dang foamers!" to myself from the brain worms. :rolleyes:
 
If the Lowell Line is upgraded to RER-type operation, it'd be insane not to provide a transfer to the GLX at West Medford (or another outlying stop). The transfer would hugely enhance the potential for reverse commuting, e.g. from Somerville to Lowell (as I had to do for a few days awhile back when serving on a jury).
 
ceo said:
If the Lowell Line is upgraded to RER-type operation, it'd be insane not to provide a transfer to the GLX at West Medford (or another outlying stop). The transfer would hugely enhance the potential for reverse commuting, e.g. from Somerville to Lowell (as I had to do for a few days awhile back when serving on a jury).
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We're talking physically possibles vs. not.

  • We know West Med is going to have to be grade separated sooner or later because RER ops on that route for both Lowell and Haverhill + an expanding Downeaster scheduleis way too much for those crossings to bear day-in/day-out.

  • We know a max-width 4-track cut to the property lines is what they'll most likely build because the streets and fences frame it nicely, and it's a one-and-done gimme for tapping future considerations.

  • We know that at roughly 75-80 ft. wide Rite Aid side wall to Playstead St. sidewalk you have the same ROW width to work with as North Quincy on the Red Line: 2 modes, 4 tracks, 1 mode having a regulation 12 ft. wide island-width platform.

  • ...and we know within those dimensions that there's no room left to spread tracks on the other mode to have a platform.

  • Further, we know the cut needs about 1300 ft. of running room between the Mystic River and High St. @ 1.5% grade to have sufficient underclearance for 25 kV electrification over freight cars. That eliminates any room for offset platforms across the street on High, like the original GLX-West Med plan proposed.

It's expected that GLX-Route 16's opening and a mass bus reconfig in the neighborhood will load-shift a lot of current CR ridership down the street to GLX where the 6-minute headways are more than double the best RER can do. With only a couple exceptions the Purple-to-rapid transit transfer stops tend to be situated at major bus terminals that serve to substantially deepen the transfer gravity well: Ruggles, Malden, Quincy Ctr., Forest Hills, Sullivan if they manage to build that CR station, Lynn if they manage to build BLX. With others like Porter serving fewer but very high ridership-weighted bus routes.

Demographic and ridership data just doesn't point to West Med having anything close to that multimodal transfer profile, so the impetus isn't there for some civil engineering strongman competition to widen the cut at High St. with an obliteration of the Rite Aid TOD property and 50 municipal parking spaces on Playstead. The city's probably not going to support that above-and-beyond footprint taking when just letting the T work within their property lines gets them the grade separation they truly want.

For reverse commuting, the bus reconfig could help them a lot. Davis-College Ave.-Route 16 is a murderer's row of rapid transit transfer opportunities and connections between bus routes, and the 94 currently makes very brisk time to West Med. A streamlining with amped-up frequencies on all the West Med vs. Medford Sq. route splits is definitely in order after College Ave. opens.

One big route gap to plug is a new "94A" that continues up Playstead onto the 134's route to Winchester Ctr. instead of going east to Medford Sq. Winchester Ctr. is only 2-3/4 miles from Route 16 and there will be significant demand for a direct rapid transit connection closer by than the 134's meandering trip to Wellington. Since speeds are already good on the corridor to Davis, the new route merely only needs to run at good frequencies. That "94A" route may also become outright necessary to offset the loss of Wedgemere station when it has to be closed over technical inability of raising the platforms to full-high for RER. Good bus frequencies spanning 16-West Med-Winch Ctr. will thus become mandatory compensation. Therefore, the reverse-commute pipe from West Med to Winchester will probably already be in place after the GLX base build just with the bus route revamp...with those route patterns well-matured by the time any grade separation and GLX +1's decisions have to be made.


As described before, once the grade separation is paid for by the RER interests the cost of widening the Mystic arches gets you pretty much clear sailing on the Lowell ROW all the way into the west Winch Ctr. parking lot...so the next installment doesn't have to limit its scope to just a +1 unless a +1 is all the demand math truly calls for. Costs are stupendously far less daunting for the 2-3/4 miles past Route 16 to Winch Ctr. than all the pain and suffering preceding it in the Somerville cut...so you can make a lot of hay with a bunch of chainsaws along the property lines, 3 ho-hum small bridge replacements, and a mini-makeover of the east Winchester lot to compensate for the couple dozen spaces that need to be taken in the west lot for the trolley stub-out.
 
tysmith95 said:
Could you make the transfer somewhere else, like college Ave/Tufts
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No room. No room at any GLX stop in the Somerville cut.


But, again...the demographics don't fit for demanding a transfer station because there aren't enough bus routes at any individual stop. This is a case where the seeming conventional wisdom of "end-of-line ==> must have outbound transfer" doesn't fit the reality of actual rider behavior. If it's not at a tri-modal megatransfer, the CR ridership is very unlikely to be enough to keep the platform lights turned on (and step-up to RER schedules still too big a hill to climb from zero). Braintree is the only exception on the system where that's kinda-sorta working without a plethora of bus routes floating the utilization, but I suspect there's a lot of reverse-commute CR park-and-rides influencing that stop given its position at the Middleboro/Plymouth split so it's also very alien to any other CR+RT transfer on the system.
 
Porter is the highest used of the non terminus commuter rail stops I believe (besides back bay)
 
tysmith95 said:
Porter is the highest used of the non terminus commuter rail stops I believe (besides back bay)
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Porter is more of a transfer stop (ie: CR riders get on the Red Line there but their destination isn't Porter)
 
jklo said:
Porter is more of a transfer stop (ie: CR riders get on the Red Line there but their destination isn't Porter)
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Yep of course, i'm sure most of the riders use it to go to Kendall or parts of downtown further from North Station.
 
What's the point of the 3rd orange line track? Wouldn't it be better to just make it a 2nd commuter rail track.
 
Back in the day, it was going to be a peak express track out to Reading— a rare case of planning ahead. It certainly sounds to me like it should be converted, but I think it’s used as a test track right now.
 
Riverside said:
Back in the day, it was going to be a peak express track out to Reading— a rare case of planning ahead. It certainly sounds to me like it should be converted, but I think it’s used as a test track right now.
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I mean it would be nice to extend the orange to reading and run the Haverhill through the wildcat, but that'll never happen.
 
Test track was going to eat the CR track out to some midpoint between Oak Grove and Wyoming Hill, with the short CR platforms at MC & OG going Orange. I don't know what the actual service patterns would've been or how equipment rotations would've worked to Forest Hills, other than it was bi-directionally signaled to be reversible by rush hour.

As of the mid-70's, 1 RR track needed to remain out to Medford St. to serve freight customers on the Medford Branch and Commercial St. So that's why the Mystic Bridge is 4 tracks and why the Wellington tunnel was built for the roof to host a RR junction. But all of that industry is kaput now, so I guess in an Orange conversion scenario that 4th berth from Assembly to Malden becomes a bike path. There wouldn't be much use in adding a 4th OL track in its place given that the Community College-Sullivan viaduct only has 3 on its ROW, and Malden-Oak Grove only has 3 on its ROW.



Ripping out the third OL track to try to donate capacity to CR doesn't end up doing much good. Community College to the foot of Sullivan the OL is flying over CR on its own viaduct. At Sullivan the I-93 girders so thoroughly slice up the CR and OL sides you wouldn't be able to tie anything into the CR side, be it 3rd track for RER capacity or platforms. How exactly they do plan to fit platforms for Sullivan CR is still a great big mystery, but it'll probably require invasive construction to the busway-side retaining walls. At Assembly there's 4 tracks anyway because of the CR passing siding. And north of Wellington there's the other freight passing siding to upgrade for full-service duty.

That pretty much leaves only an 0.8 mi. stretch of Mystic Bridge-proper and Wellington Station-proper where a rip-out could possibly do something for CR capacity. But there's still the 0.8 mi. passing siding north of Wellington left to upgrade, and 1.7 miles Malden-Oak Grove you can't do anything with because of a closely-abutted 3-track only ROW.

It'll never be worth the cost to blow up half of Wellington station, stitch it back together, rip out all that OL infrastructure, and equip that 0.8 miles when CR traffic is going to slam into the Malden-Oak Grove single track all the same. In fact, it would probably be less costly to extend that Wellington-north passer further by. . .

  • . . .backfilling some embankment, capping some retaining walls, and slapping 4th bridge decks on Adams & Charles St.'s to extend it 0.5 miles further north to the foot of Malden Ctr. station.
  • . . .taking advantage of the T's proposal for building a 200 sixty-footer capacity bus yard in the Wellington surface lot (with parking traded vertical to a new garage) by moving back the lot-side retaining wall a few feet to open up a track berth for bringing the passer 0.5 miles further south to the foot of the Mystic Bridge, reducing the pinch to just the 2500 ft. length of the bridge + approaches itself.
. . .thus making the Medford-Malden passer longer than the Malden-Oak Grove single.


When all of these options--upgrading passer for full service and extending it either/both north and south with landscaping--price out cheaper than a nuke/re-stitch of what little actual length of the OL test track is potentially claimable by commuter rail, there'll never be justification for ripping up the test track. Too many less-invasive things to try, and doesn't address the real limiter which is MC-OG where the test track ain't.
 
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bigeman312 said:
Ruggles has surpassed Porter in ridership to claim that distinction.
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I could see LMA workers getting off there and taking the shuttle. Transferring to Orange wouldn't make sense since Back Bay is the next stop.
 
tysmith95 said:
For ridership yes, but I think if you look at percentage of riders getting off the Fitchburg line at Porter would be pretty high.
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Absolutely!

But the claim was "Porter is the highest used of the non terminus commuter rail stops ... besides back bay" which was the case until a few years. Ruggles has surpassed Porter in CR ridership and is now 4th in ridership behind SS/NS/BBY.
 
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