F-Line to Dudley
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Neato!
Some comments:
- Green Line, E -- With South Huntington able to be fed from either/or D Line or Huntington tunnel, there's probably no excuse now not to send it all the way back to Forest Hills. Your choice.
- Green Line, Seaport -- The E St. line is surplus-to-requirement, seeing as how if Green Line to Transitway ends up displacing SL2...the first task will be to make amends at Black Falcon. And second task would be to replace the original SL City Point and original-original GL City Point branches.
- Green Line, Seaport -- City Point routing along E. 1st fared very poorly as a Silver Line branch. Neighborhood peculiarities may mean this only does well following the 9 down E. Broadway if the neighborhood will allow street-running.
- Green Line, Urban Ring NE -- Unsure if the Airport terminals loop is just repeating the Massport People Mover proposal verbatim. If so, then I guess keep it on the map because that's the closest thing to an "official" proposal. But in reality this would work best as a complete loop because time chewed changing ends would make it less efficient vs. completing the circuit (also would be best if it could be a combo busway that SL1 can use).
- Orange Line -- Edgeworth station is an official proposal, so I guess worth keeping. But the huge price tag for landscaping around the embankment and residential impacts make it very unlikely this one ever comes to pass. Bus coverage is also very weak compared to adjacent stops.
- Urban Rail, Fairmount -- Delete "Widett" stop. The access problems are extreme, and there's simply no way to pour an 800 ft. platform without running afoul of some set of interlocking switches.
- Urban Rail, Salem -- Delete Revere/Wonderland stop. A recurring 'zombie' proposal that'll never get built because the 1100 ft. walk to the Blue Line and all buses kills its utilization.
- Urban Rail, Waltham -- Delete Alewife. Another 'zombie' proposal put forth again and again by the city. Ridership projections always stink on further review because of the weather-unprotected 1100 ft. walk to the Red Line/busway station entrance, and a few hundred more feet to reach the Red fare lobby. No one's going to use that when Porter is 1 stop away at one conveniently unified facility.
- Urban Rail, Waltham -- Delete Riverview. It performed miserably on ridership the last time it was a Purple Line stop, and there are flanking bus routes covering the area.
- Commuter Rail, Fitchburg -- Delete Orchard Hill infill. There's too much freight traffic on the Pan Am Southern mainline Ayer-west, and this is a spot in Leominster that has steep grades so it would do too much harm to the schedule to stop here.
- Commuter Rail, Foxboro -- Delete the town-center stop. Gillette near the Walpole town line is the only service planned, as the NIMBY's in Foxborough didn't want any more. T full-service proposal has the layover yard next to Gillette, and RIDOT isn't going to fund any full-time service from the other end beyond the Providence game trains.
- Commuter Rail, Franklin -- Officially studied extension proposals to Milford/Hopedale via Forge Park OR Woonsocket via Blackstone. Milford would've had additional stops @ Bellingham/MA 126 and either Milford Center (for a Milford terminus) or Milford/MA 140 on the Grafton & Upton RR + Draper Mills/Hopedale for a Hopedale terminus. Woonsocket would continue on the old mainline from Franklin Jct., replace Forge Park with a new stop at current Canal St. end-of-track (probably with GATRA's circulator bus flipped around for the station switch), then continue with stops at Millerville/MA 126, cross the Blackstone River on a new bridge, and make a short 1.5 mi. hook onto the P&W main southbound to Woonsocket Union Station. Milford/Hopedale didn't study out too well on ridership, and RIDOT has yet to do its promised re-study of Boston-Woonsocket with updated numbers. Woonsocket probably has genuinely good upside, especially since RIPTA buses are now allowed to cross state lines and would be able to make Millerville the neighborhood stop of the northern parts of the city outside of Union Station's catchment.
- Commuter Rail, Haverhill -- Plaistow extension is dead on the NH side of the border and will not be revived. The NIMBY's have spoken. Rosemont + layover yard a hair on the MA side of the state line is as far as it's going to go.
- Commuter Rail, Lowell-Nashua -- The Nashua extension may very well end up adding a UMass-Lowell infill stop, depending on what funds are available to expand track capacity for freights & passenger to coexist. Consider adding.
- Commuter Rail, Plymouth -- Chances are if RER frequencies and the Downtown Plymouth stop goose utilization on the old mainline they'll aim to discontinue the Kingston stop in the sand pit (but keep the layover yard) and try to site a replacement station either at old Kingston Depot on 3A or shivved by Exit 9 with high-capacity driveways to Main St. I don't know if that's worth noting at all on the map because it's unclear what they'd opt for, but something will have to give.
- Commuter Rail, RIDOT -- RI is extremely unlikely to use the Middleboro Secondary out of Attleboro for any commuter service. *Maybe* if South Coast Rail served Newport, but that's not even speculation given the chaos surrounding the project. Right now that's chicken & egg where RIDOT says they'll study Newport-state line if MA has SCR funded and shovel-ready (which of course it's not!).
- Commuter Rail, Manchester & Lawrence Branch -- Dead and rail-trailed on both sides of the state line...never going to happen. Ward Hill infill on Haverhill Line defuses some of the I-93-via-MA 213 PnR demand, better bus frequencies meeting better train frequencies serves downtown Methuen good enough out of Lawrence Station. Even if the tracks were still available, mainline freight congestion Andover-Lawrence would've put severe crimp on achievable service levels juggling with Haverhill RER and Downeaster schedule expansion. Better off directing resources to strengthening the Haverhill Line and connecting buses instead.
- Commuter Rail, Stony Brook Branch -- Delete...it's extremely busy with Pan Am freight main traffic, and the T doesn't even have trackage rights over it yet. There are RTA buses in Westford that could be expanded instead; too many rubber-tire transit pivots left to make in this area before the Stony Brook is even worth a paper study.
- Commuter Rail, Worcester-Springfield -- MassDOT is explicit in all long-range planning that Purple Line to Springfield is not in the cards, and that a robust-enough Amtrak schedule is the best fit for that kind of extra-extra- out-of-district travel. Delete everything west of Worcester unless you plan to depict it as an Amtrak route. Palmer is the only proposed Amtrak intermediate.
- Commuter Rail, Knowledge Corridor -- Southern terminus, if it interlines with the Hartford Line, will be Hartford...not Bradley. Too many I-91 commuters Northampton-south need to get to downtown Hartford. There also won't be any direct passenger rail service on the Bradley Branch, because the meandering path it takes won't beat the Airport shuttle buses ConnDOT is going to start running from the new Windsor Locks train station. Even CT has sort of gotten it out of its head that the Bradley Branch is at all passenger-useful.
If you want some anal retentive map corrections:
- Blue Line, Kenmore -- Angle the tail tracks a short distance up Brookline Ave. Beacon St. is the C/D tunnel, so provisions for continuation have to go via Brookline Ave. + the Pike/B&A.
- Green Line, Newton-Needham -- Add New England Business Center stop on west side of Charles River bridge, behind Fremont St. That's in City of Newton's official study proposal, with a circulator bus pinging from there to Kendrick St. around the industrial park.
- Green Line, Newton-Needham -- move Needham Junction station behind Roche Bros. The wye real estate becomes the yard + turning loop for reversing direction, so stop has to be before that...not at the historic depot.
- Green Line, Seaport -- Delete the quasi-loop thingy framing Eliot Norton Park in favor of slicing straight through. This would be a 4-track station in-and-out, so no need to have a bad-angle bypass track.
- Green Line, Urban Ring NE -- Orange-Assembly is actually a little closer than it appears to Green-Assembly. Maybe bump the OL placemarker level with Partners Healthcare and move the Green placemarker closer to the start of the bridge so they look like they're same latitude.
- Green Line, Urban Ring NE -- In Eastie the ROW runs along the edge of the East Boston Greenway, so place the line on the other side of the Blue Line. It would cross over underneath all the 1A ramps on one side or the other of Blue-Airport Station.
- Green Line, Urban Ring NW -- Technically the junction is right onto the Union Branch underneath McGrath Hwy., but not sure if that's just a map artifact.
- Green Line, Urban Ring NW -- Add Twin City Plaza infill, as it's got the ridership bona fides with East Cambridge + Brickbottom via a traffic-calmed McGrath and the Somerville Ave. duck-under. Shift Cambridge St. stop to be centered on Cambridge St.
- Orange Line, W. Roxbury -- Station positions Bellevue to W. Rox may shift 200-500 ft. west away from historic depot sites to re-center on intersections w/bus transfers. TBD.
- Urban Rail, Reading -- Continue to show the Reading-Wilmington Jct. track connection in purple (without N. Wilmington station), because there may still be a couple daily Haverhill runs chucked here after the schedules divorce when there's an interfering Downeaster slot on the Lowell Line.
- Urban Rail, Reading/Salem -- Add Sullivan Sq. CR station, since officially proposed.
- Commuter Rail, Hyannis -- There *are* proposals for adding an infill stop on the other side of the Canal for Cape Flyer, but the various local & state officials are deadlocked on a location. Could by by the Bourne Bridge, could be by the Sagamore, could be in-between. Honestly don't know how you'd represent this on a map, but it is a *thing* under active planning.
- Commuter Rail, Lowell-Nashua -- City of Nashua officially bought property for its downtown station @ the Crown St. grade crossing. It's now a brand new commuter lot, but the property landscaping literally frames the slot where the platform would be poured. Add this to the map.
- Commuter Rail, Providence -- Add new Pawtucket stop. All MBTA trains will be using that one.
- Commuter Rail, RIDOT Intrastate, Pawtucket-Westerly -- If you want to add this 'mercenary' Purple Line service entirely within RI borders, add: Cranston, East Greenwich, West Davisville infills to the existing map. Then extend through Kingston and Westerly.
- Commuter Rail, RIDOT Intrastate, Providence-Woonsocket -- On the P&W mainline, diverging from NEC north of Pawtucket. Stops at Cumberland, Manville, Woonsocket Union Station.
- Commuter Rail, Rockport -- Omitted Beverly Farms by mistake. Add that, whack Prides Crossing.
- Commuter Rail, Stoughton -- Missing North Easton station (behind Roche Bros. on 138) on the extension.
