Fitchburg Line
1. Union Sq infill station with a center-island, high-level platform between Webster Ave & Newton St overhead bridge and Washington St overhead bridge. Egress to west side of Prospect St overhead bridge and east side of Webster Ave & Newton St overhead bridge, and east side of Washington St overhead bridge.
Studied with real numbers...in isolation as a GLX cop-out and with a GLX superstation. The ridership projections were terrible either way. Union thoroughly slots into a rapid transit profile, not CR or both. This is one of those recurring zombie proposals like Alewife CR and Wonderland CR that sounds good in concept but every times does a complete belly-flop when ridership projections are formally ascribed.
3. Replace Belmont station with a center-island, high-level platform between a point 800' east of Concord Ave undergrade bridge and Concord Ave. Egress to both sides of Concord Ave undergrade bridge.
Would be side platforms, not center. Mass Architectural Board prohibits new-construction track crossings, so centers would require completely superfluous and expensive new construction of up-and-over access or shafting down-and-under access. Concord Ave. overpass is 80 ft. wide because it used to have 4 tracks + 2 platforms on it, and ROW east to the high school is 60 ft. atop the embankment. You have plenty of room for side platforms.
Just start start the side 800-footers at the east ends of the current platforms right adjacent to the bridge, ramp down onto the old lows and recycle those platforms for the egresses. Still have plenty of room to drop the Fitchburg Cutoff bike path behind the outbound platform railing with how wide the ex-quad ROW is, and to drop another ramp off the east end of that platform onto the path. Old outbound platform then becomes continuation of bike path. Simplest/cheapest way because of available width and recyclable egresses.
4. Replace Waverly station with a center-island, high-level platform evenly centered on a new plaza built overhead between Trapelo Rd overhead bridge and Lexington St overhead bridge. Egress to new plaza.
Only if it's saner than the pants-on-head eleventy switchbacks plan the T floated. But this is probably going to be easier to do as side platforms because of the retaining walls providing a pre-existing structural anchor to redo the stairs or graft on elevators. Retaining walls will have to be extended to make platforms full 800-footers, so also an opportunity to graft much gentler ramp egresses to the hillsides to the east, especially on the outbound side where the bike path is going to be climbing the hill behind the car wash, then descending the hill at the west end of the platform by Agassiz Ave. to continue en route to Waltham.
5. Warrendale infill station with a center-island, high-level platform west of Beaver St. Details not determined.
Reanimating the pre-1978 Clematis Brook platforms under the Main St. bridge probably slots slightly above this one on ridership, and only if it's an Indigo-level 128 service. But yes...a known-known transit draw and a cheapie.
Again, no with the center islands because of the Mass Architectural Board regs. You would have to do this as a completely unnecessary up-and-over tower because they frown upon leading passengers squeezed between two tracks to a grade crossing where any direction requires a track crossing. Side platforms at a crossing don't draw their ire.
6. Eliminate Jackson St overhead bridge and turn the Elm St and Moody St grade crossings into undergrade bridges.
NO. The extended embankment you'd have to create around the Riverside Park curve at for dropping back down would come with punitive runoff/erosion mitigation costs next to the dam flood zone that push price tag into boondoggle territory. Fitchburg Line simply doesn't have the traffic ceiling to ever make that wash. Elm/Moody are environmental uneliminables just like Bishop/Concord in Framingham, and Fitchburg << Worcester. Deal with it as it is, not as the Crazy Transit Pitch we want it to be. It's not worth blowing 40% the cost of bringing GLX from Union to Porter over a "perfect is the enemy of good" OCD viaducting of Waltham Ctr.
7. Replace Waltham station with a center-island, high-level platform evenly spaced on the new Elm St undergrade bridge and Moody St undergrade bridge. Egress to east side of Elm St undergrade bridge and west side of Moody St undergrade bridge.
Again...no with the center islands because the MAB mandates up-and-over with these. The simple fix for the grade crossing problem is to group both platforms opposite each other west of Moody where the current long platform is. Egress on the new inbound platform to the Charles path, and Moody via permission from Biagio's Ristorante to sidewalk adjacent to their building. Parking row in the oubound-side back alley converted entirely to parallel parking instead of angled for track realignment. Elm-Moody block platform abandoned. Maybe you can get the city to consider opening up the Elm-Moody spanning alley on the river side as some sort of load-balancing cross street/quasi-extension of River St. for a little more traffic distribution around the crossings.
Big advantage is that Elm no longer gets fouled at all during station stops and all platforms are full length. And that's about the best you can hope for. Un-foul Elm and Waltham Ctr. retreats behind Reading Line stops like Greenwood and Wakefield on the traffic mgt. concern list. Not great, but better.
8. Replace Brandeis/Roberts station with a center-island, high-level platform at existing location. Egress to east side of South St grade crossing on both north and south sides of the rails.
No again on center islands per the onerous MAB regs. Side platforms raised in-place are fine. The curve is well within tolerances for full-highs.
9. Use existing signals between Brandeis/Roberts and South St to create a DTMF Control Point for westbound movements. This will prevent crossing activation until the signal is called for by the train crew, at which point the gates will activate, and shortly after a permissive signal displayed.
OK...but Brandeis doesn't rate all that high systemwide re: crossings that most merit a DTMF install. It's lesser-concern unless you've first checked off all the Reading Line crossings that need that tech much more urgently.
10. Weston/128 infill station with a center-island, high-level platform west of MA-128/MA-20 interchange. Details not determined.
Dear God, yes.
11. A new interlocking immediately west of the new Weston/128 station to facilitate movement over a new "wye" connection to the old Mass Central Branch.
12. Reestablish Mass Central service to Wayland, South Sudbury, and Hudson.
Read the 1993 study archived on the Central Mass Rail Trail site. The ridership projections stunk and station siting vs. demand was very problematic.
- All stops except downtown Hudson are well off-center from the village centers of these towns. The towns don't build residential sidewalks as regular practice, and lack of sidewalks makes for very limited walkup catchments from what suffices as "density" in Weston, Wayland, and Sudbury. This is a particular problem with the Weston stop on Church St., which is basically a Silver Hill clone by any other name where what limited patronage does exist would be almost entirely car dropoffs. Per the '93 study that means lack of parking and driveway land becomes a limiter even when the intent is to stimulate walkup and not parking sink.
- Weston's Central Mass catchment is virtually nullified by the 128 Fitchburg Line superstation. A bus route 1 mile west on Route 20 to "downtown" would serve the entirety of their need with 2x or better train frequencies. Presence of 128 stop is a sea change from '93 that nullifies most need for another Weston local stop on same grounds that KG/Hastings/SH are useless.
- Post-'93, Wayland and Sudbury have erected big-box shopping centers adjacent to their stops. Changes the ridership projections *somewhat* from '93 and distances them from Weston's structural problems, but they are still off-center from the residential areas in town and do not constitute the sort of TOD that's going to anchor stops out there. Since neither town has had any interest whatsoever in exploring bus routes to Natick or Framingham on the Worcester Line there is no starting benchmark for what these stops can bear. Until they're willing to drop their icky-poo faces at a simple suburban bus shuttle, there's nothing further to study or read between tea leaves.
- Hudson is admittedly a prototypical nice downtown stop, in a transit cavity. However, the '93 study predicated going further to West Berlin/495 for a highway parking sink at the Route 62 exit to tame some of the 495 traffic in the vicinity of the 495/290 interchange. Ridership wasn't good because it's a desolate area save for another big box sprawl-mall a wee too far to walk from. So at the end of the day Hudson was the only stop on the route that didn't have problematic demerits. Hudson alone is nowhere near enough to salvage all the other demerits.
- Commuter rail to Northborough/I-290 out of Framingham on the Fitchburg Secondary (studied 2002) ends up superior to the West Berlin parking sink in every way. The 290 stop is at an ideal TOD spot in a dense-ish high-tech office park and more convenient to the 290/495 interchange than the Central Mass 495 stop. Building N'boro and running a downtown Hudson shuttle bus down the Route 85 expressway connector would probably provide equal transit access to a Central Mass branch on a line whose studies showed legitimately robust peak-hour ridership at its all its stops, while offering higher potential frequency ceiling as branch off an appropriately upgraded Worcester Line. Building this CR line cuts any remaining legs out from under the Central Mass, and does it entirely on an active line with long-term stable freight traffic.
13. Eliminate Kendall Green station at a minimum. Eliminate either Hastings or Silver Hill, possibly.
Easy as pie to extend the driveway along KG serving the Weston DPW yard to a ped path to the new 128 station, so Church St. residents can be accommodated in the relocation.
Hastings needs to go NOW since it's the single most dangerous station on the system: just a platformless gravel grade crossing where commuters have to loiter by the side of the road. Silver Hill I guess you can barter as a keep if Weston digs in, since it has an actual platform and an embankment that if regraded, paved, and lit can offer fully accessible ramp access. A 1-car wood mini-high and a little dirt-spreading + blacktopping is not far-fetched for keeping this on the limited flag-stop schedule in full ADA compliance if the town is willing to take over the maint costs.
14. Replace Lincoln station with high-level, side platforms west of Lincoln Rd grade crossing. Egress to west side of Lincoln Rd on platforms' respective sides of rails.
YES. I can't believe this wasn't done 30 years ago and that they're still clinging to that bonkers boarding procedure. This is so easy they should just contract out Lincoln in one ADA package blitz with a bunch of the prefab Reading Line stops since they're all rote side-platform grade crossing jobs.
Not sure what to do at Concord-proper at all.
Aye...no kidding. Single most difficult full-high mod on the system, bar none. The historic building + the short platform sandwiched on the grade crossings + the curve + the abutting density pinning all into place. More delicate jobs have been done elsewhere, but there are no good answers here. And the town will be a nightmare to deal with.
Split service into thirds. 1/3 of service is all-stops locals to Hudson. 1/3 of service is locals to Littleton/495. 1/6 of service is locals to Wachusett and 1/6 of service is express services to Wachusett. If Concord is resolved, all Hudson and Littleton/495 trains could use powered doors.
As earlier, Central Mass isn't going to happen. Service patterns are going to be mainline-only: Indigo to 128, local service to Wachusett, local short-turns to Littleton when freight slots create schedule gaps further outbound.
I'd add that full-high platforms are doable at most/all of the outer stops without breaking the bank.
- Ayer is a big safety concern because of the track crossing, very narrow platform, and exploding freight volumes. That one can be done up as an 800 ft. full-high island with up-and-over access, flanked on both sides by outer thru freight tracks if Track 4 west of the freight wye were continued through the wye. Then tweak interlockings accordingly. This is probably exactly how it's gonna go, and it'll be sooner rather than later because it's only a matter of time before some passenger gets killed by a passing freight.
- Shirley is doable by dropping a center freight passer and doing two side full-highs. Space fully available if the town re-grades the haphazard parking layout framing the station to all-angled spaces.
- N. Leominster would require widening the Main St. overpass and approach embankment to tri-track and moving the existing platforms back a couple feet to create space for a center passer. Not hard if Pan Am Southern is willing to contribute to the bridge widening cost and town doesn't over-complain.
- Fitchburg is on a passenger turnout, and the curve is within tolerances for full-highs. Station was fully rebuilt in '02 before the Mass Architectural Board tightened up the regs, so it was one of the last ones where mini-high was a valid cost opt-out.
Can probably nip each/every outer station in the bud sooner than the time it takes to find a least-worst Concord Depot retrofit that Town of Concord doesn't vomit all over.