You can't just look at the raw numbers without diving into the factors that drive them. Franklin is the most populous municipality on the line (and would be the most populous on the Providence Line north of Attleboro as well). Ridership from Forge Park is severely suppressed by horrendous travel times on the CR. Downtown Franklin station parking lot fills up before 7am on weekdays, and many residents taking public transit drive to other facilities because of it (but I'm definitely not advocating for expanding that downtown parking lot - rather keep increasing walkshed residential population). While some go to Forge Park, many more go to Norfolk (towards Boston, whereas Forge Park is away, and has 630 spaces vs downtown Franklin's 173), and I would bet a plurality of Norfolk Station riders live in Franklin (3X the population). Many others go to Norwood Central (730 spaces and a lot more frequency), or to QA for the red line's frequency.
Generally speaking, 1 hour to 495 and 30 minutes to 128 is the sweet spot where commuter rail becomes driving-competitive in Greater Boston. Forge Park-South Station takes about 72 minutes right now. If you electrified Forge Park at an 18% average time reduction (as outlined in my previous post) it comes down to 59 minutes...right on the money. So don't cut stops and suppress
more ridership than you gain...do your due diligence and implement full Regional Rail on Franklin/Foxboro and you get your idealized transit times with no changes to the stop roster.
You're also going to need to show some evidence that Norfolk is overly cannibalized by Franklin overflow. They are not very close at all, being 4.5 miles apart. The road network is not oriented well between the two, as the MA 115 corridor taps Wrentham and Millis much more than meandering Main and Pleasant Streets tap Franklin.
The point of my take is to align travel times on the Franklin line with the significantly better travel times enjoyed on other lines for the same travel distances. If there were 5+ added neighborhood stops on the Lowell or Providence lines, aligning travel times from Lowell or Mansfield with Franklin, I think ridership would drop precipitously.
Again...idealized travel times net less ridership than having enough well-sited neighborhood stops. This is proven time and again in Regional Rail applications worldwide, and the T's own Regional Rail Rail Vision includes
copious infills across the system (though not on Franklin, which already taps pretty much all of the population catchment on its route) to take advantage of that within the slack offered by electrification's time savings. I think you're
severely overestimating the topline of improved travel times to relatively medium-small towns vs. the bottom line of reduced ridership from cutting service. Again, I have to note that basic electrification brings Forge Park in under the hour target so there's no need to consider draconian station cuts to "improve" service from the end of the line.
You are right I was being hyperbolic with 99% on Norwood Depot but I would be curious to know what % of those Norwood Depot riders would prefer a faster travel time (albeit they wouldn't benefit nearly as much as Franklin from the cut stations) to the possible small edge some riders get from station proximity now.
Norwood Depot and Central are exactly 2 minutes apart on the schedule. On previous midday schedules when Depot
was skipped the time savings were minimal. That's not going to move the needle. No trains skip it today because the ridership tapped at Depot was too beneficial to be outweighted by any savings in travel times by skipping it on the off-peak. Norwood's got a big enough downtown to merit two full-time stops. They already have all the data they need to see that's the case.
Re: Hyde Park - the take is not necessarily about the Franklin line itself, but about boosting as opposed to reducing HP Station service. The scheduling is terrible right now and that suppresses ridership. But we have to be planning the right conditions, not reacting to the wrong ones. HP is embarking on a housing explosion. It's already sub 10 minute ride from HP to a major employment area in Ruggles and just over 10 to Back Bay.
Perfectly valid. They should absolutely think about rebuilding it for high platforms and increasing the service levels. But is that worth more ridership gain that
cutting up to 5 stops on the Franklin schedules? Absolutely not. Look...you're single-mindedly focused on better end-to-end travel times damn the torpedoes. If that somehow requires draconian service cuts to intermediate stops contributing 1/3 of the line's total ridership, shouldn't you be prioritizing keeping the ones that bring in the most ridership for their service levels? There is no effing way Hyde Park outslugs Norfolk or Norwood Depot, or that the one-seat to Ruggles and Back Bay matters
that much. The math simply isn't there.
Re: Foxboro - there's just not a lot of point to the station for anything other than Patriot Place. Almost nobody lives around the station and the Town does not want any new housing. They even rejected a completely undevelopable MBTAc district at town meeting the first time around. If you live in Foxboro and take the train to Boston, you go to Mansfield and cut your commute time nearly in half. In a regional rail world where travel time from Forge Park is ~50min or less, it makes more sense to send all those trains to Franklin where you have a much bigger population center now, far more housing being permitted, and the added ability to draw many more from the City of Woonsocket if you just get the travel time reasonable. Zone for 2500 housing units in the Gillette Parking lots and I'll change my mind.
Foxboro Station isn't the be-all/end-all of having Foxboro service. You seem to be single-mindedly hyper-focused on the endpoints rather than the intermediates. Having Foxboro service is a service
boost to all of the intermediates out to Windsor Gardens (and Walpole if the station is relocated several hundred feet to before the junction), and as said before service increases are a far bigger ridership generator...FAR bigger...than travel time cuts. Overall Franklin ridership is up because of the extra slots, if those Foxboro service levels were increased to the all-day level of the
2010 Feasibility Study they'd be higher still, and if full-on Regional Rail were implemented there'd be :15 service out to Walpole cranking it up to the moon. Gillette Stadium itself doesn't have to contribute more than middling numbers to provide a HUUUGE boost to the line's fortunes because most of the ridership increases get driven on the inner half of the mainline. I can't fathom the logic of wanting to cut all that for...reasons?
Secondly, you
need Foxboro all-local service if you ever want to do what
@themissinglink suggests about running some skip-stop service to Forge Park to decrease travel times and make Milford or Woonsocket more palatable extensions. Foxboro in a Regional Rail universe would provide :30 service by its lonesome to Walpole, which is probably enough for the Endicotts and Islingtons and Windsor Gardens of the world where :15 service would probably be overkill. So...yes!...Forge Park would get to skip some of those stops and beneficially decrease travel times without unduly hurting ridership on the mainline. Do you not see that it would be insanity to kill off Foxboro service before we move to a Regional Rail model? That directly cuts against what you ultimately want.
www.newspapers.com
Note that a shorter freight route from FR and NB to points west was the primary motivation, with passenger traffic secondary.
