Logan puts out statistics for a bunch of things, including the number of departing flights. It's per month so I did a very crude 'multiply by 7/31' to get a rough number of weekly flights for August. Some quick googling can get you the number of flights per week between BOS and JFK, LGA, EWR, PHL, BWI, DCA, and IAD.
T-100s are the (fairly) authoritative source for non-stop information.
It would be interesting to see how many of those Logan passengers are Boston originating versus connecting.
You'd need a shuttle bus any which way. The Minuteman ROW is almost 2 miles up Hartwell from Hanscom's terminal. It's not exactly rail to the airport's doorstep.
My head might explode too. Wouldn't an el be more expensive than a cut-and-cover, while also destroying the trail's value as a nice, green linear park?
A bunch of them may be connecting through hubs or onward to international flights those are harder to displace with train vs. trip where NYC is the destination.
Trail users would also be virulently opposed to this idea.
Yeah, I was responding to @393b40 in their pitch to go directly directly to Hanscom with a branch to Burlington. What I failed to make clear (at all) is that I don't think such late branching is worthwhile so what I'm saying is that you can go to Hanscom, Bedford (Maybe, maybe Hanscom to Bedford), or Burlington, but not Hanscom then Burlington. Cue the air travel discussion, so I offered only Bedford or Burlington.
Does it though? Ridership projections north of Arlington are horrific, that's why this thread is titled like it is. And it's not really surprising, Arlington has a population density 5 times higher than Lexington. For the amount of political and monetary capital it would take it's probably the single worst hypothetical transit project under broad, general consideration right now.
Those projections are from the past though. Lexington is one of the success stories of the MBTA communities act. They proceeded in actual good faith and are seeing development in the places that matter. Many of the people against the proposal are doing so on the back of limited bus service so would support it if the MBTA buses were more frequent. Lexington is primed to be what Arlington was minus the catholic hand wringing. You can't argue in good faith that we should extend the red line to Milton, who actively won't densify, and then say that Lexington shouldn't have the red line. The community at large understands that is Cambridge/Boston facing, that transit is important (they have their own municipal buses to serve trolley lines that don't exist anymore and are not covered by the MBTA), and they are willing to densify the core villages of the community where the trains used to stop. The density now is not really a factor when the state is quasi-forcing towns to build housing because we are desperate for it. By the time these things get funded, Lexington WILL be more dense plus we can connect the red line to 128. It's frankly a no-brainer that you're poo-pooing because you want that money applied elsewhere. Choose "yes-and" so that we have plans that are shovel ready when the money is there.
That's still a long ways off from heavy rail density though, and when a significantly cheaper option (LRT dinky or better bus service) also exists, it's pretty difficult to justify. It's 3 miles and 6 grade crossings for one station that would (in a perfect world) end up with ridership similar to Orient Heights, or about 4300 people per day.
And I think the size of the vehicles they use on those routes speaks to the demand. There's definitely room for capacity increases there before we need to start thinking about a subway line.
But you can definitely argue that we should extend the Red Line to Mattapan and Lower Mills, and like it or not the best way to do that goes through Milton. It's the same reason Needham is high on the priority list, not necessarily because they deserve it first, but because it's a requirement to serve West Roxbury and Roslindale.
Anecdotal but to add on Lexington is also trying to supplement their existing transit.
