Red Line Extension to Arlington Heights

Is the RLX getting to a length where an express track would be useful?
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
The 1975 plan was tunnel all the way. And yes, the yard (which I think was to be above-ground) was going to go on the Arlington Coal & Lumber property.

Most likely they'd keep to the 1975 tunneling plans verbatim. The only real change would be that Arlington Center and Arlington Heights stations wouldn't have the pornographic parking capacities of the very car-brained '75 plan. Both stops would probably have zero parking if done today.


EDIT: The '70s plans had the storage yard @ AH below-ground as longish tail tracks much like Alewife today. Arlington Coal & Lumber property would've been taken for the station itself so it fronted the bus station instead of putting it in Park Ave./Lowell St. triangle. See this post.
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Okay a tunnel the whole way thanks. The grade change in the original study docs is very illuminating. They could build a portal at Mill St. since the tunnel is forced near the existing ground level to accommodate water/sewer pipes. But then after that the existing ground level rises 90 feet so it’s like might as well stay underground. Makes more sense now.

Another observation is the Heights station placement alongside the MBTA bus yard. If they had planned to take Coal & Lumber anyway, I’d expect the platform to be located adjacent to the west side of Park Ave vs. where it’s shown on the study. The study probably focused on MBTA/state/municipal rights of way which is why it’s placed there in the study docs.

Parking yeah Center has the existing Russell Common lot (paved paradise and put up a parking lot) so no need there, but the Heights might benefit from a residents-only lot or a small paid lot to soak up some SOV demand among the better bus connections.

Seems like a no-brainer and I hope the advocates can call attention to the sentiment shift in the community.
 
On the north side? I doubt it. There's not too many stops you could get away with skipping.
 
RandomWalk said:
Is the RLX getting to a length where an express track would be useful?
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What would you even skip? Certainly nothing after Davis, so that leaves what, 3-4 possible expressed stops? Alewife and Davis are both powerhouses for ridership, if we're building to Arlington then it would be silly to skip Arlington Center, and Arlington Heights would be the end of the line. So that just leaves the hypothetical East Arlington station, and I don't see how the operational complexity 'express' service would introduce would possibly be justified by the 60 seconds or so of time savings.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
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Is there a provision for a station at Lake St in these plans? It certainly looks like it.
 
TheRatmeister said:
Is there a provision for a station at Lake St in these plans? It certainly looks like it.
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Looks like a coincidence of the sand layers in the soil that the grade ends up mostly flat, such that going a couple tenths of a degree flatter would allow enough level space for a platform. But they weren't considering it at all back then. Since the grade forces the entirety of the platform to be north of the surface crossing, to do it you would need to take at least 2 houses on Lake St. and 2 on Orvis Circle to excavate the width for a station when it's all that close to the surface.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Alewife is an absolutely dysfunctional bus hub, and was never intended to host as many routes via the Route 2 frontage roads as it did after the Arlington Heights extension was canceled in the 70's. It's an operational quagmire because of the traffic problems around Alewife, and the frequencies suck because the equipment cycling sucks amid all those traffic problems. The northwest-region bus system is a lot healthier in schedule adherence, frequency, and coverage if Arlington Center and Arlington Heights each host substantial bus hubs at the Red Line stations and Alewife gets vacated of everything except the 83, the LEX Alewife express bus up Route 2 to the 128 office parks, and maybe some future backfill Medford and Watertown circumferential routes along the parkways. To go along with what everybody's said about Arlington's very rapid transit-worthy population density, there's great need for correcting the major bus circulation deficiencies in the northwest region and RLX to Heights directly accomplishes that.
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I'd probably reroute the 67 to the Medford GLX & Davis because the Arlington Center RLX connection would exist. Restore the former 84 Arlmont Village-Alewife bus and delete the 78 bus altogether. Then make the 74 bus a FBR and take the 75 and reroute it to Arlington Center, to allow an Arlington-Belmont-MtAuburn crosstown that would replace the deleted 78/rerouted 67. Then abolish the 87 altogether by extending the 96 from Davis to Union Sq rather than Harvard, and extending the 89 from Davis to Arlington Center. Then extend frequent service in Medford some more by running the 94 Arlington Center to Wellington.

And also, I got bored and tried to estimate how much frequency time savings the 62/76 and the 350 would get if they vacated Alewife and terminated at Arlington Heights and Arlington Center instead.

Here's the current no of buses the MBTA seems to run the 62/76 and 350 buses, and the frequency changes and improvements

Route 62/76
TimeCurrent no# buses to AlewifeCurrent frequency to AlewifeAdjusted no# buses to A-HeightsAdjusted frequency to A-Heights
Weekday AM peak615 trunk/30 branches613 trunk/26 branches (extend morning service from 5:18AM to 5:00AM)
Weekday interpeak330 trunk/60 branches326 trunk/52 branches
Weekday PM peak715 trunk/30 branches712 trunk/24 branches
Weekday evening240229 (extend evening service from 7:47PM to 7:58PM for the 76 and from 9:59PM to 10:35PM for the 62)
Saturday midday2503 (+1 additional bus to undo the Fall 2025 Saturday service cut removal to Lincoln Lab)25 trunk/50 branches (double Saturday frequency between A-Heights and Lexington Center. Extend service from 5:57AM-9:34PM to 5:20AM-10:35PM)
Sunday midday250236 (no span of service extension)

Route 350
TimeCurrent no# buses to AlewifeCurrent frequency to AlewifeAdjusted no# buses to A-CenterAdjusted frequency to A-Center
Weekday AM peak625617 (extend morning service from 5:51AM to 5:00AM)
Weekday interpeak260 (40 from Fall 2021 - Spring 2023)3 (+1 additional bus to revert/undo COVID era service cuts to the Fall 2021-Spring 2023 frequency)36
Weekday PM peak530523
Weekday evening260252 (extend evening service from 10:32PM to 10:37PM)

(maybe we could add a 3rd bus here for every 34 minute frequency)
Saturday midday345-60336 (extend morning service from 6:12AM to 5:20AM)
Sunday midday260253 (extend service from 7:06AM-6:56PM to 6:00AM-7:58PM)

So basically, the RLX would allow us to run buses between Lexington Center-Arlington Heights every 25-28 minutes weekdays through Saturdays from morning through the evening, with 12-14 minute rush hour frequencies. Evening and Saturday service get the biggest uplift from the 40-50 minute frequencies right now without RLX to every 25-29 with RLX, but weekday middays is only limited improvement from the 30 -> 26 minute weekday interpeak frequency even with RLX. Saturday service is doubled between Lexington Center and Arlington Heights (every 50 -> 25 minutes) to restore service to Lincoln Lab that was eliminated in Fall 2025, but no changes or service cuts are needed between Bedford VA and Lexington Center with RLX in place. For the 350 bus, we'd see biggest RLX improvements in weekday midday frequency (hourly frequency -> every 35-37 minutes), rush hour frequencies increase from every 25 to every 17 minutes in the morning, and from every 30 to every 23 minutes in the evening rush hour with RLX. Saturday service frequency increases from every 45-60 minutes to every 36 minutes. Sunday service frequency improvement from the RLX is limited to every 53 minutes rather than hourly. Span of service extensions with the 350 and 62/76 in both the morning and evening would also be needed with RLX.
 
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