Red Line Extension to Arlington Heights

themissinglink said:
Yes. In the '70s-era plan for the RLX, the tunnel through Arlington was planned to surface behind Arlington High School next to the football field.
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Wrong. Check out the final Environmental Impact Statements that show plans to run the Red Line underground all the way to Arlington Heights. Remember that the plans c alled for retention of freight rail service in the corridor, which is no longer a necessity. It's time to dust off the plans, make some minor revisions, and start the relatively easy cut-and-cover construction through Arlington.

Resources – Extend the Red Line

extendtheredline.org extendtheredline.org
 
Time to get on board!

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This is awesome @schlichtman , thank you for sharing, I'll certainly keep an eye on this and get involved where I can.

From the site:

> Getting started with that study now helps prepare us for when the MBTA’s situation changes. Phillip Eng, the new General Manager of the MBTA, has made great progress in actually fixing the T’s backlog of needed maintenance. The MBTA’s priorities could look very different in 5 or 10 years, especially with the possibility of federal funding for infrastructure that can address climate change.

100% agreed

> Among Boston-area cities and towns that do not have rapid transit stations, Arlington has by far the highest population density.

I think this is a bit off. Arlington is 8k/mi^2, but Everett is 14k. Even if you eliminate Everett due to the pending SL3 extension, you have Watertown at 7k, which is behind but not "far" behind. Maybe it's better to highlight East Arlington which on its own is 15k/mi^2.

All that said, I fully support the extension.
 
schlichtman said:
Chatting about a Red Line extension into Arlington might be fun, but getting involved to make it happen is a much better idea. Please join friends advocating for a RLX and better transit in Arlington here:

Extend the Red Line – A community project

Extend the Red Line is a community group working to extend the MBTA's Red Line and bring better transit to Arlington, Massachusetts – and beyond.
extendtheredline.org extendtheredline.org
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I'm in. It's about time.
 
This is a bit of an odd one, but I'm sticking it here for want of a better place. I'd previously glossed over it, but the T in its latest CIP has funded a new project to build a high rail access tunnel at Alewife to reduce reliance on the 1st Street Gate at the Kendall Portal - which, fair, that's a inconvenient spot for hi-rail access and loading stuff into the Red Line Tunnel.
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But what I hadn't thought about is the fact that the Alewife yard stub tracks are under the Minuteman - and still about 25ft deep. (I don't know what PVI is, but here I'm assuming that's the depth) So assuming this is built, how does the MBTA 1) minimize the impact on the Minuteman, 2) not impede future extension to Arlington, and 3) make it easier to build that extension?

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It’s a portal, but for trucks instead of trains.

They could design it multiple ways to accommodate a Red Line extension. For example, setting off to one side of a future extension, or routing the future extension around the sides of the access portal.

The real fun will be Arlington residents weighing in on it.

Amusingly, there is a truck hanging out by the access hatches over the yard tracks for the coming shutdown:
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RandomWalk said:
It’s a portal, but for trucks instead of trains.

The real fun will be Arlington residents weighing in on it.
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Yeah, a proposal to introduce noisy trucks next to an Arlington residential neighborhood might rouse some NIMBY ire.
 
One possible solution would involve eliminating the dogleg the bike path currently takes around the access hatches and placing the portal next to the playing fields, at the end of the parking lot. That still doesn’t avoid the issues with the size of the portal, length of the incline, or the security (fencing, lighting, cameras, etc) for the portal.
 

Arlington official tells MBTA board town deserves better​

commonwealthbeacon.org

Arlington official tells MBTA board town deserves better

“Here’s the bottom line. For $3.4 million a year, we shouldn’t be ignored. We deserve a seat at the table,” Paul Schlichtman said. “If we don’t get adequate transit, we’re just going to suffer from a horrible case of car constipation, so let’s get started on a Red Line extension.”
commonwealthbeacon.org commonwealthbeacon.org

Chair of the Arlington School Committee comes to the MBTA Board meeting requesting restored and improved bus service, and requests a review of extending the Red Line to Arlington Heights
 
Delvin4519 said:

Arlington official tells MBTA board town deserves better​

commonwealthbeacon.org

Arlington official tells MBTA board town deserves better

“Here’s the bottom line. For $3.4 million a year, we shouldn’t be ignored. We deserve a seat at the table,” Paul Schlichtman said. “If we don’t get adequate transit, we’re just going to suffer from a horrible case of car constipation, so let’s get started on a Red Line extension.”
commonwealthbeacon.org commonwealthbeacon.org

Chair of the Arlington School Committee comes to the MBTA Board meeting requesting restored and improved bus service, and requests a review of extending the Red Line to Arlington Heights
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I really hope that the Red Line gets extended to Arlington sooner rather than later.

That being said, the decision to oppose a Red Line extension in the '70s by Arlington residents and pols was such a narrow-minded, short-sighted thing to do.
 
themissinglink said:
I really hope that the Red Line gets extended to Arlington sooner rather than later.

That being said, the decision to oppose a Red Line extension in the '70s by Arlington residents and pols was such a narrow-minded, short-sighted thing to do.
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If Arlington wants the Red Line, they are going to need a political champion to persistently fight for it for at least 10+ years. The Green Line Extension and South Coast Rail are both good case studies for how transit expansion projects can get done in our political system (I'm not defending the process itself - this is from a political angle and not a technical / planning standpoint). Curatone, when he was mayor of Somerville, and Rep. Strauss as the co-chair of the Transportation Committee, fought for their respective projects for well-over ten years - sometimes at the expense of other causes or issues. It took a lot of relentless advocacy, too - not just political leadership - to get governors and general managers on-board with costly expansions.

If Arlington wants this, it's going to take a lot more than a school committee chair complaining about the municipal assessment payments (which every municipality in the service area gripes about), and I haven't seen the level of political leadership emerge in Arlington that could pull this off. My money is on Blue Line Extension to Lynn before RLX to Arlington ever happens given there's more political potential behind State Senator Crighton, former Mayor McGee on the MBTA Board, etc. If Arlington became a city with a strong mayor system with an ambitious, strategic leader at the helm and residents shook up their state representation, I think that could change. Until then, I don't think it's likely (even though I wish it were otherwise).
 
I don't think now is a bad time for them to begin to advocate; with the T's hi-rail portal going in into Thorndike, it's reasonable for Arlington to ask for that design to not preclude an extension and at a minimum could provide updated paper on how to connect to the existing tunnel.

I'm of the opinion that there's at least a consensus about what form RLX Arlington should take - a RL tunnel under the minuteman. GLX had a multitude of options throughout its existence, being pushed and pulled this way and that. Tunnel, single branch, green or actually blue? I feel as if the T could almost just blow the dust off the cover of the 1978 documents and it would be fine with just minor updates to current standards.
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Funding, as always, will be the issue. Short of a program of 10 cent Federal dollars for transit, where would it come from?
 
I'm very skeptical if a full tunnel would ever pass the cost-benefit analysis. Cut and cover would shut down the path for years. TBM would be less disruptive, but also require deeper stations. Arlington can grow, but can it grow so much as to justify a Red Line extension? Can Lexington, for that matter?

For what it's worth, one of the major reasons that the RLX was rejected in the 70s was that the T wanted to build large parking garages in Arlington Center and the Heights. This would have brought in a ton of traffic. My guess is that the T wouldn't go for this today, so you might have a better shot.
 
KCasiglio said:
"Deserves" is an interesting word from a town that is responsible for them not already having it
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I get this sentiment, but you're kind of saying this like "the town" is some singular entity, or one person, who's now flip-flopping or being hypocritical. It's not. Those were completely different people who made that bad decision 50 years ago. People in Arlington today aren't the ones "responsible" for blocking the red line, and they might reasonably feel like they got screwed over by those decisions made by people two generations ago. Yeah, I think Arlington "deserves" better public transit, just like every other city and town around here.
 
Stlin said:
I don't think now is a bad time for them to begin to advocate; with the T's hi-rail portal going in into Thorndike, it's reasonable for Arlington to ask for that design to not preclude an extension and at a minimum could provide updated paper on how to connect to the existing tunnel.
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Isn't the hi-rail portal being built near the Russel Field entrance to Alewife? If so it seems unlikely that construction would block an RLX given that it's not near the end of the RL tunnels.
 
ritchiew said:
I get this sentiment, but you're kind of saying this like "the town" is some singular entity, or one person, who's now flip-flopping or being hypocritical. It's not. Those were completely different people who made that bad decision 50 years ago. People in Arlington today aren't the ones "responsible" for blocking the red line, and they might reasonably feel like they got screwed over by those decisions made by people two generations ago. Yeah, I think Arlington "deserves" better public transit, just like every other city and town around here.
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100% agreed, and I said almost exactly the same thing to the person who posted this in the r/mbta reddit with a much more "f them" attitude. I just found the implication that Arlington doesn't have better transit because of the MBTA to be humorous.

vanshnookenraggen said:
Arlington can grow, but can it grow so much as to justify a Red Line extension?
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I mean, I have no doubt it CAN. Given the state of the housing market I think if you do RLX to Arlington Heights you could get people to build all the TOD in the world. I think the question is, would Arlington go along with it? To the point above, I absolutely agree Arlington deserves better transit, but I think such an extension should come with some kind of TOD zoning agreement.
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
I'm very skeptical if a full tunnel would ever pass the cost-benefit analysis. Cut and cover would shut down the path for years. TBM would be less disruptive, but also require deeper stations. Arlington can grow, but can it grow so much as to justify a Red Line extension? Can Lexington, for that matter?

For what it's worth, one of the major reasons that the RLX was rejected in the 70s was that the T wanted to build large parking garages in Arlington Center and the Heights. This would have brought in a ton of traffic. My guess is that the T wouldn't go for this today, so you might have a better shot.
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The issue is the tunneling. Arlington's density in these areas isn't dissimilar from Newton, Brookline, or Milton, but those areas don't even have heavy rail, much less tunneled heavy rail.
 
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