Red Line Extension to Mattapan

Arlington

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...and everyone will assign different values to the disutlity of walking, risking a missed connection, having to "get settled"/unsettled,
seat selection, and walking between vehicles. The models (accumulated experience) is that HRT and single seat rides attract users from farther away--people invest "a longer walk" for a "better total trip" payoff.

"Your mileage may vary" is a useful caveat

Another trade-off is whether you think more frequent HRT trains are more convenient (as a rider) or just more ambient noise (as an abutter)

Net-Net this seems like a win for both the locals in the immediate walk catchments AND a win for regional mobility via connections at Mattapan [& HRT Milton]
 
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whittle

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Well, I measure the cemetery ROW at 32 feet in Google Earth, and the Blue Line up by Suffolk Downs in the same range (trees make it a little hard, but they're both in the 30-35 range). So I doubt that.

They didn't study it and in their minds it's too late now, so Mattapan was obviously always going to get the Type 9s.

It drives me bonkers sometimes how MBTA planning simply ignores low-hanging fruit like this, or Orange-Roslindale, or Green-Upper Falls. But South Coast F-g Rail gets green-lit. Politics!
Going back to this, if anyone wants a more concrete width requirement for the Red Line, the median of the Longfellow Bridge is 27ft wide.
 

Charlie_mta

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Well, I measure the cemetery ROW at 32 feet in Google Earth, and the Blue Line up by Suffolk Downs in the same range (trees make it a little hard, but they're both in the 30-35 range). So I doubt that.
The 27' Longfellow Bridge ROW is narrower than that, so the Red Line cars would definitely fit within the Mattapan line ROW.
 

Joel N. Weber II

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What if we extend the Red Line to Milton, and then run Type 9 trains from Milton to Mattapan (and maybe continue the Type 9s along the 29 bus route (minus its Franklin Field Housing deviation) to Jackson Sq if sufficient transit reservations can be set aside in the streets)?

Alewife effectively uses one of its tracks to turn around Braintree trains and the other to turn around Ashmont trains, which suggests that a single track at Milton might be sufficient to turn around all trains, and if turning around every train that currently serves Ashmont on a single train at Milton isn't practical, sending only half the Ashmont trains to Milton and having the other half terminate at Codman Yard during rush hour would also be possible.

Single tracking a Milton terminus would simplify the interlocking there to a single switch, assuming double track was preserved from the Neponset River to Ashmont and beyond.

If we do this, I think we should also consider building a pedestrian underpass in the vicinity of Cedar Grove, and side platforms between Cedar Grove and Gallivan Blvd to serve both current Cedar Grove riders as well as to give Gallivan Blvd bus riders an opportunity to transfer to the Red Line; a road diet of Gallivan Blvd at the same time may be desirable as well.
 

F-Line to Dudley

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What if we extend the Red Line to Milton, and then run Type 9 trains from Milton to Mattapan (and maybe continue the Type 9s along the 29 bus route (minus its Franklin Field Housing deviation) to Jackson Sq if sufficient transit reservations can be set aside in the streets)?

Alewife effectively uses one of its tracks to turn around Braintree trains and the other to turn around Ashmont trains, which suggests that a single track at Milton might be sufficient to turn around all trains, and if turning around every train that currently serves Ashmont on a single train at Milton isn't practical, sending only half the Ashmont trains to Milton and having the other half terminate at Codman Yard during rush hour would also be possible.

Single tracking a Milton terminus would simplify the interlocking there to a single switch, assuming double track was preserved from the Neponset River to Ashmont and beyond.

If we do this, I think we should also consider building a pedestrian underpass in the vicinity of Cedar Grove, and side platforms between Cedar Grove and Gallivan Blvd to serve both current Cedar Grove riders as well as to give Gallivan Blvd bus riders an opportunity to transfer to the Red Line; a road diet of Gallivan Blvd at the same time may be desirable as well.
There isn't nearly enough facilities space to extend the line to street-running. The line runs on an 8-car fleet. You can't maintain something much larger than that at Mattapan shed or some LRV-serving replacement shed in the corner of Codman Yard. So unfortunately 28X is pretty firmly in the BRT category as best available option, because even though Blue Hill Ave. once had a trolley reservation that shared yards with the HSL...it also had an Arborway Carhouse connection on the other end that kept the fleet requirements well-distributed. And that doesn't exist today, nor is there space for it.

N-O! on single-tracking anything. No rapid transit operation in Boston runs on low-enough margins for its frequencies--including the existing HSL--to survive with only 1 track. Braintree and Ashmont can and do appear on either Alewife track when conditions warrant, even when most of the time they stick to the same side for wayfinding sanity. It's not foolproof; ops needs chaos-absorbing flexibility at turnbacks at any given moment.

Extending the Red Line to Mattapan in-full is not a big production. The two required grade crossing eliminations are not big productions. The state simply doesn't want to spend a dime more than it's forced to kicking-and-screaming on the corridor, and they have tried to bury it enough times prior that the residents have so much pent-up mistrust that public support is guided in large part by what prevents another chance at transit loss. Support would probably be higher for the HRT option if they had any indication the state was dealing with them in any plausible honesty over it...but the state pretty much spit all over that option. If accepting Type 9's is what keeps the dreaded bustitution talk tabled for another 20 years, that's where the widest share of support gravitates. It's not because they think that's 'best'...they know they can do better, and that includes fact that the trolleys could run a whole lot more frequent than the CAF's propping up the same not-very-frequent headways as the PCC's. But it is 'safest' pick when they haven't gone more than 10 years without dodging a bullet on major existential threat of transit loss.

Hopefully the next debate after this punt the conversation will actually pivot to what's a greater transit deal for the corridor, but right now those residents can be forgiven for still treating it like survival mode.
 

Scott

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Hooray! The quirky little trolley line on the edge of the city survives. And BTW the title of the thread doesn't make sense, the Red Line already goes to Mattapan you are just forced to take a really cool vintage trolley to get there.
 

AndrewOnTheMBTA

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Hooray! The quirky little trolley line on the edge of the city survives. And BTW the title of the thread doesn't make sense, the Red Line already goes to Mattapan you are just forced to take a really cool vintage trolley to get there.
This is a less relevant question- but will the recycled green line trolleys be green? Or will there be some plan to paint red or orange?
 

Equilibria

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This is a less relevant question- but will the recycled green line trolleys be green? Or will there be some plan to paint red or orange?
I don't think they've said. The Type 9s would probably get some sort of mid-life overhaul between service on Green and Red, so it seems logical to recolor them at that point. I suspect the community would ask for it.

Could make a good case to just rebrand the Mattapan HSL as the Pink Line and put the Type 9s in that color. The line serves two CBDs (Mattapan and Milton), after all.
 

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