Regional Rail (RUR) & North-South Rail Link (NSRL)

275 ft platforms are not long enough by today's construction standards. For light rail, GLX's specs called for 300 ft, so they're either built this way (Lechmere is about 350) or have provisions to extend them. For heavy rail, Malden Center's platform is about 410 ft, and Fields Corner 430 ft. Not a magnitude of difference, but it reduces the difference from NSRL to some extent.
The 275ft number is based on real systems in places like Vancouver and Copenhagen that get high capacity through high frequency automated service rather than fewer, larger trains. (And when there's a lot of people making a lot of smaller journeys that involve transfers, I think this is 100% the way to go.) You absolutely can have trains that size.
Disregarding the question of whether tunneling under downtown immediately implies $$$ when the ROW is very wide, if we assume that's true, then tunneling through Longwood will be even tougher. The hospital buildings are almost as tall and roads are much narrower, sometimes 35' between sidewalks.
Tunneling in downtown is expensive because your worksites are downtown. Simple as that. Once you get outside downtown there are more surface streets, and there are wider surface streets, making transporting equipment and materials easier and less disruptive.
but any Urban Ring proposal that completely avoids Kendall is likely a no-go.
Quite simply, I don't agree, and there's one table that summarizes why quite well:
Screenshot 2023-12-16 at 06.14.26.png

A station that is dominated by commuter traffic to office districts is not a reliable source of ridership going forward. Given the choice of Kendall, an office district that is struggling to win back people who transitioned to WFH, and Harvard, a thriving student hub, I'd certainly pick the latter. Building a system tailor specifically to the needs of office working commuters is part of how we got into the mess we're in, it's time to change course.
I also think you're underselling NSRL's usefulness. It's almost never about allowing Providence-Lowell OSRs, but rather, improving efficiency (with through-running trains), access to multiple downtown destinations and subway connections, transfers for regional travels, and perhaps most important of all, allowing much higher frequencies on all trunks such as <=10 min Fairmount, 15-30 min Providence, and even allowing many urban segments (Fairmount Line, Newtons, Waltham, North Shore) to receive rapid-transit-level service.
How many of these things actually require the NSRL? There are no shortage of rail lines around the world that operate 15 minute or better frequencies out of city center terminus stations, providing rapid-transit like service to urban areas. London and its many termini is probably the best example of this, although there are plenty of other cities with similar situations. Yes, throughrunning is better, but is it so much better that it justifies the $18bn pricetag, and likely sacrificing non-radial transit? Again, we've now built a system further dependent on commuters, not for people making regular, everyday journies.
 
Tunneling in downtown is expensive because your worksites are downtown. Simple as that. Once you get outside downtown there are more surface streets, and there are wider surface streets, making transporting equipment and materials easier and less disruptive.
TBM does not disrupt surface traffic except at station sites, and NSRL has a massive advantage in the number of stations.

Saying there are more and wider surface streets along the Urban Ring than in downtown is also a blanket statement. North, Central-Aquarium and South Stations all have Surface Rd which is relatively wide (not to mention Greenway space can be used), plus a rather robust road network with many cross streets and parallel streets. On the other hand, LMA almost certainly does NOT have many wide surface streets. The Allston-Brookline stations (Coolidge Corner, Harvard Ave (B), and Union Sq Allston) only have wide streets on the crossroads but not along the corridor itself (Harvard Ave), and the surrounding road network (especially parallel streets) is not nearly as robust as downtown for diverting traffic, especially given there had been a recent discussion on whether there needs to be more roads in this area.

Quite simply, I don't agree, and there's one table that summarizes why quite well:
View attachment 45667
I think there has to be an error in your spreadsheet. I compared 2019 Jan-Oct and 2023 Jan-Oct using the Gated Station Entries spreadsheet: (full list here)
1702710028145.png

There's virtually no difference between the ridership composition of all three stations, despite Kendall's ridership composition being so different from the other two.

A station that is dominated by commuter traffic to office districts is not a reliable source of ridership going forward. Given the choice of Kendall, an office district that is struggling to win back people who transitioned to WFH, and Harvard, a thriving student hub, I'd certainly pick the latter. Building a system tailor specifically to the needs of office working commuters is part of how we got into the mess we're in, it's time to change course.
While your first sentence may hold for downtown stations (though even there, GC and State do well), Kendall is not just an office district (or is not one at all). It also consists of many biomedical labs, whose needs for in-person operations and experiments remain; and MIT, whose students obviously still need to go to campus, and many of whose staff still work in-person in some capacity. In fact, both Kendall and LMA are exactly the kind of industries that should fare well in transit ridership post-Covid.

Specifically attributing Harvard's ridership to students also ignores MIT's student population. Also, students (undergrad and grad) generally have a tendency to stay as close to campus as possible (within their budget), especially at the level of Harvard and MIT, so they have lower needs for commute, especially on a subway. While an argument can certainly be made on increasing the mobility of commuting students so that they can live further away, this argument applies to MIT even more than Harvard due to its current lackluster transit - in fact, I know many MIT students living closer to Lechmere than Kendall.

If Harvard's recovery rate was actually 90%, a much more plausible explanation would have been from Cambridge/Watertown/Belmont/Allston residents via bus transfers and from recreational activities at Harvard Square. But regardless, its recovery rate is 51%, same as Kendall.

How many of these things actually require the NSRL? There are no shortage of rail lines around the world that operate 15 minute or better frequencies out of city center terminus stations, providing rapid-transit like service to urban areas. London and its many termini is probably the best example of this, although there are plenty of other cities with similar situations. Yes, throughrunning is better, but is it so much better that it justifies the $18bn pricetag, and likely sacrificing non-radial transit? Again, we've now built a system further dependent on commuters, not for people making regular, everyday journies.
Except that commuter rail is much more successful than subways and buses at bringing back its riders: (source)
Commuter rail, meanwhile, stands in contrast to both subways and buses. Its average ridership is the lowest of the three primary modes, but it has displayed undoubted success at attracting passengers since the lowest of the lows.

As recently as March 2022, the commuter rail system had a lower rate of ridership recovery than both MBTA subway and buses. And since the turn of the year [2023], it's been effectively tied with buses for the best rebound, attracting about 68% as many passengers in February 2023 as it did in February 2020.
Improving commuter/regional rail, including NSRL, is far from having a singular focus on commuter ridership. The shift to a "regional rail"-like schedule post-Covid has certainly helped improve ridership, and they show that you can - and you should - have a quality regional rail system even if you want to attract non-commuters.

While I'm not well-versed in regional rail operations to comment on whether 15-min frequencies for all lines out of South Station (plus <=10 for Fairmount) is feasible, I'm not sure if London is the best example, as they just built their own version of NSRL in Crossrail.

Also, why are commutes not counted as "regular, everyday journies"? If anything, that's still the biggest source of regular, everyday journeys. I certainly go to work more often than I go to supermarkets or dine out at restaurants in other neighborhoods, and I'm sure many people still do, especially those whose companies are calling them back in person or pushing a hybrid schedule.
 
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I agree with all this, 100%.

Ironically though, in the long term, I don’t believe there should be a continuous Cambridge <> Sullivan <> Chelsea <> Airport service. Sullivan <> Airport via Chelsea is lengthy and roundabout enough that Orange + Blue is gonna be too competitive.

Chelsea <> Kendall is worthwhile for the OSR to Kendall, and Chelsea <> Airport for the same reason. If you want to have a Sullivan <> Airport service pinging back and forth, that seems reasonable to pick up local riders transferring to Orange/Blue, but I don’t see that as a load-bearing service, nor do I see it redirecting any Orange + Blue transfers away from State.

I agree that bus routing that covers too much of the ring in one route shouldn’t be the goal, but I am envisioning longer routing than you are. I don’t believe that these routes require end-to-end riders to be successful. I’m envisioning the target to aim for to be roughly six routes that each cover roughly 1/3 of the ring. What are your thoughts on that? What I mean in practice is that in a world with a bus-based Urban Ring, the target routes would be something like:
  • Orange (e.g. Sullivan) <-> Red (e.g. South Station)
  • Red (e.g. Kendall) <-> Blue (e.g. Airport)
  • Green (e.g. Kenmore) <-> Orange (e.g. Sullivan)
  • Orange (e.g. Ruggles) <-> Red (e.g. Kendall)
  • Red (e.g. JFK/UMass) <-> Green (e.g. Kenmore)
  • Blue (Airport) <-> Orange (e.g. Ruggles)
(Mods feel free to move this discussion to Urban Ring)
 
I don’t believe that these routes require end-to-end riders to be successful.
In general, I agree with you. But (very very theoretically) once a bus travels further than its longest-distance rider from the start of the route, then it is doing the work that another bus could be doing, at the expense of its own reliability. The longer the route, the more opportunity for delays.

There are, of course, many many many reasons why it's not as simple as that. You obviously can't create separate services for every pair of endpoints; the location of feasible turnback and layover points has an impact, and you also need to balance efficiency of equipment use in consideration of demand.

So, yes, you don't need end-to-end riders, but I think the lack thereof has to trigger additional scrutiny for a route.
I’m envisioning the target to aim for to be roughly six routes that each cover roughly 1/3 of the ring. What are your thoughts on that?
In general, this is indeed my rule of thumb when thinking about circumferential designs. Once you go more than about 1/3rd of the way around a (perfect/idealized) circle, you are traveling a further distance than it would be to go directly to the center of the circle and then back out. So, in general the farthest I see a rider taking a circumferential service is about 1/3rd of the way around the circle. (More elaboration here.)

But... the Urban Ring corridor is not a perfect circle.

Here is a perfect circle, centered on Park St, that roughly hits key Urban Ring nodes, including Airport, Sullivan, and Nubian.

1702749861119.png


But that circle misses certain key nodes: it runs wide of Kendall, runs short of reaching Longwood, misses almost all of Southie, to say nothing of the Seaport, and literally does not even make it past the Mystic, leaving Chelsea untouched.

To stretch that circle to reach Chelsea, Sullivan, and Longwood, we get an oval (though, annoyingly, this particular oval I've drawn hits most of the nodes pretty well, but still only grazes LMA):

1702749994441.png


And, as you know, the actual Urban Ring corridor distorts this even further, with bulges out to the Logan Terminals, Everett, and probably Andrew, and tighter hewing inward to Kendall:

1702750253978.png


One of the consequences of this distortion is that not all segments of the Urban Ring Corridor are created equal. As I've mentioned, the Sullivan <> Airport segment has to diverge so much from the "perfect circle" that it (likely) would be just as fast to continue the Orange + Blue transfer at State.

On the other hand, the physical alignment of Sullivan <> Kendall <> LMA runs in nearly a straight line:

1702750483574.png


Meaning that a circumferential service from Sullivan/East Somerville to Longwood would potentially be competitive with the OSR radial journey via the Green Line.

The Chelsea segment underperforms for circumferential journeys, while the Kendall segment overperforms.

So, to the specific routes you propose:
  • Orange (e.g. Sullivan) <-> Red (e.g. South Station)
    • I would split into a Sullivan <> Logan Terminals route and the current SL3
    • See note below
  • Red (e.g. Kendall) <-> Blue (e.g. Airport)
    • I would truncate this in Chelsea, for a Kendall <> Chelsea route
    • See note below
  • Green (e.g. Kenmore) <-> Orange (e.g. Sullivan)
    • As mentioned above, this route makes sense and probably could even be extended south to Longwood proper
  • Orange (e.g. Ruggles) <-> Red (e.g. Kendall)
    • Yup, this is solid
  • Red (e.g. JFK/UMass) <-> Green (e.g. Kenmore)
    • This quadrant is always such a headache. Kenmore <> JFK/UMass seems a little long, so I might split into Kenmore <> Nubian (see note) and LMA <> JFK/UMass, but I think there are a lot of moving pieces here
  • Blue (Airport) <-> Orange (e.g. Ruggles)
    • I think this one is tricky. I've been sorely tempted by a limited stop Nubian <> Logan service designed for a maximally speedy connection to Logan and to the Seaport
    • But just in terms of distance, Washington St LRT + Blue is actually a little shorter between Nubian and Airport station than a route via Logan and the TWT would be; the question will then be whether the Washington LRT would be fast enough to compete
    • But... if we measure to Logan Airport itself as the destination, the calculus changes a lot -- the distance becomes basically the same between the two, but the route via TWT would be a 1SR as opposed to the 3SR (Wash + Blue + shuttle) via downtown
    • So, I would split this into SL3/SL1, plus a Ruggles/Nubian <> Seaport route, potentially with an extension through the TWT but with a question mark next to it
NOTE: if we stop thinking of them as "Urban Ring" routes, several of the routes I've laid out have some obvious potential extensions:
  • SL3 could be extended to Everett or even into Malden, or have a separate Malden <> Logan Terminals with significant interlining between Chelsea and Airport
  • A Kendall <> Chelsea route could extended along the 116 corridor into Revere. This route would be a bit long, and probably we could come up with a faster Revere <> Kendall alignment via the Tobin Bridge
  • Alternatively, a Kendall <> Chelsea route could be rerouted into downtown Chelsea proper for its terminus, e.g. via Everett Ave
  • A Kenmore <> Nubian route is already being proposed: the T28. Just as the Malden <> Logan or Kendall <> Revere routes I've suggested would actually be radial routes based out of Logan and Kendall, the T28 will become a radial route based out of Logan, but like the others will also fill a circumferential gap for part of its route
(A lot of this is very similar to the initial proposal for Urban Ring Phase 1, though I've suggested some changes.)

To summarize my suggestions (with a couple extra tossed in at the end):

TerminusviaTerminusoptional extension to
South StationSeaportChelseaEverett
Logan TerminalsChelseaSullivanMalden (branch)
KendallSullivanChelseaDowntown Chelsea or Revere
SullivanKendallKenmoreLMA
KendallLMARugglesNubian
KenmoreLMANubianDorchester
LMANubianJFK/UMass
Nubian/Ruggles[something]SeaportLogan Terminals
RevereTobin BridgeKendall
HarvardAllstonLMA
 
MBTA has released a Request for Information (RFI) for the Regional Rail Future Innovative Operating Contract, with an explicit mention of electrification:


The main potential roles which could be procured separately or together as part of a Regional Rail contract or contracts would be:
  • Passenger service operations
  • Legacy rolling stock maintenance
  • New rolling stock provision, maintenance and finance/leasing
  • Infrastructure management (including O&M and dispatch)
  • Delivery, finance, and long-term maintenance of major capital works including electrification
Questions for interested parties also include:
4. Has your organization previously been involved in a major project to decarbonize or electrify a new or existing railroad?
Sample interview questions (for different roles):
  • Are you willing to assume risk delivering or integrating electrification work?
  • What are you views on a P3 approach that includes rolling stock and the necessary electrification infrastructure and support facilities (like RSSOM)? In that case how would you ensure the input of the train operator is cost effectively incorporated in the design/performance requirements?
  • How practical/ cost effective would a move to predictive maintenance be with the legacy Diesel fleet?
 
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MBTA has released a Request for Information (RFI) for the Regional Rail Future Innovative Operating Contract, with an explicit mention of electrification:



Questions for interested parties also include:

Sample interview questions (for different roles):
This RFI looks like the start of finding who will take over operating commuter rail when Keolis's contract ends in 2026. Is that what this is, or something slightly different?

Also, I might be reading this wrong, but some of this looks kind of bad. This looks like the continued outsourcing of everything, while giving up on building inhouse expertise and ability in the MBTA. That lack of institutional capacity is routinely cited as a main cause for lots of transit problem in America, like outrageous infrastructure costs. (This is a major theme in the Transit Costs Project). I think it was @F-Line to Dudley that was pointing out that electrification is the perfect project to start building up that institutional capacity, for a bunch of reasons: there is some inhouse expertise to build on; it's a large but repetitive project, allowing a team to build, iterate, and improve; it is a (relatively) straightforward problem with limited options and known solutions. But everything in this RFI looks like MBTA really wants to just contract the problem out.
 
This RFI looks like the start of finding who will take over operating commuter rail when Keolis's contract ends in 2026. Is that what this is, or something slightly different?
It's putting feelers out ahead of the operator renewal bid for a substantial change in responsibilities in the operator if Regional Rail/Rail Vision is implemented. And an RFI instead of RFP because they need to know if the expansion of responsibilities is going to kill off competitive interest in the eventual bid or jack the prices up more than they can bear.
Also, I might be reading this wrong, but some of this looks kind of bad. This looks like the continued outsourcing of everything, while giving up on building inhouse expertise and ability in the MBTA. That lack of institutional capacity is routinely cited as a main cause for lots of transit problem in America, like outrageous infrastructure costs. (This is a major theme in the Transit Costs Project). I think it was @F-Line to Dudley that was pointing out that electrification is the perfect project to start building up that institutional capacity, for a bunch of reasons: there is some inhouse expertise to build on; it's a large but repetitive project, allowing a team to build, iterate, and improve; it is a (relatively) straightforward problem with limited options and known solutions. But everything in this RFI looks like MBTA really wants to just contract the problem out.
Now isn't the time to bring in-house arguably the only competently-operating division of the agency. Yes, they're the largest commuter rail operator on the continent who still outsources ops, and that's sub-ideal. No, we don't want to change that until the rapid transit and bus divisions have been rehabilitated out of crisis. For at least one more 10-year term it's going to be prudent to keep CR ops outsourced. Keolis has shown they're at least competent at what they do; the T in-house, not so much.

Construction I agree needs more in-house oversight. Not necessarily full-on "MBTA Construction", just lots more professional in-house project managers so individual projects are getting watched before they accrue cost blowouts. We're already getting killed on the costs of station renovations which are going for double, triple, quadruple what they could be, and level boarding is going to trigger dozens more of such instances. The consultants are bleeding us dry there. And the outsourcing of electrification to consultants-managing-consultants-managing-contractors already has very bad omens in this hemisphere by how mismanaged Caltrain's retrofit was and how much it's overcomplicating GO Transit's more sprawling electrification plans. They have to strive for more efficiencies before the iterative process of Regional Rail renovations/retrofittings begins.
 
Now isn't the time to bring in-house arguably the only competently-operating division of the agency. Yes, they're the largest commuter rail operator on the continent who still outsources ops, and that's sub-ideal. No, we don't want to change that until the rapid transit and bus divisions have been rehabilitated out of crisis. For at least one more 10-year term it's going to be prudent to keep CR ops outsourced. Keolis has shown they're at least competent at what they do; the T in-house, not so much.

Construction I agree needs more in-house oversight. Not necessarily full-on "MBTA Construction", just lots more professional in-house project managers so individual projects are getting watched before they accrue cost blowouts. We're already getting killed on the costs of station renovations which are going for double, triple, quadruple what they could be, and level boarding is going to trigger dozens more of such instances. The consultants are bleeding us dry there. And the outsourcing of electrification to consultants-managing-consultants-managing-contractors already has very bad omens in this hemisphere by how mismanaged Caltrain's retrofit was and how much it's overcomplicating GO Transit's more sprawling electrification plans. They have to strive for more efficiencies before the iterative process of Regional Rail renovations/retrofittings begins.
Yeah, I agree. I should have been a little clearer. I wasn't saying we should totally ditch outsourcing commuter rail ops. (I mean, we should. Like you say, this is sub-optimal, but not best to change now).

I was specifically concerned about the construction parts of the RFI. MBTA is looking for companies interested in "Delivery, finance, and long-term maintenance of major capital works including electrification." And asking companies "Are you willing to assume risk delivering or integrating electrification work?" Those look like significant expansions of what private companies would be doing with CR, and looks like a step in the wrong direction.

It is especially worrying that the MBTA is looking for companies to assume financial risk of construction projects. This is one of the practices the Transit Costs Project points to specifically as a big factor in rising construction costs. Those researchers found that trying to push the cost of risks onto private companies leads to higher initial bids, but does basically nothing to actually control eventual costs.
 

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