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

themissinglink said:
www.bostonglobe.com

MBTA receives nearly $140 million grant for Haverhill Line improvement - The Boston Globe

The MBTA will also upgrade the Reading, North Wilmington, Ballardvale, and Andover stations with high-level platforms, improving accessibility.
www.bostonglobe.com www.bostonglobe.com
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The high-level platforms that are planned for the Haverhill Line will be shorter than 800 feet:
According to an MBTA spokesperson, “the plan for all four stations (at Andover, Ballardvale, North Wilmington, and Reading) is to have two-sided, short high-level platforms. They will not be full-length (not 800 feet), but they will be accessible.”
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The project will be split into two phases, with the first breaking ground in 2028 and the second breaking ground in 2029:
A project schedule from the MBTA’s grant application suggests that these improvements could be in place by 2030.
The grant application suggests that the work will proceed in two phases. Phase 1 would begin construction in early 2028, and the shorter segment of double-track from Lowell Junction through Ballardvale, plus the construction of new high-level platforms at Ballardvale and Andover stations.
“Phase 2” would begin construction in 2029, and includes the longer section of double-track from Reading to Wilmington Junction (where the Haverhill Line intersects with the Wildcat branch line) and the new high-level platforms at Reading and North Wilmington stations.
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The Tewksbury Street grade crossing will be eliminated as part of the first phase:
Haverhill-Line-double-track-project-map.png

 
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Overall good news, but Phase II double tracking N Wilmington to Reading is a head scratcher. Isn’t the long term goal still to route outer Haverhill via Lowell?
 
Highwayguy said:
Overall good news, but Phase II double tracking N Wilmington to Reading is a head scratcher. Isn’t the long term goal still to route outer Haverhill via Lowell?
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If it tightens up the on-time performance, it's probably worth doing right now in spite of the future uncertainty as increased reliability will drive some immediate ridership gains even predating line-wide frequency increases. Haverhill definitely needs that. Although I was led to believe that the single-tracking around Ballardvale and Andover was a much bigger source of delays than Reading-Wilmington Jct., at least once you've doubled-up Reading Station -proper with a passing solution for thru trains to get around short-turning trains. Double-track on the blank slot of a double-track ROW doesn't cost all that much, and there wouldn't be a lot of signal mods involved since they aren't planning any crossovers between modded Reading Station and modded Wilmington Jct. (i.e. the short-turn location is not moving any further north of Reading Station). So the far bigger cost variable here is going to be whether they can keep the station renovation costs at the 4 affected stops sane without doing something stupid like more dwell-killing 400 ft. platforms.

AFAIK the goal is still to separate Reading trains from thru-Haverhill trains when the time comes to increase frequencies beyond 128, and beyond this first reach of :30 service to Reading. Traffic management around the grade crossings and Medford-Malden single-track adds a bit of chaos factor to the schedule, so for timekeeping accuracy it's better to keep the longer-distance trains on the mostly grade-separated route and keep the trains that do have to juggle the single-track and crossings on a much shorter schedule so delay time simply doesn't have enough opportunity to accrue. Especially when you consider that there needs to be an orderly procession of traffic on the combined Eastern + Western Routes through Somerville to the Reading Jct. split while basically doubling, tripling, quadrupling overall future frequencies through there. Can't have one more-brittle-than-the-others schedule dragging things down for everyone on the combined trunk. Plus the travel time difference via the NH Main is large enough that it'll shrink the over-long thru-Haverhill schedules and drive more ridership on the outer portion of the line even while making the local stops West Medford-Wilmington. The T's own Rail Vision studies and the TransitMatters RER analysis both conclude that relocation to the NH Main is a no-brainer on the pure benefits, never mind for just avoiding the constraints.
 

MBTA Reveals Its Plans For 'Phase 1' of New Widett Circle Rail Yard - Streetsblog Massachusetts

The planned facility will include charging facilities for electric trains and the first phase is expected to be operational by 2030.
mass.streetsblog.org mass.streetsblog.org
In a public hearing on Wednesday evening at the State Transportation Building in downtown Boston, MBTA staff revealed that they are now ready to begin construction on the first phase of a new rail yard for the site. The work will demolish several of the former warehouse buildings, relocate utilities, and add fill to raise the ground elevation of the site (which used to be the middle of Boston’s South Bay) and protect it from rising sea levels. Once that site work is complete, the T will install six new storage tracks in the center of the site, each of which would be long enough to store a 9-car trainset.
Those tracks will also have overhead catenary structures that can recharge new battery-powered trains. The T is currently negotiating to lease 7 four-car battery-powered trains that would run on the Fairmount Line by the early 2030s; the agency is also shopping for 10 new battery-electric train engines that would run on the electrified Providence Line.
Alistair Sawers, the MBTA’s Director of Rail Modernization, explained that the new layover tracks at Widett would also store older diesel trains.
[...]
The T hopes to solicit construction bids for the Phase 1 project later this fall, and begin construction in March. Construction is expected to take two years, followed by several months of testing and commissioning the new tracks.
The T is also doing preliminary design for a second phase of work that would add 12 more layover tracks and a train inspection pit. A third phase would build out more tracks on the rest of its Widett Circle property.
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Governor Healey Secures $153 Million in Federal Transportation Funding​

Governor Maura Healey today announced that Massachusetts has successfully secured $153 million in additional federal transportation funding for 16 MassDOT and MBTA projects across the state.
The funding comes through the Federal Highway Administration’s annual redistribution process, which makes federal transportation dollars available when other states and programs are unable to use them. Because Massachusetts had eligible projects ready to move forward, MassDOT and the MBTA were able to compete for these additional dollars and bring them to Massachusetts.
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  • Boston ($32.64 million): Widett Layover Facility (Project ID S13532 | MBTA CIP ID P0952)
    • Construction of a new Regional Rail facility to meet the needs of Railroad Operations for mid-day and overnight storage, inspection, light maintenance, fueling, cleaning, and crew facilities. Includes a 6-track electrified layover facility to support battery-electric Regional Rail vehicles.
  • Newton ($15 million): Newtonville Station. (Project ID S13533 | MBTA CIP ID P0170)
    • Design and construction of a fully accessible Newtonville Regional Rail Station with 400 ft. high-level double-sided platforms. Includes up-and-over structure, stairs, elevators, wayfinding, and other improved amenities.
  • Boston ($5.36 million): Fairmount Line infrastructure supporting decarbonized service. (Project ID S13534 | MBTA CIP ID P1315)
    • Infrastructure upgrades to support decarbonized 20-minute service on the Fairmount Line, enhancing sustainability, frequency, and reliability.
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Charlie_mta said:
What does the Fairmount Line infrastructure supporting "decarbonized" service mean? I assume its readying the corridor for the battery-electric multiple unit (BEMU) trains (which will start around 2030), including installing overhead catenary wires at South Station and Readville for the BEMUs to recharge? .
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There's $68-84 million estimated in support infrastructure needed for the billion-dollar BEMU's, so these grants are only a down-payment on that. And the cost jumped a lot in the May project update from what they were projecting for all this support infrastructure last year. They're also no longer doing any charging point at Readville whatsoever; the SS+Widett terminal district will be the only place the BEMU's run under-wire, as they got sufficient assurances that the Stadlers' charging range would hold up.

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Still more expensive than European orders generally are at this point (seemingly a ~1.5-2x ratio, ish) but given the lack of scale in North America so far it's honestly pretty good for transit project pricing.

Now if only we could actually learn from European best-practices for BEMU operations, but uh, baby steps I guess.
 
TheRatmeister said:
Still more expensive than European orders generally are at this point (seemingly a ~1.5-2x ratio, ish) but given the lack of scale in North America so far it's honestly pretty good for transit project pricing.

Now if only we could actually learn from European best-practices for BEMU operations, but uh, baby steps I guess.
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Metra is buying pretty much vanilla FLIRTs straight outta the catalog (save for a light bit of FRA-compliance cruft under the relaxed new rules) while the T is buying Caltrain's customized-to-@#$% KISSes, and fumbling around blindly trying to customize them even more. Stadler is kind of the darlings of the transpo blogosphere because of their engineering prowess at building efficiently to any configuration, but if there's one rule with their pricing it's DON'T OVERCUSTOMIZE or you will get absolutely reamed. Moreso than with any other builder out there, as most will cater their orders to higher degree of custom specs as a baseline in tradeoff for a longer offramp on delivery times. Stadler doesn't. They will offer a dizzying array of catalog options and offer them for faster assembly because their railcar families are all very modularly-constructed, but once you go outside the catalog with *any* specs-tinkering--even chintzy stuff like the door-interface rabbit hole that sucked in Caltrain--the customer gets sacked with all the risk and truly gruesome premiums. Unfortunately specs tinkering is like crack for U.S. transit agencies, and Stadler's reps encouraged it by not pushing back--and outright goading--all of the fiddely nonsense Caltrain was proposing, because that just made their payday exponential. The T being serial addicts at specs tinkering made them unusually easy marks for it.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
And only one-fifth as expensive purchased as the ones the T is going to LEASE and then have to give back.🤮
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How are you getting one-fifth? I think the Fairmount Line trains might be ~2.5 times more expensive.

(Sorry to be pedantic. I'm planning to yell at my representatives again and just want to make sure I have my numbers exactly right.)

MBTA will lease 7 four-car trains for $765M. Metra will get 8 two-car trains for $154M. So Metra is paying about one-fifth but getting about half the train.
 
Metra's contract costs went up significantly (ending up at $365 million) after various change orders, including tripling the battery size.

Also only 3 cars on each MBTA train can carry passengers, so it's effectively 21 cars for $765M. Both cars on the Metra train can carry passengers, with the batteries in a center section (similar to a Type 8 Green Line car).
 
4300th said:
Metra's contract costs went up significantly (ending up at $365 million) after various change orders, including tripling the battery size.

Also only 3 cars on each MBTA train can carry passengers, so it's effectively 21 cars for $765M. Both cars on the Metra train can carry passengers, with the batteries in a center section (similar to a Type 8 Green Line car).
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So what's a fair apple-to-apples comparison?
 
ritchiew said:
So what's a fair apple-to-apples comparison?
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I think we need to know passenger capacity for the cars carrying passengers; or for the trainset. Something like a cost per seat; since the point of the trains is to move passengers.

I believe the METRA vanilla FLIRT seats 112 in the 2 car set, and can add a 46 seat trailer car. (Not sure if METRA is buying the trailer cars.)

I don't think the MBTA 4 car configuration has an announced passenger seating capacity.
 
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JeffDowntown said:
I think we need to know passenger capacity for the cars carrying passengers; or for the trainset. Something like a cost per seat; since the point of the trains is to move passengers.

I believe the METRA vanilla FLIRT seats 112 in the 2 car set, and can add a 46 seat trailer car. (Not sure if METRA is buying the trailer cars.)

I don't think the MBTA 4 car configuration has an announced passenger seating capacity.
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If it's the same seating configuration as the Caltrain KISSes without any additional specs fiddling to change the layout it'll be 93-96 seats per car, with slight differences in the powered vs. trailer cars.

For a bi-level, that's pretty pathetic. It won't matter on Fairmount because the per-run loading is much lighter with much flatter peak-hour spikes than most of the suburban lines, but they likely can't be used (in the very unlikely event that any option orders get drained) on any other line in the system because even two sets coupled back-to-back would seat fewer than a minimum 4-car set of push-pull bi-levels. Instead of doing all-2x2 seating the cars have a weird mix of 2x2 and longitudinal, with random open areas for standees and of course large quantities of seats deleted to fit in the lower-level doors. The base KISS design is based on the much smaller Swiss loading gauge, with the international versions superficially buffing out the aluminum shell to be flush with the high platform (the Russian versions are even a little wider than the U.S. version). But the interior components and floorplate are still laid out according to the smaller Swiss gauge, so the electrical components end up eating up more interior space and deleting more seats than they ideally should for a U.S.-deployed car while there is some wasted empty space between the interior walls and the bigger exterior shell. Instead of coming up with a 'cleaner'-design U.S. & etc. floorplate for the (majority of) countries that don't have restricted loading gauges, they told Caltrain (and others in similar boat) that they'd have to accept the Swiss floorplate or be charged as a customization at $$$ if they were to rearrange components to optimize interior space. So Caltrain didn't do it, and ended up with a somewhat crippled-seating bi-level set as a result. Ironically, all the trouble they had with the low-door interface was directly tied to the small loading gauge of the floorplate. If you click the link of the Caltrain picture in this post you can see the bottom of the carbody folds inward considerably including at the bottom of the low-level doors, and that completely fucked up the U.S. low-platform interface with the folding steps and wheelchair bridgeplates. The T's rumored customizations end up fiddling with that problematic element even more because they simply refuse to raise the Fairmount and Readville platforms and are trying to make this custom design work with platforms that are at ground-level 8 inches lower than Caltrain's low platforms.

Stadler makes good product fast, but at the downside that you have to accept some compromises like inferior seating along the way and that buyers will take it completely up the ass if they do *any* off-roading with specs fiddling from the modular showroom model.
 
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