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

Like you said, it would provide a small benefit to many municipalities outside 128 and on the north shore, but there are no big winners like most of the _X projects, and thus champions.

The Big Dig was done almost 15 years ago. For anyone under 35 or who moved here in the last 15 years, they don't really remember it (or what it was like before it). Smaller projects like GLX or even the Comm Ave bridges and Government Center reconstructions, Terminal E expansion, etc. have shown that there is the ability to do projects right here. Part of the messaging has to be "we learned lessons X, Y, and Z from Big Dig and it will be different because we already dealt with these problems in that project" though.

I feel like the NSRL could have a number of champions if the benefits were better communicated to constituants and politicians. I'm sure many local and state level politicians would be eager to support a project that minimally impacts their communities with construction hassles, while improving connectivity to job centers while also expanding their source of job applicants for local businesses. Given the broad geographic reach of the commuter rail it may not be that difficult to 'onboard' a broad coalition.

I also agree that the Big Dig, while somewhat recent history, is less of a barrier now after demographic changes in Boston and time elapsed. The city and those who remember it have had time to experience the benefits it's provided too - smoothing over some of the pain it was during construction.
 
I also agree that the Big Dig, while somewhat recent history, is less of a barrier now after demographic changes in Boston and time elapsed. The city and those who remember it have had time to experience the benefits it's provided too - smoothing over some of the pain it was during construction.

I definitely agree that the benefits of NSRL have been poorly communicated. But I would disagree that the Big Dig is less of a mental barrier than it used to be. Urban Boston has undergone significant demographic changes in the nearly 2 decades since the Big Dig was largely finished, but the demographic changes in Eastern Massachusetts as a whole have been less drastic. And for the people who don't live in the city itself, I don't think many of them are particularly aware of the benefits. It's not as if they're strolling the Greenway every day. They don't care that the capacity of the highway through downtown is higher than it was in 1999 because they're still sitting in traffic. Sure, the Ted Williams Tunnel was a huge improvement, but drivers from the South are still crawling in traffic along the SE Expressway to get to it. Even without airport traffic from the South/West, the Callahan and Sumner are still slow at peak hours and in need of major repair (thankfully that's in progress). People like us on AB find all of this stuff interesting can point to many major upgrades. But I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone commuting to the city from 128 and beyond who would say much positive about the Big Dig's "benefits." Many people still see it as a huge investment that didn't improve their commute much (if at all).
 
A few additional stray thoughts on pair-matching northside and southside.

The key here is that we want to match like-for-like services, so you can use the same equipment and frequencies on both legs. I see the (future) regional rail network broken up into three buckets.

Within-128 Metro Services (Indigo Lines)

These are stretches that we want to create rapid-transit-like service. 15 min headways max, but if we can get below 10 min, all the better. The prototypical example is the Fairmount Line, with an optional extension to Dedham Corp Center. The B&A to Riverside is a similar example, although I am skeptical that the short-turn service to Riverside could see headways better than 15 minutes; other stations would receive additional service from Framingham trains.

The northside doesn't have any direct equivalents to the Fairmount Line, but the Eastern Route to Salem or Peabody comes close (as a complement to an extended Blue Line, not as a substitute). The Fitchburg Line to Waltham or Weston/128 is a strong contender for 15 min headways, particularly given Waltham's usefulness as a reverse commute destination. The NH Main Line to Anderson RTC is a weaker contender, as it goes through a pretty significant density gap between Winchester and Woburn, and also because it will see several longer-distance routes layered on top of each other. (See below.)

On the face of it, the Reading Line is an obvious contender for a Metro service. However, Metro service through the NSRL will require electrification, and I believe that infrastructure improvements on the Reading Line such as electrification are better spent on an extension of the Orange Line. Additionally, the bottleneck on the mainline tracks next to the existing Orange Line will hamper frequencies.

So, the southside sees 4-8 tph on the Fairmount, and perhaps 4 to Riverside. On the northside, you have Salem/Peabody and Waltham/Weston, both of which could easily merit 4 tph, neither of which necessarily is screaming for 8 tph... but since we are only talking about two southern legs and two northern legs, you could split the difference, and have 6 tph on each northern branch, splitting up 2-to-1 on the southside weighted toward Fairmount. Or you could run a trio of overlapping services:
  • Dedham-Waltham (4 tph)
  • Readville-Lynn (4 tph)
  • Riverside-Peabody (4 tph)
Giving Readville-Downtown-Lynn headways under 10 minutes, providing a one-seat ride from the North Shore to Back Bay and Longwood, and giving Dorchester riders reverse-commute options to both Lynn and Waltham.

These examples are purely illustrative, and the details would still need to be worked out, but it should be very feasible to pair-match the Metro services.

Suburban Services

These are outside of 128 but still close enough to merit 30-min headways all day, per the Regional Rail model TransitMatters proposes. I think there are some modestly clear pair-matches as well here -- you'll notice some conspicuous absences, which I'll get to below.

The NH Main Line to Lowell and Haverhill matches pretty well with the Northeast Corridor to Providence and Stoughton/Taunton/South Coast. Major cities form strong anchors and reverse-commute destinations, with main lines that diverge about 14 miles outside of downtown, and which will see limited stops inside of that merge: Canton Junction, Route 128, Readville, Ruggles on the south (I love TransitMatters, but am very unconvinced about Forest Hills and other intermediate stops), and Wilmington, Anderson/Woburn, Montvale, Winchester, and maybe West Medford. There is some rough parity in travel times -- Lowell is the closest terminal in a major city on the network, and Providence benefits from long straightaways that run pretty much as the crow flies. And while more dispersed, Taunton, New Bedford and Fall River's ~250K residents are roughly equal in number to those in Haverhill, Methuen, Lawrence, and the Andovers; Lawrence is exceptionally dense, but otherwise the SCR cities are roughly as dense as Haverhill and Methuen, again suggesting that it would be relatively easy to pair-match based on demand.

Remaining on the southside are the B&A and Franklin Lines, and on the north we have Fitchburg and Eastern Route. The pair-matching is less ideal here: the Eastern Route and the B&A have roughly similar ridership, but the Fitchburg Line is a bit lower than the Franklin; based on ridership, we might suggest those pairings. On the other hand, the Eastern Route and the Franklin Line share similar profiles with urbanized inner halves and lower density outer halves; Worcester and Fitchburg aren't as similar, but do both have anchor cities at the far end, along with significantly circuitous routes to Boston.

I don't think there's as obvious a conclusion with these four, but I also think we can be reasonably confident that a solution is feasible, and will depend on the particulars of what service looks like at the time. (For example, I can see a strong argument for running Metro services past Dedham into Norwood; at that point, a Suburban Franklin service would pair match well with Fitchburg in terms of profile and frequency, which would leave Fram/Worcester to match with Rockburyport -- an all-the-more parsimonious match if a Marlboro Branch is added: to use some old analogy notation, Worcester : Marlboro : Framingham : : Newburyport : Rockport : Salem.)

Long-Haul Services

These routes are long enough that I can't ever see them being through-routed across the city. Most of these are proposed extensions at this point. Of the current routes, South of Providence is a pretty clear candidate for this group, and I would argue that local services from Worcester and Fitchburg would be as well. Proposed extensions to Buzzard's Bay, Cape Cod, Woonsocket, Milford, Plaistow/north and Portsmouth would also be unlikely to ever through-run; a Nashua extension might, as potentially could a Manchester, but a Concord extension wouldn't.

Fall River & New Bedford are a little odd. As I recall the travel times, I think they are weaker contenders for through-running. If there are Stoughton or Taunton short-turns available, then probably those would through-run and FR/NB trains would terminate at South Station.

Exceptions

The Needham Line should be converted to rapid transit via extensions of the Orange and Green Lines and removed from the Regional Rail network.

The elephant in the room here is my conspicuous absence of the Old Colony Lines. One reason is physical: the Old Colony would require its own dedicated portal, adding significant cost to the project. [EDIT: This is not true, as F-Line points out below. The cost of adding a portal for the OCR is not significant in the overall context of this project.] Another reason is network-based: the Southside has more lines and more ridership than the north, so some lines never will run through. If you subtract the ridership of the OCR Lines, northside and southside ridership is roughly equal. To me, the portal issue then makes it tough to justify. But there's a third piece of the puzzle here...
 
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Reasonable Expectations for Electrification

The Providence Line (minus a few additional wires and a new substation) is already electrified, and there is reasonable momentum afoot to electrify the Fairmount. Somewhat less momentum is also present to electrify part or all of the Newburyport/Rockport Lines.

But in order to through run all the Suburban Services I've listed here, you'd need to electrify all of the Lowell, Haverhill, Newburyport, Rockport, Fitchburg, Worcester, Franklin, and Stoughton Lines. While that might someday happen, I don't think it will happen anytime soon, and I don't think it's reasonable to plan around.

What I do think is more reasonable is targeting those Metro services I described above, where there is clearer demand and benefit to through-running, lower capital costs, and more existing infrastructure. Suburban services can continue to run into the surface terminals, each with ample opportunities for easy transfers to through-running Metro services. (This is another reason why I don't see through-running OCR anytime soon: the Red Line already provides the "128 Metro Service" on that trunk, so there'd be little incentive for the more modest starting build I'm suggesting here.)

Providence offers a bit of an unusual situation, both in terms of existing infrastructure and demand. Providence clearly isn't a "128 Metro Service"; however, the infrastructure is almost entirely extant, and demand would be high enough that through-running might be worthwhile. I also think it's worth seeing the Providence Line as an "express line" from 128, offering a different kind of service than Fairmount/Dedham would. This could be accomplished using layered electrified Suburban services to Providence and Stoughton/points south, without actually having a short-turning service at Westwood/128.

On the northside, it's a little trickier, but I do think there would be benefit to all-day through-run service on the NH Main Line -- either from Anderson/Woburn as a semi-express, mirroring Westwood/128's role, or running all the way from Lowell. Lowell is the largest city in northern Mass, and has genuine potential as reverse-commute destination; Lowell is relatively near to Boston and has very few station stops in between, and has a relatively direct alignment. With speed upgrades and raised frequencies, Lowell could become as closely linked to downtown as Braintree or Riverside are.

The piece I am less clear on is the role of the NH Main Line as a freight route -- I don't know what the impact would be on electrification and frequent rail. So that's the wildcard there. If the NH Main could handle Metro services from Lowell, those could through-run pretty nicely to Providence. If not, Metro service trains from Providence could be through-run to Waltham, Lynn, Anderson/Woburn, or some combination of the three.

So, what I think we land on is an NSRL that is designed to add rapid-transit-like Metro services to:
  • Fairmount/Dedham
  • Allston/Brighton/Newton/Riverside
  • Waltham
  • Lynn/Peabody
And potentially "Metro Express" services to
  • Providence
  • Lowell
As well as a handful of Amtrak services that would be through-run to Woburn where they likely would have a locomotive change before heading on to Maine and/or New Hampshire.

If additional Suburban services become electrified, then they can be added as half-time extensions of the above Metro service -- meaning there is room for growth in the future, but not making the whole enterprise contingent on being able to ride one-seat from Franklin to Salem on Day 1. Unelectrified suburban services can run alongside the Metro services here, in some cases raising frequencies into genuine rapid transit territory, terminating at surface level at North Station/South Station. With reasonable scheduling, Suburban > Metro transfers could be encouraged at places like Readville, Sullivan, and Porter -- relocating those transfer points from North Station/Back Bay/South Station, and therefore continuing to relieve pressure on the subway, even if without the one-seat ride.

A "Metro NSRL" would add what amounts to a new rapid transit line through downtown, relieving pressure on the Orange Line as riders on the three major northern trunks within 128 (Fitchburg, NH Main, Eastern) would no longer need to transfer at North Station for the "last mile", downtown and Back Bay employers would get access to a new job market on the northside, and up-front capital costs would be significantly lower due to fewer electrification miles needed on Day 1.
 
The elephant in the room here is my conspicuous absence of the Old Colony Lines. One reason is physical: the Old Colony would require its own dedicated portal, adding significant cost to the project. Another reason is network-based: the Southside has more lines and more ridership than the north, so some lines never will run through. If you subtract the ridership of the OCR Lines, northside and southside ridership is roughly equal. To me, the portal issue then makes it tough to justify. But there's a third piece of the puzzle here...

If you don't build an OC portal, you don't get a Fairmount one. They split from each other a mere 500+ ft. before seeing daylight, and share 90% of a long lead tunnel. You can't VE out one of the southside portals without VE'ing out 2 of 3. If Fairmount's a must-have for NSRL, then you must build an OC portal...they're conjoined.
 
Didn’t the most recent NSRL study exclude an OC portal for cost reasons? And even if not, how does a Fairmount portal require an OC portal?

Or is your point that the add-on costs of an OC portal are low enough that it’s worth it to build to maintain long-term operational flexibility?
 
Didn’t the most recent NSRL study exclude an OC portal for cost reasons? And even if not, how does a Fairmount portal require an OC portal?

Or is your point that the add-on costs of an OC portal are low enough that it’s worth it to build to maintain long-term operational flexibility?
They portal-up on opposite sides of the north tip of Southampton Yard. Deleting 500 ft. of shallow tunnel under a rail yard to pinch pennies for only one portal is an absolutely trivial amount of cost savings given that you'll still be spending at least a billion dollars on the portion of lead tunnel shared by both portals. It's basically a mirror-image of how the two northside portals fork to the Fitchburg and NH Main/Western/Eastern sides of Boston Engine Terminal. No one is rationally ever going to omit only one for the sake of chasing cost savings. Finishing the job is a rounding error's worth of construction.


The most recent NSRL study was a hot mess of Baker/Pollack tankapalooza politics, if you didn't notice. The places they put their fingers on the scale didn't make sense in a lot of places. Not making sense to the point of self-defeat was kind of the whole objective. They were cooked books.
 
Fair enough. As I described elsewhere, operationally I still see OCR as the odd one out, at least in a first phase of NSRL ops, which I do maintain would be best focused on Metro services on the 4 (or 6) legs I laid out above. The Red Line already offers a one-seat ride through and across the core, so an "Indigo Line" to Braintree wouldn't add much. (Though see caveat below.)

In a future state where the OC is electrified, or the T has enough dual-modes, or enough battery trains, then clearly it will be valuable to be able to through-run at least some Suburban Old Colony services, so it would of course be great to keep the portal. I'll amend my post with the correction.

Caveat: the strongest case I see for Phase 1 NSRL ops down the Old Colony is if we could institute through-running Metro service from Brockton. Despite being further out, like Lowell and Providence it is a significant urban hub that would significantly benefit from better access across Greater Boston. Beyond electrification, I think this would also entail addressing the capacity constraints between JFK and Braintree, which adds additional prerequisite -- although truth be told, even just hourly service through the NSRL from Brockton could be beneficial.
 
Fair enough. As I described elsewhere, operationally I still see OCR as the odd one out, at least in a first phase of NSRL ops, which I do maintain would be best focused on Metro services on the 4 (or 6) legs I laid out above. The Red Line already offers a one-seat ride through and across the core, so an "Indigo Line" to Braintree wouldn't add much. (Though see caveat below.)

In a future state where the OC is electrified, or the T has enough dual-modes, or enough battery trains, then clearly it will be valuable to be able to through-run at least some Suburban Old Colony services, so it would of course be great to keep the portal. I'll amend my post with the correction.

Caveat: the strongest case I see for Phase 1 NSRL ops down the Old Colony is if we could institute through-running Metro service from Brockton. Despite being further out, like Lowell and Providence it is a significant urban hub that would significantly benefit from better access across Greater Boston. Beyond electrification, I think this would also entail addressing the capacity constraints between JFK and Braintree, which adds additional prerequisite -- although truth be told, even just hourly service through the NSRL from Brockton could be beneficial.

This is a chicken-and-egg thing. It's hard to justify even electrification of any of the OC if the single-track mainline bottleneck remains unsolved. That's just not going to amortize its construction costs if service on the branches simply cannot go better than every 50-60 minutes, not to mention 50-60 minutes at each of the mainline stops given the way they have to be fileted by branch schedule. And that low a frequency cap is not going to float much share of a dual-mode fleet either, because the equipment shares are miniscule compared to every other line on the system that has native capacity to scale so much denser. If electrification's great payoff is Regional Rail service levels ( :30 to 495, :15 to 128), obviously you have to be talking up a line that is in some way/shape/form capable of plying real Regional Rail. Right now the political will is all kinds of fucked for fixing the single-track bottleneck, because the I-93 add-a-lane crowd always hijacks it to boondogglery. But in the real world it's not thaaaaaat bad a fix. It can even be done on the installment plan well compatible with the financially constrained universe we live in: DT'ing JFK+QC station platforms first with cost consciousness, fixing Savin Hill in a more expensive later installment, fixing Wollaston-Braintree in another TBD installment. Any which way the issue gets forced and the value proposition hammered out eons before NSRL goes to shovel. The only reason there's no talk of it is because they don't want to do any of it...not even to the degree that bailing out the main will give South Coast Rail Phase I's anemic frequencies some leg to stand on.

If systemwide electrification is a prerequisite for service inclusion in NSRL, the drive for electrification will bring the fix. You will by NSRL's opening have wholly supportable :30 bi-directional patterns on all 3 OC branches to pair-match as equal units with whatever their northside counterparts. If we aren't able to consent with ourselves for fixing the single-track bottleneck with relatively straightforward solutions, there's never going to be enough consent to build any NSRL to begin with. So if crayoning a universe where NSRL exists, you are functionally crayoning a universe where the OC has long been double-tracked and is up-to-snuff on capacity. And of course, you're building 9/10ths of the OC portal by virtue of building the Fairmount portal, so there is no practical build universe where Fairmount gets included but the OC does not.
 
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So if crayoning a universe where NSRL exists, you are functionally crayoning a universe where the OC has long been double-tracked and is up-to-snuff on capacity. And of course, you're building 9/10ths of the OC portal by virtue of building the Fairmount portal, so there is no practical build universe where Fairmount gets included but the OC does not.

Yes, this is the key point, and always an occupational hazard when crayoning -- it's important to keep the sequence of events straight. I do enjoy gaming this out using phased crayon maps, but of course that's a lot more work, so I don't do it as often.

Honestly, there are some days when I think that we should phase out the term "North South Rail Link" and just start advocating for an "Indigo Line from Fairmount to Lynn" -- deemphasize North Station and South Station, and highlight the cross-region connectivity. Don't change the actual physical proposals. But use a more familiar concept to gain public support. (I am reminded of Valérie Plante's proposal for La ligne rose in Montreal, which, from what I can gather, had reasonable popularity during her campaign due to its pithiness.)
 
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So if electrification of Providence/Fairmount/Salem lines are coming in the supposed near future, shouldn’t the T be thinking about dual-mode locomotives now? I’ve heard a lot of talk about EMU’s but wouldn’t these be a sort of novelty until all lines are electrified? Dual-modes could use all existing coaches and be interchangeable on all lines. On a side-note, I also think Amtrak has a pretty neat idea of using train sets with a pantograph that can power the diesel locomotive, which would mean there’s no need for a locomotive swap when switching to OCS, but I don’t see how those could fit into the CR system.
 
The B&A to Riverside is a similar example, although I am skeptical that the short-turn service to Riverside could see headways better than 15 minutes; other stations would receive additional service from Framingham trains.

The Needham Line should be converted to rapid transit via extensions of the Orange and Green Lines and removed from the Regional Rail network.

I've been of the opinion that Indigo to Riverside alleviates some of the Green Line Central Subway capacity issues that could be caused by Needham GLX without having to do a Green Line megaproject first.
Riverside Green Line trains could mostly terminate at Kenmore, with the Needham trains taking over the through-running that Riverside trains do today. Riverside would retain a 1-seat ride to Back Bay and Downtown via Indigo, which would also be faster than the existing service. Riverside-Kenmore short-turns with today's headways would accommodate LMA connections at Riverside and the existing traffic today. Woodland, Waban, and Eliot are the least used D stations, and would still retain frequent connection to Kenmore.
 
So if electrification of Providence/Fairmount/Salem lines are coming in the supposed near future, shouldn’t the T be thinking about dual-mode locomotives now? I’ve heard a lot of talk about EMU’s but wouldn’t these be a sort of novelty until all lines are electrified? Dual-modes could use all existing coaches and be interchangeable on all lines. On a side-note, I also think Amtrak has a pretty neat idea of using train sets with a pantograph that can power the diesel locomotive, which would mean there’s no need for a locomotive swap when switching to OCS, but I don’t see how those could fit into the CR system.
EMUs are necessary for their acceleration capability. No dual-mode extant can come close.
So, If phase 1 is implemented(Prov &Fairmont on South side) and E/W gives us electrification on Worcester, EMUs would be 1/2 the Southside fleet.
 
I've been of the opinion that Indigo to Riverside alleviates some of the Green Line Central Subway capacity issues that could be caused by Needham GLX without having to do a Green Line megaproject first.
Riverside Green Line trains could mostly terminate at Kenmore, with the Needham trains taking over the through-running that Riverside trains do today. Riverside would retain a 1-seat ride to Back Bay and Downtown via Indigo, which would also be faster than the existing service. Riverside-Kenmore short-turns with today's headways would accommodate LMA connections at Riverside and the existing traffic today. Woodland, Waban, and Eliot are the least used D stations, and would still retain frequent connection to Kenmore.

*opens mouth to object*

That’s…

*reconsiders*

…not actually a terrible idea, at least as an interim measure until/unless D-to-E is built. I’m not sure I would short-turn all Riverside trains at Kenmore, but... this could be a workable piece of the puzzle. The question is, how often would Indigo trains run from Riverside?
 
Lowell is the largest city in northern Mass

Slight nitpick, but this is mostly because it has larger city limits than Lawrence. The latter packs more people into a smaller space, and if you factor in adjacent sections of Methuen and North Andover then I imagine you'd find Lawrence is actually "bigger".
 
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Slight nitpick, but this is mostly because it has larger city limits than Lawrence. The latter actually packs more people into a smaller space, and if you factor in adjacent sections of Methuen and North Andover then I imagine you'd find Lawrence is actually "bigger".
It’s actually really close. The census map maxes out at 10K or more per sq mile (the darkest blue) so hard to tell how dense it really is within this segment. However, from the eyeball test, it does appear Lawrence (and surrounding) has a slightly larger area of dense population than Lowell (and surrounding).

And as we all know, individual city population size comparisons are often misleading as it doesn’t account for city area. Jacksonville FL vs Boston case in point.
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The question is, how often would Indigo trains run from Riverside?

I guess part of that depends on how a new Riverside station would be configured and whether it would be designed to accommodate connections from through-running trains on the B&A to the Highland Branch or just those terminating at Riverside. I couldn't find any mockups in a quick search, but getting all that infrastructure in such a small area could be difficult. Not having a connection over less than a half mile would be unfortunate to make trips like Framingham to Longwood not require a long walk from Lansdowne or backtracking -- although this is the status quo.
 
I though of something this morning... You know the hideous parcel next to MassDOT HQ off Kneeland Street? The one that no sane developer would touch because it is bounded by highway ramps and not suitable for residential or office use? The one that Charlie Baker has begged someone to buy? The one that would be perfect for only a handful of things?
What if.... and hear me out here.... what if we kill two birds with one stone?
1. The Fed takes The Hideous land from the Commonwealth and
2. Builds a new Postal Service Distribution Center there with plenty of parking next to quick access highway ramps that would be used by mail trucks constantly, to a large degree it would keep them off city streets.
3. The Fed rips down the old Postal Service building
4. We tunnel down behind the I-93 ventilation building next to the adjacent rail coming into a dedicated NSRL ROW connecting to one of the three previously proposed alignments
5. Build access to South Station.
6. Once complete, cover the rail, reroute and raise Dorchester Ave about a yard or so, berming the Ft. Point side
7. Build a ton of Toronto-esque waterfront apartment buildings, TOD all the way.
8. Gloat about the awesomeness.

Just look.... Move Green to Yellow
GoPostal.jpg
 

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