Regional Rail (RUR) & North-South Rail Link (NSRL)
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Agreed. TBM issue aside (theoretically could you dig out the station and leave the tbm in place to dig the tunnel later? I would assume not because by the time political, financial, and logistical will is in action to finish the job it probably wouldn't be usable). My question was not about what made sense from practical need. If we exist in a political environment where megaprojects are nearly impossible, how could we hope to build NSRL without some kind of piecemeal solution? The value of the under stub-end terminal lay only with it's pottential to start NSRL. If it truely is a construction non-starter to be able to start and stop then I do not see a feasible way around the political barrier for the forseeable future. Maybe a post-East/West where more of the state "values" the rail network?
@fattony , I had considered your point already and it is really moot without an electrified service to go through it.
HenryAlan
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Yeah, I don't know that it's true, but I do think that is the mindset of our political leadership -- fed money will be available at some point, we'll do the project at that time.
bigeman312
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The answer, as @fattony alluded to, is that you should look at “piecemeal” differently. Tunneling is one piece. Some other pieces include:
* Rebuilding South Attleboro Station
* Rebuilding Natick Center Station with high platforms and increased capacity to accommodate a third track
* Rebuilding Winchester Center Station with high platforms
* Rebuilding the Newton stations with high platforms
* Double tracking the Franklin Line
* Many, many more
There are so many punch list items that need to be taken care of before an effective North-South Rail Link (NSRL) Tunnel is in use, that this can be done in a piecemeal fashion by focusing on things like completing the rebuild of all of the stations that currently are inaccessible and will need high platforms to serve the future NSRL. Many of the ones I listed, I chose because they are in progress.
Koopzilla24
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There’s also the 3/4 million people that live in the 4 Western Counties that tend to staunchly oppose big state funding for Boston area projects that they feel has zero benefit for them. They’d need at the absolute very least a guarantee that NSRL would come with a new Amtrak Lobster Bisque that runs all the way to Portland from Albany via Boston.
On that note there doesn’t seem to be enough emphasis given to the Feds on the potential services that could be served by Amtrak with NSRL in a market that is very used to and open to train travel. NH or ME to the Cape NYC or DC has Vermonter or Ethan Allen potential.
Here is a fiddly question. Specifically on the Eastern Route (at least as far as Lynn), how closely can trains run together? Would the signaling etc permit trains as often as every five minutes? (Assume that roughly half would be running through the NSRL, so capacity through the North Station interlocking isn’t an urgent issue.)
(No, I am not thinking about replacing BLX with Regional Rail —am thinking about something different.)
(No, I am not thinking about replacing BLX with Regional Rail —am thinking about something different.)
F-Line to Dudley
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You would need to solve for the slow zones, which will cost a fair amount of money.
- Eastern Ave. grade crossing in Chelsea imposing something like a 30 MPH speed limit, and unlike the others which cluster around the Chelsea station stop...it's punitive for schedules being out in the open. The 2004 North Shore Transit Improvements study proposed eliminating Eastern Ave. crossing with a road-over-rail bridge. You'd probably have to act on that to have a leg to stand on. Merely tarting up the crossing protection isn't going to whack the restriction, since it's a bad-angle crossing of a wide, high-speed road with lots of gas tanker traffic. This is #1 with a bullet on changes you'd have to make to densify service to that degree.
- Pruning some of the other crossings helps to a lesser degree. It's about the same restriction here, but because the Chelsea station stop (which I'm assuming you're not going to express thru) is in the middle of the cluster it doesn't hurt too bad. Closing superfluous 3rd St., closing 6th St./Arlington St. and making it a pedestrian-only duckunder help...as does upgrading the crossing protection at 2nd and Spruce St.'s (Everett Ave. is already quad-gated).
- Saugus Draw approaches are somewhat speed-restricted due to the age of the bridge. The T preliminarily has an overhaul project in design, but given that the nature of the rehabbed bridge isn't changing I'm not sure if there'll still be a speed restriction afterwards. It would be nice if we could eliminate the movable bridge altogether for a somewhat taller fixed span that could run at 100% full native track speed, since the amount of silt in the river sharply inhibits boat traffic.
Beyond that you might have some congestion issues in Somerville out to Reading Jct. with co-running with :15 Urban Rail on the inner Western Route. That depends somewhat on whether you're able to speed up the terminal district any (though a Sullivan Sq. infill will probably swallow all those gains), so your practical traffic limiter for a hyper-dense Eastern may be the conjoined lines (in which case, OLX-Reading may have to go on the table).
Good stuff. Yeah, in this scenario I am assuming that Reading has gone to OLX, giving hyper-Eastern full reign at least to the NSRL portal.
And yeah, in the same vein as other comments upthread, I’ll assume that the Eastern Ave crossing has been grade-separated, and that as much as possible has been done with the downtown Chelsea crossings. (In a post-NSRL world, it seems reasonable to assume these are done.)
It sounds like the Saugus Draw approaches then become the limiting factor. Do you remember what the speed limit actually is? (Though it occurs to me that River Works/Lynnport/whatever is right there, so to a certain extent you'll need to have deceleration to stop anyway.)
In this idea I'm sketching out, my top objective is hyperdense service to Chelsea, with <10 min headways to North Station (either Upper or Lower), and ≤15 min headways through the NSRL. Continued hyper-high-freq to Lynn is nice but secondary. One reason why I was looking at Lynn was turning capacity: Lynn Station historically was quad-tracked, and there sorta is enough of a remaining footprint that you could quad-track+double-platform it again. Two extra tracks would let you turn 4 tph without blocking through-traffic.
I looked at quad-tracking Chelsea station but the ROW is more constrained, in part because I want to preserve the extra width to the south for circumferential LRT/BRT. (Which I guess you could stick on a short viaduct above the station.) But...
Looking at the satellite, you have about 2500 feet between Broadway and Eastern Ave where the ROW is primarily abutted on at least one side by parking lots. So perhaps you could fit two inner tracks along here to use for turning those 4 tph. (Or maybe a single inner track but double length with multiple turnouts... idk.) There probably isn't room for a platform, but I think demand for a station would be light anyway. Turning along there would avoid the Saugus Draw, and in theory could avoid Eastern Ave as well (although it sounds like Eastern Ave grade separation is worthwhile on its own merits).
The layer cake I'm toying with:
| Origin | Destination | Frequency | Mode |
|---|---|---|---|
| Newburyport Branch | North Station Upper | 2 tph | diesel |
| Rockport Branch | North Station Upper | 2 tph | diesel |
| Peabody Branch | NSRL | 2 tph | electric |
| Lynn or Chelsea (ish) | NSRL | 2-4 tph | electric |
(One additional benefit of finding a way to turn trains at/near Chelsea is that it'll keep running times tighter on whichever Southside routes are thru-routed.)
BeyondRevenue
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Looking at your North Station Upper... with the exception of Garden events, I'd guess deboardings at North Station will be a third of south bound NSRL through riders. I base this mostly after years of watching throngs of downtown workers sprinting from Post Office Square and beyond to North Station around 5-5:30. And jam-packed Orange Line trains that drain at NS. The only reason North Station is there at all is because we haven't ever had a NSRL. We've just made ourselves expect an unresponsive transportation system instead of demanding one that goes where we need it to... or at least closer.
Ever since the first Hackney driver's lobbyist bought off key Boston officials to maintain the South Station <> North Station cab ride shakedown, the NSRL has had a difficult go.
From horse carts to Uber. A Century of Regress.
I really appreciate what you are all doing but I fear I've been misunderstood. In the sandbagged 2018 study (pg. 63 onward is where we're looking), upstream investments account for $1.32 Billion and Electric trains account for an additional $2.44 Billion which leaves $17.73 billion remaining just for the portals, tunnels, stations, etc for NSRL itself. I agree and fully understand that the upstream investments (including electrification and procurement of electric locomotives) will need to happen either prior to or concurrent with the build of the actual link. You are starting to wade into the weeds on those "upstream investments" and I am explicitly not talking about that part of the project. My question remains: is it possible to break up the $17.73 Billion of the build itself or is this impossible? @BosMaineiac gave their reasons for the answer being, "No" and I am looking to see if that's the limits of reality. Is there no way to break it down to get over the political hurdle of a mega-project (understanding that the figure is sandbagged, but also there is inflation so the real cost could even remain true to the sandbagged figure anyway).
Is that clearer of a question? Please keep in mind that I'm likely up to speed on a lot of the materials and conversations you are, but I am also not an engineer nor involved in construction (tunneling or otherwise) so am looking for that perspective given that many of you are or tangentially are.
I did some analysis on the costs broken out in the 2018 study upthread. (During which analysis I discovered more and more absolutely bonkers things in that study.) I then did a subsequent analysis on potential construction costs for a Green Line Reconfiguration (broken out over two posts); toward the end of that analysis, I applied a different estimation approach to the NSRL, and got broadly similar costs to the 2018 study (when compared to the figures they arrived at before applying a bizarre 362% contingency multiplier).
The 2018 study's $17.7B build is for a 4-track-3-station-2-southern-portals alternative (maybe -- the number of southern portals in that estimate is actually unclear -- one of the many bonkers things in this study). The only way I see to break this up is to instead build the 2-track alternative as a Phase 1, with a second tunnel and pair of tracks added as a Phase 2.
Going down the list of subcosts:
- Tunneling: as discussed above, the options here really are "2 tunnels", "1 tunnel", or "no tunnel" -- it's not feasible to only build part of a tunnel. And from what I see in the designs, the proposed alignments would not be conducive to terminal operations -- not in the least because the tracks are stacked vertically rather than horizontally
- Stations: I guess potentially you could, for example, not build "North Station Under" during Phase 1 -- I believe the stations will be mined, not deep-bored, so perhaps you could future-proof the tunnel but leave the station unbuilt. But, as I figure it, even if you only built the pair of "South Station Under" platforms in the $17.7B 4-track alt, at best you can reduce the cost of the project by 18% (probably less), turning it into a $14.5B project, which doesn't seem paradigm-shifting to me
- Trackwork: this is a tiny percentage of the cost of the project -- less than 5% as I figure it
- Portals: basically contingent on the number of tunnels; maybe you could trim this down by reducing the number of northern portals, but again overall the portals are only contributing 15% of the $17.7B number, so trimming out one or two won't change the calculus too much
So maybe -- maybe -- you could do a "Phase 0" build with
- 2 tracks in one tunnel
- one southern portal and one northern portal
- one station
But that's a barely viable build. More realistic (though still in my opinion a bad choice) is the 2018 study's 2-track CAT alt, which they estimate slightly higher at $8.6B. Which brings me back to "you could just build one tunnel" as really the only potential option for a "partial build". But, given that the Fairmount Line is most likely to be electrified -- and is already the most "rapid transit"-like of all the commuter rail lines -- it seems short-sighted to exclude it from an initial NSRL build. At the same time, northside commuters are rightly going to want a one-seat ride to Back Bay in addition to South Station, so I don't think it'd be politically feasible to build a "one tunnel, one southern portal" alt that only serves Fairmount.
There are other ways to reduce costs. For example, if platforms were built shorter than the proposed 1000 feet and 800 feet -- justifiable through the use of shorter more frequent trains -- that would reduce both station costs and I believe some of the tunneling costs. But, that would probably not be an incremental build, because if you manage to cut down tunneling costs through that method, it will definitely preclude extending the platforms later.
Maybe there's a strategy that hasn't been thought of yet. But it seems to me that you're gonna want to do a 2-track-2-station-2-southern-portal build for around $10B, or the 4-track-3-station-2-southern-portal build for $18B, or maybe something in between. Either way, the damn thing is gonna be expensive no matter what.
It's true. But the alternative is to electrify everything all the way out to Newburyport (and further, if we ever get an extension to Portsmouth) + Rockport, or use a hacky workaround like dual-modes or a locomotive transfer. I've opined about this before, but if we insist that most of the CR network be electrified before building the NSRL, it'll never get built.
(Also, I should note: in the layer cake above, hopefully we would see a fair number of diesel -> electric transfers occurring on platform at Chelsea or Sullivan: get off the diesel train, wait 5 minutes, board the following electric train. Hopefully this could be made competitive with an Orange Line transfer at NS. And additionally, an Urban Ring transfer at Sullivan could also divert some Cambridge commuters as well.)
If you ignore all the upstream investments like electrification, I feel the most you'd be able to get piecemeal is things like land acquisition and relatively simple portal work. basically, provision for, plan for, "do no harm" to a future NSRL. In principle, per the 2018 study most of the portals were to basically cut-and-cover, and don't require a TBM. Whilethe 2018 study is sandbagged, I don't think it's so badly sandbagged we can throw out it's numbers completely. The portals would cost the same amount approximately in both alteratives, ~1.7B, 10 to 20% of the total cost.
The only parallel I can think of as NYC's gateway, another mammoth stalled tunnel project, has steadily been chunking hundreds of millions to get a tunnel box (without any operational rail components) through Hudson Yards over past decade or so. Problem is... they've bought the land, they're building this first portion... But the remaining bit of that ~16B dollar tunnel is yet to be funded, and without it, the tunnel box structure is kinda useless - but at least it keeps the gateway project viable. That's the sort of thing I feel would be worthwhile, as the same calculus would apply in Boston. Maybe you build the South Bay portal, or engineer and preserve a intended RoW for it when you reconfigure the Cabot/Southampton Leads for the Widett Circle Layover. Opportunitisic stuff like that. But you'll have to accept it'll sit unused for decades while they figure out the tunnel itself. Think of how Charles/MGH was built provisioned for a Red/Blue connector in 2003, and here we are in 2023 still with that out on the horizon.
The only parallel I can think of as NYC's gateway, another mammoth stalled tunnel project, has steadily been chunking hundreds of millions to get a tunnel box (without any operational rail components) through Hudson Yards over past decade or so. Problem is... they've bought the land, they're building this first portion... But the remaining bit of that ~16B dollar tunnel is yet to be funded, and without it, the tunnel box structure is kinda useless - but at least it keeps the gateway project viable. That's the sort of thing I feel would be worthwhile, as the same calculus would apply in Boston. Maybe you build the South Bay portal, or engineer and preserve a intended RoW for it when you reconfigure the Cabot/Southampton Leads for the Widett Circle Layover. Opportunitisic stuff like that. But you'll have to accept it'll sit unused for decades while they figure out the tunnel itself. Think of how Charles/MGH was built provisioned for a Red/Blue connector in 2003, and here we are in 2023 still with that out on the horizon.
HenryAlan
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And for a similar example that ultimately did become part of our transportation system, Tufts Medical was built in the 60s, but wasn't used until 1987.
RandomWalk
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Probably for the crazy transit pitches thread, but I have wondered about how to break, for example, RL to 128 into incremental parts.
Charlie_mta
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The RL was programmed to be built to Arlington Center when it was built to Alewife. The town of Arlington revolted from fear of a "crime train" coming to town, so that segment was dropped. If built, it would need to be cut-and-cover under the Minuteman trail. A couple of generations have passed since 1980, so maybe it could have some traction now. Though personally I would place it as a much lower priority than BLX to Lynn or the Red-Blue connector BLX.
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The EGE
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Arlington Heights - Lexington - Route 128 would be the obvious phasing. But I just can't imagine anything beyond Lexington (or honestly, Arlington Heights) managing to be worthwhile compared to the multitude of denser areas in the region. There's just not much there beyond Arlington Heights, and the era of the giant park-and-ride is over.
RandomWalk
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That is thinking in complete segments. I was thinking in components or sub-components (tunnels, portals, yard, station boxes, station fit-out, etc.).
The thinking behind that is whether we could be opportunistic in our transit infrastructure construction. The second level of the 63rd Street tunnel being built, even though the original 1960s LIRR plan was DOA, is an example.
The thinking behind that is whether we could be opportunistic in our transit infrastructure construction. The second level of the 63rd Street tunnel being built, even though the original 1960s LIRR plan was DOA, is an example.
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F-Line to Dudley
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Yeah, but it wasn't built with the intent that it would sit unused for 20 years. Originally it was to be built simultaneous the I-95 Southwest Expressway which Orange would share a cut with. Then 95 got bogged down in community opposition missing any sort of construction starts in the 60's, and finally got turfed by the 1972 highway construction moratorium. At which point the whole SW Corridor had to go back into top-down redesign to re-add the NEC instead of re-routing it over the Fairmount Line, redesign everything for a narrower cut and different street interfaces, and finally re-get to a shovel-ready point by 1979. Had everything gone originally to plan the relocated Orange Line would've opened more like 5 years after construction started on the SW Cove tunnel, rather than 20.
It's very much unlike the 63rd St. tunnel in NYC in that the long-game installment plan wasn't initially foreseen.
F-Line to Dudley
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You have to maintain that infrastructure that gets pre-built, and pausing projects for long durations drives up cost in the end by having to re-study/re-design/re-bid things in different economic eras. It would be one thing if there was some sort of "use-it-or-lose-it" once-in-a-lifetime future-proofing opportunity that simply had to be taken lest it be lost forever (the NYC 63rd St. example), but it's not something that scales well to just any old project. Not even a well-studied project like NSRL has seen any opportunities for efficiencies by jumping the gun. You're definitely not going to find it in stuff like an under-Minuteman tunnel box for RLX-Arlington. Ultimately it's just get your project phases all done when you're ready to mount them at all, and don't allow the extra red tape too many decades to accumulate.
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