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

michaelw37 said:
The "excuse" is that adding length to high-level platforms is not at all the main driver of cost - UNLESS there is something in the way. Like, perhaps Waverley you would avoid it because as soon as you have to move the retaining wall, it's an order of magnitude more costly. But aside from those kinds of cases, once you've got contractors on site doing a high-level, having them stay on a few extra days to pour another few concrete panels into place is a rounding error when we are talking about things like electrification and new grade separations. In return, you get long-run future proofed stations, standardization in design, and simplified ops that are good for network effects. Even ConnDOT sees the advantage of maxing out high-level platforms and they are hardly a forward-thinking state transportation agency.
Click to expand...
CtDOT spends even more per station, so not the best justification. Our cost per station, north of 40M per, is keeping us from achieving RR. Just once, I would like to see a station built for the same money, adjusted for inflation, that the Fairmount ones were, or that Littleton was.
 
Tallguy said:
CtDOT spends even more per station, so not the best justification. Our cost per station, north of 40M per, is keeping us from achieving RR. Just once, I would like to see a station built for the same money, adjusted for inflation, that the Fairmount ones were, or that Littleton was.
Click to expand...
That's not surprising. The newer CTRail stations on the Hartford Line for example have 50%+ of each platform sheltered along with nicer facades and facilities. It's all about priorities, really. With a 15 minute regional rail service I definitely lean towards the MBTA's current model with stations like Littleton/495, but for some places I think a better station could be justified.
 
Riverside said:
I mean, if Waltham really clamors for it, I'm sure it could move up the priority pile. I think it could also be built incrementally, with for example an intermediate build terminating at Belmont.
Click to expand...
What’s the potential in this day and age that Belmont would pull an Arlington and require an all-or-nothing build? If a temporary terminus was in Belmont they could raise the concern of increased traffic. Since it’s Green not Red this wouldn’t be near the same impact but have we reached a point where the benefit of getting a rapid transit station outweighs the negative of more traffic to a wealthy town?

The follow up question would be, if NSRL is complete would an S-Bahn style line that terminated at an upgraded Brandeis serve the same purpose?
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Lincoln's not hard at all. Take the outbound side platform north of Lincoln Rd. and raise it to a full-high 800-footer, and slap a new inbound platform opposite it on same side of Lincoln Rd. Discontinue the kooky "inbound" platform that requires walking across the tracks, and be left with just a prefab station north of the crossing. It would be the single cheapest upgraded station to do on the whole Fitchburg Line because of its layout simplicity.
Click to expand...
Are you talking about the unpaved lot that Lincoln residents use to park for free?
 
Tallguy said:
CtDOT spends even more per station, so not the best justification. Our cost per station, north of 40M per, is keeping us from achieving RR. Just once, I would like to see a station built for the same money, adjusted for inflation, that the Fairmount ones were, or that Littleton was.
Click to expand...
Yeah and CT has a small number of stations. I'd like to just see the MBTA build out 3-4 lines and focus on those for good Regional Rail service, like the FMCB recommended, but it will never happen because every state rep will call the governor and whine about why they're not getting something for their dinky town with no TOD. It's absurd that somewhere like Mansfield has a single-high platform in 2023 but that's what you get when you try to please everyone instead of saying no and setting priorities based on crazy things like "potential ridership."
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
It was considered during the 2004 Program for Mass Transportation by Boston MPO. But that was when GLX was only proposed as one branch to Medford with 2 routing Alternatives:
  • The branch to Medford as built today, with no Union representation whatsoever
  • A "uni-branch" that went to Union along the Fitchburg Line as today but then turned down Webster Ave. in a subway, placed the Union station in the middle of the square as a subway station, and deep-bored under Prospect Hill to get back on-alignment to the Lowell Line by Gilman Sq.
The subway Alt. was ultimately rejected as too expensive, and the twin-fork line became the Preferred Alternative when the first comprehensive feasibility study was published. That pretty much KO'd the Union CR station plan. Here's the screenshot from the '04 PMT. Note that the write-up doesn't mention rapid transit at all, only "bus routes that connect with rapid transit lines". Ridership was not exactly awesome at CR frequencies.
View attachment 43147


Today the price tag would be much higher because of property acquisition required on the southerly side of the ROW to widen it for CR platforms. 5 adjacent parcels would have to have strips of land acquired to fit an 800 ft. platform, and as this is a hot redevelopment area the current industrial scuzz on those parcels is not likely to last long before new developers start massing large buildings snug against the tracks. I'm not sure if there are any such active proposals (paging @Dr. Rosen Rosen!), but they'd all have to start reserving space for the T's property acquisition if a companion Union CR station is ever going to be in the cards. And I doubt TransitMatters was considering that when they stanned for its inclusion.
Click to expand...
Thanks for that

That report is really interesting. Skimming through, the analyses for possible projects seem to roughly hold up (or haven't gotten worse), except for the CR station at Union Square. Really just because Union Square has changed a lot. The analysis was based in part on people using bus connections, because there was no green line. It's trying to find a good way for people in Union Square to get downtown, but now that CR station would be more useful for commuters along the Fitchburg line to get to Union Square. They expected new development, but hard to say they expected 25 story residential next to millions of square feet of new office and lab space. They didn't expect Union Square to be the destination, ridership could be much higher now, and the cost has gone way up. They rated the project "high priority" in 2004, but every single assumption underlying that analysis is now mostly wrong.

I'm not really trying to make a point here. Just marveling at how much Union Square has changed.
 
WarpedReality said:
Are you talking about the unpaved lot that Lincoln residents use to park for free?
Click to expand...
Alongside it, yes. Most of the platform room can be freed up by compressing the tracks closer together. This spot was where a long-ago deleted third center track started, so there's ROW room to re-claim.

They can get a proper paved aux lot in the deal. Looks like there's even a little room in the back to expand it slightly.
 
ritchiew said:
Thanks for that

That report is really interesting. Skimming through, the analyses for possible projects seem to roughly hold up (or haven't gotten worse), except for the CR station at Union Square. Really just because Union Square has changed a lot. The analysis was based in part on people using bus connections, because there was no green line. It's trying to find a good way for people in Union Square to get downtown, but now that CR station would be more useful for commuters along the Fitchburg line to get to Union Square. They expected new development, but hard to say they expected 25 story residential next to millions of square feet of new office and lab space. They didn't expect Union Square to be the destination, ridership could be much higher now, and the cost has gone way up. They rated the project "high priority" in 2004, but every single assumption underlying that analysis is now mostly wrong.

I'm not really trying to make a point here. Just marveling at how much Union Square has changed.
Click to expand...
I still think the land acquisition costs make it a nonstarter. With no GLX (or the 'uni-line' GLX that put the Union stop in a subway) the CR platforms could've stayed completely on-footprint by taking up space currently used by the Green Line station. That's no longer an option, so you're taking 20 ft. strips of up to 5 parcels. Maybe if the state acted on that right this second while the parcels were industrial or parking there'd be a means of keeping the cost in-check. But the very scalding hot 'destination' market you cite means that those parcels are going to flip for dense redev as soon as the owners will sell out (assuming deals haven't already been struck for some of them), and be massed up to the property lines with big buildings. It's extremely unlikely with how fierce Union's real estate market is that those parcels are going to be available whenever we get around to checking off enough of the Regional Rail bucket list to get down to the point of considering infills. The window is fast, fast closing before there simply isn't enough physical room left to do it and/or blowout costs involved that make a 'nice-to-have' but non-essential infill not so nice to have.

Enhancing the 'destination' connectivity here is increasingly a job for GLX-Porter.
 
Koopzilla24 said:
The follow up question would be, if NSRL is complete would an S-Bahn style line that terminated at an upgraded Brandeis serve the same purpose?
Click to expand...
The terminus would be the Weston/128 stop, since Brandeis is a janky place to turn a train. There's also lots of TOD out there, a crying need for a park-and-ride, and room for a pocket-track layover that places further inbound doesn't have. It's officially been proposed, and even the Rail Vision placemarks a stop out there...so it's more than just TM's wishlist driving that one.


For NSRL patterns, one thing that makes GL-Waltham *somewhat* more attractive is Fitchburg's status as the 'garbage chute' of NSRL...being able to take mismatched pairs from the southside like no other north mainline can because it's branchless and (unlike Reading) fully double-tracked. In that case there'd be a more irregular churn of frequencies, which makes slotting the :15 Urban Rail service a little bit tricky. But if you flipped all the intermediates over to GL, reactivated the Waltham stretch of the Central Mass ROW, and just did a NS-Porter-128 express for anything running on it you could basically make the 128 and/or Littleton short-turns act as a giant sponge for all sorts of run-thru patterns that don't fit neatly in with the churn on the other northside lines. Plus, it would substantially speed up Fitchburg run times for the :30 frequencies that are continuing on.

Far-future stuff, since it requires NSRL to not only be built but to be matured enough in its growth that inefficiencies under saturation-level service start to arise with the pair matches. But there is some potential utility in making the inner Fitchburg that sort of catch-all relief valve.
 
Java King said:
I wasn't sure which thread to post, but this seems like the most appropriate. We are all upset that the MBTA hasn't moved quickly enough into a Regional Rail system, however it's also important to realize how far we have progressed in 30 years! I give to you an article from Passenger Train Journal from March of 1993. Thirty years ago! It's about the potential expansion of the MBTA rail network.

We have achieved Worcester extension, Newburyport, Old Colony, and (almost) Fall River and New Bedford in the last 30 years! Look at the photos of South Station in the article. No bus terminal!

They speak about the Central Artery Rail Link instead of calling it North-South link.

We are NOT where we need to be, but it's also encouraging to see how far we have come! It's just critically important to keep our infrastructure in good working order and maintain resources and stations, so we don't have station closures like Ashland, Lynn, South Attleboro, etc. that are fairly "new" in relation to the entire system.
Click to expand...
This is a really cool little time capsule! Thanks for sharing! Yeah, very good perspective to remember what has been achieved over 30 years.

This is a fun little crayon map too:

1696337058947.png


Interesting to see what has stayed on the radar...
  • South Coast Rail
  • Milford
  • Nashua
  • Plaistow
And what has been abandoned or forgotten as ideas:
  • Central Mass
  • Minuteman
  • Topsfield via Wakefield
  • Saxonville
Saxonville is intriguing; I wonder if I could find ridership data from the 80s/early 90s, but at least in the last decade, West Natick and Framingham -- both of which would be missed by diverting short-turn service to Saxonville -- are the heavweights of the line, second only to Worcester station itself:

1696337585406.png


But I wonder if ridership was more anemic back then. And I guess it could be a question whether Framingham & West Natick's existing ridership would be better served by a P-n-R just off of the Mass Pike, though that seems unlikely to me.
 
Does there exist a world where a Red Line branch from Alewife to Waltham via the Fitchburg ROW (with another branch to Arlington) is worth it, as compared to the Green Line branch?

Red Line offers the best capability and likely frequency of all modes, and the distance to Waltham is long enough (with likely higher ridership than Riverside) that I feel it's better suited for HRT than LRT if we're talking about rapid transit conversion. But I imagine grade separation will blow up the cost - the question is if that makes it a non-starter.

The tail tracks at Alewife are pointed towards Arlington, but that's not a death sentence in itself. The EGE has a proposal for branching Red Line at Alewife.
 
Riverside said:
But I wonder if ridership was more anemic back then. And I guess it could be a question whether Framingham & West Natick's existing ridership would be better served by a P-n-R just off of the Mass Pike, though that seems unlikely to me.
Click to expand...

Main issue with using the Framingham Secondary is... that at 2019 levels, they aren't exactly a lot of slots left. They were sending 4 tph at peak.
 
jklo said:
Main issue with using the Framingham Secondary is... that at 2019 levels, they aren't exactly a lot of slots left. They were sending 4 tph at peak.
Click to expand...
Yeah, sorry, I was implicitly suggesting that the Framingham short-turns would be rerouted to Saxonville, with no additional trains added. That’s why losing Framingham and West Natick would be a problem.
 
There was a Saxonville Branch proposal or study?!? How extremely odd. The ROW isn't even landbanked past Natick Mall.


Map's also missing Framingham-Northborough, Middleboro-Buzzards Bay, and Salem-Peabody/Danvers as studied proposals. Also, I would've assumed Lawrence-Methuen/Salem, NH would've been on the "future planning" category since that service almost happened 42 years ago.
 
This is April 1983 weekday boardings (from the inside cover of Boston's Commuter Rail: The First 150 Years). Ridership was substantially lower at that time: about 10,700 northside and 9,400 southside.
20231003_121735.jpg


Saxonville and Topsfield definitely stand out as the strange ones; all the other ones have either been built or studied since that article came out. I suspect the Saxonville proposal went by the wayside as soon as the Worcester infills were settled on. The later Danvers/Peabody studies smartly looked at a branch from Salem, which hits higher-density areas and avoids the Wakefield grade crossing hell.
 
Teban54 said:
Does there exist a world where a Red Line branch from Alewife to Waltham via the Fitchburg ROW (with another branch to Arlington) is worth it, as compared to the Green Line branch?

Red Line offers the best capability and likely frequency of all modes, and the distance to Waltham is long enough (with likely higher ridership than Riverside) that I feel it's better suited for HRT than LRT if we're talking about rapid transit conversion. But I imagine grade separation will blow up the cost - the question is if that makes it a non-starter.

The tail tracks at Alewife are pointed towards Arlington, but that's not a death sentence in itself. The EGE has a proposal for branching Red Line at Alewife.
Click to expand...

Red has an advantage on speed and direct access to Kendall, as well as capacity. Both modes would probably top out at around 6-minute headways (if the Red Line also goes to Arlington).

The only grade crossings before downtown Waltham are Park Street and Sherman Street (Green only), Brighton Street, and Beaver Street. The first three really need to go no matter what, and Beaver Street would be easy to bridge. Where it gets tricky on either mode is nearing downtown Waltham. The ROW is only wide enough for two tracks after the Central Mass split; you're talking about a lot of property acquisition to get a rapid transit station at Central Square. Tunneling under the ROW would be difficult because of the water table; Main Street is higher elevation and might be more doable. F-Line has suggested rerouting commuter rail over the Central Mass through Waltham, but I think the curves, grade crossings, and distance from downtown makes that a poor choice.

Ultimately, I don't think Waltham ends up being a very high priority for a rapid transit extension because it's very difficult/expensive to do. It's not Lynn where there's a plenty-wide ROW, it's not Arlington where shallow cut-and-cover works, it's not Needham/West Roxbury where Regional Rail headways will never be good. 15-minute Regional Rail service with pulsed buses, especially with NRSL, will provide vastly better service to Waltham than current.
 
The EGE said:
This is April 1983 weekday boardings (from the inside cover of Boston's Commuter Rail: The First 150 Years). Ridership was substantially lower at that time: about 10,700 northside and 9,400 southside.
View attachment 43216
Click to expand...
That is interesting -- Framingham and West Natick do indeed stand out less than they do today. E.g. West Natick is comparable to the Wellesleys, not at all true today, while Framingham & Natick are basically the same, while today Framingham has pulled ahead slightly. So, yeah, maybe in that world it might make sense diverting some trains from West Natick & Framingham over to Saxonville? But yeah -- definitely an odd proposal.
 
Riverside said:
That is interesting -- Framingham and West Natick do indeed stand out less than they do today. E.g. West Natick is comparable to the Wellesleys, not at all true today, while Framingham & Natick are basically the same, while today Framingham has pulled ahead slightly. So, yeah, maybe in that world it might make sense diverting some trains from West Natick & Framingham over to Saxonville? But yeah -- definitely an odd proposal.
Click to expand...

As the article states in Passenger Train Journal from 1993, the Saxonville proposal was meant to be a Park-and-Ride off of the Mass Pike. I remember when I first moved to the Boston area in 1987, the Framingham line was pretty anemic with large headways. There wasn't even ANY weekend service. So, maybe that factored into this proposal?
 
Quoting from this Reddit post in the context of the Red-Blue info session yesterday:

I actually heard them say during the meeting that "work on the North South Rail Link project ceased 4 years ago." That's all they said and they didn't give more information. Don't remember the context but it wasn't talked about after that was said.
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top