Re: North-South Rail Link
Was just looking at some North-South Rail Link documents in the Transportation Library last week. The North Station Superstation plan was massive. It would have had entryways and headhouses as far reaching as the Garden, the corner of Merrimac/New Chardon/Congress, and Endicot St in the North End. And of course tie in with the Green and Orange lines at North Station, as well Haymarket. The size of platform space alone dwarfed the current North Station subway station by probably 3 or 4 times, and a grand atrium between Valenti and New Chardon, on Canal St. The Central Station/Aquarium Station also had some far flung headhouses, trying to penetrate the Financial District.
I wish this would get on track again.
That was the whole-candy-store plan. Much like the Amtrak 2040 Vision it's so excessive an actual build would have to be chopped down to a fraction of the scale. They're aiming for the sky then negotiating down, much like the ARC Tunnel absurdity in New York that didn't even work for Amtrak. That was negotiated down to the more reasonable Gateway Tunnel that doesn't give NJ Transit the candy store of their dreams but does get all parties from Point A to Point B efficiently and equally serves Amtrak, saves having to build a largely redundant $2B station, and does leave slack space by the portal for NJ Transit to take a later, cheaper run at its coveted one-seat ride (Secaucus Junction upgrades, not the ham-fisted 7 train extension candy store).
Let me count the ways the official N-S fantasy drawings with unicorns are absurd:
-- They planned on running some portion of EVERY line through it. Who in their right mind would need to go from Needham to Rockport or Fairmount to Fitchburg??? And how much does that diminish the importance of the terminal tracks when everyone will demand everything run thru?
-- The tri-portal feeds on the southside with mile-long tunnels going on the NEC, Fairmount, and Old Colony lines chew up a huge percentage of the total cost; none of that land is pre-cleared like the main tunnel under the Big Dig. The Old Colony and Fairmount portals have to go under the Ft. Point Channel, all that land that was frozen for the Big Dig and now has underground sinkhole problems, and through a whole new round of awful utility relocations and fresh environmental/archeological EIS considerations the pre-cleared Big Dig land and 100% redeveloped in last 20 years North Station/BET area doesn't have to. The Fitchburg portal on the northside is a less-messy one because it splits very close to the main portal and much closer to surface...but still very expensive and kind of messy. Is feeding ALL lines worth half the project cost and two-thirds the cost inflation, or does feeding MOST lines with an end-to-end NEC/NH shot?
-- There is NO intercity service on any of the lines getting the extra portals. Amtrak will never ever use them. Ever.
1. Middleboro to the Cape are accessible by the NEC or Stoughton Branch to the Middleboro Secondary. Braintree-north is on the Red Line. Is an extra billion-plus for an Old Colony portal worth it for the sake of Hingham, Plymouth, and Brockton? They could send the Red Line to Weymouth or Brockton for the same price (they won't--and probably shouldn't--but that's the counterargument to this illogic).
2. Fitchburg is accessible via Lowell with a North Chelmsford-Ayer diversion down the Pan Am mainline if they want to go there, OR via Framingham-Clinton-Leominster on the CSX Fitchburg Secondary. The former is a whole lot less new electrification mileage forking off Lowell than doing the mainline from Boston, and would be pretty zippy. Sorry, Acton and Concord. And Waltham needs real rapid-transit more than it needs this. If it matters that much go save 9 figures by blowing up a couple Innerbelt buildings instead and doing a surface runaround track splitting off the Lowell Line embankment.
3. The Fairmount will never be used by Amtrak because there's no Back Bay access. It should be a rapid-transit line, but the need for a commuter rail bypass from Franklin/Foxboro and freight to South Boston make that a tough sell. Sorry Dorchester...you should know by now you don't have the clout to avoid getting jobbed on transit. But...if it absolutely has to be done, why not build ONE portal to serve both that and the Old Colony and realign the Fairmount behind South Bay shopping center? That was actually the line's ORIGINAL late-19th century alignment before they decided to re-route it on a straight shot to the Southie port. $1B+ for a combined portal and $50M through an open parking lot with simple bridges over Mass Ave. and I-93, or $2.5B for 2 portals that slam 3 mainlines into each other at the same underground junction? Is this even a choice when the consolidated option does exactly the same thing at exactly the same speed for 40% the price?
-- Because of the grades in the tunnel Central/Aquarium Station can only fit long enough platforms for 7 cars. Worcester and Providence already run 7 cars at rush hour, and will be 8+ easily as soon as the T's new higher-horsepower locomotives start arriving in 2 years. Amtrak Regionals may already be too big, and Acela will be when they get longer trainsets than the skimpy 6 cars they've got now. What is the point of having a station when the 3 services that need it most at peak hours...can't use it. Is that worth doing at all with a 25 MPH speed restriction clogging up traffic because the station spacing is too close and the platforms will sit on an slight incline? Throw in the extra excavation costs of widening beyond the Big Dig tunnel footprint to fit the station and this is untenable by $2B or more. Now you're talking >2/3 the project cost and almost limitless potential for overruns tied up in smaller-utilization frills like extra portals and platforms that aren't necessities and don't do squat for the national rail plan.
I get the point of aiming for the moon because that's kind of how this inefficient political negotiation works. But Big Dig fatigue makes it too high a goal, and the state is now trying to skirt another Transit Commitments
law-mandated project because it once again set itself up with an impossible standard and unbuildable, incompatible mode. They have time to rethink this and start from scratch because Gateway Tunnel must be built first before Amtrak is capable of sending enough traffic to Boston for this to matter. But that's why the Transit Commitment specs doing the EIS this far out. It's complex enough job to take 10 years of planning prior to 10 years of building. They can't shirk it; it's too important for the National Rail Plan to not pick it back up on
conceptual plans before 2020 (no doubt with gun to head) and not put first shovel into ground until 2035.
Here's what they need to do:
-- Cut this multi-portal shit now. If Old Colony must happen, then no way in hell can Fitchburg or Fairmount happen too with the aforementioned surface alternatives that do EXACTLY THE SAME THING at billions less. Amtrak won't use these, so why would the Feds fund it? Save yourselves an ARC Tunnel fiasco and focus the priorities more.
-- Cut Central Station. It's no use for the biggest rush hour trains, and stuff will move a lot faster without it. There is no way to fix the platform length with those tunnel grades, so this doesn't even work as an initial-only build.
-- Make a tunnel cut for the Old Colony junction but save the actual tunnel build for a future generation. I'm betting never because the intercity need isn't there and the Cape's political heft doesn't care with equal-or-better bypasses available.
-- 2 RR tracks only, space for 4 in the tunnel so there's either a rapid-transit provision on the other side or expansion space when it's needed. This is not the East River tunnels with every NEC train and every NJ commuter rail to Manhattan squeezing through, with no alternative for getting to Penn Station if there's an underground service disruption. All the existing South Station tracks are still bustling right upstairs. Judicious subset of Providence/points-south, Worcester/points-west, Lowell/points-northwest, Haverhill/points-northeast routed through the tunnel to other destinations. Maybe Newburyport/Portsmouth for northeasterly service if the Eastern Route gets reconnected to the outside world and becomes the preferred Downeaster HSR route. That's it. That's all you need, and you can do that on 2 tracks. Eventually clearing out the Lowell Line to Woburn and Eastern Route to Salem by flipping the local stops over to parallel-running rapid transit keeps things moving fast and clean all points north of SS to 128.
-- Combine megaprojects to get these Transit Commitments unclogged and achieve build efficiencies.
1. That NEC tunnel is going to spit out right past Washington St. a safe distance behind where the Orange Line surfaces. It's going to go way deep. The Green Line Tremont St. tunnel is sitting there 1-1/2 blocks up Shawmut Ave. They're in violation of their Transit Commitment for dropping Silver Line Phase III. Why not do a bi-level tunnel here with light rail on the upper level, a 2 stinking block extension of the Tremont tunnel to get there, and then hook-in to the Transitway with a South Station runaround where alignments diverge? The Transitway is designed to handle dual bus and trolley. Isn't an extra $B for the second level and Transitway connection worth $6B in savings on the unbuildable Chinatown bus tunnel from hell. Why has no one at the state level ever raised this possibility, even as upper-level BRT?
2. Columbia Jct. on the Red Line funnels traffic to a giant X pattern without any intermixing of tracks. It's just the northeast leg of that X isn't really a branch, only 2 miles of yard leads. But if it were a branch, you'd have exactly the same capacity on that fork as the subway. Lo and behold, Cabot Yard ends about 400 feet away from where the N-S NEC/Fairmount/Old Colony tunnels would all converge. $4B for 2 lightly-used commuter rail portals, or $250M to dig a much shorter (because the incline can be way steeper than a RR) subway tunnel under Cabot feeding the Link via those sorely underutilized yard leads. Could also feed it via the abandoned upper-level Broadway tunnel for just a few hundred feet more under-street digging and angling into that same exact Cabot incline to the Link). Fork the branches at Columbia Jct. and use 100% of that track capacity. Send a lot of Braintree service through there so those Old Colony riders get compensated with one-seat subway access to North Station. Build a small, tight Aquarium transfer to the Blue Line and let the RR side speed past it. That's a buildable Central Station option with of the small 1-platform/6-car footprint and rapid-transit grades. Expand the upper level of the North Station superstation over the Orange Line tracks and put the new line there. Later phase...double-up the Orange Line portal to 4-track and send these Red Line trains out there and across BET to take over the Green Line Medford extension. Then you can plan real rapid-transit to Woburn and get 4 branches firing on all cylinders on the big Red X.
-- Around South Station it's going to be a miniature Big Dig. Deal with it. Give it some unprecedented-for-this-state contractor oversight. They have to make a big show of learning their lesson. Moreso on the stations and portal construction than the under-Artery portion. That one's not going to be too bad because the fill's all clear of utilities and EIS hurdles, and the tunnel walls will get a normal sealing from leaks instead of having to do the problematic I-93 method of unfinished slurry walls to fit all those lanes (4 tracks way narrower than the narrowest 3 lanes + shoulder portion). Go all-in on this being Boston's big comeback and confidence-booster from the Big Dig. Putting that embarrassment behind us is the only way we'll ever get to think big again and build other needed stuff.
-- Don't bullshit with the EIS schedule. They need to collect themselves, shoot for some funding, and get underway on this EIS by 2016 or '17. If Gateway gets funded, then the Link is on the clock. Feds are going to be itching to get shovels in ground sometime before '25. I don't think they'll want to dance if the Gateway tunnel boring machine is hard at work, first train is 4 years away, and the state of MA is still spazzing around delinquent on its EIS for the next big piece of the puzzle. If they don't stop covering their ears and screaming "NO! NO! NO!" on yet another promise it signed on for Amtrak's going to finish up what relatively minor capacity improvements it can capably make on the Shoreline east of New Haven then call it a day on further investment in eastern New England. They've got more to gain welcoming Virginia and North Carolina into the HSR family than getting their ridership through the New England megalopolis permanently capped by a 1 mile track gap nobody has the sack to want to fix.
