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

Re: North-South Rail Link

tangent said:
Careful, sure, but you when you have the tools available to make a good model you need to go ahead and try. Everything can be quantified in some way or another.

I don't think people would be so gun shy about these multi-billion dollar potential boondoggles if the math really checked and could be checked. But so far our experience the last 20 to 40 years has been that projects are low balled by about 1/3 of their eventual real costs and then the economic benefits aren't really measured. So maybe people just won't believe the numbers because they have been used to obfuscate for so long, but if we don't get back to trying to get to real models then nobody will make big investments.

And all the arguments about demand management also apply to mass transit. If you don't build it, they don't come. You are already talking about a highly developed part of the city where adding a N-S link probably won't attract new development. This isn't like building a new station on the line where you have to justify with ridership numbers and capital costs of the station alone.

We are talking about diffuse system wide effects with improvements to travel times between specific destinations and enabling other improvements and efficiencies. That's why I say quantify it. Run some numbers, publish the results. Heck if it is a software model or even spreadsheet model then publish the source code so it can be verified. So far I've seen a few compelling bullet points and a lot of things which are nice to haves.

If the numbers add up, then great let's build a tunnel.
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But when you are truly "guestimating" without any real hard data, you also need to provide error bands -- which is never done with this type of social sciences model.

Garbage in, garbage out. You can prove anything you want to prove with the "right" estimates.
 
Re: North-South Rail Link

tangent said:
Careful, sure, but you when you have the tools available to make a good model you need to go ahead and try. Everything can be quantified in some way or another.

I don't think people would be so gun shy about these multi-billion dollar potential boondoggles if the math really checked and could be checked. But so far our experience the last 20 to 40 years has been that projects are low balled by about 1/3 of their eventual real costs and then the economic benefits aren't really measured. So maybe people just won't believe the numbers because they have been used to obfuscate for so long, but if we don't get back to trying to get to real models then nobody will make big investments.

And all the arguments about demand management also apply to mass transit. If you don't build it, they don't come. You are already talking about a highly developed part of the city where adding a N-S link probably won't attract new development. This isn't like building a new station on the line where you have to justify with ridership numbers and capital costs of the station alone.

We are talking about diffuse system wide effects with improvements to travel times between specific destinations and enabling other improvements and efficiencies. That's why I say quantify it. Run some numbers, publish the results. Heck if it is a software model or even spreadsheet model then publish the source code so it can be verified. So far I've seen a few compelling bullet points and a lot of things which are nice to haves.

If the numbers add up, then great let's build a tunnel.
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I agree with the sentiment, but I'm 99% sure that the numbers don't "add up." That isn't anything special about NSRL, I think that is true for every single public infrastructure project.
 
Re: North-South Rail Link

F-Line to Dudley said:
He finally found cronies in the construction industry to profiteer through and pipe through his revolving-door patronage network? That's usually the minimum baseline requirement for a Massachusetts Speaker-Monarch to commence giving a shit about something. :rolleyes:
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I'd notch that as progress. I'd have been unreasonable to expect it to happen any other way.
 
Re: North-South Rail Link

fattony said:
I agree with the sentiment, but I'm 99% sure that the numbers don't "add up." That isn't anything special about NSRL, I think that is true for every single public infrastructure project.
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There is a difference between not adding up and being off by 30%. I'd call that being in the ballpark, but are we really talking about saving 2000 people a day 15 minutes or another 100,000 people another 5 minutes. At some point you put dollars to those numbers and the numbers have to be at least close otherwise we are doing serious damage to the economy by dispensing a finite amount of money. I think everyone can agree that there are benefits, that has never been the issue.
 
Re: North-South Rail Link

What's Duke's issue with SSX? Does he see it as a bait and switch (i.e. once SSX is completed, the acute need for better CR service would be alleviate just enough that NSRL can be kicked down the road for a few more decades)? Is it political play?

I'm under the impression that NSRL does not obviate the need for SSX, at least the non-track expansion interchange work (some of which, I guess, could be folded into a hypothetical NSRL), and the stub-end terminals can be useful for mediating a switchover from diesel stock to a combo of something else and/or getting creative with other xMU modes.
 
Re: North-South Rail Link

I think a bait and switch is exactly what he is afraid of because SSX would help push the need for a tunnel out for at least 5 to 10 years I would think before it would become a capacity issue and the conversation would start all over again at this same point which means the tunnel could be as far out as 15 to 20 years.

I can't say for sure that is the case but it isn't a totally illogical fear seeing how Boston and Massachusetts seem think new transit infrastructure is needed i.e. when there are major failures in the current system or capacity issues.
 
Re: North-South Rail Link

CantabAmager said:
What's Duke's issue with SSX? Does he see it as a bait and switch (i.e. once SSX is completed, the acute need for better CR service would be alleviate just enough that NSRL can be kicked down the road for a few more decades)? Is it political play?

I'm under the impression that NSRL does not obviate the need for SSX, at least the non-track expansion interchange work (some of which, I guess, could be folded into a hypothetical NSRL), and the stub-end terminals can be useful for mediating a switchover from diesel stock to a combo of something else and/or getting creative with other xMU modes.
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Afraid they'll name something else after him that he doesn't want named after him?

The Link is too far down the road for SSX to be bait-and-switch fodder. And SSX realistically can have its costs pared back by deferring the headhouse and lobby expansion until a later phase. That's what's pushing the total price tag a little uncomfortably high for a single swallow. The track work alone isn't that expensive because it's pretty mundane and there really aren't any nasty cost overruns that are going to sneak up on you when reconfiguring an interlocking. If the toilet clog with the USPS relocation got solved they'd probably be able to put their heads together and segment out the build to spread that cost risk over a longer period. If the platforms themselves don't need much more than bare aluminum shelters to be operational, then they can do the track expansion and just defer the station building expansion until the stitched-together Dot Ave. redev is built out and firing on all cylinders as a revenue-generator for the city. Then go for the crown jewel headhouse when there's more stakeholders and potentially some private investors putting wind at that build's back.

All of that can and will be settled before anyone gets far enough along on NSRL to even reanimate the studies for an EIS.


Now, Dukakis can and should be very skeptical about just how serious this revival of Link talk actually is. It could be a distraction for any number of things that gets dropped cold once it stops being a useful distraction. But there's no real correlation with SSX because the timetables for each are in separate universes. So his beef's got to be about something else.



And there's nothing about the Link that diminishes the 100-year utilization of the surface terminals. Including the expanded surface terminals. It's not a replacement. It's not a gradual transition where things start increasingly moving into the tunnel and the surface terminals get busted down to bit players. You only get the capacity to run anything and everything at any frequency to serve any demand through the duration of the 21st century by taking advantage of BOTH the tunnel and the two surface terminals to the max. That is the century-level solve for mainline rail needs in the region. Downsizing or sunsetting the surface terminals just means you're trading one systemwide capacity-limiter setting the ceiling for service levels on every line--the terminal district interlockings at NS and SS--for another: the terminal district interlockings into/through/out of the tunnel. Why build it at all if that's the price of conceptual purity. The surface terminals are there. Both of them will be expanded before this thing gets its first shovel in the ground. It costs $0 capital to keep using them to the fullest after the ribbon-cutting on the tunnel. The whole upside for this is service levels and service density, not run-thrus for run-thrus' sake. If you want clock-facing inner 'burb service, consistent all-day CR headways, frequent regional intercity service, and every permutation of long-haul service to be able to coexist at idealized levels here...you use everything in the kitchen sink: surface and tunnel, surface terminal interlockings and tunnel approach interlockings.

This misconception can't be pounded out forcefully enough. This is not SEPTA Center City; it's not replacing or diminishing the surface terminals. It's first removing a capacity cap so we can fill out the rest of the 21st century with Euro- and SE Asian- level blended service frequencies, thru-running service second. The latter isn't reason enough alone to do it. Its value proposition is in the whole package, though clearly the run-thrus are going to get overrepresented in the PR and public consciousness as the 'sexy' improvement easier to grasp than capacity caps and service densities no local Sully has a reference point for unless they've done a whole lot of travel abroad.
 
Re: North-South Rail Link

whighlander said:
Mathew -- Thanks to Technology Explosion -- We are currently in a period of profound change in metropolitan transportation both core to core and within a core

On on hand we have B-787 and A380 changing the rules for getting from one global core metro to another -- small number of bulk flights and lots of point to point smaller flights

On the other extreme the combination of Uber-style with Self-driving electric vehicles will revolutionize the local and within metro transit universe

In the long-run -- say 20 years -- I think the rail-based T will "be equivalent of the A380" -- hauling a lot of people to and from a few destinations -- and the roll of the B787 will be played by the self-driving Uber-likes and other vehicles untethered to the rails

What we should not do now is spend a lot of money digging a tunnel which was conceived of when the idea of Uber and self-driving, GPS, etc., not part of the lexicon

The better solution might be something entirely different -- and it may be soon apparent
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http://readwrite.com/2015/05/02/self-driving-cars-transform-cities seems to be implying that we should be concerned about Massport going bankrupt in five years due to a collapse in parking demand (is Massport actively taking on more debt to build more parking these days?), but that high capacity transit like the NSRL will likely still have value.
 
Re: North-South Rail Link

Matthew said:
And DMUs are not "almost as good" as EMUs. A modern EMU has high power-to-weight ratios. It doesn't have to carry it's own fuel source. It can [briefly] summon a large piece of the output of a massive power station to quickly accelerate back to speed. Electrification as well as system-wide level boarding are both essential pieces (about equal weight, perhaps) towards making the system function as rapidly and efficiently as possible. Think about it: what are the characteristics of every busy metro rapid transit system you can think of? Do you know any that run on diesel? Even if they're fully aboveground (such as the old NY steam-powered elevateds were -- and those were converted to electric in an effort to compete with the newfangled subway). They're all electrified and they all strive for level boarding (with varying levels of success).

To me, the goal for commuter rail ought to be to transform it into something more like regional rapid transit, albeit with some differences. It's more heavily branched than a metro rapid transit could be. There'll be longer headways on the branches. There'll probably continue to be bi-levels, or a mix of vehicle types depending upon the need. You might have to support several variants of stopping patterns (not to mention the regular intercity trains), although they should converge as the system becomes more efficient and as you get closer to the trunk (in order to make schedules work).
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Has anyone ever built an EMU that accelerates as fast as Tesla's P90D with the Ludicrous Speed option? I think the real limitation is that internal combustion engines are big, heavy, and don't produce much power compared to electric motors, and carrying the fuel probably isn't so much the issue.

I'm wondering whether bi-level cars in the configuration the MBTA uses are actually a win if most of the passengers in a single, full car are going to get off at a single stop, and that single stop is an expensive underground platform. Some of the single level NJT Arrow and SEPTA Silverliner cars have doors at the center of the train car, and that likely would provide a shorter dwell time. If Alon ever decides to do a blog post exploring the dwell time vs time for trains to enter / exit the station tradeoffs, that would be interesting to see; the thing to optimize for is how many total passengers can disembark at the station in an hour, given both the door configuration and the time it takes for the train to enter / exit the station. A few more doors than are present on those NJT / SEPTA trains might even be ideal; I'm not finding any example of a commuter train with as many doors as an 1800 series Red Line train.
 
Re: North-South Rail Link

Arlington said:
Freight is also impossible due to the extreme (by rail standards) climbs and dips that are required to get down into and up out of the tunnel. Only passenger trains have a power/weight ratio adequate to the task. (a secondary issue is the question of freights wanting tall clearance).
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I believe I've seen at least one Youtube video of B721 which showed something like three reefers and 10 or 15 scrap metal cars.

The reefers seem to be the high value freight, and the typical maximum weight for a freight car in the US is 286,000 pounds (though last I heard, the Pan Am mainline into Maine couldn't handle that much). 286,000 * 3 is 858,000 pounds.

http://www.kawasakirailcar.com/CT_MBTA says some of the MBTA's Kawasaki bi-level cars are 126,000 pounds, others are 131,000 pounds. 126,000 pounds times 7 is 882,000 pounds.

If you can get a train of 7 bi-level passenger cars though the NSRL, I don't see how the weight of three reefers would be a problem.

(And I'm curious what happens to the scrap metal after it gets delivered to Everett. Would there be any viable way to redirect the scrap metal to Track 61?)
 
Alon said:
Okay, then it won't happen, because Amtrak has no reason to care. And if it does offer the NSRL, I will be happy to point out that it's engaging in agency imperialism, of the same kind that led it to propose Gateway (which is of limited use for it - it's much more useful for commuter rail), at much higher cost than ARC because it's Amtrak. Basically, an Amtrak that's willing to offer Massachusetts the NSRL is an Amtrak that's too incompetent for Massachusetts to want to deal with it.
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The last paragraph of the 81st page of the 87 page PDF at http://www.necfuture.com/pdfs/2015_tier1_eis.pdf (the page number printed within that page at the bottom left is 76) claims that an expanded South Station isn't enough for the Alternative 3 that NEC Future is studying.

Perhaps it isn't strictly accurate to conflate the NEC Future study with Amtrak, especially since the study is proposing to replace the current Northeast Regional service with something with 15 minute headways and more stops, which may or may not be run by Amtrak, but given this study I'm not sure it makes sense to boldly claim that intercity service doesn't need the NSRL.

(And the study also isn't saying anything about whether the NSRL is going to be the solution to South Station expansion being inadequate, but I have yet to see a viable alternative to the NSRL proposed to address the need the study is talking about there.)

Alon said:
Hourly trains from Boston to Portland aren't fantasy at all, provided the speed is adequate. Portland's metro area is slightly smaller than Malmö's. Boston's is twice as large as Stockholm's, and New York's is ten times as large. The Stockholm-Malmö express service, which runs shitty 200 km/h tilting trains but still averages 140 km/h, runs hourly. Stockholm-Malmö is about 500 km, whereas Boston-Portland is 200, but at this range, ridership doesn't depend on distance - more people travel Boston-Portland than Stockholm-Malmö, but assuming equal train average speed, more will drive in the US because the shorter distance means the train's speed advantage translates to a smaller trip time advantage than in Sweden.
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I believe Bangor, Maine is only about 220 miles from Boston. With mostly 220 MPH track, Bangor to Boston (via Portland) could probably be under 90 minutes and thus a viable daily commute.
 
Re: North-South Rail Link

Dude, Joel

Not to be pushy, but try to put your responses in one big post instead of four/five posts in a row.
 
Re: North-South Rail Link

Alon said:
3. Electrification is extremely useful independently of the NSRL, although the two projects work best together (NSRL requires electrification, and electrification is more useful if North Side commuters have access to South Station). The current MBTA consists have an acceleration time penalty of 70 seconds just from 0 to 60 mph. The borderline-vaporware Colorado Railcars are at 43 seconds. In YouTube videos, the UIC-compliant Talent DMU has a 33-second penalty to 100 km/h, and the FLIRT EMU has a 14-second one (as does the FRA-compliant Silverliner V), and only 24 seconds to 160 km/h. This allows all-stop trains to get from Boston to Providence in 42 minutes, including schedule contingency. Systemwide there are 530 km to electrify, and at 90s-era NEC electrification cost it would cost $1.5-2 billion, plus around $500 million for extensions to Hyannis, New Bedford, and Manchester. But EMUs are cheaper to buy, maintain, and run than diesel trains, so the lifetime cost of electrification is negative.
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But do overhead lines throughout the commuter rail system make any sense?

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/594186544174366720 says Tesla's commercial stationary batteries cost $250/kwh. For $1 billion, you can therefore buy 4 gigawatt-hours of batteries. If you divide that by the T's current inventory of 80 locomotives, that's 50 megawatt hours of batteries per locomotive. 4200 horsepower (Amtrak P42 diesel locomotive at full throttle) is 3.13 megawatts, so 50 megawatt hours of batteries works out to about 16 hours of running a P42 at full throttle.

The 85 kwh battery pack in the Model S seems to be around 1,000 pounds, and you might not want to add 500,000 pounds or more of battery packs to a train, but on the other hand, the heaviest of the Kawasaki bi-levels the MBTA has are 131,000 pounds, and freight cars in the US can be 286,000 pounds, so if you really wanted to have commuter trains built as four car EMU sets that could draw as much power from their batteries as a P42 running full throttle for 16 hours, that might actually be possible.

But in the real world, figuring out what the actual power requirements are and downsizing this appropriately probably makes more sense. (I just don't know where to get good numbers on how much power a commuter train actually uses in its typical run.)

NIMBYs also need to be considered. When we look at the challenges with the Greenbush Line, with South Coast Rail, and even the South Acton ADA vs historical commission delays, I don't see how anyone could reasonably expect building overhead power lines through the entire commuter rail system could possibly have any chance of going smoothly.
 
Re: North-South Rail Link

Joel N. Weber II said:
The last paragraph of the 81st page of the 87 page PDF at http://www.necfuture.com/pdfs/2015_tier1_eis.pdf (the page number printed within that page at the bottom left is 76) claims that an expanded South Station isn't enough for the Alternative 3 that NEC Future is studying.

Perhaps it isn't strictly accurate to conflate the NEC Future study with Amtrak, especially since the study is proposing to replace the current Northeast Regional service with something with 15 minute headways and more stops, which may or may not be run by Amtrak, but given this study I'm not sure it makes sense to boldly claim that intercity service doesn't need the NSRL.

(And the study also isn't saying anything about whether the NSRL is going to be the solution to South Station expansion being inadequate, but I have yet to see a viable alternative to the NSRL proposed to address the need the study is talking about there.)



I believe Bangor, Maine is only about 220 miles from Boston. With mostly 220 MPH track, Bangor to Boston (via Portland) could probably be under 90 minutes and thus a viable daily commute.
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Joel -- no one lives in Bangor who wants to commute to Boston
There are a few people who commute from the Portland Maine area to Boston but that is about the edge of the edge of the fringe

Before we worry about places as distant as Bangor there is plenty of much lower hanging fruit for the rail roads to pick such as Nashua and Manchester NH
 
Re: North-South Rail Link

Joel N. Weber II said:
And I'm curious what happens to the scrap metal after it gets delivered to Everett. Would there be any viable way to redirect the scrap metal to Track 61?)
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Joel -- The scrap metal gets loaded onto ships and it then departs from the Boston area to parts unknown

what would you do with the scrap metal once it got to Track 61?
 
Does it get packed into shipping containers and trucked to Conley Terminal, or does it get loaded onto bulk carrier ships docked at Everett, or something else, or some combination?

If some of the scrap metal ends up going to Conley Terminal, being able to transfer it from train to shipping containers as close to Conley Terminal as practical is likely to save a bunch of labor, since each train car can probably handle as much weight as 4-6 shipping containers.

If some of the scrap metal goes into bulk carrier ships, then would it be practical to have those ships dock at Black Falcon Terminal to get reasonably direct access to Track 61?
 
Re: North-South Rail Link

Joel N. Weber II said:
Does it get packed into shipping containers and trucked to Conley Terminal, or does it get loaded onto bulk carrier ships docked at Everett, or something else, or some combination?

If some of the scrap metal ends up going to Conley Terminal, being able to transfer it from train to shipping containers as close to Conley Terminal as practical is likely to save a bunch of labor, since each train car can probably handle as much weight as 4-6 shipping containers.

If some of the scrap metal goes into bulk carrier ships, then would it be practical to have those ships dock at Black Falcon Terminal to get reasonably direct access to Track 61?
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No to pretty much everything
 
Re: North-South Rail Link

Joel N. Weber II said:
Does it get packed into shipping containers and trucked to Conley Terminal, or does it get loaded onto bulk carrier ships docked at Everett, or something else, or some combination?

If some of the scrap metal ends up going to Conley Terminal, being able to transfer it from train to shipping containers as close to Conley Terminal as practical is likely to save a bunch of labor, since each train car can probably handle as much weight as 4-6 shipping containers.

If some of the scrap metal goes into bulk carrier ships, then would it be practical to have those ships dock at Black Falcon Terminal to get reasonably direct access to Track 61?
Click to expand...

Scrap is handled as bulk -- I've seen a pile taller than a house of just engine blocks getting picked-up with a crane with a big magnet and dropped into a waiting ship or sometimes a barge

from Schnitzer Steel Industries, Inc.
We operate mega-shredders at our export processing facilities in Oakland, CA; Everett, MA; Portland, OR and Tacoma, WA.
SCHNITZER - EVERETT
(Metals Recycling Yard, Port & Regional Office)

69 Rover Street
Everett, MA 02149 US

Materials Accepted: Ferrous and nonferrous metals
Transportation:Trucking and/or container service available
Equipment: Mega-shredder, mobile shears, material handlers, loaders
Highway Access: I-93, I-90, I-95, MA-99, US-1
Rail Access: Boston & Maine CSX
Barge Access: Yes
Ship Access: Yes
Water Depth: 38' MLW
Port Equipment: Loading cranes, bulk loading conveyor
Loading: Bulk & Container
Load By: Crane & Conveyor
schnitzer_111006_066.jpg
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