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

[whighlander]

Re: North-South Rail Link

I got this from Seth Moulton's site. He seems to be a little optimistic about increasing Northern lines while not doing anything to the Southern lines but he does represent Essex County.

TySmith -- but so much of that map is fantasy

There are no stations in Nashua, Manchester or Concord without active financial participation by NH

The Old Colony Lines as currently constructed are not planned to participate

There is no regular year round service to Cape Cod and there may never be the "South
Coast Line"

Aside from those things there is nothing on the map that is significant except that Seth is planning a run for Governor -- but he better watch out since the young prince Kennedy is also eying the same slot

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Re: North-South Rail Link

TySmith -- but so much of that map is fantasy

There are no stations in Nashua, Manchester or Concord without active financial participation by NH

Fantasy #1.

NHDOT Strategic Plan: https://www.nh.gov/dot/programs/nhrta/documents/15-0821NHRTAStrategicPlanapproved.pdf. City of Nashua has acquired the property for its downtown station and is seeking a federal grant to jump-start a minimum-build plan that pokes across the border, since state does not think Manchester in one shot is going to be fundable. We will know within 2 years if "active financial participation" is a go.

The Old Colony Lines as currently constructed are not planned to participate

Fantasy #2.

You keep repeating this utter bullshit lie no matter how many times it gets debunked. NSRL Major Investment Report, 2003, Ch. 2, Description of Alternatives, page 21: https://web.archive.org/web/2006031.../Report/Volume1/Chapter2/Chapter2.pdf#page=21

Is that official enough for you? Or do you want me to screencap it as a JPEG and blow it up 400%?

There is no regular year round service to Cape Cod and there may never be the "South Coast Line"

Fantasy #3.

FCMB board presentation, April 2016: http://www.mbta.com/uploadedfiles/A...otsStrategicDiscussionMaterialsv2.pdf#page=11.

Itemization of programmed funds for Cape Rail upgrades, 2017-2021 MassDOT CIP: http://www.archboston.org/community/showpost.php?p=270114&postcount=222

I could keep going with the weblinks since this has been very active with current events over the last 2 years since Bourne voted to join the MBTA district.




Now...do you care to give any officially-sourced citations for your fantasy claims?

 

[tysmith95]

Re: North-South Rail Link

I'll give it to Whigh that some of these proposals won't happen for years, but hopefully the state gets their shit together and starts improving transit. The other proposals listed on that map are probably more likely to happen in the next 10-20 years than the NSRL.

However Whigh, why are you always so pessimistic when it comes to transit? Is it because you're a boomer?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Re: North-South Rail Link

I'll give it to Whigh that some of these proposals won't happen for years, but hopefully the state gets their shit together and starts improving transit. The other proposals listed on that map are probably more likely to happen in the next 10-20 years than the NSRL.

"Years" isn't very specific. Read the links.

Cape Rail has $35M in Middleboro-Hyannis mainline upgrades programmed for FY17-21. The FCMB presentations are talking about trial service initiating as soon as they have equipment (which...uhh...is admittedly a bit of a year-to-year buzzkill). BB CR was a line item in the big 2013 Transportation bill. State's noncommittal on timetable for the Phase I extension of the full Middleboro schedule to Buzzards Bay because of the acute crisis commuter rail is in with equipment shortages, but that's as little as a 5-year plan...no more than an 8-year plan. Bourne did not agree to annual tax assessment payouts as a full-blown MBTA district member for the lovely commute to a full Middleboro parking lot; they did it to gain full-time service. They'll take legal action to get their membership voided and assessments refunded if the state does a cut-and-run. Baker's and Pollack are not going to poke that hornet's nest.

Also...Cape Chamber has already done a property assessment of a +1 on the other side of the bridge. First surveyed candidate behind the skating rink on Sandwich Road near the Bourne rotary didn't pan out. They're taking a year to regroup then will start poking around the DPW lot and auto chop shops underneath the Sagamore Bridge. There's more than just the T involved with that. The locals and public-private partnerships are doing a lot of heavy-lifting here to try to serve this up as a gimme in sharp contrast to the South Coast FAIL grifters.



We'll have to wait out the fate of the City of Nashua home-run swing to see if it pans out. Go/no-go on advance to next steps will be known by 2018. MassDOT already has to do lots of freight upgrades on the North Chelmsford Jct.-Lowell Station stretch from IOU's in the GLX Somerville land swaps with Pan Am and clearance improvements for double-stack freight cars between Ayer and the state line in Haverhill. Half the route miles for the MA portion of the extension will get extensive work in the next 7-8 years, and qualify for fed freight grant sources. Their costs for the remaining N. Chelmsford Jct. to state line miles + Vinal Square intermediate stop are pretty low if freight funding can knock off most of the bucket list elsewhere.

Again..."years" is relative. Go For It is a sub- 5-year plan, build a 10-year plan. This isn't like South Coast Rail where we'll all be wormfood before a Purple Line train takes commuters out of New Bedford.




I'd give him the benefit of the doubt on differing interpretations of "years", but he couldn't resist couching it in that repeat lie about the official NSRL build. What was it...4 days ago that Old Colony misinfo last got injected to chum the waters? Same threadshit, different day.

 

[whighlander]

Re: North-South Rail Link

Fantasy #1.
NHDOT Strategic Plan: https://www.nh.gov/dot/programs/nhrta/documents/15-0821NHRTAStrategicPlanapproved.pdf. City of Nashua has acquired the property for its downtown station and is seeking a federal grant to jump-start a minimum-build plan that pokes across the border, since state does not think Manchester in one shot is going to be fundable. We will know within 2 years if "active financial participation" is a go.

Fantasy #2.
You keep repeating this utter bullshit lie no matter how many times it gets debunked. NSRL Major Investment Report, 2003, Ch. 2, Description of Alternatives, page 21: https://web.archive.org/web/2006031.../Report/Volume1/Chapter2/Chapter2.pdf#page=21

Is that official enough for you? Or do you want me to screencap it as a JPEG and blow it up 400%?

Fantasy #3.
FCMB board presentation, April 2016: http://www.mbta.com/uploadedfiles/A...otsStrategicDiscussionMaterialsv2.pdf#page=11.

Itemization of programmed funds for Cape Rail upgrades, 2017-2021 MassDOT CIP: http://www.archboston.org/community/showpost.php?p=270114&postcount=222

I could keep going with the weblinks since this has been very active with current events over the last 2 years since Bourne voted to join the MBTA district.

Now...do you care to give any officially-sourced citations for your fantasy claims?

F-Line -- NO -- I don't need citations for those

Yes there are "Official this and that statements" -- but there have been such about Red-Blue links at Charles for years -- try that transfer today -- it involves hiking up a recently rebuilt Cambridge Street -- no sign of the connection

And you also keep fantasizing about some Federal Funds -- Repeat after me $19T in debt and no sign of economic growth -- Federal Funds for anything new are about as likely as the President dedicating the Boston Olympic Stadium

If anything is funded in the near future it will be fixing leaks in station roofs and replacing switch heaters before the next blizzard

There is no money in either the Federal or State Treasury and the Taxpayers are a gold mining claim which has "played-out"

The only realistic scenario for T new infrastructure involves some sort of Infrastructure Bank.

The key is how it is funded -- perhaps somehow through investment of the Corporate Funds currently stored Overseas. The Gov't could offer the corporations a 1-time low tax rate for just repatriating funds, and an even lower [or Zero] tax rate for providing start-up capital for the Infrastructure Bank.

Hypothetically, let's say there is $2T overseas. Today to bring it back @ a tax rate of 35% about $700B goes away in taxes. Lower the corporate tax rate to 15% and still $300B goes into taxes. However, if you say $1T can be invested in the Infrastructure Bank not only tax free but paying -- and the remaining $1T gets taxed at 15% the total tax bill is only $150B. Saving $550B is strong incentive to repatriate the funds, pay the taxes and have $850B for fun and games now, and a further $1T sitting invested paying like preferred shares on the revolving loans made by the bank to fix the infrastructure -- perhaps even some involving the T.

This get's the Fed's out of the business that they should not be involved in and yet it still makes available on a competitive basis funds to fix and improve all of the infrastructure. All you need do is come with a plan how to spend the funds and how to repay the bank.

Note that investing in the Infrastructure Bank would be open to anyone, from any walk of life -- paying income to the investor [tax free] -- so the Barr foundation could put its money where its huge mouth is located.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Re: North-South Rail Link

F-Line -- NO -- I don't need citations for those

Bullshit, you don't. You've polluted 2 of the last 4 pages with the same exact debunked misinformation. You go provide some documented evidence that you're not pulling this out of your ass.

Yes there are "Official this and that statements" -- but there have been such about Red-Blue links at Charles for years -- try that transfer today -- it involves hiking up a recently rebuilt Cambridge Street -- no sign of the connection

So what...are...these...official...statements? Obligatory whigh-shit strawman...check. We're not talking about Red-Blue. We're talking about the official statements about NSRL, and what lines YOU say are officially being omitted by. Your pants are on fire and about to go three alarms; cough up your evidence.

And you also keep fantasizing about some Federal Funds -- Repeat after me $19T in debt and no sign of economic growth -- Federal Funds for anything new are about as likely as the President dedicating the Boston Olympic Stadium

Obligatory whigh-shit off-topic deflection...check. Bonus points for the lame attempt at lying with statistics by citing the gross public debt of the U.S. Treasury, not the federal budget deficit. The U.S. still retains a gold-standard AAA credit rating, amidst 5 years of economic growth. As for actual on-topic federal BUDGET math. . .

Oh, right...Congress for-real passed a transpo bill last year! --> http://www.mbta.com/uploadedfiles/About_the_T/Board_Meetings/FastAct.pdf
​

TIGER grants doled out $500M in FY2016, with calls for applications for FY2017 due in April. Each year a grant app narrowly misses the cut improves its chances for a resubmission. --> https://www.transportation.gov/tiger
​

FTA New Starts give are budgeted for >$2B per year --> https://www.transit.dot.gov/funding/grant-programs/capital-investments/about-program. You may remember that one for the $996M they committed to GLX. And by "may remember", I mean...of course you remember, because you threadshat the same exact talking points all over that thread too.
​

As for what the "fantasies" the state has...they are required to file their rail network "fantasy" priorities once every 8 years with the FTA in the form of a State Rail Plan.

Let's turn to Chapter 9, shall we, 'cause it's got purdy pictures and charts: https://www.massdot.state.ma.us/portals/12/docs/RailPlan/MAStateRailPlanSeptember2010v4.pdf#page=182. #1 "fantasy" on that list is already "fantasy"-funded and under "fantasy"-construction. #2 "fantasy" freight upgrade covers 20 miles of MBTA overlap on the Lowell and Haverhill Lines; one-quarter of that is on Nashua extension mileage between Lowell and N. Chelmsford Jct.


Didn't you used to be a whole lot less lazy than this at covering your tracks?

If anything is funded in the near future it will be fixing leaks in station roofs and replacing switch heaters before the next blizzard

Near-future? You need to get out of Lexington more...they've been replacing that stuff all damn summer with money already appropriated. Tie piles and new lengths of third rail stretching as far as the eye can see.

There is no money in either the Federal or State Treasury and the Taxpayers are a gold mining claim which has "played-out"

Well, except for that being not at all true and disprovable by a colon dump of weblinks to the contrary that you are too lazy to make the faintest attempt to refute.

The only realistic scenario for T new infrastructure involves some sort of Infrastructure Bank.

Sort of like the Highway Trust Fund...which we've had for 50 years with a transit line sub-fund for 35 years. The very same one the federal highway bill passed last year restocked, per that MBTA link above. The very same one the sitting President and BOTH...yes, both...Presidential nominees want to hugely expand.

Obligatory "facts already in evidence presented as original thought" whigh-shit...check.

Hypothetically, let's say there is $2T overseas. Today to bring it back @ a tax rate of 35% about $700B goes away in taxes. Lower the corporate tax rate to 15% and still $300B goes into taxes. However, if you say $1T can be invested in the Infrastructure Bank not only tax free but paying -- and the remaining $1T gets taxed at 15% the total tax bill is only $150B. Saving $550B is strong incentive to repatriate the funds, pay the taxes and have $850B for fun and games now, and a further $1T sitting invested paying like preferred shares on the revolving loans made by the bank to fix the infrastructure -- perhaps even some involving the T.

This get's the Fed's out of the business that they should not be involved in and yet it still makes available on a competitive basis funds to fix and improve all of the infrastructure. All you need do is come with a plan how to spend the funds and how to repay the bank.

Wait...but I've been repeating after you for 5 minutes now!!! I thought spending was "played out" and there we were so far up to our eyeballs in Treasury debt and zero-growth that we were doooooooomed! I thought big business was smart and stuff about not throwing good money after lost causes?

Are you saying you've been...*gasp*...jerking the thread around all this time?!?!

Note that investing in the Infrastructure Bank would be open to anyone, from any walk of life -- paying income to the investor [tax free] -- so the Barr foundation could put its money where its huge mouth is located.

Wait...where have I heard of this concept before?

Oh, that's right. . .

TAXES!

 

[tysmith95]

Re: North-South Rail Link

Whigh, I know you're a smart guy but no one will ever win an argument about transit against F-Line. He is just a wealth of information and as i'd said before needs to be promoted by Charlie Baker to be president of the MBTA or some other roll. F-Line probably forgot more than Beverly Scott ever knew.

 

[curcuas]

Re: North-South Rail Link

That map from Moulton's office also seems a bit silly in where doubled up service is assigned. With NSRL, wouldn't you want several northside lines travelling down the fairmount line to give it increased service?

 

[tysmith95]

Re: North-South Rail Link

That map from Moulton's office also seems a bit silly in where doubled up service is assigned. With NSRL, wouldn't you want several northside lines travelling down the fairmount line to give it increased service?

I'd love to see rapid transit frequency between Fairmount and Brandies/128. They would use smaller train sets and some infill stations could be built along the Fitchburg line. For example Union (connect to the TDoing this they could add some infill stations to serve Union Square), a stop near Market Basket, the Alewife area (without connecting to Alewife), and possibly one in Waltham. Of course this assumes that they electrify the lines.

Another rapid transit line created by the NSRL could be between Salem and Boston Landing. Again use small but frequent train sets (with larger ones from the outer neighborhoods used during rush hour). Doing this they could also add an infill station between back bay and Yawkey (maybe at Hynes with an underground ped connection to the Green Line). Also add an infill station at BU. This would help alleviate some of the overcapacity on the Green Line especially during Sox Games. The Salem to Lynn portion could use an Infill station or two but it would bring rapid transit service to Chesla/Lynn/Salem and negate the need for a BLX.

Feel free to put this into crazy transit pitches mods haha.

Of course with all of this they should standardize payment systems between the T and the Commuter rail. Most of the commuter rail stops don't need gates but a charlie card contact point at the platform would do along with regular enforcement. They do this in the metro systems of Germany/Denmark.

Also F-Line, do you know anything about the possible speed of Electric trains versus diesel trains. I'd assume that the electric trains accelerate a lot faster which would cut down on transit time. Also would an estimate of 4 million per mile to electrify be accurate (it was 2.5 in 2000). With that the total cost of electrifying the system would be just under 1.6 billion dollars. Using MBTA logic even at a cost of 3-4 billion the project would be worth it in my option. Also the operating costs of the electric trains would be lower than the operating costs of the current diesel trains negating much of the upfront costs.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Re: North-South Rail Link

It's not about "winning." It's about trolling so banal and transparent you can set a clock to it. If somebody finds the topic boring, they're free to go find some other not-boring topic to post in or suggest some on-topic angle. Not decide you're going to bury whole threads in an overturned garbage truck of copypasta, image spam, irrelevant personal anecdotes, strawmen arguments, and ideological flamebait for the lulz...and punctuate all that chum with ad hominems directed at individual board members. Then deflect deflect, run like a coward...and come back 2 pages later to do exactly the same thing. Look at today's most active thread on the boards...a Gen. forum excised refuse thread cut from yesterday's big Dev board whigh-shit that people are using to make a little levity over the fact that it's getting harder and harder to talk around folks who just want to watch the world burn.

This is somebody who still wants to be taken seriously and knowledgeably in threads where he's got his 'serious' cap on, so the only motivation he's got to cut this shit out is threat of not being taken seriously. Want this to stop? Make stupid own the stupidity he spreads around for how stupid it is.



(And, yes, mods...please excise this dumpster fire for tomorrow's "phrasing" joke-fodder if that helps.)

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Re: North-South Rail Link

I'd love to see rapid transit frequency between Fairmount and Brandies/128. They would use smaller train sets and some infill stations could be built along the Fitchburg line. For example Union (connect to the TDoing this they could add some infill stations to serve Union Square), a stop near Market Basket, the Alewife area (without connecting to Alewife), and possibly one in Waltham. Of course this assumes that they electrify the lines.

Union and Alewife don't study out very high as mainline stops. Indigo isn't a drop-in replacement for trolley station spacing. Even in a nimble EMU you need to be picking your spots judiciously on stop spacing or it's going to be a slow and slovenly trip. Have to keep a lid on it at < 30 mins. all-stops to 128 or the round trips just aren't going to cycle effectively at a clock-facing interval. Porter's got Red and North Station's got Green...and Porter may have both someday. And Red and Green have the dense frequencies to get you the next stops over for a connecting bus. So there's no reason to double-up Red at 2 consecutive stops and Green at 2 consecutive stops for the sake of slightly different bus flavors. Remember the network effects of frequencies: 2-seat rides where both pairs run frequently enough provides more total mobility than the 1-seat that's trying way too hard to overcompensate for a weaker overall network.

For that reason Indigo's really going to want to focus on subsuming the primary service of the inner town-center CR stops, filling in station spacing gaps where there's an opportunity to tap an adjacent bus line for some strengthening of a weak-frequency part of the bus network, and obviously taking care of business anchoring 128 and major TOD areas.

For Waltham, that's pretty much:

Porter [Red/Green] // Belmont Center // Waverley // Beaver Brook OR Clematis Brook (pick one of the pre-1978 station sites @ Beaver St. or Main) // Waltham Ctr. // Brandeis // Weston/128
​

For Reading:

Malden Ctr. [Orange] // Wyoming Hill // Cedar Park // Melrose Highlands // Greenwood // Wakefield // Quannapowitt/128 // Reading
​

For North Shore:

Chelsea [Silver/UR] // Lynnport [maybe Blue?] // Lynn [Blue] // Swampscott // Salem State Univ. // Salem // Peabody Square // North Shore Mall/128
​

For Woburn*:

West Medford // Winchester Center // Montvale // Anderson RTC
​

For Riverside:

Back Bay [Orange] // Yawkey // West // New Balance // Newton Corner // Newtonville // West Newton // Auburndale // Riverside [Green]
​

For Fairmount:

Newmarket [poss. UR] // Uphams Corner // Four Corners // Morton St. // Blue Hill Ave. [M Line; walking-distance] // Fairmount // Readville // . . .

• + Endicott // Dedham Corporate Ctr./128
• OR + East Dedham // Dedham Center

Note these all average about 7-9 stops over about 12 miles. Stop spacing loose in the innermost regions where the network's densest and needs the least 1-seat duplication of 2-seat rides where the 2-seat rides have strong frequencies on both sides. Basically, hit a color line within the first 5 miles but don't overdo it. Then the stops pack closer once you're out of the thickest part of the network. You can see that with Belmont-Waltham when the infill is added. Each line ends up having at least one random outsized station gap because of a stretch of unpopulated wetlands/industrial/cemeteries. And then back to similar spacing or wrap it up @ 128. There could be more infills later for really outstanding demand as it merits, but this is generally the motif you're going for, and which is going to work best for keeping an even keel with NSRL tunnel slot matching. Doing anything hyper-hyper- dense (like West Lynn + East Lynn + another filler around Hawthorne in Swampscott) starts to seriously cross the lines into "just build the damn HRT line out there and leave the RR tracks for 495'ers" territory.


*Note that Lowell's a special case. Wedgemere and Mishawum are too damn close to their next stations even for Indigo, and neither can be done as full-highs while all others can. Lot more wetlands out here in between population bursts, so the stop spacing doesn't really serve up a lot. And you definitely don't need to duplicate GLX as the buses to West Med (probably modded to incorporate Winch) do a Route 16/College Ave./Davis Sq. conveyor belt in 10 minutes. And will run hella frequent when GLX opens. That 2-seat / strong-network rule manifesting itself.

City of Lowell is going to merit 30 min. all-day frequencies in due time, and thru Haverhill traffic bumped from the Reading Line as requirement for Indigo'ing Reading flushes out general frequencies pretty full. Chances are some sleight of hand with the long-haul schedules buys you a 'paper' quasi-Indigo without really trying. Since the NH Main is far and away the most important northside line for NSRL, pairing with the NEC, Providence-Lowell and Haverhill-Stoughton/Taunton/South Coast are the natural pairs and you'll have lots of run-thru slots going 495(south)-to-128(north) and 495(north)-to-128(south) on the tunnel schedule. That ends up serving all the core 128-to-128 frequencies Westwood-Woburn that you need with only the occasional run-as-directed short-turn needing to be slipped in to cover a headway gap. It's Indigo all the same whether the variety of trains that run this premier pair are signed for overlapping destinations elsewhere.

 

[tysmith95]

Re: North-South Rail Link

^Great analysis as always. The one issue with your plan would be Salem to Peabody. The railroad from the Salem station to Peabody currently is only single tracked. Also the northbound train to Salem would have to stop at Salem station and back up to go towards Peabody. Putting a large park and ride at North Beverly could give commuters 128 service although it would be redundant as the towns along 128 would be served by the Rockport Line. Honestly as I'm writing this I think that extending the blue all the way to Salem and slightly increasing Newburyport/Rockport service would make the most sense. Of course it would be even better if the Newburyport line was extended to Portsmouth however I believe that that ROW is being turned into a bike path.

Also another cost that I didn't mention was how the increased frequencies in the indigo level areas would affect at grade crossings. Still making the commuter rail into a rapid transit or regional rail with all day service would be worth it up to big dig levels of cost, and even then the increased revenue from riders would offset some of that.

Btw why can't Boston add congestion pricing on I93. I don't want it to be a tax, the price could drop to 0 at night and during non busy weekends however congestion pricing could improve traffic on that corridor. Acutally scratch that make it a tax so that we can pay for all of the transit fantasies that have been discussed by me and F-Line. Since many of the commuter rail improvements will help suburbanites it may be politically ok.

Along with all of this the state should amend 40b so that it encourages new developments next to train stations. They could require train stations to have a certain number of housing units within a half mile radius. If a town falls below this than the developers could build apartments or condos within walking distance to train stations without any zoning restrictions. This way Boston metro can continue to grow and densify but without the negative mobility effects that density can bring.

 

[The EGE]

Re: North-South Rail Link

Salem to Peabody is 1.5 miles, and only another 1.5 to a park-and-ride sink. Don't know if it was ever doubled originally, but adding a siding or two would definitely be possible.

The currently-missing leg of the wye would be restored for that service. The tunnel portal still exists, and the right-of-way was explicitly reserved during garage construction. You'd have to have a grade crossing on the entrance road, but it's entirely doable. You can only get about a 4-5 car platform, however.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Re: North-South Rail Link

^Great analysis as always. The one issue with your plan would be Salem to Peabody. The railroad from the Salem station to Peabody currently is only single tracked. Also the northbound train to Salem would have to stop at Salem station and back up to go towards Peabody. Putting a large park and ride at North Beverly could give commuters 128 service although it would be redundant as the towns along 128 would be served by the Rockport Line. Honestly as I'm writing this I think that extending the blue all the way to Salem and slightly increasing Newburyport/Rockport service would make the most sense. Of course it would be even better if the Newburyport line was extended to Portsmouth however I believe that that ROW is being turned into a bike path.

Peabody was double-tracked. Hard to spot in the overgrowth east of the Square, but if you switch satellite view on/off you can trace how the property lines are double-track length, the water crossings all double-wide with single-track decks, and small pieces of Track 2 were repurposed as freight sidings in the backlots. It's a *tight* fit with minor, non-destructive encroachment of rear lots and parking spaces (see Stop & Shop's rear-most parking row)...but it is all intact. The section between the Square and Route 128 is owned by Peabody Municipal Light Co. as power line ROW carrying the primary feeders between their downtown substation and West Peabody. (Posted No Trespassing all around so no trails will ever be allowed!)

Salem Station is not going to be a big issue for these schedules because the Peabody Branch splits off inside the tunnel clean from all other traffic. It's actually a capacity-increaser for Salem Station in spite of the tunnel because it only takes seconds to clear the switch to a second platform. Whereas a Beverly-terminating train has to chew up a platform reversing or foul the junction by crossing over into the very small stub yard there. If you're talking real-deal Salem-terminating Indigo in the shorter term it's probably going to be much less expensive to build the Peabody-side platform for Day 1 rather than widening out the mainline platform. Plus the branch has the 3-track freight yard right next to the station to immediately use as a layover straight off the platform.

In a NSRL world you may do a mix/match of some Peabody-terminating trains and some Beverly. Peabody's platform @ Salem would be capped at 5 cars, and Peabody has a lot of grade crossings...but by this time Saugus Draw on the mainline will have long been replaced by a fixed span so there'll be no interruptions in the clock-facing frequencies. Beverly has longer platform that's more appropriate for absorbing 495-to-128 slots from the other direction and no grade crossings. However, that drawbridge is never going away and gets busy in the summer with small boats so there will be inevitable irregularities in the clock-facing frequencies for bridge openings. That busy junction also can't be so saturated with turning/crossing trains that it fouls the procession of branch traffic. Newburyport/(Portsmouth?) and Rockport are the hungriest branches on the system by a wide margin.

On capacity and near- geographical orientation the Eastern Route's going to be the ideal tunnel pairing match for Worcester. So in that universe it's easiest to take all 'pure' Indigo Riverside trains and designate those as Peabody's matching pair. Then take selection of longer-haul trains running thru from Framingham and send those to Beverly's longer platform. Mix/match accordingly when Peabody's got a stray slot to fill. Keep in mind that Worcester is going to be the system-thickest layer cake of overlapping schedules on a single main: Indigos, conventional locals, semi-expresses, super-expresses, Framingham turns, and Worcester turns all intermixed. Not only are Worcester Line permutations going to be the #2 user of tunnel slots after the NEC, but the sheer schedule variety makes the B&A biggest beneficiary of all the increased surface terminal capacity in the NSRL era.

You don't have to speculate today what run-thru slotting works best Peabody vs. Beverly. There'll be more Framingham-originating schedule variety to sift through than you can shake a stick at. Riverside-Peabody fits like a glove as a single-schedule permanent pair; everything else will fall into place when the time comes with whatever combinations work best at that time.

Also another cost that I didn't mention was how the increased frequencies in the indigo level areas would affect at grade crossings. Still making the commuter rail into a rapid transit or regional rail with all day service would be worth it up to big dig levels of cost, and even then the increased revenue from riders would offset some of that.

Thankfully that is not an issue on most of the system.

• 100% of the southside is grade-separated inside 128. All set.
• Lowell has just that max-difficulty West Medford pair before being clear all the way to North Chelmsford. West Med would obviously be taken care of as an NSRL prereq.
• Eastern Route has the festering sore of those 6 Chelsea crossings. But all of them are solvable. 3rd Ave. is an outright closure. Eastern Ave. had a $19.6M plan unacted upon for a dozen years now. 6th/Arlington can be a closure + ped footbridge if the Route 1 loop ramp were re-angled to Spruce St. instead of Arlington. 2nd + Everett + Spruce are fairly straightforward road-over-rail jobs, despite the driveway density around Everett. Other than these, it's just tiny least-concern Oak Island Rd. in Revere (no elimination necessary) and a useless closable one in Beverly amidst the industrial crud abutting the drawbridge. They just have to start tackling the Chelsea jobs one at a time with some foresight instead of letting it pile up into a mad scramble as prereq. for the Urban Ring or necessary mitigation for running oil trains to Port of Eastie.
• Fitchburg is the most under-capacity main because it will never have branches to run, so the unsolvables at Waltham Ctr. won't be saturated by an Indigo schedule. Move the platforms to face each other west of Moody St. to give Elm crossing some relief, and tart that whole place up with precise signal timings. It'll survive; car congestion in Waltham Ctr.'s going to get better with real transit frequencies, not worse. The one surefire elimination will be Park St. Somerville if GLX Union-Porter happens. Hilly up-and-over road bridge like Dane St.

That leaves Reading, which is a real problem. Obviously it's capacity-constrained enough that to do Indigo at all...even today...thru schedules to Haverhill have to vacate in favor of their old pre-1979 routing on the Lowell Line to Wilmington. So there'll never be anything but short Indigo-signed trains to begin with. The problem re: NSRL becomes:

1. Do you want more than that so there's another mainline that can take a unique southside pairing? Now what's it going to cost to zap a dozen-plus crossings and make a warzone out of the Orange Line in Somerville-Medford tearing out that third track?
2. How much can you cram through the Eastern/Western split in Somerville to begin with before the Eastern Route starts getting choked for slots? It's not like stuff under the I-93 decks is widenable.

I think Reading becomes one of those new inequities that the tunnel creates where further corrective action has to be taken to avoid a game of picking winners/losers. At the cost of eliminating that many crossings at 1% recommended RR grades, you could eliminate them at much steeper Orange Line maximum grades at lower cost. And not have to tear the shit out of Sullivan-Malden fishing for extra tracks or duplicate-electrifying. And you would give the Eastern full capacity through Sullivan by eliminating the junction.

I think finishing the Orange swallow of Reading becomes a front-burner issue. Maybe not a final decision, but something that gets heavily debated as part of setting the network's future course. Upgrading it to par with the other northside mains drives up the RR upgrade cost to cost neutrality (or worse) with building out Orange, so the only way to really shave costs and keep it RR...is to do a really half-assed job not eliminating nearly enough crossings. Thus ensuring Reading's always going to be somewhat of a capacity gimp. Maybe the numbers point to it having a place as least-amongst-equals, maybe they don't. It's very hard to predict today in 2016. But this decision re: Reading's fate is one of those post-NSRL pivots that'll have to be made after the seismic shift has changed the whole nature of the network, because some things will get much less neat-and-tidy while others get moreso.

 

[cbrett]

Re: North-South Rail Link

^Great analysis as always. The one issue with your plan would be Salem to Peabody. The railroad from the Salem station to Peabody currently is only single tracked. Also the northbound train to Salem would have to stop at Salem station and back up to go towards Peabody. Putting a large park and ride at North Beverly could give commuters 128 service although it would be redundant as the towns along 128 would be served by the Rockport Line. Honestly as I'm writing this I think that extending the blue all the way to Salem and slightly increasing Newburyport/Rockport service would make the most sense. Of course it would be even better if the Newburyport line was extended to Portsmouth however I believe that that ROW is being turned into a bike path

Not true, the Peabody/Danvers branch would split in the tunnel through the existing portal, using a seperate Salem station platform shown here: http://www.mbta.com/uploadedFiles/D...t_Improvements/Figure_3_9_Peabody_11x17_1.pdf

As F-Line said before, the ROW could be double tracked again if necessary. Also, Blue will never go beyond the proposed South Salem Station without major construction in downtown Salem and tons of wasted money. Seth Moulton is a great supporter of transit on the North Shore, and with his support I definitely can see Blue to Lynn in our future, but I doubt anything further for quite some time.

North Beverly's Park and Ride is a no-go because of the lack of ridership, the only area you could potentially attract without transit service is Beverly/Danvers along Conant Street which has way too small a population and way too much traffic already from Cherry Hill's Industrial Park. Route 62 from Danvers to Beverly will also be bursting at the seams from the new buildings at the Cummings Center.

 

[tysmith95]

Re: North-South Rail Link

^I stand corrected. I guess I can't rely on Google Maps for all of my information.

However with Salem/Lynn service the question is weather the blue line or the indigo line would provide rapid transit to the corridor. Either could work. The indigo line would provide another benefit of giving Chelsea increased frequencies but the blue line might better serve lynn and salem.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Re: North-South Rail Link

N. Bev. could've played a bigger P&R role had they not chewed up all available parking land with those recent(ish) construction big-box stores on the same parcel. The T lot is pinched at an unexpandable 90 spaces, and there's no way to rearrange the Tetris bricks to usefully consolidate the big-box parking. If they'd built this shopping plaza with anything resembling transit-oriented density this would be an ideal P&R stop...way better value than clogging up downtown with that garage. But they went cookie-cutter suburban instead. Old zoning habits die hard.

Newburyport's got plenty of capacity for additional rush-hour frequency growth; that's not a problem for cranking up frequencies through N. Bev. The '04 North Shore Transit Improvements Study and its big bundle of eminently sensible and totally unacted-upon recs called for +2 morning-peak (7 + 2 = 9 trains) and +1 evening peak (6 + 1 = 7) trains on that branch, requiring two minor passing siding installs in single-track territory to the north. Not a pricey package in the slightest.

The branches could absorb even more if any action whatsoever got taken on the Chelsea crossings, especially Eastern Ave. which extends the slow zone by a full mile east of all others. That $19.6M price tag for the elimination is worth two minutes gained on all schedules by its lonesome. Basic SGR for the aging signal system improves it even more. Having some sort of endgame for Saugus Draw replacement with a fixed bridge does even more. Finishing the job they didn't do double-tracking the Salem mainline platform (parkingparkingparkingparking fixation) does even more.

It's not far fetched to picture >20 conventional-schedule round-trips on each branche happening in the middle-term future at non-megaproject cost if the backlog of old crap got scrubbed squeaky-clean. And still be able to do Peabody and Indigo via the Peabody-side Salem platform lathered on top of that. This is why a properly bolt-tightened Eastern can match wits with Worcester in a #2-most-important NSRL tunnel pairing. North Shore certainly has the demand. It produces some of the highest transit ridership by raw numbers of all near-128 destinations when CR and bus modes are combined, and yet it has a relatively poor transit share from lack of opportunities and is one of the most car-centric areas inside of 128. Frequencies there are mere drop in the bucket to what's needed. We've talked before how BLX-Lynn matters almost as much to the bus network as it does for rapid transit. So does further continuation of Blue to Salem in a later era, because Salem has enough bus demand to be a satellite bus terminal in its own right spraying out new frequencies all around to Beverly, Danvers, Wenham, etc.

Blue-Salem wouldn't necessarily replace Indigo either because that Riverside pairing is a whole different demand audience than rapid transit through Revere and Eastie. Indigo's going to be so overstuffed by that point it'll need to shovel off some North Shore crush load to continue doing its job through the CBD and Allston-Newton half without exploding from the overcrowding. Say Blue allows the Eastern to shed all North Shore intermediates except critical Chelsea/UR, Lynn multimodal terminal, and Salem (south-of-portal) multimodal terminal. That's still enough 2050 demand to sustain spanning the hardest-to-reach opposite points on 128 and reverse-commute growth on the Newton-Riverside 128 quadrant + North Shore density centers. Riverside-Peabody will still be a primary pairing. It's simply that insane how bottomless North Shore transit demand truly is. If their transit share ever gets parity with the rest of the region before the big mid-century increase in region-wide transit share lifts all boats...they are going to need the multimodal kitchen sink up there.

 

[DBM]

Re: North-South Rail Link

Attended Seth Moulton's coffee chat/El Trumpo postmortem today on ye bigge islande of Nahant. He repeatedly stumped for NS Rail Link as something politically palatable under the soon to be new federal regime. He spoke about how he vetted it at considerable length after Dukakis first pitched it to him; no way was Seth going to swallow the Duke's sweet siren song of NS Rail Link without major cool-headed analysis first! Even got down to discussing tunnel boring machines.

His one zinger: "the South Station expansion proposal is a 19th-century solution to a 21st-century transportation issue." Kapow! Zing! Windows still rattling in the corner office at Beacon Hill, no doubt... he also touched on his advocacy for Blue Line to Lynn/Salem, and commuter ferry to Seaport, but not nearly to the extent of NS Rail Link....

 

[whighlander]

Re: North-South Rail Link

Attended Seth Moulton's coffee chat/El Trumpo postmortem today on ye bigge islande of Nahant. He repeatedly stumped for NS Rail Link as something politically palatable under the soon to be new federal regime. He spoke about how he vetted it at considerable length after Dukakis first pitched it to him; no way was Seth going to swallow the Duke's sweet siren song of NS Rail Link without major cool-headed analysis first! Even got down to discussing tunnel boring machines.

His one zinger: "the South Station expansion proposal is a 19th-century solution to a 21st-century transportation issue." Kapow! Zing! Windows still rattling in the corner office at Beacon Hill, no doubt... he also touched on his advocacy for Blue Line to Lynn/Salem, and commuter ferry to Seaport, but not nearly to the extent of NS Rail Link....

DBM-- How about this zinger -- pulling long trains of cars from the front is a 19th C solution -- yet short of subways almost all rail systems are still doing it

By the way I don't think that what Seth Mouton thinks moves any needles either on Beacon or Capital Hill -- "elections do have consequences" {Barack Obama}

 

[DBM]

Re: North-South Rail Link

By the way I don't think that what Seth Mouton thinks moves any needles either on Beacon or Capital Hill -- "elections do have consequences" {Barack Obama}

Well, for very obvious reasons--despite his glittering war record and overall conspicuously overachieving/prestigious resume, he remains a junior junior Congressman for the minority party. I'm just intrigued at how the machinations between his and Baker's office will play out on this ongoing NSRL vs. South Station expansion battle. It's just catnip for mass transit policy wonks, I'm sure...

P.S. A cursory review of the MBTA commuter rail system map overlaying Mass. congressional districts map makes me think Moulton has more commuter rail stops, by a fairly comfortable margin, than any of the other MA Congressional reps. All of Newburyport/Rockport line north of Chelsea, all of Lowell line save Lowell, all of Haverhill line save Lawrence & Haverhill (as best I can judge). But again, that's just a long glance...