Re: North-South Rail Link
guy on City Data writes.....
I'll go point-by-point.
1. This is a prime example of how formal advocacy for the NSRL is failing...badly...at explaining to interested citizens what this thing attempts to accomplish. It's not about replacing the terminal or run-thru, it's the fact that the mash-up of all lines onto the terminal lead tracks imposes an immovable headway limiter on the whole system. Until the messaging becomes simple enough for this to grasp, you're going to have folks like this utterly lost from the get-go. The advocacy never hits critical mass if it can't be bottom-lined what the hell the thing does.
2 & 3. This is true...but the poster loses the plot by not being able to name what those details are. And that's a red-flag for the confusion in #1 that he/she has no idea what this thing is supposed to do. Too few people claiming to be gung-ho for it know what it's supposed to do, and that's the messaging's fault. It's one thing to be able to look at the parts and determine "OK, Central Station really isn't adding much useful on top for its expense; lets cut that." It's another thing to have such blinders about what kinds of frequencies we hope to run through it and conclude "Let's just do 2 tracks." Yeah...according to the official study 2 instead of 4 tracks in a downsizing option. But the consequences are a lot bigger for making that cut instead of Central Station...so have some idea of what the mission statement (system frequencies) is before assuming all cuts are equal. Some parts are a hell of a lot more important than others. The messaging to-date hasn't armed the public with any means of ranking what features and/or frills matter the most. How are we going to agree upon what kind of build to fund if we can't rank those parts?
4. Lots of confusion here too. Poster correctly pegs the Amtrak demand drop-off; New Hampshire and Maine are mostly a Virginia Northeast Regionals-type audience for a very modest subset of run-thru service. But this stuff about Amtrak system standardization (e.g. electrification)? Irrelevant; it's abstract conceptual perfectionism that won't sway any federal dollars. Amtrak has no qualms with doing an engine switch to diesel in New Haven or Washington; the Springfield Line and Virginia lines don't need electrifying until ConnDOT or Virginia Railway Express commuter rail density compels it. Same thing here. They'll engine-switch the Regionals at Anderson RTC (where they'll presumably have a maint facility) for continuing to Concord or Portland those few times of day demand compels it.
And this whole thing that it's all about commuter station crowding misses the whole point about frequencies. The subway is choking to death on congestion because downtown growth is outstripping the Red Line's ability to run its peak frequencies. That's the Seaport doomsday clock ticking on economic growth cap of the CBD if we don't build some subway relievers. But you can't de-clog Red by building NSRL; commuter rail's mode share is simply too tiny. That's a distraction from the real issue...sort of like all these desperation ploys for a Track 61 dinky are a distraction from the real issue of never having completed Silver Line Phase III. You're not removing load faster than you're adding it by shuffling the project deck. Look at the Blue Book boardings by mode; the threat is all
top-down from Red to Green/Orange. You don't address a top-down problem with potentially serious economic consequences by throwing bottom-up solutions at the board in desperation. The scale is inverted to where relief is needed.
Finally, if the poster understood that NSRL was about adding frequencies he/she would see the folly in a build that DOUBLED-or-more Purple Line frequencies into each terminal somehow being able to take riders off the choked downtown subways. How, exactly? Is Central Station on the system's lightest-ridership subway (Blue) supposed to offset that North Station Orange + Green, SS Red + Silver, and BBY-Orange are going to be seeing 2-3x as frequent CR trains upstairs & downstairs? Again...frequencies top-down vs. bottom-up. If we intend to run real RER frequencies through here, the loads downtown are going to keep spiraling up, up, up
because of NSRL's real endgame of increasing Purple frequencies. You will have to build the whole kitchen sink of Red-Blue + Silver Line Phase III as prerequisites to be able to distribute those loads, will have to build the linear rapid transit extensions to big bus terminals like Lynn and Roslindale/West Roxbury to get the Yellow Line pitching in at effectively distributing those loads. It'll amp up the pressure on building the Urban Ring since NSRL hitting the CBD harder with Purple transferees puts more emphasis on being able to load-spread Yellow-centric subway transferees further away from the CBD. NSRL increases the rider supply. Congestion management where there already is an oversupply/overdemand is always, always going to be a top-down priority with Red + Green + Orange in the CBD leading all other modes by the nose. That's the forever pecking order. If NSRL's function is so poorly-understood that we can't understand how it fits in the pecking order...then we better clear up that confusion before selling the public on the job.
5 (re: build sequence). Ass-backwards. No...the Link will be completely useless if you don't pre-prep the biggest ridership line pairs first. Because it's all about frequencies, and a tunnel that's just sitting there being fed by mainlines not up-to-snuff for the change in frequencies isn't going to do much good. It'll barely be a change from current commuter rail frequencies to have a Day 1 with push-pull consists pulled by morbidly obese dual-mode locomotives covering the Providence-north and Worcester-north top pairings. Half-ass the frequencies for Day 1 because of an over-focus on steel-and-concrete being 'the' build, and there's little motivation to dig out of that hole and finish tightening the bolts systemwide because half-assed becomes the schedule baseline that sets all expectations.
You have to have your electrification pre-prep far enough along to run some Riverside-Salem Indigo trains and Providence-Lowell thru pairings on nimble EMU's. And you have to have eaten your peas for a couple decades decrapifying the mainlines of any SGR deficits that impose unnatural frequency limiters...stuff like top-shape signal systems, killing speed restrictions over bridges and grade crossing clusters, modernizing stations for optimal dwell times. Transit's never an "if you build it, they will come" calculation. Transit's an "if you
run it, they will come." How many times do we have to get punked by throwing a lot of money at shiny stuff only to have the powers that be backpedal away from running the originally intended frequencies? Guess what...you can proportionately make NSRL just like another Fairmount Line by building the shiny stuff then throwing the service plan in the trash when it comes to actually running frequencies that matter a damn through the shiny stuff. In fact...we should expect this as the DEFAULT temptation for state officials given how many transit projects have seen inevitable attrition between study and grand opening on frequencies. NSRL advocacy must pitch it as more a
frequency megaproject than a physical-construction megaproject to make sure that whittling-down effect doesn't systematically stifle all momentum for enacting the service plan.
The fact that this poster is assuming a general status quo on how these things go--emphasize the monument before the usefulness--is all the red flags you need to show that things have to change with how we perceive service-oriented civil engineering projects in this state. "Build it first, details later" doesn't fly. If that's how the sales pitch is being processed...then the sales pitch has to be a lot different.
I'd like to say I'm more optimistic, but this poster's response betrays the exact warning signs that tell us that the NSRL advocacy isn't clear enough, isn't emphasizing the right service-oriented things, and in general is lacking any sort of consensus on what this thing's upside is. If frequencies keep getting de-emphasized and set aside in a discussion of the project's basic parts and basic upside...then we don't get it. Clean up the murk and weasel-words in the public talking points. The advocacy has to ding the right part of the public's brain. It 'clicks' when, after outlining the key points, the public starts brainstorming--wholly on their own devices--about what their travel options would be on RER-style frequent train service. You'll know it's working because they'll pretty much give back a dictionary definition of RER-level service without ever being told beforehand what "RER-level service" is. The frequency argument just leads one's brain right to that service paradigm as the natural order of things. If the selling points for NSRL can't lead people to that
natural-order conclusion, it's botching the messaging. Faulty conclusions about replacements for other unbuilt subways, surface vs. tunnel warfare, ignoring whether the CR network even has the SGR to be ready for it, inversions of the mode-by-mode demand profile (i.e. top-down vs. bottom-up), overemphasis on the tunnel structure itself to exclusion of how it's used, or eight-dimensional political chess: ALL...OF...THESE are dead ends, not starting points for an advocacy. If the messaging leads to mass confusion or dumping people into those dead ends rather than letting service levels set the agenda and shape the momentum...that means the advocates need to sharpen their game and try again.
This whole post is basically a road map for every dead-end conclusion the advocates need to address as they sharpen their game and try again. It won't work if that poster is the proverbial control sample for how these talking points lead people's conclusions astray. The project has no chance if a relatively educated person like this can't be set straight bullet by bullet with service-first project emphasis.
