DominusNovus
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Re: North-South Rail Link
Did anyone go to the meeting yesterday? Any good info?
Did anyone go to the meeting yesterday? Any good info?
premier-tier service...terminating in Woburn out in the 'burbs??? I don't think so. The NEC FUTURE Commission doesn't mention anything about that, and all their reports duly footnote NSRL as a consequential traffic influencer their studies need to factor in.
Yes, Woburn Proper is dumpy, but I don't see that being much different from where they plopped Lyon's TGV station (out on the 3rd ring road).
The market is out there, arguably about 1/4 of all Metro demand--Tech along 9 & 93 and money managers' homes at the eastern end of 128 and probably a higher % of demand that has trouble getting to Logan.
That Amtrak Virginia has NER-like operating profits means that it has great market demand despite the long northbound scheduled hold for its NEC-slots at WAS, and generous padding in both directions between Alexandria and Union Station.Think...why haven't there been any plans to terminate all Regionals/Acelas at the south end of the D.C. Beltway instead of downtown when that's a much bigger metro area?
That Amtrak Virginia has NER-like operating profits means that it has great market demand despite the long northbound scheduled hold for its NEC-slots at WAS, and generous padding in both directions between Alexandria and Union Station.
We also see, in the success at ROA, that there's real appetites for taking the NER "one stop farther"
In DC's case, a better reason why the NEC has not been extended south "one more stop" can't be primarily market demand but rather that the Long Bridge & RF&P are:
1) Owned by CSX
2) Slot-restricted and delay inducing
3) VA has no appetite for electrification (unlike Mass if we do the NSRL)
4) And whatever other reasons that have kept MARC & VRE from Through-running on each others' CSX, Diesel-hauled territories.
If they work out VRE-MARC North-South through-running, and VA pays for Electrification and a commuter yard at the Springfield Interchange (and NSRL proposes to do analogous/mirror-image things in Woburn in a way that's not available in DC) then I would expect Amtrak to try to find a way to "freeload" to get to that southern quadrant of the DC area (Franconia-Springfield WMATA/VRE)
But in Virginia, that CSX owns the ROW makes it much harder to imagine, despite the proven demand, than picturing an Acela in Woburn.
If the North-South rail link happened, is there any chance that the Downeaster would be rolled into an extended Northeast Regional?
Listening to the radio this morning I was a bit annoyed that the take-away message is that N-S Rail Link would connect North and South Stations and they are a mile apart so why not... I mean the new underground platforms would likely be pretty far from North and South Stations.
The benefits of linking the North and South sides of the rail system include reducing system-wide travel times, increasing capacity and improving regional transportation options by connecting people from the North and South to job and housing opportunities on the other side of downtown.
^ Yeah i'm increasingly convinced that this project will only really get moving if and only if it gets repackaged as part of a "21st Century rail" megaproject - its just too hard to communicate the system-wide benefits (and required investments) under the NSRL headline.
^ Yeah i'm increasingly convinced that this project will only really get moving if and only if it gets repackaged as part of a "21st Century rail" megaproject - its just too hard to communicate the system-wide benefits (and required investments) under the NSRL headline.
Selling nsrl as 'lets build a tunnel to make it more convenient to get from North station to South station by train' is like selling the big dig by saying 'lets build a huge cable stayed bridge over the Charles to make it more convenient to get from Somerville to the North End by car...
The Big Dig was more about removing the central artery from view, not anything else. The TWT was just a throw in to please Weston CEOs to make their lives easier to get to Logan.
A third tube should have also been built to carry heavy rail, or be dedicated travel lanes for buses - the silver line and Logan Express.
I don't know the specifics but the Silver Line was supposed to have dedicated lanes through the TWT, but that was cut.
Selling nsrl as 'lets build a tunnel to make it more convenient to get from North station to South station by train' is like selling the big dig by saying 'lets build a huge cable stayed bridge over the Charles to make it more convenient to get from Somerville to the North End by car...
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/11/23/u-s-finally-legalizes-modern-european-style-train-cars/
I don't think I've seen any discussion of this new FRA decision? I wonder if anyone thinks this would impact the costs for regional rail/NSRL and by how much.