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

Okay I called the congressman's office and they told me the "full report" will not be published until the Fall.
 
Longfellow said:

I think I found the same slides as you. Not much here besides an alignment endorsement but I am not super familiar with eg. if the "advocates" long settled on the artery alignment.

I know the deep underground stations are a cost driver but 2.9 miles of TBM, come on! at this point hire a european country to do it and pay them 2x of whatever it costs them to do it. Just get it done.

View attachment 51644
Click to expand...
Ive sometimes wondered the same thing. If nsrl is going to cost 10 billion, what if we give the chinese 5 billion to do it? If the options are the chinese build the tunnel or we get no tunnel Id be ok with the chinese building it.
 
Longfellow said:

I think I found the same slides as you. Not much here besides an alignment endorsement but I am not super familiar with eg. if the "advocates" long settled on the artery alignment.

I know the deep underground stations are a cost driver but 2.9 miles of TBM, come on! at this point hire a european country to do it and pay them 2x of whatever it costs them to do it. Just get it done.

View attachment 51644
Click to expand...
Absolutely infuriating that they seem to be pursuing a backwards "build the Link first, then get Regional Rail" tact instead of latching onto the TransitMatters momentum. Moulton really seems to intensely believe that stub-end terminals are the be-all/end-all of sucky "19th century" ops instead of the whole bunch of other things that have been factually proven.
 
RandomWalk said:
The NSRL has a big ribbon cutting. Reworking ops doesn’t.
Click to expand...
And this is why I question the pols' true commitment. The public isn't going to get behind NSRL in a big way unless they have some means of perceiving what high-frequency service and truly useful 2-seat tripmaking really is. It's too-abstract a concept right now (doubly so when the rapid transit division's supposed-to-be useful frequencies are imploding), and they'd be right to be skeptical that digging an $8B tunnel only to run the same infrequent ops constitutes some sort of boondoggle. For example, the way SEPTA slashed its system to the bone before opening its run-thru tunnel, then kept things at the same reduced service for 40 years provides easy-grasp national cautionary tale for this skepticism. So the only way NSRL is ever practically going to get to the starting line is by reworking ops first. Stub-end terminals are no constraint to densifying Regional Rail. You might have to expand some (maybe not all, and definitely not larded-up with the vast majority of the real-estate kingmaking and headhouse monument-building costs) of South Station to the chagrin of the zero-sum game advocacy contingent who are pitting SSX diametrically against NSRL...but most of the work is just optimizing the terminal district interlockings, electrification and EMU's, level boarding, and fare zone + transfer equity. Then simply run the trains every :30 to 495 and :15 to 128 on every line. The rest of the advocacy comes naturally, because the ease of commuting and transfer utility will be FAN-FUCKING-TASTIC all around until you hit the brick wall of that gap through Downtown. Then people will really, truly notice the need for run-thru. It doesn't have to take an eon to get to that stage, either. Partial Regional Rail-ification of the system this decade will thoroughly whet people's appetites for more.

If Moulton really, truly wants this it's baffling that he isn't leaning into--and in fact is swimming against--the TransitMatters advocacy tact of "RER-first, NSRL self-evidently next". It makes his job so much harder to nearly impossible to try to argue that run-thru is the barrier to frequency, and that building this monolith is the only path for making things ever better. And that makes me wonder if he's just another in the line of high-profile pols whose personal cause for NSRL was more about personal publicity in-the-now than it is playing a long political game to actually get something done.
 
^^At this stage, most Americans aren't used to being able to expect their government to do things for them...at least in ways they're conscious and conscientious of.

The truth of it, too, is that NSRL is probably in a real sense logistically and publically easier than Regional Rail-ification. NSRL is one big project (Bostonians are used to that, for better or worse) that hypothetically everyone using the system would benefit from--never mind that AFAIK a lot of NSRL specs are based around electric traction's performance--which is graphically demonstrable by a fat line between North Station and South Station.

By contrast, say, an initial "trial" line of level-boarding/EMUs/fare rationalization to pitch a lower total cost to the public at the cost of jockeying interests to decide who goes first; OR the entire system at once with the aforementioned changes and media headlines of, "tEnS oF bIllIoNs oF dOlLaRs", would probably require some education that first requires bringing to the public's attention that hey, there's actually more choice than either traffic apocalypse or creaky old diesel-hauled commuter trains to navigate Greater Boston.

I'd like to think that we could pick that middle option, have people see how much better commuter rail can be when it's also regional rail, and then vie to be the next line to be modernized, but at this point it's a struggle just to get people to be more rational about their car purchasing/driving habits, much less get them to think they could rely on something besides their car/driving to get them around, in the first place. I'd love to be made a fool on that count, though.
 
Is it more likely for future NSRL costs (relative to today + inflation) to keep rapidly growing, stay about the same as today, or possibly decrease?

I agree with the idea that starting RER should be done first, but worry that the best/cheapest time to start building this is always going to be "yesterday"
 
KCasiglio said:
Henry George has an idea
Click to expand...
Hell yeah, and even without a LVT it's still possible to use land value to help with this. I did my thesis on using land value discrepancy to identify potential redevelopment sites around the commuter rail, and it was pretty easy to find enough parcels to cover the cost of RER electrification. NSRL fully funded is possible if we fully tap into the big sites like Beacon Park, and that's also leaving out the real sicko moves like "Beverly's Rantoul Street" ification of many commuter rail stops.

Gotta dig through and redo the parts I'm missing at some point, will post on here the next time I'm able to get adderall and enter the manic planning zone
 
I’m late to this and not at all a rail expert, but I noticed in some of the diagrams it shows a Union Station as a central hub after NSRL completion but I don’t see that on the alignment map posted above. Is this really feasible or necessary? I imagine that’s the deepest part of the bore, so would require a ton of extra room for access. Where would this be, right on the greenway?
 
Justbuildit said:
I’m late to this and not at all a rail expert, but I noticed in some of the diagrams it shows a Union Station as a central hub after NSRL completion but I don’t see that on the alignment map posted above. Is this really feasible or necessary? I imagine that’s the deepest part of the bore, so would require a ton of extra room for access. Where would this be, right on the greenway?
Click to expand...
Usually referred to as Central Station -- not really a central hub, but a connection to get the Blue Line connected to the Urban Rail network. It is deep and expensive to build, and often talked about as optional. But it does get all the rapid transit lines connected to the Urban Rail network if implemented.
 
JeffDowntown said:
Usually referred to as Central Station -- not really a central hub, but a connection to get the Blue Line connected to the Urban Rail network. It is deep and expensive to build, and often talked about as optional. But it does get all the rapid transit lines connected to the Urban Rail network if implemented.
Click to expand...
I think a good compromise to get a useful walkshed around the "union station" would be to build "north station under" near the haymarket/GC area. That would be close enough to the blue line for transfers and certain northside lines can continue to terminate at the surface stub-end station.
 
It's important to remember that the NSRL itself requires electrification, because diesel trains won't be able to handle the required grades. So before the NSRL can open, at least the lines that are slated to run through will have to be electrified.
 
ceo said:
It's important to remember that the NSRL itself requires electrification, because diesel trains won't be able to handle the required grades. So before the NSRL can open, at least the lines that are slated to run through will have to be electrified.
Click to expand...
The grades will be 2.5% max, which is lower than the Commuter Rail's current steepest grades: Mystic River Bridge on the Eastern Route (3%), Neponset River Bridge on the Old Colony main (3%), and the currently out-of-service Wellington duck-under on the Reading Line (almost 3%). So there's no restriction on push-pull sets; indeed Amtrak will be running its Charger dual-modes and Airo sets through there for future Portland and/or Concord Northeast Regionals, as well as a South Station/Southampton Yard-terminating Downeaster. But as an unventilated tunnel it obviously can't take straight diesels because of the fumes. The T did evaluate Alts. that equipped the whole system with dual-modes so it could retain push-pull ops, but the performance through the tunnel would be sucky at best and the locos would basically be the most expensive on the planet. EMU's are definitely the way to go on price and performance, as they have somewhat more zip and can recover better from the numerous speed penalties on the underground grades, curves, and junctions.
 
sneijder said:
I think a good compromise to get a useful walkshed around the "union station" would be to build "north station under" near the haymarket/GC area. That would be close enough to the blue line for transfers and certain northside lines can continue to terminate at the surface stub-end station.
Click to expand...
That's exactly what they're doing. North Station on the CA/T alignment will have egresses to both the North Station Green/Orange superstation and Haymarket. No direct Blue Line transfer, but it serves the walkshed.

1715031826800-png.50284
 
During the July Red Line diversion, the Fitchburg line is adding a Porter Shuttle so that NS > Porter gets half-hour headways. I don't recall them doing something like this before, but with this and the recent "Lucky Express" for the Celtics game during the OL diversion it seems the Commuter Rail Ops is getting more practice with short-turns inside 128.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
That's exactly what they're doing. North Station on the CA/T alignment will have egresses to both the North Station Green/Orange superstation and Haymarket. No direct Blue Line transfer, but it serves the walkshed.
Click to expand...

So this will be a big station, but this looks markedly not like the palatial underground stations like Penn. I assume the idea is that trains will truly not be terminating at NS/SS under and will always run through? As far as that goes I'm glad they are more forward thinking than NYC in this aspect.
 
Longfellow said:
So this will be a big station, but this looks markedly not like the palatial underground stations like Penn. I assume the idea is that trains will truly not be terminating at NS/SS under and will always run through? As far as that goes I'm glad they are more forward thinking than NYC in this aspect.
Click to expand...
Surface NS and SS remain the Downtown termination stations. NSRL is for thru-running to a surface terminus further out.
 
Longfellow said:
So this will be a big station, but this looks markedly not like the palatial underground stations like Penn. I assume the idea is that trains will truly not be terminating at NS/SS under and will always run through? As far as that goes I'm glad they are more forward thinking than NYC in this aspect.
Click to expand...
They can't be big stations being bored so far underground. It'll probably be a little claustrophobic. And the egresses and transfer interfaces with rapid transit will take some time...very long escalators and walkways, but that's the geometry they're dealing with.

It's the expectation that everything using the tunnels will be run-thru. There'll be more liberal short-turning at Route 128 for culling long runs on the unified system, but Downtown will be an orderly procession through the tunnel. Throwing everyone off at one of the claustrophobic underground stations creates long dwells which harms capacity, so they wouldn't want to do that if they can avoid it. The surface terminals are definitely staying if the Link is only 2-track...there's too many mouths that won't be able to be fed by a tunnel pair-matching. On a 4-track Link NS *might* be able to go, but SS surface will still be needed for all Amtrak service that's terminating in Boston, lines like the Cape or Wickford Jct./deep-RI that are too far out to pair-match with scheduling accuracy, rush-hour surge slots on the heaviest-loading lines, shift changes where a train will be going out-of-service, and all slots that don't map neatly to a pair-match. Run-thru's capacity isn't infinite because of the slow speeds through the steep tunnels, so there'll still be plenty to go around. Indeed not getting rid of the surface terminals essentially doubles the system's total capacity by doubling-up the terminal district's mashup of lines to above-ground and underground interlockings; the terminal districts (especially southside) currently serve as the system's traffic limiter. You could basically saturate each mainline with hyper-dense service up to the practical traffic limits of whatever grade crossings remain on them if you kept the surface terminals in conjunction with the Link.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top