Re: Track 61 (Seaport - Back Bay DMU)
I feel like Davey is reading Crazy Transit Pitches. This really sounds like gimmick transit.
Maybe they want some more listed uses for a potential DMU fleet to "justify" the purchases.
I don't know how thrilled the FRA is going to be with the idea of moving people on yard tracks. Also, are they going to change ends at Back Bay station? That would seem to be a capacity clogger on the NEC.
Perhaps they can install a passing siding somewhere and double the potential frequency by staging meets.
It's not the FRA. It's Amtrak, because they control all the yard tracks and all of the NEC.
Looking at some of the T and Amtrak employee reactions on RR.net, the ops issues with the yard are what's going to kill this. There are so many conflicting movements this thing would have to pause at switch...after switch...after switch...after switch in just those couple blocks between Dot Ave. and Albany St. It's not just that it's slow track like the curve out of SS...it's inside a busy yard. So cab signals do not protect from sub-5 MPH collisions where operator override is in effect. With EVERY Fairmount, Old Colony, and Amtrak/MBCR non-revenue move crossing this one spot by the loop that is going to mean the DMU has to pause at a stop signal at each crossing even if the coast looks clear. And dispatch is going to have to manually verify it's clear before giving a green. So, basically it'll be like waiting at 3-5 multi-minutes long traffic lights to get across 2 blocks of the city street grid.
And lord help us all if one of these revenue runs has a slow-speed 'oopsie' in the yard with an Acela while it's pulling into the Amtrak building between runs to get its dining car reloaded. That may be the end of this experiment right then and there with Amtrak's permission.
Then to get to BBY for a terminal stop they are going to have to use the Worcester platforms (the mini-highs) which require cutting across either 4 of 5 or all 5 NEC tracks from the wye. Meaning there can't be anything moving to/from the NEC on that whole elongated set of crossovers before the DMU is allowed a green from dispatch. Everything stops...Acela, Regionals, Providence, Stoughton, Franklin, Needham...while it crosses. And the DMU stops and waits...and waits...while all 5 of those other services get priority if they're in the vicinity. The max unconflicted moves you could make is maybe a Worcester train to/from SS-BBY on the outermost track simultaneous with this DMU pulling in wrong-rail into the Worcester inbound platform. Who goes last in that queue for a clear track? Amtrak is the dispatcher, remember.
5:00pm...it's going to take 5 minutes to get between the Track 61 switch into Southampton to the wye out of Southampton. Then another 5 minutes at a red signal at the wye waiting for every simultaneous-moving peak hour train to clear. Then you have to change ends at BBY and lay over on the platform ("Fairmounted" Worcester fans, take special note).
There are a lot of things flawed about this, but there is no way this can work on the ops side. It fouls every single train movement through the region's busiest yard and every NEC track. It'll be twice as fast to take a bus
in traffic with how much time this is going to chew up at stop signals. And I'm not sure it can be done fail-safe because those 5 MPH yard collisions are the only things cab signals and PTC are not designed to stop. It's human control and extra, extra long stops to be absolutely sure every switch is clear when trains are coming in so many directions and changing myriad directions through switches that line-of-sight is not enough to judge. Slow-speed collisions are the most common kind. There was an infamous oopsie at D.C. Union 2 years ago when a Regional and a MARC commuter rail train exchanging places in the yard bumped each other and derailed at a switch that just happened to be right by the nerve center. It blocked 5 revenue tracks out of the station at 3 o'clock on a Friday and screwed up train traffic on the entire eastern seaboard for 8 hours...for a collision that didn't even cause damage, but fouled a switch in the worst possible location for crossing movements. National media fallout over how extensive and widespread the delays were. That's why 10 minutes at red lights scattered throughout Southampton is not at all unrealistic when the yard is at its busiest.
You can't look at a map of miles and miles of yard tracks and see limitless possibility for revenue tracks. They can't build a flyover to bypass all of this (for one, because Track 61 comes in from
underneath the Red Line overpass). You could, maybe, do a straight Convention Ctr.-Fairmount run without problems because that crosses many fewer switches and only requires pausing for the Old Colony...but this is Back Bay, not Fairmount, they want. There's no way to make it fail-safe without being...slow...deliberate...and full of dead stops. You can't look at the schedule and say..."Well, except for 5:00pm we can just cruise right on through!" No. Yards don't work that way. They're arguably busiest at off-peak shift changes like 10:00am, lunch, 3:00pm when the mainlines are emptying or gearing up for the next shift and all the out-of-service equipment is getting moved into place or cleaned or prepped and all kinds of staff are walking along the tracks to get to/from their trains and the breakroom.
This is a total immovable object no amount of Crazy Transit Pitches brainstorming is ever going to solve. There is no alt route. There is no dispatching massaging. The only way from Point A to Point B is across every single active southside terminal and yard track during peak activity. Unless we want to spent $250M on a new flyover and a replacement Red Line flyover for the Cabot Yard flyover that has to get blown up to build this flyover.
I have to wonder because of that if this was just some of the Gov.'s cronies, the Mayor, Sec. Davey, and a bunch of BRA guys doodling on a map without ever asking the T what the traffic modeling would look like. It's very apparent they didn't ask Amtrak given how surprised and kerfuzzled the employees are on RR.net today. And there is the possibility that the additional "oversight" of having the T report to the MassDOT chair is punking them over today much like South Coast FAIL is being forced on them at gunpoint without the agency having any say in the out-of-district towns. Massport owns Track 61, not the T. If they helped cook this up with the pols as a scheme to get more funding money...the T doesn't have a lot of recourse. They'll be forced to run it, but it's runs 50% on infrastructure they don't own at all and 50% on infrastructure they don't control at all because of Amtrak. Nobody told Amtrak before going to the press? "Heyyy, Beverly...this is Davey. Say, could take this call from Amtrak Prez. Joe Boardman down in D.C.? I can't understand some of the profanities he's shouting at me, and I have to go to another ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Berkshires train. K THX BYE!!!"
Nobody's in control of this. The pols who want shiny toys are proposing it, a MassDOT sub-agency in direct sibling rivalry with the T for funding is the host of it, the sad sacks who have to buy the equipment and run it and clog BBY to possible detriment of their own commuter rail schedules have to pay for it and run it, and a wholly unrelated federal third party is being wishful-thinking tasked with making sure it operates smoothly and safely. It is a total perversion of the "accountability" the DOT reorg was supposed to bring about. Divide and conquer...then nobody can tell the Gov. that nice playthings are not so easy. We saw this with SCR. We're seeing this with Berkshire intercity. And now this. It won't be anywhere close to the last time.
