Re: Track 61 (Seaport - Back Bay DMU)
I'm not saying build GLX instead of this Track 61 plan. But it should someday replace this DMU shuttle, because the shuttle is crippled by scheduling issues. The tunnel system I just detailed comes from F-Line as the most viable route...
Yeah. The problem with Track 61 if it gets approved is that because it's so constrained at rush hour we may only have 10-12 years to run it before its capacity window completely closes. Consider:
-- South Station expansion realizing the maximum-most Fairmount and Worcester schedules + buying the Old Colony a few more slots above its current ceiling. Lots more Fairmount + some more OC traffic slicing Southampton with more frequency.
-- Likely Middleboro extension to Hyannis. Buzzards Bay has pretty much been clinched already by Cape Flyer; Hyannis is an inevitable Phase II now. See above with that claiming all available extra slots on the OC.
-- Likely Foxboro fork off the Franklin, which would route over the Fairmount as a requirement. More Fairmount traffic on top of the Indigo schedule.
-- Likely evolution of more Franklin runs being diverted over Fairmount as the NEC gets more congested. Still more Southampton-crossing traffic.
--
Amtrak 2025 NEC Infrastructure Improvements Plan. Tri-tracking and movable bridge replacements downstream flushing more intercity to Boston. Vehicle procurements like Acela replacements doing more of the same. Substantial expansion of Southampton required to support all this (see that highlighted in the linked report as a high priority...this is where the private businesses in Widett probably have to get moved elsewhere). More crossing NEC intercity traffic at the wye getting priority above all else from Amtrak dispatch.
-- T storage expansion. If they displace the BTD lot and cold storage warehouse at Widett for their own layover tracks, their trains come out of the Amtrak yard further to the south and end up fouling the loop and Track 61 switches more than they do today.
-- South Coast Rail or Phase I to Taunton flushing more Stoughton traffic through the NEC. General Providence Line growth. Will be much much harder to get a slot across the wye. Will force many more Franklins over the Fairmount and across Southampton.
-- Worcester schedule saturation chewing up short-turn opportunities at BBY/Yawkey/New Balance (which today is not a problem). "Fairmounted Worcester" to Riverside tops off that capacity with thru trains, making 5-8 minute platform layovers for a reverse impossible. You will probably have to continue all the way to Riverside instead of ever getting a chance to reverse at one of the intermediates.
And so on. All of these things are near-term stuff or in active motion. None of them with all that big question marks for implementing within 10 years except Taunton and (if the BRA doesn't get its ass in gear with the Post Office) SS expansion. Track 61's last daytime slot may be gone by 2025-27. And then we're S.O.L.
I said a couple pages ago for this to work with such a ceiling for possible schedule slots it almost has to be a 1-2 punch of this in the interim + restarting SL Phase III or alternative studies, design, and action plan. Whether the funding exists in the next decade to start building, it's a shot across their bow to restart the paperwork and get it all back on the frontburner. Obviously on a much different route this time than the impossible Chinatown Big Dig and desecration of the Common burial grounds. The BCEC camp's renegade move to propose this is, as Shepard noted in his post, a stinging indictment of what they were left to work with on a half-complete Silver Line. The pressure is on to fix that now. Because they know Track 61 passenger traffic may have a very finite lifespan at no more than a decade...if it's feasible to initiate at all.
That's why finding feasible non-"Medium Dig" routes off the Green Line becomes a lot more urgent now. Changing at Tufts or crossing platforms at Park for a Copley train is--two-seater be damned--a shitload higher-capacity and more frequent way of getting easily to BBY than the DMU that can't run often and threatens to be squeezed, squeezed, squeezed out of existence before it hits puberty age.
