The Orange Line Thread

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Toonie29

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ant8904 said:
I'm sorry but that just look like building trains for just to have more trains. The Orange line is literally across the street. Granted, it feels far due to the size of Rutherford and the stations itself is set back from there, but it is still right there with less than 1000 FT.

Now if the Green Line goes into Charlestown, then that's expanding service.
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Why not just move the Orange Line a 1,000 FT closer to civilization and run it underneath the updated Rutherford Ave. Heck, half the tunnels are already there.

- At the CC stop, install headhouses on both the BHCC and Thompson Square sides which would eliminate the need for pedestrians to cross the busy intersection.

- At the Sullivan Square stop, have headhouses on the Schrafft's side of the rotary and the bus terminal side so no one has to dodge rotary traffic. (And they could discontinue that silly Sullivan/Schrafft's shuttle.) If you wanted to get really fancy you could build a bus terminal in the middle of the rotary. That way the buses could enter and exit by simply merging into/out of the rotary traffic instead of waiting for traffic lights.

- Create a new City Square/Chelsea St./Navy Yard stop.

In the end, you even end up with a much straighter shot for the train between North Station and Assembly Square and almost everyone in Charlestown is a 10 min walk (or less) from an accessible Orange Line stop.
 
Re: Rutherford Avenue to go on a diet!

Toonie29 said:
Why not just move the Orange Line a 1,000 FT closer to civilization and run it underneath the updated Rutherford Ave. Heck, half the tunnels are already there.
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... no it's not. There is no tunnel under or anywhere Rutherford Ave other than the highway ramps which would make moving the Orange Line even more expensive. Yes! Let's just move the Orange line 1,00' for no reason except we have all this money to burn.


In the end, you even end up with a much straighter shot for the train between North Station and Assembly Square and almost everyone in Charlestown is a 10 min walk (or less) from an accessible Orange Line stop.
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So you'd spend upwards of $1B so some people wouldn't have to walk so far?
 
Re: Rutherford Avenue to go on a diet!

Haha! I never said it would be fiscally feasible or responsible, just that it would be a much more logical and covenient place for the Orange Line.

Of course increased ridership on the Orange Line would make a bad situation even worse. Trying to fit onto an Orange Line train during morning or afternoon rush hours can be a nightmare sometimes. Having to wait for 2 or 3 trains before you can finally squeeze onto one is bad enough. I can't imagine what it will be like in a couple of years once thousands of people are living in Assembly Square.
 
Re: Rutherford Avenue to go on a diet!

Toonie29 said:
Haha! I never said it would be fiscally feasible or responsible, just that it would be a much more logical and covenient place for the Orange Line.

Of course increased ridership on the Orange Line would make a bad situation even worse. Trying to fit onto an Orange Line train during morning or afternoon rush hours can be a nightmare sometimes. Having to wait for 2 or 3 trains before you can finally squeeze onto one is bad enough. I can't imagine what it will be like in a couple of years once thousands of people are living in Assembly Square.
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Luckily, Assembly Square is slated to be office heavy, not residential. I believe the figures are pegged at ~2,250 residents and ~6,000+ office jobs. This hopefully means that people coming from Oak Grove, Malden, and Wellington (as it is, not everyone can even fit on at Wellington sometimes, WTF?!) will be getting off at Assembly Square for work. And most people will be reverse commuting from the south to get to jobs there.

It really is a dire situation, though, when trains are crammed after just Malden. I always feel bad for the people in Sullivan, because they don't have a shot in hell during peak hour.
 
Re: Rutherford Avenue to go on a diet!

BostonUrbEx said:
Luckily, Assembly Square is slated to be office heavy, not residential. I believe the figures are pegged at ~2,250 residents and ~6,000+ office jobs. This hopefully means that people coming from Oak Grove, Malden, and Wellington (as it is, not everyone can even fit on at Wellington sometimes, WTF?!) will be getting off at Assembly Square for work. And most people will be reverse commuting from the south to get to jobs there.

It really is a dire situation, though, when trains are crammed after just Malden. I always feel bad for the people in Sullivan, because they don't have a shot in hell during peak hour.
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It like an argument to now activate the express track. Unfortunate it doesn't go to North Station though.
 
Re: Rutherford Avenue to go on a diet!

The express track is useless for revenue service. I don't understand why it was designed the way it was.
 
Re: Rutherford Avenue to go on a diet!

vanshnookenraggen said:
The express track is useless for revenue service. I don't understand why it was designed the way it was.
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It truly is. It's just begging to be converted into a second Haverhill Line track. Although it comes in handy for disabled consists and the current run-around at Assembly Square.

I imagine the engineers were on crack when they designed the Haymarket-North extension. (And if that doesn't convince you, look at their architectural choice for stations)
 
Re: Rutherford Avenue to go on a diet!

I totally understand that they were expecting to extend it out to Reading but that being the case why is the express track totally designed wrong? North Station and Sullivan Sq are the only ones that should have been express (along with Malden Center). It boggles the mind.
 
Re: Rutherford Avenue to go on a diet!

BostonUrbEx said:
It really is a dire situation, though, when trains are crammed after just Malden. I always feel bad for the people in Sullivan, because they don't have a shot in hell during peak hour.
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Sorry but I'm just not buying that it's a 'dire' situation like the saturation on the Red and Green. I think that's more of an issue of people not understanding how to properly ride public transit in general. You can't expect that your backpack or shoulder bag or purse or shopping bags are going to have their own designated space when it's standing room only, for Pete's sake.
 
Re: Rutherford Avenue to go on a diet!

BostonUrbEx said:
It truly is. It's just begging to be converted into a second Haverhill Line track. Although it comes in handy for disabled consists and the current run-around at Assembly Square.

I imagine the engineers were on crack when they designed the Haymarket-North extension. (And if that doesn't convince you, look at their architectural choice for stations)
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OL North is crammed because the line doesn't @#$% have enough cars. It's the same exact fleet that used to run on the Washington St. El in 4-car trains. They literally empty 100% of Wellington Yard during rush hour to service the line at crush load. It's not enough. The headways are way too sparse from lack of supply. The signal system can handle Red-level headways.

The new car order is supposed to add a minimum 24 more cars. And now there's that new indie report out saying it needs to be closer to 40 more cars to track with ridership growth. That's how bad the shortfall is, and how much it's hurting that they keep delaying this new car order.
 
Re: Rutherford Avenue to go on a diet!

vanshnookenraggen said:
I totally understand that they were expecting to extend it out to Reading but that being the case why is the express track totally designed wrong? North Station and Sullivan Sq are the only ones that should have been express (along with Malden Center). It boggles the mind.
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Bad idea of them to short North Station of the express track, although the thinking at the time was that the contra-flow expresses would skip virtually everything out to Oak Grove (where the 3rd track was supposed to end if commuter rail got displaced) to speed the trip to Reading.


Unfortunately the electrical/signaling infrastructure makes it a PITA to rip out in favor of a 2nd CR track. And there's just not a lot of demand for it since the Haverhill schedule's easily supplemented with Anderson expresses on the Lowell Line.
 
Re: Rutherford Avenue to go on a diet!

I've taken the Orange Line inbound in the morning a few times from Sullivan. It's more packed than I could have ever expected. But yes it seems like with more trains you could have shorter headways. If the Red Line can run every 5 minutes at rush hour, certainly the Orange Line can too.
 
Re: Rutherford Avenue to go on a diet!

The Orange Line does run every 5 minutes, according to schedule. I suppose that assumes every car is in service.
 
Re: Rutherford Avenue to go on a diet!

Matthew said:
The Orange Line does run every 5 minutes, according to schedule. I suppose that assumes every car is in service.
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In theory. But on any given day there will be cars rotated in and out of service, and since they only run 6-car consists that means there are several out. Given how old they are they are almost never at full strength, and thus that 5 min. headway rarely happens in reality. If you see 2 trains 5 mins. apart, that's usually because of bunching not end-to-end throughput.
 
I moved this tangent from the Rutherford Ave thread to this one so now we have a place to complain about the Orange Line!
 
One complaint, pure and simple: I understand that not every T stop is going to pass the white glove test, but is there any vision for renovating Sullivan Square T stop so that us Somervillians have the option of exiting/entering from the west rather than requiring the huddled masses to pass under a highway while walking alongside a massive bottleneck before entering the most dystopian parking lot/rotary in New England?

Yes, I know there's plans to rebuild Sullivan Square in general, but I haven't heard anything about an alt access point for the T (I'll settle for an exit only option!). A number of stops on the southern red line provide for this. JFK, North Quincy, etc.
 
If we could just get rid of the cheesy, faux wood paneling, all of the Orange Line's problems would be solved.
 
MBTAddict said:
If we could just get rid of the cheesy, faux wood paneling, all of the Orange Line's problems would be solved.
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I for one will mourn the loss of the wood paneling with the 1200s finally give up. :(
 
http://www.mbta.com/uploadedfiles/About_the_T/Financials/14-18 Draft CIP 2013-3-5.pdf

The scope of this project encompasses the design and installation of a state-of-the-art Automated Train Operating (ATO) system on the Orange Line from Chinatown to Oak Grove with interfaces at Wellington Yard and Chinatown. The new ATO system is compatible with the existing ATO system on the Southwest Corridor and the Orange Line fleet's ASC.
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Can somebody knowledgeable inform me as to what an ATO system accomplishes?
 
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