Along with its proximity to the city. Which goes back to my point that Waltham is the farthest away close inner suburb, and not because of its distance from the core. Its so disconnected from the city in so many major ways that it is basically almost forgotten besides the people who live there. If you do not have close friends who live in Waltham there is no reason someone would jump through the hoops it takes to get there. For me its not as bad because I am on the red line, but for everybody else in the city its a nightmare to get there. If you live far away from downtown on the green line or orange line and do not have a car your trip could be up to 2 hours with multiple transfers between trains and busses along with walking to your final destination. Theres no excuse for this other than the fact that it was never in anybody's interest to connect it. Even Arlington had a proposed red line extension, to my knowledge nothing has ever been planned for waltham. I could be wrong through. Im not an expert as f-line is but I do think that the NSRL would benefit people on the South Station corridor if they could take one train from wherever they were past north station to Waltham. But that is not really what the intent of the NSRL is, along with Waltham not having adequate stops anyways even if it did happen. I would imagine they would add more stations if either the indigo or NSRL were to be put into place though, as it would take years for either of these to be completed.
Waltham never had any rapid transit proposal whatsoever. Bus proximity to Watertown, which had the A Line and has the 71, made that kind of unnecessary. The problem isn't that it hasn't got transit; Waltham Ctr. is a very big bus hub. The problem is that the west-region Yellow Line is so starved for equipment that the frequencies are totally anemic. And heavily skewed to those Pike express buses that are peak-only. They'd have so very much more mobility if the Bus Facilities Master Plan did the Watertown carhouse reno into a full-time bus yard. H2O Sq., Newton Corner, and Waltham Ctr. hubs would all have stratospherically better options for boosting frequencies with that one little line item. Which is non-optional anyway because--as discussed in the Seaport Transpo. thread before it went all Lyle Lanley moving-walkway crashed-into-ditch--they can't even scramble equipment for an ad hoc Seaport reliever via Haul Road without having to rob another key route of vehicles. Every garage district is paralyzed for coping strategies in the meantime.
Fitchburg Line was never really touched because until this most recent upgrade it was the red-headed stepchild of the entire commuter rail. Fourth-world physical plant, slow as hell, perennial system-worst OTP by >10% behind the (many candidates for) next-worst, ass-hurty long schedule, and too-few frequencies. It just climbed out of a 50-year gutter like...18 months ago. Now it's got some legitimate growth ahead of it if they don't cut-and-run on the schedule increases these upgrades paid for. Much of it geared to sustained long-term demand growth for reverse-commutes. Devens is the 495 belt's emerging high-tech sector. City of Fitchburg is having some success leveraging its abundant, fairly cheap, and serviceable-for-retrofit industrial/commercial real estate to poach companies from across the border in New Hampshire who are sick of the fees and bleak outlook for that state's sustainability. Their local transit access has always been pretty solid with MRTA bus coverage, and simply needed the Fitchburg schedules to get out of the gutter. Now it is. And Gardner's got that frequent shuttle bus coming online that hits Wachusett in 10 minutes, giving them access.
Waltham's got a golden opportunity to stake out its place on the Fitchburg chain and drive some of that reverse-commute demand. These 128 redevs are where the next big job sink is going to be, and there'll br a ton of outbound demand from Boston/Cambridge, those subway transfers, and the 70 to get out there to that all-critical 128 CR superstation. As well as ton of demand from Allston and Newton via bus if H2O Sq./Newton Corner/Waltham Ctr. get their frequency infusion of Yellow Line equipment.
Makes it equally critical that they press the flesh hard with the business community to get their coalition onboard with a robust 128 biz shuttle scale-up. Because look at what the next development goldmines are if you solve for last-mile transpo:
- Bear Hill Rd. and the entire west side commercial/industrial. Which will become more accessible when that whole plan for a 117-to-20 connector road de-isolates that side from 128 and the future CR station site.
- Wyman St., continuing north of the Polaroid grid en route to Trapelo and Route 2 through all those other corporate campuses and business hotels. Quite a few infill parcels here, and the somewhat sprawly campuses are ripe for light densification makeover.
- Winter St. and the Raytheon campus. Also a few choice infill/densification parcels out there.
None of these places really have any overarching master plan. Especially Bear Hill, which has very attractive parcel density the whole span between 117 and Totten Pond but scattershot land use and too much asphalt waste for too little usable square footage at those buildings.
You can kick-start a new master plan for framing 128 all the way up to the Lexington town line by getting the transpo ducks in a row: the Fitchburg superstation, the Fitchburg frequencies (think general-purpose first, Indigo when the T gets its head screwed on straight), the bus frequencies--70 tied in with the superstation and the relief for Waltham Ctr.'s Yellow Line starvation--, and the biz shuttles. A circulator that just makes a loop through Polaroid, Wyman, Winter/Bear Hill in a big circle around both sides of 128 could pretty much run all day with the activity around here. Especially when you consider basic workday logistics like...uh...people at Raytheon gotta eat somewhere other than the company cafeteria, and all the good food is over by Polaroid. Another circulator that pings down 128 to Riverside helps drag up those commuters to where the jobs are. A third one that pings north to Hanscom, Burlington, and Anderson RTC reels in those, and connects the 3 big corporate clusters of this side of 128 together. Far better than that anemic and hopelessly long Alewife shuttle ever did.
Put the mobility pieces together from Waltham Ctr. bus terminal and the reverse-commute rail schedules, and crank up the densification at the other 128 parks as Polaroid's encore and Waltham could honest-to-god double or triple its tax base in 20 years. I don't know if you want to call that lower-case Cambridge/Somerville or some other analogue, but they go in a very short period from being a faceless suburb to one of those "donor" job revenue generators that gets to throw some weight around in the halls of power like the big boys closer to the CBD. All while not needing to change the nature of their downtown and classical community any more than they prefer, because the home-run swing at densification is by 128 where the traffic belongs and easy/frequent access is all that's needed to join them together.
Double or triple the tax base. Who else in Eastern MA has an opportunity to do that without selling out their community's soul?
