Light Rail to Arborway Officially Dead

A. Maybe a scrap company would remove them for free to get the scrap; a plan to look at when the price of steel is high.
B. Might be cheaper to paint them than to remove them if I am way out of line in my guess at the cost vs. scrap value.
C. They are probably mostly still perfectly usable for streetlights or whatever (of course, so are the existing street light poles).
D. The writer is blowing the poles out of all proportion. The community has endured them for 30 years (which I guess in 1910 was --- since five years before the line was suspended?)? Enduring? Most people probably barely notice them once the wire was gone. Enduring rails in the pavement I can see. Enduring some poles with signs in a city neighborhood? Please.

MBTA3247 wrote:If that proposal to restore service a few blocks south to Hyde Square actually gets implemented, the T could probably reuse the existing poles where they stand.

I doubt they would reuse them, even more than I doubt this Hyde Square proposal will ever get anywhere given the longstanding bias against light rail in mixed traffic here in Boston. Some high-paid consultant would certainly say they're too old or in the wrong location to be reused and millions of dollars would be added to the project cost for pulling up the old poles and putting in new ones. And that's only if this thing comes to pass before some technological advance comes along that will make collecting power via overhead wires obsolete - and we may just see that before light rail to Hyde Square, too. Those Proterra battery-electric buses in Worcester seem to work pretty well...

Off-wire trams are a real thing - Charlotte just ordered 6 of them for an off-wire section of their Gold Line. But they have a unit cost about 50% higher than conventional wired trams.

The EGE wrote:Off-wire trams are a real thing - Charlotte just ordered 6 of them for an off-wire section of their Gold Line. But they have a unit cost about 50% higher than conventional wired trams.

I'd like to see "hi-rail" cars that can switch from rail to road AND switch from electricity to diesel.

There's a couple of trolley poles in West Newton being used for fire alarm wire and a fire alarm street box. Those poles haven't been used for trolley wires since about 1930.

I'm sure the original poles would not be used for the Hyde Square extension (if it ever happened). Sometime during the several proposed revivals of Arborway service, the T had begun replacing the old poles with new ones in preparation for the service that never came about. You can still see both old and new.

I like the idea of a hi rail vehicle for the Arborway branch. Such a vehicle could be used to also, in effect, restore the "A" branch to Watertown. I think that there was an experimental rail/bus vehicle in Japan at one point, although I don't know how to link in the video. ( If the video still exists). In my opinion, I think that such a vehicle would make too much sense for the leadership in Boston to implement.

Are there hi-rail vehicles that operate at transit speeds both on rails and over the road? The only hi-rail vehicles I have seen are yard/work vehicles.

Some years ago I saw an artist's conception drawing of private automobile-like hi-rail vehicles called "R.U.F." I forgot what that stood for. You drive yourself from home to a neighborhood or town center "freeway ramp" where your vehicle joins a fixed guideway automated system. Then, near your destination you are shunted to an offramp back to the road system to drive yourself to your final destination. I foresee the same kind of problems that would beset a personal rapdi transit sytem like Transit-X. Too many vehicles wanting to converge on certain segments of the fixed guideway network resulting in systemwide backups


Old trolley line poles would need to be checked for structural strength. I saw at least one leftover pole (on Cambridge St. not far from Lechmere) whose base was visibly rusted out and which would likely snap off at ground level if re-used for overhead trolley wires.

MBTA3247 wrote:If that proposal to restore service a few blocks south to Hyde Square actually gets implemented, the T could probably reuse the existing poles where they stand.

They'd be replaced anyway because the track and stop layout to Hyde is likely to be a little different than it was before and require some shifts in where the wires are hung. That's a tiny cost item anyway. The most important bit of recycled infrastructure is the still-active power feed below street that interconnects Forest Hills with Heath St. to span 650V traction substations.

BandA wrote:

The EGE wrote:Off-wire trams are a real thing - Charlotte just ordered 6 of them for an off-wire section of their Gold Line. But they have a unit cost about 50% higher than conventional wired trams.

I'd like to see "hi-rail" cars that can switch from rail to road AND switch from electricity to diesel.

There's a couple of trolley poles in West Newton being used for fire alarm wire and a fire alarm street box. Those poles haven't been used for trolley wires since about 1930.

The city could use them for wifi

Or as part of an eruv.

There's no reason the poles couldn't be used. There are poles no different than them in use all over the system, many of which have been carrying wire for as long as those have existed. JWhite's example of a costly replacement at the suggestion of a high end consultant wouldn't surprise me in the slightest, but there's no need for them to be changed.

Boston Elevated line poles are still in place all over the district for municipal reuse, some relocated by the municipality and some right where they stood with wire attached. Everett has some chopped down to about half the height with traffic lights mounted on them. All of Seashore's metal poles are second hand from the Boston Elevated as well, and I somewhat surprised to see BERy poles in use on the Shoreline Trolley Museum in Connecticut!

I was born in 1989 and lived very close to Forest Hills throughout most of the 90's. I remember always seeing the unused Green Line platforms and being very confused by it as a kid. I now know that it was rebuilt during the reconstruction of the Orange Line in 1987 but I always wondered if that terminus ever saw a Green Line train at all. Was that station ever used for Green Line trains? When was the last time the yard was used as well.

Nope...no train has passed Heath St. since 1985, and overhead was never installed from the yard to the new station. Nor was the trolley overhead past Heath energized at all when service resumed past Brigham Circle to Heath in 1989.

Wishful wistful speculation.

Let's just imagine for a moment that the E-Arborway light rail were rebuilt all the way to the Forest Hills loop. How would the deteriorating Casey Overpass have been dealt with considering that the Forest Hills loop is being cannibalized in today's actual plans?

1. The Casey Overpass would have been rebuilt to the delight of many Jamaica Plain residents and preserving the loop.
2. The Arborway line would have been re-terminated at Arborway (Yard) and the Casey Overpass torn down and surface roads built to today's actual plans.
3. The Arborway line would have been cut back again to Heath St. to stay.
4. Tracks would have been built across Arborway (Casey Way) to the Forest Hills upper bus loop where today's 39 bus is going to be terminated.

If the E had still been running to Forest Hills, this wouldn't even be a question, because the Casey Overpass replacement design would have included the E line in it.