North South Rail Link

l008com wrote:

B&MYoshi wrote:I would think curves on the UFRR would be too sharp, being they are street running. The big problem on the Grand Junction is that speeds are very low due to unprotected crossings. The bridge over the Charles ain't lookin too pretty, both litlerally and metaphorically.

Well if the big problem is just unprotected street crossings, then i'd rather pay for 4 sets of gates for the street crossings, instead of digging a new tunnel through boston...

No, no, NO!! The BIG problem with the UFRR is that it DOEN'T EXIST anymore!! The tracks were all pulled up by the late 70's!! The ONLY way to connect North and South Stations with ANY practicality would be via tunnel. There WERE provisions for just such a tunnel made during the Big Dig, but IIRC they only go as far as the outer slurry walls. The subject WAS discussed in annother thead on this website in a different forum, probably MBTA Rail Operations.
But "street running?" You gotta be kidding! The UFRR had enough problems when they DID exist with people parking on the tracks.
OK, sorry to vent on y'all, but I've been holding back quite a bit on this.
It's really down to Tunnel, Grand Jct, or Worcester.
Cosmo

Most of the trips on the Downeaster will probably always originate or terminate near Boston, or north of it. Trains that ran through from south of Boston might pick up through passengers from, say, Providence headed for Maine, or New Haven headed for Durham, but not many New Yorkers would ride to Bath or whatever. Most intercity passenger trips are what, 2 or 3 hours? And even with trains starting at North Station, Greater Boston has plenty of folks to ride to Freeport to shop, Rockland on vacation, etc.

But while we're daydreaming--isn't it fun?--here are some of my favorite ideas about cross-Boston service.

Problems with the N'S rail link:
Huge cost, like enough to make the Downeaster free for ten years.
Trains would have to stop a long way below North and South Stations, so if many trains ran through the existing tracks, platforms, and concourses would be obsolete. (To get down below the highway, the subways, the Charles River, etc., on a reasonable grade, they'd have to start going down what, a mile or more south of South Station/north of North Station.)
Huge cotst, like enough to eliminate a dozen of the worst grade crossings in NE.
South Side delays and North Side delays would become one big, and more frequent, delay.

Good things about it:
Ability to get across town. South-Side commuter rail access to jobs near North Station and vice versa.
Potential one-seat ride from Mystic to Durham or whatever (but since this is a much, much smaller number of passengers than the commuter rail trains, building any N-S link for intercity travel doesn't make sense).

Alternatives:
1. Use the space saved for the N-S rail link for a new subway line instead. If the geography works out right, make it a branch of the Silver Line or the Green Line. Make the walk from the Amtrak platform to the new line's platform as easy as possible, and include special cars with luggage racks.
OR
2. Put the Grand Junction 20 feet underground. Build a bike path or light rail on top, creating a great improvement for that part of Cambridge and getting local pols on your side. Set the underground track up for passenger service at a decent speed. Run trains to Maine NYC-Dorchester Branch-Back Bay-Anderson TC-Maine. Skip North and South Stations entirely. (Trains NYC-Maine used to bypass Boston entirely.) Change to Diesels at New Haven as if train were going to Springfield. This would probably cost a hell of a lot less than the downtown link, which would be deeper and more complicated. It wouldn't do much for commuter rail, though.
OR
3. Renovate Back Bay station slightly to make transfers between Amtrak-Commuter Rail and the Orange Line easier. For example, put in lots of elevators. Build a platform between the Northbound Orange Line track and the nearest Commuter rail track, with a fence and turnstiles, to allow cross-platform transfers; rearrange operations so that Northbound corridor trains and commuter rail trains use that track. Etc.

Who needs a North-South connection? London and Paris seem to have done quite well, not only without a through connection, but with a multitude of stations - right, guv? / n'est-ce pas?

PBM

No one NEEDS the connection, but it would open up all sorts of new COMMUTER city pairs. And you're right about the Paris comparision. It's easy as pie there with their subway, just like it is in Boston: the Orange Line between North Station and Back Bay for most routes.

London built one cross-city rail connection (Thameslink) and I think they're working on another (Crossrail).

Paris has several RER lines that run from suburb to suburb right through the middle of the city.

I confess that Thameslink slipped my mind - memory is the first thing to go, and I forgot whatever the second thing is - probably because I haven't been in London since 1985. However, I may also have dismissed it because I have the impression that Thameslink is a heavy-rail mass transit operation rather than part of a through long-distance route, which I believe was the original rationale for the North-South link.

Peripherally, I noticed that reference to the N-S link has disappeared from the Conservation Law Foundation website, and since they were one of the environmental groups pushing for it, combined with all the other info, it appears to be dead.

Permit a minor detour: there are better ways to spend the taxpayers' money on high speed rail. Consider fast links between Logan Airport and T. F. Green in Providence, to Worcester, or to Manchester, NH.

Now back to our scheduled program.

PBM

Despite often being billed as a link in a high speed rail system, offering one seat rides from Richmond VA to Portland ME, the real benefit to the NSRL is commuter, and its not even for someone going from Lowell to Westwood. The most important benefits are:

1. opening up multiple downtown distribution points for passengers: Many people don't take commuter rail because their offices are to inaccessable from where their train arrives. If someone lives in Beverly, and works in the Back Bay, depending on how the Green Line is doing, they may spend as much time getting to and from North Station as they do on the commuter rail ride. This added time and transfer drives people away from commuter rail -- to either drive to the city, or to clog a subway park and ride somewhere. In one NSRL version, with a Central Station at State St., many commuter rail trains would make FOUR stops downtown, rather than one or two, and connect directly with all four subway lines. That's time saved getting to work, means more people will use the system.

2. Better equipment utilization and storage: Arriving AM inbound equipment doesn't need to be turned before it becomes an outbund to another line, which can serve either the reverse commute market, or to turn at an outlying point to be another inbound. Also, the T lacks enough Boston end storage during mid-days -- the NSRL allows those suburban layover yards to be used to store trainsets during the day and night, by simply running trains thru town, rather than to is.

3. Unclogs terminals: Through-track stations downtown mean each train is one movement, both as an arriving inbound and departing outbound. No need to tie up platforms for 15-20 minutes, or use precious slots through terminal throat areas for deadhead moves.

If you want to see how this works, go to Philly and observe how the Center City Tunnel works. Its far from perfect, but its completely changed the way SEPTA's railroad works from the Pennsy and Reading days.

Now, I realize that to fully realize a scenario like the CCT in Philly would cost billions, both in the tunnel and in electrification, but I wanted to demonstrate where the real benefits to it are. The fact that an Amtrak run from Maine to NYC could also use it in minor in comparison to the benefit to the commuter rail system.

There are other transportation and rail projects that are much more
important than a north - south link in Boston which would cost millions
upon millions to build and take a long time and cause a lot of
disruption all over the place.
There is adequate and indeed pretty good public transportation to both
North Station and South Station from just about all of downtown Boston.
As far as Amtrak is concerned, the best north-south link for them is by
running a New York - Portland train via Worcester, the tracks are all in
place and although they would require some work in order to properly run
an Amtrak train over them, they are a decent and quite direct route
between the two end points and they would serve much better than a link
through Boston for both Amtrak and its passengers.
Noel Weaver

That would be like the old East Wind. Sounds much more doable than the N/S Rail Link under Boston. Of course at the rate things happen here in New England, it could be decades before it actually is in place and running... if at all.

I think Mr. Weaver about got it right. If you look at where most people are going with CR, it's downtown, and you can get there pretty well from either side. There just aren't that many destination stations on the other side (anything on the North Side besides Porter Square, easily accessible from South Station via Red Line?) to make the link worth the $$$. In addition, there are more than half a dozen CR extensions, most of them quite worth doing, waiting to be done; most of them will be much more cost effective per rider than N-S rail link, and add more towns to the T system too.
I can't see N-S rail link being built before all of them are done, which is at least 20 years in the future. I don't think I'll see it in my lifetime.

I don't think the N-S Rail Link (NSRL) would be built for intercity rail purposes.

The primary justification would have to be for commuter / suburban rail puposes. The expense of building this tunnel link may be difficult to justify unless traffic studies of both the re-built I-93 (ie the Big Dig) and rte 128 suggested that a sufficient amount of auto traffic could be removed. I haven't seen any unscientific observations suggesting that congestion on the Big Dig at rush hour is as big a problem as it was for the Central Artery. OTOH I know that 128 is often a stop and go experience at rush hour.

As for non-rush hour usage, the NSRL could get north siders to Fenway and Foxboro by single seat rail trips and similarly get south siders to Celtics/Bruins events (for those who enjoy paying big $ to see the home team lose) at the Garden or to beaches of Cape Ann.

I have to agree about the commuter aspects.

Living north of Boston, using commuter rail was much easier when I worked near the Green Line's Kenmore station. If I still worked there, it would be even better now because of all the North Station improvements and the new Green Line platforms - no more waiting for the crowd to reach critical mass to cross Causeway Street.

HOWEVER - when I worked over in the Seaport District, commuter rail was out of the question. WAY too long to get to the Red Line - too many treansfers/seats.

If a train from Lowell were able to stop at South Station, all those Financial and Seaport District jobs would now have a more attractive view of North side commuter rail.

But commuter rail doesn't exist solely for commuters. If it did, there would be no Saturday or Sunday service. I think its purpose is to give people in general another transportation option in large city areas. We could take Metra in Chicago as an example where they offer a special weekend fare for $5.00 for a family.