NEC Future: HSR "High Line", FRA, Amtrak Infrastructure Plan

I think it is quite clear to me that none of this stuff is ever going to happen, at least not in my lifetime, and I'm only 23. Each one of these proposals posits an infrastructure project the likes of which New England hasn't seen since the various turnpikes and interstate highways were built. The funding isn't there, nor is the political will. It seems like a waste to even discuss such things. That's not to say that I wouldn't like to see such projects, but I just know that they won't happen.

As for the Providence route through the East Side tunnel, the chance of that happening is nil. Following the closure of the old Union Station, the tracks were realigned in such a way that there would be no way to serve both the current Providence station and the tunnel. Furthermore, the existing right-of-way to the tunnel, whilst largely made-up of parking lots (a known Providence issue), also happens to have a large Citizens Bank building on it. Furthermore, there is no way that the city would consent to a new 'Chinese wall' elevated alignment, even if the right-of-way were free. The bridge over the Seekonk River is the least of one's issues. I've always thought that the realignment, as it was done, was very shortsighted, but there isn't anything to be done about that now.

The only route that interests me as a proposal, and which strikes me as somewhat viable in the most outlandish way, is certainly the route from Hartford to Providence. I have found it quite disappointing that I-84 was never completed. The lack of a direct connection between these cities seems beyond foolish. Indeed, completing both I-84 and the proposed railroad at the same time seems like an ideal way to fill in this gap in New England's transport infrastructure. However, the alignment is not an easy one, and I imagine that environmental concerns about the Scituate Reservoir would resurface, even if the proposal were for electric high-speed trains only. Furthermore, I don't understand what would be done with the current 'Hartford line' project. Would this proposal mean ripping up the existing work, and the new stations being built now to double track spec, so as to allow for high-speed usage? Or would this be a completely new alignment alongside the existing one? Furthermore, how would one sort out the situation in Hartford itself? Hartford Union Station certainly is not set-up in such a way as to serve a proposed Providence route, and its future is in question anyway because of the viaduct debacle. As we can't even get that damn viaduct done, how in the heck are we going to build a new railroad east of Hartford?

This whole thing sounds like a nonsense, if you ask me. The best we're going to get, likely, are new bridges on the shore route, and a few passing sidings, such as in Westerly. That's not to say anything of alternative 1, which doesn't even deserve the slightest bit of consideration.

bostontrainguy wrote:The fine print:

4.7.3.7 Rhode Island
. . . The new segment continues in tunnel under the Seekonk River into East Providence and
comes to grade in Rumford, east of the Ten Mile River, where the infrastructure continues at grade
north before entering Bristol County, MA.

Also of interest:

4.7.3.8 Massachusetts
New, two-track infrastructure, beginning north of Canton Junction Rail Station continuing north
and reconnecting with the existing NEC near Route 128 Rail Station in Dedham.
New Segment: Sharon, MA to Canton Junction, MA (approximately 3 miles)

These are completely dumb overreaches by the crayon-drawers at the consultants the commission is letting steal their money.

There is NO need for a tunnel across the Seekonk River. None. The existing tunnel portal pops out on a hillside perfectly aligning with a new fixed bridge, and the existing Old Mainline ROW is completely grade separated in City of East Providence except for the access road to the 50's-70's -era Dexter Rd. industrial park which only need a whoop-de-doo simple $5M road overpass. So...of course!...undercut 500 ft. of existing tunnel floor, do a completely and utterly unnecessary deep bore under the river for a half-$B, and portal-up in a spot where a whole mess of underground gas pipelines would have to be relocated. Brilliant!

The only thing they need to do once they figure out the interface from Providence Station into the west tunnel portal (that probably is some sort of minor floor undercut + tunnel extension) is:
-- Build the new fixed bridge over the river on a less severe curve than the old draw. Which they can do by gently curving out the portal onto a slight NE turn along the riverbank on Cold Spring Point, slowly elevating on an embankment in the process, crossing the river at a diagonal angle roughly where Waterman St. dead-ends (almost 200 ft. less water to cross than the old draw), then inclining-down on embankment on the old ROW to slip under the Henderson Bridge.
-- Off to the races for 18 miles of 100% tangent track to Sharon. Road-over-rail crossing elimination at Dexter St.; rail-over-road crossing eliminations of Ferris Ave., MA 152, Pine St., and Oak Hill Ave. 2 tracks to East Junction for just Amtrak and the negligibly small single P&W daily, all commuter rail and heavy freight gets segregated to the existing alignment through South Attleboro.

Excluding the Providence Station-west portal interface, all else from inside the tunnel to the new bridge to the East Junction Branch upgrades probably don't top $250M plus inflation if managed correctly. So, sure...let's invent extra work so we can spend 5x that for exactly the same railroad because reasons!



The Sharon realignment is equally pointless. There's two very minor curves in existing 150 MPH (to-be 165 MPH) territory south of Sharon station. I don't even think there's a speed restriction at either of them today, but for 220 MPH you'd need just a couple degrees knocked off and a superelevation re-grading to sustain maximum speeds through there. There's plenty of side room to do the curve easing. Touchdown in E. Providence to Canton Viaduct is sustainable 220 MPH and 4-track north of East Junction with no realignments of more than 10 ft. required. Bada-boom...easy. No overthinking required

There is NO capacity crunch at Canton Viaduct mandating a bypass None whatsoever. It's 1400 ft. where 4 tracks would have to drop to 2, and the structure is so overbuilt (and recently rehabbed) that it's expected to last another 200 years. Canton Jct. station itself has luxurious expansion space on the west-side parking strip to go triple again or even quad on the Providence side. The junction would remain at-grade, but then it's all quad-track and tangent again for 9 more miles north to Forest Hills if the curve passing under Dedham St. (no abutters; plenty of room) and north end of Hyde Park station (tree buffer and expendable alley parking lot; plenty of room) got eased no more than couple degrees. There is zero chance the 3 mile bypass will ever get environmentally approved through the heavily protected Neponset River Reservation, and it would plow right through a residential subdivision and the largest cemetery in Sharon. Stupid crayon drawers inventing problems that don't exist.

The Franklin Line can get expunged entirely from the NEC onto the Fairmount Line and never interact with another NEC train again; those commuter slots outright disappear at $0 cost. Did NEC FUTURE suggest that? Of course not...it whacked commuter rail frequencies on all lines by cramming Franklin and Needham onto a single bi-directional track that in turn limited the tracks available to Providence and Stoughton. Then it proposed a wanton-destruction widening of the SW Corridor tunnel, already proved infeasible a thousand times over by an MBTA study 10 years ago. There have been proposals studied for nearly 70 years about expunging the Needham Line entirely from commuter rail by giving the Forest Hills-West Roxbury segment over to an Orange Line heavy rail extension, and the Needham Junction-Needham Heights segment over to a Green Line light rail spur out of Newton Highlands. Would successfully remove ALL commuter rail traffic from the NEC except for the Providence Line and Stoughton/South Coast lines (which, even if built in non-stupid fashion, have a pretty low frequency ceiling). As rapid transit projects go, it's a relatively middling-expense job since there'd be no all-new stations just converts of the existing ones. Fed match funding for the Needham Line conversion basically solves the single biggest capacity pinch NEC FUTURE has to deal with in Massachusetts, and the grand total of everything else they need to do on the NEC itself between Forest Hills and the RI state line in Seekonk on the East Junction Branch is probably $300M or less (mostly settling up whatever quad-tracking wasn't done prior). Otherwise, the state is ready-made for the high-speed line of their dreams and they have far less to spend here than they do anywhere else from Maryland to Rhode Island.

Clearly the commission thinks it unacceptable to spend less than $2B in any one state, so gotta make a whole bunch of @#$% up.



Burn it all down. Fire everyone. Start over. Now...before they salt the earth behind him across the entirety of the Northeastern megalopolis with their stupidity and toxic excuse for public outreach.

Just want to point out that there are options to totally bypass Providence all together as well as other options that include a new Providence high-speed-rail station along with the existing Amtrak station. I am sure the politicians in Rhode Island will agreed to any new alignment that assures that Providence is included in the "new" NEC.

The East Providence to Stoughton straight-a-way provides the easiest and quickest potential for true high-speed rail operation on the Corridor and at very low cost. It's kind of a no-brainer and should have been the route of the NEC way back when the original Providence station was in use. It's a solution sitting there for the taking.

bostontrainguy wrote:Just want to point out that there are options to totally bypass Providence all together as well as other options that include a new Providence high-speed-rail station along with the existing Amtrak station. I am sure the politicians in Rhode Island will agreed to any new alignment that assures that Providence is included in the "new" NEC.

The East Providence to Stoughton straight-a-way provides the easiest and quickest potential for true high-speed rail operation on the Corridor and at very low cost. It's kind of a no-brainer and should have been the route of the NEC way back when the original Providence station was in use. It's a solution sitting there for the taking.

Actually, in absolute terms the E. Providence bypass doesn't shave a lot of time off the schedules. Where it really pays dividends, though, is the commuter rail and freight segregation. RIDOT would be free to institute I-295 belt ultra high-frequency shuttles pinging between South Attleboro and Cranston. 20 minute headways, stations every half mile. A halfway to rapid transit setup sort of like the Indigo Line proposals for the T's Fairmount Line. If the far inland bypass is chosen and the HSR spine joins up to Providence Station via the ex-Washington Secondary, a flying junction with grade separation would basically keep old NEC traffic and new HSR traffic permanently segregated from East Junction in Attleboro all the way to the Springfield Line merge in New Haven. That is huge for commuter rail mobility.

NEC FUTURE isn't thinking about that...it just wants E. Providence as an I/me/mine route it doesn't have to share with anyone. But RIDOT has stratospheric, 100-year solution gains to tap by freeing up the old NEC to the state line. The commission (or its saner replacement) just needs to put 2 and 2 together and see what's in it for the states. Ditto Massachusetts with that Needham Line conversion, 70 years in the making, which would give the last two Boston neighborhoods cut off from rapid transit their 7-minute frequency subway trains to downtown at long last. Way more in it for all involved at alleviating NEC congestion inbound of Forest Hills by talking match funding splits for that rapid transit project instead of the feds trying to spend 5x as much nuking the SW Corridor tunnel and putting a vice grip on commuter rail frequencies.



Along similar lines I'd say the Philly Airport bypass has similar local transit potential if they actually brainstormed with the locals instead of embarking on some quixotic airport empire building exercise. Bypass all SEPTA Wilmington Line stops between the split with the Media/Elwyn Line and Chester and that's capacity for ultra-dense SEPTA service and more infill stations. Or...a partial conversion to rapid transit. The 11 and 36 surface streetcar lines flank the NEC from the would-be split with this Airport bypass on each adjoining block. Say you take 2 NEC tracks, combine the 2 trolley lines at the mid-block on a fast grade separated shot with lots of infill stations. Then branch the lines back onto their regular street routes around Island Ave. just by Darby Regional Rail station and let a third trolley route stay on the NEC terminating at Chester or Marcus Hook or wherever the Airport bypass meets back up. Keep the other 2 NEC tracks as RR and express the Wilmington Line between University City and Chester as a now exclusively Delaware-serving route where zippier trip significantly counterbalances some of the constraints NEC FUTURE imposes on schedule growth to Wilmington. Enormous, enormous boon to Philly-area transit any way you slice it (repurposement by ultra-dense Regional Rail or partial rapid transit conversion) and enough pot-sweetener to get Pennsylvania's enthusiastic buy in (for the Airport bypass...the multi-billion 30th St. bypass is still a thoroughly opposed stinker).

Has the commission thought of a fed/state conversation of that sort? Of course not! What's a simple phone call when states don't truly exist to the FRA...it's just the consultants and their crayons.

"I strenuously and strongly oppose this plan, because it threatens to destroy historically significant and environmentally sensitive areas," Blumenthal said Friday in a phone interview. "It should be soundly and immediately rejected by the Federal Railroad Administration."
Blumenthal, who serves on the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, stressed the importance of investments in the railroad network and the FRA's development of a vision that will meet the needs of the northeast.
But he called the idea to reroute rail through the inland area "a half-baked and harebrained notion" that would never come to fruition because it violates principles of historic preservation and environmental conservation.

http://www.theday.com/local/20160701/or ... h-old-lyme" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

A very strong statement out of Blumenthal on Kenyon to Saybrook.

Fair-use quote from the bottom of the WTNH article linked at http://wtnh.com/2016/06/30/emails-confi ... -old-lyme/

The state and federal-level conversations captured in these emails occurred several weeks prior to a private March 11, 2016 meeting between David Carol and Old Lyme First Selectwoman Bonnie Reemsnyder, aides and other local officials. These emails obtained by SECoast as part of a May 22, 2016 Freedom of Information Act request, funded in part by donations from the local community, are the first public confirmation of Federal Railroad Administration plans for high speed rail along the Northeast Corridor. Two additional Freedom of Information Act requests filed earlier with the Federal Railroad Administration on April 4, 2016 remain unfilled.

I think this development is being made into something it's not. I think that drawing any conclusions about which alternative, much less alignment, will be pursued, from one email thread that is at least three months old, is a stretch too far. I am not going to say that SECoast is wrong or unjustified, but they are an organization with clear aims (historic preservation), and analysis of their comments and the media coverage of their position needs to account for that.

I said this earlier in the thread and will repeat it: This is a very early stage. California was at this point about a decade ago with its HSR project, and the final route and phasing are STILL undergoing refinements. I went to the public meeting that FRA hosted in New Haven, and I have been following this process from my armchair for a while. The stakeholders have seemed intent on taking this process far beyond whimsical crayon drawings.

seacoast wrote:"I strenuously and strongly oppose this plan, because it threatens to destroy historically significant and environmentally sensitive areas," Blumenthal said Friday in a phone interview. "It should be soundly and immediately rejected by the Federal Railroad Administration."
Blumenthal, who serves on the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, stressed the importance of investments in the railroad network and the FRA's development of a vision that will meet the needs of the northeast.
But he called the idea to reroute rail through the inland area "a half-baked and harebrained notion" that would never come to fruition because it violates principles of historic preservation and environmental conservation.

http://www.theday.com/local/20160701/or ... h-old-lyme" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

A very strong statement out of Blumenthal on Kenyon to Saybrook.

It's sad that there's even more important and more damning reasons against the bypass than what he focuses on, too. (Though I don't necessarily fault him for focusing on historical/environmental reasons, either, since those are what the constituents care the most about.)

bostontrainguy wrote:Just want to point out that there are options to totally bypass Providence all together as well as other options that include a new Providence high-speed-rail station along with the existing Amtrak station. I am sure the politicians in Rhode Island will agreed to any new alignment that assures that Providence is included in the "new" NEC.

The East Providence to Stoughton straight-a-way provides the easiest and quickest potential for true high-speed rail operation on the Corridor and at very low cost. It's kind of a no-brainer and should have been the route of the NEC way back when the original Providence station was in use. It's a solution sitting there for the taking.

Politicians in Rhode Island won't need to agree, since anything of that sort won't ever even get to the point of being seriously considered.

I'm also pretty sure that politicians in Rhode Island would never agree to using eminent domain to take the Citizens Bank building, considering the importance of Citizens Bank in R.I. as a major taxpayer. I'm also pretty sure that politicians in Rhode Island won't agree to covering up a piece of river they spent tons of money on uncovering, that they won't agree to a new station when they can barely afford to maintain the existing one, barring the current meagre renovations going on there, and that they won't agree to covering up a ton of parking lots, because if there is anything that gets Rhode Island politicians in a tizzy, it is parking, parking, parking, parking. This whole thing is a nonsense. If it isn't going to go on the current alignment, it isn't going through Providence.

I think earlier discussion / Amtrak planning suggested skipping Providence (probably going through Woonsocket or something), but going through Providence was better for ridership (and RI support) and wouldn't make much difference in time.

Switching MBTA Needham Line Commuter Rail off the NEC onto subway - Is there enough capacity in the Orange Line? Someone should have told them to keep the Washington St EL instead of stealing tracks from the NEC back in the mid 80s. We would have saved lots of $$$, had a 4-track NEC (or more) into Boston, wouldn't have needed to replace the nice 1920s BBY station, which is about to be replaced again.

seacoast wrote:"I strenuously and strongly oppose this plan, because it threatens to destroy historically significant and environmentally sensitive areas," Blumenthal said Friday in a phone interview. "It should be soundly and immediately rejected by the Federal Railroad Administration."
Blumenthal, who serves on the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, stressed the importance of investments in the railroad network and the FRA's development of a vision that will meet the needs of the northeast.
But he called the idea to reroute rail through the inland area "a half-baked and harebrained notion" that would never come to fruition because it violates principles of historic preservation and environmental conservation.

http://www.theday.com/local/20160701/or ... h-old-lyme" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

A very strong statement out of Blumenthal on Kenyon to Saybrook.

That's probably the last word on this alignment. Blumenthal is BFF's with Chuck Schumer, who's slated to take over as Democratic Leader with Harry Reid's retirement and would become Majority Leader if the Democrats flip the chamber in November. Schumer is point man on putting together the Gateway Project, and he and Blumenthal tag-teams on anything Metro North-related...so Blumenthal's got the Leader's ear. I'd expect a co-sign coming very soon from Sens. Murphy, Reed and Whitehouse, and Reps. Courtney and Langevin. Probably with the Rhode Island delegation + Gov. Raimondo saber-rattling that they better not skip Providence if this spine has to move northward. I don't see how the FRA is going to walk this one back and plead for calm now. They utterly failed to inform how preliminary this was, and the opaqueness of concealing this behind private e-mail is horrid optics. This is Exhibit A why the commission needs to be nuked from orbit. The public outreach clownshow ends up destroying them before the infeasibility of the alignments gets critiqued. At least if there's a non-destructive comment process involved the right questions get asked about what nonsense their contractors are doing. Instead we don't even get to Step 2 because they're poisoning necessary political and constituent relationships on first impression.

BandA wrote:I think earlier discussion / Amtrak planning suggested skipping Providence (probably going through Woonsocket or something), but going through Providence was better for ridership (and RI support) and wouldn't make much difference in time.

Switching MBTA Needham Line Commuter Rail off the NEC onto subway - Is there enough capacity in the Orange Line? Someone should have told them to keep the Washington St EL instead of stealing tracks from the NEC back in the mid 80s. We would have saved lots of $$$, had a 4-track NEC (or more) into Boston, wouldn't have needed to replace the nice 1920s BBY station, which is about to be replaced again.

Yes, there is enough capacity; Orange on the SW Corridor was specifically designed for a West Roxbury or beyond extension in the late-60's when partial construction began. It was retreated back to Forest Hills by funding and lack of interest in the nearly 20 years it took to get the new alignment open.

At any rate, that was but one example of where the commission made life needlessly hard on itself by punitively capping commuter rail frequencies to the detriment of the host state where it should be seeking solutions. This, along with a $0 shift of Franklin trains over the Fairmount Line, are relatively straightforward mitigation tactics that solve all of the capacity problem without requiring a revisit of that >$B tunnel widening that is a total nonstarter because of how much it would ravage the surface during surgery. Orange conversion has real archived studies with which to pin a reliable cost estimate. The 2003 Boston MPO Program for Mass Tranportation pegged the Orange Line extension that swallows West Roxbury and the Green Line branch off the D Line that swallows the Needham half at a combined $440M (that's a bit low...could be up to double that but wouldn't top $1B because all station sitings are pre-existing). Would add 11,300 new Orange Line riders and 3400 new Green Line riders: an exponential increase in mobility, big congestion relief on the streets and Route 128, and solve for the overloaded buses weighing down Forest Hills terminal. So why, NEC FUTURE, ignore all that...not even so much as Googling one of the many archived Boston-area transit and mobility priorities studies...and unilaterally propose reducing commuter rail frequencies on the branchlines while spending twice as much on a hell-on-earth cut widening. Did it occur to no one that 50/50 fed + state split on this Needham relocation project and the $0 Franklin relocation solve ALL of the SW Corridor congestion they want to wage wanton billion-dollar destruction on? This is sadism.

And it's like that in every state. That Philly example I gave is just something I spitballed on-the-fly...doesn't constitute a necessarily serious proposal because I'm not familiar enough to know what the locals need or want for mobility. The Providence spitballing...I don't know how hyper-frequent the shuttle frequencies truly should be on an Amtrak-vacated NEC to serve a mid-size metro area's demand. But that spitballing at least begged the questions: "What are your state and local mobility needs, and how can this megaproject help address those needs in a partnership? To the degree Amtrak is going to take a bigger piece of the pie on total slots and place limits on commuter rail frequency growth what kinds of high-ROI transit investment mitigate the problem? The commission just ignored and trampled all over it. That's why they're doing little but making powerful political enemies instead of getting any transit-related message across.

BandA wrote:Switching MBTA Needham Line Commuter Rail off the NEC onto subway - Is there enough capacity in the Orange Line? Someone should have told them to keep the Washington St EL instead of stealing tracks from the NEC back in the mid 80s. We would have saved lots of $$$, had a 4-track NEC (or more) into Boston, wouldn't have needed to replace the nice 1920s BBY station, which is about to be replaced again.

While I do sorta agree, at the end of the day the SW Corridor was Massachusetts-made and owned, and the Washington Street El was both unpopular with locals in addition to being an aging structure in need of rehab. I'm also pretty sure the Orange Line can take on the additional capacity for branching, as the Red Line was able to take branching with the South Shore extension. When you remove the capacity constraints of having to support the Needham and Franklin Line trains on the NEC, I don't think three tracks is anywhere near a big issue anymore, even if a handful of Franklin Line trains still continue plugging along to BBY, Ruggles, and Hyde Park.

Speaking of the old Midland routing, clearly the answer is to rebuild the Highland between Hartford and Willimantic and then the Midland east of there, and route some intercity trains that way like the old days. Clearly.

It's not a branch...just a +4 stop linear extension. Minor supplemental car order to maintain headways and it's no different than the enhanced headways Orange will be running at when its new car order is fulfilled in 4 years. Green is a branch-off-a-branch and would need some congestion mitigation in the Central Subway, but the D Line itself is under-capacity and headways into Needham don't heed to be anywhere close to as frequent as they do on Orange out to West Roxbury. Really not a whole lot to debate here as the makeup of both halves of this conversion has been more or less agreed-upon since 1945, re-studied in the 70's, and (in Needham at least) locally studied within the last 12 years with loud local advocacy.

And nothing to debate about the Franklin relocation. The proposed Foxboro Branch off Walpole Jct. would use the Fairmount Line from Day 1 specifically to avoid the NEC...no promise whatsoever of a Back Bay one-seat to those patrons. Several Franklin trains run express over Fairmount today, so also not a new thing. It's an inevitable NEC relief valve that more and more Franklins are going to get punted over to Fairmount over time. The loss of a one-seat to Back Bay station is no biggie if lathering on branches like Foxboro outright doubles the service on the heaviest-demand half of the line. And don't forget RIDOT's freshly-filed State Rail Plan calls for pursuing a joint feasibilitystudy with MassDOT within the next decade for a 7-mile reactivation of the Franklin Line from end-of-track to Blackstone where it would hook briefly down the P&W main to Woonsocket. Rhode Island envisions Woonsocket eventually becoming a triple-junction Union Station of intrastate commuter rail, Providence-Worcester commuter rail, and Boston-Woonsocket commuter rail. That's the kind of packaged universe of transit improvements that directly serves growth near a metro area without overloading the NEC. The FRA is the agency that mandates the states file these 8-year State Rail Plans where all their rail SGR and improvements cost itemizations get spelled out, and all the longer-term hopes and dreams get put on the public record. Why does the commission not read their own documents.

Speaking of the old Midland routing, clearly the answer is to rebuild the Highland between Hartford and Willimantic and then the Midland east of there, and route some intercity trains that way like the old days. Clearly.

You're not far off, because CDOT owns all that I-84 land to this day and there was an agreed-upon routing at long last for the highway extension between Bolton and Willimantic in 2003. The locals agreed to a north-of-Hop River routing that avoided property takings...but the Army Corps of Engineers played politics and doubled-down on a south-of-river routing that had more impacts. If it weren't for the AC being an immovable object, the Bush Administration was ready to fast-track I-384 to Willimantic. *Poof*. So the engineering survey points east of Bolton Notch is very, very up-to-date and would only have to be re-studied for rail curvature and grades instead of the current Interstate highway standards. Being in a river valley, though, grades to Willimantic aren't a problem. You just have to solve Bolton Notch in some way less face-meltingly stupid than tunneling straight through Eastern CT's hardest geological landform. It's going to be a slow zone, but I bet you can bank out the north approach off the existing ROW in Vernon by meeting I-84 near Exit 65 then making a gentle mile-long superelevated curve through a flat-ish meadow clear of residential houses to insert into the Notch. Good enough to stay north of 90 MPH on the curve coming off of 10 miles of perfectly tangent 165 MPH territory from Hartford to Manchester. The south end of the Notch would need some sort of reciprocal banking curve; I have no idea how disruptive that would be, but probably a match on keeping speeds at a 90 MPH floor since the highway alignment heads southeast on the north bank of the river on sort of the same trajectory. From there it's flat river valley and 11 more miles of 165+ MPH.

Come downtown Willimantic you'd take a spin on a (presumably cut-buried) Air Line for 4 tangent miles to get back on the highway alignment, then head off the legacy ROW to hit the power line ROW out to Brooklyn. This is the CDOT-owned land for I-84, last EIS done in the 70's. Again, just need to make 70's-era Interstate grades jibe with modern HSR grades. Curves aren't a problem here, and compared to the Shoreline bunny-hop Willimantic-Brooklyn only makes two 200 ft. grade changes, compared to anywhere from minimum 6 to maximum 12 such 200 ft. elevation changes on the OSB-Shannock bypass. And again...this was for-real EIS'd for the highway.

Then from Brooklyn (i.e. about 3 miles west of the P&W mainline and 5 miles west of I-395) you need to make some decisions on alignment. Assuming a Providence insertion on the Washington Secondary you'd probably need to cross I-395 and slip past the northeast shore of Moosup Pond, then meet up with the old ROW where it straightens out in Sterling next to CT 14. 3 minor curve easings and that's another 13 miles of top-speed territory fully on the existing ROW in flat river valley. Then things get real messy in Coventry and West Warwick and you've got multiple tight S-curves through dense residential on a 4.5 mile stretch of existing ROW that needs creative bypassing before it's back off to the races south of I-295 for 8 miles of near-tangent existing ROW ending on the NEC on the final curve into Providence Station. But if Coventry-Warwick is the only place you need significant property takings, tunnels, and expensive mitigation...that's double-digit less tunnels, hundreds of fewer property takings, thousands of acres less environmental impacts, and a billion less in expensive private mitigation than any other choice they could make. All because there's so few battles to pick deviating outside of wholly existing rail ROW's or CDOT-owned land EIS'd for a major Interstate highway.


Sure...there could be fatal blockers. Nothing is known until the engineers and surveyors pick it over with fine-toothed comb. But any idiot with two eyes and Google terrain view can see how frickin' nuts the I-95 bypass is, so paths of least resistance and being able to isolate the battles one has to pick matters the world when there's that stark a difference. They may go through the motions trying to fuss with that alt-Shoreline routing and the Providence-bypasses mountain-climber to Worcester (until Rhode Island's Congressional delegation torpedoes that), but it's pretty obvious where the serious study work is going to happen once they stop playing games and have to conceptualize how to make it work in the real world.

YamaOfParadise wrote: It's sad that there's even more important and more damning reasons against the bypass than what he focuses on, too. (Though I don't necessarily fault him for focusing on historical/environmental reasons, either, since those are what the constituents care the most about.)

I'm all ears!

As for whether we are making a mountain out of a molehill. Let me say, that I am an academic, not an activist, by training. I take my reputation and 'getting it right' seriously. The denials are, shall we say, lawyerly. And though Carol's comments are 3 months old, in our view they differ pretty significantly from assurances given by Carol to the impacted communities only days later. Not good. There are credibility problems here... and more to come.

I'm a little skeptical that the planners are looking at building anything affordable!

Every time I read tunnels in the various plans, I see boondoggles and money flushing down the drain.
I can see building tunnels under navigable rivers and under tall mountains as an engineering necessity, but not under unnavigable rivers and foothills.

As for the other recent discussion about maximum speeds, we should get realistic and realize going faster than 160 mph or in a shared corridor with freight trains is difficult enough as it is. To reach maximum speeds of 200 or 220 mph, the tracks and corridor will have to be dedicated for HSR trains only, not sharing the tracks with slower commuter trains or even worse freight trains.