Boston Surface Railroad: Worcester-Providence Commuter Rail

[F-line to Dudley via Park]

Well, for one, as a private company they should not be just sharing their business plan with you.

You're right. I'm not on the Worcester or Providence Chambers of Commerce, or an elected politician serving constituents in either.

Were I, I would expect to be briefed on whether this thing were still happening for "Q1/Q2 2017", as my ability to rustle up support to--as you say..."step up their game to survive in this region"--is dependent on getting regular updates and being able to publicly relay that information to business associates, other community leaders, constituents, and the media.

It is not a plausible assumption that all of those affected parties have been sworn to airtight NDA's preventing disclosure of any updates whatsoever to any soul in those communities for 5 whole months when start date is still projected for 1 year. Not a tweet? Not a single mentioning in the activist Providence urbanist blogosphere? Not a reference in a community meeting about continued talks since September? Wouldn't that have been a timely thing for pols to account for when Providence canceled its streetcar proposal last week and outlined--in great detail--the bus circulator replacement with all its commuter rail tie-ins as part of the public reassurances about the comprehensiveness of the city's modified transportation vision?

Tell me, then...how else should the political will be mustered to rally a community behind a transportation business plan that committed itself to a firm date? Explain how total silence advances that goal amid all other aspects of business development and transportation policy development in those two cities which are subject to a regular, publicly acknowledged back-and-forth?

I don't get why everyone feels that they are entitled to both see and dispute any companies financial figures nor planning. If you are an investor, yes. If you just want to second guess them, really, no. And, no they are not claiming to do this all on $3mil. They are saying that is what will get them started. Big difference there.

You cannot run Day 1 of service without all of those cost items outlined in the previous post. Of which the paper-only items such as trackage rights permissions and railroad insurance alone cost more than $3 million. No STB filings??? Not even by P&W or Amtrak filed on BSRC's behalf? The time it takes to adjudicate some of that stuff can exceed the time they project it takes to get this service going, and they'd have to publicly state their schedule in such filings to begin with. Money needs to have been transacted already--well over a year in advance--on a couple of these initial (and publicly reportable when they involve regulatory agencies or a public entity like Amtrak) line items. So where's the update on how that initial $3M is being spent? And the update on fundraising for the rest? And the update on the schedule, adjusting the dates forward as-needed if they are running behind?

Big difference indeed. Public reporting doesn't give benefits of doubt. It either happens or it doesn't. And if it isn't, the business that is staking itself to a schedule for providing service to the public...kind of has a responsibility to update that schedule for the public. And the public leaders who can leverage it for the betterment of their cities.

[dowlingm]

I just shake my head when I see threads like this - even when all the naysaying is well founded and probably going to be borne out. All that TIGER money dumped on the SWC route for 1tpdpd rather than move to the better populated Transcon (for example), and moves to restore service in some form east of New Orleans which will likely be similarly thinly operated and patronised, whereas a shuttle between two reasonably large urban areas (also creating a shortcut between LSL and NEC) which would surely do far better on a passenger-mile/$m investment basis is crapped on from a height.

Doesn't it worry anyone that there are unreasonable barriers to entry for innovative rail operations? BSR may be cowboys, they may not, but even a well resourced private operator would struggle to get a foothold. It still seems unbelievable that Brightliner is proceeding and FEC own the railroad!

[F-line to Dudley via Park]

How should BSR be analyzed then? The difficulties in setting up such a service are well-known. No one's disputing that private operators are shut out by extreme and largely unnecessary hurdles, and that the industry's and regulators' unwillingness to take a look at that is leaving too many viable niches unfilled. There's lots of threads on RR.net that touch on that; it's a big issue nationwide.


That said, when a private entity makes promises of no public funding and stakes itself to a set schedule for start of service...are they supposed to be excused from scrutiny because the hurdles are difficult? They're the ones making the bold claims to media and business leaders with math that doesn't add up. Who then go dark for months at a time with no paper trail evidence of follow-up action, such as the numerous public filings required simply to slog through the necessary regulatory paperwork in advance of a service start. And still hold themselves to the same implausibly close-approaching startup date. It's pretty hard to ignore that their behavior has been suspect on details and absent any of the corroborable progress milestones that would by nature and/or official regulation be publicly measurable knowledge and not wholly backroom-negotiated or non-disclosed. The criticisms in this thread have been very specific about where information and action has been lacking, how that impacts their credibility, and how their sticking to their story becomes increasingly implausible in light of all that and in light of the fact that they still haven't budged on their start date. If the...er...'scatological' analogy is correct then the thread wasn't fazed enough by the smell to ID the signs of poor dietary habit in each nugget.

(Oooooooooohkay, that's enough of that analogy. )



Maybe the larger issue here is deserving of its own breakout thread at top of the Passenger Rail subforum, because there's a lot of fertile ground to cover there. And better examples highlighting the issues than BSR. Or that incredibly sketchy Golden Eagle group in Maine that's been making the news. There was recently a mini-discussion in one of the Maine threads about a Canadian tourism firm proposing a hotel train from Portland to Montreal running as a 'classy'-amenity overnighter using the St. Lawrence & Atlantic mainline. With much more open accounting of having the trainsets, experience, operating plan, and means of providing customer experience. That plan ended with a thud when SLR said they had to buy unlimited--not limited-liability--insurance to use their line, which only sees a couple widely-spaced freights per day. Insurance for CP running miles through the Montreal suburbs looked even more frightening, so they needed--and were very up-front about in their sales pitch--to be able to get limited-liability coverage over SLR to have any shot at all. They didn't, and had to tell Maine "Sorry, we tried. If this situation changes, we'll absolutely be back. I hope you understand this is a big challenge both we--and you--face."

That's not the only example nationwide, but it is more appropriately indicative of the larger problem than a fly-by-night sales pitch that smells more like vaporware with each passing month. Something could've come out of the hotel train proposal. Nothing's going to come out of BSR unless they adjust their timetable and start showing some verifiable outward signs of making progress. They kind of do a very legit issue a disservice with their unreliability.

[lakest101]

FWIW I know :

o From friends at P&W that BSRC funded running a geometry car all the way down the mainline to the Boston Switch and followed up by a high rail with engineers from Jacobs Engineering -

o From friends at Jacobs Engineering that they ran a high rail for BSRC with Amtrak last week from Boston Switch down to Brayton

o From watching that a survey team was out at Worcester Union Tuesday measuring off property lines for a platform on the west P&W track

o From google alerts that BSRC now leases the entire old train station in Woonsocket as of January 1.

o From friends and according to folks in P&W mechanical they have on BSRC's dime inspected several sets of rolling stock and power although they wouldn't tell me where or what.

o From coworkers who were there last night (WITHOUT ME GRRRRRR) BSRC had a table at the New England Railroad Club dinner and had folks from Amtrak, Jacobs and P&W at their table along with the former CMO of Amtrak Jonathan Klein.

I'm not sure why the folks at BSRC have gone press silent but there is a *lot* of money being spent on *stuff*. We are used to a lot of publicity into these projects when it's the T or Amtrak or RIDOT but the lack of transparency into a truly private venture is maddening.

The P&W guys clearly think something is going on.

[leviramsey]

a shuttle between two reasonably large urban areas (also creating a shortcut between LSL and NEC) which would surely do far better on a passenger-mile/$m investment basis is crapped on from a height.

Doesn't it worry anyone that there are unreasonable barriers to entry for innovative rail operations? BSR may be cowboys, they may not, but even a well resourced private operator would struggle to get a foothold. It still seems unbelievable that Brightliner is proceeding and FEC own the railroad!

Firmly agree on the second paragraph, but I'm not sure that Providence-Worcester's being a shortcut between the LSL and NEC is that meaningful: it's not much of a shortcut under current track conditions between Providence and Worcester, and it's fairly likely that any scenario where Providence-Worcester goes to 79 mph, most of Worcester-Boston goes to 90 or even 110, and it's really only a shortcut for RI to LSL/Worcester to NEC. Every other stop on the NEC has a better way to the LSL already, and every other Amtrak stop on the B&A has a better way to the NEC. Springfield-New Haven-Providence might not even be that much slower than Springfield-Worcester-Providence.

Regarding the second: that Brightline is also FEC-owned may have a lot to do with their progress. Look at all the issues even Amtrak and the established commuter operators have with being tenants on someone else's railroad (e.g. Amtrak with MNRR, NJT with Amtrak, Amtrak with MBTA, Amtrak with CSX).

[lakest101]

where Providence-Worcester goes to 79 mph, most of Worcester-Boston goes to 90 or even 110,

reality is that P&W mainline is Class III track so at best 59MPH and although WOR-BOS is Class IV I have never been on a train that hit faster than 65.

WOR-PVD is not a shortcut for anyone for anyone except maybe for a couple of NYC bound passengers because it could in theory if timed properly shave a whopping 13 minutes off the trip assuming comparable layovers :

VIA MBTA WOR-BOS 55min; then BOS to NYP 210min = 265min not including layover

VIA ???? WOR-PVD 70min??; then PVD to NYP 182min = 252min not including layover

[F-line to Dudley via Park]

Worcester-Boston is only Class 3. Worcester-Framingham is due for a Class 4 uprate very soon now that the requisite rail destressing project is (done? almost done?). But Boston-Framingham is kneecapped by the very limited old ABS signal system's 59 MPH speed limit, and that's the ruling limit for any schedule. Fixing inbound of Framingham is a rip-out/replace resignaling job that probably costs them near the top of 8 figures.

P&W Class 3 ≠ 59 MPH passenger MAS. It's a track hardware maintenance class. Norfolk Southern, for instance, maintains a lot of its mainlines lines to Class 4 standard...but sets the MAS for its freights at 50 MPH instead of the 60 MPH allowed by the FRA for freight within Class 4. They do it because they find Class 4/50 MPH the right balance between speed and minimizing wear. So P&W can set passenger MAS at whatever it wants within the bounds of Class 3, not necessarily the FRA maximum.

There most certainly are going to be tons of places where the line is so curvy MAS isn't close to possible. P&W stays bolted to the Blackstone River most of the way; in Rhode Island the river's pretty wide which keeps it from curving too severely. In Massachusetts it's much thinner and more variable and starts twisting around wildly, taking the tracks with it. Millerville, Uxbridge, Northbridge, and Millbury are going to be painfully slow whether the line is Class 3 or Class 8.

Second, Class 3 doesn't entail a smooth-riding trip. Jointed rail, a few grade crossings on small side streets not maintained to same standards on thoroughfare crossings, and some of the smallest streets and private crossings are flashers-only or less instead of gates. P&W is about as good as it gets on privately-installed crossing gates and maintaining quality crossing surfaces everywhere it matters most, but even they aren't rich enough to cover all in the kind of totality the MBTA does where smooth/reliable ops extend to the residential cul-de-sacs and most of the private driveways. Trains will have to slow up at those poorer and unprotected crossings. They will have to slow up at some of the rough spots...either for passenger comfort or because P&W just doesn't want the uneven spots on the roadbed taking an even bigger beating than they have to. And that proposed schedule will have minutes added to it when the field survey ID's each one of these. Private money can stamp a few of those rough spots out; it won't do it in totality. Crossing surfaces are expensive; redoing the entire line with CWR ridiculously so. 59 MPH MAS on paper is probably going to be a rare sight in the field in the years until RIDOT resurfaces everything from Boston Switch to Woonsocket Union for its own commuter rail.

Field surveys will tell the tale on what the achievable schedule ultimately is going to be, and whether it's time-competitive enough to draw. In BSR's defense, they have to make a mission statement before they're allowed in the field to count up the speedos and figure out what their speeds can be. Of course that travel time is going to get adjusted and probably be a bit over-optimistic on that first spitballed quote. It does mean that all the good intentions (and transparency) in the world might not net on further investigation a viable travel time at Class 3, so caveat that due diligence itself may close the door on them having a way forward. Most definitely shortcuts or transfers to the Lake Shore Limited shouldn't even be part of this conversation. This infrastructure may be in sterling condition for a Class II freight line, but it's waaaaaaaaaay far from being able to offer the kind of scope where you can start pivoting off of it for far-flung transfer opportunities. That's not going to happen until RIDOT/MassDOT have rebuilt the whole thing end-to-end and are running full-blown in-house PRV-WOR commuter service. The only action item this prematurely on that is RIDOT sticking a note in its 2014 State Rail Plan that it would like to initiate a joint study with MassDOT at some point in the term that Rail Plan covers to quantify service numbers, since it will by that point have built out to Woonsocket. Not commit to build...just study, because no study has ever been done before across the whole corridor.

Square One of umpteen. The Lake Shore Limited just doesn't rate.

[BandA]

Worcester-Boston is only Class 3. Worcester-Framingham is due for a Class 4 uprate very soon now that the requisite rail destressing project is (done? almost done?). But Boston-Framingham is kneecapped by the very limited old ABS signal system's 59 MPH speed limit, and that's the ruling limit for any schedule. Fixing inbound of Framingham is a rip-out/replace resignaling job that probably costs them near the top of 8 figures.

Weird that 3-4(?) years ago they replaced the old telegragh signal wiring through at least newton, and painted ALL the wayside signals and signal boxes. Did they provision anything for future signal upgrades, or did they just blow money on window dressing?

[BandA]

I read somewhere that the "T" CR deadheads (a doubleset?) from Worcester to Boston to Providence at the end of the day. I assume that even today a direct Worcester-Providence routing of a deadhead would be faster, although they would have to pay P&W rather than running on their own tracks. Are the labor & fuel costs for a longer run smaller than trackage fees & inefficiency handing off the train?

[leviramsey]

I read somewhere that the "T" CR deadheads (a doubleset?) from Worcester to Boston to Providence at the end of the day. I assume that even today a direct Worcester-Providence routing of a deadhead would be faster, although they would have to pay P&W rather than running on their own tracks. Are the labor & fuel costs for a longer run smaller than trackage fees & inefficiency handing off the train?

Highballing it from Worcester to Boston is an hour, give or take a few minutes (judging from the proposed Worcester-Boston nonstop). Change ends in 10 minutes or so, then highball to Providence in call it 40 minutes, so two hours, with probably 100 gallons or so of fuel consumed (assuming HEP is turned off; it's also mostly downhill).

Worcester to Providence is likely about an hour and a half, and consumes 50 or so gallons of fuel. A half-hour of crew labor saved and 50 gallons of fuel is somewhere around $150-200; I'd expect that P&W charges at least that (and more if a P&W pilot is needed).

Of course, it's also likely that at some point in the next few years, there won't be a Worcester-Boston-Providence deadhead. The proposed new schedules purport to nearly eliminate scheduled sharing of equipment between lines (in which case the 8-bilevel that starts in Providence stays on that line), and if most/all of the Framingham Secondary (now Commonwealth-owned) is 59 mph, then Worcester-Framingham-Mansfield-Providence is probably as fast as Worcester-Providence (though that move would require a wye somewhere to get the locomotive facing away from Boston).

[F-line to Dudley via Park]

Worcester-Boston is only Class 3. Worcester-Framingham is due for a Class 4 uprate very soon now that the requisite rail destressing project is (done? almost done?). But Boston-Framingham is kneecapped by the very limited old ABS signal system's 59 MPH speed limit, and that's the ruling limit for any schedule. Fixing inbound of Framingham is a rip-out/replace resignaling job that probably costs them near the top of 8 figures.

Weird that 3-4(?) years ago they replaced the old telegragh signal wiring through at least newton, and painted ALL the wayside signals and signal boxes. Did they provision anything for future signal upgrades, or did they just blow money on window dressing?

I wouldn't call it "window dressing". Some unrelated consideration must've forced the pole line's relocation. Could've been something as basic as leasing out space for Comcast or Verizon to lay data cable along the ROW. It's still the same signal system it ever was.

Painting the signal boxes is a cycled maint thing. With the road spray those boxes and signal stands in Newton are subject to, they're probably on regular schedule of corrosion abatement touch-up every X years.

[BandA]

The painting, pole replacement, platform crack repair may have been related to "state of good repair" work, after the purchase of Boston-Framingham from CSX I believe. I noticed some modern poles were still in place today, with modern bundled cable (rather than individual wires on telegraph poles). Still think it's a waste of money to repair stuff that should be replaced asap, and will probably be replaced within five years or so (or at least have a project).

Back on topic... if Worcester ==> BOS ==> Providence is presently only 10 minutes longer than Worcester ==> Providence, then BSR is uncompetitive for sure until P&W tracks are upgraded. It would be cheaper & better to guarantee MBTA transfers at BBY! I would think P&W would give a warm welcome to passenger trains in exchange for government free upgrades to tracks + collecting trackage fees from BSR.

[leviramsey]

The painting, pole replacement, platform crack repair may have been related to "state of good repair" work, after the purchase of Boston-Framingham from CSX I believe. I noticed some modern poles were still in place today, with modern bundled cable (rather than individual wires on telegraph poles). Still think it's a waste of money to repair stuff that should be replaced asap, and will probably be replaced within five years or so (or at least have a project).

CSX never owned Boston-Framingham. The B&A sold from Riverside to BOS to the Turnpike Authority (who then leased it back to the B&A). The MBTA bought Riverside to Framingham decades before CSX bought Conrail.

[Jeff Smith]

I know there's ample skepticism on here, and only time will tell if the project ever runs, but here's some news:

Valley Breeze

FAIR-USE SNIPS:

Woonsocket on track for new train service

WOONSOCKET – Plans for a new commuter railroad that will connect Woonsocket to Worcester in the north and Providence in the south are moving forward, with longtime tenants at One Depot Square in Woonsocket relocating to make room for Boston Surface Railway Company headquarters.
...
Bono plans to run commuter trains between Worcester’s Union Station and Providence’s Station Building twice a day, with just one stop in Woonsocket along the way.

“We had been on the fence about adding Woonsocket at the start, however Mayor Baldelli-Hunt convinced us to re-examine the ridership potential here and make Woonsocket our headquarters. Since then her support and enthusiasm has been invaluable,” Bono told The Breeze this week.
...
In terms of construction at the historic depot, which was first built in 1882 to serve as a passenger stop for the Providence and Worcester Railroad, Bono said he will add a platform on the western side of the building for high level boarding.
...
The complete trip from Worcester to Providence is expected to take around 80 minutes as of the train’s first scheduled run in 2018, but will be shortened to 60 minutes after upgrades, according to Bono, who added that the company expects to release some good news about progress in mid July.

BSRC is reportedly exploring the feasibility of an earlier service start for the route from Woonsocket to Providence only.
...

[YamaOfParadise]

I'm less skeptical than I was; I still can't say I'm fully in the "this'll totally happen" camp, since there's been an odd lack of information for something that's supposedly so imminent, but I think it's far more probable than it was warranted from the initial announcement way back when. Something should happen out of this, at least, even if the CR doesn't pop up itself. Even if the company were to fold before service started or couldn't start it for whatever reason, I think the municipalities (like Woonsocket) are interested and invested enough to make noise in the event that it wouldn't happen.

Gotta give them props for moving into the old station building; seems it might yet see passengers again! (As I imagine with BSRC being in it themselves, they'll probably open a waiting room there if they do locate the stop there.)