NH2060 wrote:Bypassing Boston is one of those ideas that sounds "bad" and "pointless", but -in this case- is probably necessary for this train to work. WHY would you want BON-POR/BRK riders booking seats that would otherwise be used by NYP/STM/NHV/HFD/SPG/WOR,etc.-POR/BRK riders? The latter = more $$$ and therefore more incentive to keep such a train operating. If they need to reverse and can't do my suggested "around the horn" approach that's one thing, but dropping off and picking up passengers doesn't have to be done. IF the train is ever in need of a boost in ridership stopping at BON would be the best backup plan.
No, it's $$$ without a funding source to upgrade the bypass tracks. It doesn't matter what the merits are on such a routing, there is no funding conduit for the track if you bypass Boston on a state-sponsored route. And Amtrak will not operate in new un-upgraded territory. The end. That's the be-all/end-all...don't engage Massachusetts, can't get there from here, train never happens.
If you want a NY-Portland train to ever happen in our lifetimes, you must stop at a
terminal in Boston. This isn't about the perfectness of the routing, it's about the structural feasibility of making it happen. It can't happen any other way. Debating the perfectness of the routing gets you not one year closer to making it happen in your lifetime. Perfect's the enemy of good here.
If having MA adequately served by train to/from NYC from/to Maine is essential to seeing it become a reality putting in a station @ Cambridge near Mass Ave. or Main St. (right in the heart of MIT) could satisfy that in spades. If anyone is meeting up with anyone from Boston enroute, as F-Line suggested, they can hop on at Cambridge (I doubt there are more than a handful of people who would have such an arrangement to begin with). I actually wouldn't be surprised if the proposal for upgrading the Worcester-Lowell tracks instead of the Grand Junction is because those in Maine wanted to avoid having Boston passengers eat up the North of Boston to Worcester, Springfield, Hartford, etc. reservation possibilities. I do think it's imprudent though to upgrade them when fixing up the Grand Jct. is a piece of cake compared to rebuilding the Pan Am tracks.
Such a platform is proposed for that location in a Worcester Line-North Station study from about 6 years ago. However, the station location there is a full 2-block walk from the Red Line station. And will have zero parking. Absolute no-go. MassDOT is not going to allow the one and only Boston stop to be parceled out to a station that doesn't have direct-connect subway access (of which North Station feeds 2 lines), a ticket office, and staffing help for all the weekenders carrying luggage. Appealing to Amtrak instead will get it shot down for the same reasons. Trying to shiv in something at that new West Station the MBTA wants to build isn't going to work either, because that too has no direct subway connection that doesn't require walking a couple blocks.
It takes both MassDOT and Amtrak to tango no matter what New York City and NNEPRA prefer, and you won't get their buy-in without a stop at North Station. Structurally engage the parties on this route as they are, not as you want them to be from a perch outside the state's borders looking in. There is no bypass of North Station in existence that incentivizes MassDOT and Amtrak to get onboard with this, no funding source from an outside-Massachusetts state that overrules that objection. To get that overrule have to first establish a bureaucratic mechanism for pipelining the money totally from outside the state borders. As this isn't a federally-operated route and NNEPRA doesn't have that kind of power, such a mechanism doesn't exist. So...you can either daydream up pitch-perfect scenarios that logistically can't happen with the physical plant and/or oversight, or take the path of least resistance and get something useful done.
Any NYC-Maine service will NOT be a Downeaster set as they're already stretched thin on equipment and the Cabbages would have to be removed/tacked on @ New Haven since they can't be used into NYP due to clearance issues. Either a cab car or double Gennies will need to be used. And if stopping @ North Station is going to be on the table then having a 6-8+ car consist better be on the table as well. You're talking about serving New York, Stamford, New Haven, Hartford, Springfield, Worcester, North Station, New Hampshire, Portland, Freeport, Brunswick ALL on one train. With the variety of travel patterns possible there better be seats to make it possible, especially if those longer distance ticket revenues are ever going to see the light of day.
Yes...equipment would come from the general pool. But that's not something you can get around. People aren't getting kicked off the train in Boston, so there's already a mismatch that scatters DE equipment if you don't keep the New York trainset separate from the one that spends its entire rotation self-contained in New England. That's not a big logistical barrier to square...keep trainsets intact and stuff stays in alignment.
I don't see what the problem is with the train being popular. All but 1 of those stops is served on any which NY-Portland routing. Do you think these trains are going to run 4-5 cars and empty from New York through Worcester on a weekender route that was never available to those folks before? You're going to need a longer consist for that by default; it will be popular. Why would the presence of New Yorkers onboard +1 frequencies swell North Station boardings to crush load when those folks have 5 (and probably more) options per day for Maine and nearly infinite options for NYC between the NEC and future Inland Service? If the train's crowded, it's going to be nearing capacity before it exits Connecticut and be stuffed before it ever hits the New Hampshire border no matter what routing you take. Missing the forest for the trees to nitpick BON as the point of collapse. If BON is the point of collapse you've got a pre-existing capacity problems to address before running this train on any routing. And I somewhat doubt that's really going to be a problem.
The only reason I'm harping on this is because bureaucratically the links on the chain pay the way. You can't break the Massachusetts link by attempting to skip Boston and get a route. It doesn't work. There is no higher power to appeal to when their money is dependent on a route happening at all. Amtrak's going to back MassDOT up on this; it's a P.I.T.A. for them if they aren't stopping at a Boston terminal, and they have no incentive to relent. So first and foremost to get a route from NY-Portland that bypasses Boston you have to reform the entire structure of state-sponsored route funding in 4 New England states (and since this precedent impacts routes across all of New England...make that 6 in reality) so the authority can make decisions not subject to each individual link in the chain and not driven top-down by the states with the biggest share of the pie (namely, Massachusetts). NNEPRA doesn't have that clout. Structurally, this is not going to happen this decade. And probably not next either. So you are left with the same choice: hold out a lifetime for something perfect, or engage the stakeholders as they are and get something really good sooner. Any answer for a routing that skips or attempts to substitute for BON has to answer for this appeal-to-authority issue head-on. If it doesn't, you're wasting your time.
Continuing to "Yeah, but...", "Yeah, but..." means--in the real world--you don't think the route is viable unless it's the perfect that can't bureaucratically happen. In which case...the whole last 2 pages of this thread are moot because there's no possibility of an NY-Portland train in the next 20 or fewer years and it doesn't wash on the merits for the only way it can happen. Problem solved.
I happen to think it is a useful train. One worth dealing with conditions as they are to make happen in the short-term. But I may be the minority there. Just realize that "conditions as they are" is not a
variable when it comes to who makes the money decisions, it's a
constant. So expending a lot of energy trying to change the constant into a variable isn't a good use of time.