apodino wrote:1. NYC banned Diesel locomotives in the underground tunnels years ago, and only electrics run into GCT and Penn Station. Why are Diesels allowed in the South End tunnel?
Because it was designed for that from Day 1. The NEC wasn't electrified until '99; everything, including Amtrak, was diesel prior to that. And electrification was not a fait accompli when the Corridor was being built, so it is required to handle heavy diesel traffic. There are regularly-placed vent shafts all along SW Corridor Park. The building ventilation at BBY was woefully miscalculated and should've been a lot better than it was. These fixes are 30 years in the making, because proper design should've never left behind a fumes problem this big.
2. Why is the T spending 10 Million on better ventilation, which may or may not solve the problem, instead of running electric trains through Back Bay. The tracks through Back Bay are already electrified. I know only Providence is electrified the whole way. But there is a locomotive out there, the ALP-45DP which the MBTA could have ordered, which would allow the trains to run on electric in the tunnel, but can run on diesel on non electrified track.
The T running electrics on Providence is not an instantaneous process. Can't lease a bunch of stored AEM-7 beaters and start running under-wire to Providence tomorrow.
1. Not enough electrical capacity for both Amtrak and T service at Sharon substation, which feeds the NEC + South Station terminal district down to Norton phase break. This is by-design, because when Amtrak was planning the NHV-BOS electrification in the early-90's it was completely unknowable what the T's would-be power requirements might've been, and what the timetable was for South Station Expansion. The T wasn't a participant in the design committee, so that data was all blanks. Sharon sub ended up being built with only enough transformers to meet Amtrak's 20+ year needs, and the other half of the site was left empty and pre-prepped for future hookups. That way the T can add just as much or as little as it needs...when it's pinned down exactly how much it's going to need...rather than wildly guessing to over-capacity or under-capacity and ending up making a foolish investment. If, for example, the T favored electrifying the Fairmount Line and Worcester Line out to Riverside to get 2 Indigo/urban-rail routes under wire in addition to Providence, they'd have to bake those power needs into Sharon sub expansion. Even if the Indigo wire-ups aren't immediate, and simply provisioned. So quantifying how much juice Sharon is going to need to provide is a necessary first step.
2. Because adding commuter capacity is a large expense that has to be funded, put through design-build, and constructed by
Amtrak (because it's their power system, so they run point on all upgrades)...you aren't going to see action on that happen in less than 5 years. It needs to first appear on a 4-year MassDOT CIP, the paper-pushing with Amtrak has to be hashed out, and the actual bids have to go out. We might actually end up with a recommendation to do exactly this when the CR Future study releases its recommendations in mid-2019, but that means you're still looking at 2023-24 for the extra juice going on-line. Not as simple as renting a bunch of Toaster junkers next week.
3. Pawtucket layover would have to be electrified to make Providence doable, and that's a RIDOT funding expense. 2-state coordination now necessary, as well as squaring the differences in CIP advance budgeting between MA and RI. Another thing that practically needs a 5-year gestation period to get done.
4. FULL electrification of the Wickford Jct. schedules is not possible until there are RIDOT funds to finish the missing northbound platforms at T.F. Green and Wickford and wire up the platform turnouts. With T.F. Green this also incurs extra expense of constructing a gauntlet track for P&W freights, because they don't clear the wire on the mainline and won't clear a future-wired platform because of the adjacent Coronado Rd. overpass. The gauntlet (which is pre-provisioned by the wider track spacing between the platform track and the mainline tracks) would make it so that the P&W autoracks run 'between' the catenary on the adjacent tracks to get through the clearance restriction. Slightly more money there, and if you're investing any significant sum in finishing off incomplete T.F. Green you're going to be making a final up/down decision on whether to build a set of Amtrak platforms there for NE Regionals to stop at the airport. So...a consequential package of expenses before you can eliminate south-of-PVD diesels.
5. There is absolutely no cost/benefit to buying dual-modes unless you have an unventilated tunnel like GCT, Penn, or Montreal Mt. Royal to contend with forcing that hell or high water. In Boston, the only hell-or-high-water scenario is the North-South Rail Link, because its incredible tunneling depth leaves it impossible to ventilate. The ALP-45DP is a monstrosity...horrendously overweight, extremely high maintenance costs, very inefficient in diesel mode because of its problematic genset engines. That's the ultimate lipstick-on-a-pig move. Even with better duals than the ALP on the horizon, the state's going to have to seriously revisit the wisdom of banking on dual-modes for the majority of North-South Rail Link schedules through those very steep unventilated tunnels, as the rosy assumptions of studies-to-date re: dual-modes' utility are a far cry from reality.
Some duals picking up the initial slack on lines that are lower-priority for immediate NSRL-related electrification...sure.
Some duals permanently serving a smattering of schedules on lines that can't be electrified because of unsolvable freight clearances (outer Haverhill Line a potential hard blocker once double-stacked PAR freights have carved out every last inch available underneath the Lawrence street grid)...sure. But they're almost certainly going to have to step up and electrify the Big 4 primary-pair routes (Providence, Worcester, Lowell, Rockburyport) to run all-electric from Day 1 or that tunnel's going to be an excruciating slog. The days of thinking that duals are a hammer and every conceivable service scenario is a nail didn't pan out like the foamers running NJ Transit 10 years ago thought it would.
3. Would the MBTA ever consider just electrifying most of the south side? The North side wouldn't make sense yet. But I think lines such as Needham, Franklin, and Fairmount are all prime candidates, and you take all the diesels out of the system, which reduces the impact on climate change.
As above, Fairmount and Worcester Line to Riverside are achievable just by chaining off of existing Sharon sub and budgeting for the necessary power boost. Substations are large-cost items, and tough to locate because they have to be within stone's throw of major transmission lines AND be free of NIMBY interference. So being able to glom 2 high-frequency Indigo services + Providence off the pre-existing expansion space at Sharon is a big deal.
Needham won't be electrified...as a commuter rail line at 25 kV AC. As an Orange Line extension to West Roxbury and Green Line branch from Newton Highlands to Needham Jct. electrified to 600V DC...yes. But that's because Needham's the perennial odd-man out on SW Corridor congestion and can't meaningfully have its service levels increased as long as Amtrak has such voracious appetite for more slots. So it's better to just cut the cord (and re-plug it into the rapid transit div.) rather than wire it up, have to plunk a pricey substation out by Route 128, and still be stuck running the same poor headways because NEC slots are too valuable to waste on a branch. This is an inevitable shift. It's all about whether the T is proactive about it, or when NEC FUTURE traffic levels make it completely reactive and non-optional.
Worcester's ideal to continue past Riverside to Worcester because the service (present and future) is a layer cake of overlapping schedules--all-stops locals, skip-stop locals, semi-expresses, super-expresses--on a singular un-branched mainline. The vacated freight clearances east of Framingham require no clearance mods (NOTE: Beacon St. overpass near Yawkey has to be modded if you're doing the initial Riverside wire-up because it's too low for 25 kV clearance envelope over the roof of a bi-level). Neither does Framingham-Westborough on the vacated autorack route. Double-stack territory from Westborough to Worcester only has a half-dozen overpasses that have to be checked for 25 kV over double-stacked freights (i.e. 20'6" + 2'6" wire clearance envelope for 25 kV = 22'). Most of them already are 22 ft., and the few that either aren't or are borderline happen to be easily solvable by trackbed undercuts. You won't ever get the Amtrak Inlands to Springfield wired up because it's 35 more overpasses between WOR-SPG, but wiring up the T to Worcester is mercifully cost-effective. And there are an arseload of high-tension power lines crossing the ROW in MetroWest, so plunking a substation somewhere in the Ashland-Westborough stretch is fairly academic.
Franklin's another good one, though doesn't trump the Worcester layer cake. Conceivably you could extend wires from Readville to Deadham Corporate off the Sharon sub feed to extend the electrified Fairmount Line to Dedham Corporate as a first step. Foxboro would be next priority...substation for the whole works located on the Framingham Secondary where all the big power lines cross, and very few overpasses that need to be checked for wire clearance over 17' Plate F freight cars. Walpole-Forge Park...meh, lower-priority. Lack of a proper Franklin layover and extreme expense of finding one (nearest suitable site: Bellingham Jct.) means south-of-Walpole schedules don't have much chance at increasing while Walpole/Foxboro and Fairmount-Dedham Corporate very much do. The upside of the studied Milford extension that would tap that Bellingham layover site is iffy at best, and with RIDOT making noise about taking a second whack at Boston-Woonsocket via Franklin CR study the brighter long-term future may be on the reinstated old main to Blackstone/P&W and not the twisty Milford Branch. Probably better off getting those ducks in a row about the "vision thing" for Walpole-south's ultimate future before spending the coin to electrify to Franklin.
All in all, Back Bay station is awful, and I would like to see something other than a 10 million dollar ventilation project address it. I think this is just lipstick on a pig.
It's necessary anyway, because even if every T service that passed through BBY got electrified the Amtraks running west on the
Lake Shore, future
Inlands, and future Boston-Montreal would still be all-diesel and fill the building up with smoke during those time slots. If the Inland Preferred Alternative in the NNEIRI study comes to fruition that's more than a dozen times per day that an AMTK-logoed soot-belcher is going to be stopping there. It's a non-optional fix. There's no way to zero-out diesel traffic, and even
substantial reductions like an initial Providence electrification are still going to leave the lower-priority branchlines running diesel while they wait their turn for funding & build action. $10M today projected over 20 years of saved maintenance from soot buildup not decaying station structures and saved customer service inconveniences pays for itself over the practical electrification timetables we're talking for whittling down the diesels to just trace traffic. And this $10M is lumped in with 30-year cycled building repairs that were overdue anyway. That's not lipstick, it's basic state-of-repair. The air quality improvements are necessary even in a "GO FOR IT!" decision on electrification because of what timetables you're looking at for maintaining a bridge era until electrification buildout has pounded the diesel outliers down to the barest tolerable minimum.
