2018 Massachusetts State Rail Plan

MassDOT released the draft 2018 State Rail Plan on Friday, January 28th. (the last plan was in 2010)

Link to web page with draft MA State Rail Plan
https://www.mass.gov/service-details/rail-plan

Two public information meetings were held over the past week (in Worcester and Springfield).

The plan includes a lot of interesting proposals, including:
- expansion of passenger service north of Springfield to Holyoke, Northampton, and Greenfield, as a pilot service.
- Extension of the Fall River Secondary to Rhode Island Border
- A study of "Western Massachusetts" to Boston Passenger Service
- Otis Industrial Track Study for expanded freight service to Cape Cod
- and many other projects

Comments will be accepted until Friday, February 16th and may be sent to [email protected]

A little confused about the Palmer project. Is the MCR currently only able to interchange with NECR? And MassDOT is going to build a MCR mainline alongside the NECR mainline to get them a direct interchange with CSX, independent of NECR?

Will be looking forward to seeing Capital improvements funded and carried out on all Cape lines. The Otis Industrial track study will hopefully result in funding as the Otis spur is back in operation and has a lot of potential for varied freight purposes to serve the Cape area.

Falmouth Secondary to Otis wrote:Will be looking forward to seeing Capital improvements funded and carried out on all Cape lines. The Otis Industrial track study will hopefully result in funding as the Otis spur is back in operation and has a lot of potential for varied freight purposes to serve the Cape area.

What is concerning though is that the draft 2018 State Rail Plan, which is supposed to look out 20 years, is totally silent on the topic of passenger rail to Wareham, Buzzards Bay or the Cape.

Maybe the first two are part of one of the other studies but one would have thought that future service to the Cape (besides just the CapeFLYER) would be at least mentioned in the plan -- considering the money that is going in to the state-of-good-repair work.

Train60 wrote:

Falmouth Secondary to Otis wrote:Will be looking forward to seeing Capital improvements funded and carried out on all Cape lines. The Otis Industrial track study will hopefully result in funding as the Otis spur is back in operation and has a lot of potential for varied freight purposes to serve the Cape area.

What is concerning though is that the draft 2018 State Rail Plan, which is supposed to look out 20 years, is totally silent on the topic of passenger rail to Wareham, Buzzards Bay or the Cape.

Maybe the first two are part of one of the other studies but one would have thought that future service to the Cape (besides just the CapeFLYER) would be at least mentioned in the plan -- considering the money that is going in to the state-of-good-repair work.

You would think that Commuter rail to Buzzards Bay would be mentioned somewhere in the draft 2018 State Rail plan. Seeing that the Cohasset Narrows bridge is to be replaced and platform & rail improvements are planned as well for Buzzards Bay. After those projects are completed the infrastructure would be ready to run Commuter rail, subject to funding of course. But considering that Bourne has been a paying community member of the MBTA for a few years now, local expectations are that it will happen in the near future.

Speak up. It's only a draft.

Rockingham Racer wrote:Speak up. It's only a draft.

I sent in some comments on the draft 2018 State Rail Plan and will be looking to see if I get a reply

Rockingham Racer wrote:Speak up. It's only a draft.

Yes, you are so right. Time to submit comments or sit and watch until they update the plan again in five or so years.

FYI - MassDOT just extended the comment period to March 2nd.
https://www.mass.gov/service-details/rail-plan

Falmouth Secondary to Otis wrote:

Rockingham Racer wrote:Speak up. It's only a draft.

I sent in some comments on the draft 2018 State Rail Plan and will be looking to see if I get a reply

Good show! Keep us posted.

Falmouth Secondary to Otis wrote:You would think that Commuter rail to Buzzards Bay would be mentioned somewhere in the draft 2018 State Rail plan.

Seems more likely to appear in the "MBTA Commuter Rail Vision" and hopefully that is the response that you will get.

Here is the link to the Cape Cod Commission's April 2015 Buzzards Bay Commuter Rail study for those who haven't read about the details of the proposal.

http://www.capecodcommission.org/resour ... Report.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I just read the Cape Cod study. Seemed to say "it's hard to estimate how many passengers will use the station". Comparative data for stations marked as having "free" parking doesn't look correct, even for 2013. Also, why would you want to encourage "transit oriented development" in an area that has a shortage of drinking water?
Wikipedia says:

the Environmental Protection Agency and the State of Massachusetts designated Buzzards Bay to the National Estuary Program, as "an estuary of national significance" that is threatened by pollution, land development, or overuse.

BandA wrote:I just read the Cape Cod study. Seemed to say "it's hard to estimate how many passengers will use the station". Comparative data for stations marked as having "free" parking doesn't look correct, even for 2013. Also, why would you want to encourage "transit oriented development" in an area that has a shortage of drinking water?
Wikipedia says:

the Environmental Protection Agency and the State of Massachusetts designated Buzzards Bay to the National Estuary Program, as "an estuary of national significance" that is threatened by pollution, land development, or overuse.

There is certainly no shortage of drinking water in the Town of Bourne or any other of the surrounding Towns as well. Pretty much all watershed areas and saltwater bays are under some sort of environmental designation by the EPA and State of Massachusetts to provide protections from pollution, land development or overuse. At this point in time commuter rail is just a proposal and until the Buzzards Bay RR infrastructure is updated and service is funded that's all it is.

BostonUrbEx wrote:A little confused about the Palmer project. Is the MCR currently only able to interchange with NECR? And MassDOT is going to build a MCR mainline alongside the NECR mainline to get them a direct interchange with CSX, independent of NECR?

MCER and CSX currently interchange at Palmer, but according to what the Rail Plan states, the 1.2 mile stretch to the interchange is not owned by Mass DOT (which makes me think it's NECR-owned).

Lee

Conrail put the piece up for sale several years ago. The EOTC declined to bid on it. The Mass Central did buy it for peanuts and that piece gave them a virtual lock on the ware river contract operation.