COMPASS RAIL: Pittsfield / Springfield / Boston East-West Passenger Rail

Yeah let’s sit in I-90 traffic… . Seriously I say again I think the comp here is NY Albany. Who in their right mind wants to go to Albany? Yet it’s well-used. Yes the service is thin to begin, but it’s a good start. And don’t forget the casino and Basketball HoF.

Jeff Smith wrote: ↑Sat Sep 23, 2023 6:23 am If I recall correctly there were some 25mph sections. Any improvement to that would be more than a slight improvement! As would 2 extra frequencies. Think about it. Except for a single LD the Massachusetts capitol has no service from its largest city. Now contrast that with New York. Even better if the times are right and they make them through regionals.

There is one 25MPH section on the entire Boston Line - and it's just west of Worcester Union Station while trains are going through CP45. The next slow section is a 30 MPH segment through downtown Springfield, which includes both the Springfield station stop and the bridge over the Connecticut River. The speed limit increases to 40 for the next several miles (and goes up to 50-60 after that), and then there's a long section of 35-45 MPH running as the line climbs to the summit of Washington Hill. After that, the only extended slow section is while going through Chatham, NY which is full of sharp curves. Given that most of the slow sections are there for specific reasons (or are located where trains would be coming to a stop or leaving a stop anyway), I don't know how much they're likely to get improved. Any sort of superelevation allowing significantly higher speeds on curves would probably play havoc with slower freights.

Joshua

Safetee wrote: ↑Sat Sep 23, 2023 6:59 am well, it's not like they don't have train service which they do and is rarely used by Springfielders. and then there is all the bus options which are cheaper than the train and just about as fast. and for folks with their own cars there is the Pike and rte 20.

Beyond all that is there any real demand for expanded train service between Boston and Springfield? Who in their right mind in Boston really wants to go to Springfield? What do you do when you get there?

You could make that argument about just about everywhere that has train service that’s also served by interstate highways and busses. Take the Vermonter. There’s a train that follows perfectly good interstates I91 and I89 and takes significantly longer, probably nearly double, than driving in some circumstances and a much less dense population density. Yet people still use it and it’s quite successful. In the case of Vermont I91 and I89 are seldom congested and most people have their own cars. The turnpike around Boston can be absolutely awful so I’m really not buying this turnpike and rt20 argument.

Whether Springfield folks use the train to get to Boston or intermediates under current conditions says almost nothing about whether they'd use trains actually designed for travelling between Springfield and Boston. Springfield and Boston do technically have train service between them, but it's one daily roundtrip of a long-distance train whose eastbound trips are regularly delayed by more than half the time planned for them to get from Springfield to Boston, and not uncommonly by more than the total expected time between Springfield and Boston. Even on time, it heads east from Springfield and west from Boston far too late in the day for a day trip in either direction.

The roads are there, but they have a lot of traffic and parking in Boston will never be fun or cheap in the daytime.

Who in their right mind in Boston wants to go to Springfield? People who live in Boston because a spouse or partner works in Boston, but who have now gotten a job in downtown Springfield. People with family in Springfield. Students from Boston who are at one of the five colleges, who want to change trains or buses to get to Northampton, Amherst, Holyoke. Students at colleges in Boston who want to visit friends at one of the five colleges.

1 other basis for Boston-Springfield ridership -- the MGM casino.

Jeff Smith wrote: ↑Sat Sep 23, 2023 6:23 am Except for a single LD the Massachusetts capitol has no service from its largest city. Now contrast that with New York.

Your wording makes it look like you are identifying Springfield as either the largest city, or as the capital, while it is neither. The MBTA Red Line is the train service between South Station and the State House.

jaymac wrote: ↑Mon Sep 25, 2023 10:45 am 1 other basis for Boston-Springfield ridership -- the MGM casino.

Maybe, but there is a much larger casino in Everett, right across the Mystic River from Boston. That said, I agree with Arborwayfan that there are likely many valid reasons for people in Boston to take a train to Springfield.

Ok, I surrender. There are at least 50 people from Springfield including Richie Neal who want to occasionally go to Boston by train. And there are at least 15 people in Boston who want to occasionally go to Springfield by train.

About 20 years ago ,upon discovering what I did for a living , an elderly neighbor inquired if trains still went through Woonsocket RI . I replied that P&W ran a freight or two daily . She said she meant passenger trains . I explained there haven't been any in a while . She says "too bad ,my friends and I used to take the train to Providence all the time . It would be really handy if the train still ran . " I didn't bother to tell her that it had been at that point almost 45 years since passenger service to Providence had been annulled . So , when people claim it would be' really handy ' to have rail service to or from their town, be a bit skeptical about whether they will actually use it or just like the idea of having train service .

HenryAlan wrote: ↑Tue Sep 26, 2023 2:55 pm

Jeff Smith wrote: ↑Sat Sep 23, 2023 6:23 am Except for a single LD the Massachusetts capitol has no service from its largest city. Now contrast that with New York.

Your wording makes it look like you are identifying Springfield as either the largest city, or as the capital, while it is neither. The MBTA Red Line is the train service between South Station and the State House..

Sorry; complete brain cramp. My comp to Albany is completely off-point now.

I could see with a shuttle from Springfield or a temporary stop in West Springfield the Big E would be a big draw for 3 weeks out of the year. There's your New York comparison.

I've ridden the Vermonter a few times, and not only did it seem well patronized, Vermonters (the people) seemed to have an affection for it. Coming back from Burlington last month when the Ethan Allen was annulled, I rode a bus to the Amtrak station in Rensselaer, and the bus, as far as I could tell, is subsidized by the state of Vermont and had few passengers. I booked it through Amtrak, with difficulty, because none of the agents I spoke with knew about it. The bus ridership in Vermont really seems to have dried up, and I don't know why. Vermont Transit used to have a good network with good service that I used when I was young.

If Chicago-Champaign-Carbondale, with mostly small online communities except for Chicago and Champaign-Urbana, and a lot of cornfields between them, can support two pair of corridor trains and a share of the City of New Orleans, surely Boston-Worcester-Springfield-Hartford-New Haven-NYP-pts west can support at least so many.

I'm really puzzled by the people here who are just totally convinced that almost no one in Springfield would take a convenient train to Boston or vice versa. There are millions of people living along the route, probably over a hundred thousand living within walking distance of a station, the station cities all have colleges in and close by and at many of the colleges a lot of the students don't have cars and do have friends in some of the other station cities, a lot of people in Boston, New Haven, and Hartford are already used to riding trains daily or occasionally, Boston is a stressful place to drive into and an expensive place to park, I-91 and I-84 are as miserable at rush hour as anyplace else in Connecticut, the Mass Pike is no better and you have to pay tolls, there are decent bus systems to connect to in Worcester, Springfield, probably Hartford--and the T keeps limping along. The route seems as made for train service as any place in the US that doesn't currently have it, and yet two posts back someone admitted there might be a couple hundred potential occasional riders. This is not a proposal for hourly service to Lincoln, New Hampshire, or some other foamer daydream.

Does it really matter that there are a few deranged naysayers on this site? The political reality of the situation is that 1) Richie Neal wants Springfield to renew its legacy as the rail cross roads of new england as his political epitaph.. And 2) amtrak wants an alternative to the NEC in case of flooding etc. So in the final analysis, with those two power houses pushing for this and they already have a good chunk of the money in hand , it doesn't really matter if nobody in Springfield wants to take the train to Boston. But I will stick by my contention that the idea that people in Boston and Springfield want to visit each other on trains is sheer fantasy. and is really beside the point. The service is going to happen one way or t'other and I can't wait to see the figures.

Nobody in Boston is likely to take a train to Springfield. A few in spg will take a train to Bos. Congestion really sets in at rush hour from I-495 east. As discussed repeatedly, train spg-alb is not time competitive. Much easier today to get from spg to Hartford than to Boston by any transportation mode!

What was NY Central's best times SPG <<>BOS? That will be the gold standard to eventually beat.