New Widett Circle Rail Yard

It will be a very long time before anything is built over Widett.

Not sure about that. It's the largest parcel near downtown that's available for development and the T already said anything they design will allow air rights.

Building stuff above diesel facilities is problematic - BBY, South Station bus station above idling trains...

Widett Circle is a terrible place for any useful development. It's cut off by an elevated highway on one side, and rail lines and industrial parcels on the other. There's not a walkable street grid to connect to. It's a minimum half mile walk to the Red Line. There's a reason it's never been anything but industrial.

And the same was said about the Seaport or the Old Herald and it's going to take years and by that time the T very well could be electrified.

Widett can be built so it become a two or 3 tier facility. All electric bottom with diesel - electric on top. Makes for great snow avoidance. costs more to build but reduces D/h time operating costs.

Red Wing wrote: ↑Fri Feb 10, 2023 8:36 pm And the same was said about the Seaport or the Old Herald and it's going to take years and by that time the T very well could be electrified.

The issue with the Herald site was environmentally related. The real estate market in the city has been hot enough for the last 10 years that paying for environmental remediation + development balanced out moneywise. If the Herald site was that desirable 20 years earlier, it would've been developed 20 years earlier.

The only obstacle to building in the Seaport was displacing the parking lots.

You are not decking over a diesel rail yard. Can you offer one example where this has happened?

And that's where the problem is Boston thinks small now they don't think revolutionary. As I said this is a multiyear project and by the time we get any deck overs which is being done at North Station, South Station and along the Turnpike fyi, the rails will be electrified like the yards around Penn and Grand Central. Also they turn on fans when there is a health hazard in a tunnel or at other repair facilities. The whole place doesn't have to be decked over at once.

You didn't qualify it as only a partial deck — although if you look at the projects along the Turnpike, they've tended to happen in clusters.

It doesn't have anything to do with not being imaginative, although that exists plenty here. How are you going to connect Widett to the larger street network in the South End or South Boston? Cabot gets in the way of any direct connection to Dorchester Avenue. BTD gets in the way of any direct connection with Albany Street. You're talking hundreds of millions of dollars of infrastructure to make any Widett development work.

Is Widett Circle large enough to be a major service facility? Or will it be just for storage, maybe inspection or cleaning.

Done deal:

"new yard . . . will . . . reduce deadline miles by more than 50,000 annually"

https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews ... uter-yard/

Waste of money. The New Yard, presently(theoretically) being used for RL car shakedowns could hold eight trainsets(50% of present midday layover need), has most of the needed track and is already owned by the T. The Front Yard could hold one Acela, but the other three tracks are too short. There is space for two trainsets at the Southampton facility and four trainsets could be based west of Beacon Yard. Present layover needs could be met without the $300+M boondoggle that Widett would be.
We should be keeping trains moving providing service, not sitting.

I do not even know where to begin with this post.

the Front can not handle any Acela due to being no OCS nor track length. We are only allowed by Amtrak to use FY 4&5 and can only be 5 car sets. FY 1 2 3 are used for Amtrak MOW storage. SHSY can handle 1 set on S4, 2 sets on S3, S2 & S1 can hold A set each. Overnight, Amtrak does not let us store equipment in the Big Yard due to their overnight storage needs.

The obsession with Beacon Park needs to go sail away down the Charles River and out to sea. NOTHING will be stored there ever. It is a major inconvenience to the fleet, equipment cycle, and most importantly TIME to move and position equipment. As of today, of the 6 remaining tracks left adjacent to the WML, only 2 are connected end to end from an electric lock sw at each end.

These trains need servicing, fuel, cleaning, and REST. This fleet isn't made to go 24 hours a day, nonstop.

Would air rights residential development have a problem with noise and vibration? Wasn't there a complaint some years ago from residents of Beacon Hill about the Red Line trains running deep underground between Charles and Park St.

Alternatively certain low income housing could be developed in areas such as Widett that have poor road access. To provide more housing units, there could be insufficient parking let alone electric car hookups for each and every resident and thus not the need to provide enough green time out onto arteries that would add more congestion to the latter. Instead, excellent "complete streets" could be developed that provide for buses, walking, biking, college move-in/move-out, repair contractors, food wagons, and Amazon Prime trucks, while not attracting cut through commuter traffic.

Hmmmm. Similarly, is the development planned at Beacon Park in Allston going to further impact the B Boston College line? Again many more people will be going into and out of an area that formerly had nothing but railroad tracks. Shortly there will be increased traffic onto Comm. Ave. at at least two more four way traffic lights. Today, some of this traffic is confined to Storrow Drive until after the Green Line goes underground.

From the drawing, it looks like the new Widett Yard will have about the same track capacity as South Station! I'm sure they wouldn't be buying it and touting the reduced deadhead miles if it wasn't needed. With Acela 2 Amtrak will need more space not less and probably a longer maintenance building? And if it catches on imagine if Northeast Corridor service were to double how would that be accommodated?

Refresh my memory, where is the present layover that Widett is replacing? And I still love the idea of using Beacon Park. Although it is about 4 miles away, the T owns it. They can run frequent shuttle service between south station and Boston Landing or beyond for revenue and crews. I'd also love to see Beacon Park used, and I'd love to see a balloon track to access the Grand Junction from the east without a reversing move. (Sadly, nobody else seems to agree with me).

This idea of just running the trains has a cost; You would have a bunch of 6-8 car sets (because you can't afford to split them apart and reconnect them and also store the pieces) going back and forth midday with a handful of passengers. I assume the minimum crew size is 2? And fuel cost and wear and tear and increased periodic maintenance costs have to be weighed against the cost of storage facilities.

Another thing on the shoulda list, when the Boston Herald was being redeveloped, they should have bought the ground level and put in a basement mini-yard with electric yard switchers.