North Adams - Boston Passenger Service Study

west point wrote: ↑Sat Aug 17, 2024 9:31 pm As someone from outside the area it would appear that the route is very crooked and adds to rail mileage...as much straightening of the route is possible.

Some layers-enabled Google Earth surfing over current rail routing and possible reroutings will demonstrate the grade challenges of both the 19th and 21st centuries. All things considered, the original surveyors did the best they could with the topography they faced.
Curvature mitigation can be handled -- somewhat -- with superelevation. Land-taking for curvature reduction would be both politically and fiscally costly.

Is this kind of investment by the state needed to ensure that PAS doesn't become just a series of sections of abandoned and exempt trackage once NS can route double stacks and racks over the B&A to Ayer?

No - PAS is not going anywhere. NS is not going to pay someone else to haul their non-priority tonnage vs put minimal cap-ex into 100 miles of Class 2 trackage. It's a rounding error.

Actually, the route west of Greenfield towards North Adams is much straighter overall than Route 2. Leaving Greenfield heading west, the rail route dips south before coming back northwest. If you've ever taken Route 2 West out of Greenfield, you'll know why... it climbs up pretty substantially to Shelburne, while the railroad takes the "water level route" along the Deerfield River.

Honestly, I can't imagine there'd be a lot of demand to go all the way to North Adams. I'd start with Gardner, then Greenfield, and go from there. Greenfield would attract those in southern Vermont with a direct route to Boston.

In my mind, the northern tier rail service should just focus on Boston to Greenfield. The combination of being adjacent to rte 91 and connecting with the Valley/Knowledge trains has a lot going for it . If the Vermonter can ever become the Montrealer again the synergies between Montreal and Boston would be terrific. Further benefits would accrue to those would be train riders in the conn valley and Vermonters wanting to go to Montreal and Boston North Station area with its Downeaster Maine connection and Cambridge.

West of Greenfield I just don't see a lot of traffic between the likes of north Adams and Boston. Truth be known, not a lot of people want to go to North Adams from Boston. By the same token i don't see many/any folks in North Adams pining for rail service to Boston. From what I have heard, most people in the North Adams area would like to see train service to Albany. Beyond the lack of demand for train service to Boston, the North Adams piece is problematic because of the cost to fix that chunk of track with it's huge financial sword of Damocles aka hoosac tunnel.

Because of the way the folks at Mass Dot packaged the Northern Tier study it was a Boston to North Adams train study not just a Boston to Greenfield study. There is no doubt that the North Adams area politicos would flip their lids if they were to be cut out of the deal. So what to do? I propose that for a lot less money a two year experiment featuring a fare free two round trip buses a day service be run from the Albany Bus terminal to Williamstown, North Adams, Greenfield to North Station. And then lets examine the actual ridership.

If it turns out that only 50 people a day go to Albany and 300 a day go to Boston well that would tell one story that would side well with Mass Dots original thinking. But if the figures are reversed then i would say the proof is in the pudding. Instead of wasting money going to North Adams and dealing with the tunnel, spend any left over moneys rehabbing the Greenfield to Boston operation..

Safetee wrote: ↑Thu Sep 19, 2024 5:47 pm In my mind, the northern tier rail service should just focus on Boston to Greenfield. The combination of being adjacent to rte 91 and connecting with the Valley/Knowledge trains has a lot going for it . If the Vermonter can ever become the Montrealer again the synergies between Montreal and Boston would be terrific. Further benefits would accrue to those would be train riders in the conn valley and Vermonters wanting to go to Montreal and Boston North Station area with its Downeaster Maine connection and Cambridge.

West of Greenfield I just don't see a lot of traffic between the likes of north Adams and Boston. Truth be known, not a lot of people want to go to North Adams from Boston. By the same token i don't see many/any folks in North Adams pining for rail service to Boston. From what I have heard, most people in the North Adams area would like to see train service to Albany. Beyond the lack of demand for train service to Boston, the North Adams piece is problematic because of the cost to fix that chunk of track with it's huge financial sword of Damocles aka hoosac tunnel.

Because of the way the folks at Mass Dot packaged the Northern Tier study it was a Boston to North Adams train study not just a Boston to Greenfield study. There is no doubt that the North Adams area politicos would flip their lids if they were to be cut out of the deal. So what to do? I propose that for a lot less money a two year experiment featuring a fare free two round trip buses a day service be run from the Albany Bus terminal to Williamstown, North Adams, Greenfield to North Station. And then lets examine the actual ridership.

If it turns out that only 50 people a day go to Albany and 300 a day go to Boston well that would tell one story that would side well with Mass Dots original thinking. But if the figures are reversed then i would say the proof is in the pudding. Instead of wasting money going to North Adams and dealing with the tunnel, spend any left over moneys rehabbing the Greenfield to Boston operation..

Literally nothing has to be done to the Hoosac Tunnel to accommodate passenger service.

But yes the demand for access to the Berkshires is absolutely higher from NYC than Boston. One only has to take a look at the parking lots of the Clark and Mass Moca to see that. Plus far less folks from NYC have cars than the Boston area. I think a shuttle from Albany Rens to North Adams would be far better exploring than North Adams to Boston, which is an absolute waste of money IMHO.

Don't forget that a Boston to North Adams train wouldn't just serve whatever passengers are going from Boston to North Adams, but also Fitchburg to North Adams, Greenfield to North Adams, Greenfield to Boston, et cetera. For this reason I think it should go all the way to Albany even though it would be longer than through Springfield; it doesn't need to serve the Boston to Albany market, it needs to serve the North Adams to Albany market as well as Greenfield to Albany, Fitchburg to Albany, et cetera. Now how big those markets truly are is another story.

Experimenting with a bus will only reveal that people don't like taking busses, but give you no useful prediction of what train traffic would be.

Danville VA has 3 intercity services: 2 Virginia Breeze busses and 1 Amtrak train (Virginia Breeze is the brand for intercity busses subsidized by the Commonwealth of Virginia). All of these services provide single seat Danville VA to Washington DC trips that are scheduled between 5:30 and 6:00 total trip time. Despite the busses being less expensive, at better hours (daylight in both directions), time competitive, and accessible using Danville's public transit (the Breeze busses use the transit plaza / interchange point for all the local bus routes while there are no local bus services to the Amtrak station), Amtrak carries about 2.6 passengers for every bus passenger between that single city pair.

I don't think intent of the suggestion for doing a test with busses was to get an accurate count of the traffic likely to be served by a train. I think it was to get a gauge of where the balance of the traffic would be going. If it turns out that the market demand (based on what percentage of riders are going where) is for service from North Adams to Albany, or from Greenfield to Albany, then that indicates that train service to Boston might not be the best investment, and that service to Albany might be a better one.

Any estimates on how long the trip from Greenfield to Fitchburg and Boston would be?

Per the study, depending on investment and number of stations (low investment -> longer times):

• North Adams to Boston is between 3:48 and 2:48
• Greenfield to Boston is between 2:31 and 2:00
• Fitchburg to Boston is 58 minutes in all cases

How do you get from North Adams to Albany? The old B&M service terminated in Troy, unless I'm mistaken, via track that no longer exists.

Yes ,the old Rutland/B&M Albany connection from North Adams via Troy etc is long gone. I'm unclear what would supposedly need to happen to provide a rail connection to make an Albany/ Rensselaer connection possible again, but i gather that it would not be cheap. The cheapest fix would probably be to rebuild the North Adams secondary track, presumably over the dead bodies of the folks who believe once a trail always a trail. But bus service from North Adams to Rensselaer Station would be quicker and doable as well as downtown Albany.

Safetee wrote: ↑Tue Sep 24, 2024 1:12 pm Yes ,the old Rutland/B&M Albany connection from North Adams via Troy etc is long gone. I'm unclear what would supposedly need to happen to provide a rail connection to make an Albany/ Rensselaer connection possible again, but i gather that it would not be cheap. The cheapest fix would probably be to rebuild the North Adams secondary track, presumably over the dead bodies of the folks who believe once a trail always a trail. But bus service from North Adams to Rensselaer Station would be quicker and doable as well as downtown Albany.

I looked through Google Earth to see where the tracks interact with each other the most, and it looks like trains from North Adams, via Mechanicville, can run into the Adirondack's route just north of Mohawk Yard. The benefit of this is that trains can also serve Schenectady.