highgreen215 wrote:Okay, let's go back to basics. Have you EVER ridden the Orange Line? Rapid transit vehicles as currently designed with longitudinal seating, narrow butt space, standees, no overhead racks, noisy running and maximum speeds of about 45MPH, are suitable only for short distances where comfort is not that important.
Don't underestimate the importance of "comfort" for longer runs - it means heat in the winter, air-conditioning in the summer, and most importantly room to stretch out, read the paper, work on a laptop or just snooze. The Orange Line works very well to carry maximum loads relatively short distances. It does provide heat and air, but not much else. I can see it running as far as Roslindale, but I can assure you West Roxbury and Needham folks would not like being forced to switch from CR to HRV unless the next batch of cars are totally redesigned.
There was a time in the 1950s when the MTA equipped one complete Harvard-Ashmont train with bus-style leatherette double seats. The public loved them. And when the Red Line was completed to Braintree, the new cars had bus-style seats and the ride was very pleasant. But apparently the passenger loads per car were not high enough so they were soon converted to longitudinal seating. My point is that rapid transit cars are typically designed for maximum passenger loads, not "comfort", and that does not attract longer distance riders out of their automobiles.
You realize a West Roxbury OL terminus is only 2.8 extra running miles, do you? That's slightly less than 9 miles inbound to North Station and only 14 miles to Oak Grove. Needham Jct. via the Green Line is 13 miles to Gov't Center vs. 12 miles for the D. The "short" Blue Line is 6 miles from Wonderland to Bowdoin. Very few people are doing West Roxbury to Malden or Needham to Medford commutes; they're going downtown to the transfer stations. I used to do a Porter-Quincy Ctr. commute on Red at >20 miles. It wasn't bad. If I had to put up with commuter rail frequencies on that run, comfy butt and all, I probably would've had to drive half the time it would've been so inconvenient. This is trivial distance.
And there is not end-to-end overcrowding. A 6-car train originating at West Roxbury is going to have seats, and if it happens to be packed to the gills by the time it hits Roxbury Crossing or something it's going to empty out by State. A 2-car Needham trolley is not going to fill up until it's in Brookline. The Needham Line already frequently overcrowds to/from Rozzie thereabouts on peak-hour trains because of very few trains on the schedule and platforms only long enough to board short consists. You think those standees are living the comfy life? And the 59 bus north out of Needham Jct. frequently overcrowds to Eliot on its generally pathetic schedule. Demand is far outstripping available schedule. That's why Needham and the outer Boston neighborhoods want rapid transit so badly. It'll be much easier to get a seat with the line split in half and frequencies of 1 every 10 minutes on OL and 1 every 15 on GL instead of the paucity of CR trains. The Orange side obviously significantly faster than the Green side, but the neighborhoods in Boston-proper need that more than downtown Needham.
This "comfort" argument is BUNK. Either it's the product of an over-sensitive tush, or I have to question how well do you actually know the services on this corridor. If you think residents in transit-deprived neighborhoods inside the city of Boston and in downtown Needham are going to protest a denser schedule because they don't have adequate 'comfort' (and, please, describe what makes a utilitarian 30-year-old single-level CR coach the Lincoln towncar of transit vehicles)...you are sorely, sorely mistaken. NOBODY will do that. If that matters to them as priority #1, they already drive a car and do not take any public transit. What you're arguing does not exist in the real world.