BostonUrbEx wrote:F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:Actually, North Shore Mall had the slight upper hand in ridership in the study, though it was a near- statistical tie and both sites had their advantages and disadvantages. But that's all moot now. North Shore's the only option left; Danvers didn't want their branch and did want the trail, so they voluntarily gave it up. Peabody's still charging hard to bait commuter rail to the Square any way they can to try to get its foot in the door.
Just curious, when exactly is the trail from Peabody Sq to Danvers Ctr supposed to happen? I don't recall ever seeing anything on this before. I figured it was simply in limbo because the commuter rail option was still on the table.
The T gave out the 99-year trail lease in 2011. I don't know when construction is supposed to begin.
I still feel that people on the state level should be stepping in saying "no, either we truncate this at Peabody, or you take the line all the way into Danvers." If it goes to North Shore Mall, as I said, it's only good for a park-and-ride (which I personally don't think is good policy) and only nets the Indepence Greenway east of I-95. A route to Danvers, however, could net the Independence Greenway with extension into Peabody Sq as well as the Newburyport Branch in both directions and the rest of the line up into Middleton which will be trailed.
Either extension was going to have a big honking 128 park-and-ride. The Danvers option was a huge parking sink at Endicott Square Shopping Center stopping a mile short of downtown and not even crossing Route 128.
Danvers option:
http://mbta.com/uploadedFiles/Documents ... 1x17_3.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Peabody option:
http://mbta.com/uploadedFiles/Documents ... 1x17_2.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
They're exactly the same thing.
Peabody Sq. was the local stop with the bus access, the 128 stops were to take a load off traffic streaming into downtown Salem and Beverly. That was the whole point of the North Shore Transit Improvements recommendation for doing it...keep the cars from streaming off 128 into the downtowns by trapping them right next to an exit. This was not the T being the evil downtown-unfriendly parking ogre; downtown streets in Peabody, Salem, and the Route 62 area in northeast Danvers all got optimal relief with the stops directly at 128. Not all park-and-rides are a bad thing. When it's right there next to 128 it's a very very good thing. Consider how much a Fitchburg Line 128 park-and-ride would de-clog downtown Waltham or a Haverhill/Reading park-and-ride at Quannapowitt/Exit 38 would de-gunk Route 28 in Reading and Wakefield. Sometimes those things are indeed the best relievers for the nearest downtowns.
North Shore came out slightly ahead of Endicott Sq. Mall on ridership due to the Lahey Clinic being a traffic generator and the closer positioning to the I-95 interchange. Slightly ahead.
As for the trails...the Independence Greenway is never getting across 95 and 1. It's an 800 ft. gash with 2 levels of ramps cutting across either end of it. You are always going to have to go down Lowell St. on a trail gap to get around. But the
only chance you ever have of getting the isolated portion of trail east of 95 across 128 instead of dumping off at the Mall is if North Shore commuter rail gets built. A single-track overpass of 128 can use the second track berth for the trail. There is absolutely zero chance that MassDOT would ever build a ped-only bridge, because it not only has to cross 128 but also Northshore Rd. on a 300+ ft. span. No one will fund that, and the wetlands prohibit an underpass. If you do the rail bridge you at least get across, split sides of Proctor Brook with the rail line to reach Warren St. Ext., and be right in the Square. That never happens if you don't build the rail.
I just don't understand how Danvers could be opposed. I have to ask, why? A Danvers Branch could even have a mini-layover point, and it could be placed in Peabody just south of the Waters River, next to an industrial development.
Danvers has 2 buses from downtown, the 435 and 465, which hit both malls and Peabody Sq. They did not want extra station traffic downtown, so a downtown stop was never going to be in the cards. Since the buses from downtown ran to either mall site they didn't have a strong preference either way. When the trail funding came available to do the paved trail on the Newburyport Branch, they inquired about the Danvers Branch and got their lease.
You don't have to agree with that decision, but it doesn't outright transit-deprive anyone since there are preexisting bus routes that could have their frequencies synced with the train. From Danvers' standpoint, they could be supportive of commuter rail in Peabody's city limits and reap similar benefits and let Peabody do the more frothing-at-mouth activism. It wasn't an anti-rail decision...it was the tradeoff of increasing downtown traffic counts when they didn't want to do that, or keeping the traffic counts down and pushing for better bus frequencies whether the station was built at their mall or Peabody's mall. It's a defensible decision for them, and no tragedy. They saw it as win-win if anything got built and decided they had the luxury of not having to choose. Coulda/woulda/shoulda about a downtown stop is totally moot...it was never proposed, never supported locally, and half the alignments under consideration around the Endicott Sq. Mall wetlands wouldn't have been on the correct alignment to begin with for ever continuing downtown. It wasn't ever a possibility.
Also, unrelated, as for branch ops, what'd we be looking at? Maybe one through-route round-trip to Boston for each rush hour, and a DMU shuttle to Salem the rest of the day, with timed meets?
It would be a full local-schedule branch to North Station like Newburyport and Rockport. No shuttles, because the buses already perform that function and a 3-1/2 mile dinky just wouldn't attract riders like the one-seat that attracted a whole lotta riders. One-seat was the must for successfully taking cars off the road and dropping local traffic counts at the intersections the North Shore Study saw as greatest need. They didn't game out schedules because that was dependent on whether layover yards were built at (either) Mall, and the North Shore Transit Improvements study was back in 2004 so DMU's weren't in the picture. Just specced restoration of the southbound wye at Salem (which the new station construction fully permits), 450 ft. full-high platform at the constrained space in Salem, 800 ft. full-high at Peabody Sq. spanning the length of Railroad St., then the Mall station.
If you evolve what they were thinking back then 10 years the addition of a third branch with the same hourly rush hour frequencies Rockport and Newburyport get would boost the Eastern Route main Salem-south to a real clock-facing hyper-dense schedule. So it's basically what you choose to do on the off-peak that makes up the difference with a real Indigo Line schedule. You would have to have much more of the Salem-Boston traffic covered within the Indigo headways by push-pull sets because Newburyport/Rockport service already pretty stiff schedules at peak, and you may well need 5 bi-levels to serve that Peabody 128 park-and-ride on the busiest runs. But as long as everyone's on the same zone fare it doesn't matter what vehicle pulls into the station...it's still Indigo as it was envisioned. Off-peaks I would assume Peabody branch reverts entirely to DMU and that service becomes the primary load-bearer for the mainline between peaks. Because of the pretty decent bus coverage at Peabody Sq. and (less so) at the Malls it would sustain a bit more off-peak ridership than flushing more Beverly short-turns would.