b&m 1566 wrote: In Seabrook,107 can work but you have security measures to deal with at the power plant.
My suggested site (beyond Seabrook Commons) wouldn't require dealing with the power plant at all. Site the station in line with the road extending from the end of 107 at 1, and you'd have plenty of room for a station and some parking well before hitting the security perimeter around the plant.
By combining Salisbury and Seabrook near the state line you would also cut down travel time.
Yes, but you have to balance travel time with actually providing service where it would be useful. Every commuter rail line would be faster if it skipped more stops, but it wouldn't help ridership. The goal should be to balance big parking sinks with walkable, town center stations. It doesn't make sense to me to skip over Salisbury center when the line passes right through it, and there's walk-up potential (plus it's a good bike/shuttle/pick-up/drop-off connection to Salisbury Beach, and a straight shot on 110 & Elm St to Amesbury). A Seabrook station at 107 and a Salisbury Station at 110 would be +/- 3.5 miles apart. That's a longer gap than the majority of CR stations.
It's worth noting though that I did actually suggest a station near the state line - at the 286 crossing. I just think it would be a suitable replacement for a station at 107, rather than a replacement for both Salisbury and Seabrook.
North Hampton is more likely a useless stop if Hampton has a station and would tack on longer travel time.
Lightly used, perhaps. But still, more than 2 miles north of the Hampton station, and it was previously a station. It would be a good location for residents of North Hampton and Rye that don't want to drive in to Hampton. That stretch of route 1 is awful in the summer. Plus, going straight from Hampton to Portsmouth would yield a gap of over 10 miles. A decent number of people live in that 10 mile gap.
Make it a flag stop, or have some trains skip it, but it's worthy of service. I feel like a good comparison of it would be Rowley.
The small plot of land in Portsmouth, with is odd shape, would make it tight for a parking a garage to be built along with a station platform, but I suppose its possible. The problem you would run into is non train riders filling up the parking garage. Portsmouth is hurting for parking spaces, a system would have to be developed that would allow only train riders to park in the garage along with hotel guest.
That lot is plenty large enough for a garage. It's almost the same size as the municipal garage on Hanover St (62,000 SF vs 75,000 SF). For comparison, the new Beverly garage is 45,000 SF, and the new Salem garage is 51,000 SF. If 51,000 SF is good enough for the busiest station on the entire north side, it'd be good enough for whatever ridership Portsmouth would generate. Which honestly wouldn't be that much, because at that point you're looking at a 2 hour ride to Boston, and pushing the limits of commuter territory. So it wouldn't exactly be a problem for non-riders to park in the garage. The Hanover St garage, which is much more convenient to downtown Portsmouth, is $1.25/hr. If the station garage started filling up at regular T prices ($4/day), then price it slightly higher than the municipal garage, or even significantly higher and offer a discount to regular T parking price with a valid ticket or pass. Again though, it's a moot point. Much of Portsmouth's ridership would be walk-up so long as the station is downtown, and a not-insignificant chunk could be transfer ridership if they diverted local buses to the station.