by Safetee
i'm willing to bet that Mr. Cahir will not shed a tear if the bourne stop disappears suddenly in the midst of a political explosion.
Railroad Forums
Moderators: sery2831, CRail
Train60 wrote:As I recall, in 2014 MassDOT wanted to build a 400' high-level platform and some additional track. To the average person a 400' high-level means a lot of people are going to be using the platform.As a resident of Bourne I respectively disagree with that. The ideal site is the Gallo Ice Arena location which has unlimited parking and is not in use during the summer, with it only being a short distance from the Bourne Bridge location. The Bridge parking lot is small and is usually full of cars from people using the Canal area for recreation, which is what it was built for. But aside from that as I have said before, Cahir has once again left his local town out of the discussion about this which doesn't do the promotion of the Cape flyer any good.
If I lived in Bourne or Falmouth I would have been upset that the project was shutdown back in 2014 since without this stop people in these town were left with two bad options -- pickup CapeFlyer passengers in Buzzard Bay and then deal with the Cape-bound traffic jam crossing the bridge, or tell people not to use the train, because we don't want to deal with the bridge traffic.
Hopefully the voices of many will speak up against the voices of the few who fear the dozen or so cars, and a shuttle bus to the ferry, will mean when the train stops for all of 5 minutes on a few days this summer.
Falmouth Secondary to Otis wrote:I am very happy to defer to people who live in the area regarding the site of the station. The point I was simply trying to make was that the opening of a station in Bourne was delayed by five years because of the concerns raised by what appeared to be a small number of residents. They very effectively brought the station project to a stop.Train60 wrote:As I recall, in 2014 MassDOT wanted to build a 400' high-level platform and some additional track. To the average person a 400' high-level means a lot of people are going to be using the platform.As a resident of Bourne I respectively disagree with that. The ideal site is the Gallo Ice Arena location which has unlimited parking and is not in use during the summer, with it only being a short distance from the Bourne Bridge location. The Bridge parking lot is small and is usually full of cars from people using the Canal area for recreation, which is what it was built for. But aside from that as I have said before, Cahir has once again left his local town out of the discussion about this which doesn't do the promotion of the Cape flyer any good.
If I lived in Bourne or Falmouth I would have been upset that the project was shutdown back in 2014 since without this stop people in these town were left with two bad options -- pickup CapeFlyer passengers in Buzzard Bay and then deal with the Cape-bound traffic jam crossing the bridge, or tell people not to use the train, because we don't want to deal with the bridge traffic.
Hopefully the voices of many will speak up against the voices of the few who fear the dozen or so cars, and a shuttle bus to the ferry, will mean when the train stops for all of 5 minutes on a few days this summer.
mgdemarco wrote:Before we move onto 2019, there is a point from 2018 that was not posted on here. The FLYER once again increased ridership from the previous year:Looked at Cape Flyer ridership on MassDOT tracker and while it had a good start in 2013 with 16,586 riders it dropped off to 12.625 in 2014 recovering since then to 13,781 in 2018. Seems like the interest has leveled off.
https://www.capecod.com/newscenter/as-c ... a-success/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
2018 felt different though from 2016 and 2017. I don't have the numbers, but in 2016 and 2017 there were a number of large groups, often heading to Nantucket. I believe the 2016 4th of July Friday evening train was something like 750 people. Saturday mornings in 2016 and 2017 also had large groups of people and packed trains. 2018 didn't appear to ever really match those crowds. However, 2018 seemed to always be moderately busy, especially on Saturday evening return trains. 2018 felt like a lot of groups of two-three people on pretty much every train. I could be wrong, but this is how it often appeared.
Falmouth Secondary to Otis wrote:Thanks for the official numbers and the correction on 2013-2014. In 2013 though it ran through Columbus Day with about 1,500 riding after Labor Day.mgdemarco wrote:Before we move onto 2019, there is a point from 2018 that was not posted on here. The FLYER once again increased ridership from the previous year:Looked at Cape Flyer ridership on MassDOT tracker and while it had a good start in 2013 with 16,586 riders it dropped off to 12.625 in 2014 recovering since then to 13,781 in 2018. Seems like the interest has leveled off.
https://www.capecod.com/newscenter/as-c ... a-success/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
2018 felt different though from 2016 and 2017. I don't have the numbers, but in 2016 and 2017 there were a number of large groups, often heading to Nantucket. I believe the 2016 4th of July Friday evening train was something like 750 people. Saturday mornings in 2016 and 2017 also had large groups of people and packed trains. 2018 didn't appear to ever really match those crowds. However, 2018 seemed to always be moderately busy, especially on Saturday evening return trains. 2018 felt like a lot of groups of two-three people on pretty much every train. I could be wrong, but this is how it often appeared.
https://massdot.mghpcc.org/tracker/2018 ... pcapeflyer" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
frigidlight wrote:Here's a couple better photos of the new platform in Bourne taken earlier today.All it would take for the Gallo site is some tree removal and a bulldozer to level off the site as it's not really a big issue. The main advantage of the Gallo location is a large parking area that is not in use during the summer with easy pickup / drop off for car & bus traffic, with no impact on the local neighborhood.
The ramp is still half built but I wonder if that's to keep people from playing on the platform?
I'll be very curious to see how many people use this station. I do think it will be much better from a traffic standpoint than the Buzzards Bay stop, however. A large amount of the traffic going across the bridge continues on to Falmouth and the backup is caused by the rotary. Sandwich Road (the road coming from this stop to the Bourne Rotary) can get backed up but nowhere near as bad as the bridge approach.
The ice rink parking lot does have a significant hill from the parking lot to the train tracks and any platform location. This would require much more work to build the necessary ramps and platforms for a full station than dropping on pre-fab platform on some crushed gravel.