Abandonded Watertown Station

[BandA]

[OT] When did the subsidy to B&A start?

[TomNelligan]

There was no state subsidy in New York Central/B&A days. In 1967 the NYC attempted to drop its remaining commuter service out of South Station (one train to Worcester and two to Framingham) and was denied regulatory permission, and the trains kept running with no public money. The NYC became Penn Central in 1968, and it inherited the former New Haven commuter operations in January 1969. PC sold the trackage east of Framingham to the state in January 1973. The MBTA began subsidizing the remaining B&A commuter service in August 1973, roughly a decade after it had begun paying the Boston & Maine and New Haven.

[kieran]

I went up on this branch yesterday for a few miles with my dogs just to see how it is. A little overgrown, but definitely walkable for the mile or so around the station. I wish it would stay like it is, but it most likely will get paved over into a stupid bake trail.

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[Cosmo]

Quite a shame, really. I don't often say this, but it could have made a nice little tourist line.

[CRail]

No reason it still couldn't. The MBTA owns the line and if they decided to start running trains tomorrow they could (well, they'd have some work to do before the first train could run but you get the idea).

[F-line to Dudley via Park]

http://www.masscentralrailtrail.org/ima ... _and_1.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The 1996 Central Mass restoration feasibility study wasn't kind to the line's prospects. Executive Summary linked above (can't find the full 80-something page doc archived anywhere). Assuming a new junction in Weston before Kendal Green; a terminus at Berlin/495; and intermediate stops at Wayland, South Sudbury, and Hudson (additional infills negotiable, but this was just taking a litmus test of the highest-ridership stops), and 16 round trips per day (16 also the daily round trips on the Fitchburg at the time, so a 2x'ing of the innermost frequencies). Of course, this was before the current Fitchburg modernization project when that was still the dog-slowest and most decrepit line on the system, so today the throughput could probably be way higher.

-- Ridership numbers came out real anemic. See p. 9 of the PDF. They're transit-deprived towns and Route 20 really sucks, but...they're small towns.

-- Capital cost pretty nice, even tracked for inflation. Of course this was before the Old Colony lines blew their estimates out of the water with town demands larding it all up, and with this being a NIMBY murderer's row of bedroom communities those shennanigans were a cinch to happen here.

-- Operating cost recovery was abysmal. 12% farebox recovery on operating expenses with the West Berlin option (31 miles from North Station), only 27% if the build got shorted to South Sudbury only. You couldn't come up with enough new additional demand in the ensuing 18 years to put a significant dent in that. And the transit options on that quadrant of 495 have gotten better since with all the outer Worcester Line intermediate stops opening circa-2000 and their schedules increasing...plus Littleton and South Acton getting their makeovers, better OTP, to-be faster times, and to-be ramped up frequencies as the ongoing Fitchburg improvements wrap up. It's still a transit cavity, but it's not quite as inaccessible as it used to be.


Oh well...at least the trail organization had to pledge in writing that they would not stand in the way of restoration should there be a need to restart service, as requirement for receiving outside funding. The Weston NIMBY's probably won't be so charitable, but this is at least a trail lobby operating above-board and not hiding inside an anti-train trojan horse. They did their own analysis saying rail-with-trail was probably a doable solution on the whole corridor at little additional cost because of how fat and wide this ROW is, and very very unencroached outside of downtown Hudson because of the shared power lines. If it ever needs to happen there'll be less cost-bloating riff-raff and Operation Chaos opposition than with most (and while Weston will scream real loud, their very widely-scattered backyards don't exactly get anywhere near the tracks).

[BandA]

With route 20 jammed, route 2 jammed (not quite as bad) and route 90 jammed at rush hour, the capital cost of rebuilding the ROW might be justified if the service was fast and frequent. All you need is low operating costs; Good deals on rolling stock, all high level platforms, electric doors, highly efficient fare collection, express + locals. Rt 20 and 2 are basically unexpandable. Rt 90 can (should) be widened to 4 lanes from Millbury to Weston, but the turnpike extension is not economically expandable. There's more traffic on the roads today than in 1996. Rush hour on rt 90 is about 30MPH of dangerous stop and go between 495 and Boston. Rte 20 must be worse.

[The EGE]

All you need is low operating costs; Good deals on rolling stock, all high level platforms, electric doors, highly efficient fare collection, express + locals.

Oh man, are you an optimist. The T is terrible at all of those things.

I don't think the line would be long enough, or with dense enough stops, to justify expresses.

[csor2010]

If Metro-west really needs a new commuter rail route, it will probably be on the Agricultural Branch out to Marlborough or Clinton. Compared with the Central Mass being abandoned, it already carries CSX locals and has the capability to connect to the Pike, Route 20, Route 9, and 495. IIRC this was studied a little while back and it came out much more favorably than the Central Mass. Additionally, you'd be funneling trains onto the Worcester Line, which is already in better shape than the Fitchburg although they may be more equal after the upgrade program. There's still capacity for at least one additional track from Framingham to Riverside (the ROW is four tracks wide with some platform encroachment), though the Pike extension bottlenecks capacity inbound from there. Honestly, I'd rather give the Central Mass to the rail-trail folks lest they try to rip up something more useful. Given that Weston is still unhappy about a gravel bike path, I doubt you will ever see them allowing a train through there again.

[F-line to Dudley via Park]

If Metro-west really needs a new commuter rail route, it will probably be on the Agricultural Branch out to Marlborough or Clinton. Compared with the Central Mass being abandoned, it already carries CSX locals and has the capability to connect to the Pike, Route 20, Route 9, and 495. IIRC this was studied a little while back and it came out much more favorably than the Central Mass. Additionally, you'd be funneling trains onto the Worcester Line, which is already in better shape than the Fitchburg although they may be more equal after the upgrade program. There's still capacity for at least one additional track from Framingham to Riverside (the ROW is four tracks wide with some platform encroachment), though the Pike extension bottlenecks capacity inbound from there. Honestly, I'd rather give the Central Mass to the rail-trail folks lest they try to rip up something more useful. Given that Weston is still unhappy about a gravel bike path, I doubt you will ever see them allowing a train through there again.

There was an I-290/Northborough commuter rail study done in 2002 by Boston MPO. It's never been archived anywhere, though. The now-outdated 2003 Program for Mass Transportation by the MPO has a bit summarizing it, though for absurd reasons they listed downtown Leominster instead of Northborough as a terminus (there is a city bus that stops in front of the old NYNH&H station and drops you in front of North Leominster on the Fitchburg Line nearly walking distance away). From the PMT report it shows $375M (2003 dollars) capital cost for construction Framingham-Leominster with 7 stations that included park-and-rides at Mass Pike (Framingham), I-495 (Marlborough), I-290 (Northborough), and I-190 (Sterling) and restoring the railbanked (non-abandoned) Fitchburg Line connection to use East Fitchburg as the layover yard. There's not a lot to conclude from that little blurb because it's the extra running miles past 290 that send the cost-per-rider and operating cost spiraling out of control (16 mi. Framingham-290, 17 mi. 290-Leominster, 4 mi. to reinstate the severed Fitchburg Line connection). I bet three-quarters of the ridership is at that murderer's row of park-and-rides out to 290 + the likely Framingham Ctr. stop right in front of Framingham State U. Wasted effort to go any further than that. And the line's too curvy to attain tolerable end-to-end travel times, so keeping it a taut 16-mile scoop-up of park-and-riders extended off an otherwise conventional Framingham short-turn on the Worcester Line is where this extension hits paydirt.

I'd love to see the 2002 full-detail study at what the costs break down to. There's no question they'd all be high-ridership stops in terms of daily boardings. The economics hinge more on whether there's any off-peak demand whatsoever given how extremely skewed the station siting would be--excepting Framingham State U. and maybe the Bose and Staples HQ's by the Mass Pike--towards park-and-riders who are only likely to opt for this line at hours of peakmost highway congestion vs. driving a little extra to a Worcester Line park-and-ride all other hours and getting higher train frequencies. Someday it'll be necessary to do this...I'm just not sure 290/495/Pike are quite bad enough today in that region for this extension to break the out of the depths of the third tier for desireable commuter rail projects. And that's still one good tier higher than the Central Mass.



The Central Mass restoration makes a little bit more sense as a future follow-on to Fitchburg Secondary commuter rail. Leominster is forever kind of useless because of the Fitchburg Line proximity, increasing FL service, and a well-established local bus system facilitating better feeder service to the FL. But Berlin and Clinton are still in the transit cavity, and Clinton has an out-of-service track connection with the PAR Worcester Branch (southbound direction only) facilitating future run-thru options. So let's say Northborough gets a final +1 extension some years later to downtown Clinton with maybe a tiny intermediate stop at Route 62 in Berlin.

Now say some years after that the need becomes acute for Worcester reverse-commutes and firewalling Greater Worcester with more radial park-and-ride relief. The Worcester Branch heading out to the immediate north of the city starts having attractive uses...but nothing all that attractive to hook it to because Boston-Ayer-Worcester is a batty out-of-the-way routing. Boston-Framingham-Clinton-Worcester is not so out-of-the-way, but is geometrically so slow no matter how perfect the track gets upgraded that it can never be done on a plausible schedule. And maybe the routing isn't batty, but it starts to get murky somewhere around Clinton where the Boston park-and-riders end and the Worcester reverse commuters begin, leaving the mission statement of such a time-consuming thru run a little unclear. BUT...a Central Mass schedule on arrow-straight Class 4 track that swiftly makes all its native stops to Berlin/495 is much more appropriate for running thru to Clinton on the Fitchburg Sec., then turning south on the Worcester Branch and hitting Worcester Union station. 54 miles Worcester Union to North Station, same as the Fitchburg Line after the Wachusett extension opens, and only 10 miles longer to Worcester than the current Worcester line while serving entirely unique east-west areas. The change to north-south orientation around Clinton isn't severe enough to distort the ridership audience like any other routing would...it's still a clearly east-west line. Two-thirds of the distance is going to be on tangent Class 4 track geometrically a little faster than the current Fitchburg Line and with pretty wide stop spacing east of 495, so the Berlin-Clinton-Worcester curves can achieve a roughly equivalent schedule despite their slower speed. And you have run-thru options from Northborough for alt service patterns. Hell, if it matters that much you can even do the Leominster leg as a Central Mass branch instead of a Northborough extension to keep your butt from falling asleep after 2 hours in a commuter rail coach.

I think it'll take a significant reverse-commute job market in Worcester developing in the coming decades to really merit this, but Central Mass restoration makes a little more sense as a post-Northborough puzzle piece working towards Worcester. There's widespread agreement that Worcester will by midcentury be a reverse commute market. There's widespread agreement that the Worcester Branch will need to have some passenger use made of it to serve that reverse commute market before the area highways all choke. There's little consensus about any routes that can be fashioned off of upgraded existing track that'll serve that need (at least north and northeast of the city). And in a vacuum there's no there-there with just a Berlin/495 park-and-ride, plowing further north of Northborough for just a Boston commute, or confusing the audience for either of those ROW's by lumping in Fitchburg or any of the Fitchburg Line's catchment areas north of Clinton into a shotgun solution. I think the Central Mass might be worth a second look someday as a relatively cheap-to-implement Phase I of a "Worcester-North" commute pattern. After there's enough reverse commute growth to Worcester that some significant destination bleed-through starts showing itself in commute demographics around the Framingham/Sudbury/Acton dividing line (i.e. roughly the Route 27 corridor). 2050-era stuff not worth paying any mind to today, but keep that CM restoration study in the file cabinet because it may have another future life bootstrapped onto this context.