Have anyone heard if the MBTA still has plans to extend a branch of the Needham Line to Millis and the Franklin Line to Milford.
What's the story on this.
What's the story on this.
Railroad Forums
The construction of six new tracks would allow for additional future service to be added to the southside lines, including long-discussed Commuter Rail extensions to Milford, Buzzard’s Bay, and Millis; increased service on the Worcester Line; and more and higher-frequency service on the Fairmount Line.
Choo Choo Coleman wrote:I had the occasion to ride the Needham Line for the first time yesterday. I noticed at Needham Junction where the line branches off towards Millis. I know the T doesn't have any money so I don't anticipate any expansion there for awhile.The trail lobby on this one is hard to take seriously. It's the same 3 guys who pretty much part-and-parel run the Needham Bikes advocacy group who are primary sponsor of this. They had that nice slick website of theirs, the plans, and blogs/mailing list/message board set up behind it before they'd even established line ownership and whether it was still active.
I looked up the Millis Branch and I came across a story that talks about some local residents who want to covert the Millis Branch to a rail trail. The story says that the T would still hold the rights to put the line back in, but I think that once you rip up the rails the odds of the rail ever going back in goes down significantly.
I still don't get why they can't just put a bike trail next to the line? It would benefit everybody.
http://www.wickedlocal.com/needham/fun/ ... gh-Needham
It's from the Needham Times from August 2009
The bike trail is only in the discussion stages, but it would be smart to let the ROW get paved over.
diburning wrote:Here's a solution.... we keep the service, but whenever theres no service on the line, we let the bikers use it, but they would have to replace the wheels on their bikes with ones that have flangesOr, hey, there's the big wide railroad bed that goes all the way from Boston to Worcester, and all the way beyond to Albany. Last two times I rollerbladed over the Beacon St. bridge there weren't any trains on it, so I figure it must be abandoned. And, get this, it's two-tracks wide...you could put, like, TWO bike paths at once on that! So I called up my friend at Bay Colony to ask if I can have it...he said "Well, we don't have any freight on that thing, so...sure, you can have it." I set up the website, got a bunch of my friends to sign the guestbook, had my picture taken overlooking it from the Pike with the Framingham mayor's estranged brother-in-law, and I figure we'll be out at Natick tearing up the rails around 7:25 next Tuesday morning.
FP10 wrote:Would a Millis/Milford extension make sense if a new Green Line branch were made to Needham Junction like planned in the 50s? Therefore instead of 2 new CR lines crowding South Station you still only have one (longer) line, and a GL transfer allowing the Franklin and Millis/Milford passengers metro-west and northern boston access sooner, without having to get on the red line.It is on the table, wish-list wise. Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization screened it for its 2004 Transportation Plan (http://www.bostonmpo.org/bostonmpo/3_pr ... /plan.html). Of the unfunded line extensions it screened, here's how they broke them down:
This of course would create crowding issues in the central subway, but I feel these must be addressed in some form when the Medford Extension opens, and revised routing could probably handle another line (after all, the numbers of trains going through there has been decreasing thanks to the abandonment of Arborway and the A)
EDIT: I agree this is low-priority to other projects, but still something that should be on the table
trainhq wrote:People would definitely ride the trains to that area, and it would help unclog Route 109. However, even though it's a decent idea,That's what doesn't really make snese to me. Why does the T continually go after pie-in-the-sky projects like CR to Fall River and NB while neglecting simple, cheap and likely profitable things that could be done much faster?
there are too many other projects waiting in the queue in front that will get funding first. It's going to be at least 10 years or more
before the T even looks at it.
madcrow wrote: Why does the T continually go after pie-in-the-sky projects like CR to Fall River and NB while neglecting simple, cheap and likely profitable things that could be done much faster?In the case of the South Coast service restoration, it's largely politics -- keeping the legislators from that part of the state happy so they'll vote for general MBTA funding when it comes up every year. And the Governor is pushing it because he too wants votes from the area.