when Beacon Park yard is gone

Any estimates on how many more trucks will be coming in/out of Boston when the yard is gone and how that may/may not effect the area roads and highways? Any op's for niche yards sprouting up? Would a Somerville yard lite be a possibility witnessing the recent proactive philosophy of Fink Jr with PAR?

NRGeep wrote:Any estimates on how many more trucks will be coming in/out of Boston when the yard is gone and how that may/may not effect the area roads and highways? Any op's for niche yards sprouting up? Would a Somerville yard lite be a possibility witnessing the recent proactive philosophy of Fink Jr with PAR?

Many fewer trucks. Very little of what currently goes into Boston stays there. 80% of it just heads right back out west on the Pike, and significant percentages all the way to 495. So it'll be much better for traffic with the radial spread of the highways in the Worcester area with maybe some increases between 495 and 128 on the Pike. But not as much as you'd think because they're going to be using a lot of 495-to-3, 495-to-93, 495-to-95 to get to the 'burbs that are any greater than 1/3 of the way outside 128 between 128 and 495. Which also makes the substantial increases out there a little less noticeable on each of the radiating highways. Difference will be pretty dramatic at the Allston tolls and Pike inside of Weston. There will not be nearly as many big rigs to get stuck behind at the tolls or as many traffic FUBAR's when one breaks down in Newton and Allston during rush hour.

As for PAR, they're similarly set up to use the 495 belt and Worcester-area expressways with the close access from Ayer to Route 2 smack in-between 190 and 495 and 495/93 from Lawrence, so they're going to be using the same trunk trucking routes. And the trucking companies similarly are going to be aligning their hubs around that northwest quadrant of 495 to take advantage.


As for Boston-proper, there definitely aren't going to be any more yards in the city. PAR's got to be smashing its head against the wall already from how much the Green Line extension screws up their access around BET. They have to use the grade crossing- and NIMBY-hellish Fitchburg Line, a non-clearance route, for the ethanol train because their nearly grade crossing-free real-deal clearance route Lowell Line is getting kneecapped of its capacity to handle 30+ car consists by how much freight trackage and storage around the horn at BET gets shredded by the Green Line layover yard unless sanity prevails and the schematics get redesigned to preserve access (would be much better than it did, because then the Fitchburg Line wouldn't be needed at all). They don't have enough left in Boston, even if the revived East Boston Branch gets more customers, to really merit a transload operation in the urban core. If they want one inside of 128 then expanding Montvale Yard beyond the scope of Tighe Warehouse probably fits that bill well enough with 93/128 right there and the easy access in every direction from Boston, Ayer/Lowell, and Lawrence. Woburn's a sweet spot for doing that at nice price if the need arises.

As for CSX, Readville will keep on keeping on. A little uncertain how things are going to shake out with the yard pecking order after the big move to Worcester, but I think Framingham is going to be more the odd-man out since their sorting needs are going to be so much less, the town is a royal P.I.T.A. to coexist with, they're jettisoning runs out of Framingham with things like the G&U Milford turnover and letting MassCoastal do their South Coast sorting for them at Middleboro, and Readville has some strategic upside for port access and whatnot. Unfortunately the trucking access there still sucks and requires going through town roads in Dedham to get to the highway. There's conceptual (like, napkin-sketch embryonic) proposals from the state for a haul road right next to the NEC feeding straight to the University Rd. exit. A great idea that would be easy to implement and wouldn't be too environmentally damaging if limited to truck and bus traffic. But the howls of opposition over the Neponset reservation would be prohibitive. If they want a real localized truck transload for inside the 128 belt they're almost better off doing something at the underutilized Dedham Industrial Track where there's a lot of space and a lot of trackage to fashion a small transload operation. The NEC will be getting its third track back out of Readville soon enough, and the Route 128 overpass at Westwood/128 station has space for 2 more tracks on the east side of the current platforms (the restored 3rd track would go on the west side, turning the current outbound platform into an island platform). Very easy to shoehorn a passing track if they want clearance around the high platform. Or install a gauntlet track on the west side when the third track comes back. They already do the reverse move at the T's Readville Yard leads to access the freight Readville Yard, so going the extra 3 miles to Dedham is pretty effortless and minimal-impact to NEC traffic when you're probably only talking 2 freights a day to handle the pretty small % headed into the urban core.

I don't think they've quite got the motivation to pursue that, but the infrastructure's sitting there easily adaptable and port freight's a little bit of a wildcard that could make firming up their 128 intermodal base a higher priority down the line.

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:As for CSX, Readville will keep on keeping on. A little uncertain how things are going to shake out with the yard pecking order after the big move to Worcester, but I think Framingham is going to be more the odd-man out since their sorting needs are going to be so much less, the town is a royal P.I.T.A. to coexist with, they're jettisoning runs out of Framingham with things like the G&U Milford turnover and letting MassCoastal do their South Coast sorting for them at Middleboro, and Readville has some strategic upside for port access and whatnot.

Closing Beacon Park and making Worcester an intermodal-exclusive yard will strengthen, not diminish, Framingham's primary importance in CSX's eastern MA carload network. It hubs the Fitchburg Secondary, everything heading up/down the Framingham Secondary, traffic heading east on the B&A and over into Chelsea/Everett, and, working west toward Worcester including the G&U and the new Transflo transload yard being constructed in Westborough. In terms of possibly shifting Franklin/Milford I.T. traffic or Mass. Coastal traffic to the G&U, it's arguably likely that traffic would continue to be hubbed in Framingham, and even if it were handled only over Westborough or directly by a road train, it's a small portion of Framingham's work. The option of sizably reducing Framingham's work by diversion to the G&U and re-distribution of switching is very unlikely given the volume of traffic of all/part of the 3-4 annual million gross tons handled on the Framingham Secondary that you'd have to run over a hill-'n-dale-profile railroad built for trolley traffic. Even though the locals are opposed to CSX's Framingham operations, given its relative importance, difficulty in redistributing or reconfiguring the existing operation, and, likely necessity of an expensive green-field replacement yard option to the west, I think Framingham yards' central importance is likely to remain unchanged for a long time.