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Transit and Infrastructure All things T or civilly engineered within Boston Metro. |
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#541 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: Feb 2017
Posts: 133
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Re: Fairmount Line Upgrade
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#542 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Rozzie Square
Posts: 1,841
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Re: Fairmount Line Upgrade
Yes, and that was entirely the point. Effective, workable, regional rail does not require amenities, it requires frequency, speed, clock facin schedules, proper pricing. There is nothing wrong with this station that prevents the things that matter.
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#543 |
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Join Date: May 2007
Location: South Cove
Posts: 2,664
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Re: Fairmount Line Upgrade
+1
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Jeff H. Downtown, South Cove |
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#544 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: Jul 2006
Posts: 4,194
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Re: Fairmount Line Upgrade
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HOWEVER, if you have no plans to add frequency, then those amenities will help your riders since theyre waiting longer. |
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#545 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Apr 2013
Location: Roxbury
Posts: 573
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Re: Fairmount Line Upgrade
^ Yes. We can and should aspire to have both.
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#546 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Rozzie Square
Posts: 1,841
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Re: Fairmount Line Upgrade
Sure, I don't oppose amenities. I just don't think they are something that changes ridership. If you think about other lines, is the presence (or lack) of a coffee cart what leads people to use the service? And how is such a thing remotely profitable on a station platform that attracts customers infrequently, compared to opening a stand up on the street level?
That stuff is nice, but I don't think it has the kind of impact that a useful service has, so I'd rather focus on making it be a useful service. The amenities will come along on their own once that happens. |
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#547 | |
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Join Date: Jul 2006
Posts: 4,194
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Re: Fairmount Line Upgrade
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What was the last MBTA commuter rail line to be eliminated completely? Off the top of my head, Id think it was the Lexington branch, a branch where most of the stops were essentially bus stops with no amenities. Thats a lot east to abandon than something like the Worcester Line with real stations. Same with other rail. It was so easy to discontinue the A and E branch because there were no amenities left behind. |
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#548 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Nov 2010
Posts: 4,670
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Re: Fairmount Line Upgrade
Woburn Branch, 1981. And that pretty much was just 2 bus shelters. Lexington Br. ('77) actually had a few really nice station houses, which were also adjacent to squares with retail.
Reasons for those abandonments were equipment shortages on the RDC fleet coupled with lousy track conditions in the very first years after the T bought the northside from bankrupt B&M. *Very* specific to that particular time and place. |
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#549 |
Senior Member
Join Date: May 2009
Posts: 123
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Re: Fairmount Line Upgrade
The Central Mass. Railroad had pretty nice station buildings, and it got eliminated anyway. I'd say the correlation between amenities and ridership, beyond a certain baseline, is tenuous at best.
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#550 |
Member
Join Date: Apr 2018
Posts: 33
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Re: Fairmount Line Upgrade
My anecdotal evidence shows that people don't like buses because they run infrequently and unreliably and get stuck in traffic. I can walk into a t stop and wait on a platform and know a train is coming in less than10 minutes, can't say the same for most buses.
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#551 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: Dorchester
Posts: 4,914
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Re: Fairmount Line Upgrade
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![]() ![]() One more question I know one of you can answer. How in gods name do these do grade crossings? There is a picture of these crossing a street. Here I found a better picture of how they do a gap in the 3rd rail.... How is this safe?? It looks like maybe they make contact under the rail... but still.. ![]() Last edited by stick n move; Yesterday at 11:20 PM. |
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#552 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Feb 2014
Posts: 589
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Re: Fairmount Line Upgrade
Buses can also be drastically re-routed on a moments notice. Steel rails in the ground can’t. The flexibility of buses also gives them a feeling of impermanence.
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#553 | ||
Senior Member
Join Date: Nov 2010
Posts: 4,670
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Re: Fairmount Line Upgrade
Quote:
Third rail isn't an option here. South Station is electrified to 25 kV AC, while LIRR/MNRR's third rail is an extremely different 750V DC. It takes substations every 3-6 miles to electrify at 750V DC, while the Amtrak AC system only needs subs every 30 miles. It would be too prohibitively expensive to do DC; that's more ideally-suited for subway/rapid transit spanning a compact region (e.g. inside-128). The contact surface of third rail also only allows an uppermost speed limit of ~90 MPH, way too slow for Amtrak's needs. LIRR has its DC network because it grew up a mostly isolated RR, and it has enough DC power lines spanning the west half of the island that their 750V system is cheaper to keep augmenting rather than changing over. MNRR does it (except on the New Haven Line which power switches from AC to DC) for clearances in the tunnel to Grand Central. Those are the only such installations on this continent. Quote:
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#554 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: Dorchester
Posts: 4,914
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Re: Fairmount Line Upgrade
Quote:
Last edited by stick n move; Today at 07:25 AM. |
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#555 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: Nov 2010
Posts: 4,670
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Re: Fairmount Line Upgrade
Quote:
How did this turn into "A) copying LIRR verbatim = electrification; B) fossil fuel self-propelled; C) nothing at all"? That was never the set of choices here. |
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#556 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: Jul 2006
Posts: 4,194
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Re: Fairmount Line Upgrade
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#557 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Feb 2017
Posts: 133
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Re: Fairmount Line Upgrade
At least in my experience, BU students who lived off campus (so the ones who would be using 57/B daily) would would be well aware that the 57 was faster, but those who lived on campus (with some exceptions) would be largely unaware that public buses even existed.
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#558 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: Jul 2006
Posts: 4,194
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Re: Fairmount Line Upgrade
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Spend a little extra at construction and get a lifetime of free added exposure. |
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#559 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Rozzie Square
Posts: 1,841
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Re: Fairmount Line Upgrade
I think there is some truth to that regarding buses. Nice shelters make waiting for the bus look more appealing and serve the dual purpose of suggesting permanence. I don't think this is the case for rail, however, where the tracks make the case for permanence. See the same example, of BU students taking the trolley rather than the bus. You can't argue that very many B Line stops have attractive amenities. They are functional at best, and yet huge numbers board at many of them.
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#560 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Feb 2017
Posts: 133
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Re: Fairmount Line Upgrade
I think the issue is much deeper than just how visible the station is. Buses are inherently confusing for someone unfamiliar with the street grid (an accurate description of most BU underclassman). Combine that with the fact that most BU students grew up in wealthy suburbs where buses are basically unheard of.
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