MBTA Fitchburg line extension

[Tlcooper93]

https://www.trains.com/trn/news-rev...rding-to-early-stages-of-study/#comment-78709
As much as half-witted comments like “boondoggle” and “this price you could buy every one of us 40,000 of Franklin County a Tesla and we could drive ourselves to Boston,” infuriate me, how is it that conventional rail, connecting small towns like this, costs this much to upgrade? Perhaps this country is doomed for trains.

Why is the state even considering things like this, with this amount of cash.

 

[AmtrakMaineiac]

If the Commonwealth has $2 Billion burning a hole in its pocket I can think of some better places to spend it.
They already tried extending service to Gardner back in the 1980's and it was a failure, partly because the roundabout route of the former B&M via S. Winchendon is not competitive with driving. Beyond Gardner there isn't really a lot along that corridor, Athol and Greenfield are about the only decent sized towns. The CSX line via Worcester and Springfield would be a better place to use that $2B.

 

[west point]

IMO it is a boondoggle. Theere is no way that MA can afford to spend this kind of money on this route and still spend ~ the same on Worcester - Springfield upgrades. Concentrate on the best route that will help the most. Once Worcester - Springfield has been completely updated then other routes will have a better chance to be justified upgrading. Especially this proposal.

 

[fdaley]

The existing route from Wachusett to Boston is hardly competitive with driving, but tons of people use it. I suspect there are a lot of people in towns farther west who'd be OK with the four-hour version that costs half as much. Back in the '80s, no one had laptops and cell phones. Today, there are a lot more people who want the freedom to get from A to B while working, playing or sleeping and not having to be staring at the road ahead. If the cost is too much to pursue in one gulp, then do it in stages, maybe starting with Wachusett-Greenfield, which already has a fair amount of track that's in better condition.

 

[jis]

The existing route from Wachusett to Boston is hardly competitive with driving, but tons of people use it. I suspect there are a lot of people in towns farther west who'd be OK with the four-hour version that costs half as much. Back in the '80s, no one had laptops and cell phones. Today, there are a lot more people who want the freedom to get from A to B while working, playing or sleeping and not having to be staring at the road ahead. If the cost is too much to pursue in one gulp, then do it in stages, maybe starting with Wachusett-Greenfield, which already has a fair amount of track that's in better condition.

I guess part of the problem with driving into Boston is what does one do with ones car after getting to Boston? If there are stations en route with large parking lots then people could drive from far outlying areas to one of those stations to park at and then take the train in. For example I used to do that sort of a thing to get to New York from Jersey Shore even when there is the slow poke NJCL down the shore. I used to drive to Metropark to catch a much faster service to New York. Admittedly I have no idea about the details of the Fitchburg Line and its extensions as far as parking at stations go.

 

[fdaley]

I guess part of the problem with driving into Boston is what does one do with ones car after getting to Boston? If there are stations en route with large parking lots then people could drive from far outlying areas to one of those stations to park at and then take the train in. For example I used to do that sort of a thing to get to New York from Jersey Shore even when there is the slow poke NJCL down the shore. I used to drive to Metropark to catch a much faster service to New York. Admittedly I have no idea about the details of the Fitchburg Line and its extensions as far as parking at stations go.

Well, the current western terminal at Wachusett was designed as a park-and-ride near Route 2, the highway that continues to everywhere west.

For years the line ended in downtown Fitchburg, which required anyone coming from the west to get off the highway and spend 15 or 20 minutes navigating slow, local roads to get to the station. People from towns to the west like Athol and Greenfield were calling for service to be extended to their communities. As I recall, MassDOT produced a study then saying extending the service would be fabulously expensive and still be significantly slower than driving, so the park-and-ride at Wachusett was their solution for serving everyone to the west.

Now it's a decade later and people in all those towns to the west are still calling for direct service to their towns so that they don't have to drive an hour from Greenfield or two hours from North Adams to get to the train.

 

[jis]

Well, the current western terminal at Wachusett was designed as a park-and-ride near Route 2, the highway that continues to everywhere west.

For years the line ended in downtown Fitchburg, which required anyone coming from the west to get off the highway and spend 15 or 20 minutes navigating slow, local roads to get to the station. People from towns to the west like Athol and Greenfield were calling for service to be extended to their communities. As I recall, MassDOT produced a study then saying extending the service would be fabulously expensive and still be significantly slower than driving, so the park-and-ride at Wachusett was their solution for serving everyone to the west.

Now it's a decade later and people in all those towns to the west are still calling for direct service to their towns so that they don't have to drive an hour from Greenfield or two hours from North Adams to get to the train.

Have they talked about how much time would be acceptable to them that the train would take from their town to Wachusett? I have seen in the past that there is a lot of supposed demand for such extensions to the boonies, and then they realize the that the train will take half an hour more than the drive and ridership does not develop. Hope they are not headed for yet another one of those or MassDOT is able to develop a rail service that is actually time competitive with that amount of money, which appears to be remarkably large for such a short extension.

 

[fdaley]

Have they talked about how much time would be acceptable to them that the train would take from their town to Wachusett? I have seen in the past that there is a lot of supposed demand for such extensions to the boonies, and then they realize the that the train will take half an hour more than the drive and ridership does not develop. Hope they are not headed for yet another one of those or MassDOT is able to develop a rail service that is actually time competitive with that amount of money, which appears to be remarkably large for such a short extension.

Well, the cost estimate does seem shockingly large -- as does the $2B to $4B that MassDOT estimated it would cost to upgrade the Worcester-Springfield-Pittsfield route. On the latter route, there had been a separate study several years earlier (2016?) that pegged the cost of upgrading Worcester-Springfield in the hundreds of thousands, well below $1B. So I do wonder a bit whether maybe both projects could be accomplished for substantially less than the latest MassDOT estimates if the planners put their minds to it.

As I recall, when the Downeaster was first being discussed in the early '90s, the cost of upgrading the freight-only line from Haverhill to Portland -- which is about the same distance as from Wachusett to North Adams -- was estimated at about $50 million. Even accounting for inflation since then, that's still an order of magnitude below what we're talking about here.