Grand Junction Branch (The North/South Side Connection)

[diburning]

Here's a couple of mine.

http://rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=3644032

http://rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=3644033

[tomytuna]

thank you both for the info and pics....Tommy

[Tracer]

http://photos.nerail.org/showpic/?photo ... ex=0&key2=

CSX isn't afraid of running some big power on the line.

[CSRR573]

love the size comparison between the loco and the bus

[BandA]

That pic is from 2009

[johnpbarlow]

Recent give and take at the "Red-Blue Connector" thread proposed use of DMU service via the Grand Junction as a means of providing west of Boston to north of Boston travel (specifically Suffolk Downs/Amazon). One detailed reply talked about street traffic impact in Cambridge due to frequent blocking of Broadway and Mass Ave crossings. Using this point as background and considering downtown Cambridge (ie, MIT/Kendall Square area) as the destination/origin for metrowest suburb commuting (ie, not North Station), why not the operate DMU shuttles (or maybe selected rush hour trains) only as far east as a platform at Vassar St and Mass Ave to avoid crossing any streets at all? This location would be about a quarter of mile from Kendall Square station for Charles/MGH or Harvard Square commuters.

[F-line to Dudley via Park]

Recent give and take at the "Red-Blue Connector" thread proposed use of DMU service via the Grand Junction as a means of providing west of Boston to north of Boston travel (specifically Suffolk Downs/Amazon). One detailed reply talked about street traffic impact in Cambridge due to frequent blocking of Broadway and Mass Ave crossings. Using this point as background and considering downtown Cambridge (ie, MIT/Kendall Square area) as the destination/origin for metrowest suburb commuting (ie, not North Station), why not the operate DMU shuttles (or maybe selected rush hour trains) only as far east as a platform at Vassar St and Mass Ave to avoid crossing any streets at all? This location would be about a quarter of mile from Kendall Square station for Charles/MGH or Harvard Square commuters.

The Worcester study ID's the intermediate at Kendall as the only ridership catchment worthy of its own platform, not Mass Ave. The problem is the #1/CT1 would get delayed by gates-down too much of the time for 15-minute bi-directional headways if the Grand Junction were an Indigo route, and those bus routes carry many more daily passengers than the Indigo route. But it's not true that those bus routes carry so many people because they hold any significant share of the transfer patronage coming inbound Brighton/Newton/MetroWest. That demand's coming from elsewhere, and thus is not any sort of critical 'get' for a Grand Junction route. So it's a complete waste and mis-read of the demand sources to severely truncate that routing at Mass Ave. for the sake of avoiding grade crossings but to skip the only places on that routing that the study ID's significant ridership demand. You'd be sacrificing too many riders peeling off and stubbing out vs. doing more Worcester frequencies to Yawkey, BBY, and SS. The study said that was a problem with all but the rush-hour, peak-direction frequencies because ridership the rest of the day when Red/Orange were functioning normally was much higher by self-containing B&A frequencies to SS instead of diluting them to NS or anywhere on the Grand Junction short of that route. This holds true for the Mass Ave./1/CT1 midday demand, too; that doesn't inversely spike on the off-peak, so more is lost trying to gerrymander a 1-seat poke there vs. stiffening mainline frequencies to Yawkey/BBY/SS all day and across-the-board.

[BandA]

If the NIMBYs won't let the train cross Taxxachu$$et$ Ave, then you would have to build the platform at Vassar & Mass Ave, and the passengers would have to walk the long block to Main St. This would make an excellent pilot service, a dinky or a couple of RDC's running back & forth between Boston Landing & Mass Ave, with an intermediate platform underneath the Memorial Drive overpass. Rolling stock is a couple of RDC's leased from Vermont, or a few coaches + a low-power passenger locomotive. Modify the Mass Ave crossing as a stop with a DTMF controlled gate ala Framingham. Couple of temporary or low-cost full-high platforms with easy ADA access from the sidewalk. Only real problem is adding a switch east of Boston Landing to allow Track 2 access to the Grand Junction without a backup move.

Once this service becomes popular, the businesses in Kendall Sq will start lobbying to move the stop closer to Main St. Who is more powerful, lobbyists or Nimbys?

[malbojah]

Who is more powerful, lobbyists or Nimbys?

The nimbys who pay the lobbyists.

/sarcasm

[johnpbarlow]

Forget rehabbing the Grand Junction branch, tieing up Mass Ave/Broadway grade crossings, etc! Our own Keolis is partnering with French technology company Navya demonstrating its Autonomous Shuttle for "last mile" public transport in urban/suburban environments at the APTA Expo in Atlanta on October 8-11:

http://www.metro-report.com/news/single-view/view/navya-plans-us-production-of-autonomous-shuttles.html

Keolis has been the operating partner for trials of the Navya shuttle in the public transport market both in Europe and North America. ‘The USA is not yet ready to go fully autonomous’, suggested Maurice Bell, Vice President for Mobility Solutions at Keolis Transit America. Widespread adoption ‘could take up to 10 years’, he felt, but the economic advantages of the operating model were likely to appeal to many city authorities, especially where on-demand options could replace full-scale bus operations. ‘Equally I envisage 10 or 15 of these shuttles operating in tandem — that would mean the end of the streetcar in urban centres’, he added.

Hopefully in the real world the shuttle would have a max speed >> than 7km/hr (a brisk walk) as it buzzes down Cambridge St from Boston Landing toward Kendall Square...

[deathtopumpkins]

A shuttle from Boston Landing to Kendall would be a horrible idea. That's a 25-30 minute drive in rush hour traffic. It's far from a straight shot down Cambridge Street.

[F-line to Dudley via Park]

The only thing the Grand Junction is good for as semi-useful rapid transit is the very rapid transit project they once officially proposed for it: Urban Ring. In whatever century they can get on with doing that. If you have zippy-accelerating trolleys on that ROW you can insert simple traffic light cycles at each crossing, which at Main & Broadway would slip inocuously into the existing traffic signal cycles as extra partial phases and at Mass Ave. with an extra signal timed with the adjacent Albany/Vassar/Amherst lights to dump the queues quickly after the transit vehicle passes. RR priority, even with things like DTMF signals at adjacent platforms, is just too all-or-nothing and cumbersome to manage the road queues like a traffic-obeying LRT/BRT vehicle can...not to mention the vehicle acceleration on even the nimblest FRA-compliant xMU's is too slovenly to clear the crossings as quickly as a trolley can. Add to that with rapid transit you can at least climb grades steep enough to have some plausible means of eliminating Mass Ave., Cambridge St., and others even if Main is un-eliminable because of the air rights above and Red Line below and Broadway may be un-eliminable because of proximity to Main. All of the worst crossings are staying forever on the RR mode because max allowable grades just don't let you get up or down quickly enough to eliminate them, and the streets themselves are too densely-packed to do bridges or underpasses around the level tracks.

[johnpbarlow]

A shuttle from Boston Landing to Kendall would be a horrible idea. That's a 25-30 minute drive in rush hour traffic. It's far from a straight shot down Cambridge Street.

FWIW, Commuter rail trip duration Boston Landing to South Station is 15 minutes per MBTA schedule. Red Line trip duration from South Station to Kendall Square is 9 minutes per T on-line schedule so that's 24 minutes not considering the time it takes to get off the Framingham line train and walk to the Red Line station to catch a train to Kendall Square - at least 5 more minutes. So it would be a wash timewise going Boston Landing - Kendall Square via Cambridge St v. South Station. I'm guessing the autonomous shuttle would have WiFi to permit one to do email/FaceBook/web surfing/texting and all those other work related activities.

[deathtopumpkins]

And the commuter rail already has wifi, so that's moot.

If it's a wash time-wise, and still requires a transfer, I don't see any benefit of a shuttle over the existing Red Line connection, and I see numerous downsides (including adding yet more vehicles to already clogged roads).

[CRail]

Anyone who, in this day and age, still believes rubber tired vehicles are superior to rail is simply in denial or completely delusional. That's been disproved relentlessly for over half a century. MU cars will run from West Station or Brighton Center to North Station and stop at Mass Ave., Broadway, and probably Twin City, I'm minutely shy of certain of that. When? Well, maybe before the sun supernovas...

Screw traffic cues. If we cared about automobile traffic flow we would have traffic lights operating on demand and in sequence, and we wouldn't be slicing thoroughfare capacities in half to make way for other modes, and we certainly wouldn't be eliminating grade separated passageways that allow for seamless flow over, under, and around busy and congested areas. The days of automobile domination are over, it's time we set up a transit system that conforms to that reality!