jamesinclair wrote:F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:
I think Worcester commuters will be just tickled having more trains period. Which they can do when all those Allston freights dissapear and the line gets its badly needed cab signal installation on the inner half. Nobody's going to be inconvenienced by an Orange Line jog from Back Bay when they've got twice the number of trains to choose from to fit their schedules.
Its not about their convenience, its about south station being full, and needing to send the trains elsewhere. The Worcester line is the ONLY line where this would be possible.
Once the Indigo line comes online, that's it, no more room at South Station. You either send trains to NS, or convince people to commute during off peak hours.
The state's planned purchase of the Postal Annex solves that problem. Anywhere from 4 (minimum-build) to 6 (maximum-build) tracks would be added by razing the structure and replacing with narrower Dot. Ave.-facing development. The nuclear option is 11 tracks if the whole thing gets bulldozed without redevelopment (very unlikely). The South Coast rail studies say that the 6-track option would accommodate FR/NB, Fairmount, high-frequency Worcester sevice, and even speculative extensions like Millis, Milford, and Buzzards Bay without tapping it out.
The purchase is moving slowly because of flaky developers, but USPS most definitely is planning to move within the next 5 years to a new facility a mile down the road in Southie, and the state is ponying up to lock down the parcel and get that building knocked down. SS will have at least some more tracks in it before the decade is out, even if a max-build isn't in the cards until something huge like FR/NB is ready to run.