Safetee wrote:the best, quickest, least expensive route with the best boston, cambridge, and maine connections from Montreal would be to jump on pas at Greenfield and head east.
No, the best, quickest, least expensive route Boston-Montreal is to (gently) subsidize bus(es) running express on the highways we already have. Adding trains is about increasing the usefulness of the network we already have, which is more about the towns along the line, rather than the endpoints, and for that, you need to go through the hub, in this case, a hub at Springfield
Safetee wrote:Unfortunately, the current "planning" in west mass is to do whatever is possible to get folks to the new casinos in Springfield and that means folks from Boston and Montreal connect by going to Springfield by train directly.
As linked, the studies favored Springfield because it is a natural hub for intra-regional travel, as both a decent-sized O/D itself, and along naturally-busy lanes of demand, and strong bus connections to all of Western Mass. #1 Rule of Hubbing: don't bypass the hub.