• Red-Blue Connector

  • Discussion relating to commuter rail, light rail, and subway operations of the MBTA.
Discussion relating to commuter rail, light rail, and subway operations of the MBTA.

Moderators: sery2831, CRail

  by jamesinclair
 
Thats how most modern non-us subways are run

  by sery2831
 
Okay, lets get back on topic :-)

  by maxman927
 
okay, heres a stretch but what if the red line was converted to blue line cars and they conected the blue line to make it a branch, through Charles/MGH. then, trains could run from alewife to wonderland,

  by AznSumtinSumtin
 
Impossible. The Red Line cars are taller and wider. To board a Blue Line car from a Red Line platform, you would have to jump down into the car and hope you don't miss and land into the pit. Reconstructing the stations to accomodate Blue Line cars would cost billions of dollars. It would just be easier to have people transfer at Charles/MGH instead.

  by maxman927
 
AznSumtinSumtin wrote:Impossible. The Red Line cars are taller and wider. To board a Blue Line car from a Red Line platform, you would have to jump down into the car and hope you don't miss and land into the pit. Reconstructing the stations to accomodate Blue Line cars would cost billions of dollars. It would just be easier to have people transfer at Charles/MGH instead.
if you had the trains line up at exactly the same place at the station you could have little "bridges" to connect, like in nyc for the shuttle.

  by Veristek
 
AznSumtinSumtin wrote:Impossible. The Red Line cars are taller and wider. To board a Blue Line car from a Red Line platform, you would have to jump down into the car and hope you don't miss and land into the pit. Reconstructing the stations to accomodate Blue Line cars would cost billions of dollars. It would just be easier to have people transfer at Charles/MGH instead.
When you think about it... the US spends $12 billion a month or $150 billion per year on a pointless war in Iraq.

If the US didn't spend that money on Iraq, but rather, gave just one month's supply of "Iraq money" to the MBTA once, then the MBTA can pretty much do all of its extension, expansion, revonations, and everything, plus pay off all of its debts.

Thus, it would be a cakewalk finance-wise to extend the Blue Line to Charles / MGH, or even do the Red Line revonations (or upgrade the Blue Line to accomodate Red Line cars).

  by maxman927
 
well, i think that it'd be worth it to have the red line platforms narrowed so that blue line cars could run it. with all that money they could also connect the orange line to make a unified subway.

  by ceo
 
Updating the Blue Line to accommodate Red Line cars would cost even more, because the tunnel under the harbor doesn't have enough clearance. (This is why the Blue Line cars have such a low platform height; the tunnel was built for streetcars.)

  by maxman927
 
it should be cheaper to have the whole system use blueline cars should it be unified. that way any car could go anywhere.

  by sery2831
 
Blue Line cars are very small and don't hold many people. That is not a good idea.

  by maxman927
 
sery2831 wrote:Blue Line cars are very small and don't hold many people. That is not a good idea.
longer trains?

  by sery2831
 
Still would hold less people... It's not the way to go.

  by maxman927
 
is the clearance the only problem with the blue line? if so, without the bowdoin loop couldn't you theoretically run OL cars, with pantographs?

  by sery2831
 
You couldn't make the turn at State with Orange Line cars.

  by maxman927
 
ah, so if we had said money we could straighten that out as well.
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