Southcoast Rail

The phase II route does exist, it has just OOS?? or landbanked?? since the 1970s. Runs from Stoughton through North Easton to Taunton. The consent decree between the state of Massachusetts and the Army Corp of Engineers, which is ridiculous, makes the former main line uneconomical to restore.

If you look carefully at google satellite view, you can see the abandoned ROW running through the Hockamock swamp.

AFAIK, the rails are still in place till about the Stoughton Fish and Game club

Huh. I didn't realize there's already a RoW there. Following it, it looks like they're going to have to fight with a lot of abutters, and it's going to be a long and slow ride down a single track with lots of crossings.

and it's going to be a long and slow ride down a single track with lots of crossings.

The tracks are mostly straight for a good amount of the journey, and the current plans call for 100mph service if I remember correctly.

The idea of building a single-track line at a time where there are increased calls for a more robust regional rail system blows my mind — especially a stretch of single track that long.

Assuming NB/FR service uses the NEC, there will need to be flexibility on the branch to accommodate NEC delays. Even if it uses Fairmount, that’s still desirable.

Funny thing is, the Phase 1 SCR stops HAVE two tracks, the T just decided to only put in platforms for one track for all stops except for East Taunton. Not good, MBTA.

Just shows that they don't actually care about the idea of "Regional Rail", and have no real intention of pursuing it much further, which was obvious from the start.

Funny thing is, the Phase 1 SCR stops HAVE two tracks, the T just decided to only put in platforms for one track for all stops except for East Taunton. Not good, MBTA.

That's because the second track at all of those single platform stations are for Freight traffic to bypass without impacting the fully high-level platforms, this is the reason that the station you singled out, East Taunton, has 3 tracks.

Ah, makes sense. They should really install a third track or gauntlet track in the future though. Already is killing frequencies, but would even more so when it's extended along the NEC.

That’s a big if phase 2 happens. I don’t see it happening anytime soon. Even if it were to happen, the frequency wouldn’t be that good based on current middleboro and stoughton line schedules. Can’t add more trains without hiring more crews and having more equipment than what they already have.

Traffic down the SWC/NEC would also be bad too. Unless you reroute all the franklins over the Fairmount and have potential timed transfers at Readville to Providence & Fall River/New Bedford trains.

That’s never going to happen. You could also reroute Franklin line trains to track 3 of the nec for when after needham clears it and have foxboro via fairmount. I could see that happening, but all of them via fairmount, nope. That would make Franklin riders that gets off at ruggles and back bay angry and frustrated.

Was on a train yesterday. The engineer told me that he was told south coast rail won't be opening till the fall (September or October I believe).

If phase two were to happen today, the New Bedford and Fall River trains would have to stop at Hyde park which would make the small trains even more crowded, unless they ran all doubles regularly during peak rushour. Unless the frequency increases, timing on the nec would be similar to today, which means that wouldn’t be a problem. The reason I said this is because existing stoughton trains do stop there. However, peak rushour outbound wouldn’t as Franklin and foxboro trains stop there.

Current service patterns are completely irrelevant to ones that don't exist yet.