Green Line extension to Tufts, maybe...

[hauntmeister.livejournal.com]

Okay, this is more Tufts-related than Davis Square related, but I figured it was close enough! First, it looks as though the Green line will extend into Somerville...Hurray!

But there are two competing proposals for the route the extension will take. Either way, it would begin from Lechmere, and then either go one stop into Union Square (and stop there) or through east Somerville to Tufts, making three or four stops along the way. You can read the Somerville Journal article about it, though the proposals make more sense if you can see the maps in the printed version.

Let me encourage people to write a letter to the Somerville Journal (if you do it today, it'll be in this week's paper) at Somerville@cnc.com and support your proposal of choice. My feeling is that the longer extension into Tufts makes more sense than a single shunt into Union Square.

Comments

[ceo]

I disagree. If they're only going to do one or the other, Union Square is much more in need of decent public transit. Tufts already has Davis within longish walking distance.

Ideal would be to then tunnel under Prospect Hill and keep going out to Tufts (or West Medford), but that's likely way too expensive. Two branches would be OK, but that would make it harder to get to Union Square from the rest of Somerville.

[hauntmeister.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, the single-stop shunt from Lechmere into Union Square still wouldn't connect Union to the rest of Somerville. It would make it easy to go between Union Square and downtown Boston, but public transit into Union from anywhere in Somerville would still be limited to busses..

The purple line already passes through Union Square as it goes between Porter and North Station. One option for servicing Union Square would be to put a new station on that existing line.

Another option would be to extend the green line to Tufts, and run a light-rail shuttle along Washington St from the nearest green line stop into Union Square. This might even be a cute automated thing like at airports.

[alphacygni]

The commuter rail is an entirely different sort of transit than the light rail green line, or a bus. It would quite probably be nice to have the Fitchburg line stop at Union Square on its way between North Station and Porter, but I don't think it will solve the problem of Union Square being considered inaccessible via public transit.

Union Square has a tremendous amount of bus service, going in almost all imaginable directions to three different MBTA rail lines. But obviously, people consider this insufficient. I often wonder what, if anything, could be done for the bus service there to make people like it or use it.

If the green line continued past Union westward to Tufts, how would that not be "from Union to anywhere in Somerville"? It could be that you're thinking that connecting to the red line would be ideal, to truly connect to the various well-known places in the area, and that's probably true. But with the locations of the various red line stops, I think it's terribly, terribly unlikely that the green line would dip down and connect.

[hauntmeister.livejournal.com]

One fundamental problem is that Union Square, as you point out, is on the Fitchburg line, while the proposed green line run out to Tufts would run along the Lowell line rail bed. Maps here (http://www.mbta.com/traveling_t/schedules_commuterrail.asp)

If the green line continued past Union westward to Tufts, how would that not be "from Union to anywhere in Somerville"?

Oh, that would be wonderful! But difficult, if not impossible. As ceo points out, it would be ideal if the green line could run from Lechmere, into Union Square, and then continue to join the Lowell tracks and complete the run to Tufts. But inbetween the branches is Prospect Hill, forcing the train to either tunnel underneath (prohibitively expensive) or to backtrack (frustrating.) So at the moment, it's looking like running the green line into Union Square would be a one-stop dead end.

[in-parentheses.livejournal.com]

I often wonder what, if anything, could be done for the bus service there to make people like it or use it.

As someone who is starting to use the Union Square buses a lot, I know I'd feel more like they were "real" public transportation if the stops were indoors. Standing around in the rain or the cold is much less pleasant than in a heated indoor T station.

Also, of course, there's the issue that most people can't get by just on a bus pass, and a bus + T pass is rather expensive.

[hauntmeister.livejournal.com]

Yes, some sort of Davis-like central bus stop would be a big win and make waiting more pleasant. And as another poster pointed out, different busses currently stop at different places, even if you can take them to the same destination.

[dmaze]

I feel like the bus setup is okay for commuting, but once you step outside of that friendly Monday-Friday 7AM-7PM window it starts sucking. Going to visit friends at MIT? Neither the 85 nor the CT2 run outside of commuting hours. You can take a bus to a T stop but that's not where you're actually going; once you get to Sullivan, Central, Harvard, or Davis you still need to wait for a train to actually take you somewhere. (Between the 86 and 87 there's reasonable coverage of Somerville, at least.) And most of the busses, outside of commute hours, run every half-hour at best, more likely some irregular hard-to-remember schedule that's less frequent.

Union in particular also has the problem that busses going to the same place have separate stops (wait in different places for the 86 or 91 to Sullivan, for example). Plus the traffic is a known disaster.

At least, I have a reasonable feel (not having looked at the maps) for how light rail could get into Union Square from Lechmereish, but there don't seem to be a whole lot of expansion opportunities from there. Extending the line down Somerville Ave. to Porter Square could be worthwhile, but I don't think the road is wide enough to have a separate rail right-of-way. I'm pretty sure the Fitchburg commuter rail line doesn't have enough space to also support light rail.

[enmascarado.livejournal.com]

You seem to know a lot of the details, which I appreciate.

What consideration has been given to parking? I live behind the High School and can imagine where they'd put that stop. There's an abandonned (I think) warehouse that that could be torn down to make for parking, but not many spaces are that lucky. My biggest concern with the addition of a stop in Union Square has always been where the parking would go. Considering that people will likely be coming in from Malden and points North to hop the T for work and/or weekends in Boston, parking needs to be considered. Union Square doesn't have enough parking now. Ball and Magoun, similarly so.

-Dan

[hauntmeister.livejournal.com]

Parking is a good point, which I honestly hadn't considered. I was working with the assumption that most of the passengers would be local residents walking to the T, which is what I do.

But you're absolutely right. People living in the northern suburbs but working in downtown might want to drive to the nearest T stop, park for the day, and take the T into downtown. Lechmere has this problem now, which is why the parking rates at the Cambridgeside Galleria are cheap for the first hour or so and then skyrocket. I don't know the answer to this.

[cnoocy]

Well, the Alewife solution isn't bad in theory: Extend the line far enough to build a large parking facility at the terminus, then expect all suburban traffic to use that parking. I will admit that I don't know how well this works for Alewife.

[enmascarado.livejournal.com]

From when I lived in Waltham and still had a car I can tell you that it worked great if you got there before 10am. Not so well if you got there between 10am and 4pm. I used to give myself an extra half hour when going to job interviews to idle outside of the parking ramp waiting for someone to leave.

-Dan

[dmaze]

From the north, Wellington seems to be a popular "park and T" destination; I assume from the parking garages in the area that Malden Center is as well. I guess a hypothetical stop at Boston Ave. and Harvard St. in Medford would be in about the right place, or at Boston Ave. and Mystic Valley Pkwy., or even West Medford, but the roads going west from 93 aren't really that friendly (and seem to be a little overburdened to start with). My initial suspicion is that the road layout will lead people to stay on the orange line, or at Alewife, for driving to the subway.

(This leads me to wonder if people drive from outer suburbs to Anderson RTC in Woburn, which I believe has lots of parking and advertising from both 93 and 128, and then take Lowell commuter rail trains in. But even if there were Ball Square and McGrath Highway commuter rail stops, the commuter rail would probably be strictly more appealing than the Green Line over this stretch.)

[syntheticnature.livejournal.com]

Don't Malden-and-points-North people take the Orange Line (or maybe even the Blue Line) already?

[enmascarado.livejournal.com]

Malden may be a bad example, but I still think that there will be the need for more parking. Maybe not. I don't drive, I'm just thinking about what might happen.

There might just be an increased need for parking from other places in Somerville.

-Dan

[syntheticnature.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. I think I would prefer to drive to Wellington or to Alewife instead of Union if I were coming from outside the city to take the T, because they are convenient to highways and because I feel like the other lines are faster than the Green Line. But that's just my personal guess.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

I don't think people will actually drive to the nearest T stop geographically. If they want to T, they will drive to the nearest T stop in terms of *time*. No one's ever going to drive into Davis from the suburbs because it's a tangle of surface streets; they'll take Rt. 2 to Alewife. Similarly, I'm not sure people would want to go to Union Square, because traffic there is a tremendous pain in the ass, even with the McGrath. I suspect major parking will only be needed near important (ie numbered, route- or highway-type) roads.

[enmascarado.livejournal.com]

I don't think something on the order of Alewife is needed, but I think something will be. My cousin used to drive from Winter Hill to Davis and park to take the T and I know people who do the same from Medford currently. You won't be getting people from a couple of towns over, but you will from the next town and within town. The people who live along the Mystic Parkway would likely drive to the nearest Green Line stop if it gets built along the Lowell Line. Having more stops will diffuse the problem, but I can still see my landlord having a hard time finding parking by their house if they put a stop in Gilman Square.

-Dan

[dmaze]

Having lived near Magoun Square, I think having better transit in that part of Somerville and near Medford would be a big win. There are reasonably obvious places along the Lowell commuter rail line to put rapid transit stops that would serve residential neighborhoods, and it's not that much of a stretch to put something in Ball Square. Yes, this is only a 15-20-minute walk to Davis, but having the newer stops makes Winter Hill be much more transit-accessible than depending on the 80/89/101 bus now.

All of the proposals I've seen have said glowing things about "West Medford", though, and I'm not convinced this is workable. I readily believe that the right-of-way has four tracks' worth of space from McGrath Highway to the Cedar Street interlocking. But from Ball Square to West Medford, the right-of-way is two tracks wide, and that's it. Where is the green line supposed to go here? (Fighting for track space with the Downeaster? Unlikely. :-) The "must pave world with bike paths" people also have their eyes on the Somerville part of this corridor.

Which brings an interesting question: my understanding is that the clearance above the decaying freight track here is just enough more than above the two passenger tracks to be important. Does Guilford still use this line for freight deliveries? (I saw a sand train there, once, three years ago.) Is there enough capacity elsewhere in the system ("on the single-track Haverhill line") if this line goes away for them?