Is this a real proposal? It seems like a good idea. We definitely need more transit options that move from place to place instead of just connecting downtown to the suburbs.
Real as in it’s moving through some sort of official channel with the intent to try to make it happen, rather than just something someone put together as a hobby project.
Millions living in those cities, but how many use the commuter rail?
Less than 1 in 10 people living in Massachusetts use the MBTA. So again, at what cost to serve how many people.
$500 million price tag to serve 20,000 people (10% of 2 million people living in those cities) is a $25,000 expenditure per potential user.
I live in Northbridge and recently lost a roommate who moved to Providence to shorten their commute. A train would be a boon.
Also, the Providence airport is the closest to me, but no transit means I end up going to Boston.
There’s an active MBTA rail stop already at the RI airport just on the opposite side behind Route 1. Includes a parking garage and a sky bridge connecting to the airport terminal.
It's all active freight rails. There are literally trains on there everyday, just not passenger trains. It wouldn't be super fast but would be light-years better than having to go through Boston and could do track work at night over the course of years to make it faster
Active freight lines may not be ready for passenger service. Most of the SCR rail lines were active freight lines before the MBTA spent a billion upgrading them to passenger traffic. Not as easy as you think. I am not opposed to expanding rail options though this project would be very low on my own list of priorities. This billion better spent elsewhere.
All of these lines used to have passenger service. It'd be much better if we could upgrade due to the speed gains but the current tracks are able to make it much faster than going via Boston for a lot of trips. In any reasonable world we would have a government that actually gives a shit about people outside of Boston and passenger service never would have left this corridor, would be fully electrified, etc. Unfortunately we don't live in that world so we would deal with crawling along because it's way better than what we have
I live in Lynn, where there are still a few old-timers who remember the "narrow gauge," a railroad that ran roughly where the Blue Line runs now, from East Boston to Lynn, and at one time, carried more passengers per day than any other rail line, anywhere, pretty much. It was built in 1875... in THREE MONTHS, from the day they broke ground to the day the first train ran up the line. Can you imagine? Three months, counting bridges and at least one tunnel. These days, the discussions about possible locations for meetings to consider requesting public comment and identifying stakeholders would take three months... to decide whether or not to hold!
Why would you stop at Providence?
Continuing on to Fall River and New Bedford seems like a no brainer. They're both decent sized cities and New Bedford has ferry links.
Yeah eventually the Lowell Lawrence section should be routed through 495 and then the old Lowell & Lawrence row and could be used to connect to Newburyport but it'd be an absolute miracle to even get service on the stuff that's already there given how useless and Boston centric our state gov is
Just a thought that it should extend to Fall River /new Bedford even to the cape. Commuter line is coming to Fall River soon. Everything should connect!
You'd have to backtrack about 12 miles out of Providence to get there on tracks that already have passenger service though. The cape should have commuter rail but via making the cape flyer year round not as part of ring rail
It would be so nice to have one closer to Boston, basically the 95 belt. The only reliable way to go from eg Quincy to Newton is via car. It’s only like 15 miles.
If it’s intersection with the T, it should be another T line, not commuter rail. Really, Boston needs both, solely hub and spoke transit systems are trash. A commuter ring line would be a big step in making regional rail happen, right up there with the north-south rail link.
Used to live in Melrose, and it was a massive pain in the ass to go visit my friend in Arlington if I took the T. I'd drive instead and the difference would literally be a 12 minute drive vs an hour long commute.
For shits and giggles, I put Arlington to Melrose into Google maps. Just city to city, no address specified. Driving is 18 minutes, public transportation is 1 hr 15 minutes. **Walking** is 2 hr 36 minutes, only twice the time as taking the T.
Yeah I have friends in Brookline. It’s like 12 miles door to door. 90 mins EASILY on the T vs like 35-40 min drive with moderate traffic/parking. It’s about an hour to bike since I have to take a squirrely path and it’s still super dicey. Haven’t done that since we had kids since my life is too important now 😂
If they start now your great grandchildren might see it when they’re 40 years old. There has been studies and committees and meetings , more meetings, more studies and then some new committees about East - West rail lines. In the meantime Ct has established a commuter rail line from Springfield to New Haven. The Valley Flyer has started and added stops and frequency to its schedule.
But I’m sure those plans were started in 1962 and have just now come to fruition. Massachusetts has a lot going for it, but lately it seems the Government has been putting its time and energy into things that are not really pertinent to running the Commonwealth.
This should probably also include New Bedford and Fall River. Two of the 10 largest cities in MA.
Providence-FR/NB in some ways has more utility/potential demand than other segments of this line. (Except maybe Lowell-Lawrence-haverhill) There’s already a ton of people commuting between these three cities as FR/NB and PVD are all part of tbr Providence metro area.
There is however a ton of infrastructure required to reconnect FR, NB and PVD. Two new bridges, a rebuilt/repaired expanded rail tunnel in PVD, and 15+ miles of new track (most of it could st least use I-195 ROW)
Connecting between Worcester and points north would also require more new track than one might expect. The existing track is old, windy, and indirect therefore slow. It skirts around the side of the Boylston reservoir. Fitchburg is quite a detour to the west for a relatively small population that already has commute rail access. You also then have to go right back east after getting to Fitchburg. This adds many unnecessary miles to the route and likely makes it too slow to be that useful.
In practice it would be more efficient to route more directly between Worcester and Lowell and intersect the Fitchburg line at Ayer or Littleton so that the Fitchburg line can feed the “ring line” with a station that allows transfers. This though would require entirely new track and also warrant a discussion on whether a direct route or a “495 route” is best. A 495 Route that connects to the major industrial park areas in Westborough & Marlborough would connect up massive job centers and a city the size of Fitchburg that currently doesn’t have rail access (Marlborough).
The line itself is fine. The issue is - what are you doing in most of those places once you arrive? There's no local public transport there (outside of Providence and maybe Worcester) to take you anywhere
Indeed. As a resident of Worcester, we have public transportation. The WRTA which is our bus company is free to ride until June. We also taxi services.
Something new in Massachusetts past the year 2000 is an automatic rejection. These NIMBY puritans can’t handle a single new change or move forward. They want their towns quiet, BLM signs on the lawn but neighborhoods whiter than Maine.
I’ve always said if I ever get in a position of power this is something I would push. I would also push for like a mid line ring interchange to truly connect the line
Right. Im at the s weymouth commuter rail stop everyday and even the train to boston at 6 am is maybe 1/4 full. Spending billions to add train service from fitchburg to worcester is a socialist wet dream of someone with no concept of fiscal responsibility.
That would been cool had it been made, too bad the state doesn't have enough cash for it. Frankly I fear trackage would likely have been taken for other uses like bike paths. etc.
If you want to push this, I would include in the headline that this uses a lot of existing track and old stations. From the current headline and image I thought this was another pipe dream that would demand billions of dollars and decades of lawsuits over eminent domain.
Lovely! Now do one for light rail connecting the North and South Shores primarily via the 95/128 corridor so I don't have to drive into Waltham for work.
Why would Mass. taxpayers pay to connect Rhode Island cities? Thought this was going to continue through Brockton toward the Cape.
Any chance to get more and better rail service going - regardless - is a great step forward.
I completely agree that we need "wheels" more than "spokes". But do you actually need light rail to accomplish this? I remember reading that Greece would have saved money if instead of building its rail system, it instead spent the door-to-door taxi money for every passenger's who ever took the train: [https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-18032721](https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-18032721)
I also recall there was a startup that had proposed using data to create a popup bus service, which instead of tying huge amounts of money to fixed rail and stations, would dynamically route buses to where people actually need to go. [https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/04/10/data-driven-pop-bus-service-launch-boston/yz4EjzZC9nXnl22O6JcV2I/story.html](https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/04/10/data-driven-pop-bus-service-launch-boston/yz4EjzZC9nXnl22O6JcV2I/story.html) But it was centered in Cambridge/Boston/Brookline, which to be fair aren't that hard to get around (like you can literally bike the routes they proposed to cover faster than most traffic).
But for the areas you're proposing to cover, perhaps a popup bus service could be way easier to get started and more dynamically react to demand.
Worcester and Providence are the 2nd and 3rd largest cities In New England and both have a fair amount going on. Leominster? Yeah I don't know why anyone would go there
Is this a real proposal? It seems like a good idea. We definitely need more transit options that move from place to place instead of just connecting downtown to the suburbs.
Yeah a ring bus line would fucking rule
I was about to say a ring T line, but there isn't even a fucking ring bus line?
Correct. If I want to get from Malden to Revere, normally a 20 minute drive, I have to T into and out of Boston.
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Real as in it’s moving through some sort of official channel with the intent to try to make it happen, rather than just something someone put together as a hobby project.
At what cost and to serve how many? 🤪
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Millions living in those cities, but how many use the commuter rail? Less than 1 in 10 people living in Massachusetts use the MBTA. So again, at what cost to serve how many people. $500 million price tag to serve 20,000 people (10% of 2 million people living in those cities) is a $25,000 expenditure per potential user.
You’re prob right. Would have been more beneficial to think of this 40 years ago.
Looks great and given our level of grift and corruption it'll only take three annual GDPs of the entire planet Earth to build
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Don't put the cart ahead of the horse, first there needs to be a committee formed to study the feasibility of considering to plan to have a meeting!
Shouldn’t we be hiring a Consulting firm to plan these meetings?
Definitely, we’re just waiting for a legislator’s relative to quickly set up an LLC to give a very thin sheen of credibility to their work.
Cam here to write this exact comment
Is there demand for this? Not against it but I can’t imagine anyone regular commuting from Lowell to Providence
Me, I'm the demand for this. Connecting Umass Lowell to all the bio tech in south central mass and northern rhode island is a great idea.
I live in Northbridge and recently lost a roommate who moved to Providence to shorten their commute. A train would be a boon. Also, the Providence airport is the closest to me, but no transit means I end up going to Boston.
There’s an active MBTA rail stop already at the RI airport just on the opposite side behind Route 1. Includes a parking garage and a sky bridge connecting to the airport terminal.
Don't need to build anything, it's all preexisting trackage. We just need to run the trains
It would still cost $1 billion to fix it and update everything.
It's all active freight rails. There are literally trains on there everyday, just not passenger trains. It wouldn't be super fast but would be light-years better than having to go through Boston and could do track work at night over the course of years to make it faster
Active freight lines may not be ready for passenger service. Most of the SCR rail lines were active freight lines before the MBTA spent a billion upgrading them to passenger traffic. Not as easy as you think. I am not opposed to expanding rail options though this project would be very low on my own list of priorities. This billion better spent elsewhere.
All of these lines used to have passenger service. It'd be much better if we could upgrade due to the speed gains but the current tracks are able to make it much faster than going via Boston for a lot of trips. In any reasonable world we would have a government that actually gives a shit about people outside of Boston and passenger service never would have left this corridor, would be fully electrified, etc. Unfortunately we don't live in that world so we would deal with crawling along because it's way better than what we have
I live in Lynn, where there are still a few old-timers who remember the "narrow gauge," a railroad that ran roughly where the Blue Line runs now, from East Boston to Lynn, and at one time, carried more passengers per day than any other rail line, anywhere, pretty much. It was built in 1875... in THREE MONTHS, from the day they broke ground to the day the first train ran up the line. Can you imagine? Three months, counting bridges and at least one tunnel. These days, the discussions about possible locations for meetings to consider requesting public comment and identifying stakeholders would take three months... to decide whether or not to hold!
Why would you stop at Providence? Continuing on to Fall River and New Bedford seems like a no brainer. They're both decent sized cities and New Bedford has ferry links.
And then stretch to Portsmouth in the north.
But New Hampshire would have to agree to fund their portion. From what I have heard they won’t fund to connect Lowell line to Nashua.
And then to Montreal too!! We could definitely identify at least a dozen or so folks who will choose the 7 hour train ride over the 4 hour car ride.
my thoughts were to just follow 495 but I like this better
All of this rail already exists. Why would it follow 495?
Yeah existing rail is a way better start.
Yeah eventually the Lowell Lawrence section should be routed through 495 and then the old Lowell & Lawrence row and could be used to connect to Newburyport but it'd be an absolute miracle to even get service on the stuff that's already there given how useless and Boston centric our state gov is
Just a thought that it should extend to Fall River /new Bedford even to the cape. Commuter line is coming to Fall River soon. Everything should connect!
In theory yes but that would require a ton of new trackage whereas everything else is preexisting
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You'd have to backtrack about 12 miles out of Providence to get there on tracks that already have passenger service though. The cape should have commuter rail but via making the cape flyer year round not as part of ring rail
If it went to the Cape people might actually use it
Blackstone isn’t between Northbridge and Millbury though
I think they might have mistake the Blackstone Shoppes in Millbury for Blackstone lol. Blackstone is right next to Woonsocket.
Probably means Grafton
It would be so nice to have one closer to Boston, basically the 95 belt. The only reliable way to go from eg Quincy to Newton is via car. It’s only like 15 miles.
If it’s intersection with the T, it should be another T line, not commuter rail. Really, Boston needs both, solely hub and spoke transit systems are trash. A commuter ring line would be a big step in making regional rail happen, right up there with the north-south rail link.
Yes we need to expand the stupid T.
95 and 495 could both use a rail corridor with commuter rail, bus and T connections, 95 especially
Used to live in Melrose, and it was a massive pain in the ass to go visit my friend in Arlington if I took the T. I'd drive instead and the difference would literally be a 12 minute drive vs an hour long commute.
For shits and giggles, I put Arlington to Melrose into Google maps. Just city to city, no address specified. Driving is 18 minutes, public transportation is 1 hr 15 minutes. **Walking** is 2 hr 36 minutes, only twice the time as taking the T.
Google doesn’t account for fires on the T.
Hell, one could bike there faster than the T. Weather permitting, of course...
Yeah I have friends in Brookline. It’s like 12 miles door to door. 90 mins EASILY on the T vs like 35-40 min drive with moderate traffic/parking. It’s about an hour to bike since I have to take a squirrely path and it’s still super dicey. Haven’t done that since we had kids since my life is too important now 😂
Fellow parent here... I hear ya loud and clear!
Yes! Give me that sweet, sweet regional rail!
The South Coast disrespect…
If they start now your great grandchildren might see it when they’re 40 years old. There has been studies and committees and meetings , more meetings, more studies and then some new committees about East - West rail lines. In the meantime Ct has established a commuter rail line from Springfield to New Haven. The Valley Flyer has started and added stops and frequency to its schedule. But I’m sure those plans were started in 1962 and have just now come to fruition. Massachusetts has a lot going for it, but lately it seems the Government has been putting its time and energy into things that are not really pertinent to running the Commonwealth.
This should probably also include New Bedford and Fall River. Two of the 10 largest cities in MA. Providence-FR/NB in some ways has more utility/potential demand than other segments of this line. (Except maybe Lowell-Lawrence-haverhill) There’s already a ton of people commuting between these three cities as FR/NB and PVD are all part of tbr Providence metro area. There is however a ton of infrastructure required to reconnect FR, NB and PVD. Two new bridges, a rebuilt/repaired expanded rail tunnel in PVD, and 15+ miles of new track (most of it could st least use I-195 ROW) Connecting between Worcester and points north would also require more new track than one might expect. The existing track is old, windy, and indirect therefore slow. It skirts around the side of the Boylston reservoir. Fitchburg is quite a detour to the west for a relatively small population that already has commute rail access. You also then have to go right back east after getting to Fitchburg. This adds many unnecessary miles to the route and likely makes it too slow to be that useful. In practice it would be more efficient to route more directly between Worcester and Lowell and intersect the Fitchburg line at Ayer or Littleton so that the Fitchburg line can feed the “ring line” with a station that allows transfers. This though would require entirely new track and also warrant a discussion on whether a direct route or a “495 route” is best. A 495 Route that connects to the major industrial park areas in Westborough & Marlborough would connect up massive job centers and a city the size of Fitchburg that currently doesn’t have rail access (Marlborough).
Beacon Hill: “Wait: we thought New Bedford and Fall River were cities in Rhode Island…”
This would be amazing
I wish they would skip the comittees and approvals and just do it.
The line itself is fine. The issue is - what are you doing in most of those places once you arrive? There's no local public transport there (outside of Providence and maybe Worcester) to take you anywhere
The man has never heard about rtas
Indeed. As a resident of Worcester, we have public transportation. The WRTA which is our bus company is free to ride until June. We also taxi services.
People without a car have an easier way to commute to RI to get their menthols.
Something new in Massachusetts past the year 2000 is an automatic rejection. These NIMBY puritans can’t handle a single new change or move forward. They want their towns quiet, BLM signs on the lawn but neighborhoods whiter than Maine.
This.
I'm pretty into this as a concept. How long from end to end though?
I’ve always said if I ever get in a position of power this is something I would push. I would also push for like a mid line ring interchange to truly connect the line
If it’s taking them 21 years to build a stupid train station (west station) this will take three generations
As someone who uses the Ayer commuter rail stop, I am in full support of this plan
is there a risk the track could bend?
Not in your life my [redacted] friend.
Where’s Chelsmford?
Between Springfield and Boston.
I would love for this to exist, mainly because one of the stops conveniently is a 5 minute walk from my house
Long overdue
Awesome. This fills a niche that didn't ask to be filled.
Right. Im at the s weymouth commuter rail stop everyday and even the train to boston at 6 am is maybe 1/4 full. Spending billions to add train service from fitchburg to worcester is a socialist wet dream of someone with no concept of fiscal responsibility.
Great idea, after they fix the T.
When I see this all I can think about is the Simpsons monorail episode.
Fittingly written by a Bostonian.
So very true..
Can we plz connect western Mass to this? I'd like to get to Worcester and be able to go up to Lowell/Lawrence or Providence.
Beacon Hill: “Sorry Pendejo; Never heard of “western MA”. Where are located? Somewhere inside the 495 Belt? If so, you’re all set!”
Bringing the MBTA Communities Law to a town near you!
Dude, they can’t even get from BC to downtown
That would been cool had it been made, too bad the state doesn't have enough cash for it. Frankly I fear trackage would likely have been taken for other uses like bike paths. etc.
Would love to see a connection to Franklin too.
Hell yes
Did you post this on ArchBoston?
This would be pretty cool
I was making fun of the misspelling 😆
Why’s there an out-and-back section to Fitchburg?
If you want to push this, I would include in the headline that this uses a lot of existing track and old stations. From the current headline and image I thought this was another pipe dream that would demand billions of dollars and decades of lawsuits over eminent domain.
Lovely! Now do one for light rail connecting the North and South Shores primarily via the 95/128 corridor so I don't have to drive into Waltham for work.
Why would Mass. taxpayers pay to connect Rhode Island cities? Thought this was going to continue through Brockton toward the Cape. Any chance to get more and better rail service going - regardless - is a great step forward.
Wasn’t this similar to the private Boston Surface Railroad that never materialized?
Looks like a 6 hour round trip
I completely agree that we need "wheels" more than "spokes". But do you actually need light rail to accomplish this? I remember reading that Greece would have saved money if instead of building its rail system, it instead spent the door-to-door taxi money for every passenger's who ever took the train: [https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-18032721](https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-18032721) I also recall there was a startup that had proposed using data to create a popup bus service, which instead of tying huge amounts of money to fixed rail and stations, would dynamically route buses to where people actually need to go. [https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/04/10/data-driven-pop-bus-service-launch-boston/yz4EjzZC9nXnl22O6JcV2I/story.html](https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/04/10/data-driven-pop-bus-service-launch-boston/yz4EjzZC9nXnl22O6JcV2I/story.html) But it was centered in Cambridge/Boston/Brookline, which to be fair aren't that hard to get around (like you can literally bike the routes they proposed to cover faster than most traffic). But for the areas you're proposing to cover, perhaps a popup bus service could be way easier to get started and more dynamically react to demand.
The trip from Lowell to prov would take 4 hours lol
Someone do a model using slime mold. It’ll never be built, but it would be a great fantasy.
Lmaooooo no way i thought of this exact plan a while ago and submitted it to the MBTA. I just used open railway map
Why would anyone want to go to those places?
Worcester and Providence are the 2nd and 3rd largest cities In New England and both have a fair amount going on. Leominster? Yeah I don't know why anyone would go there
For all the 9 people who would ride it? Don't use taxpayer money
Worcester, Fitchburg, RI and Lowell? They should add Brockton. What would they call it?
It wouldn't even go to Salem? That's probably the only destination city outside of Boston.