Tag Archives: south coast rail

In the weeds: South Coast Rail

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Sometimes I take some issue with CW’s headlines, but I like this piece overall. (I wrote it. Suggested headline was “to build SCR, look to the roads.”)

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A few in-the-weeds notes:

The route straight along the right-of way in Norton looks nice, but it has a few issues. It passes quite near to several homes, and would probably raise NIMBY issues. It is mostly owned by the town of Mansfield, which has a sewage treatment facility in Norton near the Taunton Line, and uses the ROW for a sewer pipe, which might have to be relocated within the right-of-way. There are some very low-angle grade crossings which would require extensive roadwork to make safe (or require grade separation). Extending down the 495 median to bypass this makes a lot of sense.

This post assumes electrification, although the original reason for the army corps to demand electrification was something about crossing the Hockomock Swamp. Still, electrification is the only way to allow high speed operations from Boston to Taunton, and between Taunton and Fall River and New Bedford. The maximum curvature on this portion of 495 is less than 1˚, which would allow 110 mph operation. Amtrak Regional trains reach Mansfield in 25 minutes from South Station, so even making stops at Mansfield and Myles Standish, an electrified Commuter Rail train could make Taunton in under 40 minutes.

Not only is the Taunton Station located closer to downtown using this route, it is also located adjacent to the main GATRA transfer point. Of course, fixing GATRA would help; Miles is not particularly enamored with their service. It would also be adjacent to some land which would be primed for TOD, and would likely increase in value if it were 40 minutes from Downtown Boston.

Myles Standish Industrial Park is sort of the wild card here. I am considering that having passenger rail access would be a net benefit, and that providing a right-of-way would not be particularly costly. The three buildings which would require takings would cost about $10 million; the additional land taking would add a bit more. I’d propose a viaduct to access the industrial park and cross the main roadway (Myles Standish Blvd)—which the current ground profile makes relatively easy—before running in the middle of Robert Treat Paine Drive, which could be relocated on to either side of the new rail right-of-way. It is at least 240 feet between any buildings in this corridor, the western portion of which has an overgrown and disused freight spur. A two-lane roadway could be built on either side with room to spare. The crossing of John Hancock would require an engineering decision of whether to build it at-grade or on a short overpass.

The map shows the path through Myles Standish, with the path of a new Robert Treat Paine Drive show in dashed lines on either side of the right-of-way.

The “station area” would allow access to most of the industrial park (although better bicycle/pedestrian access would help) and may allow zoning changes and higher density. There is no housing in the park itself, but some nearby. Here’s what a profile of the roadway might look like, and there is plenty of room for all of this. (And, no, I’m not sure you need an eight-foot-sidewalk plus a two-way cycletrack on each side of the roadway, nor two lanes of traffic and parking for a road which currently carries 1500 vehicles per day, but the room is there. Also, imagine the streetlights in the middle are catenary poles and wire.)

via Streetmix

There are two potential issues building in the 495 corridor. The first is environmental. 495 crosses through the Canoe River Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC), a good map of which can be found here. This would raise some permitting issues, particularly since 495 crosses the Canoe River twice, to assure that steps were taken to mitigate any impact to the surrounding environment. The ACEC was designated in 1991, long after 495 had been laid out and built; it’s safe to say that if the highway were built today, it would be built with a smaller footprint which would preclude its easy use as a railroad right-of-way.

The second issue is that 495 has sloping concrete bridge abutments. This would require some construction to demolish portions of the concrete, shore up the remaining concrete, and provide a trackway for rail service. An example is here on the corridor, here is a situation in Maine where a slope was changed to a retaining wall to allow a highway widening. This would be a minor issue, although the rail bed might have to be undercut slightly lower than the highway to provide clearance for any freight and electrification. There are a total of five over grade bridges along the highway; the only new rail bridges required would be the two aforementioned crossings of the Canoe River.

Next, a proposal for the Mansfield Station. Mansfield is one of the busiest Commuter Rail stations, with more than 2000 daily passengers and some trains picking up or dropping off as many as 400 passengers. By boarding at fewer doors and forcing passengers to climb stairs, this adds several minutes to each train passing Mansfield Station, potentially adding 10 minutes to the run time from Providence to Boston for busy trains. The station is on the STRACNET—the military rail network—route to Otis AFB (or whatever it’s called now) and requires wider freight clearances at stations (you can find a map of STRACNET toggling around here) and that is cited as a reason high-level platforms can’t be provided.

The idea would be to rebuild Mansfield Station as a three-track, two-platform station. The existing eastbound track (the number 2 track, “inbound” towards Boston) would remain in place, and a high-level platform would be built just east of the station house. The existing westbound track (the number 1 track, “outbound” towards Providence) would also remain in place, with a high-level platform built where the platform exits today. Two additional tracks would be added. The first would be a passenger track adjacent to the platform, branching off of the NEC east of the station. This would continue on as the southbound SCR track, eventually rising up and over the NEC to access 140 and then 495. (The northbound track would not have to cross the NEC and would merge in to the existing eastbound NEC track near West Street.) The second track would be a realignment of the Framingham Secondary, which would parallel the platform before merging in to the SCR and NEC west of the station, providing a wide freight route. An additional connection could be built between the NEC and the Framingham Secondary east of Mansfield if a wide route was needed there.

Sketch of the proposed layout of the Mansfield station, with red lines showing new track, and yellow showing platforms.
Sketch of route map showing the general track configuration from Mansfield to 495 (interlockings and small connections are omitted).

The original map (see the top of the page) proposes a station near the Xfinity Center. The concert venue is less-used than it once was (apparently at its peak, it hosted 80 shows annually, today it is more like 36) but it still causes traffic and today can only be reached by car (or, I guess, a cab or TNC from Mansfield). A park-and-ride station at Route 140 in Norton would provide a good park-and-ride location for people on 495 or who live in Norton and currently use the Mansfield P&R (with the additional benefit of reducing the number of people driving to downtown Mansfield just to park). The site there formerly contained an indoor soccer facility and has been vacant for years; there’s a plan to build a hotel there. MassDOT owns the three acres closest to the highway which could be used as a park-and-ride. As for the Xfinity Center, a train station would be about a 15 minute walk from the venue, mostly through the existing parking lots. Given the time to walk to a far-away car and get out is often longer than that, taking the train might be a good option for concert-goers.

Finally, another plug for a direct ferry connection in New Bedford with a station adjacent to downtown. Getting to the Vineyard today requires a drive to Woods Hole (or in some cases, New Bedford, Providence or elsewhere) but since the majority of travel is via Woods Hole, it requires crossing the Cape Cod Canal, in traffic, a two-hour drive from Boston or more at peak times. With parking, taking a shuttle to the ferry terminal and the ferry itself, travelers need to budget four hours to get to the Vineyard. With a 51 minute travel time to New Bedford from Boston and an hour-long ferry ride this trip could be turned on its head, with two-hour travel times from Downtown Boston. Considering that there are millions of ferry trips made each year, and that the majority of visitors to the islands don’t bring a car, this would provide a much more convenient trip to the island and would probably garner high ridership, while removing vehicles from the Cape Cod bridges at peak times.

Siting Rail Stations: New Bedford

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The South Coast Rail plan between Boston and New Bedford and Fall River—should it ever be built—raises a lot of hackles because it costs a lot of money and its benefits are hard to quantify.

(What I’d add is that in addition to current commuters getting a significantly faster trip to Boston than the current highway system, Fall River and New Bedford could be very attractive “gateway cities” with good “bones”—old, attractive housing stock, walkable downtowns—and natural amenities—namely, the Atlantic Ocean—but are currently just a bit too far from the major employment center in New England to take advantage of that. Thus, they can’t provide affordable housing for people with jobs in Boston. One hour trip-time rail service would change that equation dramatically. New Bedford is a lovely town with a lot of vacant land. But traffic renders it isolated from Boston. We need to connect it to the rest of the state.)

But what I want to address today is the siting of the rail station in New Bedford, which—if it is built where the plan currently shows it—would be a major planning failure.

Here’s a raw screenshot of New Bedford: where would you put a train station?

Just looking at the layout of the city, it’s pretty easy to spot the downtown, and the surrounding densely-populated neighborhoods. The rail corridor runs to the right of the roadway east of downtown, so it would make sense to site it somewhere east of downtown, just based on this. Let’s take it a logical step forwards: here is that same map with some annotation of major traffic generators, attractions and transportation nodes:

Oh, that makes it even easier. There’s direct access to the ferry terminal with service to Martha’s Vineyard, so instead of having to drive to Woods’s Hole across a clogged Canal bridge, people going to the vineyard could take a train from Boston (or the 128 Station, or even the park-and-ride stations further north along the line) to New Bedford, walk on to a boat, and have a city-to-island trip of 2 hours even. The Whaling Museum would be a stone’s throw away, so it could catch tourists from Boston taking the train to see the attractions (this happens, if there’s service). And it turns out that Downtown New Bedford is really quite nice, with very pleasant and walkable narrow, cobbled streets extending several blocks inland (the city was developed 3/4 miles inland by 1893, although some has succumbed to some pretty dreadful urban renewal), much like Portland, Maine’s Old Port.

Now, where is the proposed station? In about the stupidest place possible.

Should we build a station near downtown, a quick walk across a city street, and adjacent to the ferry terminal? Or half a mile north of downtown, where you have to cross a highway to get there, and nowhere near the ferry? What does MassDOT think? They think that the second option is better. To channel John McEnroe: you cannot be serious. And much like the umpire’s call which led to his outburst, this is a terrible decision.

No. Wrong.

The state’s idea is that the Whale’s Tooth Station—as it’s called–will spur economic development in the currently-industrial area nearby. That may be true. In that case, build a station there, and then have trains terminate downtown. But the zoomed-in image of a site plan for a station in a city like New Bedford should never have an arrow with the words “to Downtown”.

It gets worse: part of the reason they’ve selected the site is that it allows development of a parking structure to serve both ferry passengers and rail passengers. Of course, ferry passenger would have to walk half a mile, or probably take a bus shuttle, and many rail passengers would be driving because the station is really only easy to get to by car. Build it in the right place and you obviate the need for the parking entirely: people driving from further afield can use the King’s Highway station just off the highway a few miles north, and passengers from New Bedford can walk, or take a taxi, or a bus, to the station downtown. Those ferry passengers, instead of driving downtown, can park in King’s Highway, or Taunton, or Westwood (or take a train from Downtown Boston), and take the train to to the ferry.

Why two downtown stations a mile apart? Because New Bedford’s population is concentrated along the coast, and two stations allow easy access without a car. Census tracts immediately adjacent to the coast in New Bedford have population densities in the 5,000–8,000 range, but much of the area is commercial and industrial. Just inland, population densities range from 12,000–18,000 with triple-decker lined streets much like other New England cities—as dense as Boston, Cambridge and Somerville. A city like this should not be served solely by a single car-centric station.

And the multi-modal ferry connection is icing on the cake: current plans call for 75 minute train times, but some documents suggest that sub-60 minute times would be attainable. Given that the plans are to electrify the corridor and that it is, for the most part, arrow-straight—if built to 110 mph standards, the 16 mile tangent section between Taunton and King’s Highway could run in 10 minutes, station-to-station—this should be easy for an limited-stop train; the 1:16 time includes eight stops between 128 and New Bedford, so a summer Friday evening train could easily make the run in an hour. The ferry time from New Bedford to the Vineyard is an hour, although a faster vessel could probably cut that to 40 minutes. With a few minutes to transfer, a two-hour trip to Vineyard Haven would be attainable. This is faster than the current driving-plus-ferry time, which doesn’t include a traffic buffer, and half an hour to park or line up for the ferry. It’s probably just as fast as flying, when you factor in getting to the airport and security. You could get on a train at South Station at 5 o’clock and be on the Vineyard by 7. Try doing that today on a Sunday morning in March, let alone a Friday in July.

All of this would work … if you build the right connection (and, no, I’m not the first to make this argument).

In the 1990s, the T made massive siting errors with the stations in Plymouth, Newburyport and others, which suppresses both ridership and economic development. The as-proposed station location in New Bedford wouldn’t be quite that bad. But it could be much, much better; and New Bedford is a much bigger city than Newburyport or Plymouth. Luckily, we have time to fix it, and do it right.