Article is paywalled, can you summarize it?
It wasn't for me.
Maybe it just old age but I remember when Alwife was a brand new station. It's only 34 years old. Now it is up for demolition? I also remember when all the Quincy stations were built they didn't last very long either. I guess parking garages only have a 30 year life. I'm fine with tearing down those ugly garages and replacing them with housing and retail. But what a racket.
Garages may be ugly but they serve an important purpose for park and ride. The commuter rail on the North Side is fairly infrequent especially outside of rush hour and then you usually have to transfer to the subway anyway to get where you are going, so many times it was easier just to drive to Alewife and catch the Red line there.
Ha, ha, I lived in Arlington Center when the Red line extension and Alewife was being built. But my work has always been in the burbs.
As a park and ride, leaving the current station especially at rush hour is a nightmare.
You are correct, but the point of an infill station at Alewife is hardly for Red Line commuter rail transfers, but to add another much needed Boston direct line for the most congested area of Cambridge.
True, although for this to be a useful service for people wanting to commute into North Station there would have to be an increase in frequency over the current sparse service. I have heard proposals of electrifying part of the line either with overhead catenary or using battery electric, perhaps running shuttles as far as say Waltham. If you had service every 15 minutes at peak and 30 minutes off peak that would make it useful.
As mentioned above, there is already a plan to have half-hourly service at least through Lincoln with current equipment. That alone would be enough. Any increase beyond that of course requires electrification and EMU’s.
From what I see looking at Satellite View there might be room for a 3rd track at least in part, but definitely not 4 tracks.
Agreed. There are some locations wide enough for 4 tracks. There's even some old remnants of tracks, but I think the ROW is a far cry from practically hosting 2 tracks of Green Line, and 2 of purple line.
I wonder if there are any examples of other systems in North America or the world that have successfully implemented this hybrid battery/electric technology.
This sounds pretty muddleheaded on the part of MBTA. New Acelas are not going to release any locomotives to purchase. New Airos will, and that is at least 5 years away under the best of circumstances. The bottom line is they wish to continue to use their large collection of trailer coaches, that is why the interest in locomotives rather than EMUs which would be technically the more appropriate equipment. The usual "let's do a service using chewing gum and bailing wire" taken more often than not in the US.
What is being talked about are the Fairmount Line and Providence Line, both on the South side. So this will have no effect on the Downeaster which is on the North side. Of course ideally the whole system should be electrified, but somehow the richest country in the world does not appear to have the financial+political ability to do that anymore, to the surprise of many.
Yes that would make sense. The branch to Stoughton would be ideal for the battery electrics that could run under catenary as far as Canton Jct then use battery for the last few miles into Stoughton. They would have to wire up the station track at Wickford Jct. and maybe a few other places like Attleboro if that wasn't done already.
