Submitted by HRJafael t3_y88s92 in WorcesterMA
Just wondered what everyone's thoughts were.
What stations would be ideal to the north (Sterling, Clinton, etc.) and to the south (Auburn etc.)? Would something like that ever be feasible for Massachusetts if Worcester County continues to grow?
Ideally I was imagining an outer loop of sorts connecting the different commuter lines that come out of Boston.
> Maybe have a WRTA bus route between Union Station and the Fitchburg multi-modal station.
Nah. If the WRTA makes any changes, they should be cutting routes so that they're more condensed and focused on serving high frequency corridors in the city limits over sprawling geographies where ridership is lower. Get the city right first and immediate suburbs right first - high frequency service, rapid lanes, high traffic corridors.
The furthest out stops should be right now are places like Shrewsbury, Auburn, Cherry Valley, West Boylston, Holden, etc. Direct routes right into the city for commuters to have an option where they can avoid hopping on 290/190.
Once we actually get ridership and reliability established, then explore those connectors.
I can see an express bus route between the two if they worked it out.
Or be forward thinking and not wait till there’s an over abundance of demand and then do something about it.
Like our highways, there was t a huge demand from Oxford and Webster to have 395. But since it’s been here the towns along it have increased population well above those who don’t have access.
Building rail lines ahead of time helps “city/urban planners” establish and organize burbs or urban areas ahead of time so we don’t end up with the disasters that are the up and down, left and right mess that are Worcester streets.
I've taken the MART shuttle from Union Station to Fitchburg, it's great and $5--just only runs a couple of times a day. Underutilized service.
There used to be a rail line that ran between Fitchburg and Worcester, creatively called the Fitchburg & Worcester Railroad. Currently, two sections have been converted into rail trails: the section between Fitchburg and downtown Leominster is the Twin Cities Rail Trail, the the section between Sterling center and Sterling Junction (right near the Sterling/ West Boylston line on Route 12) is the Mass Central Rail Trail. The section between Pratts Junction and Sterling Center is partially intact, but also partially built over, particularly around I-190. There are tracks in place between Leominster center and Pratts Junction, as well as between Sterling Junction and downtown Worcester. Both are currently owned by CSX. Rebuilding that rail is possible because of how the rails-to-trails laws work, but would be very expensive (see the South Coast Rail project, which is currently reactivating a long-defunct rail right-of-way). Without a greater need, I think a rail route between Fitchburg and Worcester will be a tough sell.
>Without a greater need, I think a rail route between Fitchburg and Worcester will be a tough sell.
Worcester to Providence would be a much easier sell and I don't see that happening anytime soon, either, even though with respect to tracks at least everything is in place.
There is a company called the Boston Surface Railroad that has been trying to get Worcester to Providence commuter service started for several years now. They even acquired an old FL9 locomotive, which has sat on a siding along 146 for a while now. Unfortunately, it looks like they're still having a hard time getting it off the ground, though I hope they succeed.
That always struck me as kind of a fly-by-night operation. There's a long thread about the situation here:
https://railroad.net/boston-surface-railroad-worcester-providence-commuter-rail-t160242-750.html
As one commenter mentions the odds may have been better back when the Providence & Worcester was an independent locally-owned operation. But they got acquired by the Genesee & Wyoming which is a huge international RR holding company conglomerate and I expect they're not interested in sharing their right-of-way for anything less than serious $$$ up front.
In the ideal it seems like it would be a good route for DMUs, or perhaps even BMUs, someday. But not sure if the US regulations with respect to operating lightweight units on the same tracks as freight have changed, yet..the FL9 is a museum piece, hope some good Samaritans save it before it rusts away completely.
Thanks for the history lesson! I was about to look it up myself, but research on mobile is a pest.
I really wish we had our trains back.
>I really wish we had our trains back.
At one time circa 1950s, 1960s you could take an overnight sleeper train from NYC to Portland ME, it followed a kind of weird route, leaving the Northeast Corridor in Providence to head northwest through Woonsocket to Worcester, then running northeast to Lowell & Lawrence and on to Portland.
From there you could connect to Montreal and St. John NB by rail also, I believe if you had a sleeping car room and there was enough demand sometimes they'd just transfer the whole car to another railroad, and you didn't need to change trains yourself.
There were also regular commuter trains between Boston and Albany and Boston and Hartford, though the Boston to Hartford route was never that popular and didn't last past the 1950s.
I grew up near a part of the old Boston-Albany grade that was lost in a flood back in 1955. I spent many years running horses up a couple miles of leftover track bed, and that's what spawned my interest in railroad history, and also local history.
The section of the railroad that I lived near was destroyed by a flood in 1955. Unfortunately, the railroad never could have been rebuilt after that flood. The flood devastated several towns, and many lives were lost. The river literally moved itself, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers came and built the dams and the watershed that we have now. It was proven quite necessary. At least twice in my lifetime, I've seen the high water mark changed. If that dam wasn't built, I don't even want to think of the losses the local area would have sustained.
You can come visit and find old remnants of what was the Boston-Albany line if you know where to look. There is still some active freight railroad in the area, but it's a shadow of what it used to be.
Most of the rail near my house is now a rail trail. There are many fragments of rusted rails, rotten ties, old cinder trackbeds, steel trestles, and even some stone bridge abutments.
If you walk along the trail in the early morning fog, let your mind fade into black and white, breathe deeply, and let your imagination go, you can see the old steam locomotive coming through the old stone bridge by the river....
Yes. We need commuter rail everywhere we can get it.
Unfortunately, most of our rails have already been built, abandoned, and torn up. America will never give up its dependence on automobiles.
Look into railroad history. It's a deep rabbit hole to fall into, but it's fascinating.
I want the trains back.
Train lines are hideously expensive to build, particularly if there's no right of way already established. There's always people who will not sell part of their property to allow a train line to be run through it.
Bus lines are much much less expensive, and can run over the existing roadways. Until there's a huge commuter need for this type of service, it just doesn't make sense to invest in it.
The idea of city building though is to create infrastructure first and for demand to follow it. At least in better countries.
American way is to play constant catch up with problems due to lack of foresight.
You know that's not how state and city governments think. Look at the Big Dig. $21billion spent to make car travel faster and easier. Very little improvement to the rail service. In a lot of ways the big dig just pushed the congestion further into the suburbs, with 93 and the mass pike being regularly at a standstill.
So yeah, 'proper' rail service is politically unfeasible.
If you study the highway map, you will see the capacity of the highway system to the south is lower than any other sector. This puts more traffic on the pike. The planned northeast corridor route would have balanced this a little better...but here we are. Google maps with the traffic layer on illustrates this status on a daily basis. The big dig fixed a ton of access issues around the city. There has been capacity issues on 93 south for decades prior to the project and they continue to worsen.
Definitely a bus line between the Leominster and Union Station commuter rail stations.
That would be a colossal waste of money.
Yup. But a consistent bus would also work
I'd be happy with a bus line. I made the trip from the Burg to Worcester for a couple of years, and would have loved that to be via bus.
I think they need one that extends from Boston to Albany, quite frankly. Or at least springfield.
Obviously not a decent replacement, but one thing I find funny is that if you buy a ticket (far in advance) from Springfield to Boston on the Amtrak lakeshore limited, you can get from Worcester to Boston cheaper and faster than on the commuter rail (I believe it was $9 last time I checked)
We definitely need a frequent Springfield - Boston rail link
How does that work? Just hop on when it stops to discharge in Worcester and pretend you got on in Springfield if they ask for a ticket? You can't book from Worcester to Boston on the Amtrak site directly...
In my experience they don’t mind. For instance, coming back from Chicago I was supposed to get off in Boston but they let us get off in Worcester. Since you’ve paid for the ticket I mean you’re not doing anything wrong - though it is actually not possible to book a ticket from Worcester to Boston through amtrak so it is a bit of an exploit
I don’t necessarily think that is warranted but a service to Lowell, or even Lawrence, that stops in leominster from worcester makes way too much sense.
Commuter rail? No. Light rail? You have my attention.
There wouldn’t be enough ridership to justify that. Just ask the WRTA. also the land purchase that would be needed would be in itself prohibitive
MA needs to build a public transit system that serves the whole damn Commonwealth, but they won't.
They should at least get the fuck on top of making solar and wind power the only energy sources for the state, first though. And a plan for making gas cars illegal and electric vehicles accessible to replace them and the infrastructure to support them.
But they won't unless we all make them.
Won't happen. Source: I work there
Yeah! A bus service at the least. I’ve thought of having some sort of busing, mobile service between the two. I work in Worcester so I can relate to this issue
I'm not 100% opposed to the idea, but I think I-190 is pretty serviceable as a means of getting between Worcester and Leominster.
If I had to pick between using a commuter rail to go there, or driving, I probably would drive, more often than not.
[Now - Worcester and Providence? That would be something I'd be a little more on-board with.]
Providing people with the ability to get out of their cars is the point. Owning an automobile shouldn't be necessary to be a full participant in society.
Still - I think you have to pick your battles. Worcester and Leominster are within fairly close proximity to each other. I think there are other cities in the immediate area that would be better targets for this sort of proposition, in terms of the utility. (Providence)
Begin by linking up the 'big' cities, and from there, you can start to expand further.
What a tremendous waste of money that would be.
I think people from Worcester should be given as few ways to easily leave the city as possible, I certainly don't want them walking the streets of my town
The everyday maintenece of the T was put off in order to expand the system. Enough.
Watchfull_Hosemaster t1_isyrid7 wrote
No, I don't think that it's needed right now. They should work on building out the WRTA bus system first and have a connector between the WRTA and MART systems. Maybe have a WRTA bus route between Union Station and the Fitchburg multi-modal station.
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There needs to be enormous demand to justify a massive project like a new commuter rail line.