Boston

Anondson
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Re: Boston

Postby Anondson » December 17th, 2017, 11:52 pm

Boston Globe the previous week did a week long examination on Boston’s reputation as the most racist city in America.

http://apps.bostonglobe.com/spotlight/b ... _FooterNav

I strongly recommend reading the entire seven stories.

DanPatchToget
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Re: Boston

Postby DanPatchToget » March 12th, 2018, 11:09 pm

In my non-expert opinion, as I don't know much about the geography of Boston and all of the old and historic structures in the area, they should just completely redo the Green Line from scratch. Having been to Boston three times and using the Green Line for all of them there are major problems with it. The rolling stock is low capacity (lower than our 3-car trainset, possibly even lower than a 2-car trainset), its not level boarding, the rails and tunnels are extremely old, most of the stations are extremely old and deteriorated, and with four lines merging into one there is a lot of slow traffic. I do like it above ground, as it mixes in well with the local areas. My sister lives on the C Branch, so every time we visit we use that line frequently.

If they can spend billions on the Big Dig and consider spending billions on a short extension of an existing line then they can consider completely redoing the Green Line.

talindsay
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Re: Boston

Postby talindsay » March 13th, 2018, 9:59 am

I think everybody agrees in principle that the Green Line should be completely replaced. The challenges to that are legion, but the two big ones are cost and disruption.

The Green Line would be insanely expensive to rebuild, at least in part because it can't easily be phased or segmented, and the several branches are deeply intertwined with the city around them. Besides the issues you point out, I'm sure the current trackbed would be unable to handle the weight of modern trainsets, and the loading gauge is probably also inadequate. That loading gauge issue is the real bugger of old systems: in London and several other old systems, it means building special trainsets to fit the existing tunnels and spaces, which adds a lot of cost and complexity.

The other, closely related issue of disruption is kind of hard to fathom. Even if they accept the current loading gauge constraints, this would involve a full rebuild of the track beds and all the stations, which would render the lines inoperable for months, if not years, but huge swaths of Boston depend on the line as their primary transportation mode. If they try to make the tunnels and trenches match modern expectations then it's that much more disruption.

It's not really a matter of *if*; something does have to be done. But I think that the full rebuild that's *really* necessary is going to make the Big Dig seem like a picnic. If they can find some ways to better signalize, automate, and speed up the current setup, they'll certainly do that first. While I like the charm of the current trams, they're completely obsolete. Switching to modern rolling stock would help quite a bit with loading and unloading, and might help a little with timing; I'm guessing the fact that they haven't done this means that no mass-built modern rolling stock is capable of operating within the system's constraints of weight and loading gauge.

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FISHMANPET
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Re: Boston

Postby FISHMANPET » March 16th, 2018, 1:55 pm

That's cool and all but looks like MBTA is buying new Green Line trains right now so idk

talindsay
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Re: Boston

Postby talindsay » March 17th, 2018, 11:20 am

Well, they're buying 28 new ones for the new extension through Cambridge - their current Green Line fleet is 488 cars per Wikipedia. And the 28 are being built by a Chinese company that's setting up a facility just for that order so they may be very custom. But regardless, that's a good sign.


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