Musings on the Lowell commuter rail schedule

[dmaze]

Passing through North Station, I acquired a copy of the (ooh, glossy) 30 October Lowell commuter rail schedule. In addition to mentioning the Downeaster connection at Anderson/Woburn station and hinting at the seekrit Wildcat Branch trains to Haverhill via Woburn, the cover also advertises "Additional service to Anderson RTC". They're not lying: inbound trains leave Anderson/Woburn at 6:38, 6:58, 7:18, 7:38, 8:08 (express), 8:15, 8:30, 8:45, 9:15, and 9:35. That's often enough that it might actually be appealing to drive from outer suburbia to the 93/95 interchange and park there for the day; get stuck in traffic and miss "your" train? there's another one in 15-20 minutes.

I wonder how well this model will work for the T. It's certainly a lot of capacity (if each of those trains are 6-car trains with 100 seats per car). But it's also a good location, with Anderson having a direct exit off of I-93 just north of I-95, and lots of parking. It feels like the I-95 north corridor (Topsfield, Georgetown) doesn't have great commuter rail access, but coming in on 95 to 93 and parking might be saner than trying to get into the city on 93 at rush hour. Schedule says 27 minutes for the train ride, which feels long, though.

Still, if it was successful, there's already commuter rail service at or near a lot of other major road intersections (Route 128 station at I-95 south; Riverside/Auburndale/Brandeis stations near I-90/I-95; Littleton/495 station near MA-2/I-495; commuter rail practically goes through the I-90/I-495 interchange). So if this works out it's a potentially interesting model for MBTA commuter rail going forward.

(Amtrak's current published schedule has an inbound Downeaster leaving Woburn at 8:31, but not picking up passengers; I suspect that with the schedule change this will become either 7:45 or 9:00, since that's where there are spots in the schedule now.)

Comments

[narya.livejournal.com]

... I acquired a copy of the (ooh, glossy) 30 October Lowell commuter rail schedule.

Don't you have enough train porn already? geez!

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

"That's often enough that it might actually be appealing to drive from outer suburbia to the 93/95 interchange and park there for the day; get stuck in traffic and miss "your" train? there's another one in 15-20 minutes."

That's certainly how I read it sold in the Globe; I'm hoping that model works out.

What I'd like to see would be zipcars at the RTC so that people could take outbound trains and then toodle around.

[dmaze]

Are you going during rush hours? (The line otherwise has normal 60-120 minute commuter rail headway.) Since time *is* money for Zipcar, your one-way Zone 2 ticket to Woburn costs $3.50, or 23 minutes at $9/hour, will it be faster to change modes of transportation at Woburn than just get an extra hour of Zipcar? The tradeoffs don't seem so attractive to me.

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

"What I'd like to see..."

I meant in the theoretical, since I have a car, and avoid driving outbound at afternoon rush hour at almost all costs.

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

Only vaguely relatedly, I was just this morning (while riding the VTA Light Rail into work) discussing with Auros how when I was in high school there had been a proposal to bring back the old Greenbush line through my town (Cohasset). So I came in to work this morning and looked it up on the MBTA website and found out that the project is still going on! I had though it was killed. (My parents were sooooo against it, which kinda confused me since they're usually so much in favor of environmental things).

When that line gets built I SO want to be back living in Cohasset. *wistful sigh*

[dmaze]

I'm kind of surprised Greenbush got off the ground, actually, but it does seem to have. (Complete with tunnel beneath downtown Hingham.) With the T's waffling around projects like the Somerville and Arborway Green Line projects that maybe some people actually want, it seems odd that a commuter rail project that there was a lot of opposition to got pushed through. That area also doesn't feel like a gap in suburban transit coverage to me, but that's in part because I perceive MA-3 and the Plymouth commuter rail as running right up against the South Shore when in reality they don't.

On the other coast, I wonder if Santa Clara County will ever "fix" VTA light rail through Downtown San Jose. I'm not sure what that means, beyond "separate pedestrian and rail traffic". So behind on that...haven't ridden the Tasman West or Vasona lines at all now, not obvious I'll get to. :-)

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the closest stop on the Plymouth line to Cohasset is Quincy Center. At which point you might as well just get on the Red Line instead of the Commuter Rail. In order to actually get there from Cohasset without driving you have to take the 714 bus (not part of the MBTA system) to Hingham Center and then catch the 220 bus into Quincy Center. I spent a summer doing this to work at a non-profit in Cambridge before I had a car. And the 714 I don't believe ever actually enters the limits of Cohasset... I just happened to live on the side of town closest to Hingham and Hull so it stopped near my house. Cohasset is very snooty and probably thinks public transportation is "lower class". I think I even remember getting into that mindset myself. But I got over it!