Speaking as a Providence resident: Pawtucket begins where the comfortable-walking-distance-to-the-Providence-station ends. Pawtucket and Central Falls are languishing. Providence, generally speaking, is more affordable than Boston to live in (which drives a lot of commuter traffic to Boston), but the presence of Brown is steadily driving rents up in the suburb closest to the Providence station. Pawtucket and Central Falls should be the affordable residential suburbs of Providence, but they're not (or, at least, not so much as they should be). Commuter rail to these towns would help revitalize them and ease some of Providence's present growing pains.
The thrust of commuter rail into southern Rhode Island has failed because it has not responded to the needs of residents. In Wickford, where I grew up, very few residents take advantage of the weekday commuter lines running from the new Wickford Junction Station, since very few residents there commute to Boston. There are, however, plenty of retired folk who would love to take a weekend trip to Boston via train, but are stymied by the station being closed on weekends. If weekday commuter rail is to ever succeed in southern Rhode Island, it will not be in the short term.
> Very few residents take advantage of the weekday commuter lines running from the new Wickford Junction Station.
I wanted to take MBTA commuter rail to Boston on a Wednesday afternoon to see the Red Sox play the Giants at Fenway Park. There were no trains leaving Wickford between 1:25 and 5:30 pm, so I had to park at Wickford Junction, take a bus to Providence, and walk three blocks to the Amtrak station to catch a train. What good is a beautiful station if there is a 4-hour gap between trains on a weekday?
The point in this particular case is that Rhode Island has become a bedroom community for Boston, so improving transportation links between the two can make RI even more attractive to discretionary residents (who come here because they want to, not because they can't find anything better -- which is a byword for higher-income residents), who can stimulate both residential and commercial growth by their presence.
It's a reasonable suggestion. Another alternative is that RI could promote business growth to lure away some MA or CT talent. But whether they want to be a swankier, higher-income commuter suburb or a commercial-heavy exurb they really should do something.
The opposition of those two choices underscores how bizarre American regional divisions are. The Boston area covers parts of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire and all of Rhode Island. Rather than attempting to improve the entire region, the available options are zero-sum: RI would cannibalize the business or income tax base of other parts of the Boston area. This, in turn, encourages the MA and CT governments to do what they can to recover that loss. If there were one regional government, that could be avoided by focusing decisions about infrastructure, housing, services, and taxation on the actual region's health.
The point in this particular case is that Rhode Island has become a bedroom community for Boston
Yeah. Some friends moved from Cambridge to Providence, and in Providence they're a five-minute walk from the train station. They can be at South Station in 45 – 50 minutes. They live in a nice, newly-constructed two-bedroom apartment that's a little more than half the cost of their previous, cramped Cambridge apartment.
What a blessing of a problem to have a double-track high speed rail system passing through an underutilized station. For comparison to the Bay Area, the distance from Providence to Boston is about the same as the distance from Berkeley to San Jose. That route is also served by Amtrak, but on a neglected single-track, wooden-tie, local-stop service that's scheduled to take 1h33m, but almost always takes longer. Amtrak from Providence to Boston only takes 40 minutes and is generally reliable. Regional transportation in the northeast is so far beyond what we have in the Bay Area.
I was talking to a friend about this. Why does California not have a better public transportation system build? Especially in the Bay Area? I know cities like LA were designed for cars but I've gotten used to public transportation in the Northeast (DC/Philly/NYC/Boston) and its surprising how much west coast cities lack in that department.
I used to commute from Great America to Oakland Coliseum on the Capitol Corridor, and it took much less than 93 minutes.
Anyways BART to San Jose will help with that, but considering the tiny Warm Springs Extension is a year late don't get your hopes up for that Berryessa Bart commute.
There are a few issues with getting these train stations built though:
A. The state of Rhode Island currently reimburses the MBTA for all operating expenses south of the RI/MA state line, and they just funded a commuter rail extension south of Providence to attract intra-RI commuters to take transit to Providence instead of driving. However, even providing incentives such as free parking, ridership at these stations has pretty drastically missed expectations [1], and the trains are scheduled to take the same time as the bus takes in rush hour traffic. The commuting situation/parking isn't bad enough in RI like Boston or New York to make the train obviously beneficial time/money wise, when you lose schedule flexibility of when you can go to/leave work.
B. The site of the proposed train station only has two passenger tracks and is located in a high speed (125 MPH or 150 MPH) zone. Starting service to the station is not as simple as just refinishing it and having trains stop there: Amtrak (which owns the tracks) would probably insist that the state of Rhode Island quad-track through the station so that its trains can pass a stopped commuter train.
C. It's difficult to get transit projects funded near state borders, because of the mindset of "we paid for it and they all go work in the other state!".
Providence is a pretty fast-growing city, so it's possible that in 5 to 10 years the traffic situation makes a much more compelling case for people to make use of transit, but additional commuter rail service there is a kind of hard sell.
You would only need to add a third track, since traffic will be predominatntly inbound in the morning and outbound in the evening. That's how Chicago does it. Express trains on the center track, locals on the outer.
That said, even adding a third track is a substantial investment.
One thing I tripped over here is just what is a phototube in this context? https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2016/08/S... "Phototubes protrude from an abandoned building at the Conant Thread-Coats & Clark Mill Complex, in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)"
My own knowledge, Google, and Wikipedia have all failed me here. My best guess is it's old slang for pneumatic transport tubes, but I can't say I've ever seen anything quite like what's shown in the picture.
Vacuum transport tubes. I seem to remember them being called photo tubes at the bank branch we went to when I was a child. That was a small part of a childhood I'm still recalling odd fragments of here and there. Thanks for prompting the recall.
I love rail as a user, but the cost is … a bit insane.
> In July, the feds awarded $13.1 million, just shy of the $14.5 million the state was seeking … The grant application estimates it would serve 519 riders daily, within the range of other Boston-area commuter rail stations. But most riders would be drawn from busy stations nearby, resulting in a net gain of just 89 new passengers.
Surely we could just give $73,600 to each of the 89 people to pay for cab fare, and save the other half of the money?
I suspect your calculation ignores that grant money isn't a yearly stipend, so after the $73,600/person runs out those people are back where they started.
This should help a lot. When I worked in the rail automation biz (for a 100B multinational) the internal heuristic for people transport worldwide was two heavy commuter rail lines were the equivalent of a 24-lane highway all parameters being equal (which they never are: there were tons of planning formulae brought to bear when making projections).
Tokaido Shinkansen carries twice as many passengers so this agrees with your post end assuming that two rail lines each have two tracks each. Note that this is the most extreme example, most railways do not carry this capacity.
Lots of very intelligent critical analysis applied to these are related issues - if only some of that was applied to roads and encouraging driving. Roads are showered with money with no thought of consequences. This is not in the slightest hyperbolic. Transit projects have to claw tooth and nail for scraps.
Here's some street view of the mills mentioned. Each building the initial viewport is looking at is part of the mill complex, but ones behind the camera are usually not. You can back out of streetview to see where it is on the map.
$40m for one new station and associated signalling? That's not much less than the cost of reopening the entire 19-mile, 8-station Ebbw Vale line in Wales [1], even though British railway projects are notoriously expensive [2].
UK: Sutton Coldfield has a population just under 100K and has a manned station [1]. Pretty middle class area, no abandoned mills or anything, embedded in a larger conurbation up in the millions, fairly high density. On the Redditch to Lichfield line via Birmingham.
Smethwick: working class area with an immediate population of around 25k you get an unmanned station [2] with trains each half an hour in both directions (Walsall to Wolverhampton via Birmingham).
Both lines used for commuter traffic, and both stations built a long time ago (Lichfield line was actually early 20th Century). I suspect the economics all come down to use levels and density. What they call 'ridership'. In a lot of neighbourhoods in the West Midlands that are further away from the radial railway lines you are looking at a bus ride then train and a bus ride the other side - as I gather from the OA the present situation is in the settlements mentioned.
Yea, it is great for Rhode Island business to make it easy for talented people to commute to another city in another state to help their businesses grow. I bet they are thrilled their taxes fund that.
The alternative view is that without rail it would be harder for those individuals to bring their high pay checks back to Rhode Island to spend their money in the local economy.
RI receives a substantial sum of taxes (income, property, sales), and the residents also support (and grow) other RI businesses. It's a pretty good deal, when the realistic alternative is that those individuals will neither live nor work in RI.
A better idea yet, force employers to allow all employees who can, to work from home. It's bad for the environment, wasteful of resources and additional stress (illness/cancer) for commuters.
Shifts the burden from the planet and people to the company as they learn to manage employees remotely. Which is where the balance should be set at.
[+] [-] jswrenn|9 years ago|reply
The thrust of commuter rail into southern Rhode Island has failed because it has not responded to the needs of residents. In Wickford, where I grew up, very few residents take advantage of the weekday commuter lines running from the new Wickford Junction Station, since very few residents there commute to Boston. There are, however, plenty of retired folk who would love to take a weekend trip to Boston via train, but are stymied by the station being closed on weekends. If weekday commuter rail is to ever succeed in southern Rhode Island, it will not be in the short term.
[+] [-] chmaynard|9 years ago|reply
I wanted to take MBTA commuter rail to Boston on a Wednesday afternoon to see the Red Sox play the Giants at Fenway Park. There were no trains leaving Wickford between 1:25 and 5:30 pm, so I had to park at Wickford Junction, take a bus to Providence, and walk three blocks to the Amtrak station to catch a train. What good is a beautiful station if there is a 4-hour gap between trains on a weekday?
[+] [-] niftich|9 years ago|reply
It's a reasonable suggestion. Another alternative is that RI could promote business growth to lure away some MA or CT talent. But whether they want to be a swankier, higher-income commuter suburb or a commercial-heavy exurb they really should do something.
[+] [-] __derek__|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jseliger|9 years ago|reply
Yeah. Some friends moved from Cambridge to Providence, and in Providence they're a five-minute walk from the train station. They can be at South Station in 45 – 50 minutes. They live in a nice, newly-constructed two-bedroom apartment that's a little more than half the cost of their previous, cramped Cambridge apartment.
[+] [-] tossaway1|9 years ago|reply
They tried that and it was a bit of a disaster...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/38_Studios
[+] [-] honkhonkpants|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] om42|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] melling|9 years ago|reply
Ok, technically we do have 18 miles of high-speed rail.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_high-speed_railway_l...
[+] [-] ZanyProgrammer|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rchowe|9 years ago|reply
A. The state of Rhode Island currently reimburses the MBTA for all operating expenses south of the RI/MA state line, and they just funded a commuter rail extension south of Providence to attract intra-RI commuters to take transit to Providence instead of driving. However, even providing incentives such as free parking, ridership at these stations has pretty drastically missed expectations [1], and the trains are scheduled to take the same time as the bus takes in rush hour traffic. The commuting situation/parking isn't bad enough in RI like Boston or New York to make the train obviously beneficial time/money wise, when you lose schedule flexibility of when you can go to/leave work.
B. The site of the proposed train station only has two passenger tracks and is located in a high speed (125 MPH or 150 MPH) zone. Starting service to the station is not as simple as just refinishing it and having trains stop there: Amtrak (which owns the tracks) would probably insist that the state of Rhode Island quad-track through the station so that its trains can pass a stopped commuter train.
C. It's difficult to get transit projects funded near state borders, because of the mindset of "we paid for it and they all go work in the other state!".
Providence is a pretty fast-growing city, so it's possible that in 5 to 10 years the traffic situation makes a much more compelling case for people to make use of transit, but additional commuter rail service there is a kind of hard sell.
[1] http://wpri.com/2015/05/18/south-county-rail-ridership-far-s...
[+] [-] ams6110|9 years ago|reply
That said, even adding a third track is a substantial investment.
[+] [-] jbpetersen|9 years ago|reply
My own knowledge, Google, and Wikipedia have all failed me here. My best guess is it's old slang for pneumatic transport tubes, but I can't say I've ever seen anything quite like what's shown in the picture.
[+] [-] R_haterade|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|9 years ago|reply
With jobs moving back to inner cities, the radial structure of commuter rail works again.
[+] [-] wtbob|9 years ago|reply
> In July, the feds awarded $13.1 million, just shy of the $14.5 million the state was seeking … The grant application estimates it would serve 519 riders daily, within the range of other Boston-area commuter rail stations. But most riders would be drawn from busy stations nearby, resulting in a net gain of just 89 new passengers.
Surely we could just give $73,600 to each of the 89 people to pay for cab fare, and save the other half of the money?
[+] [-] madgar|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nickbauman|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gaul|9 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail#Automobiles_an...
Tokaido Shinkansen carries twice as many passengers so this agrees with your post end assuming that two rail lines each have two tracks each. Note that this is the most extreme example, most railways do not carry this capacity.
[+] [-] andys627|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coredog64|9 years ago|reply
[0] https://goo.gl/maps/8UFfq737jgF2
[+] [-] niftich|9 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8821836,-71.3947742,3a,75y,2...
[2] https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8794315,-71.3946096,3a,75y,3...
[3] https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8832275,-71.3979953,3a,75y,1...
Also, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conant_Thread-Coats_%26_Clark_...
[+] [-] Doctor_Fegg|9 years ago|reply
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebbw_Valley_Railway [2] http://www.transportblog.com/archives/000492.html
[+] [-] guard-of-terra|9 years ago|reply
[1] By European standards that could as well be a railway hub.
[+] [-] keithpeter|9 years ago|reply
Smethwick: working class area with an immediate population of around 25k you get an unmanned station [2] with trains each half an hour in both directions (Walsall to Wolverhampton via Birmingham).
Both lines used for commuter traffic, and both stations built a long time ago (Lichfield line was actually early 20th Century). I suspect the economics all come down to use levels and density. What they call 'ridership'. In a lot of neighbourhoods in the West Midlands that are further away from the radial railway lines you are looking at a bus ride then train and a bus ride the other side - as I gather from the OA the present situation is in the settlements mentioned.
[1] https://www.google.co.uk/maps/uv?hl=en&pb=!1s0x4870a5a8c7157...
[2] https://www.google.co.uk/maps/uv?hl=en&pb=!1s0x4870bd5d2f177...
[+] [-] planetmcd|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] epa|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacalata|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] millamox|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] graycat|9 years ago|reply
Usually in the US, passenger rail needs significant subsidies. A bit tough to think that subsidies are a good path to "a better economy".
[+] [-] honkhonkpants|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Noos|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BuckRogers|9 years ago|reply
Shifts the burden from the planet and people to the company as they learn to manage employees remotely. Which is where the balance should be set at.
[+] [-] WalterBright|9 years ago|reply
This is usually where good intentions go awry. A more efficacious approach is to find ways to make it worthwhile for employers to do so.
[+] [-] cageface|9 years ago|reply