This piece was inspired in part by Transit Matters’ Lowell Line report. They lay out some of the key reasons why Regional Rail to Lowell should be an easy win in page 2 of their report:
The busiest station is Lowell (1,522 inbound riders), followed by the park-and-ride at Anderson/Woburn (1,196) and the penultimate stop at North Billerica (911). Frequent all-day service would greatly increase ridership both from the suburbs and the inner segments of the line. In particular, the dense, walkable neighborhoods surrounding West Medford and Winchester Center have high ridership potential. Better all-day service and small investments in better land use would also increase ridership at Mishawum, which only has a few dozen daily riders but has 6,900 jobs within half a mile. Only the suburban park-and-ride stations like Anderson/Woburn, would remain as peak-dominated as they are today, serving people who would otherwise drive to Downtown Boston at rush hour.
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The line between North Station and Lowell is straight, fully double-tracked, and has a wide distance between stations, which allows for high speeds.
In fact, they understate the point about ridership: Lowell and Anderson/Woburn are among the top 10 stations across the entire system, and North Billerica is comfortably in the top 20 (out of over 130 stations across the network). Screenshot from the 2014 Blue Book for illustration — obviously the numbers have changed in the last decade, but not radically:
Those stations are prime targets.
And what’s more: Lowell is both Boston’s largest satellite and one of its closest (if we treat Worcester and Springfield as their own hubs):
Journey times today are already on par with a Green Line journey from Riverside to Haymarket. And unlike Brockton to the south, Lowell is already set up to handle terminating trains, and isn’t limited by capacity constraints like the Old Colony branches are.
The Lowell Line, maybe more so than any other line, could be transformative and truly make the Regional Rail concept sing, without even requiring electrification, and potentially be both the least expensive and the most bang-for-buck. It doesn’t require 100mph track speeds, and it doesn’t require going three rounds with the legislature in Concord. We could easily see transformation via a laser focus solely on:
- Fixing the fare equity problem
- Fixing and raising the platforms
- Fixing the pedestrian access at Anderson and Mishawum
- Running the trains more often
Item 1 is an Organization problem. Items 2 and 3 are Concrete, but are focused and limited in scope. Item 4 is probably a combination of all three types, but probably can see meaningful progress by Organization-level work alone. Focusing on these pragmatic changes will have immediate high impact and be transformational.