9:10 turn the minute man rail trail into a rail trail rail 😂

Would totally love to see a video like this on Toronto!

Considering that the communities west of the western extent of the commuter rail (Fitchburg & Worcester) contribute funds $$ to the MBTA, and have for many decades, the recent proposals to extend those rail passenger service to & trough the western half of the state should be approved & built.

Good point about the wide stations possibly being used for express busses. Sad we have never seen this. i recently posted a POV video for part of the G line.

Please improve your articulation.

I agree with your idea that Metro systems are primarily to shuttle people between the suburbs and the core. I think one alternative to the "Bloop" could be to have trains start at Eisenhower ave and route them towards National Harbor and beyond. Those trains would then reach Old Town station and continue towards Franconia Springfield. This would mean that there would be no metrorail service between Old Town and Eisenhower Ave, which is probably an unpopular idea. However, you still have the massive park and ride complex in Huntington that many people could use to commute to DC via National Harbor. And vice versa. You could have alot of people commuting from Maryland and park at Oxon Hill and take the metro to Eisenhower ave. Then, you could route the silver line through Columbia Pike, Pentagon, the Yellow Line bridge and eventually to its terminus to Largo on a separate tunnel.

For Downtown, we should keep Theatre District station, and run the commuter trains there in addition to the LRT lines that go there. An additional Theatre District DCPA station would be built under the DCPA complex, and we would still have that downtown loop you mentioned, just with the bottom of it being my proposed Theatre District corridor. When doing that, be careful not to put it under any active theatres. Don’t wanna disturb a performance of Mamma Mia when a Silverliner V rips through at full speed.

7:58 Route 0 gets its numbered like that because we use a grid system, and Broadway is internally a 0-point, being what determines East and West roads. All of our bus routes get their numbers based on the internal number assigned to their primary road, hence the Broadway bus getting route 0.

With the Downtown proposal, would Theatre District station survive the change, or would we no longer use it?

Some things I’d do differently: • If the downtown rail link was built, the Orange Line would basically have no purpose due to following existing railways for almost the entirety of it’s route. I would have the Pink Line take over the Orange Line’s old alignment between North Station and Oak Grove, while the Orange Line would receive an entirely new route north of North Station, through Charlestown, Chelsea Station where it would interchange with the Silver Line SL3 and the Newburyport/Rockport Line, and Everett, terminating at Square One Mall in Saugus. • Not a light rail shuttle for the short segment between Needham and West Roxbury. Instead some kind of local shuttle bus service along Green Plain Ave & Needham Street. There is not much in the area except for low-density suburban sprawl and a bus service would be less costly and still have the capacity. If it really was needed, it could kinda just have articulated buses and if it was really needed, dedicated lanes. • I’d have the Nubian-Waterfront transit line be a subway instead of a light rail and instead of having the people mover, extend the subway from the waterfront area via the airport to the Blue Line’s Airport Station, which I’d rename Airport Interchange to not cause confusion. A new bus loop would be built at Airport Interchange Station with one line of the expanded BRT system terminating there, instead of going to the waterfront. This way the line would not have to run in the middle of Washington Street. I would also have the line extended along Washington Street to Forest Hill to interchange with the Orange Line, creating a new rapid transit line that follows almost the entirety of the old route of the Washington Street Elevated.

Orange line is fine ending at forest hills,but split it in half with the south and north parts meeting at downtown crossing,north trains use the existing platforms,and the ones from the south end on lower platforms with lift acess to the north,and the south section becomes free for the 1st month,along with the north

Green line should be extended to ANDERSON WOBURN using the freight line.....with Green line , commuter rail connections added at Wdegemere, West Medford, Winchester, Mishawum could be reopened as a parking lot for commuters and a green line station. - and ending at Anderson Woburn with a connection to the commuter rail with the big park and ride lot there. Perhaps more EVehicle charging statyions could be added or a designated Evehicle charging lot for both teslas and non teslas at Anderson Wobrun as well.

why couldnt they use the median of route 2 and extend it alongt her oute 2 corridor from alewife ending at Hanscom AFB??? bedford? (the Red line) you already have the media for route 2 you could use for the rail line and it would be minimal distruption to the towns. plus you can build garages and parking facilities right off the highway with exits to and from on the highway

I know you're not really a traffic guy but as a resident I'd love to see you cover the atrocity that is the intersection of I76, I25, I270 and US36. In particular, 270E clogs up every single morning and I stg it's an actual case of just one more lane being all that's needed

I like the ideas. I don't know DC well, but if you're using Montreal as an example - what's made the REM successful is that most of it is elevated (not buried). The cost and feasibility will depend partly on how that shakes out but I think it's really solid. Better than the Bloop. :-) I'd love it if you just focused a bit more on the route map as a whole. You fly through close ups really quick - it would be good to get a better sense of the whole route - especially for those not as familiar with DC.

I love your stuff. You are smart and dedicated. Be confident. Take the time and re-record your v/o if you can if you flub it. It sounded like you were getting flustered around @4:00. I like the Swiss adage from the last video: "Organization before Electronics before Concrete." I'd add Expansion to the list too, whether it is expansion of service (more trains, more tracks, more bridges on same right of way, if there was space, depending on the situation - wouldn't work so much in this case but it would help). Likely Org - Electronics - Expansion - Concrete. Something like that. Tho I don't want to get into a fight with the Swiss. LOL

I broke down laughing when he said subways were every 5-10 minutes

Nice vid glad you mentioned Monroeville

I just want to say that this is great, some really neat ideas in here!

Great vid and analysis. Yes, straighten the Boylston curve. I never have my earplugs - so just resort to using my fingers. Can you submit this video and your resume to the MBTA HR people?

You missed MBTA, which literally calls itself Commuter Rail. A good meme for MBTA would be some disaster or fire.

Yay Skytrain!!

Yay you uploaded after 7 months!

It would be awesome if you did one of these for Philadelphia SEPTA! We used to have a strong streetcar network that was eventually slashed and much of our subways don't actually provide transportation throughout most parts of the city.

very cool

More doors are a good idea, but I'm not sure they can be easily or affordably retrofitted to existing train cars.

I think at a minimum the MBTA system definitely does NEED an orbital route, the yellow line in your plans. But IMO the second of importance is a Fitchburg-Worcester (pronounced 'wor-ster' or 'wistah') link along rt190, as well as the North-South Stations link, because currently that's a Red-Orange/Green transfer rather than a direct route. Also, as long as the airport still gets free access to the subway system, almost anything would be an improvement over the silver line. (even though I take advantage of that free ride only once in a blue moon)

Colfax is a crucial commercial vehicle corridor through the city. It’s the only street that explicitly allows commercial vehicle traffic, and as such, heavy vehicle traffic is quite high throughout. This would pose a challenge to any road diet/centrally aligned train system. My suggestion would be to use 13/14th streets for trains or shift commercial vehicle traffic to those streets. Having trains and commercial vehicles on the same stroad sounds like a recipe for disaster. The colfax corridor desperately needs improved transit though. It’s crazy that it’s only being served by busses that run in the same lanes as normal traffic.

Oh, man. Train service on Little River would be an absolute game changer. That's one of the busiest and most underserved bus corridors I've experienced. The bus I often take only runs once every 30 minutes and is almost always very late because of the crazy traffic, so I've had a chance to watch a LOT of buses go by, and they're always packed like sardine cans. Even when you've got various buses going by every couple of minutes, they're all full. It's insane. And the two buses that actually go past Annandale? Forget about it. I'd even take rabid bus going from like King Street to Fair Oaks Mall, with dedicated bus lanes. Hell, at this point, I'd take no change to service, but with dedicated bus lanes. That alone would be a huge step up. But a train? That would be amazing!

The expansion needs to focus on Allegheny county first before any thought of reaching out further . People moved out there to avoid paying taxes so let them fund their own connections

Australian here - Melbourne's City Loop is not a great example of this type of solution in my opinion, as it had a number of drawbacks and was overbuilt. They also stuffed up bits of the construction so that one of the lines can ONLY run one direction around the Loop without conflicting with other lines, and the Loop design tried to put too many lines/branches into one Loop tunnel. This Loop design was actually very peaky and commuter-focused. In an Australia context I would suggest Sydney is a better example with its City Circle line that does the same job in a better way. But I disagree this is the best solution - I think Denvers suburban rail should through-run onto the busier southern LR branches and these should get platforms raised and be converted to suburban rail standards with some improved grade separation. This would give you faster speeds and the eficiency benefits of through-running, which is my major criticism of the Melbourne City Loop concept - you showed on the map you highlighted that there are 7 main lines running into the city of Melbourne from the West and roughly the same from the east (not including branches), as many of these as possible should be through-run rather than looped as looping has hefty disadvantages too (slower journeys to the last station on the loop before resuming running in the suburban direction, more confusing for passengers, more construction & maintenance needed for less benefit, more difficult to add additional services).

Awesome. Wish people like you were making decisions for us

1:45 as a Virginian, this is true.

howdy! absolutely loved this. just curious, do you have an xml/kml version of the new map, and if so, could you provide a download link? thanks!

amen to getting more frequent light rail on the commuter lines closer to the city! One train every two hours is basically useless.

So, when do we storm the RTD and City Council meetings to get this approved?

The idea of getting the property to build a line down Colorado blvd would bankrupt a state 4 times the size of Colorado.

Pittsburgh resident here. I would make a 5 lines Line 1 (PGH International to Monroeville) , the line would go through downtown , the growing east end , Wilkensburg and finally Monroeville. Stops in Green Tree , Carnegie , and Robinson Line 2 (South Hills village to Cranberry) It would extend the current line run Parallel to I-279 , I-79. Stops in West view , Ross , Wexford. Line 3 (Downtown to Penn Hills) Stop in Oakland , Squirrel Hill , East Liberty , Lawrenceville. Line 4 (North Shore to Ambridge). Runs along rt. 65. Stops in Bellevue , Avalon , Ben Avon , Sewickley. Line 5 (rt. 837). Station Square to Mckeesport. Help revitalize the 837 area. It will never happen. Area is not big enough. Just my dream.

TriMet with WES: “hey, you ever hear of light rail?”

Have you ever heard of the Indigo line proposal? I think that'd be a good thing to add in some way if you ever redo this

I lived car-free in Boston for a decade, and I fell in love with the T. It may be a hot mess, but it’s _our_ hot mess.

Is there a link to the google map of the proposed loop and lines?

As a person who constantly railfans the Hartford Line in CT and MA, I can’t decide if CT Rail copied Amtrak or if it’s the other way around cause both rail lines use cab cars.

Make sure to send this to the Massachusetts governments

When do you think that the blue line expansion Will happen

any chance at part 3?

Big problem with proposed underground rail lines: the earth here is _impossible_ to work with. Anything underground costs so, so much more money here.

Why would you straighten the bolyston curve? The almost 90 degree turn is one of the sharpest turn in US north

The Geary corridor should of been constructed instead of the central subway because Geary has high ridership levels.

It's my dream to one day take a train from Washington in the south, all the way to down town in a single trip. Even if they simply extended the T past south hills to peters it would be a massive improvement.