Author Archives: Garrett Wollman

A further examination of the Agricultural Branch for Regional Rail

Posted on 2018-11-12

About a month ago, I posted the most recent of several posts about using the former Agricultural Branch Railroad, the CSX-owned freight line which runs from Framingham to Clinton, for passenger service under Regional Rail. I made a Google Maps … Continue reading →

Posted in Transportation | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Three Reasons the Commonwealth Needs to Commit to Regional Rail Now

Posted on 2018-10-27

After writing that very long slide deck, I thought it was worth boiling down my conclusions for policymakers to three important points: 1. There is a large investment of some sort required in commuter rail infrastructure over the next ten … Continue reading →

Posted in Transportation, Uncategorized | Tagged , , ,

A comprehensive Regional Rail slide deck

Posted on 2018-10-26

Hard to believe it’s my 400th post on this here blog, but given recent trends it’s not hard to believe that it’s about transportation rather than computer networking, figure skating, sliding sports, travel, or (most of all) cooking. I’ve spent … Continue reading →

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Interlude: Physics of train acceleration

This past week I’ve been working on a slide deck that people can use to present the Regional Rail concept to non-transportation-nerd audiences, and one of the things that I wanted to include, just as an aside, was a couple … Continue reading →

Aside | Posted on 2018-10-20 | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Restoring passenger service to the Agricultural Branch

Posted on 2018-10-15

I’ve written here a few times in the past about the prospect, under Regional Rail, of operating passenger service on the former Agricultural Branch Railroad through Framingham. Twitter user @h100gfld convinced me to take another look, and I identified a … Continue reading →

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Next steps for Regional Rail

Posted on 2018-10-04

At the October 1 meeting of the MBTA’s Fiscal & Management Control Board, there was an extended discussion of capital investment planning. The presenter, in the capital projects department, noted that in past years, the MBTA had been unable to … Continue reading →

Posted in Transportation | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Service delivery standards for Regional Rail

Posted on 2018-10-01

Relax, this is not going to be another 2,500-word opus, just a few thoughts on how the MBTA’s service delivery standards need to change for Regional Rail. The Regional Rail concept encompasses a significantly expanded rail service over existing MBTA … Continue reading →

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Rolling stock for Regional Rail: What and how to buy

Posted on 2018-09-30

If you’ve been reading these posts at all in the past weeks, you’ll have noted that I’m very high on the JKOY Class Sm5 electric multiple unit trainset (pictured above if you’re using a desktop browser) used on Finnish railways … Continue reading →

Posted in Transportation | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

Two outlines of a Congestion Charge District for Boston

Posted on 2018-09-28

In today’s exercise in transportation blogging, I’m writing about congestion charging. Boston is an old and congested city, and suffers a great deal from air, water, and noise pollution as a result of automobile traffic. Unlike congestion pricing, which is … Continue reading →

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The cost of implementing Regional Rail

Posted on 2018-09-26

I just finished watching the video replay of Monday’s MBTA control board meeting, which was mostly about buses and bus drivers, and I found very little notable about it other than the fact that the MBTA’s Chief Engineer hates catenary, … Continue reading →

Posted in Transportation | Tagged , | 1 Comment