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UniWheel t1_iy40vz4 wrote

Reply to comment by CriticalTransit in Progress on the Mass Central Rail Trail in Waltham. Ultimately will connect Boston to Northampton by Exit_127

>Unfortunately the Worcester/Springfield route does nothing for people in the NW part of the region.

Because it goes west to Albany by way of Pittsfield rather than North Adams?

> At this point I would settle for a bus once an hour.

It looks like the bus from Albany to Springfield currently runs just three times a week.

Yes, there's a feedback loop there - service so infrequent as to not really be usable means no one even thinks to check if transit is possible for a given trip, which means low ridership and no justification for running the service.

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CriticalTransit t1_iy5ggfa wrote

The problem with existing service is it requires going through South Station or Back Bay which burns a lot of time. If you live in Somerville, for example.

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UniWheel t1_iy5gxkm wrote

>The problem with existing service is it requires going through South Station or Back Bay which burns a lot of time. If you live in Somerville, for example.

That's inevitably true of transit routes - they're built where the peak demand is.

We're yet to even get our act together to have one cross state rail service that runs more than at most once a day and that only as part of the Boston split of the water level Chicago service.

Actually building one beats musing about a second.

Note that if you try to drive from Somerville to Northampton you're probably going to take 90 south of the Quabbin rather than route 2 north of it, which is to say, you'll be roughly paralleling the train.

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