> With NSRL, I'd rather double track the commuter rail line from Assembly to oak Grove than extend the orange line. That would provide connectivity to all the southern commuter rail lines. Some of the route (especially the bridge over the Mystic River) already has 3 orange line tracks, so you could turn the third track into a commuter rail track instead of rebuilding the bridge. You'd mainly need new construction from about Wellington to Oak Grove. Still expensive, but probably somewhat comparable to all the grade separations you'd need to build to extend the orange line. > >

The triple tracking was done during the mid 1970's because the Haymarket North Extension had plans to go to Reading. My suggested extension was basically just this old extension proposal. Basically just send Haverhill Line trains up the Lowell/Wildcat Line instead and you can reclaim all of the Haverhill Line ROW to Reading for the Orange Line. Makes a triple track a useful thing for express trains. Grade separations can be handled by small tunnel segments. Fun fact, the OL already does this to pass under the old Medford Branch around here. If only we hadn't let the Medford Branch ROW disappear, because that too could have been a nice 1 or 2 station Branch of the OL. Maybe a Spring St station plus a Medford Sq station. Plus there's an old station from the Medford Branch on Park St though no idea who owns it now.

I wonder which option would be better. I'm pretty sure you could get more capacity and frequency with the OL extension to Reading. Whether we'd ever build up Reading, Wakefield and Melrose enough to justify that... who knows. With a Regional Rail improvement you could always branch up through Wakefield, Lynnfield and beyond via other old rail ROWs that are slowly turning into multi use trails. Though we could even build further OL extensions under those if we ever want/need to.

> PS - This debate is much more productive than arguing over whether we even should build transit, which is all a lot of people seem to want to talk about. I hope the legislature and Maura Healey are having a similar debate, not the other one.

I hope so. I imagine the additional tax revenue from ballot question #1 (the 1% tax to fund education/transit) could help change the equation too. I have to imagine they were previously worried about raising taxes to fund infrastructure improvements. Now that that's partially solved, we could start planning some of these extensions/improvements without worrying as much about funding. But they could always try and use funky accounting to negate that increase in revenue. Or just spend it on highways. 🤡 who knows.