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Speaking as a Providence resident: Pawtucket begins where the comfortable-walking-distance-to-the-Providence-station ends. Pawtucket and Central Falls are langu

by jswrenn 10y ago

Speaking as a Providence resident: Pawtucket begins where the comfortable-walking-distance-to-the-Providence-station ends. Pawtucket and Central Falls are languishing. Providence, generally speaking, is more affordable than Boston to live in (which drives a lot of commuter traffic to Boston), but the presence of Brown is steadily driving rents up in the suburb closest to the Providence station. Pawtucket and Central Falls should be the affordable residential suburbs of Providence, but they're not (or, at least, not so much as they should be). Commuter rail to these towns would help revitalize them and ease some of Providence's present growing pains. The thrust of commuter rail into southern Rhode Island has failed because it has not responded to the needs of residents. In Wickford, where I grew up, very few residents take advantage of the weekday commuter lines running from the new Wickford Junction Station, since very few residents there commute to Boston. There are, however, plenty of retired folk who would love to take a weekend trip to Boston via train, but are stymied by the station being closed on weekends. If weekday commuter rail is to ever succeed in southern Rhode Island, it will not be in the short term.

chmaynard 10y ago
> Very few residents take advantage of the weekday commuter lines running from the new Wickford Junction Station. I wanted to take MBTA commuter rail to Boston on a Wednesday afternoon to see the Red Sox play the Giants at Fenway Park. There were no trains leaving Wickford between 1:25 and 5:30 pm, so I had to park at Wickford Junction, take a bus to Providence, and walk three blocks to the Amtrak station to catch a train. What good is a beautiful station if there is a 4-hour gap between trains on a weekday?
- api_or_ipa 10y ago
  > What good is a beautiful station if there is a 4-hour gap between trains on a weekday? Transit begets transit. The shame in urban planning is the reactionary cycle that engages the public process of investing in efficient and multi-mode transit. In the Bay Area, I'm continually frustrated by the lack of Caltrain service. A light rail system with the local Caltrain service density and a headway of <15m could provide the backbone of a huge number of bike commuters. In my experience, Caltrain > driving for most commutes in the SF <=> SJ corridor and having adequate last mile solutions. The challenge now is to transform the chore & appointment traffic into public transit friendly opportunities.
  - cbhl 10y ago
    Some of Caltrain's biggest problems: - funding (some municipalities' voters don't want their towns to be bedroom communities for Mountain View and SF -- these are also the towns that vote against e.g. HOV lanes on their section of the 101, and against BART running through their town) - ground level crossings along the whole route (trains hit people and cars all the bloody time, but "grade separation" is expensive and also makes the stations harder to use -- for example, see San Bruno station) - having to sound their loud horns along the whole route for safety reasons (anyone with train tracks in their backyard opposes increased frequency) - people wanting electric trains before more service happens - did I mention funding? (Caltrain used to have people selling tickets at every station -- those jobs were cut due to a lack of funding.) I think creating a well-funded, well-managed state agency that was in charge of transit (ala Metrolinx in Ontario) could do wonders for BART and Caltrain. But the first thing that needs to happen would be to give public transit more money (which is difficult considering all the other things on municipalities' plates, like homelessness in San Francisco, and property tax rates not reflecting the rise in housing prices).

by jswrenn 10y ago

chmaynard 10y ago

> Very few residents take advantage of the weekday commuter lines running from the new Wickford Junction Station. I wanted to take MBTA commuter rail to Boston on a Wednesday afternoon to see the Red Sox play the Giants at Fenway Park. There were no trains leaving Wickford between 1:25 and 5:30 pm, so I had to park at Wickford Junction, take a bus to Providence, and walk three blocks to the Amtrak station to catch a train. What good is a beautiful station if there is a 4-hour gap between trains on a weekday?

api_or_ipa 10y ago
> What good is a beautiful station if there is a 4-hour gap between trains on a weekday? Transit begets transit. The shame in urban planning is the reactionary cycle that engages the public process of investing in efficient and multi-mode transit. In the Bay Area, I'm continually frustrated by the lack of Caltrain service. A light rail system with the local Caltrain service density and a headway of <15m could provide the backbone of a huge number of bike commuters. In my experience, Caltrain > driving for most commutes in the SF <=> SJ corridor and having adequate last mile solutions. The challenge now is to transform the chore & appointment traffic into public transit friendly opportunities.
- cbhl 10y ago
  Some of Caltrain's biggest problems: - funding (some municipalities' voters don't want their towns to be bedroom communities for Mountain View and SF -- these are also the towns that vote against e.g. HOV lanes on their section of the 101, and against BART running through their town) - ground level crossings along the whole route (trains hit people and cars all the bloody time, but "grade separation" is expensive and also makes the stations harder to use -- for example, see San Bruno station) - having to sound their loud horns along the whole route for safety reasons (anyone with train tracks in their backyard opposes increased frequency) - people wanting electric trains before more service happens - did I mention funding? (Caltrain used to have people selling tickets at every station -- those jobs were cut due to a lack of funding.) I think creating a well-funded, well-managed state agency that was in charge of transit (ala Metrolinx in Ontario) could do wonders for BART and Caltrain. But the first thing that needs to happen would be to give public transit more money (which is difficult considering all the other things on municipalities' plates, like homelessness in San Francisco, and property tax rates not reflecting the rise in housing prices).