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 <i>should</i> 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.<p>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.
The point in this particular case is that Rhode Island has become a bedroom community for Boston, so improving transportation links between the two can make RI even more attractive to discretionary residents (who come here because they want to, not because they can't find anything better -- which is a byword for higher-income residents), who can stimulate both residential and commercial growth by their presence.<p>It's a reasonable suggestion. Another alternative is that RI could promote business growth to lure away some MA or CT talent. But whether they want to be a swankier, higher-income commuter suburb or a commercial-heavy exurb they really should do something.
What a blessing of a problem to have a double-track high speed rail system passing through an underutilized station. For comparison to the Bay Area, the distance from Providence to Boston is about the same as the distance from Berkeley to San Jose. That route is also served by Amtrak, but on a neglected single-track, wooden-tie, local-stop service that's scheduled to take 1h33m, but almost always takes longer. Amtrak from Providence to Boston only takes 40 minutes and is generally reliable. Regional transportation in the northeast is so far beyond what we have in the Bay Area.
There are a few issues with getting these train stations built though:<p>A. The state of Rhode Island currently reimburses the MBTA for all operating expenses south of the RI/MA state line, and they just funded a commuter rail extension south of Providence to attract intra-RI commuters to take transit to Providence instead of driving. However, even providing incentives such as free parking, ridership at these stations has pretty drastically missed expectations [1], and the trains are scheduled to take the same time as the bus takes in rush hour traffic. The commuting situation/parking isn't bad enough in RI like Boston or New York to make the train obviously beneficial time/money wise, when you lose schedule flexibility of when you can go to/leave work.<p>B. The site of the proposed train station only has two passenger tracks and is located in a high speed (125 MPH or 150 MPH) zone. Starting service to the station is not as simple as just refinishing it and having trains stop there: Amtrak (which owns the tracks) would probably insist that the state of Rhode Island quad-track through the station so that its trains can pass a stopped commuter train.<p>C. It's difficult to get transit projects funded near state borders, because of the mindset of "we paid for it and they all go work in the other state!".<p>Providence is a pretty fast-growing city, so it's possible that in 5 to 10 years the traffic situation makes a much more compelling case for people to make use of transit, but additional commuter rail service there is a kind of hard sell.<p>[1] <a href="http://wpri.com/2015/05/18/south-county-rail-ridership-far-short-of-expectations-may15/" rel="nofollow">http://wpri.com/2015/05/18/south-county-rail-ridership-far-s...</a>
One thing I tripped over here is just what is a phototube in this context? <a href="https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2016/08/Screen_Shot_2016_08_09_at_1.41.29_PM/1500b1c9e.png" rel="nofollow">https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2016/08/S...</a> "Phototubes protrude from an abandoned building at the Conant Thread-Coats & Clark Mill Complex, in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)"<p>My own knowledge, Google, and Wikipedia have all failed me here. My best guess is it's old slang for pneumatic transport tubes, but I can't say I've ever seen anything quite like what's shown in the picture.
They already have the tracks and the trains; they just need a station. This is the easy case. This isn't about building a new line.<p>With jobs moving back to inner cities, the radial structure of commuter rail works again.
I love rail as a user, but the cost is … a bit insane.<p>> In July, the feds awarded $13.1 million, just shy of the $14.5 million the state was seeking … The grant application estimates it would serve 519 riders daily, within the range of other Boston-area commuter rail stations. But most riders would be drawn from busy stations nearby, resulting in a net gain of just 89 new passengers.<p>Surely we could just give $73,600 to each of the 89 people to pay for cab fare, and save the other half of the money?
This should help a lot. When I worked in the rail automation biz (for a 100B multinational) the internal heuristic for people transport worldwide was two heavy commuter rail lines were the equivalent of a <i>24-lane highway</i> all parameters being equal (which they never are: there were tons of planning formulae brought to bear when making projections).
Lots of very intelligent critical analysis applied to these are related issues - if only some of that was applied to roads and encouraging driving. Roads are showered with money with no thought of consequences. This is not in the slightest hyperbolic. Transit projects have to claw tooth and nail for scraps.
If anyone is interested, I believe this [0] is the train station in question on Google Maps. I can't find the mentioned nearby mills though.<p>[0] <a href="https://goo.gl/maps/8UFfq737jgF2" rel="nofollow">https://goo.gl/maps/8UFfq737jgF2</a>
$40m for one new station and associated signalling? That's not much less than the cost of reopening the entire 19-mile, 8-station Ebbw Vale line in Wales [1], even though British railway projects are notoriously expensive [2].<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebbw_Valley_Railway" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebbw_Valley_Railway</a>
[2] <a href="http://www.transportblog.com/archives/000492.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.transportblog.com/archives/000492.html</a>
It's 100,000 people[1], how come they don't have a station for a rail that literally passes through? Of course they need to fix it right away.<p>[1] By European standards that could as well be a railway hub.
Yea, it is great for Rhode Island business to make it easy for talented people to commute to another city in another state to help their businesses grow. I bet they are thrilled their taxes fund that.
Will it pay for itself or need subsidies?<p>Usually in the US, passenger rail
needs significant
subsidies. A bit tough to think
that subsidies are a good path to
"a better economy".
A better idea yet, force employers to allow all employees who can, to work from home. It's bad for the environment, wasteful of resources and additional stress (illness/cancer) for commuters.<p>Shifts the burden from the planet and people to the company as they learn to manage employees remotely. Which is where the balance should be set at.