The case for saving the Mattapan trolleys

As the Herald op-ed mentioned, San Francisco, Philly, San Diego, and Kenosha WI have recently rolled out service with PCCs. With five cities operating them instead of one, isn't it possible that at least some of those parts will now be manufactured in order to serve five times the number of customers?

My question: why not extend the actual Red Line from Ashmont down to Mattapan? Yes, the cemetery may present a challenge, and yes the bridges will have to be reinforced, and yes, there may well be other issues more significant than that (though I don't know what they are).

But at least this way there'd be a one-seat connection for more customers, a legitimate quality of service upgrade.

What's wrong with the T making parts by hand?They run a huge variety and type of equipment. Keeping spares for all of that equipment is going to be nigh impossible with or without the PCC fleet. Having a few highly trained guys (and girls?) who can make *anything* if a part can't be found is a good thing. I am sure that these same people also provide parts for various other lines like our 40+ year old red line cars, 40+ year old green line cars, and 30 year old orange line cars.

here's a case of someone (poster and media) talking about shit which they know nothing about. Old vehicle repair has been going on for close to a century. In Cuba they have been keeping 50s era American cars on the road for about 50 years with HOME MADE PARTS. It REALLY isn't the rocket science everyone makes it out to be. The PCC cars are mechanically very simple. Much less complicated than modern trains. I had bumper brackets for my old VW bus fabricated at a local machine shop. Whats crazy is now with modern technology, you can save the plans on a CAD file and a CNC machine can just rattle off the parts once you have one good one made. My brackets cost $240 to set up, and for the rest of time I can get the fabricator to make them for me for $42 cuz all he has to do is pull up a CAD file and fire up the machine.
MAKING mechanical parts isn't a deal breaker, but it is a convienient excuse that they can throw out there that 9 out of 10 people don't understand is just pure mis-information. The T has its own machine shop. They have been making and repairing these parts for a long time as well as getting good used parts from the Trolley Museum, etc. The Mattapan Trolley has a fleet of ten, count em 10 cars to maintain, 6 run at peak times.
As someone else pointed out if it was really a huge cost savings they would have gotten rid of it a long time ago, Boston hasn't been shy about ripping up rail lines, only to dream of re-installing them later. It's pathetic.

Mattapan is very capable of running Green Line LRV's.

-- Power system is exactly the same voltage as Green, Red, Orange, Blue, Silver, and the Cambridge trackless trolleys. The only difference between all of them is method of power collection: third rail, overhead wire w/pantograph, overhead wire w/trolley pole.
-- Power draw, which is shared with the Red Line Ashmont Branch, is scheduled for an upgrade to boost the capacity before the new Red Line cars arrive. That upgrade takes care of the power needs for running LRV's to Mattapan.
-- Green Line trolleys are electrically compatible with trolley poles if they were installed on the roofs. The T could either remove the pantographs and replace with poles, or install poles in addition to the existing pantographs so a portion of the fleet can be traded back and forth between Green service and Mattapan service as needed.
-- All stations except for Valley Rd. (exempt because of the stairs) are ADA-compliant with high platforms that match up with the front doors, meaning the high-floor Type 7 trolleys are 100% accessible.
-- The Ashmont loop is within tolerance of the tightest Green Line curve radius (the inner loop at Lechmere is the ruling minimum radius the LRV's were designed for). The inner loop at Mattapan for turning back onto the platform is the one that's way too tight, but since LRV's are double-ended they can just change ends on the platform like they do when reversing direction at Cleveland Circle. The inner loop can be outright retired.
-- The bridges on the line, which all used to have posted weight limits, have gradually been rehabilitated to modern load ratings as part of the systemwide bridge maintenance program. One of the two Neponset River crossings may (or may not) still be waiting for an upgrade. If yes, it's the last one and will probably get its turn in the next couple years.
-- They have flatbed trucks that can transport a tied-down LRV to and from Riverside. They're in use now as the Type 7's get taken to Hormel, NY for the ongoing midlife overhaul program.
-- There's no signal system on Mattapan, because there's almost never more than 2 trains going in the same direction at any given time and no bunching to speak of requiring track to be separated into signalized blocks. GPS tracking means the dispatcher will be yelling at the operator over the radio to slow up long before they get within sight range of the next car ahead. If they have any desire to install a collision avoidance system there it'll probably be something dirt simple that pings off the GPS rather than involve a trackside signal system.

Main tasks they'd need to do in order to start using LRV's on the High Speed Line are:
-- Complete the scheduled power upgrades and last bridge rehabs.
-- Resurface the track, as Type 7 LRV's are more finicky than PCC's about running on beat-up and bumpy old track. If it's the Type 8's instead, then the track has to be spot-on perfect. But the High Speed Line is ADA-compliant without needing low-floor trolleys, so no need to punish Mattapan riders with those Breda pieces of crap.
-- Build a new maintenance shed equipped to service LRV's, with hydraulic lifts that can handle the much longer cars. They may not have room to expand the Mattapan one because there's some underground utilities complicating things, but the whole southeast corner of Red Line Codman Yard at Ashmont is unused empty space so there'd be no trouble building a new shed there instead accessible by a yard turnout coming off the Ashmont loop.
-- Reconfigure the Mattapan tracks to eliminate the too-tight turnback loop and do whatever tweaks they need to with the yard layout.

That's it. A few minor state-of-repair items that have to get done sooner or later regardless, and the maintenance facility. All of that is less expensive than paving the dang thing over and making all kinds of expensive width modifications to be able to drive a 40-foot bus down it.