New Hampshire legislators to commuter rail: Thbbft!

You're right. No one in NH wants the layover, and Haverhill won't support the extension without moving it. Lose/Lose NIMBY and that's ok I don't blame either side. Once the 93S toll booth goes up and resident stickers are required for discount MBTA passes and parking at MBTA lots, NH might change their tune a bit.

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That's because they're full of Republican ex-Massholes

You mean like how when a drug dealer offers you the first hit for free, you should just take it, right? Seems foolish not to, right?

The study included various options for Manchester full-build with 4 stations (South Nashua, Downtown Nashua, Manchester Airport, Downtown Manchester), and scaled-back alternatives that hit just Nashua. Included development of city transit centers at both the two Nashua stops and Downtown Manchester, plus modeling of airport shuttle service at the Airport stop. So it wasn't just a flat study of 1 service pattern in isolation. Multiple options of very different scale + the real estate development around the stations = more money chewed up by studies.

$4M still is probably too much to chew up with just a study, but it was never quite that simplistic to begin with.

Now, this may not be dead because Nashua is gung-ho enough about it to have a "go it alone" option in-pocket. They already purchased the blighted Crown St. property downtown across from the freight yard for that station, and are sizing up sites around the Mall to purchase (as well as engaging in conversation with the Mall owners about parking and whatnot) for S. Nashua. The Pan Am Railways freight yard downtown, already subject to all-day activity from noisy/smelly freights, has lots of unused space in the back along the river for sticking a layover yard far enough out of the away from abutters that nobody will notice the difference. And the T previously secured lifetime trackage rights to Concord as a contractual perks from one of the Green Line Extension land swaps they pulled with Pan Am.

In a "go it alone", Nashua can self-fund a much more limited-scope study to figure out whether they can build just South Nashua or South Nashua + Downtown...then apply for fed grants on the construction. The rest is just the T working with Pan Am to square arrangements, and getting the NH Legislature to passively okay a variation of the same "Pilgrim Agreement" that allows the T to operate in Rhode Island. As long as the Legislature aren't spiteful bastards, it's no skin off their backs to let Nashua do what it wants.

On the "Broke T" side of the state line, they have several incentives for pressing forward with the extension in spite of the agency's wrecked finances.

-- The Lowell Line has no layover yard, the only line except itty-bitty Stoughton that outright lacks one. This requires them to waste a lot of non-revenue "deadhead" moves of empty trains for shuttling equipment, and causes some irregularities in the schedules when they have imbalanced equipment assignments. They'd save money in the long run by having an end-of-line yard and not having to waste so many empty trains, but there's no land south of the state line suitable for building a layover. They have operating cost control self-interest in pursuing a Nashua layover.

-- Lowell, much like Worcester, is a line that would benefit from more regular midday and reverse-commute service. Lowell's growing, and the farebox recovery on a quasi-intercity line like this looks a lot more bullish going forward than on the purely suburban lines. But can't increase service at all without the layover, so Lowell service is stuck at current levels until they can build that layover.

-- There is a lot of freight track work upcoming in the next 5-8 years on the stretch of track that goes from Bleachery Junction in downtown Lowell (i.e. those freight tracks on the other side of the station) to North Chelmsford Junction 3 miles west along the riverbank. One of the I.O.U.'s in all those Green Line land swaps with Pan Am was a track reconfiguration around Lowell station to reduce freight interference. And Pan Am's Ayer-Portland mainline will need to have its overhead clearances raised so the freight trains can take double-stacked shipping cubes up to Maine, meaning bridge modifications to several of the street overpasses in downtown Lowell. That's MassDOT's #2 statewide freight priority after finishing the same height upgrades on the Albany-Ayer portion of Pan Am. Because there's lucrative freight and freight-to-truck revenue at stake for the state's economy, that kind of heavy construction qualifies for a more diverse set of federal grant aid than a passenger-only project would. The state would have an opportunity to maximize its funding chances by rolling the freight upgrades they have to eventually do with the passenger extension they want to eventually do. Getting a TIGER grant score here would knock off all the necessary work on 3 of the 8 miles to the border.

-- There's not much else that has to be upgraded to make Nashua happen. The track is signaled to Manchester, and has a passenger operating speed of 60 MPH between Lowell and Nashua. With Manchester now dropped from consideration, they no longer need to worry about double-tracking the line past North Chelmsford. It mainly just needs a thorough track resurfacing for smooth ride (it'd be uncomfortably bouncy on the current cruddy track), renewal of 3 small grade crossings, and money paid to Pan Am so they can equip a portion of their Nashua freight yard for a layover. An intermediate stop at North Chelmsford's Vinal Square (which would have good ridership because of the walk-up density and LRTA bus routes) can just be a prefab single side platform.

So while chances just got a lot poorer with the NH Legislature's action, it's not necessarily over. Nashua's got go-it-alone options, and the T + MassDOT have other motivations that'll make them think long and hard (maybe not act...but definitely think) about packaging up some Lowell Line to-do's into a bigger passenger + freight bundle if Nashua were game for it.