Why Connecting the Gap Between North and South Station Would Benefit CRE Development

Another effort to connect the region’s north and south rail systems through downtown Boston may be getting some momentum; here are some CRE implications for the link, and why this rare gap exists in the first place.

Among Boston’s various peculiarities is a one-mile gap in not only the region’s but also the nation’s rail transportation network, spanning our North and South Stations. Urban development trends, increasing transit ridership and related capacity issues have given rise to the latest of numerous efforts to connect the two terminal stations by way of rail tunnel, a project described as the North-South Rail Link. Proponents state the $2 billion potential project would be many times offset by the project’s multiple efficiencies, related economic development potential, and other benefits.

Gap Consequences

A Terminal Condition
Though not referred to as such, both North and South Station are Terminals, with no continuing, through tracks. Terminals create significant capacity problems as each track experiences two-way movement with heavy-switching at peak times; intercity front-facing trains must back out of the station, turn around, and back in to pick up passengers. A link would make both stations.
Terminal Facts
 In New York City, both Grand Central Terminal and Pennsylvania Station
operate at full capacity. Penn handles more passengers per day than GCT,
even though GCT has 67 tracks and Penn has 21.
 In 1984, Philadelphia’s Center City Connection was completed, a project
which united its two disparate rail systems with a link.
 Boston is one of just cities in the United States with more than one active
passenger rail terminal, the other being Chicago.

Why the Gap?
The uniqueness in Boston is not just that its systems aren’t unified, it’s that they still aren’t. Early railroads throughout the 1800s grew their systems everywhere they could, building major terminals in center cities. Around 1900, railroads, with incentives from cities, built unified stations to provide better service, encourage ridership, and enable partnered service across each other’s lines. Actually, our region did get into the Union Station craze, only the old City of Boston, densely settled and surrounded by water, caused the development of two union stations, north, and south.

Read the Rest of this intriguing story about the Transit Gap, and see what real estate is doing in these transit-accessible areas from Encopmass Real Estate Strategy’s NODE HERE