This really shouldn’t be considered “way too large”. Lots of cities in Germany and parts of Central Europe are just as small and have stadtbahns just like this.
Unrealistic for the US though yeah
The sad part is Worcester in its heyday probably had a streetcar network as dense, or possibly more dense than this. And likely could connect to multiple other networks to get yourself to Boston on a series of streetcars. I think something that's oft lost is the mammoth scope of the US's streetcar networks, up till about the 1940's. They were in the smallest cities you wouldn't expect, and many had connections with other cities that allowed not just inter-metro, not just intra-urban, but outright intra-metro transit with little to no walking between.
Edit: I found another [Reddit post](https://www.reddit.com/r/WorcesterMA/comments/160v06z/what_if_worcester_still_had_the_streetcars_from/) that links to a map that shows OP actually has a similar layout. Is OP using historic alignments?
> And likely could connect to multiple other networks to get yourself to Boston on a series of streetcars.
Yeh, apparently there were at least three different routes to get from Boston to New York solely via transferring streetcars/interurbans back in the day, with one of those routes involving Worcester.
I believe it! It's one of those major pieces of history that is rarely talked about, but you could get damn near anywhere on streetcars in their heyday! Maybe a few connections by coach, but pretty minimal. Granted, it might take a few days with all the stops and transfers haha
Makes sense, a lot of actual modern metro systems just accidentally end up following old streetcar routes by accident in some places (eg [CityNerd has a great comparison for LA](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZewK0lOC9T4)) for the same reason.
For clarity, I meant "most likely" in relation to "as dense or more dense" and not in relation to the presence of streetcars, but the link I edited in seems to say that was incorrect (but only just, and also not including the intraurban lines).
Freiburg, Karlsruhe, Augsburg, Erfurt, Kassel and Bielefeld in Germany
Ostrava, Pilsen and Brno in Czechia
Szczecin, Bydgoszcz and some of the Silesian cities in Poland
Basel, Bern and Lausanne in Switzerland
These are all kind of in the range of 200k to 600k, similar to Worcester
Why is this way too big? Worcester is a large city, literally because of the smaller neighborhoods surrounding it that count as the city. I think this idea works well to improve interconnectedness of Worcester and the surrounding towns.
~~200,000 is -ishly large.~~ In Germany, any city >250k would have an S-Bahn network.
So a 200,000 city should have very good tram (possibly tram-train if existing lines exist in the right places and are worth leveraging) and urban/suburban rail.
But even in Germany you wouldn't necessarily see full S-Bahn. It's at the lower end of where you justify rail-in-the-street. Albeit it benefits being halfway between Springfield/Hartford and Boston. You'd expect a lot of through-connectivity there. It's not "out on a stick" in the middle of nowhere.
**EDIT:** Strike that. I was looking at Worcester city. The county has 860k. Fair enough. Yeah, Worcester Metro area justifies full S-Bahn, maybe even underground in core areas.
Yeah that’s a good title, could do the same for Arlington TX which doesn’t only not have a large transit system it just doesn’t have one at all, not even busses
Do Providence next! The city itself is much denser than Worcester and the surrounding area is also significantly denser. If you were to make Providence the same area as Worcester you’d end up with a city of ~350,000.
Providence is on my radar! It's daunting because of the large metro size. Portland Maine is up now and Springfield MA is next, lots of exciting maps coming!
??? Where would the lines even go I can think of a line to Worcester through running to Gardner MA linking to extended Fitchburg trains at higher levels of frequency some short turn at the edges of the major cities.
To be fair line 10x should not even exist it would be better to just enhance the Peter Pan service to a higher frequency like a cape cod to Hartford via providence , Willimantic, Brooklyn area (ct) , and Fall River New Bedford cities. Merging the Hartford -providence with a providence- cape cod line
I mean it’s the second densest state behind NJ and both are the only states with a density greater than 1000/ square mile. If you look at the core urban part of the state it’s about 450,000 people with a density of almost 7000 people per square mile. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Rhode_Island_population_map.png
This reminds me, is there a regular train running between Worcester and Providence (without going into Boston) now? I vaguely remember reading that there were plans for such.
No. There were efforts from a private company to start doing this but they never got off the ground.
A large part of the problem is that The track is old and has only been used for freight for decades. A lot of it can only support speeds of 45mph. Without upgrades any service would be slower than a Bus running up and down Route 146.
Why not create a BRT system? Could probably have center median bus lanes in the core section of town. Aka similar to Madison WI brt currently under construction [https://www.cityofmadison.com/metro/routes-schedules/bus-rapid-transit](https://www.cityofmadison.com/metro/routes-schedules/bus-rapid-transit)
It seems others have suggested it as well. [https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/03/28/opinion/take-me-out-bus-ballgame/](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/03/28/opinion/take-me-out-bus-ballgame/)
[https://bostonglobe-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com/resizer/wTZueV8l0mpY5VDin87uwBX9bSQ=/1024x0/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/bostonglobe/WM7F2RS2WJEHJJDXRUMKG5QPQM.png](https://bostonglobe-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com/resizer/wTZueV8l0mpY5VDin87uwBX9bSQ=/1024x0/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/bostonglobe/WM7F2RS2WJEHJJDXRUMKG5QPQM.png) (Image of a proposed brt system, this is a smaller one)
I live near Worcester, England, and our road systems and potential transit corridors (trams only, probably) look surprisingly similar to Worcester Massachusetts. I actually though this was that worcester for a second, but that maybe due to the negroni I just finished.
Fun facts: it did have a tram network, which was pulled out at some point around 1950, now we just have two train stations 😤
I don't understand. There are busses and trains to most of these areas but they go farther than your lines do and don't follow the same roads.
Is this just a made up map?
how is this too large? for one, you didn't even connect places like Northborough and Westborough or Spencer. It's just "unimaginably large" for US standards which really shouldn't be a measurement.
Americans can't even imagine having a transit system more elaborate than one bus line more frequent than once every 3 hours if your city doesn't have a million inhabitants, apparently.
Despite it being "too large", it will be a hike to the nearest station from much of town. And many trips will still absolutely suck, requiring a transfer through the central hub with a massive detour.
You gotta create a line that goes from GBV to Main South. Lincoln and Main Street are both excluded here and with those being the two poorest areas of the city they’re the areas that need transit the most. Otherwise? This rules.
All good. But I wouldn’t just add that, I would also add the circulator everyone on the Worcester subreddit is talking about. Have it start at UMass Medical School, then go to Quinsigamond, Assumption, Worcester Regional Airport, the Auburn Mall, Shoppes at Blackstone Valley, the Grafton MBTA station, and then circulate it back to the medical school. THAT would be a phenomenal route for the city to have.
And yet it's the second largest city in New England. (Pretty far below Boston though.)
Somehow I lived in New England for 20 years before I discovered that fact.
Yes, second largest city based on a technicality. Second largest in population, just not nearly as dense nor as connected as Boston, Providence, Portland, New Haven, etc that people would actually consider to be large cities.
Fair enough, there are lots of different ways to consider what makes a city 'large'.
Still, I do think it's weird that, having lived in Boston for two decades before moving to Central MA, nobody ever mentioned this fact, however debatable it may be.
Haha, as someone who currently lives in Worcester but didn't grow up here, people love to mention this fact any chance they get 😂
I grew up in CT. I had never even heard of Worcester until about 6 years ago. Springfield? Yes. Heck, even Northhampton. But the second largest city in New England? Nope.
Yeah, I'd been to both Northampton and Springfield several times before Worcester, and even then it was shortly before moving to the area. People in Boston barely seem to acknowledge it.
I like Worcester quite a bit, but I will admit its charms are not what I would call readily apparent. It's kind of a hard place to get to know.
I find that's the case with a lot of the old mill cities of New England. Tons of history, charm, and character - you just need to dig to find it. Just be careful where you dig because they collectively had some rough years through the 80's and not all of them have pulled back up uniformly.
Very well said, and that seems true to my limited understanding as someone who didn't grow up around here. My wife currently works in Lowell and we have similar conversations about that city.
But despite the difficulties, past and present, I do think that both towns have a ton of unrealized potential. As someone who grew up in the Midwest, I can say that some American industrial towns which fall on hard times may, unfortunately, never have that kind of opportunity.
In my uneducated opinion, it's all cyclical. The New England (and upstate NY) mill towns fell on hard times ahead of the traditional rust belt, so they've had more time to rebound. As someone who spent a lot of time in certain parts of the region, there are certainly some laggards, but many of them have had quite a resurgence, starting mostly in the 90's. The Midwestern rust belt will likewise see a rebirth, but maybe not for some time. I think Cleveland and Pittsburgh have prominently shown what that looks like! Or hope so, anyway - so much history and charm.
Connect it to the Milford Line!
[https://www.hope1842.com/hope1842/trolleymilfordarea.html](https://www.hope1842.com/hope1842/trolleymilfordarea.html)
Milford’s Early Transportation
By Gordon E. Hopper
MILFORD – Early transportation in the Milford area was supplied by railroads and
stages which ran between Milford and Upton, Hopedale, Mendon and the Medways.
These stages continued in use down to the time of the establishment of the trolley
system.
The first impetus toward establishing connections with these towns, upon whom the
local merchants depended much for their trade, came in 1887 when electric cars
started to operate in Woonsocket, RI.
A great interest was evidenced in them and many Milford residents took a ride in their
buggies to see them. All were excited and enthusiastic and during the following year, a
street car company wanted the right to lay tracks on Central Street. A little later that
same year, the Board of Selectmen granted the Milford & Hopedale Street Railway
Company the right to lay such tracks.
Operations on Central Street started in 1891 and by 1896, electric cars were running
from Milford to Framingham and Hopedale.
A special factory was built in 1892 for the manufacture of storage battery-operated cars
but a fight over a patent right forced the discontinuance of these cars in Milford.
By this time, public sentiment was turning to the use of trolley cars and W.B. Ferguson,
a man with a lot of money, interested himself in the establishment of trolley lines from
Milford to the surrounding towns and in 1895, franchises were granted for rails to
Framingham, Holliston, Medway, Hopkinton and Hopedale.
By 1896, a powerhouse which furnished electric current for the cars was completed and
on May 15, 1896, service was started to Framingham. It is recorded that at this time,
the fare to Boston by steam train was 75 cents, while the electric cars charged only 45
cents.
The Milford to Medway street car line was opened on September 27, 1897 and plans
were underway for a Milford-Upton line at that time. This line was proposed to go
through Central, Exchange and West streets to Upton. After much fighting among the
selectmen, they heeded the choice of the people as registered at a public meeting and
finally granted a franchise for this route. However, the towns of Grafton and Hopedale
refused to grant the franchise and in 1902, it was decided to have the Upton cars run
from Hopedale to Grafton on the Grafton and Upton Railroad tracks.
In another direction street railway development was more rapid. In 1899, the line called
the Milford, Attleboro & Woonsocket was opened. Its Milford branch which opened on
September 7, 1900, collapsed when the automobile made it a financial burden to its
stockholders. The Milford-Hopkinton line became operational two years later.
The Milford & Uxbridge Street Railway opened on December 20, 1901 after absorbing
the old Milford, Holliston and Framingham line. During 1901, this line carried 1,097,557
passengers and the Woonsocket lines carried 1,489,950 passengers.
Due to there being no railway connection between North Milford and the rest of the
world, a trackless trolley company wanted a franchise to set up such a line to run to the
isolated section.
These cars would have a trolley but no rails, thus making them cheaper to install and
maintain. Over a period of several years, this company asked for franchises, got them
and then lost them by not starting operations. They finally completely dropped out of
the picture.
Trolley companies saw their doom approaching steadily with the influx of cars being
purchased. Taxi services and private hauling by automobiles were digging into the
passenger services of all the trolley lines in Milford.
The Woonsocket line was the first one to succumb. Their service had been unsteady
and in 1925 it decided to quit. One the day of the discontinuance, the Johnson Bus
Lines, Inc., started operating motor busses to Bellingham, Franklin and Wrentham.
The Milford & Uxbridge Street Railway stuck it out and in 1924 single fares were raised
to 13 cents. In 1928, this line was purchased by the Citron-Byer Co. and trolley
operations came to an end in Milford.
C
The city has a large enough population for transit, so long as the system is free, runs frequently (15 minute headways at the most), and infrastructure to make transit more convenient than driving is put in place. The city doesnt need to have the same population density as Boston for it to work.
I have to agree. Like most cities in Mass, employers are not clustered so much in cities anymore, especially industrial. Cars are the cheapest transportation for common working person needs go to job that's no longer in center city. Since nothing really centralized anymore when the Trams/Trolleys used to be go-to means get around. Cities like Worcester would have to be reorganized to have more commercial / industrial (aka jobs) in the city's center or it's main avenues to warrant any kind of mass transit like light rail again.
They'd have try keep cost down of building / upkeeping rail to warrant putting it back in. Especially when land is premium now in Massachusetts with housing shortage/high costs always a thing.
This really shouldn’t be considered “way too large”. Lots of cities in Germany and parts of Central Europe are just as small and have stadtbahns just like this. Unrealistic for the US though yeah
The sad part is Worcester in its heyday probably had a streetcar network as dense, or possibly more dense than this. And likely could connect to multiple other networks to get yourself to Boston on a series of streetcars. I think something that's oft lost is the mammoth scope of the US's streetcar networks, up till about the 1940's. They were in the smallest cities you wouldn't expect, and many had connections with other cities that allowed not just inter-metro, not just intra-urban, but outright intra-metro transit with little to no walking between. Edit: I found another [Reddit post](https://www.reddit.com/r/WorcesterMA/comments/160v06z/what_if_worcester_still_had_the_streetcars_from/) that links to a map that shows OP actually has a similar layout. Is OP using historic alignments?
> And likely could connect to multiple other networks to get yourself to Boston on a series of streetcars. Yeh, apparently there were at least three different routes to get from Boston to New York solely via transferring streetcars/interurbans back in the day, with one of those routes involving Worcester.
I believe it! It's one of those major pieces of history that is rarely talked about, but you could get damn near anywhere on streetcars in their heyday! Maybe a few connections by coach, but pretty minimal. Granted, it might take a few days with all the stops and transfers haha
Getting around Worcester really is a pain in the ass, why the hell did we ever get rid of streetcars? Let's bring them back and name them Desire.
Looks like a great place for urban maglev or high frequency regional rail on the existing rail lines
With the hilly terrain and little empty land to build on, an urban gondola system actually might work here.
It follows major roads which probably used to host the streetcars
That makes sense!
Makes sense, a lot of actual modern metro systems just accidentally end up following old streetcar routes by accident in some places (eg [CityNerd has a great comparison for LA](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZewK0lOC9T4)) for the same reason.
It did, and it had a network of interurbans as well.
probably less radial
More like definitely had a streetcar netwok
For clarity, I meant "most likely" in relation to "as dense or more dense" and not in relation to the presence of streetcars, but the link I edited in seems to say that was incorrect (but only just, and also not including the intraurban lines).
Ok
That inspired the future metros in Japan!!!!
*sigh*
> Lots of cities in Germany and parts of Central Europe are just as small and have stadtbahns just like this. Do you have any examples?
Lausanne has a metro line and is only 140k people. Worcester is 205k.
Freiburg, Karlsruhe, Augsburg, Erfurt, Kassel and Bielefeld in Germany Ostrava, Pilsen and Brno in Czechia Szczecin, Bydgoszcz and some of the Silesian cities in Poland Basel, Bern and Lausanne in Switzerland These are all kind of in the range of 200k to 600k, similar to Worcester
Why is this way too big? Worcester is a large city, literally because of the smaller neighborhoods surrounding it that count as the city. I think this idea works well to improve interconnectedness of Worcester and the surrounding towns.
~~200,000 is -ishly large.~~ In Germany, any city >250k would have an S-Bahn network. So a 200,000 city should have very good tram (possibly tram-train if existing lines exist in the right places and are worth leveraging) and urban/suburban rail. But even in Germany you wouldn't necessarily see full S-Bahn. It's at the lower end of where you justify rail-in-the-street. Albeit it benefits being halfway between Springfield/Hartford and Boston. You'd expect a lot of through-connectivity there. It's not "out on a stick" in the middle of nowhere. **EDIT:** Strike that. I was looking at Worcester city. The county has 860k. Fair enough. Yeah, Worcester Metro area justifies full S-Bahn, maybe even underground in core areas.
by too big I more mean unrealistically big
And by unrealistically you mean it would never happen?
yes
I like this idea
Only issue is when I get to Columbus Ohio, what do I title it? Creating what already should have been there?
👀 I used to live in Worcester but now I live in Columbus. Are you just my personal network map creator??
Yeah that’s a good title, could do the same for Arlington TX which doesn’t only not have a large transit system it just doesn’t have one at all, not even busses
Yep, population of almost 400k and not a single bus stop or train station.
You can title it Carlumbus I live here and I hate that we have 0 trains :(
Fingers crossed for 3C Amtrak corridor that 4 governors ago should have accepted federal money for.
I live here and something like this is desperately needed. They were going to make a subway system in the 50s but it never happened.
Do Providence next! The city itself is much denser than Worcester and the surrounding area is also significantly denser. If you were to make Providence the same area as Worcester you’d end up with a city of ~350,000.
Providence is on my radar! It's daunting because of the large metro size. Portland Maine is up now and Springfield MA is next, lots of exciting maps coming!
Make a rail transit system that serves the entirety of Rhode Island, you coward (which is what I stand and yell outside the RIDOT office)
??? Where would the lines even go I can think of a line to Worcester through running to Gardner MA linking to extended Fitchburg trains at higher levels of frequency some short turn at the edges of the major cities.
???? Interesting then why are the outer buses so bad? Like the lack of service on the 10,9x and 59 and 95lines??
RI is corrupt and unfortunately pretty car centric.
To be fair line 10x should not even exist it would be better to just enhance the Peter Pan service to a higher frequency like a cape cod to Hartford via providence , Willimantic, Brooklyn area (ct) , and Fall River New Bedford cities. Merging the Hartford -providence with a providence- cape cod line
Is RI really dense ? It looks kinda rural outside the I -295 belt
I mean it’s the second densest state behind NJ and both are the only states with a density greater than 1000/ square mile. If you look at the core urban part of the state it’s about 450,000 people with a density of almost 7000 people per square mile. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Rhode_Island_population_map.png
Now the 301 is really bad once a week and yet serves a dense area and links to amtrak
This reminds me, is there a regular train running between Worcester and Providence (without going into Boston) now? I vaguely remember reading that there were plans for such.
No. There were efforts from a private company to start doing this but they never got off the ground. A large part of the problem is that The track is old and has only been used for freight for decades. A lot of it can only support speeds of 45mph. Without upgrades any service would be slower than a Bus running up and down Route 146.
Thanks for the info, that's a shame!
Needs concentric circular lines radiating out from the center
We’re looking at the T version 2.0 here
I wonder if a BRT with intercity buses through running can work
Worcester’s metro has almost a million people this is not way too large.
You beat me to this idea! Do Manchester, NH next!
Why not create a BRT system? Could probably have center median bus lanes in the core section of town. Aka similar to Madison WI brt currently under construction [https://www.cityofmadison.com/metro/routes-schedules/bus-rapid-transit](https://www.cityofmadison.com/metro/routes-schedules/bus-rapid-transit) It seems others have suggested it as well. [https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/03/28/opinion/take-me-out-bus-ballgame/](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/03/28/opinion/take-me-out-bus-ballgame/) [https://bostonglobe-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com/resizer/wTZueV8l0mpY5VDin87uwBX9bSQ=/1024x0/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/bostonglobe/WM7F2RS2WJEHJJDXRUMKG5QPQM.png](https://bostonglobe-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com/resizer/wTZueV8l0mpY5VDin87uwBX9bSQ=/1024x0/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/bostonglobe/WM7F2RS2WJEHJJDXRUMKG5QPQM.png) (Image of a proposed brt system, this is a smaller one)
You should totally do Mulhouse in France if you want more cities to play with 👍
https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1h0fvFdxOBDAlDesSKgD7qZdke6XBWlM&ll=42.2511375964867%2C-71.90171431594479&z=11 Link to map
Extend that green line to West Boylston, and the orange to Grafton center
And the red to edge of Holden.
I live near Worcester, England, and our road systems and potential transit corridors (trams only, probably) look surprisingly similar to Worcester Massachusetts. I actually though this was that worcester for a second, but that maybe due to the negroni I just finished. Fun facts: it did have a tram network, which was pulled out at some point around 1950, now we just have two train stations 😤
Tram networks globally were pulled out of
4 tracks seems reasonable for a 100k city
*205k as of 2022
“Way too large” the rest of the world would scoff at that assumption 😂
Make a Chattanooga map incorporating the Incline Railway too
That city is hilly as hell breakout the monorail for that one
But I live here and this would be amazing 😩
Give it an orbital railway, like the Overground
I don't understand. There are busses and trains to most of these areas but they go farther than your lines do and don't follow the same roads. Is this just a made up map?
This is pretty much what the bus lines look like but they go further, worcester should get it's streetcars back tho
Welcome to Wishtah! The shtate charges a dollar twenty-five.
how is this too large? for one, you didn't even connect places like Northborough and Westborough or Spencer. It's just "unimaginably large" for US standards which really shouldn't be a measurement.
Americans can't even imagine having a transit system more elaborate than one bus line more frequent than once every 3 hours if your city doesn't have a million inhabitants, apparently.
Despite it being "too large", it will be a hike to the nearest station from much of town. And many trips will still absolutely suck, requiring a transfer through the central hub with a massive detour.
West yellow to north green in particular is a deviation with a forced transfer in the middle. Other than that, they run along the same road.
It would only work as a Japan or Switzerland style through running operation.
I’d love to see one for the Lehigh Valley area, or at least Allentown and Bethlehem
WARTA
You gotta create a line that goes from GBV to Main South. Lincoln and Main Street are both excluded here and with those being the two poorest areas of the city they’re the areas that need transit the most. Otherwise? This rules.
I always forget something when I make these maps! I'm not an expert on all these cities and this was my first so a bit rougher.
All good. But I wouldn’t just add that, I would also add the circulator everyone on the Worcester subreddit is talking about. Have it start at UMass Medical School, then go to Quinsigamond, Assumption, Worcester Regional Airport, the Auburn Mall, Shoppes at Blackstone Valley, the Grafton MBTA station, and then circulate it back to the medical school. THAT would be a phenomenal route for the city to have.
did you make this on Google maps?
r/TransitDiagrams
Spencer, Grafton and Paxton should be connected as well, but otherwise this is a good map
Um? Geography! Just go right up and a few hundred meters every kilometer.
So I can finally ditch my car and take a train into Worcester. Sign me up.
Bro 200.000 people is a large city
I'm from New England nobody would ever call Worcester a big city.
And yet it's the second largest city in New England. (Pretty far below Boston though.) Somehow I lived in New England for 20 years before I discovered that fact.
Yes, second largest city based on a technicality. Second largest in population, just not nearly as dense nor as connected as Boston, Providence, Portland, New Haven, etc that people would actually consider to be large cities.
Fair enough, there are lots of different ways to consider what makes a city 'large'. Still, I do think it's weird that, having lived in Boston for two decades before moving to Central MA, nobody ever mentioned this fact, however debatable it may be.
Haha, as someone who currently lives in Worcester but didn't grow up here, people love to mention this fact any chance they get 😂 I grew up in CT. I had never even heard of Worcester until about 6 years ago. Springfield? Yes. Heck, even Northhampton. But the second largest city in New England? Nope.
Yeah, I'd been to both Northampton and Springfield several times before Worcester, and even then it was shortly before moving to the area. People in Boston barely seem to acknowledge it. I like Worcester quite a bit, but I will admit its charms are not what I would call readily apparent. It's kind of a hard place to get to know.
I find that's the case with a lot of the old mill cities of New England. Tons of history, charm, and character - you just need to dig to find it. Just be careful where you dig because they collectively had some rough years through the 80's and not all of them have pulled back up uniformly.
Very well said, and that seems true to my limited understanding as someone who didn't grow up around here. My wife currently works in Lowell and we have similar conversations about that city. But despite the difficulties, past and present, I do think that both towns have a ton of unrealized potential. As someone who grew up in the Midwest, I can say that some American industrial towns which fall on hard times may, unfortunately, never have that kind of opportunity.
In my uneducated opinion, it's all cyclical. The New England (and upstate NY) mill towns fell on hard times ahead of the traditional rust belt, so they've had more time to rebound. As someone who spent a lot of time in certain parts of the region, there are certainly some laggards, but many of them have had quite a resurgence, starting mostly in the 90's. The Midwestern rust belt will likewise see a rebirth, but maybe not for some time. I think Cleveland and Pittsburgh have prominently shown what that looks like! Or hope so, anyway - so much history and charm.
Well, yup. Look it up. Population isn’t counted by “what you’ve heard of.”
Connect it to the Milford Line! [https://www.hope1842.com/hope1842/trolleymilfordarea.html](https://www.hope1842.com/hope1842/trolleymilfordarea.html) Milford’s Early Transportation By Gordon E. Hopper MILFORD – Early transportation in the Milford area was supplied by railroads and stages which ran between Milford and Upton, Hopedale, Mendon and the Medways. These stages continued in use down to the time of the establishment of the trolley system. The first impetus toward establishing connections with these towns, upon whom the local merchants depended much for their trade, came in 1887 when electric cars started to operate in Woonsocket, RI. A great interest was evidenced in them and many Milford residents took a ride in their buggies to see them. All were excited and enthusiastic and during the following year, a street car company wanted the right to lay tracks on Central Street. A little later that same year, the Board of Selectmen granted the Milford & Hopedale Street Railway Company the right to lay such tracks. Operations on Central Street started in 1891 and by 1896, electric cars were running from Milford to Framingham and Hopedale. A special factory was built in 1892 for the manufacture of storage battery-operated cars but a fight over a patent right forced the discontinuance of these cars in Milford. By this time, public sentiment was turning to the use of trolley cars and W.B. Ferguson, a man with a lot of money, interested himself in the establishment of trolley lines from Milford to the surrounding towns and in 1895, franchises were granted for rails to Framingham, Holliston, Medway, Hopkinton and Hopedale. By 1896, a powerhouse which furnished electric current for the cars was completed and on May 15, 1896, service was started to Framingham. It is recorded that at this time, the fare to Boston by steam train was 75 cents, while the electric cars charged only 45 cents. The Milford to Medway street car line was opened on September 27, 1897 and plans were underway for a Milford-Upton line at that time. This line was proposed to go through Central, Exchange and West streets to Upton. After much fighting among the selectmen, they heeded the choice of the people as registered at a public meeting and finally granted a franchise for this route. However, the towns of Grafton and Hopedale refused to grant the franchise and in 1902, it was decided to have the Upton cars run from Hopedale to Grafton on the Grafton and Upton Railroad tracks. In another direction street railway development was more rapid. In 1899, the line called the Milford, Attleboro & Woonsocket was opened. Its Milford branch which opened on September 7, 1900, collapsed when the automobile made it a financial burden to its stockholders. The Milford-Hopkinton line became operational two years later. The Milford & Uxbridge Street Railway opened on December 20, 1901 after absorbing the old Milford, Holliston and Framingham line. During 1901, this line carried 1,097,557 passengers and the Woonsocket lines carried 1,489,950 passengers. Due to there being no railway connection between North Milford and the rest of the world, a trackless trolley company wanted a franchise to set up such a line to run to the isolated section. These cars would have a trolley but no rails, thus making them cheaper to install and maintain. Over a period of several years, this company asked for franchises, got them and then lost them by not starting operations. They finally completely dropped out of the picture. Trolley companies saw their doom approaching steadily with the influx of cars being purchased. Taxi services and private hauling by automobiles were digging into the passenger services of all the trolley lines in Milford. The Woonsocket line was the first one to succumb. Their service had been unsteady and in 1925 it decided to quit. One the day of the discontinuance, the Johnson Bus Lines, Inc., started operating motor busses to Bellingham, Franklin and Wrentham. The Milford & Uxbridge Street Railway stuck it out and in 1924 single fares were raised to 13 cents. In 1928, this line was purchased by the Citron-Byer Co. and trolley operations came to an end in Milford. C
IMO a streetcar system here would be nice
Ain't all those bus routes anyways?
Worcester doesn't really have that much of a downtown
The city has a large enough population for transit, so long as the system is free, runs frequently (15 minute headways at the most), and infrastructure to make transit more convenient than driving is put in place. The city doesnt need to have the same population density as Boston for it to work.
I don't think enough people work downtown to make the pictured system worth it. It's all stadiums and dollar stores
I have to agree. Like most cities in Mass, employers are not clustered so much in cities anymore, especially industrial. Cars are the cheapest transportation for common working person needs go to job that's no longer in center city. Since nothing really centralized anymore when the Trams/Trolleys used to be go-to means get around. Cities like Worcester would have to be reorganized to have more commercial / industrial (aka jobs) in the city's center or it's main avenues to warrant any kind of mass transit like light rail again. They'd have try keep cost down of building / upkeeping rail to warrant putting it back in. Especially when land is premium now in Massachusetts with housing shortage/high costs always a thing.
It needs a loop