They are still talking about this down in Concord. As late as the 1960's there was rail service to Manchester and Concord. It was abandoned in the '60s 'cause nobody was riding the train. Manchester is only about 25 miles from Nashua, so they are talking about $10 million a mile to fix up the abandoned right of ways. That's pricey. And that is just to get the track into useable shape. Actually operating the trains is more money.
The NHPR piece mentioned an estimate of 600,000 riders. Which sounds like a lot, but one person riding the train to work daily for a week counts as 10 rides, five inbound in the morning, and five more outbound in the evening. There are about 200 working days in a year, so divide that 600,000 tickets sold by 400 and and you get about 1500 actual people who use the train every day. That ain't many people to justify spending $250 million on trackwork.
No mention of schedules, how fast the train would go. There is fairly decent bus service to Manchester and Concord right now. No mention of what the fares might be, or if the train trip would be faster than the bus.
No mention of the fact that most of the commuters down I93 to MA are working out on 128, where the train doesn't go. You need your car to get to the company parking lots off 128. Not that many people have jobs in downtown Boston.
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