Silver Line to Chelsea

Re: Silver Line to Chelsea (Study Meeting)

Scipio said:
Yup, I just went to check it out this morning, the southern portal is bricked up (and fenced in) and I couldn't find the northern portal without some major daytime trespassing.

drbBA5U.jpg
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Here's a nice Bing Aerial view of the Southern Portal:
http://binged.it/1gjtzGs

Seemed like the northnern portal would be in this picture but unless its the little brown patch in the center, i couldn't find it:
http://binged.it/1gjtXom
 
Re: Silver Line to Chelsea (Study Meeting)

Nope, the top of the north portal is this line of stone.

I've been to the north portal; it's buried deep in brush, but the stone wall is still there.
 
Re: Silver Line to Chelsea (Study Meeting)

davem said:
I'm sorry to derail this further with railroad questions, but there was supposed to be a dedicated track out of North Station towards the eastern route, its the rusty one furthest east. It looks like it just has to be tied in to the mainline near community college, anyone *cough* f-line *cough* know why that never happened?
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That's the Tuttle Track. MBCR was rehabbing that Summer 2012, but then work stopped (perhaps crews were diverted to the Fitchburg and Haverhill line double-tracking projects?). This would allow Newburyport/Rockport trains to express through a good chunk of interlocking at a decent clip. Whether work will resume or not is anyone's guess.

winstonoboogie said:
I believe MassDOT/MBTA was interested in the possibility of a Silver Line Gateway stop in East Boston near Bennington St/Day Sq., but determined it would be too expensive to widen the right-of-way under 1A (plus the stop would be very close to the Airport station stop)
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I asked MassDot officials on this, and they pretty much didn't even look very much into it because they figured everyone would rather walk to Airport, instead. So they basically shrugged and said, "Hey, why stop and hold up taxis/shuttles/cargo for little or no ridership?" One of the people in charge of the project even said his wife commutes to Day Sq or something along those lines, and she said the Blue Line at Airport would probably still be the faster, and preferred, method of getting to/from downtown or downtown transfers.
 
Re: Silver Line to Chelsea (Study Meeting)

So, I have a question about this whole idea of running the Silver Line to Chelsea via the Ted Williams and the Airport.

By my math, it'll be about 20 minutes between Chelsea and South Station:
South Station – Silver Line Way: 7 minutes (according to Google Maps transit; also, 7 minutes for a mile? Seriously? On the Green Line, that's how long it's scheduled to take to get from Government Center to Hynes, 1.8 miles.)
Silver Line Way – Airport: 4 mins (according to Google Maps driving directions– assumes that the T and MassDOT figure out a way for the Silver Line to avoid the ridiculous turnaround to get into the TWT)
Airport – Chelsea Station: 10 mins (according to Google Maps transit directions going from Chelsea Station to Maverick, which is the same distance as the new transitway would take; this is also how long is take SL4 and SL5 to go an equivalent distance between Dudley and Tufts Medical Center).

Maybe the third leg of that journey will be shortened more than I'm anticipating. Still, even if there were ideal conditions, and the busses traveled along this transitway at 30 mph, it would still take about 4 minutes to traverse that distance.

So we're almost certainly looking at significantly over 15 minutes' travel time. And that's only to get to South Station, which is somewhat at the periphery of the CBD, and which doesn't have great connectivity to the rest of the system.

Contrast that with the 111, which, in 2010, had 8,692 weekday boardings, and which, according to Google Maps transit, travels between Chelsea Station (well, really Arlington & 5th) and Haymarket in 8 minutes.

So: how is a Silver Line extension to Chelsea supposed to compete with the 111?

The 111 goes directly to Haymarket, which is close to the CBD and has a high number of connections with the rest of the system, while the Silver Line goes to South Station, located on the periphery of the CBD and which has relatively few connections to the rest of the system, and would arrive from Chelsea in twice the time.

It sounds like they're making the same mistake as they did with trying to pit SL3 against the 7, and we saw how that turned out.

Or is the thought that this will be sold as connecting Chelsea with downtown, when, in fact, it's part of a piecemeal effort to construct Urban Ring BRT infrastructure?
 
Re: Silver Line to Chelsea (Study Meeting)

The 111 supposedly has 77% schedule adherence, only a few points behind the SL routes. But it gets absolutely clobbered over the Tobin. In nominal conditions it can make it from Bellingham Square to Haymarket in 11 minutes; at rush hour it's scheduled for twice that.

I suspect the 16/99 circle prevents buses getting to Wellington or Sullivan from Chelsea.
 
Re: Silver Line to Chelsea (Study Meeting)

Many people may also just take the silver line to the Blue Line (like people who take the 116/117). For people who want to get to the red line, it's also the better choice.
 
Re: Silver Line to Chelsea (Study Meeting)

cozzyd said:
Many people may also just take the silver line to the Blue Line (like people who take the 116/117). For people who want to get to the red line, it's also the better choice.
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Beat me to it. The 111 is not the only way to get into Chelsea. The 116 and 117 are severely overcrowded. I'd argue that the SL to Chelsea is more to alleviate these routes (thank the lord) than for the 111. Instead of taking the BL to Maverick and catching a 116/117, you could take the BL to Airport and then catch the SL into Chelsea and never deal with the 116/117 buses.

Friday night I went to Davis to hang out with my friends. I had to take the 116/117 from Webster Ave to Maverick, then wait for a Blue Line train to State, switch for Orange to DTX, and finally switch to Red to get up to Davis. This journey took a whopping 1 and a half hours, mainly due to the fact that the 116/117 is never on time (and sometimes never even shows up).
 
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Re: Silver Line to Chelsea (Study Meeting)

datadyne007 said:
Beat me to it. The 111 is not the only way to get into Chelsea. The 116 and 117 are severely overcrowded. I'd argue that the SL to Chelsea is more to alleviate these routes (thank the lord) than for the 111. Instead of taking the BL to Maverick and catching a 116/117, you could take the BL to Airport and then catch the SL into Chelsea and never deal with the 116/117 buses.
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Aha. Alright, that makes sense. Targeting the 116/117 makes much more sense than the 111 (even with its delays).

But still– when the Silver Line to Chelsea project is being sold as a one-seat ride into downtown, that's misleading at best.

Lord, knowing the T, they'll probably cut out the stop at Airport Station somewhere along the way...
 
Re: Silver Line to Chelsea (Study Meeting)

Riverside said:
So, I have a question about this whole idea of running the Silver Line to Chelsea via the Ted Williams and the Airport.

By my math, it'll be about 20 minutes between Chelsea and South Station:
South Station – Silver Line Way: 7 minutes (according to Google Maps transit; also, 7 minutes for a mile? Seriously? On the Green Line, that's how long it's scheduled to take to get from Government Center to Hynes, 1.8 miles.)
Silver Line Way – Airport: 4 mins (according to Google Maps driving directions– assumes that the T and MassDOT figure out a way for the Silver Line to avoid the ridiculous turnaround to get into the TWT)
Airport – Chelsea Station: 10 mins (according to Google Maps transit directions going from Chelsea Station to Maverick, which is the same distance as the new transitway would take; this is also how long is take SL4 and SL5 to go an equivalent distance between Dudley and Tufts Medical Center).

Maybe the third leg of that journey will be shortened more than I'm anticipating. Still, even if there were ideal conditions, and the busses traveled along this transitway at 30 mph, it would still take about 4 minutes to traverse that distance.

So we're almost certainly looking at significantly over 15 minutes' travel time. And that's only to get to South Station, which is somewhat at the periphery of the CBD, and which doesn't have great connectivity to the rest of the system.

Contrast that with the 111, which, in 2010, had 8,692 weekday boardings, and which, according to Google Maps transit, travels between Chelsea Station (well, really Arlington & 5th) and Haymarket in 8 minutes.

So: how is a Silver Line extension to Chelsea supposed to compete with the 111?

The 111 goes directly to Haymarket, which is close to the CBD and has a high number of connections with the rest of the system, while the Silver Line goes to South Station, located on the periphery of the CBD and which has relatively few connections to the rest of the system, and would arrive from Chelsea in twice the time.

It sounds like they're making the same mistake as they did with trying to pit SL3 against the 7, and we saw how that turned out.

Or is the thought that this will be sold as connecting Chelsea with downtown, when, in fact, it's part of a piecemeal effort to construct Urban Ring BRT infrastructure?
Click to expand...

What if they transfer to Blue at the Airport?
 
Re: Silver Line to Chelsea (Study Meeting)

BussesAin'tTrains said:
What if they transfer to Blue at the Airport?
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Yeah, Silver-Blue is the way to go to get downtown for sure. SL all the way is only good for the Seaport, SS, and redline connections - but those are all important destinations/connections in their own right.
 
Re: Silver Line to Chelsea (Study Meeting)

As I sat in traffic for 20 minutes on the 112 waiting for the Chelsea St bridge to come down for a passing tanker the true absurdity of the claims of what a game changer the SL is set in. Beyond just tracking the ships live via ShipTracker/GPS is there anyway to track ahead of time when the bridge is likely to be raised?
 
Re: Silver Line to Chelsea (Study Meeting)

ChelseaDweller said:
As I sat in traffic for 20 minutes on the 112 waiting for the Chelsea St bridge to come down for a passing tanker the true absurdity of the claims of what a game changer the SL is set in. Beyond just tracking the ships live via ShipTracker/GPS is there anyway to track ahead of time when the bridge is likely to be raised?
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Not that I've been able to find. I hear ya. The bridge takes a half hour at least. As an example, MassDOT tweets whenever the Fore River Bridge in Quincy is going to open and I wish something like that could be done for Chelsea St and Meridian St. It completely ruins my commute in the morning. I sincerely hope that the MBTA coordinates with the bridge operators to prevent the bridge from opening while the SL is close by to keep it on schedule.
 
Re: Silver Line to Chelsea (Study Meeting)

Did I just read that the Silver Line is profitable? ...I'm not sure what to think of this..
 
Re: Silver Line to Chelsea (Study Meeting)

ant8904 said:
Did I just read that the Silver Line is profitable? ...I'm not sure what to think of this..
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Yup, my understanding is that SL5 is the only bus service in the entire system which is profitable. It does make one pause...

The article is interesting. Ideally, I still prefer rail transit, but I am coming to grips with the political realities of buses. It's an interesting idea, to make the buses themselves sexier. But I think the faster service (mediated primarily by enforcing the dedicated lanes– as opposed to eliminating stops) is much more important to improving public perception of SL5.
 
Re: Silver Line to Chelsea (Study Meeting)

Signal priority would help too. Not sure why Glaeser didn't mention it.
 
Re: Silver Line to Chelsea (Study Meeting)

He links to the Bus RPI page which has been posted since early last year, and that kind of stuff was available in more infrequent reports earlier.

The "profitability" he refers to is a "negative subsidy per weekday rider" that is in the chart. You need to take that number with a large grain of salt, however.

Basically, first they calculate cost by multiplying vehicle-hours by hourly cost, and adding that to vehicle-miles multiplied by per-mile cost.

Then they take the measured weekday boardings number and multiply it by the average fare to get the revenue generated.

Subtract those two numbers for the net cost, and then divide it up by all the weekday boardings.

That gets you an estimate of operational net subsidy per boarding.

Here's the problems:

Cost per vehicle-hour and cost per vehicle-mile are numbers that are derived based on modeling, not strictly real-world data. For buses it's about $100-110 per hour and $3-4 per mile (IIRC). Those numbers have to be updated through a research study (and inflation adjusted every year) and from what I heard, the last time that was done was in the 90s.

Second, those numbers are strictly marginal operational expenses. They don't factor in the cost of running a maintenance dept, bus yards, administration, etc. It just says: if you want to run a bus another vehicle-hour, then that costs you an added $100. If you want to run a bus another vehicle-mile, then that's an additional $3.

Another artificial number is "Average fare." This is obtained by taking all of the revenue generated by a particular mode, and dividing it by all of the passengers of that mode. IIRC, in the 2012 fare hike CTPS study, they found a $0.76 average fare for buses, and after the fare hike they projected that it would be closer to $0.96 or so. So "bus revenue" is just 0.96 multiplied by the number of passengers.

These assumptions are very large. They're mostly useful for the task bus RPI gets put to: shuffling resources around on the existing bus network. In fact, I think there's a warning label somewhere that says "don't take these numbers out of context please." You couldn't "take over" the SL5 and make it a profitable business, if it were somehow possible to split that route away from the rest of the system.

Edit: Let me add, I should put a warning about the biggest way people misunderstand "subsidy per passenger": it does not say that the T is paying X amount of money everytime someone boards the bus! This is a common source of confusion.

For example, the 39 bus says it has a $0.72 subsidy per boarding ("Net Cost Per Pax"), and there are 15,018 daily boardings.

This does not mean that the T pays $0.72 every time someone boards. If I go and ride the 39 bus right now, it does not cost the T an extra $0.72.

The 0.72 is just (cost - revenue)/boardings as described above. The T is paying the same cost no matter how many people use the bus that day. Typical daily cost of a frequent bus route is about $20,000 give or take a few thousand. That cost is sunk, no matter how many people ride the bus. The more people ride the bus, the better, in fact, because then the T generates more revenue, and that can lower the subsidy.

The short version: More ridership is always better for recouping costs.
 
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Re: Silver Line to Chelsea (Study Meeting)

The Silver Line along Washington St works despite itself. It needs less stops, signal priority and enforced dedicated lanes. Ironically that was all planned for but never got off the drawing boards once the public and politicians got a hold of it. I remember a stop was added (Worcester Sq) to serve a senior center and signal priority has never been something the city bothered with (probably due to money?)

I don't have the ridership numbers but I'm sure you could shave off a couple stations to speed up service. That or do what NYC does and have the regular local bus and the Select Bus Service (BRT) which makes only major street stops. I use one of the routes and it was a HUGE improvement since it came on line. Also a actual pre-boarding payment system which is heavily policed would help.
 
Re: Silver Line to Chelsea (Study Meeting)

Pre-boarding payment is good, but the way NYC implements it is incredibly stupid.

Basically, you have to dip your MetroCard in an outside machine regardless of whether you have a Monthly Pass or not. You must obtain a receipt from the machine. So, no convenience upgrade for Pass holders, which to me is one of the major sells of all-door boarding.

The other incredibly stupid thing that NYC SBS does is stop the bus during a fare inspection. Basically they pull a vehicle to the curb, check everyone's receipt, and then let the bus go... bye bye speed advantage.

There are too many stops on Washington Street (the old El had too few though) but the big problems with the SL are not that right now: the slow slog through Chinatown is the biggest time waster, and the front door boarding scrum at Dudley and at Temple Place. I actually haven't watched it at South Station but it might be the same there.
 
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