Re: Dr. Beverly Scott resigns
That's not what I meant by scheduling crunch. Those problems don't come about when trains are traveling one behind each other on the same track (there are other problems related to dwell time, but that's independent). The problems come whenever trains cross paths or merge paths. The biggest scheduling crunch comes from the Copley junction, and nothing short of a mega-project will fix that. But there are other places where trains merge paths: North Station, Government Center, Park Street, and Kenmore. The point with the highest volume of merging trains (not including Copley Junction) comes at Government Center (pre-shutdown) and Park Street (right now).
During normal operations, with Government Center open, the "B" and "D" branches turn around and merge back together with the "C" and "E" coming from further east. There is very little room for layover at Government Center, just the loop track and that's it. Problem is that while the "D" branch can be made somewhat reliable (despite dwell time issues/front door idiocy), the "B" branch is completely unreliable on top of the dwell time problems. With nowhere in the Central Subway to lay up trains, any schedules abnormalities have to be sorted out prior to entry: usually at Kenmore station, prior to the merge. This produces extremely obnoxious waits for customers, who are forced to participate in the layover until the other train arrives. This is extremely likely to happen after the train has already been delayed, as well.
After the GLX, the MBTA will have enough subway cars to have separate turnaround points for each branch: "B" - Park St/Gov't Center, "C" - North Station, "D" - College Ave/Medford Hillside, "E" - Union Square. That will take the pressure off of the 'east' end of each branch and layovers should no longer have to be sorted out while in revenue service. In addition, there will be a maintenance yard on the 'east' end of the system in case of difficulties, so trains won't have to limp all the way back to Reservoir in case of trouble (or get stashed in a siding until that can happen). The "E" branch will also have a true yard along its route for the first time since Arborway closed.
I know that other people will say that the MBTA could run their operations better today, and I don't disagree. For example, under ideal circumstances, you would want all your service to run end-to-end. Today, you would want every train to run through to Lechmere and go around the loop. And in the future, you would divide up the branches evenly between College Ave and Union Square, for example {"C", "D"} to College Ave and {"B", "E"} to Union Square. But that would require even more train cars/drivers to fill in all the additional route-kilometers. And with routes such as the "B" with scheduling unreliability, the longer they run, the more difficult it is to keep them on-time. Also there's some questions about the ability of the built-in-1910 Lechmere Viaduct to handle that many trains without major maintenance/reconstruction. And I'm not sure that the MBTA can handle turning back a train every 3 minutes without a loop track, as will be the case for both the new branches. Although it's standard practice to turnback high-frequency trains with just 2 tracks in many places around the world, the MBTA always seems to screw it up eventually at Brigham Circle, and that's only one branch.
Okay, this response has grown waaay to long. Sorry.
That's not what I meant by scheduling crunch. Those problems don't come about when trains are traveling one behind each other on the same track (there are other problems related to dwell time, but that's independent). The problems come whenever trains cross paths or merge paths. The biggest scheduling crunch comes from the Copley junction, and nothing short of a mega-project will fix that. But there are other places where trains merge paths: North Station, Government Center, Park Street, and Kenmore. The point with the highest volume of merging trains (not including Copley Junction) comes at Government Center (pre-shutdown) and Park Street (right now).
During normal operations, with Government Center open, the "B" and "D" branches turn around and merge back together with the "C" and "E" coming from further east. There is very little room for layover at Government Center, just the loop track and that's it. Problem is that while the "D" branch can be made somewhat reliable (despite dwell time issues/front door idiocy), the "B" branch is completely unreliable on top of the dwell time problems. With nowhere in the Central Subway to lay up trains, any schedules abnormalities have to be sorted out prior to entry: usually at Kenmore station, prior to the merge. This produces extremely obnoxious waits for customers, who are forced to participate in the layover until the other train arrives. This is extremely likely to happen after the train has already been delayed, as well.
After the GLX, the MBTA will have enough subway cars to have separate turnaround points for each branch: "B" - Park St/Gov't Center, "C" - North Station, "D" - College Ave/Medford Hillside, "E" - Union Square. That will take the pressure off of the 'east' end of each branch and layovers should no longer have to be sorted out while in revenue service. In addition, there will be a maintenance yard on the 'east' end of the system in case of difficulties, so trains won't have to limp all the way back to Reservoir in case of trouble (or get stashed in a siding until that can happen). The "E" branch will also have a true yard along its route for the first time since Arborway closed.
I know that other people will say that the MBTA could run their operations better today, and I don't disagree. For example, under ideal circumstances, you would want all your service to run end-to-end. Today, you would want every train to run through to Lechmere and go around the loop. And in the future, you would divide up the branches evenly between College Ave and Union Square, for example {"C", "D"} to College Ave and {"B", "E"} to Union Square. But that would require even more train cars/drivers to fill in all the additional route-kilometers. And with routes such as the "B" with scheduling unreliability, the longer they run, the more difficult it is to keep them on-time. Also there's some questions about the ability of the built-in-1910 Lechmere Viaduct to handle that many trains without major maintenance/reconstruction. And I'm not sure that the MBTA can handle turning back a train every 3 minutes without a loop track, as will be the case for both the new branches. Although it's standard practice to turnback high-frequency trains with just 2 tracks in many places around the world, the MBTA always seems to screw it up eventually at Brigham Circle, and that's only one branch.
Okay, this response has grown waaay to long. Sorry.
