General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

cbrett said:
Pretty sure 2 of the BU stops are gone to make room for the new bike lanes. Can't wait for a news piece on how evil cyclists are even attacking the T now
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Yeah, I know that. We've just been waiting forever to hear the final picks. And thank god BU didn't dig in its heels on BU West, because their own pissy resistance to any change whatsoever is the only reason why it survived every previous attempt to end its useless existence. This was topical discussion throughout my undergrad years there...and I graduated 16 freakin' years ago.
 
I heard on the radio (WBUR?) that there's a plan to make the current Orange Line fleet increase trains per hour by speeding the turns at the end of the line. The story said that the T was considering stationing an operator at Oak Grove and at Forest Hills whose purpose would be to cut the time it takes to reverse direction.

Sounds like a great plan to me--basically it is the Southwest Airlines model of more turns per vehicle. Does anyone have details?
 
That's called dropback; the basic idea is that a second operator will take over the vehicle to give the first operator time to complete something else (like taking a meal break). In this case, the second operator would board the train as soon as it pulls into the station; they could then pull the train back into service as soon as passengers were off and on, rather than waiting for the first operator to walk the whole length of the train. The first operator will then be the new operator for the next train to pull in, and so on.

If you even save three minutes at each end, that's the equivalent of having one extra trainset in service. Given that they recently had to drop from 17 to 16 trainsets because of reliability issues, that's a pretty big deal.

As for why this wasn't already done: dropback is tricky to schedule. A single operator will be on several different trains during their shift, rather than just one. It does also usually increase the number of operators on duty at one time. So dropback at terminals isn't necessarily an ideal practice when you have enough fleet to run the headways you want, but it can represent an improvement in some situations like this.
 
Does anyone have any updates regarding when active stoplight control might be implemented on branches of the green line? I know this has been floated many times in many places, but I'm curious as to the current status. Last I heard they were going to pilot it on the #1 bus first as an evaluation phase.
 
The #1 project has almost nothing to do with the MBTA, actually - it's being implemented by the city alone. There are some within the MBTA that strongly believe that TSP will have little impact on the Green Line, even though other cities have gotten rather nice benefits. Supposedly there is a test program at several intersections on the B Branch, but no information from that is forthcoming.
 
The EGE said:
The #1 project has almost nothing to do with the MBTA, actually - it's being implemented by the city alone. There are some within the MBTA that strongly believe that TSP will have little impact on the Green Line, even though other cities have gotten rather nice benefits. Supposedly there is a test program at several intersections on the B Branch, but no information from that is forthcoming.
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Interesting, thanks...the counterargument I've heard is that passenger boardings adjacent to stoplights is an issue potentially hindering the full benefit of TSP on the green line. I'm very curious if this is actually the case, and/or if some sort of hybrid design (e.g., with operator interventions) could overcome this. I didn't realize that the #1 bus program was a city initiative not MBTA.

I know I am ill informed about this, but was hoping that some of those on this forum could discuss it.
 
bigpicture7 said:
Interesting, thanks...the counterargument I've heard is that passenger boardings adjacent to stoplights is an issue potentially hindering the full benefit of TSP on the green line. I'm very curious if this is actually the case, and/or if some sort of hybrid design (e.g., with operator interventions) could overcome this. I didn't realize that the #1 bus program was a city initiative not MBTA.

I know I am ill informed about this, but was hoping that some of those on this forum could discuss it.
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Multiple ways to do it, but most trolley detectors can tell when the doors are closed and won't start the yellow-light countdown on cross streets until doors are shut. It's not full-on signal preemption if they just passively re-time the lights to the schedule. Real active preemption detects both the transit vehicle on approach to an intersection and at starting spot coming out of a station stop and shouldn't be upended by a station dwell.
 
They took the filthy plastic off the ceiling light fixtures at Harvard and let the bare tubes light the platforms. Wow...what a difference that makes. It's bathed in brightness right now...enough that you can see every individual streak of grime caked up on the walls. Night and day from couple weeks ago where everything was dim and sickly yellow-twilight.

Give the surfaces a solid power-washing and replace those harsh daylight fluorescents with LED's of tolerable color temp and the whole station could look good-as-new with zero other improvements.

I don't think I've seen a station get powerwashed since Porter right before the '04 Dem Convention. Geez...buy a few of those and work the whole system over one line at a time. It would totally roll back the clock on the dank.
 
Speaking of things whose filth has been revealed, I was on a newest-series Red this morning and it was utterly covered with dried-on dust/grit. What's up with that? Washer broke?
 
Arlington said:
Speaking of things whose filth has been revealed, I was on a newest-series Red this morning and it was utterly covered with dried-on dust/grit. What's up with that? Washer broke?
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If it was on the outside of the car usually means A/C vents above the ceiling were dumping a full load of condensation in a gusher out the small drainage holes on the side where roof meets wall. There's probably some cars that haven't been through the carwash since the last heat wave in Sept. still retaining streaks across the windows from that water outlet. Normal behavior for a de-humidifying A/C; a home window unit will drip its condensation out the bottom in much the same way.


Sometimes happens on the inside of an 01500/01600 near the ends of the cars when those very old vents fail to redirect the built-up condensation outside and overspill/leak into the car. Can make a royal mess of the end seats when it takes a dump. Never seen that happen on an 01700 or 01800, though...only the oldest rolling ruins. And only on Red; the ancient Orange cars are much more immune to that.
 
Not sure how recently this happened, but Harvard appears to have gotten a full power-washing along with all new light bulbs.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Whee! Another Type 8 derailment!
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Jaysus. In the 16 years I've been riding the Green Line, I had developed some modest optimism. They relaid all that trackbed and tracks on the D line, cut all those trees that ought never have been allowed to grow in the D line ROW, the repair they did on that massive flood blow-out a few years back was astonishingly fast, the rehabs of the type 7s look good, and ..... I had previously thought they'd sorted out whatever the Bredas' problems were (or perhaps it's a failure to keep track geometry suited to the Bredas, whichever). I had definitely noticed a gradual improvement in reliability, and certainly during the winter of doom, the D branch of Green kept on bouncing back faster than just about everything except the Blue Line. I recognize the other three Green branches struggled more that winter than the D, but I think that was road blockages, not the line itself, and they were still bouncing back faster than Red or Orange or commuter rail.

But these derailments are numbingly common. There goes my optimism..... fading into the mud .....

It seems there's been a slew of these derailments out towards the end of the B line. Maybe they've just let the geometries out there go to shit since the last time they aligned the rails in that area?
 
The one just east of BC a couple weeks ago was 100% human error - the switch was changed while the car was still traversing it. Had it been a Type 7 trailing on that consist, it would have derailed just the same.
 
The EGE said:
The one just east of BC a couple weeks ago was 100% human error - the switch was changed while the car was still traversing it. Had it been a Type 7 trailing on that consist, it would have derailed just the same.
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That's useful to know, thanks. I'll nudge my optimism back up a notch on the equipment front.
 
West said:
That's useful to know, thanks. I'll nudge my optimism back up a notch on the equipment front.
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The derailment at Lake St. (Boston College) last night was caused by a broken rail. It was also a motor truck, not the center truck, on the Type 8 that came off.
The shut down later in the day on the B line was also a broken rail at Packards Corner, but luckily not a second derailment in less than 24 hours.
 
bakgwailo said:
Not sure if anyone posted this, but today from the Globe:


MBTA could test daily commuter rail trains from South Station to Gillette Stadium


Is it me, or should they be focusing more on event/game trains first?
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They've done game trains for over 40 years now.


The Framingham Secondary right now is in process of being upgraded for some CSX freight I.O.U.'s, so it'll have less ass-tastic rail by next year and a passenger speed limit raised to ~40 MPH. That's decent enough to do some trials on the new infrastructure, up to the daily limit for trips on unsignalized track without triggering the PTC mandate.

If Kraft's floating subsidy for the trial, why the hell not. Best-case it'll only take a couple of years for full proof-of-demand to greenlight the full-blown extension for 16 round trips daily (double the current Franklin frequencies out to Walpole) at relatively svelte ~$75M total cost. And this trial would shut up the East Walpole NIMBY's who've been threatening a pitchfork mob at any thoughts of full-time service by showing them that the world isn't going to end.
 
The T's new hydrogen fuel cell powered pilot bus has entered revenue service. " Miles on the T" blog has a review here: https://milesonthembta.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-mbtas-new-hydrogen-powered-bus.html

This is part of an USDOT-funded trial being done in several cities. T has a small write-up with schematics of how it works here: http://www.mbta.com/about_the_mbta/environment/default.asp?id=26033. This is the same tech that's been powering our manned spacecraft ever since the Apollo program. It works by drawing a couple types of different fuel from tanks and mixing them at cryogenic temperatures inside the fuel cell to produce electricity, with the only byproduct being plain water. While extremely efficient, environmentally friendly, and battle-tested it's only had very limited commercial applications to-date because of the complexity of designing the cryo cooling in a way that can be easily serviced by laymen, plus a limited supply chain for general-consumption availability of the fuel mixture. Enough R&D has gone on behind the scenes that the tech has now gotten serviceable enough for public trials, and this is one of those data-collection efforts that hopes to build it up to critical mass and break hydrogen cells big as a mass-market fuel source. A startup in Billerica designed this particular fuel cell for the USDOT trial.


Bus will run for 6 months before being returned to the feds with data collection on the technology's suitability for public transportation. Currently based out of Charlestown garage, so will be primarily making the rounds on the Sullivan, Malden Ctr., and non- Harvard tunnel Cambridge/Somerville routes. Per the T website write-up for the program's goals, they are looking for public feedback so if you catch a ride on it be sure to give your two cents. Look for the special paint job:

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