General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

F-Line to Dudley said:
No. They've been upgraded to Tier 0+ emissions, microprocessor controls, LED light fixtures, and other minor touches. Basically, it's an upgrade that does minor optimizations to the existing platform where they can get it and ensures that all parts of dwindling availability are changed out for parts that will be readily available for a full 25-year life extension of the vehicle. For emissions, the 3000 HP EMD 645 prime mover can't be tarted up to any higher emissions standard than 0+ (which is considerably cleaner than the non-rebuilds in the fleet), and if you changed the prime mover to something newer-tech it stops being a rebuild loco and starts being a remanufactured loco...in which case you're now bound to the maximum Tier 4 emissions standard.

Metra, Metro North (west-of-Hudson), and the T all run F40PH-3's. They're not exactly identical (the T's have more LED bulbs than MNRR's earlier rehabs), but MPI is following Progress Rail's rebuild specs for the MNRR and Metra fleets pretty faithfully so they're all broadly third-generation at spec level. The "C" in -3C still stands for "Cummins" as it did for the -2C generation, since that is the make of the auxiliary generator providing HEP power to the coaches. Metra's fleet does without the generator (like the HSP-46's do) and runs the coach power straight off the main engine's alternator, so theirs are just -3's without the "C".
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Anyway, it looks brand spanking new!! :cool:
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Now we more or less know there's options in-hand for getting between West Station and Western Ave. on a protected reservation by running somewhere approx. 2 blocks east of N. Harvard St. And it'll glom to that separation whether BRT or LRT; the MIS's street-running is now 100% obsolete. The only question is how diligent is Harvard going to be at setting aside that separated ROW they've claimed they'd set aside. The very existence of Beacon Park as Harvard property now forces a re-study of the (only scarcely studied) spur.
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Right — but what entity "forces a restudy" here? Harvard? Does the state actually have any power to force a restudy when Harvard owns all the land?
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F-Line to Dudley said:
Harvard has lots of institutional stuff about the need for the Ring + spur. A whole lot. I don't think they've ever not been solidly vociferous about the need. But they are infuriatingly vague on what precisely they're setting aside for a reservation, because the plans for Beacon Park keep changing and keep getting punted out. Though if there's a suspect motive here, I think it's that they're too content to sit on land and don't intend to build out as fast as people & pols think or hope. They've taken the slow lane with a lot of other Allston redev, so it's a little iffy to picture frenzied building starting up the second the Pike realignment project finishes. I fear the state building a perfectly good West Station but needing decades before it fires on all cylinders because Harvard wants to cadillac it on the adjacent land.
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Again, my real concern is that, given the fact that
1)Harvard owns the land, is developing it, and
2) There is absolutely no public discourse about the need to preserve an absolutely critical ROW (it's not top MBTA wish list priority etc, it's never talked about even now with the constant bandying about of "transportation crisis" in local news), this is in jeopardy. I feel like "we" on aB are complacent since we're used to reading about the spur like it's fait accomplis, when it's far from it.

Should people be advocating to their local reps the need to draw some attention to this? I remain concerned that if this is not front and center in the transportation conversation, Harvard might not adequately plan for and preserve a ROW that could accommodate LRT, which is clearly the best long term solution. If they wind up giving some BS BRT corridor that prevents LRT conversion, we lose a major opportunity, forever. This may sound alarmist but the state doesn't have a great track record of executing desperately needed transit connections, and, in this case, there's not even a historical ROW to preserve for future use.
 
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Some minor bad news.... The Back Bay - South Station commuter rail trip is no longer free, they're back to charging zone 1A fares. The gentleman checking tickets said they weren't told about it until yesterday morning and said the employees weren't happy about the lack of notification to passengers. Did anyone see a notice or announcement about the change?
 
Well, the good news is that it'll only really matter for a couple years. AFC 2.0 will (almost certainly) make Zone 1A a free transfer to/from subway.
 
ssresident said:
Some minor bad news.... The Back Bay - South Station commuter rail trip is no longer free, they're back to charging zone 1A fares. The gentleman checking tickets said they weren't told about it until yesterday morning and said the employees weren't happy about the lack of notification to passengers. Did anyone see a notice or announcement about the change?
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With the soon (?) To be introduced fare gates at back Bay and south station this was inevitable at some point soon, no didn't see any announcements. However for the time being the reality still is it won't get checked, I bought a 10 ride zone 1a CR ticket and over a 2 month period of commuting have used 9 tickets...
 
FK4 said:
Should people be advocating to their local reps the need to draw some attention to this? I remain concerned that if this is not front and center in the transportation conversation, Harvard might not adequately plan for and preserve a ROW that could accommodate LRT, which is clearly the best long term solution. If they wind up giving some BS BRT corridor that prevents LRT conversion, we lose a major opportunity, forever. This may sound alarmist but the state doesn't have a great track record of executing desperately needed transit connections, and, in this case, there's not even a historical ROW to preserve for future use.
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If the question is "should we inform pols and officials of our well thought out and drawn out policy ideas, or should we hope that it's figured out absent the community's input?" I think the answer should be obvious.

 
Apparently there was a suicide by train last night near the Newtonville CR stop. Don't think there's anything the MBTA can do to prevent this, sadly.
 
Per NETransit, Type 8 3847 that derailed in the Green Line C/D portal tunnel last month has been written off as a wreck.
 
jklo said:
Apparently there was a suicide by train last night near the Newtonville CR stop. Don't think there's anything the MBTA can do to prevent this, sadly.
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More free ad space to suicide prevention hotlines would be a start.
 
Arlington said:
More free ad space to suicide prevention hotlines would be a start.
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Sounds nice and I'm not arguing against attempting that effort (and this is out of scope for this discussion), but suicide is not an issue that can be solved through advertising.

Advertising a suicide hotline is not even close to a replacement for quality relationships, a sense of community, a purpose, a passion, a cause that feels as if your life has meaning, and healthy social interactions.

Unfortunately, there are many in this country whose lives are completely devoid of the above keys to fulfillment. Advertising a suicide hotline is not a very effective way to inject meaning into somebody's otherwise empty life.

Sure, advertise a suicide hotline, but to think that (or the MBTA in general) can do anything statistically meaningful to make a dent in the suicide rate is misguided. It might feel good to say they're doing something, but it misses the point.

The problem is that people's lives feel meaningless, not that they haven't seen more advertising for a suicide prevention hotline.
 
I hesitate to derail this, but..

You’re dead on.

Perhaps more on track: having urban design and infrastructure that brings people together rather than atomizing them is one lever of solution to the deeper problem you describe.
 
I agree. I tend to think that commuting in traffic in a single-occupancy motor vehicle is a very dehumanizing experience. Mass transit, in theory, should bring people together with their community more.

Anecdotal: I commute by the Orange Line and Commuter Rail. I have a friend at my gym who is often on the same Orange Line train as me in the morning. Until some recent Keolis scheduling changes, I knew my train’s conductor well and we chatted a good amount (reverse commute mid-morning, so quiet train). I have another old friend who I’ve recently gotten back in touch with who overlaps a couple stops on the afternoon inbound Commuter Rail. Now I’m not claiming this is typical, but I have to imagine that (on a perfect day) having three friendly faces to have positive interactions with to-and-from work is a lot more emotionally beneficial if an experience than sitting isolated, “atomized” in a single-occupancy motor vehicle in highway traffic.

So, frankly, if the MBTA can do anything to improve mental health, it’s to focus on improving service.
 
Just released...Transport Kendall Report: Actions to Transform Mobility

https://www.transportkendall.org

From:
To address the mobility challenges facing a growing district, a group of stakeholders, including representatives from the City of Cambridge, state transportation agencies, local institutions, and private organizations, came together in 2015 to form the Kendall Square Mobility Task Force (KSMTF).
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Grand Junction is significantly featured...
 
bigpicture7 said:
Just released...Transport Kendall Report: Actions to Transform Mobility

https://www.transportkendall.org

From:


Grand Junction is significantly featured...
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Hits all the right notes without much fluff. F-Line's going to hate the assumption that the GJ transit is DMUs from West to North. Mentioning the Kendall headhouses, platforms, and portal is good. This is the first I've heard of a bus bridge from Cambridge Crossing to Inner Belt.
 
Equilibria said:
Hits all the right notes without much fluff. F-Line's going to hate the assumption that the GJ transit is DMUs from West to North. Mentioning the Kendall headhouses, platforms, and portal is good. This is the first I've heard of a bus bridge from Cambridge Crossing to Inner Belt.
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The DMU thang was on the midrange Rail Vision options, so it's not surprising they rolled with it verbatim as a best-odds pick. But it is asterisked to hell in the RV as dependent on further capacity analysis (which hasn't been done). That's where it's going to run into problems trying to make Urban Rail headways. Doubly so because if it's being opened up to this niche-y dinky then the state-level politics of token quantities of Worcester-NS one-seats is going to interfere and really push the schedules beyond what'll support :15 bi-directional headways. Double-tracking the GJ doesn't necessarily move that needle at all because # of on-line stations and the North Station terminal district approach are the time chews and pinch points that jeopardize the very frequency target that nets useful-enough service.

It's not this study's fault that the scheme is a house of cards. It's the fact that West-North DMU dinky has been so prominently featured on multiple state-level proposals dating back to Gov. Patrick's IOC wet-kiss vaporware "Indigoes 2024" map without ever getting any formal workup whatsoever on headways and crossing impacts. That only exists in the GJ Transportation Study for part-time unidirectional Worcester runs. The Kendall study couldn't stick its necks out any further than "develop a transportation concept".

I wouldn't get hopes up for this, because they could do little more than shove everything on the Rail Vision for answering the too-numerous TBD's about throughput. The RV Alts. have always been structured to make West-North one of the first/quickest cuts if they run into a headwind on achievable capacity, so we sort of know up-front the odds aren't real great. When all is said and done, I still think we'll be studying something off the RR mode to find the schedules frequent enough to match the corridor demand forecast. Thankfully they are planning to update that forecast so we'll have fresh numbers to show what baseline frequency is the must-have.

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The Innerbelt bridge could be 1 of 2 things: (1) Urban Ring-derivative bus-only bridge, so...again...scraped up from prior studies; or (2) an actual city-street extension of Innerbelt Rd. The UR MIS had bupkis about where such a BRT bridge would actually exist through the spaghetti rail junctions at Brickbottom, so it's impossible to tell which of the 2 this refers to. And I guess the Kendall study doesn't know either because they make no mention. Nothing really to say here because we don't know any tangible facts about it. Building "a" bridge is certainly doable. Whether that bridge is on an alignment that facilitates Ring-like BRT service without ham-fisted turning is another matter. An east-west bridge would've been more favorable for direct service than a north-south bridge, but the UR MIS wouldn't even say that much specific.

It won't be cheap, that's for sure. If drawing a straight line as if Innerbelt is going to connect to Lechmere it would have to pass over a minimum of 13 tracks, including the rump-end of some elevated GLX infrastructure where the freight wraparound from the Lowell Line passes under the GL yard leads. Then it has to quickly get down behind the Shell station on O'Brien Hwy. before the GLX Lechmere viaduct extension and sharply turn towards Water St. Tall and long bridge. Bend closer to O'Brien...more elevated + ground-level spaghetti. Bend closer to Boston Engine Terminal...fewer to no elevated junk but longer length and many more tracks to overpass.

FWIW...I think an actual city-street extension of Innerbelt would be rad as hell for general-purpose linkage, especially if it came with a project to widen the makeshift tunnel under the Lowell Line to have full sidewalks. But that bridge alignment question around spaghetti junction is a feasibility crapshoot, so probably has to be kept on a short leash for any prospective wishlists.

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The bus prioritization stuff is genuinely good. As is repairing the advancing decay on the Red Line platforms and improving ped flow at the egress level. That station gets so dangerously crowded at rush; it can't go on any longer with 1912-sized exit stairs.

I'm not sure the flood risk to the portal is as great as they claim, however. The portal is up pretty high above Charles Basin to align with the Longfellow approach, and Main St. is ancestral terra firma here so there's no landfill anywhere on the Cambridge Tunnel alignment. It's surrounded very nearby on all sides by landfill to Vassar St., but the tunnel itself is thoroughly bedrocked.
 
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F-Line to Dudley said:
The bus prioritization stuff is genuinely good. As is repairing the advancing decay on the Red Line platforms and improving ped flow at the egress level. That station gets so dangerously crowded at rush; it can't go on any longer with 1912-sized exit stairs.
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One question I'd ask if I were the MBTA: what's behind the platform walls at Kendall? Is it too hemmed in by utilities to widen the platforms a bit?
 
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New signs being installed this morning. Contra the old signage here:

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Really solid improvements here, especially letting people from out of town know that they've just arrived on the C line (and to have another chance to figure out whether that's a mistake). Well done!
 
Equilibria said:
One question I'd ask if I were the MBTA: what's behind the platform walls at Kendall? Is it too hemmed in by utilities to widen the platforms a bit?
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Like Central and many other stations...nothing except the old BERy white tile and maybe a couple old fresco signs (which I'm guessing were too destroyed at Kendall to preserve, otherwise they would've been uncovered in the '88 renovation like Central's frescos). The platforms really can't be widened because of the structural invasiveness. But, they probably have some TBD options on the egresses, because egress flow backs up onto the platforms. The extremely narrow secondary exit stairs need a widening in addition to headhouse-area improvements.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Like Central and many other stations...nothing except the old BERy white tile and maybe a couple old fresco signs (which I'm guessing were too destroyed at Kendall to preserve, otherwise they would've been uncovered in the '88 renovation like Central's frescos). The platforms really can't be widened because of the structural invasiveness. But, they probably have some TBD options on the egresses, because egress flow backs up onto the platforms. The extremely narrow secondary exit stairs need a widening in addition to headhouse-area improvements.
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F-Line -- what about the newly extended Platform segments [most obvious due to the Ceiling structure at Park] to accomodate more cars in the train

I'm assuming that there must have been some relocating of utility lines, etc. to make way for the digging that went on at the stations in the old Cambridge-Dorchester Tunnel
 
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