MBTA Buses & Infrastructure

Stlin said:
This particular photo was included in the 9/14 Bus electrification presentation to the FMCB, but it was probably taken at the NFI facility in Minnesota prior to delivery, given that's what I think is a NYC MTA bus peeking out in the background. I would be surprised if they didn't test the overhead charging system prior to delivery. Given 1295 was the first unit delivered, this was probably a pre-delivery status update/ promo pic.

The proposal in whole is reasonable, except for the fact that the needed bus doesn't exist yet.
NFI at the moment makes available a 3rd party option with the Xcelsior TT but I don't think 25km is viable for anything other than bridging down wires or short non rev moves, once you account for 40+% range losses in extremes of weather. And, I don't think the Cambridge carhouse on mass ave has the space available immediately for what would be a bigger fleet.
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North Cambridge doesn't, but Watertown certainly does. West-region 40-footer load reliever garage would be an ironclad requirement for the extra bodies needed to run a full-on BEB network, but the fact that it can instantaneously close North Cambridge for any/all heavy repair if reanimated to any degree makes Watertown an ace-in-the-hole.

Figure if they wanted to put the full 77 on a TT/BEB hybrid for on-wire charging that's enough impetus for extending the Mass Ave. wires half-mile further to the Parkway then along the mythical Alewife-Mass Ave. busways for a 600V DC interconnect at Alewife substation. If they remanicure the Alewife Station busway to have wired side-parking turnouts for 3-5 layover 77A's at a time + 1 inspection pit with onsite toolbox for quick maint/troubleshooting, that's enough to completely sell out the 77K+ sq. ft. backlot at Trolley Square for more private development and lump all home-garage duties for the TT's at Watertown.

At minimum the 77 and 75 should be good enough to trial for on-wire charging since that's a goodly amount of wired territory before they diverge (the TM map is not quite to-scale...Arlington Heights isn't nearly as far as it looks from North Cambridge, and Medford Square on the 96 isn't nearly as close as it looks). 74...I dunno, probably have to play that one by ear to see how the charging ranges go. It would have to be a really good quick-charge with only 3/4 mile of wire to play with, but since the 74 is a pretty taut route quick thumbs-up/thumbs-down shouldn't be hard to determine on the charging range. 78's extreme wishful thinking at this point and 96 is way out of range. But...doesn't take many scores off the TT network to achieve some impressive scale.
  • Alewife busway build strongly beckons the hyper-local 77A to Alewife Station with a wire extension, so it can mirror-image the 79 Arlington Heights-Alewife on the corridor. Regular old TT...wire extension is too short/cheap for dual'ing unicorns.
  • 71 is ripe for BRT features like more imposing bus laneage, signal priority, and 60-footer TT's. 1/3 mile wire extension to a Newton Corner loop at the to-be N.C. Urban Rail station makes it a very important radial BRT route to Harvard from Regional Rail, and the ex- A Line trunk feed is still active under-street as a DC interconnect between the B Line and 71 so would be near-effortless on cost literally only requiring the pole + spools-o'-wire + hangers hardware and nothing more.
  • Full-route 77 is the poster child for an in-route charging BEB rollout, since the corridor (esp. if the 77A got its wire extension) would be split pretty close to even on vs. off wire mileage, and the stop turnout at the Parkway would--with the Alewife busways--be a busy enough crossroads of route transferrage (esp. if Route 16 got some radial-spanning BRT between Red, GLX, and OL-Wellington) to fit an automated trolley pole raise/drop into the default boarding dwell. I would think this is also worth shooting for 60-footer TT/BEB's.
  • Watertown Garage reanimation checks off lots of boxes on the Bus Facilities Master Plan...both across-board frequency expansion via load relief for Charlestown and Albany, and also for the fleet extras needed to go wholer-hog on BEB rollout. And direct-serves a large real estate redev slab at Trolley Square in the tradeout from tiny North Cambridge garage. Sort of same domino effect with Watertown direct-serving the 77K sq. ft. redev trade in Trolley Square as future Wellington Garage direct serves a Fellsway Garage flip for Medford redev (165K sq. ft. T property + 285K sq. ft. strip mall & car wash as super-slab).
  • If all goes well with the base builds on the keymost routes, then BEB technology should catch up enough to make the 75 and 74, respectively, be next-targets. Also not out of realm of possibility that we can do something in-route charging wise with the 57 if it's sharing Galen St. with the 71 extension. While I can't see Newton ever agreeing to string wire back on Tremont St., presence of the 600V DC trunk underneath the whole way to Packards Corner means the hookup opportunities for quick-charge stations at major stops is pretty good (while obviously those stations could schlep off the B's feed through BU). Kludgy, yes, to attempt a hodgepodge of charging scenarios. But presence of that 600V trunkline across the whole of the 57's route makes madcap experimentation pretty easy to do here as a proof-of-concept. And if you can rope a more speculative reach like the 57 in with the surer-thing 71/77A/77/etc., then you're really starting off like gangbusters with the in-route charging network scale.

This is really great. We were told originally that TT's were passe and the Cambridge wires needed to be ripped down as first order of business, because reasons. Now we've actually got decision-informing research and the mentality has done a complete 180 to treating the TT's as a crown jewel showcase that springboards the whole BEB network. I feel like it's just desserts for that very high-functioning part of the Yellow Line being shit upon by holier-than-thou pols all those years as an anachronism that now they need it to the hilt as a necessity for launching this politically-charged Jetsons Shit initiative into orbit. Long time coming.
 
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I wonder if battery technology will be at a place in 10-15 years where in-motion charging could be something that would work for EMU service. Electrify the commuter rail network to the edge of RER level service and then have the trains run to the outer stations on battery. Yes before somebody says it - that would be a lot of battery.
 
chmeeee said:
I wonder if battery technology will be at a place in 10-15 years where in-motion charging could be something that would work for EMU service. Electrify the commuter rail network to the edge of RER level service and then have the trains run to the outer stations on battery. Yes before somebody says it - that would be a lot of battery.
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Eastern Japan Railway Company already does that on the Oga branch line with an in-route recharge at the end.

Oga (Recharge) <--- Oga branch on batteries --> Oiwake <-- Ou main line on catenary --> Akita (connection to bullet train).

This line's rolling stock is the EV-E801 series battery electric multiple unit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EV-E801_series
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
This is really great. We were told originally that TT's were passe and the Cambridge wires needed to be ripped down as first order of business, because reasons. Now we've actually got decision-informing research and the mentality has done a complete 180 to treating the TT's as a crown jewel showcase that springboards the whole BEB network. I feel like it's just desserts for that very high-functioning part of the Yellow Line being shit upon by holier-than-thou pols all those years as an anachronism that now they need it to the hilt as a necessity for launching this politically-charged Jetsons Shit initiative into orbit. Long time coming.
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It still does seem that the infrastructure engineering/manager folks want to take down the OCSes because of the cost of maintainance. Seems like if they could they would tear it all down asap.
 
chmeeee said:
I wonder if battery technology will be at a place in 10-15 years where in-motion charging could be something that would work for EMU service. Electrify the commuter rail network to the edge of RER level service and then have the trains run to the outer stations on battery. Yes before somebody says it - that would be a lot of battery.
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No...never. Because bus vs. train is such a stratospheric difference in weight differential and by physics power storage and/or potential energies have finite densities so the extra bulk in carrying that onboard will almost literally never scale well enough to train levels in the next 100 years to hit competitive parity with offboard (i.e. wire) power delivery. It's a function of the enormity of the scale difference. Buses are veritable fruit flies to power compared to hustling the elephants of a train. Plus...trains being on a 100% fixed guideway to begin with makes matching to a continuous power conduit far easier than on any other mode.

Right now Li-ion doesn't even approach diesel's power density for bulk applications (including marine vessels...for example the Cummins QSK-95 prime mover in the newfangled Siemens Charger was a cargo boat power plant before it got ported to trains). If you don't have access to offboard energy, a large diesel fuel tank with slow-speed prime mover generating electricity for propulsion and/or consist power is a pretty much unsurmountable and figures to be for quite awhile because energy densities are a law-of-physics thing. Now, obviously that's a sliding scale...the higher-frequency the route running on the fixed rail guideway the more economically attractive offboard/wire energy looks. That's of course got its own set of economics. But as raw It Goes Anywhere™ universal source usable on the whole of the continental rail network (yes, guess you can include the unventilated NYC tunnels too because all the MTA and AMTK work equipment are diesel gensets)...diesel's going to dominate for onboard sources at least until the dawn of the 22nd century. In large part because it's not standing still in the slightest on energy efficiency, with regenerative braking and other energy recapture techniques imparting leaps-and-bounds efficiency savings over baseline.

The only real test bed where alternative onboard fuel technologies is a hot thing are yard switchers: weak horsepower because they're just shunting stuff back and forth, and limited applied range because they're usually assigned to puttering back and forth over a fixed space all day or at most drawing a very minor roaming assignment. That's where you have the hydrogen fuel cell test projects ongoing. That's where you have some "BET" test projects sniffing around. That's where in the 2000's decade you had skunkworks projects like the ethanol-powered Green Goat (which has now been modified into a mad-scientist battery test bed). And that's where the market was successfully first paved for gensets (i.e. 2 small high-speed engines instead of 1 large-size slow-speed prime mover, and computer throttles so 1 engine could power off at lower-throttle), originally a switcher-land creation but now powering commuter locos like GO Transit's MPI MP54AC and NJ Transit's dual-mode ALP-45DP. There's a very, very dynamic laboratory market for alternative fuels in switchers. But that's about it. Even with the gensets that power DMU's you're getting kind of crap fuel efficiency (for better acceleration) than a modern diesel push-pull...and way worse acceleration than anything powered offboard by wire because the extra weight in engines + fuel doles out its performance hit. It's why DMU's are kind of a niche, and not in the slightest the cure-all the overinflated hype of a few years ago spun them to be. For the most part, if service is frequent enough to merit a DMU...it's already frequent enough to merit full electrification and an offboard-powered EMU that'll slay the self-powered make across the board on performance. There's obviously niches where you can't electrify easily, and therefore DMU's are a wholly viable tool in the modal toolbox. But physics doesn't contour to flavor-of-the-month hype...at high-capacity loading, offboard >>> onboard power. Our grandkids' generation will be dead before there's Star Wars Jedi-shit tech that challenges physics at that end of the scale.
 
ra84970 said:
It still does seem that the infrastructure engineering/manager folks want to take down the OCSes because of the cost of maintainance. Seems like if they could they would tear it all down asap.
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What cost of maintenance? Most of the TT network has absolutely ancient hardware on it. Switches are the only things that wear out. Some of those wire hangers at curves probably pre-date the MBTA. Most of the poles certainly do.

Yeah, they've treated them like a redheaded stepchild. But on the other hand the system is so dirt-simple as to be virtually bulletproof through decades of reps. Not to mention the vehicles literally last 2-3x as long as an equivalent bus procurement because there's comparatively so few moving parts under the hood. If the OCS dept. hates them, that's on personal preference not economics. TT's are consistently the cheapest mode to maintain. Not cheap to expand unless you're contouring along existing DC interconnects (see: Galen St., Newton and 77A to Alewife substation as only cut-rate instances), but pound-for-pound the most inexpensive segment of Yellow Line to operate hands-down. The fact that it actually serves up a viable jumping-off point for BEB's makes it a godsend that we still have Cambridge and the Transitway to plan off of.

If only we could roll back time 25 years and slap Menino silly over his banal aesthetic-gripe turfing of TT wires for Silver Line Washington, we'd have an even bigger springboard for BEB'ing the Key Routes network.
 
ra84970 said:
Eastern Japan Railway Company already does that on the Oga branch line with an in-route recharge at the end.

Oga (Recharge) <--- Oga branch on batteries --> Oiwake <-- Ou main line on catenary --> Akita (connection to bullet train).

This line's rolling stock is the EV-E801 series battery electric multiple unit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EV-E801_series
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chmeeee said:
Interesting disparity in replies.
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Here's why. . .

Ouch...38 metric tons per car for Japanese rolling stock. Lighter than FRA porkers like the Silverliner V, but a stock Stadler FLIRT built to Euroland heft the likes of which you never see in Southeast Asia comes in close to 15% lighter per car. That's definitely the kind of unicorn you only deploy when unicorns are absolutely positively required. Lugging a giant Li-ion around in Europe or North America probably puts performance profile in some no-man's-land...DMU performance but way more complicated ranging so probably not DMU-competitive. I'd be interested to see if these are truly operating at replacement-level costs to the DMU's they replaced on that Japanese line.

It's not a new idea...tunnel motors used to rely heavily on batteries from the 1890's-1930's when getting steam trains through unventilated tunnels required a power-down + helper. But the economic scale is still way poorer than offboard power, and way more limited than traditional power. DEMU dual-modes are a thing...not a real efficient-by-nature thing, but well-established around the world. There's not really any great movement afoot to replace them with batteries...wire-up infill, yes, but not batteries. Straight-line economic scruples say going high-concept for highest-concept's sake doesn't have nearly as good a payoff as doing it right the first time with electrification infill where electrification infill is supportable.
 
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F-Line to Dudley said:
What cost of maintenance? Most of the TT network has absolutely ancient hardware on it. Switches are the only things that wear out. Some of those wire hangers at curves probably pre-date the MBTA. Most of the poles certainly do.

Yeah, they've treated them like a redheaded stepchild. But on the other hand the system is so dirt-simple as to be virtually bulletproof through decades of reps. Not to mention the vehicles literally last 2-3x as long as an equivalent bus procurement because there's comparatively so few moving parts under the hood. If the OCS dept. hates them, that's on personal preference not economics. TT's are consistently the cheapest mode to maintain. Not cheap to expand unless you're contouring along existing DC interconnects (see: Galen St., Newton and 77A to Alewife substation as only cut-rate instances), but pound-for-pound the most inexpensive segment of Yellow Line to operate hands-down. The fact that it actually serves up a viable jumping-off point for BEB's makes it a godsend that we still have Cambridge and the Transitway to plan off of.

If only we could roll back time 25 years and slap Menino silly over his banal aesthetic-gripe turfing of TT wires for Silver Line Washington, we'd have an even bigger springboard for BEB'ing the Key Routes network.
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I think they're coming up to a spending "cliff" so to say -- those poles up and down Mass Ave Mount Auburn Street Belmont Street and Trapelo Road all look like they need replacement, catenary in places too. As you say, the TTs being the red-headed stepchild, it seems like to the engineering staff they just want to be rid of it along with the OCS on the transitway. And, I think its those minds internally that need to be changed for in-motion (and, really, even in-route) charging for the GM to say go ahead and think through what this means for us.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Here's why. . .

Ouch...38 metric tons per car for Japanese rolling stock. Lighter than FRA porkers like the Silverliner V, but a stock Stadler FLIRT built to Euroland heft the likes of which you never see in Southeast Asia comes in close to 15% lighter per car. That's definitely the kind of unicorn you only deploy when unicorns are absolutely positively required. Lugging a giant Li-ion around in Europe or North America probably puts performance profile in some no-man's-land...DMU performance but way more complicated ranging so probably not DMU-competitive. I'd be interested to see if these are truly operating at replacement-level costs to the DMU's they replaced on that Japanese line.

It's not a new idea...tunnel motors used to rely heavily on batteries from the 1890's-1930's when getting steam trains through unventilated tunnels required a power-down + helper. But the economic scale is still way poorer than offboard power, and way more limited than traditional power. DEMU dual-modes are a thing...not a real efficient-by-nature thing, but well-established around the world. There's not really any great movement afoot to replace them with batteries...wire-up infill, yes, but not batteries. Straight-line economic scruples say going high-concept for highest-concept's sake doesn't have nearly as good a payoff as doing it right the first time with electrification infill where electrification infill is supportable.
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Yeah - in concept it works - but not in a north american context with FRA regs. Wish we accepted aluminum and composite materials for trains as much as we do for airplanes.....

That being said, the Oga line is located in an area of rural Japan that has been depopulating over the past decades. It's really a lifeline service - 15 roundtrips a day. Stem-and-leaf timetable link: https://www.jreast-timetable.jp/2010/timetable/tt0297/0297030.html

Note that the train runs under wire for about 20 minutes between Akita and Oiwake and then about 40 minutes on battery and if I recall the info that East Japan Railway Cie. had when they were first piloting these vehicles it takes another 20-30 minutes to charge at Oga before starting the return trip.

Much like the TTs they did note that because of the all-electric propulsion system they expected to have lower ongoing maintenance costs which would help maintain this line in an area with steadily decreasing population. This of course was in addition to the "eco" decarbonization rationale and the rural economic development rationale.
 
ra84970 said:
I think they're coming up to a spending "cliff" so to say -- those poles up and down Mass Ave Mount Auburn Street Belmont Street and Trapelo Road all look like they need replacement, catenary in places too. As you say, the TTs being the red-headed stepchild, it seems like to the engineering staff they just want to be rid of it along with the OCS on the transitway. And, I think its those minds internally that need to be changed for in-motion (and, really, even in-route) charging for the GM to say go ahead and think through what this means for us.
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"Looks" can be deceiving. The 73 OCS was completely rebuilt from Cambridge City Line to Waverley for the neverending Belmont/Trapelo reconstruction project. The 72 was rebuilt up Huron during City of Cambridge's decade-long sewer project (though strangely the brand spankin' new steel poles on Aberdeen have never had the wire migrated to them off the rickety telephone poles). A half-century old cast-iron pole coated in rust says nothing about OCS state-of-repair. The 71/73 overlap is well-maintained...got all-new switches at the Aberdeen junction just a few years ago, and the hangers are very well sound-damped where the TT's are running at max speed on Mt. Auburn between Fresh Pond & Brattle. There's definitely some curve wire on Mass Ave. that's getting long-in-tooth as the outbound acceleration zone by Porter Shopping Center, for instance, has an elevated instance of de-wiring events (with some pretty gnarly, if benign, accompanying light shows). But Cambridge kind of has to shit or get off the pot on Mass Ave. Harvard-Alewife reconstruction first. And the 71 could probably use some love, though if that's a BRT target route for a very important radial you're going to be realigning wire around stops and probably re-doing the feeders for stiffer power draw so it's 60-footer capable.

If engineering hates it, it's not because it's outdated...it's because they personally hate it. Luckily it doesn't look like they'll have the option to keep hating on it if BEB's are truly a hell-or-high-water implementation goal. They'll grudgingly learn to love it for getting that shit done.
 
Arlington said:
  • Washington Street in Somerville between McGrath Highway and Sullivan Square
I hadn't seen this one before. This will be really important for bus routes that have the potential to hit both Orange@Sullivan and GLX@East Somerville.

Picture an 86+ from Harvard Sq that used the extra speed to keep going to Everett Square.
Picture ab 95+ from West Medford Sq that used the extra speed to extend from Sullivan to Washington or even Lechmere
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That 86 needs the time savings reinvested back in its regular route. Even during Reopening Phase 2, it was getting irregular and delayed because of how long it is and as a result so many places it gets stuck in the general queue of cars without priority.

It does feel like a route that goes "through" Sullivan on one side connecting Everett and Chelsea (or Malden?) and on the other through to Kendall

It's funny how Sullivan has two of the longest circumferential routes in the bus network, 86 and CT2. Also funny how Charlestown also has Route 70 under its care, another loooooonnnnnnnng route connecting all the major centers just north of the Charles River. That 70 could probably use a limited-stop "rapid" type bus service that gets you fast from Waltham Central Square to Cambridge Central Square....
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
There's definitely some curve wire on Mass Ave. that's getting long-in-tooth as the outbound acceleration zone by Porter Shopping Center, for instance, has an elevated instance of de-wiring events (with some pretty gnarly, if benign, accompanying light shows). But Cambridge kind of has to shit or get off the pot on Mass Ave. Harvard-Alewife reconstruction first.
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No argument there. Mass Ave really does need reconstruction; the bike lane and "shift" situation @ Walden/ Henderson Carriage is terrifying. Once this happens though, what are the chances the MBTA and Cambridge finally agree to use the same set of poles for both streetlights and TT wires? SF, Seattle, Philly, hell even *Dayton OH* all do to one extent or another, so it must be doable, even if I can't think of a single place where the T does, even in the heart of Harvard Square. It seems like it'd be a win-win to be able to share costs and maint. Given that so much of the TT network is in Cambridge, it seems like it'd be worth it to both, and it'd probably nearly halve the poles on Mass Ave, assuming the same span is maintained, decluttering the streetscape a fair bit.
 
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Stlin said:
No argument there. Mass Ave really does need reconstruction; the bike lane and "shift" situation @ Walden/ Henderson Carriage is terrifying. Once this happens though, what are the chances the MBTA and Cambridge finally agree to use the same set of poles for both streetlights and TT wires? SF, Seattle, Philly, hell even *Dayton OH* all do to one extent or another, so it must be doable, even if I can't think of a single place where the T does, even in the heart of Harvard Square. It seems like it'd be a win-win to be able to share costs and maint. Given that so much of the TT network is in Cambridge, it seems like it'd be worth it to both, and it'd probably nearly halve the poles on Mass Ave, assuming the same span is maintained, decluttering the streetscape a fair bit.
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I REALLY want them to consider that for the Belmont St project in Cambridge: https://www.cambridgema.gov/Departm...jects/2019/belmontstreetreconstructionproject
If anyone with some knowledge in that arena wants to send them some feedback...

Other than "gee, but who will replace a knockdown", I have no idea why it's not something they are willing to consider. No problem putting city-owned light fixtures on Verizon-owned utility poles, but apparently doing the same on MBTA-owned poles is off the table. There was talk about the wires eventually going away, and this would make that so much easier: no poles to remove!
 
Groundbreaking announcement for Everett bus lanes, with a little more detail than we had before:

  • A first-of-its kind all-day bus lane along the outside lane of Sweetser Circle;
  • An outbound evening rush hour bus lane on Main Street from Sweetser Circle to Tileston Street effective from 4 PM to 7 PM on weekdays; and,
  • An outbound evening rush hour bus lane on Broadway from Sweetser Circle to Chelsea Street effective from 4 PM to 7 PM on weekdays.
Areas with narrower skips in red paint without directional turn arrows are meant to be kept clear for passing buses. This new type of treatment is also used at the exit from Sweetser Circle to lower Broadway, where buses are often delayed entering the circle by traffic queues from the exit. Buses in the bus lane will yield to exiting traffic from Sweetser Circle where buses need to cross the general traffic lane to continue around.
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Other Somerville bus lanes

Also it looks like Somerville has posted more info for bus lanes to be implemented soon(?). More info than the event invitation
  • Holland Ave and College Ave - short queue jumps for a few hundred feet into Davis Square
  • Eastern Washington (McGrath to Sullivan) - Bus bike queue jump lane approaching McGrath
  • Western Washington (Union to Beacon) - queue jump lanes and separated bike lanes

https://somervoice.somervillema.gov/quick-build-bus-lanes
 
The Davis Sq queue jump and stop consolidation look so obvious once they are presented (we'd advocated them here, I am glad they played so well in the hearing process)
 
sm89 said:
I REALLY want them to consider that for the Belmont St project in Cambridge: https://www.cambridgema.gov/Departm...jects/2019/belmontstreetreconstructionproject
If anyone with some knowledge in that arena wants to send them some feedback...

Other than "gee, but who will replace a knockdown", I have no idea why it's not something they are willing to consider. No problem putting city-owned light fixtures on Verizon-owned utility poles, but apparently doing the same on MBTA-owned poles is off the table. There was talk about the wires eventually going away, and this would make that so much easier: no poles to remove!
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The convoluted utility ownership played a role. Standard arrangement for longest time in most New England municipalities was that the utility owned the street lights and charged the towns flat rate per head...but that jurisdictionally made the poles a kind of battleground and for the T's separate 600V DC infrastructure sharing across paper barriers was simply too hard to bother with. This is markedly different, from, say...San Francisco...where it was never a big deal to lump infrastructure on combo poles in LRT/TT territory. Other than a couple squares in Belmont along the 73 where regular pole-strung utilities are buried and they indeed do hang streetlights on the TT poles for short stretches (or Aberdeen St., Cambridge on the 72) it's pretty much a separate-but-equal universe. Makes a real mess on Mt. Auburn in Watertown, for instance, where you've got triple the duplication: telephone pole utilities, separate 1980's-install metal-pole/underground-feed streetlights, AND the TT poles.

It's changing now. Tons of towns spent the last 15 years buying back their streetlights from Eversource after realizing the per-head fees were a giant ripoff. When the towns went from less-efficient mercury vapor lights to high pressure sodium that's 2x the light for the same wattage, the utilities never adjusted their per-head rates. They either installed way-overpowered bulbs at same wattage as their dimmer predecessors and created giant glarebombs every 50 feet, of simply pocketed the savings. Once LED's came under evaluation and they refused again to adjust per-head rates--this time at pants-on-fire 1/10th the electricity usage--the towns finally had enough and started the buybacks so they could actually pay the going rate for actual energy usage.

That'll make it much easier to consolidate infrastructure. Plus fact that LED's are so much longer lasting means you can have them hung over the TT wires without need for the muni bulb-change crew to have special training for working around the live traction power wire.


Golden opportunity for the interminably vaporware North Cambridge Mass Ave. reconstruction to do combo streetlight/TT poles, since reducing the number of sidewalk pole obstructions is going to be crucial for the enhanced ped/bike accommodations envisioned for the rebuild. Cambridge was one of the cities that did a streetlight buyback from NStar in the last 20 years. The spaghetti mess on the 71 also screams for it...at least getting rid of the streetlight poles that are wholly extra modern-install sidewalk clutter.
 
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