General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

(Disclaimer: I never know where these should go on aB; feel free to post elsewhere)
Here is the latest update from Cambridge's study to utilize the Grand Junction corridor for rapid transit. This is still just an in-process update; the project schedule therein shows a report from this study coming in early 2024.


Some items from this update:
- They still seem to be focusing on EMUs
- Their ridership study seems to show headways need to be in the vicinity of 15-17 min or better for this mode to be competitive
- They discuss the (many) areas where infrastructure improvements are needed, incl. double tracking
 
bigpicture7 said:
(Disclaimer: I never know where these should go on aB; feel free to post elsewhere)
Here is the latest update from Cambridge's study to utilize the Grand Junction corridor for rapid transit. This is still just an in-process update; the project schedule therein shows a report from this study coming in early 2024.


Some items from this update:
- They still seem to be focusing on EMUs
- Their ridership study seems to show headways need to be in the vicinity of 15-17 min or better for this mode to be competitive
- They discuss the (many) areas where infrastructure improvements are needed, incl. double tracking
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Grade separation of intersections doesn't really seem to be on the table, which is probably the main limiter for frequencies. Anyways, it seems like this isn't really about converting the GJ to rapid transit to provide a new local service, but rather adding a CR stop in Cambridge to shorten journey times for suburban commuters. And in other non-news, Cambridge is still being incredibly silly about overhead wires ruining the look of an industrial/lab space area. 🙄
 
TheRatmeister said:
Grade separation of intersections doesn't really seem to be on the table, which is probably the main limiter for frequencies.
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Sure, but their approach does mention stop light synchronization with crossing gates added to all crossings, which is at least something. In fact, it's better than what the GL has at its at-grade crossings.

it seems like this isn't really about converting the GJ to rapid transit to provide a new local service, but rather adding a CR stop in Cambridge to shorten journey times for suburban commuters.
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We don't need to pick sides here; how was this ever not going to tie in to Commuter Rail, given where this ROW goes? Allston/Brighton is indeed ID'd as one of the markets, and though its expected to be smaller than the CR connections, I'd imagine that adding this connection could induce further demand if this ever ended up as a good product. This is an existing ROW, we're not talking about optimizing where you'd place a new ROW.
 
TheRatmeister said:
Grade separation of intersections doesn't really seem to be on the table, which is probably the main limiter for frequencies. Anyways, it seems like this isn't really about converting the GJ to rapid transit to provide a new local service, but rather adding a CR stop in Cambridge to shorten journey times for suburban commuters. And in other non-news, Cambridge is still being incredibly silly about overhead wires ruining the look of an industrial/lab space area. 🙄
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Except this isn't even going to serve suburban commuters all that well, because the outer terminus in all the evaluated Alts is West Station, not anywhere 128 or beyond. Now, the Worcester-North Station study from 11 years ago didn't exactly find hot ridership from the 'burbs; it netted a not-recommended final conclusion because the diversion from Lansdowne/Back Bay/South Station gave up as much ridership as it added. This one is trying to be a purely local route, which has all sorts of problems:
  • Frequencies aren't going to be high enough to dent the Urban Ring MIS's demand profile if they're struggling to reach a 17-minute turn.
  • Speeds are likely going to be very slow, since they're evaluating more intermediate stops than just Kendall. It's noteworthy that they didn't say anything in this update about travel times.
  • The lack of any further coverage to Brighton, Newton, and the 'burbs since :15 service on the inner Worcester Line strongly favors a South Station orientation, and the extra slots will not be available here.
  • The "extended" route Alts. to Chelsea/Lynn have poor frequencies at :30 and are not going to approximate the Urban Ring's goals at all.
bigpicture7 said:
Sure, but their approach does mention stop light synchronization with crossing gates added to all crossings, which is at least something. In fact, it's better than what the GL has at its at-grade crossings.
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It's pretty much the bare minimum, since the 2012 Worcester-NS study detailed all the chaos that would ensue at Mass Ave. and Main/Broadway with a very modest slate of 5 morning inbounds and 5 evening outbounds. Gates down on an every-8.5-minute target is a steep price to pay, and they're going to be grasping at straws on how to handle all those crossing queues. It's not better than the Green Line; the Green Line can share signal phases with the road. RR has absolute priority no matter what the road signal is.
 
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^Maybe the emphasis on (too many) local Cambridge stops is to keep the whats-in-it-for-me high for the local NIMBYs? Maybe they'll eventually kill some of them later on to improve headways?
 
bigpicture7 said:
^Maybe the emphasis on (too many) local Cambridge stops is to keep the whats-in-it-for-me high for the local NIMBYs? Maybe they'll eventually kill some of them later on to improve headways?
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I don't know about that. Except for an extra Cambridge Crossing stop on the North Station approach the current study pretty much sticks to the Urban Ring stop roster verbatim: Cambridgeport (Vassar near Memorial Drive), Mass Ave., Kendall, and East Cambridge (Cambridge St.). And assumes that a Sullivan Square CR stop can be built on the extended-route Alts. The demand certainly chunks out at each location in the absolute because that's been detailed ever since the UR Major Investment Study. But can it be done tolerably on a Purple-based mode? Even with EMU's that's going to be an absolutely excruciating schedule. And the extra Mass Ave. and Cambridge St. stops make the gate timings even worse because the platforms are immediately adjacent and will feature much slower crawls in/out of a dead stop.

I fear they're running into a preordained no-build conclusion. The constraints on the route are *tight* for this mode, and they're trying to do too much pitching this as a poor-man's substitute for the Urban Ring for it to accomplish any of its goals within those tight constraints. And I think they know it already given how studied-to-death this corridor has been over the last quarter-century. It's vanishingly unlikely that there's a eureka moment that deems this to be any sort of slam-dunk advanceable to build.
 
Seriously... Why are battery trains even considered?
1701820068832.png


Even without considering this, I feel that the entire study treats the mode choice of mainline rail as a prerequisite. They're probably under the assumption that Grand Junction will remain vital to the Commuter Rail network's equipment shifts etc and that's not gonna change. But yeah, that's likely to arrive at the conclusion that no-build is preferred until GJ itself can be removed from the CR network - not because it doesn't have value, but because the best time to build it is to wait for GJ removal to happen. Unfortunately, I fear that results of these studies will make people think it's the former.

And yeah, as a daily user of the Mass Ave crossing myself, I can say that gate-controlled grade crossings are very unlikely to fly with 17-min frequencies.
 
Teban54 said:
Seriously... Why are battery trains even considered?
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On a route that short they'd spend more time charging in the NS terminal district and on the West Station ends-change than they would in-transit on the GJ. So it's somewhat defensible here as a sunk cost if the T is going to indefensibly do it elsewhere like Fairmount and Rockburyport. But BEMU's come with significant performance penalties over straight EMU's. They're much heavier because of the battery bulk. And most available makes de-power one set of bogies per car vs. their straight-EMU variants in order to fit in those big batteries. Meaning they accelerate like ass out of a dead stop (even more convenient for those Mass Ave. gate timings!), and have an acceleration profile closer to DMU's than true EMU's.

And...yeah...costs 2.5-3x as much as an equivalent straight EMU, so you end up paying more in the end than just stringing up the dang OCS.
 
jklo said:
Isn't that what that slide is saying?
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No. It's saying "the T already says they want to do this on Fairmount and Rockburyport because reasons, so *shrug* I guess if we're pooling from the same fleet you might as well do it here."
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
No. It's saying "the T already says they want to do this on Fairmount and Rockburyport because reasons, so *shrug* I guess if we're pooling from the same fleet you might as well do it here."
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Screenshot 2023-12-06 at 01.26.28.png

I would interpret this portion as not-so-subtly pushing battery-electric trains to avoid putting up unsightly overhead wires. This would also fit with Cambridge complaining about the trolleybus wires, ultimately leading to the climate-conscious decision to replace electric trolleybuses with regular diesel buses.
 
TheRatmeister said:
I would interpret this portion as not-so-subtly pushing battery-electric trains to avoid putting up unsightly overhead wires. This would also fit with Cambridge complaining about the trolleybus wires, ultimately leading to the climate-conscious decision to replace electric trolleybuses with regular diesel buses.
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Cambridge never complained about trolleybus wires...ever. The state forced the city to send budgeted road reconfigs back into design over the location of the wires, at risk of losing time-limited funding for those projects. It was a ratfucking from on-high that got the city to finally cave and let the wires come down.
 
MBTA winter 2024 subway schedule changes:

Potentially still WIP? (GTFS/paper schedules unreleased as of 9AM this morning) -> https://www.mbta.com/service-changes/winter-2024-service-changes
  • Red Line trains will now run every 17 minutes during the day on weekdays, instead of every 18 - 19 minutes. Evening service after 7:30PM is unchanged.
  • Red Line weekend trains will now run every 19 - 20 minutes, instead of every 22 minutes.
  • Orange Line will now run extra trains during rush hours only. Midday, evening, and weekend service are unchanged.
Extra bus analysis later when GTFS and paper schedules are released, but it is bad news if you were hoping for major service increases after hiring skyrocketed in August 2023. There is about a 5 - 7 month delay in getting bus operators hired I would think, but that's my guess, so come back in April, July, and September 2024 for if that changes.

TL'DR, even amount of bus frequency increases/decreases, but increases are only for 1 hour in the AM peak in the Mattapan area only, that's it. Plus, a lot of "trip shifting throughout the day/between x and y to improve schedule reliability" in the "trip changes" section, but usually that's misleading since they decrease the total number of trips made by the same vehicle operating hours.
 
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Delvin4519 said:
MBTA winter 2024 subway schedule changes:

Potentially still WIP? (GTFS/paper schedules unreleased as of 9AM this morning) -> https://www.mbta.com/service-changes/winter-2024-service-changes
  • Red Line trains will now run every 17 minutes during the day on weekdays, instead of every 18 - 19 minutes. Evening service after 7:30PM is unchanged.
  • Red Line weekend trains will now run every 19 - 20 minutes, instead of every 22 minutes.
  • Orange Line will now run extra trains during rush hours only. Midday, evening, and weekend service are unchanged.
Extra bus analysis later when GTFS and paper schedules are released, but it is bad news if you were hoping for major service increases after hiring skyrocketed in August 2023. There is about a 5 - 7 month delay in getting bus operators hired I would think, but that's my guess, so come back in April, July, and September 2024 for if that changes.

TL'DR, even amount of bus frequency increases/decreases, but increases are only for 1 hour in the AM peak in the Mattapan area only, that's it. Plus, a lot of "trip shifting throughout the day/between x and y to improve schedule reliability" in the "trip changes" section, but usually that's misleading since they decrease the total number of trips made by the same vehicle operating hours.
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Definitely still WIP:
1701879386179.png

When I checked earlier, there wasn't even any text in this section.
 
Quoting with permission a friend's Facebook post about her 4-year-old:
In case you are wondering what it's like to raise kids in Boston, Clark built this North Station out of blocks and then 4 train tracks connecting to it. He said they were all commuter rail tracks, but tracks 1, 2, and 4 are closed for construction so you can only get on at track 3. He also said that all but one of the commuter rail cars is closed and you have to walk all the way to the end to get into the open one. When asked why, he said "nobody knows". When I asked which of the two Dunkies in North station the people are going to go to he said "MOM, they already HAD breakfast at the dunkies near their HOUSES."
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Stlin said:
Buses can probably deal with the 8in platform, but I can't see them being able to handle 14in without mods? I know Seattle had buses using its downtown transit tunnel until relatively recently, but I think those buses needed substantial mods rendering them unable to flex to other routes? Plus, I feel like bus docking would be an issue with curbs that high.
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I’m not sure what Seattle’s deal was but New Flyer’s bus step height is 14”. Central Square’s (Cambridge) southbound bus stop has a bit of sunken asphalt in the back half that drops the road against the curb making it too high for the front overhang to pass over (don’t ask why I can confirm the overhang does not pass over) but when doors are open it lines up perfectly with the sidewalk level so I’d imagine that curb is ~14” there. If it is too high, the same way that the buses can kneel they can actually raise but annoyingly it’s a toss up of which buses will actually do it. Not sure if that’s a software thing or what
 
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