MBTA Buses & Infrastructure

Honestly the MBTAs own transit demand maps show very little demand for the seaport in general so don't think I can prove my dudley to logan demand other than traditionally lower-income minorities work early morning shifts in airport retail, coffee shops, TSA, etc. and the existence of routes like the 171 which manages to do pretty good in ridership. Do my maps support my assumption? Eh not really...

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But overall seaport needs ranks pretty low:
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From yesterday's FMCB meeting regarding the late night bus pilot. While increased frequency and later last trip is being kept, the after 1am service is getting axed. I think that was misguided. First of all this service is confusingly branded; like how clear is it to someone who lives off the 27 that they can board their bus downtown? And second, this decision is being made based on fall ridership numbers that are only a few months after the service began, and I don't think you expect people to adjust their decision making for an unprompted service within just a few months -- particularly when people are so accustomed to service ending by 1. And third, I think it's misguided to be making these decisions solely off ridership numbers; I think what's lost is the marginal benefit provided to each rider. Sure, the increased frequency had much better ridership numbers at a lower subsidy per rider, but the benefit that the post-1am service provided to those riders is far higher.
 
From yesterday's FMCB meeting regarding the late night bus pilot. While increased frequency and later last trip is being kept, the after 1am service is getting axed. I think that was misguided. First of all this service is confusingly branded; like how clear is it to someone who lives off the 27 that they can board their bus downtown? And second, this decision is being made based on fall ridership numbers that are only a few months after the service began, and I don't think you expect people to adjust their decision making for an unprompted service within just a few months -- particularly when people are so accustomed to service ending by 1. And third, I think it's misguided to be making these decisions solely off ridership numbers; I think what's lost is the marginal benefit provided to each rider. Sure, the increased frequency had much better ridership numbers at a lower subsidy per rider, but the benefit that the post-1am service provided to those riders is far higher.
The T did no marketing for the overnight routes. The mega route never even had a map that was released to the public. No one knew it existed. Overnight was designed to fail. The late night and early morning were huge successes though.

We at TransitMatters will be doing a postmortem on the overnight aspect of the service, as NightBus was originally our initiative and only happened because we made a fuss by rallying cities as co-sponsors and citizens to show up at meetings. We'll evaluate and eventually push for another pilot based on our findings. We'll have to go through the entire pilot process again unfortunately.
 
The T did no marketing for the overnight routes. The mega route never even had a map that was released to the public. No one knew it existed. Overnight was designed to fail. The late night and early morning were huge successes though.

We at TransitMatters will be doing a postmortem on the overnight aspect of the service, as NightBus was originally our initiative and only happened because we made a fuss by rallying cities as co-sponsors and citizens to show up at meetings. We'll evaluate and eventually push for another pilot based on our findings. We'll have to go through the entire pilot process again unfortunately.

I think a good faith effort at this would look something like:
  • create a distinct route name for night services (London's N## branding seems like a good model to follow)
  • make a map of the routes and put it fucking everywhere
  • add the new routes to bus stop signs (so people know they're waiting in the right spot)

Ideally I'd also like to see 3 additional routes in addition to what they did (one to JP, one to A/B, and one to Camberville) so that service is actually somewhat complete throughout the urban core and most transit users would be able to look at the map and think "that's a service that could be useful to me at some point"
 
I dont understand why they cant just add service to lines where it makes sense, like the 110/111. Why do you need a fucking pilot.

IE: New Jersey Transit is not a 24/7 bus provider. Some lines end service at 8pm. Some at 10pm. Some at midnight.

And some run 24/7 because the demand exists. You know because you open the schedule and there is a 3am trip or whatever.
 
I dont understand why they cant just add service to lines where it makes sense, like the 110/111. Why do you need a fucking pilot.

IE: New Jersey Transit is not a 24/7 bus provider. Some lines end service at 8pm. Some at 10pm. Some at midnight.

And some run 24/7 because the demand exists. You know because you open the schedule and there is a 3am trip or whatever.

Because they are trying to make late night bus a replacement for the subway system at late night, which means the routes desired are very different. Normal MBTA bus routes supplement the subway and connect to it, a good late night route would be instead of it. Although I think its pretty clear that there just isn't an awful lot of late night demand in Boston because boston isn't a late night place, at $16.30 subsidy per rider, it makes more sense to buy them each an Uber to their destination, and is honestly probably more environmentally friendly and quicker given the lack of traffic at 3am and the number of near empty buses late night had.

Personally would like to see the late night SL1 continued though, use that a bunch when I land in BOS on late night flights, it connects to literally nothing at South Station but means I can get an Uber from South Station for about $5 home instead of $35 from the airport. It doesn't make sense to have 15 TNCs travel through the TWT twice to get people to Boston when they could take a bus in, *then* get their TNC.
 
Because they are trying to make late night bus a replacement for the subway system at late night, which means the routes desired are very different. Normal MBTA bus routes supplement the subway and connect to it, a good late night route would be instead of it.

What Im saying is this is a model that has failed multiple times.

A better model would be making the 111 24/7 and extending it to south station (example) between midnight and 5am.

And making the 57 24/7 and extending it to Back Bay (example) between midnight and 5am

And making the 1 24/7 and extending it to Porter between midnight and 5am.

The MBTA already has route extensions in place for school runs of many lines, so its not a new concept for the system.
 
at $16.30 subsidy per rider, it makes more sense to buy them each an Uber to their destination, and is honestly probably more environmentally friendly and quicker given the lack of traffic at 3am and the number of near empty buses

This and similar figures have been bandied about for years. Most people don’t have a clue about how much money is paid to subsidize certain very low ridership bus routes, commuter rail stops, etc. Indeed, the cost per new rider for the NB/FR extension is astronomically higher. But, to keep it simply restricted to bus routes, it would be useful if someone made a ranking of ridership subsidies for all bus lines, so the lay public could actually put the figure in context instead of becoming knee jerk outraged.
 
make a map of the routes and put it fucking everywhere

In addition to this, make the PA system announce the routes instead of a generic "bus connection" and make them time-based. It grinds my gears whenever I hear "bus connection" at a transfer point on a weekend for a single route (why not just announce the route to begin with?) that runs on weekdays only. The LCD screens on the new GL Type 9 cars and RL/OL cars actually list the route numbers, but not the LED signs hanging from the ceiling...go figure.
 
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Average for buses is $2.86 across the system which comparatively isn't bad next to some of the other modes...
 
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Average for buses is $2.86 across the system which comparatively isn't bad next to some of the other modes...

I hope the MBTA considers a partnership with private firms/Uber for The Ride. $45 per trip is steep.
 
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Average for buses is $2.86 across the system which comparatively isn't bad next to some of the other modes...

Yeah, but that's average. The subsidy is way less for the heavily traveled routes and way higher for the lesser-used ones. My point is let's see a listing of every MBTA bus route's individual subsidy, and compare the supposedly egregious $16 subsidy for the late night bus.
 
I hope the MBTA considers a partnership with private firms/Uber for The Ride. $45 per trip is steep.

The Ride's On-demand Paratransit lets you use Uber/Lyft/etc. optionally on a pilot program that's slated to run for 1 more month unless the FCMB extends it. It comes with a standard disclaimer that while a Ride consumer can opt for this alternative, there is no guarantee of ADA services on the trip. Accessibility assistance still requires the traditional Ride. Therefore, it's a lot different from an "outsource" of the core Ride service.


There are *potential* avenues for Ride privatization, provided the bidders survive all scrutiny on what service they're supposed to provide (no guarantees of success there). But keep in mind that paratransit by definition is an accessibility service, and by legal definition falls under ADA regulation--Title 49 CFR 37.131--with significant government oversight and GAO data collection on individual compliance. The T is required to make available paratransit service that offers full accessibility assistance as a default. Anything different like the On-Demand program is totally opt-in, while the default full-accessible service must be offered as the primary/opt-out. It's a loss leader by-design that's supposed to carry a higher-premium subsidy than regular transit because it's so much more needs-intensive than regular transit service.

Now, the federal government should be chucking in heaps more assistance than it is for being the one to impose that mandatory overhead, but it's been affirmed many times over by letter and spirit of the law that this is an essential accessibility service so the existence of a highish subsidy is no longer controversial. Whether the T is running an efficient ship by 'Paratransit Land' standards is a fully valid question requiring fully valid comparison to other paratransit systems. But any which way it's going to be some premium over other forms of transit...and certainly over ride share services...because that's basic nature of the beast. Those other types simply do not have the extra regulatory bulk and compliance hurdles that come with being so very narrowly-focused on special-needs accessibility.

For that reason Uber's whole business model is incompatible with taking on a contract like a standard Ride service. Nor can the T flip the paradigm on its head for the bidding and make the current On-demand the new primary/opt-out and full accessibility the new opt-in, because that would be immediately illegal. Uber crowd-sources vehicles; short of reversing course and developing a whole procurement supply chain from scratch they can't guarantee pickups in an ADA-compliant vehicle. They don't train their drivers in letter-of-law accessibility services and assistance; a distance-learning course by app isn't going to verify skill/rule retention like a paratransit driver who has to pass and/or periodically recertify some sort of live employee training before taking revenue clients. And with how little give the regs offer, Uber's hands-off oversight model can't deliver a 99% accessibility compliance reportable to the government. They have a checkered enough history of vetting their drivers as-is, but it's also a business model that nets its lower free market price through explicitly lower overall oversight and higher tolerance for mistakes (i.e. "don't want to pay the medallion and union premium every time?...be willing to put up with +1 higher rate of lousy trips and you'll save the rest of the time.") That's fundamentally incompatible with the higher legally-mandated oversight of paratransit, and also risks a contractor like the T seeing all its projected savings go up in smoke--and then some--by fines racked up for accessibility shortfalls, and the incident rate at which they're getting flagged for fines. It's almost certainly a fiscal disaster in the making.

I think if you're looking for standard Ride bidders it's going to be much more the Paul Revere Transportation types who already have that in-house capability. It's not a large list of potential bidders, and is pretty much companies (like Paul Revere) the T already does contracting business with. The reason there aren't a lot of examples of successfully outsourced paratransit systems is that the only way for a for-profit bidder to make a buck is if the contract shields them from most of the extra overhead. So the potential bidding pool is cut way down, and a lot of transit agencies who'd otherwise love to get out from under that premium don't end up seeing the savings when they crunch the numbers on what they'd have to eat in an RFP. If this weren't the case, you'd see a lot of huge companies (Keolis, for one) that gobble up midsize-city municipal bus operator contracts go binge-bidding for the paratransit deals, too.



Nature of the beast being an accessibility service, as much as I'm sure that gives Charlie Chieppo at Pioneer Institute a frowny face. The ADA never did pussyfoot about costs as a reason for not implementing accessibility service. While it would be nicer if the feds did more of their share when they saddle the states with these cost burdens, it is what it is. And if the On-Demand Paratransit program is extended or deepened, the likes of Uber are still going to be relegated to bit players done on voluntary customer waiving of any right to accessibility services. It'll primarily grow by popularity from riders who deliberately want it to opt-into it (i.e. "options = good"). But because of what they're mandated to provide under the ADA as a baseline, the T can't do much deliberate or suggestive by its own hand to redirect riders to the On-Demand option as means of weaning themselves a little bit off the standard Ride subsidy.
 
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Yeah, but that's average. The subsidy is way less for the heavily traveled routes and way higher for the lesser-used ones. My point is let's see a listing of every MBTA bus route's individual subsidy, and compare the supposedly egregious $16 subsidy for the late night bus.

That might be useful for ArchBoston and other transit nerds, but I suspect such a listing would lead to public demand for other service cuts. To be honest, I think subsidy level should be one of the last factors when evaluating a route. First should be network and ridership data -- does it go somewhere useful, do people use it, does it serve some other useful social purpose. Unless our expectation is for a self funding service, we should focus most on whether it is something that matches our mission goals for public transit.
 
That might be useful for ArchBoston and other transit nerds, but I suspect such a listing would lead to public demand for other service cuts. To be honest, I think subsidy level should be one of the last factors when evaluating a route. First should be network and ridership data -- does it go somewhere useful, do people use it, does it serve some other useful social purpose. Unless our expectation is for a self funding service, we should focus most on whether it is something that matches our mission goals for public transit.

In full agreement here. And sure overnight only had about 50 rider per weeknight, and you could find more riders at a lower cost elsewhere, but those would almost certainly be riders who had the option of using transit before if they were willing to walk a little further or wait a little longer. The overnight riders did not have the option of using public transit otherwise, and that's a factor we need to consider when evaluating what services we provide.
 
Subsidy per route was actually done by the MBTA in 2012.

Today I learned that the SL1 and the SL5 turned a profit as recently as 2012. What's the deal with the SLWater? Was that bus route that got eliminiated or is that a metric just for all SL buses grom Silver Line Way to South Station?
 
Today I learned that the SL1 and the SL5 turned a profit as recently as 2012. What's the deal with the SLWater? Was that bus route that got eliminiated or is that a metric just for all SL buses grom Silver Line Way to South Station?

I suspect that is the metric for the short turn Silver Line Way buses that run from South Station to SL Way and back to increase capacity on the waterfront section: https://www.mbta.com/schedules/746/line

Be interested to see the analysis that resulted in numbers for each Silver Line branch given its notoriously difficult to tell what branch people get on after they tap in...
 

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