General Infrastructure

^^ Of interest, from today's Globe...

NB: The story contains all the insight a reporter could glean from a handful of phone interviews, and a cursory look at traffic count data.
 
I think the biggest mistake MassDOT made here was introducing a traffic signal where there was none before. The free-for-all mixing zone where cars from all directions just had to negotiate their way into the tunnel was actually quite efficient. I'm sure it looked like a nightmare from an engineer's perspective, but it works. I think MassDOT should experiment with making the traffic signal flashing yellow/red, or just turn it off altogether and see if that helps.
 
^ Yeah the trick though is that the the toll booths also slowed people down so that a car merging from the street - typically accelerating from a stop while turning sharply - could safely merge with the highway traffic.

Even without the stoplight, a lot of the street traffic is going to have to be merging from a cold stop. And even with the sharp curves in the highway, a lot of that traffic is going to be moving fast.

I think they're just going to have to give a full lane to the street traffic.
 
So bafflingly stupid:

Globe: The MBTA’s weekend commuter rail discount went pretty well. But now it’s over

Adam Vaccaro said:
By all accounts, discounting commuter rail fares on the weekend was a big success. But now it’s over — and it’s not clear if or when it will return.

Over the last six months, the MBTA offered a special $10 pass allowing unlimited trips for a full weekend on all commuter rail lines. The goal was to draw ridership to trains that were running anyway, but were mostly empty — and cost up to $12.50 for a single ride.

The T sold about 180,000 of the passes since June, making up about 23 percent of overall weekend revenue during the test. During the course of the test, weekend commuter rail revenue grew compared to the same period in 2017 by about 4.6 percent.

The program wrapped up last weekend. Members of the T’s governing board liked the data so much Monday that they seemed ready to extend it. Then they were told that’s not allowed.

Since the price was put in place as a test, federal rules require the agency to conduct a civil rights analysis to determine whether the price change was fair to low-income and minority riders after six months. Until the study, called an equity analysis, is completed, the T can’t sell the passes, officials said Monday.

[...]
Click to expand...

So decreased prices charged to customers led to increased revenue for the T: a win win for all! But now the prices have to go back up while a "civil rights analysis" is performed to make sure that the cheaper prices are "fair to low-income and minority riders." And that will take until January at least.
 
I want to note that this was such a successful pilot run and that was without the Lowell line running on weekends. There is a sizeable amount of people that would utilize this but weren't able to this summer/fall... Hope they're still on track to reinstate service on the weekends after this month...
 
JumboBuc said:
So bafflingly stupid:

So decreased prices charged to customers led to increased revenue for the T: a win win for all! But now the prices have to go back up while a "civil rights analysis" is performed to make sure that the cheaper prices are "fair to low-income and minority riders." And that will take until January at least.
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Doesnt sound stupid to me. Doing things with data is important.

MBTA has an extensive legacy of fucking over low income and minority riders, so its not like the agency can claim they deserve a good faith pass.


IE, spending $534 million for 5,411 daily riders on the Greenbush line where the median income is $70,868.

Compared to the ~20,000 daily riders on SL4 and SL5 where the median income is $20,741 and the MBTA spent a few buckets of paint and some bus shelters painted silver.
 
I agree the Civil Rights analysis is worth it. CR at normal prices serves a upscale white collar market. It would be nice to show that $10 wknd was used by low-ish income populations in "The Haverhills" or working class Gloucester or Brockton.

Or that we should be matching the CR discount with cheaper Bus (like a $2 weekend Bus $3/Zone1A kind of thing)
 
Another person chiming in to agree here. I know a disabled/low-income passenger from Brockton who utilized the weekend passes multiple times.
 
Arlington said:
I agree the Civil Rights analysis is worth it. CR at normal prices serves a upscale white collar market. It would be nice to show that $10 wknd was used by low-ish income populations in "The Haverhills" or working class Gloucester or Brockton.

Or that we should be matching the CR discount with cheaper Bus (like a $2 weekend Bus $3/Zone1A kind of thing)
Click to expand...

The T should have been running the analysis concurrently with the pilot, so that results could be reached without having to stop the thing.

It's also important to note that when prices went down during the pilot CR revenue went up (and as stefal notes, that's without the Lowell Line). So the cost to the T of running this pilot was negative. It's basically a free lunch.

My point is not that we shouldn't care about civil rights, my point is that this program was such a clear win for all groups I don't see why it has to be now held up to do a study. That should have been done already.

What is even a possible mechanism by which it can be bad or unfair to drop prices and gain increased revenue when costs are fixed?
 
Arlington said:
I agree the Civil Rights analysis is worth it. CR at normal prices serves a upscale white collar market. It would be nice to show that $10 wknd was used by low-ish income populations in "The Haverhills" or working class Gloucester or Brockton.

Or that we should be matching the CR discount with cheaper Bus (like a $2 weekend Bus $3/Zone1A kind of thing)
Click to expand...

Thats a good point. There are many bus lines that also have excess capacity on weekends, why dont they get special fares?

Whats crazy is that the 1 day bus/subway pass is $12.00. Does anyone on earth buy it?

For reference, the day pass in Los Angeles is $7.

Note that I also agree that the study should have been done concurrently with the pilot.
 
Does anyone know where would be a good place to send some road safety concerns, in Boston? I regularly see people pull up to a light on Atlantic Ave (next to Columbus park, wherw it briefly turns into Mercantile St) while on the wrong side of the street (literally ignoring the double yellow line). I’m not sure if this is because the lines are a little faded or just that there’s some consistent assholes there, but I really want to send my dashcam footage to someone who could do something about it.
 
DominusNovus said:
Does anyone know where would be a good place to send some road safety concerns, in Boston? I regularly see people pull up to a light on Atlantic Ave (next to Columbus park, wherw it briefly turns into Mercantile St) while on the wrong side of the street (literally ignoring the double yellow line). I’m not sure if this is because the lines are a little faded or just that there’s some consistent assholes there, but I really want to send my dashcam footage to someone who could do something about it.
Click to expand...


City streets are BTD's bag, so start with them. If it's a clear violation, they'll happily step up monitoring if there's ticket revenue in it for them.
 
I'd start here.

Email them, and see if they're provisioned to accept video footage. Or upload it to YouTube and send a link.
 
Thanks, both of you, BTD should have been obvious to me! The link helped quite a bit.
 
Does anyone know what is going on with Memorial Drive? They have a sign board up westbound saying it will be one lane each direction starting the 27th.

My Google-fu is failing me.
 
That might be it. It originally said the 22nd before they pushed it out to the 27th. Thanks
 
Cheers!

(Slow day up in this piece, discussing lane closures...)
 
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