General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

The downside of the countdown clocks, I suppose.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Service alerts should be running along the bottom in a scrolling marquee when there are active ones.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

novitiate said:
The downside of the countdown clocks, I suppose.
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Downside? Its fantastic. Helps people who have time sensitive trips make the decision to bail and get a cab or something.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

How did they measure this? I don't think it's ever actually taken less than 45 mins to reach Needham Junction from South Station, despite what the schedules say.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Average of scheduled times, which makes it somewhat less useful IMO.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

czsz said:
How did they measure this? I don't think it's ever actually taken less than 45 mins to reach Needham Junction from South Station, despite what the schedules say.
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The Needham line has run habitually late ever since they started to require staff only door/trap operation. The stop frequency combined with the longer dwell times imposed by restricted egress throws it off schedule very quickly. My trip between Rozzi Square and Back Bay is posted as 12 minutes, but is always a minimum of 15, and sometimes approaches 20 minutes.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Observations on this thing, taken with grain of salt since it's probably a little bit distorted.

-- Worcester - Ye gads, that has to get better NOW. There are rumors that 80 MPH west of Framingham is coming later this year after the last of the control points are re-wired from CSX to T control. Not a moment too soon. But boy, they need to get the bucks to replace those ancient to-Framingham signals or this is always gonna be a stinker.
-- Lowell - Impressively faster than I would've expected with its less-than-impressive speed limits. I bet Nashua's possible in under an hour if they did any sort of 80 MPH upgrades to even a partial chunk of the line.
-- Haverhill - MA running miles are the most delayed stretch of Downeaster for a reason. Boy, does that need real 80 MPH signaling. I really think the T should consider segmenting the schedule 50/50 between Reading thru service and Anderson expresses to cut it to no more than an hour Haverhill/Plaistow.
-- Eastern Route - Mainline's sluggishness makes both branches too time-consuming. Newburyport and Rockport really should be capped at an hour. Those restricted grade crossings in Chelsea are killing them.
-- Franklin - Maybe the map's extra-distorted here, but I don't get why the dense stop spacing to Walpole is so impressively fast while the sparse spacing Walpole-Forge Park is so much slower. There's nothing different about the line's speed limits. At any rate, Foxboro in under 1 hour looks doable while picking up some Fairmount stops.
-- NEC - With all this talk about adding Kingston to the schedule, that's going to push travel time to an ass-stiffening 2 hours. Once South County CR is up and running they really need to draw the line at T.F. Green for Boston service. That's just too much. I wonder if Providence can actually shrink to an hour--including a Pawtucket intermediate--if the T segregated its new 90 MPH equipment to the NEC.


Others are about what's expected.
-- Fitchburg - Will tighten up a good 10-15 minutes when the signal upgrades are complete and allow for 80 MPH. Wachusett will probably even come in a shade under 1:30 when it opens.
-- Reading - Unless that's distorted...brisker than I would've thought given the tight stop spacing and old infrastructure. They totally need to segment the short-turns from Haverhill thru trains to pry open more slots. This is really useful for the inner 'burbs.
-- Fairmount - Can probably tuck the new stops into roughly same travel time with the current elimination of all those speed restrictions.
-- Kingston and Middleboro - Nicely efficient. Full 80 MPH extension to Buzzards Bay would probably clock in under 1:15, which is just spiffy for the distance it covers.
-- Stoughton - I suspect that's distorted by the map, but not real impressive. And the state is shocked...shocked...that South Coast schedules are unsustainable.
-- Greenbush - Nice job, idiots, kneecapping the line at 60 MPH max because of your precious grade crossings. You get what you deserve.
-- Needham - The black sheep of the commuter rail, and it shows. There's your argument for rapid transit on the inner half and outer third.


In general, if it takes a half-hour to get to 95/128 and an hour to get to 495, something's wrong and needs improvement.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

F-Line to Dudley said:
In general, if it takes a half-hour to get to 95/128 and an hour to get to 495, something's wrong and needs improvement.
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You'd expect stops to be more tightly spaced within 95/128, which would slow that segment down relative to 128-495. Not sure it's the best comparison, but half an hour on CR to 95/128 is still far better than the D Line from Gov Center to Riverside.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Shepard said:
You'd expect stops to be more tightly spaced within 95/128, which would slow that segment down relative to 128-495. Not sure it's the best comparison, but half an hour on CR to 95/128 is still far better than the D Line from Gov Center to Riverside.
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Yes. And that's why there's less to glean from the map out to 128 than there is past there. Does appear that CR is doing a pretty reasonable job inside 128. The lines (Worcester, Eastern Route) known to have crippling speed restrictions on their inner halves can probably handle more inner infill stops if those problems were substantially addressed. And some others like Reading, Franklin, and upgraded Fitchburg (if it had a 128 stop) could easily benefit from denser short-turn service on their well-performing inner halves.

Definitely a lot of work to do improving performance to 495. Fitchburg, as noted, is going to snap into line with a serious improvement in a year-and-a-half...but Worcester, Haverhill, and Newburyport/Rockport are hideous performers for the ridership they carry.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

F-Line to Dudley said:
Observations on this thing, taken with grain of salt since it's probably a little bit distorted.

-- Worcester - Ye gads, that has to get better NOW. There are rumors that 80 MPH west of Framingham is coming later this year after the last of the control points are re-wired from CSX to T control. Not a moment too soon. But boy, they need to get the bucks to replace those ancient to-Framingham signals or this is always gonna be a stinker.
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How many "bucks" would you be talking about, to upgrade the line to 79 or even 90, anyway?
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

I don't understand why grade crossings would slow down a train line. Shouldn't the train cross them as fast as possible, to minimize the amount of time they are blocked to car (and pedestrian) traffic?
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Ron Newman said:
I don't understand why grade crossings would slow down a train line. Shouldn't the train cross them as fast as possible, to minimize the amount of time they are blocked to car (and pedestrian) traffic?
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No because of exactly what happened yesterday. Trains have to go slower near at-grade crossings to minimize the damage/carnage if a car ends up on the tracks.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

They need to start ticketing people for stopping on the tracks.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Pretty heavy construction going on around the tracks on Packard's Corner. Dug up the street all around, you can see sandbags propping up the (new?) rails.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Ron Newman said:
I don't understand why grade crossings would slow down a train line. Shouldn't the train cross them as fast as possible, to minimize the amount of time they are blocked to car (and pedestrian) traffic?
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There's a 25-30 MPH speed restriction stretching from 2nd Ave. Everett to Eastern Ave. Chelsea, with Chelsea station in the middle. Eastern Ave. is such a wide thoroughfare with high truck volume, tracks crossing at an angle, and such easy-to-evade gates that they had to slap a restriction there that ends up killing outbound acceleration in Revere. Everett Ave. causes the restriction on the west side because it's such a high-traffic crossing that cars around the shopping center routinely back up onto the tracks. The restriction extends all the way back to the 2nd Ave. crossing so conductors have maximum sightline to stop ahead of a stuck car on Everett Ave. Throw in the sharp curve around Broadway, the steep climb across the Mystic bridge, and yard limits starting at the Western Route merge and the train never exceeds 30 until it's in Revere. Before those crossings got the restriction slapped on them 15-20 years ago the speed limit was 60 through here.

Eastern Ave. grade separation was a top recommendation of the North Shore Transit Improvements study; whacking that crossing gets trains to track speed before they hit the Revere city line. At minimum it needs quadrant gates so they're not so stupidly easy for a Darwin Award candidate to evade. Everett Ave. is someday going to need full separation, but really really could use advanced obstruction-detecting gates so the restriction to 2nd Ave. can get lifted. And I don't know why 3rd Ave. crossing exists at all...sever it so there's nothing between 2nd Ave. and Everett Ave.



Train horn bans cause some restrictions elsewhere, but generally speaking that doesn't have to induce one. That's usually the result of horn-free crossings lacking sidewalk gates. If the T could upgrade some of its incomplete gate installations like they're doing now on portions of the outer Fitchburg, they could do top speed with the horn bans.

It's not that big a deal for train speeds when it's abutting a station, though. So the infamous downtown Framingham pair royally fucks up car traffic, but doesn't do much harm to the Worcester Line with the station right there. The West Medford pair doesn't do much to the Lowell Line which stops there, but it clobbers the Downeaster and Haverhill expresses with a 25 MPH restriction and they don't recover back to track speed until they're around the Wedgemere curve. And some of the ones out on the branches aren't that nice, but it makes much less difference off the mains or close to the ends of lines.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

DowntownDave said:
How many "bucks" would you be talking about, to upgrade the line to 79 or even 90, anyway?
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Supposedly, 79 is going to happen west of Framingham once the last signal installations get wired into T central dispatch. They're being flipped one at a time from CSX to the T. The line out there has got modern cab signals, so the only hardware they would have to potentially upgrade are any isolated substandard switches. Negligible expense. The rail grinder has been out in Metro West this week buffing up the track in prep for this. The big curves from the Worcester-Millbury city line into Worcester Union probably won't be any faster than they are now, but Ashland-Framingham town line to Millbury should fly.

East of Framingham the ancient wayside block signals that are speed limited at 60 MPH have to be totally ripped out and replaced. I doubt that can be done for less than $50M, but they don't really have a choice. Worcester is never going to be a fast trip if the inner half is clogged and slow, and it places a ceiling on just how much they can increase schedules. If they don't get it up on cab signals like the whole line west of Framingham to Albany, they also can't install PTC on it. That's going to get them dinged for non-compliance worse than any other non-compliant line given traffic levels and the B&A hosting Amtrak.


90 is substantially more bucks. They'd have to ease out some curves, replace a lot more crossovers/switches with higher-rated equipment, and re-time the cab signal system to do that. At commuter rail stop spacing there also aren't too many stretches where a diesel would reach that top speed for very long, so the benefits are negligible compared to getting it uniformly up to 80. It's something to shoot for when there's more substantial Amtrak traffic and frequencies dense enough to allow a significant % of the schedule to run express through the inner stops (say, if it got "Fairmounted" to 128 or further). But first things first: get it to a more or less uniform 80 and reap the dramatic benefits that come from that.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Haha that put a big ol' smile on my face!
 
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