General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Why are the headways to Waltham on the 70/70A better on Saturdays than on weekdays?
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Furthermore, why is the 70 not a key bus route, and why does it not have consistent headways?
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Ron Newman said:
Maybe because it serves shopping malls? (Arsenal and Watertown)
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I took it to Waltham today. A lot of people did get off at the malls, but the bus was almost full the whole way into downtown Waltham.

Maybe it's because the express buses don't run on Saturday?
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

I'd guess it's a combo of mall shoppers and fewer CR trains to Waltham Center.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

I feel like Bus 93 has to be one of the worst run bus route in the MBTA system. Besides the constant late bus that results in a caravan of 3 buses (all packed) traveling together during rush hour in the morning, they managed to somehow have an early bus get beaten by a later bus by 10 minutes. For those thy don't know, the 93 stops running buses into DTX at 7:35pm and starts running them from haymarket at 8:00pm. I have an app that tracks the arrival time of upcoming buses realtime. Somehow, the driver of the 7:35pm must have fucked up the time continuum immensely as his bus is not predicted to arrive until 8:11 at DTX whereas the 8:00 bus out of Haymarket is predicted to arrive at 8:03. The only question I have to ask is how can a bus scheduled 30 minutes before the next bus get beaten by it by 10 minutes? Wtf do these drivers do to make themselves 30 minutes late? Get high at the bus depot? thank god I'm moving out of Charlestown soon. /rant
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

I feel for you, but I just can't imagine anything worse than the 66.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

metasyntactic said:
Anyone know if the MBTA has any plans to apply for the "core capacity" New Starts grants? The eligibility criterion is that you can increase capacity by 10% on existing lines at/near capacity. Sounds like something the MBTA could definitely use.

Article about the grants: http://nextcity.org/theworks/entry/chicago-first-city-apply-fta-capacity-boosting-transit-grants
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I don't know, but improving signaling in the Central Subway or CBTC'ing the Red or Orange Lines seem perfect for this.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Finally got a chance to use SBS. The bus was crowded like SL5 can get. Even with boarding at all doors on a 60 footer, it took a while. The front door sucked in passengers like a vacuum cleaner though, at least. Did not get checked so I did not see that procedure.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

That would require new build (rather than improving existing lines) and the Blue Line is nowhere near capacity.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

^ Blue may not be at capacity, but the segment which would be most positively impacted by the Red-Blue connector - Government Center-Park Street on the Green Line - is easily the most congested in the whole network.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Blue-MGH would be more about helping Green/Orange capacity though.

Edit: Yes, pretty much what omaja said.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

NYC's rapid bus service with proof-of-payment.

They have bus lanes in some places too, although I saw plenty of cars trying to park or stand in them. To my shock, I saw an NYPD car actually come along and clear some of them out. Might be the first time I ever saw a police officer do anything to benefit bus riders. In NY or Boston.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Matthew said:
The 9 was part of the 2001 Night Owl rollout but it was dropped early on, for whatever reason.

The Blue Book is supposed to come out every so often but has not been republished since May of 2011 if I recall right, and that one was with 2010 data. And many of the bus numbers come from surveys conducted since 2006 or so.

There is another source of bus ridership data, which is found tucked away in a corner of the MBTA website, called "bus RPI": http://mbta.com/fares_and_passes/charlie/?id=25140
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^This was posted earlier on the late night T service page and the Link has valuable information. (Thank you Matthew). The best nugget they have is a measure for each bus route called "Loading."

Loading -This estimates how crowded our buses are. In order to pass, the following standards must be met (more detail found in our Service Delivery Policy): During peak periods the standard is
<140% of seated load (meaning there should be less than 1 person standing for every 2 people sitting). At non-peak periods, the standard is <100% of seated load - every passenger should have their
own seat. Additional funding would typically be needed to improve performance.
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Essentially, this tells us what routes need increased capacity, be it through added frequency, articulated buses, route redundancy or new modes.

The 10 highest ridership bus routes all fail the Loading test.

The highest ridership bus route is the SL5, which fails the loading test. Looking at the frequency, it seems the only time in which headways should really be improved is late night. There is rapid transit frequency until 9:30 every night. Without veering off into a Crazy Transit Pitch, is the only way the MBTA can handle the demand of the Roxbury->South End->Chinatown->Downtown corridor between the Orange and Red Lines to add rail service?
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

I found the Loading figure to be unfortunately a bit too vague. I would love to see more of the kind of information provided by Vancouver TransLink, although it's not perfect either. TransLink also measures bus pass-ups, which is something we really ought to do too, as it's a surefire indicator of capacity shortage (either because of bunching or just raw geometry) and a really obnoxious customer service failure.

Here's another very thorough critique of performance indicators (KPIs in the Queen's English, apparently).

In a way, TransLink's 99 route is like the Silver Line, in that it is extremely busy (#1 in US/Canada) and should be rail rapid transit. I would say that the Silver Line's main problem right now is that it gets stuck in Chinatown, and it needs all-door boarding desperately. Once they get it up to the level of NYC's Select Bus Service, and it still can't handle that, then it's time to think about really pushing for a Tremont Street subway link and light rail. Arguably they should do that anyway, because it's already built, but I think maxing out the "BRT" would be a pretty strong boost to the argument.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

bigeman312;191093 Essentially said:
Loading[/B] test.

The highest ridership bus route is the SL5, which fails the loading test. Looking at the frequency, it seems the only time in which headways should really be improved is late night. There is rapid transit frequency until 9:30 every night. Without veering off into a Crazy Transit Pitch, is the only way the MBTA can handle the demand of the Roxbury->South End->Chinatown->Downtown corridor between the Orange and Red Lines to add rail service?
Click to expand...

You can see more detail of how the MBTA's Load Standard is measured in their Service Delivery Policy

http://www.mbta.com/uploadedfiles/A...T_Projects_List/2010ServiceDeliveryPolicy.pdf

To measure load, they divide the service day into multiple time periods. During peak periods, the average load per trip for 30-minute segments in the peak has to be greater than 140% of seating capacity for the route to fail for that time period. During off-peak periods and week-ends, the average load per trip for 60-minute intervals only has to be greater than 100% of the seating capacity to fail the load standard. A route has to pass the load standard for all time-periods to pass. So under these measures, an individual peak trip can routinely be extremely crowded, but if the average load for the 30-minute time period that includes that trip is below 140% of seating capacity, the route will still pass the load standard for the time period being measured and will pass for the entire day if no other time periods fail. Conversely, if a route has loads at say 101% of seating capacity for a 60-minute portion of any off-peak period, the load standard will be considered a fail for that time period and the route will get a "fail" if even only one time period fails the standard.

So if a route gets a "fail" its not necessarily a chronic problem that requires an expensive solution, it might just mean adding a trip or two during the off-peak. And if a route gets a "pass", it still doesn't mean that there might not routinely be specific trips in the peak that have loads exceeding 140% of seating capacity.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Matthew said:
I found the Loading figure to be unfortunately a bit too vague. I would love to see more of the kind of information provided by Vancouver TransLink, although it's not perfect either. TransLink also measures bus pass-ups, which is something we really ought to do too, as it's a surefire indicator of capacity shortage (either because of bunching or just raw geometry) and a really obnoxious customer service failure.

Here's another very thorough critique of performance indicators (KPIs in the Queen's English, apparently).

In a way, TransLink's 99 route is like the Silver Line, in that it is extremely busy (#1 in US/Canada) and should be rail rapid transit. I would say that the Silver Line's main problem right now is that it gets stuck in Chinatown, and it needs all-door boarding desperately. Once they get it up to the level of NYC's Select Bus Service, and it still can't handle that, then it's time to think about really pushing for a Tremont Street subway link and light rail. Arguably they should do that anyway, because it's already built, but I think maxing out the "BRT" would be a pretty strong boost to the argument.
Click to expand...

SL4 and SL5 also have huge bunching problems, and not just due to congestion in Chinatown. There is little attempt by drivers to maintain a schedule, so inbound you end up with as many as five (yes 5!) SL buses at Tufts Medical inbound at once. The local joke is that SL's run in packs.

Truly horrible, because then there is a huge service gap throughout the route.
 
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