General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

[datadyne007]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Is the T perhaps too quick to declare a train "disabled" when it has only a minor mechanical problem that could wait until the end of the day (or at least the end of the run) to fix?

Uhh I don't know if you've ever actually been on a "disabled train" as it becomes disabled, but it's pretty clear they run it until it won't run anymore. Constant stalls through the tunnel until that moment when it won't move any further. They don't declare trains to be disabled willy-nilly.

 

[datadyne007]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

From the advertiser's standpoint, why blow money targeting people who are so hard up they're stuck riding the bus? I can't imagine there are many businesses that see a significant upside to advertising in buses. Of the two options, the subway would make more sense to me.

This post makes no sense. The 116 and 117 are high ridership key bus routes. There's a huge captive audience crammed to the brim in those buses every single day with nowhere to stare except at the ceiling.

 

[Arlington]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

This post makes no sense. The 116 and 117 are high ridership key bus routes. There's a huge captive audience crammed to the brim in those buses every single day with nowhere to stare except at the ceiling.

Ridership, yes, but how much discretionary spending do they represent? Where do household dollars go? If its food and rent and saving up for a car, then there's not much left over for ad agencies to steer in their clients' direction.

Think about the ads you see the most. Seems to me it is:

- Education (learn more to earn more, or debt-fueled bubble over-spending, depending on the school and your view of them)
- Medical Study Recruiting (weight, anxiety, cardio, etc)
- Discount mobile telecom

Beyond these (two discretionary spends and "medical experiments for the lot of you") There's not much else of value left to vacuum out of the wallet of most bus riders. Hence the empty ad slots.

The only place that rich people ride the bus is on the Upper East Side in Manhattan. Other than that, its a pretty grim marketing demographic. Lovely people, but its hard to justify the expense of putting them in an advertising plan.

 

[winstonoboogie]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Is the T perhaps too quick to declare a train "disabled" when it has only a minor mechanical problem that could wait until the end of the day (or at least the end of the run) to fix?

If a single subway or light rail car on a train is having a motor or motor control problem, they will cut the motors on that one car and keep the entire train in service if possible. If you see a car with a blue light illuminated on the side, that means the motors have been cut out on that one car and it is being pushed/pulled along by the others in the train.

If a train is having brake problems however and some of the brakes have to be cut-out and placed on by-pass, they will unload an entire train. It is not safe to keep a train in service that does not have all of the brakes functioning properly. The most common issue that results in a train being pushed by another is low air-pressure and all of the brakes having to be manually cut out in order to get the train to move.

 

[cozzyd]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Ridership, yes, but how much discretionary spending do they represent? Where do household dollars go? If its food and rent and saving up for a car, then there's not much left over for ad agencies to steer in their clients' direction.

Think about the ads you see the most. Seems to me it is:

- Education (learn more to earn more, or debt-fueled bubble over-spending, depending on the school and your view of them)
- Medical Study Recruiting (weight, anxiety, cardio, etc)
- Discount mobile telecom

Beyond these (two discretionary spends and "medical experiments for the lot of you") There's not much else of value left to vacuum out of the wallet of most bus riders. Hence the empty ad slots.

The only place that rich people ride the bus is on the Upper East Side in Manhattan. Other than that, its a pretty grim marketing demographic. Lovely people, but its hard to justify the expense of putting them in an advertising plan.

Do advertiser's get to choose which buses their ads run on? The demographics on e.g. the 1 or 77 are very different from the 111 or the 28.

 

[Arlington]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Do advertiser's get to choose which buses their ads run on? The demographics on e.g. the 1 or 77 are very different from the 111 or the 28.

I don't know.

What I know from how web-ad slots are sold (by sites) and bought (by ad agencies) is that sometimes you want to sell all your inventory as a block because otherwise cherry-pickers at the ad agencies rarely buy enough or pay enough for "just cherries" (like the 1 and 77) to make up for what they are not paying you.

At best (and as a practical matter of guaranteeing placement) I'd think the T would be able to offer it by garage, but not by route (too hard to predict where a bus will go).

But if there were a prime-demographic garage (the Cambridge Trolleybuses, for example) and the rest were junk, the T would have to decide whether it makes more money selling the prime stuff and letting the junk slots go empty (or filled with Public Service Annoucements, and the print-equivalent of "Do you Like Obama Yes/No" and "Congratulations, you've won an iPhone5"...which is the internet's junk ads...called "remnant" ads).

 

[datadyne007]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

...and now a GL track has cracked between Haymarket and GC. It's not just the trains that are a problem.

http://www.universalhub.com/2014/green-line-track-cracks

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

...and now a GL track has cracked between Haymarket and GC. It's not just the trains that are a problem.

http://www.universalhub.com/2014/green-line-track-cracks

That story got a little overblown. 10:00pm incident, right in time for the late local news so it got top-billing. And fixed overnight. Not cold-related, either, that far inside the subway. Cracked rail happens. They have machines that do regular inspections of the integrity of the rail, but if a fault develops in between inspections they're not going to catch it. It's a hazard if it breaks directly under the train as it's passing over, but otherwise not a big deal because the track circuits in the signal system will instantly pick up the fault.

This one had the misfortune of happening at the end of a very bad service day.



Now, if you want an "Oh, shit" deferred maintenance story, take all of Metro North and all Amtrak between New York and New Haven stopping dead for 2 hours yesterday evening due to catastrophic computer failure at Metro North dispatch shutting down all signals systemwide. That is systemic failure at terrifyingly grand scale.

 

[underground]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

How much discretionary spending do people riding the bus have? We're talking about high school kids, college kids, and young professionals, AKA advertising prime target demographics 1, 2, and 3.

 

[Arlington]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

How much discretionary spending do people riding the bus have? We're talking about high school kids, college kids, and young professionals, AKA advertising prime target demographics 1, 2, and 3.

I'm sure this is true for the bus you're on, but not on the average bus. The average bus also has lots of middle-aged service workers, anti-social folks, and immigrants who are going to "unprime" the bus audience. ArchBoston is populated by better-educated, more-literate and probably higher-income bus riders than average, and the people "we" see on "our" buses skew "above average" like us and our neighborhoods. We are not typical bus riders, as far as the system --or ad buyer--is concerned.

The only way to square your claim with reality is to conclude that the ad buyers at the ad agencies are dumb. This, from my experience managing the ad revenue for a large website, is highly unlikely.

The ads you do see *inside* the bus belie your claim that bus riders are "prime". Ad agencies aren't dumb...they buy ads wherever their target is and affordable to reach.

ArchBoston's reader-contributors are so unlike the average bus rider that we look at the ads *inside* the bus and see nothing relevant to us. The ads on the *side* of the bus are a bit higher end--hoping catch the prime pedestrians in Post Office Square (who live in Melrose or Marblehead and haven't be *on* a bus in years) and the ads at the AB-reader's stops are probably pretty prime (like the JCDecaux shelters, which skew upmarket).

On the Subway in the "prime" stations you see ads for yoga pants and luxury goods and Boston Sports Club, personal trainers, pomegranate-infused whatnot, and other "premium" goods but then you see fewer of these on the trains, and even fewer of these ads on the bus. That should tell you something. The deeper you get into the system, the poorer the demographic. Then note how ads at Commuter Rail stops push things like mortgages, financial planning, and family vacations.

Prime audiences are going to be targeted by stop..which "sits" on top of a glitzy demographic all day long, rather than by vehicles which move too freely between glitzy and gritty.

All are likely a conscious choice by an ad buyer who has picked over the T's inventory of ad-slots and knows where the ads will be seen by appropriate audiences.

Ads aimed at real college demographics will be run in "campus media", or *above-ground* at Harvard, Kenmore, Kendall, Davis, Tremont. Actually in-station is less prime, on-rail-vehicle is less prime still, bus even *less* prime-- only one cut above actually trying to run an ad in the worst stop you can imagine (which probably lacks a shelter to run it on anyway).

Generally, you'd have to say that bus riders (on the *inside* of the *typical* bus) may be generally "of the right age" but not "of the right income" to be "prime". When they are college-age they seem to not be in college (...so run ads *for* college at them). They are sicker than most (so recruit them for medical studies). And they consume a lot of off-price wireless (MetroPCS, Cricket, Virgin, etc)

If this isn't you and the people you see on your bus, the the most logical conclusion is that you are not a typical bus rider.

 

[underground]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

I'm sure this is true for the bus you're on, but not on the average bus. The average bus also has lots of middle-aged service workers, anti-social folks, and immigrants who are going to "unprime" the bus audience.

Oh, come on. That's ridiculous. "Only poor people ride the bus" is like something Mitt Romney wouldn't even say in an SNL skit. Sure, ridership skews lower income, but the idea that you don't bare minimum capture a sizable demographic with discretionary spending (which is almost everyone excluding the ultimate bottom by the way) is crazy.

The only way to square your claim with reality is to conclude that the ad buyers at the ad agencies are dumb.

Or that the T runs their ad department as well as they run everything else.

 

[Arlington]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Oh, come on. That's ridiculous. "Only poor people ride the bus" is like something Mitt Romney wouldn't even say in an SNL skit.

I didn't say that. We're talking gradations and averages.

You do not seem to accept that who the ads are aimed at is a very effective/efficient proxy for who is looking at them. But ad buyers and ad sellers know that their whole career is spent putting appropriate ads in front of appropriate audiences.

If "prime" demographics were looking at ads inside the bus, but ads in the bus were priced at "unprime" a whole bunch of ad-buyers would have spotted that arbitrage and you'd start seeing yoga pants and pomegranate ads inside your bus.

I will say that, for example, people looking at the "average" side of a bus are, on average, wealthier than the people inside the bus looking out, and the differences in ads that are shown them reflect that.

People getting on/off at Airport are more prosperous than people riding through.

 

[underground]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

You do not seem to accept that who the ads are aimed at is a very effective/efficient proxy for who is looking at them.

No, I do generally accept that in a vacuum, but we're talking about the T. Do you accept that an organization that can't even manage to take down and put up their ads when they're supposed to might be having an impact on ad agencies interest in dealing with them? Seems pretty likely to me, especially seeing as demographics is a lazy bias based excuse in this instance.

 

[Arlington]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Or that the T runs their ad department as well as they run everything else.

The print (schedules) they run in-house
http://www.mbta.com/business_center/advertising/

Quite wisely, they have an outside firm broker their inventory of stations and vehicles:
http://www.mbta.com/business_center/advertising/?id=116

{EDIT} so they won't show the rate card in this media kit, but just note how they never talk about household income of bus, and spend almost no time on it (while lavishing attention on prime stations).

From the kit below, we learn that they do target bus ads by Garage. You're going to have to compare the folks on your bus with all the folks who might be on a bus from the same garage.

http://www.titan360.com/presentation_media_kits/download/BOS_Media_Kit_DL.pdf

some select quotes...on Bus exterior ads:

Traveling throughout downtown Boston and its affluent suburbs,
these large bus exterior displays target professionals on route
to work, as well as consumers in the city centers and shopping
districts

"Professionals on route to work from affluent suburbs" is code for "suburbanites in cars"

Meanwhile, here's how they describe ads inside:

Interior Bus Cards give advertisers the opportunity to get their
message across to a captive audience. The average bus rider
travels by bus five or more days per week. This repeated
exposure will result in a higher frequency and place your ad
on the top of commuters’ minds.

...no "affluent" inside...no "professionals" inside...just captives. Not because prime demographics never ride, but because, on average, bus riders are less-affluent and less-professional. This is not a judgement of people or their lifestyles, but it is data about their average disposable income.

On Commuter Rail ads:
"177,190+ affluent Commuter Rail riders every day"

On Targeting by Garage:

[North Cambridge Trolleybus] garage serves the Northern Cambridge area.
Serving Harvard Square and Mass Ave.
These routes target young professionals, college students
and the hip & trendy consumers of the area.

...meanwhile in Charlestown the story is *not* about locals riding the bus

This garage provides heavy saturation of key
local and tourist areas such as the USS Constitution, TD BankNorth Garden, North End, Faneuil Hall, Financial District, and Downtown Crossing.
Neighborhood coverage includes Charlestown, Somerville, Medford, and Malden.

So, basically, who is looking *at* the bus, not who is on it. And this, from people who make their living saying the nicest possible things about transit audiences.

 

[Arlington]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

seeing as demographics is a lazy bias based excuse in this instance.

Ad brokers and buyers are not lazy and they get fired if they're biased (not out of any idealism, but because its bad for business). They are smart operators who work every angle to pay less for an ad and book a win when it reaches their target at fewer $ per impression.

Where there is a large-enough concentration of prime viewers they'd love to pay non-prime prices to reach them. And they get fired (by client or boss) if they pay to put ads in front of inappropriate audiences. Yet they get promoted if they run a small test and hit a prime audience and sub-prime prices. They experiment and follow the data.

The conclusion here is no more biased than: "it is uneconomical to reach prime audiences inside buses, but is economical to reach them outside buses"

and...I know this seems un-PC, but here it is:

An economically-reachable concentration of People inside buses like cheap wireless, dreaming of a degree from the University of Phoenix, and consider themselves appropriate for clinical trials, while folks on the Platform at Harvard Sta like yoga, skiwear, and fruit-infused water.

And if you listen to AM talk radio, note that the ads are profoundly different from the sponsors of WBUR. (I like both and consequently, find neither's ads relevant). Or the sponsors of Golf vs NASCAR vs Basketball. This is not the product of preconceived notions (bias), its the product continual market-testing and the free choices of consumers in responding to advertisers.

 

[underground]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

So a disinclination to deal with an agency that is bare minimum "problematic" wouldn't explain this at all? Empty ad space on the 57 despite an over abundance of riders who will spend an extra $1500 on a laptop because it's name brand is ONLY because of decisions ad agencies made? Seems unlikely.

 

[Arlington]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

So a disinclination to deal with an agency that is bare minimum "problematic" wouldn't explain this at all? Empty ad space on the 57 despite an over abundance of riders who will spend an extra $1500 on a laptop because it's name brand is ONLY because of decisions ad agencies made? Seems unlikely.

That's a very particular demographic, perhaps specific to a route.

If using T media to reach them, they are probably better reached on a display ad on a shelter where they live (or on a shelter at route-side that they'll look out the window and see) or where they work. But then I'm not going to put an ad on the paper schedule for the 57, even though it is just $300, because I bet they don't "do" paper.

I just don't see it being economical to reach them by putting an ad on all buses at [whichever garage the 57 comes from].

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Per a commuter rail employee on RR.net. . .

2 more coaches have been sent out for conversion into bike cars to support an expanded Cape Flyer schedule this summer. And probably to let the Eastern Route keep its usual summer season bike car instead of needing to steal it every Fri.-Sun. for the Flyer.

Probably will see these used in winter as well for more ski cars after Wachusett station opens. 4 miles closer to the resort for a shuttle bus than current Fitchburg station, so that shuttle can probably go full-time instead of being timed with the current very limited ski extra trains, necessitating more regular use of the bike/ski cars on the Fitchburg schedule.

 

[Arlington]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Per a commuter rail employee on RR.net. . .

2 more coaches have been sent out for conversion into bike cars to support an expanded Cape Flyer schedule this summer. And probably to let the Eastern Route keep its usual summer season bike car instead of needing to steal it every Fri.-Sun. for the Flyer.

Probably will see these used in winter as well for more ski cars after Wachusett station opens. 4 miles closer to the resort for a shuttle bus than current Fitchburg station, so that shuttle can probably go full-time instead of being timed with the current very limited ski extra trains, necessitating more regular use of the bike/ski cars on the Fitchburg schedule.

An elegant little improvement and year-round win for multi-modal and car-free leisure!

Does this mean that the Cape Flyer will effectively have 2 trainsets?

I though the reason they couldn't have a dedicated southbound departure from South Station last year was an equipment shortage during rush hour. Or was it slots? What might they have solved?

I guess the Rotems have solved the coaches problem (and presumably freed up 2 single-level coaches for being the bike-ski cars).

IF there is going to be a dedicated consist available on Fridays, I'd sure like to see it make a midday or AM run (or Thurs PM) run.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

An elegant little improvement and year-round win for multi-modal and car-free leisure!

Does this mean that the Cape Flyer will effectively have 2 trainsets?

I though the reason they couldn't have a dedicated southbound departure from South Station last year was an equipment shortage during rush hour. Or was it slots? What might they have solved?

I guess the Rotems have solved the coaches problem (and presumably freed up 2 single-level coaches for being the bike-ski cars).

IF there is going to be a dedicated consist available on Fridays, I'd sure like to see it make a midday or AM run (or Thurs PM) run.

It sounds that way. Last year's constriction was the need to use every available car for Fri. PM commuter rail rush, since that's the most crowded commute of the entire week. They want to add a a Flyer-only departure immediately trailing the regular Fri. 5:00pm Middleboro so Cape customers have a little more time to get to South Station and more seating capacity to themselves vs. the conjoined train that so severely overcrowded the Middleboro cars. That forces 1 extra trainset for the Flyer since everything else remains a conjoined run.


They do have a glut. The dead line at BET is getting overstuffed with out-of-service cars now that they've cleared through the overload of fresh Rotems that had piled up on the test track over holiday vacation. They were way behind for about 6 weeks there on burn-in testing. The control cab cars are also still banned from the southside because the cab signal units don't work (not Rotem's fault...they isolated the problem to the second-source manufacturer that made the signal units), so for the time being they're being run in service on the northside as extra blind coaches while they wait for the fix to get installed. Couple that with rate of deliveries cranking along and they're at a stable point now even with the Kawasaki bi-levels getting rotated out for overhaul.

The 2 bike car conversions are the good-condition Pullman single-levels that are going to stick around for another 8 years or so. Which would suggest an overall move to more numerous bike cars in general since these aren't quick hacks of single-levels otherwise headed to the scrapper in 2 winters. Probably means more opportunities for ski cars in winter to give them a second season of wider use. Not just for Wachusett...Nashoba Valley's in easy driving distance of Littleton, so with the Fitchburg upgrades finishing at year's end and Wachusett on-target for a 2015 open the right coordination of shuttle buses to the 2 resorts on the line can really generate big all-weekend Fitchburg ski patronage (with the 2 per-car bike racks in each Rotem and rebuilt Kawasaki covering weekday demand). Their commuter rail bike strategy is right on-point for some useful exploits.


The coaches that are going out of service are the worst-of-the-worst MBB single-levels, which won't be disposed of for another 18 months or so. They're supposed to start shipping some to offsite storage soon because the BET space crunch will be getting more severe when the new locomotives arrive and have to occupy the test track. Middleboro layover is going to take a few of the standby coaches soon. Readville probably ends up taking a few of them by spring. By later in the year might even see them appearing at the Alewife shed + storage track, Newburyport layover, Kingston layover. Anywhere with slack space and onsite security where they can sit behind a fence without getting vandalized and get quickly yanked back into service if needed.


MassDOT officials have floated the idea in recent Knowledge Corridor meetings of taking some of the single-level surplus and repurposing on-the-cheap for limited commuter rail service between Springfield and Greenfield. Most likely as an appendage to CTDOT's service (i.e. MassDOT doing the same subsidy thing to CT that RIDOT does to the T). I'm not sure the MBB coaches would be appropriate, though, since they're in tough shape and would cost a lot to rehab. CTDOT probably isn't going to be thrilled with that prospect. May have to wait until/if some Rotem options get exercised to displace some of the Bombardier singles, since those are nearly identical to the Metro North Shoreliner cars that CTDOT New Haven shops maintain, and are good enough structurally for another overhaul.

Ditto for the excess locomotives. CTDOT uses GP40's similar but not exact to the T's, so they may be able to take on some of those disposals (since they were recently rebuilt and still in decent shape) in 2-3 years. If the T gives them a super-lowball price for a handful of units that at minimum accelerates the NHHS service plan rollout and lowers the bar significantly for tying the Knowledge Corridor into that service.

The officials who commented on the coaches may not have been aware of which class of single-levels has the most rebuildability, so may have been premature on their part to assume the MBB's being yanked from service right now have enough life left to squeeze more out west. But this could very well be a big assist for Western MA commuter rail if the Rotem options free up the Bombardiers for a rehab and lighter-duty extended life on NHHS and NNHS+ to Greenfield.