General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

Arlington said:
A lot of revenue may be "leaking" at T parking:
http://commonwealthmagazine.org/transportation/t-parking-data-raises-lots-of-questions/
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Wait wait wait ... Don't we need to talk about the news that someone has apparently been steeling 100s of thousands of dollars directly from the cash registers at T parking operations?

I mean this is a big fucking deal, to quote a great American...right? How many pages did we put into overtime and sick days? This is just straight up theft!
 
Does anybody know when these will be implemented?

https://twitter.com/mbtainfo/status/739967209649360897

One great change #mbta is making: cash fare on board buses being reduced from $2.10 to $2.00, so less delays with riders looking for a dime

https://twitter.com/mbtainfo/status/739970630217519104

Other #mbta good news: bus-subway-bus counts as a single ride. Likely will be a big help to lower-income riders getting to work.


EDIT: July 1, along with everything else

http://www.mbta.com/about_the_mbta/?id=6442455611
 
JeffDowntown said:
These floor markings are common in Asian subways. The improvement is not surprising; just a little nudge can really improve otherwise horrible pedestrian flow.

Now they need to do Downtown Crossing!
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Other station platforms have been spotted being measured out for future tape markers, so this trial most definitely will expand. If they decide to make it permanent, then the temporary strips of tape probably get replaced by something more rugged, tactile, and reflective.


Bonus is that with the operator having a full platform view from the security TV monitors placed by Car #1's operator window they should be able to usefully eyeball those hashmarks when it's time to close doors and actually pinpoint to passengers bunched at one over-crowded door which specific set of nearest-by doors is clear. Which is much better than just screaming a generic "WATCH THE DAWRS, THE DAWRS ARE CLOWSING!" into the intercom until they're hoarse while Yakkity Sax starts playing to the people scrambling aimlessly around the platform.

That, and the threat of public a shaming: "HEY, YOU GUYS CROWDING BY CAH #3, FRONT DAWR...STEP ASIDE! THE DAWRS ARE CLOWSING! YES, I'M TALKING TO YOU IN THE BACKWAHDS SAWX CAP, BUDDY!" See...progress?
eyetwitch1.gif
 
^Better still, putting an identifying letter in the middle of each tape pattern (passengers may not know which car they're on but they should be able to see a big letter in tape on their bit of platform)


"Passengers at Door F, please stop blocking the doors"
 
Arlington said:
A lot of revenue may be "leaking" at T parking:
http://commonwealthmagazine.org/transportation/t-parking-data-raises-lots-of-questions/
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The parking problem surfaced initially in February when daily revenue reports at MBTA lots didn’t match up with actual vehicle counts conducted by the agency. Conflicting stories emerged as the MBTA’s parking lot operator, LAZ Parking Ltd., and then the Transit Police and an outside auditor began investigating. The problem was first described as being confined to one lot, then three, then back to two. T officials said on May 16 they were still trying to get a handle on the revenue losses, but felt they weren’t huge.

But parking revenue data obtained from the MBTA suggest the problem may be bigger than earlier believed. At the North Quincy Station parking lot, for example, revenues averaged $56,561 a month over the 10-month period between May 2015 and February 2016. In March and April, after the parking investigation began and LAZ fired two employees “for not following proper procedures,” revenues averaged $87,151, an increase of $30,590, or 54 percent.

At the Lechmere parking facility, revenues averaged $33,008 a month between May and February, but then averaged $52,613 in March and April, an increase of $19,605, or 59 percent.
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Says later in the article that the leakage / theft could be as much as $4 million per year across the whole system
 
CSTH said:
Says later in the article that the leakage / theft could be as much as $4 million per year across the whole system
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CSTH-- you're surprised -- this is the same T that used to have wholesale theft from the counting room when you used to put a quarter in the turnstyle

Come to think of it -- this is the same DOT that has had an ongoing problem with wholesale theft by the Toll Collectors on the Pike for generations

Not to be pedantic -- But the heritage is Mr. Bulger's Transit Agency
 
You're apparently much more sophisticated and worldly than I am
 
Is it just me or does anyone else find it crazy that the DMU's through Fairmount were cancelled and in bakers words "there is no plans to extend the orange line" but yet the green line-even with its budget problems has been planned for a long time and is moving forward to serve the white yuppies of Cambridge somerville. After the elevated orange was torn down there are thousands of people who are no longer close to mass transit and in the decades since there has been nothing but a proposed silver line bus to serve them. Newton Brookline Brighton all have tons of lines-albeit shitty green line, and now Cambridge and somerville will have multiple lines serving them, while huge portions of the southern part of the city are under served or not at all. Even southie which is now turning into a yuppie haven has close to 0 service for the vast majority of the neighborhood. Shit doesn't add up outside the fact that these people were not a priority to be brought into the downtown. The thing is once rapid transit is added these are huge neighborhoods-especially Dorchester which is the largest neighborhood and property values rapidly increase with transit options, so essentially thousands and thousands of transit oriented housing options are just being left on the table.
 
stick n move said:
Is it just me or does anyone else find it crazy that the DMU's through Fairmount were cancelled and in bakers words "there is no plans to extend the orange line" but yet the green line-even with its budget problems has been planned for a long time and is moving forward to serve the white yuppies of Cambridge somerville. After the elevated orange was torn down there are thousands of people who are no longer close to mass transit and in the decades since there has been nothing but a proposed silver line bus to serve them. Newton Brookline Brighton all have tons of lines-albeit shitty green line, and now Cambridge and somerville will have multiple lines serving them, while huge portions of the southern part of the city are under served or not at all. Even southie which is now turning into a yuppie haven has close to 0 service for the vast majority of the neighborhood. Shit doesn't add up outside the fact that these people were not a priority to be brought into the downtown. The thing is once rapid transit is added these are huge neighborhoods-especially Dorchester which is the largest neighborhood and property values rapidly increase with transit options, so essentially thousands and thousands of transit oriented housing options are just being left on the table.
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Simply money politics in action.

Newton and Brookline get branches of the Green Line (and now Somerville and Cambridge); Dorchester and Roxbury get buses out of Dudley, linked to the Silver Line farce.
 
This thread does bring up a question I've had: Was the Green Line F Branch to Dudley never built because it would have introduced Roxbury Blacks to the Green Line? I really think that was part of the decision.
 
Charlie_mta said:
This thread does bring up a question I've had: Was the Green Line F Branch to Dudley never built because it would have introduced Roxbury Blacks to the Green Line? I really think that was part of the decision.
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Thats exactly what I think too and there has been nothing to prove otherwise. DMU's were cancelled that would have ran through the poorest parts of Dorchester and the elevated orange line that served other poor/minority parts of the city was torn down and moved to an area that serves college students. Looking at a map all of the poorest parts of the city have by far the least reliable transit options mostly in the southern parts but think about it the blue line to Lynn would be fairly easy to do but was never taken serious and chelsea is only now getting the shitty silver line after never having a link to the city.

Theres a huge need for affordable housing yet we wont order some DMUs for dorchester for tracks that already exist but will spend multiple billions of dollars on a couple of miles of green line rail to the yuppiest parts of the city.
 
I get what you are saying about a possible racial tinge to transit expansion/serving Dudley (that's a very real concern considering the housing & highway planning of the past), but while Somerville is indeed the "yuppiest part" of the metro area, it is also the densest part of the metro area. That fact of density plus the fact that the Big Dig directly impacted that area of Somerville, led the GLX to be included as mitigation. The GLX wasn't about serving wealthy people. It was about damage control on the area affected by the Big Dig.
 
Charlie_mta said:
This thread does bring up a question I've had: Was the Green Line F Branch to Dudley never built because it would have introduced Roxbury Blacks to the Green Line? I really think that was part of the decision.
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Charlie -- I'll give you the change so that you can get off at Sculley Tomorrow AM and stop haunting us -- Give it up -- This kind of social-engineering navel gazing is like reconstructing the basis of Roman Bread and Circuses by eating a sandwich made of Roman Meal Bread at a performance of the Cirque de Soleil

The layout of the T lines is historic based on [circa 1900 or a bit earlier] patterns of existing use of existing transit means such as horses and buggies and then horse cars and finally electric street running vehicles [1889 beginning ironically along part of the Route-of-A-branch of the Greenline, from Alston Depot to Park Square]

At the time Roxbury and the North End were so demographied that it would have been much easier to find a place for a schvitz than either a cannoli or chitlins and greens

Over time for various economic and other reasons lines came and went
800px-1885_West_End_Street_Railway_map.png

Map of the planned West End Street Railway network from 1885. These existing routes were officially merged in 1887.
Unknown - Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, HAER, Reproduction number HAER, MASS,13-BOST,127
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In the Post WWII period lines mostly went as people got sick of tracks in the street

-- until circa 1965 the T took over the decision process with a whole host of proposed extensions and enhancements -- most of which never happened

By your logic Turkish influences kayoed the A-branch of the Green Line to Watertown to force the Armenian-American community to take a bus

And a conspiracy between GM and Big Oil was behind the cancelling of the extension of the Red Line to Lexington and Bedford to force people to either drive or take a fossil-fueled bus to Alewife

And in the ultimate affront -- my father's sister was unceremoniously tossed from the electric bus on Cambridge Street when it was discontinued and replaced by a "stinking diesel bus". Luckily she didn't live long enough to see the Orange Line elevated taken down which she rode every work day to her job sewing shoes in Roxbury.
 
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