General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

Arlington said:
Its all a question of how high up the chain the problem went.

If the front-line cash-collections staff were skimming the $ and faking the parking numbers It'd have been up to LAZ to do some basic parking counts to audit their employees. It'd be up to LAZ to keep the audit people as separate as possible from the cash people, but $100k/mo to $200k/mo can grease a lot of palms.

At some point up the chain of command at LAZ, there's going to be a guy who claims that all the $ he saw matched all the parking audit counts he saw. When that guy wants to claim he was no longer complicit or negligent, yeah, the numbers can get corrected real quick.

Frankly, every office building / property owner in town that doesn't have a gate metering entries and exits should be conducting an audit of their parking operator with random parking counts scattered across the year.
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LAZ is a vast parking management conglomerate with hundreds of big contracts nationwide. They're the "too big to fail" of their industry. The T would only be tip of the iceberg if they got nailed for large sums of funny math in this audit.
 
Globe article on MBTA advertising practices and revenue:

Boston Globe said:
The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s revenue from ads rose 32 percent to $31 million in its fiscal year ended in June.

Nationally, advertising spending increased about 8.2 percent in 2015, according to the Standard Media Index.

[...]

The cash-strapped MBTA believes it can further increase ad revenue, and is looking for a new partner to help. For the past 11 years the authority has used Intersection Co., a New York technology and media company that works with advertisers and oversees the installation of their ads, but the T says it wants to bolster its digital capabilities.
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JumboBuc said:
Globe article on MBTA advertising practices and revenue:
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Good to see they are getting more revenue from advertising - seriously, I don't think they could fit anymore in at least in South Station :rolleyes:

It would be kind of interesting if the MBTA partnered with say Google to fund late night service. Basically a deal that says, hey, after midnight (or whatever), Google, all the advertising is yours to go wild with. I would envision instead of the current paper ads in rolling stock, they would replace them with screens in all the cars, possible make some interesting augmented reality advertising/etc (via Cardboard/phones). Idea being Google would be interested as it would give them a real world sandbox to play in, and the MBTA would get overall advertising upgrades done everywhere, and the funding for late night service.

One can dream though.
 
FYI google already serves ads in front of almost everyone on a train, via their phones, and no the mbta is not getting a cut
 
CSTH said:
FYI google already serves ads in front of almost everyone on a train, via their phones, and no the mbta is not getting a cut
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Well aware of that, and how their add network operates (being one of the largest ever). The same could be said of print newspapers and their ads though - plenty of people used to read the paper/metro on the train and the MBTA didn't get a slice of that advertising. All I am saying is Google is generally into crazy stuff that has not readily explainable payoffs, and it would just be an idea to get some more money infused into the T/try and get late night service back.
 
^fair enough! If it contributes to late night service that's a good thing in my book.
 
CSTH said:
^fair enough! If it contributes to late night service that's a good thing in my book.
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I mean - total pie in the sky idea, it would almost definitely never happen. Just trying to think creatively, and Google does seem to like to mess around with really random stuff. Hell, maybe we could get them to design a new signaling system + fully automated train system given their work on self driving cars (which is soooo much more difficult of a problem). But, won't happen, so w/e. At this point I would just be oh so happy if they could figure out how to better sync up the High Speed line with the red at Ashmont.
 
When on the Worcester to Boston direct express in the morning does anyone know why the train has to slow to a crawl in Framingham?

I've taken this train a couple times and the train basically slows down to about 15MPH. Is it just because of the large number of At-Grade crossings in Framingham? Besides building bridges is that fixable?
 
Ah while I'm in questioning mode too... what's with the reverse track thing that seems occur right after Framingham.
 
meddlepal said:
When on the Worcester to Boston direct express in the morning does anyone know why the train has to slow to a crawl in Framingham?

I've taken this train a couple times and the train basically slows down to about 15MPH. Is it just because of the large number of At-Grade crossings in Framingham? Besides building bridges is that fixable?
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I think the speed restriction is supposed to be 25, not 15. Could be temp track work-related, as it's been a very busy summer for that out there. The overall restriction is not fixable because the crossings are what they are. The Worcester super-express is the only train on the schedule that doesn't stop there, so it's not really a schedule drain for the T or Amtrak to have to slow up on the station approach.

Dealing with Town of Framingham over basic-ass improvements to those crossings is an exercise in abject frustration. The T wants to install security fencing between Bishop and Concord St.'s because idiots keep darting across the tracks. Town opposes because they back the idiots and their shortcuts. They want to upgrade the crossing protection to quadrant gates with kitchen-sink advanced warning doohickeys to keep idiots behind the wheel from evading the gates and holding up trains by getting stuck on the crossings. Town is dithering because it wants its downtown street reconfig funded by MassDOT first, so it's hands-off until Town and MassHighway break up the logjam.

As impressive as their new downtown TOD plans look, Framingham is completely inept at pulling the trigger on actual decisions. So I'll believe it when I see it. In the meantime those crossings will continue to be a minor annoyance. But moreso a quality-of-life detriment to the town rather than a train-delayer. That's on them to pull their heads out of their asses.


Not sure what you mean by "reverse-track thing", unless that's also temp due to all the track work wrap-up going on out there. Trains pass through busy CSX Nevins freight yard immediately outbound so there is a mile-long freight lead track that starts at the Ashland town line off the outbound track and goes all the way east to the Framingham wye for feeding Nevins and North freight yards.
 
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Throw-back.
 
I remember seeing that abandoned portal when I was a kid around 1960, before the area was torn down for the South Cove urban renewal project. My mother and I were walking by there for some reason. The portal was still in place until the urban renewal project was built.

I'm talking about the Pleasant Steet portal for the Orange Line el when it was routed thru the Green Line tunnel in the early 1900's.
 
I'm offering F-Line and others an opportunity to criticize and contribute to the following new concept:

UltraBlue:

Specifically take a mated pair of Blue Line cars -- these can go anywhere that the heavy rail can go and also can travel on standard Commuter Rail Lines -- so what is missing is that the commuter rail lines lack electric power

The solution is to replace some of the passenger space with electrical components -- specifically high energy density, quick charging batteries, and the necessary electronics to get the juice [That's a technical term] in and out of the batteries from the wires and the motors/ generators [regenerative braking]

The next step is to electrify some of the commuter rail lines specifically close to Boston / Cambridge [e.g. Fairmont, Cambridge to Waltham, Chelsea to Lynn, North Station to Woburn] but also some places where vehicles might be parked overnight and stations where there might be switches and such

Then the UltraBlues just start running with reasonable high frequency trading off for the small capacity for each UltraBlue
 
Uh, the Blue Line cars cannot run on commuter rail tracks, per FRA regulations, so that's a problem right there.
 
It's an awesome way to kill passengers, because a slow-speed collision with a freight train inside of yard limits will squash that big heavy HRT car like a bug. Signal system is human-overridden at sub-10 MPH because it's impossible to automate shunting cars in a yard, so that is the single most common place for fender-benders. It's no big deal when two Red Line cars scrape at Cabot Yard or a commuter train and Acela scrape at Southampton because weight differential is the same for rolling stock on common modes. Completely different matter with a Blue car sideswiping a CSX train backing out of Readville carrying 12 fully-loaded lumber racks. The only places in the world where metro stock coexists with mainline stock is Island of Japan and southern Korean Peninsula where there is no freight...and only with *very* limited and tightly-controlled co-mingling. Even in Euroland the RR trains have a weight differential that'll pulverize a subway car at very slow speeds, because freight exists and it's a common-carrier network.
 
ceo said:
Uh, the Blue Line cars cannot run on commuter rail tracks, per FRA regulations, so that's a problem right there.
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CEO -- F-Line -- This is what is called a Gedanken Experiment -- i.e. conceptual -- of course without modifications you can't drive a Ferrari that runs at the Grand Prix of Monaco
schu-ferr-monaco-2001.jpg

on Boylston St. -- for one -- it has no headlights

The point about the "run on commuter rail tracks" is that as opposed to the other T Line options -- the Green Line is too low, the others are large and run only with third rail -- the Blue Line has height above the ground, is compact because it was forced to fit a tunnel designed for trolleys and can use a pantograph
 
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