General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

stick n move said:
^ The pike west and 93 south of the city both directions are gridlock from 2:30pm-7:30pm every day now.
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93 south of the city is also gridlocked from 8-11am, too. Around 10:30-11am it seems to switch from 93 North going into the city to 93 South coming out of it, which stays gridlocked for the rest of the day...
 
Well we have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country. Now all of our liberal policies are supposed to kill economic growth, but unfortunately we have growing, educated, and affluent population.

Fortunately, we have new trainsets on order, but the timing is a tough reality. Ideally, a real infrastructure program by the state or feds to build NSRL, SSX expansion would the usability of our system greater. Couple this with some real local willingness to do things like lower fares to attract greater ridership and be more willing to piss off some car interests in favor of isolated bus lanes, congestion fees, greater TOD incentives in suburban rail stations would all support more connectivity.
 
Arlington said:
^ Wasn't there a project this fall to trim hundreds of trees (a big number like 400 ~ 600 ?) along the D branch? Seems like this one should have been taken on the first pass.
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There was a really massive tree-cutting five or six years ago along the D branch. I'm pretty sure the number of trees removed went into the thousands. There were so many logging trucks on the road that Newton felt sort of like Oregon for a few weeks (except the tree diameters on the logging trucks were WAY smaller than what you see in Oregon).

This has very certainly produced a reduction in delays caused by down trees, though I do not have data. But in the years leading up to that tree-cutting extravaganza, it seemed like tree-fall driven delays were nearly a weekly event, and not just in winter. Every damn mildly windy day would bring down something big enough to drop the catenary wire. This is a much less common event now, limited to the kinds of days where it's easier to accept it (like yesterday / last night).

I have noticed that there were some more trees removed this fall. I don't know how extensive this was up and down the line. But some trees were removed from around Newton Highlands Station, where I spend enough time each day to notice such things next day (and a few of those removed were getting critical, so good riddance). And since then I've noticed a few other fresh-looking stumps out the window at other stops.
 
West said:
There was a really massive tree-cutting five or six years ago along the D branch. I'm pretty sure the number of trees removed went into the thousands. There were so many logging trucks on the road that Newton felt sort of like Oregon for a few weeks (except the tree diameters on the logging trucks were WAY smaller than what you see in Oregon).

This has very certainly produced a reduction in delays caused by down trees, though I do not have data. But in the years leading up to that tree-cutting extravaganza, it seemed like tree-fall driven delays were nearly a weekly event, and not just in winter. Every damn mildly windy day would bring down something big enough to drop the catenary wire. This is a much less common event now, limited to the kinds of days where it's easier to accept it (like yesterday / last night).

I have noticed that there were some more trees removed this fall. I don't know how extensive this was up and down the line. But some trees were removed from around Newton Highlands Station, where I spend enough time each day to notice such things next day (and a few of those removed were getting critical, so good riddance). And since then I've noticed a few other fresh-looking stumps out the window at other stops.
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Yes. They rented the heavy equipment and did the biggest clear-a-thon in decades along the D. It wasn't strictly just rolling back deferred maintenance, though. A lot of them were limbs and trunks severely weakened by Winter 2015 and this year's drought + gypsy moth infestation...and thus were new high-risk declarations. Don't forget, even before the '15 blizzards we had big tree falls across Eastern MA in 2011-12 from Hurricanes Irene & Sandy + the spate of post-Sandy nor'easters. The following springs were pretty much record workload for professional and municipal tree-cutters thinning clearing out all that damage. The herd had already been thinned of its weakest members by those weather events 1-3 years prior, so any deferred maintenance trouble spots had already been well-exploited.

Winter '15 was the transpo meltdown that sticks in our craw, but very little of that systemic paralysis was due to downed trees/wires because it was light powdery snow and nearly all weakened limbs had already been felled by those prior years. MassDOT sounded the alarm about trees limbs pretty early on because of the way the '11-12 storms completely paralyzed freight traffic across New England for days at a time on brush-choked freight mains and branchlines. CSX, Pan Am, P&W, and T/MassDOT all went on a 2+ year brush-cutting blitz across the whole state rail network because the economic hit was bad enough to get the full undivided attention of the freight carriers. There are stretches of commuter rail and podunk freight branches bathed in all-day sun for the first time in decades thanks to that little shock to the system.



Everyone needs to be prepared for a bad statewide tree fall if conditions don't cooperate. And non-cooperative conditions could just mean a second consecutive bad gypsy moth season and not necessarily excessive winter storminess, especially if this drought remains persistent. The ones that are ripe to go today were generally sturdy, least-concern specimens 3 years ago when the landscapers in bucket loaders were clearing out the '11-13 casualties and mass-inspecting for preventative trims. +1's all around for for T's show of force on the region's most tree-vulnerable transit corridor (the NEC and Blue Line being much marshier and less-forested). But that's probably not what's going to fuck up your commute in a bad tree fall weather event: it's your own tree-lined city street with overhead wires that's going to get put through the proverbial and literal wood-chipper first at maximum chaos.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
.... But that's probably not what's going to fuck up your commute in a bad tree fall weather event: it's your own tree-lined city street with overhead wires that's going to get put through the proverbial and literal wood-chipper first at maximum chaos.
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This.

In the aftermath of this year's drought, I've seen an incredible number of trees come down in Newton Highlands and surrounding area. Some have fallen on nearly calm days, just sort of "OK, I'm dead, goodbye cruel world" and [crash]. I haven't seen any come down on main thruways to disrupt rush hours, but then I commute by rail and my wife frequently walks to work, so I am probably just not aware of them.

Whereas on the D line, at least from Highlands inbound, I can only think of one tree fall related delay all year that affected me (not counting the one you posted from yesterday, which got cleaned up before it impacted me personally). Compared to the number of such events that I personally experienced along D from 2001 through whatever year that jumbo cutting was, I really perceive that the T is keeping ahead of this better than either Newton DPW or the average Newton homeowner. Obviously I'm going on anec-data here, just using my own travel interruptions as a proxy, but I've made 220 - 240 round trips per year pretty steadily for 16 years, so my experience is probably a reasonable enough proxy. I've got my complaints about the T's operation of the D line, but how they manage the line's dense overhead canopy these last few years is not one of those complaints.
 
bakgwailo said:
93 south of the city is also gridlocked from 8-11am, too. Around 10:30-11am it seems to switch from 93 North going into the city to 93 South coming out of it, which stays gridlocked for the rest of the day...
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It needs congestion pricing
 
jass said:
It needs congestion pricing
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Yes. Now that everyone pretty much agrees that add-a-lane projects are impossible, the best solution is to use price to better-allocate the fixed resource we have.
 
That didn't look like an overhauled unit to me. It looked like one of the teal/gray ones.
 
bakgwailo said:
I think you are correct now that I am watching it on not a tiny cell phone screen.
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It was one of the 3700's. Pause and squint and you can see the seats closest to the door have black, not orange & blue, cushions. If that was just a pantograph biting the dust then the graphite contact surface may have crumbled off and spread a little kindling on the roof. Looks more dramatic than it really is in the compressed vertical clearance of Park St. station. That or a resistor on one of the roof mounts met its dramatic end. Either way if they knocked it down quickly it probably won't keep the car out-of-service more than a few days because those parts are considered 'consumables'. The 3700's only have one pilot car in the rebuild program and won't have any others sent until the 3600's are fully complete. So unlike with the 36's where if the slightest thing breaks they send the car to the front of the rebuild line, they've got incentive to keep repairing the 37's for another year.


FWIW...in-service Type 7 rebuilds are now dead-even in number vs. all in-service non-rebuilds: 40 apiece (with 18 out-of-service in rebuild). When the next couple units currently in testing get certified for revenue service, rebuilds will be an outright majority. That milestone will be coming next 2-3 days.
 
Car was 3620, hot grids put out with an extinguisher.

Car has a leaky roof though (nothing to do with the incident), so it might be high on the list to be the next to go to Hornell. Cars with leaky roofs are the first priority to send, followed by cars in the orignal paint.
 
Wait, wasnt there someone who called out that trip as delaying the entire system 20 minutes based on a detailed data analysis and then the MBTA responded by saying "wrong because we say so".
 
jass said:
Wait, wasnt there someone who called out that trip as delaying the entire system 20 minutes based on a detailed data analysis and then the MBTA responded by saying "wrong because we say so".
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Ari.
 
Right now, the 3rd from last eastbound train from Heath St. (the 12:47 inbound trip) is the Lechmere connector train at Park St. It is followed by an inbound trip at 12:55 that offers no connections, and then a later deadhead move (the equipment from last westbound Heath St.) that carries no passengers.

The new schedule will make the fifth from last eastbound train at 12:32 the new "connector" trip that wil wait at Park St. for release to Lechmere. It will be followed by in service trips at 12:41, 12:47, 1255, and the last deadhead.

For this to work, dispatchers will now need to make sure that the 12:32 trip is held at Prudential until the last inbound from Riverside has cleared Copley junction. The last inbound from Riverside is the connector for the inbound 57 bus and becomes the last westbound from Government Center which is the connector from the last westbound Blue Line. It can't be blocked at Park St. by the last connector E.

The new schedule also sets up a scenario where a delay anywhere else in the system will result in up to five Lechmere bound trains sitting between Park and Boylston waiting for the release at Park St., and four of these five trains could have passengers onboard. If a dispatcher releases the fifth from last trip early and decides that one of the four trains behind it will now be the connector for Lechmere, they have to make sure the the Blue Line inspector at Government Center and the bus inspectors at Haymarket and Lechmere are informed of the change so that they don't release connections early. If that happens, everything must turn-around and go back and wait for the proper connection. If that mistake happens just a couple of times, look for the schedule to change back to what it was.
 
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