General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

Jouhou said:
Can someone explain to me how a bus just catches on fire?
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Generally an engine compartment thing (in back on transit bus, up front on school bus)

Winstonboogie may give the official answer, but a law firm that does liability litigation has a top 10 list (which is a bit messy since it has degrees of blame-shifting/sharing)
  1. Fuel System Leaks
  2. Electrical Wiring
  3. Spilled fluids (hydraulic/lubricant) [overlaps 4,5,9]
  4. Overheating Engine (coolant failure) [overlaps #3,5,9]
  5. Catalytic Converter (ignites something or internal gunk)
  6. Hybrid/BEV Batteries
  7. Arson
  8. Crashes
  9. Poor Maintenance [overlaps 1,2,3,4]
  10. Design Flaws
 
Arlington said:
Generally an engine compartment thing (in back on transit bus, up front on school bus)

Winstonboogie may give the official answer,
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If he is talking about the bus in Melrose mentioned above, a dragging brake caused one the rear tires to heat up and catch fire.
 
West said:
Thanks for posting this; I need to get off a missive to my state reps and senators (all Newton), as this is looking FUBAR. I don't ride commuter rail, but I still can't stand seeing this sort of screw up.
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Start with Kay Khan. She's the one pushing the rehab.
 
Equilibria said:
Start with Kay Khan. She's the one pushing the rehab.
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Will do, and that's how the articles made it look, like it was her pet project.

Do you - or anyone else here - have any sense of the chance this gets shot down by schedule planners? I mean, I intend to push back, but am curious how many more layers of vetting this would get within the T.
 
The MBTA's interest in BRT is solely because it is/was the favored mode for FTA funding grants. If the Feds suddenly developed a fascination transit via Shetland Pony, the T would convert all of its proposals tomorrow.
 
millerm277 said:
Good writeup in Commonwealth Magazine regarding the mistake the Auburndale Station redesign is.

http://commonwealthmagazine.org/transportation/t-is-rebuilding-station-in-worst-possible-way/
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Ari Ofsevit wrote a blog post detailed a proposed solution that uses the money that would no longer needed for the interlocking to create two platforms and a station overpass that includes an extension across the Pike to create a nice pedestrian link in the neighborhood, on top of increasing station accessibility.

http://amateurplanner.blogspot.com/2017/02/auburndale-is-broken-heres-way-to-fix-it.html

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RandomWalk said:
The MBTA's interest in BRT is solely because it is/was the favored mode for FTA funding grants. If the Feds suddenly developed a fascination transit via Shetland Pony, the T would convert all of its proposals tomorrow.
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Transit via Shetland pony actually sounds like a profitable gimmick for attracting tourists. Mbta: I think we've discovered that revenue source you've been searching for.
 
JumboBuc said:
I cannot imagine this working.
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They actually do this in London

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Personally, I a fan of the validation model.

You dont need physical gates. You simply need something that "consumes" the ticket

piraeus-metro-station-train-passenger-athens-crowd-transport-transportation-ARB57C.jpg
 
I'm interested how this is going to work without causing further inconvenience to riders. With gates at the station and no on board collection, I foresee many buying the cheapest zone possible, i.e, zone 1 ticket vs zone 5. Without any gates, does a buzzer go off when someone crosses the threshold without an activated ticket? The commuter rail typically has large swarms of people moving up the platform toward the train usually just a few minutes before departure so I can't imagine a buzzer for non payment would be useful. For example, my evening train is chronically late so hundreds of commuters loiter in S. Station waiting for their late train to get a track assignment. As soon as the track is announced, hundreds if not a thousand or so commuters clog the platform and board the train in a few minutes.
 
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So many unanswered questions. Makes you wonder if Keolis and MBTA upper management actually ride the commuter rail.

Are these the standard Charlie gates? If so, how will they handle mTicket? And the current gates are notoriously slow in handling paper tickets, which many infrequent riders would be using. Do CharlieTickets and Cards even encode commuter rail info, or is that just printed for visual examination by the conductor? Will cash-on-board (with surcharge) be done away with at the three stations?

And what about platforms shared with Amtrak, at all three stations?
 
saulblum said:
And what about platforms shared with Amtrak, at all three stations?
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This fact leads me to believe they will be POP-validation based not actual gates. A lot of people use mTicket anyway, so they could just walk through and board without stopping. People with paper tickets or passes could stop and get it validated.
 
datadyne007 said:
This fact leads me to believe they will be POP-validation based not actual gates. A lot of people use mTicket anyway, so they could just walk through and board without stopping. People with paper tickets or passes could stop and get it validated.
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What's the point of getting a pass validated? And (from my observations) most people only pay with the mTicket app as the conductor is approaching, so they can get around validation that way.

I can see the value in validating paper tickets and eliminating cash-on-board, but that has to be a very narrow slice of possible revenue.
 
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