General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

Re: Allston Interchange / Throat

Do we know if Houghton Chemical is now transloading their shipments to truck somewhere, or if they're shutting down that facility?

They're staying in Allston, but going exclusively by truck. Tried to keep their rail siding, but got fed up with Harvard and just took the check.

Does Indigo Regional Rail mean anything other than frequent service in both directions all day at the existing Newtonville, West Newton, and Auburndale stations?

That's the deal. ~20 minute all-day headways, same as what the Fairmount Line was supposed to get. On the Worcester Line this would presume a station lineup of: South Station; Back Bay; Yawkey; West; Boston Landing; Newton Corner; Newtonville; West Newton; Auburndale; Riverside. Newton Corner would be another key infill because of the bus transfers, and Riverside would be off the Riverside spur at a Green Line superstation with small layover yard.

While parts of 558's route are within walking distance of Riverside, Auburndale, and Waltham, a lot of that bus route covers areas that aren't within walking distance of a rail station. Maybe the 19 straightened out proposal could be refined so that instead of serving Watertown Sq, it would only follow the route I proposed in the other thread from Quincy to Newton Corner, and then continue along 558's route from Newton Corner to the Waltham commuter rail station. But that extended 19 wouldn't necessarily take care of the outer part of 558's route, and people who use 558 to get to the South Station area would be best served by the extended 19 if Newton Corner got a regional rail station.

The segment of 553/554 between the West Newton and Waltham commuter rail stations might be better served by a new Woodland (D branch Green Line with MetroWest connection) to Lexington Center and Burlington Mall (Lowell RTA connection) bus.

The segment of 554 from Waverly to Waltham could potentially be served by an extended 73, especially if we had battery powered buses. Perhaps that extended 73 could even continue along the Waltham to Brandeis segment of 553.

Perhaps 556's route could be kept from its outer origin point at Tomlin St @ Summit St to the Newtonville commuter rail station, and the portion to the east of Newtonville eliminated and replaced with duplicating 59's route from Newtonville to the Newton Highlands Green Line station on the D branch, and perhaps from there it could follow Walnut St to Dedham St to Baker St to Lasell St to Lagrange St to the West Roxbury station that we hope will end up with Orange Line service. Maybe it could even continue past West Roxbury Station along Lagrange to Cowing St and Washington St, continue along 40's route to the Georgetowne Housing, and cover the part of 33 to the south of Georgetowne Housing (and then 40 might possibly be eliminated).

There's going to be a LOT of bus route reconfiguration inspired by this. As prior, nearly all the Pike buses won't need to use the Pike at all except for maybe an oddball keeper with high-demand unique catchment. And if the rail headways are strong, a lot of local routes can be re-drawn and/or have their headways upscaled to take advantage.

Really, the whole west region of the Yellow Line becomes a canvas for a major reboot once you do this. It's that major. Especially around the infill at Newton Corner, since that will create some priority to bring Watertown-terminating routes down the block. For example, the 71 would be very easy to extend 2200 ft. down Galen because the former Green Line "A" branch trunk electrical feed is still active below the street as a 600V DC interconnect between the B Line and the trackless trolley network. You'd literally just need to erect trolley poles and plug them in.

Note also that the T's last bus facilities study from a decade ago called for a new west region garage to help pump up the frequencies of these routes and relieve Charlestown of some territory. At the time they were looking at Riverside or a rebuilt Watertown Yard. With the TOD that's going on around Riverside they're probably leaning more to Watertown.

Looking at this more carefully has made me realize that local bus service running roughly perpendicular to I-90 would work better as a regional rail feeder to replace the express buses than I'd been assuming, and I think it convinces me that existing MBTA express buses should probably be discontinued and replaced with local service instead of stopping at West Station in the long run.

Very possible. You have a converging of multiple factors, including the west region bus garage (if they ever act on it...have to see what the latest ongoing facilities study works up). The time will be ripe for a major network reboot of some sort.

Now, keep in mind that even though we're talking EMU's for Fairmount + Riverside and Orange/Green extensions swallowing Needham that "Indigo" rail is meant to be a systemwide thing, including on the northside where electrification is going to be many years further away than down south. While the T isn't going to be buying DMU's any time soon (the market for FRA-compliants has gone ice cold, for one)...if efficient Regional Rail practices are implemented the T can and will be running 128 shuttles to Waltham/Polaroid at a new Fitchburg Line infill, to Salem/Peabody Sq., and to Reading if all thru Haverhill trains were re-routed to the Lowell Line. The schedule margins are a bit more threadbare on diesel for doing turnarounds at 20-minute headways, and it helps to keep the stop density a bit less packed. But an F40 junker pulling 4 partially-filled single-level coaches has plenty of pep for making the stops and running a reliable service. It's a little more ops cost inefficiency up-front, but since there's going to be a considerable bridge era before the northside can get wired up (or for the DMU market to regroup) it's better to get the service--and service practices--established sooner with what you're got.

For bus reconfigs, you then have to take a close look at how Waltham Center bus hub fares with a much more flush supply of Fitchburg headways. Or the new infill proposed for 128/US 20/MA 117 and any 128 biz shuttles that may be trawling between there and Riverside or Anderson RTC. Fitchburg Line's pretty much ready-made for an "Indigo" shuttle with just that one office park-serving infill (which would immediately become a 'superstation' for the 70 bus terminus). That will most definitely influence the west region bus reboot.

If we rebuilt the throat next to the Allston Interchange before any of the commuter rail system is electrified, would building the Readville maintenance infrastructure be sufficient to be able to eliminate the Grand Junction connection across the Charles? Would there be a need to buy a bit of additional rolling stock to compensate for the more difficult north side to south side moves?

The Grand Junction is not going to be eliminated until the T presses forward with plans to build the NW quadrant Urban Ring as BRT or LRT. Absent a concrete plan for a mode change, it is going to remain connected to the RR network and any plan for the Pike has to preserve the junction.

Now, to go forward with the Urban Ring and taking it off the RR network, these are pretty much the only prerequisites:

  • Enough north vs. south equipment independence that swaps can reduce from 1-2x daily over the GJ to 2-3x weekly over the Worcester-Ayer bypass. Amtrak swaps Downeaster sets roughly twice a week, so if all the T's needs can be satisfied by lashing up with Amtrak they're fine.

  • Majority-EMU fleet southside, which is accomplishable by electrifying Providence + RIDOT Providence-Westerly + Worcester + Fairmount, and pushing Needham off to Orange/Green as quickly as feasible. The remaining diesel lines only make up about 30% of the southside's fleet requirements:
    • Franklin/Foxboro -- Foxboro very easily electrifiable; would knock another 5%+ off vehicle requirements since handles heaviest-ridership portion of Franklin main out to Walpole. Forge Park technically easy to wire but needs solve for its tiny layover before service levels can do the expense justice.
    • Stoughton -- Substation placement dependent on South Coast Rail's fate; do not electrify until that's clear.
    • Old Colony -- Last-priority until Dorchester-Quincy single-track pinch fixed.
    • RIDOT Woonsocket-Wickford -- P&W main a tall freight clearance route; not an electrification candidate. Tiny equipment requirements.

  • Widett Circle layover + Readville Shops. If Readville Shops can fully service coaches so that only diesel locomotives have to swap north, even better. If diesels are the only equipment that has to rotate each week, at 30% of southside schedules that's few enough moves to tack onto the regular Amtrak swaps. Occasional coaches (example: re-balancing of bi-levels, exchange of bike cars) can also make the trip as-needed.

  • Work equipment independence. Southside needs enough work equipment and access to track materials that it doesn't have to keep borrowing trackmobiles from the shed at Alewife, rock ballast from the pile in Everett, ties from the piles at BET, etc. The various Readville yards have enough acreage to absorb some of these functions.

  • Upgrades to the Worcester-Ayer line. It's crud, negligently maintained 10 MPH track right now...so it takes an excruciating 5 hours to make a SS-WOR-AYR-NS trip. MassDOT is strongly rumored to be buying the branch soon from Pan Am with the intent of upgrading it to keep the peace between Pan Am and CSX, who both use it and are constantly butting heads over it. 30 MPH passenger speeds would lop 2 hours off the round-trip and bring the crew hours in the ballpark to what a week's worth of Grand Junction moves costs.
Meet these conditions, and you can break ground on that Green Line radial between Lechmere and BU Bridge the next day.
 
Back in the day my regular commute involved the 57 out of Kenmore. I remember bus drivers seemingly waiting until the next 57 went so that they could tailgate it all the way to Watertown. I wonder if the addition of GPS for real time bus location tracking had an impact in that behavior.
 
They have finally opened the gate at Quincy Adams:

With less than 500 feet of pedestrian infrastructure, thousands of commutes around Greater Boston are set to soon improve.

It started Monday morning on the South Shore, where a 200-foot walkway between the Quincy Adams Red Line station and the next-door neighborhood was opened to pedestrians for the first time in three decades.

The locked black gate has been closed for the long period because of concerns that it would encourage people to park in the residential neighborhood during the day. Barred from a short walk to the Red Line, neighbors who ride the Red Line have instead been forced to either take a long, roundabout walk of more than a mile to access the station on the other side, or get a ride there.

You can see the existing absurdity in the Google walking directions.
 
A similarly absurd situation exists in Woburn. I'd love to take my bike on the train and ride it from Anderson via the mostly quiet back roads and wide dirt paths through the conservation land between there and my parents' place near the Mill Pond Reservoir in Burlington (or walk for that matter), but the only route out of there more than doubles the actual distance and is along frighteningly pedestrian and bike unfriendly roadways.
 
Woburn is looking to rebuild the New Boston Street bridge about 1500 feet north of the station. While the best solution is obviously extending the existing pedestrian bridge at the station, the New Boston Street bridge and a new path from the station would vastly reduce the current detour.
 
Woburn is looking to rebuild the New Boston Street bridge about 1500 feet north of the station. While the best solution is obviously extending the existing pedestrian bridge at the station, the New Boston Street bridge and a new path from the station would vastly reduce the current detour.
The article also says they're looking at a direct connection to the station from the west side. Sure wish that was there when I served on a jury at Middlesex Superior Court a couple months ago. The first day I took the bike up to Mishawum and rode over and that was fine, but got out too late for the one train back that stops there, had to ride to Anderson and swore I was never doing that again. (And I regularly bike commuted to Kendall Square for six years, and to Boston for a few months.) The next two days I left the bike at home, walked to the courthouse from Mishawum, and took a Lyft to Anderson to get home. Even just the New Boston St connection would have made it doable by bike.
 
And don't get me started about Sullivan (which I commuted through for a few years); it absolutely boggles me the way it completely turns its back on the dense residential neighborhood right next to it.
 
And don't get me started about Sullivan (which I commuted through for a few years); it absolutely boggles me the way it completely turns its back on the dense residential neighborhood right next to it.

Tell me about it. I lived about 5 blocks up Perkins for 2-1/2 years and felt the daily despair of my walk to the station being literally twice as long as it needed to be.
 
Ramirez out

MBTA general manager Luis Ramirez is out after just 15 months in the job.

[...]

Steve Poftak, the vice chairman of the T’s governing board and the head of a public policy institute at Harvard University, will take over as the general manager. He previously served as the interim general manager for about two months prior to Ramirez’s hiring.
 

As expected (though 80% of this board disagreed with me).

Ramirez had no experience in public transit, the public sector, or even working in Boston.

HBS would like you to think that "anyone can manage anything with the right basic managerial skills." That is an MBA program sales pitch, not reality.

Pertinent experience absolutely counts. My stance was and still is: set the hiring bar high, and insist on having both.
 
As expected (though 80% of this board disagreed with me).

HBS would like you to think that "anyone can manage anything with the right basic managerial skills." That is an MBA program sales pitch, not reality.

Pertinent experience absolutely counts. My stance was and still is: set the hiring bar high, and insist on having both.

My recollection was that this board pretty much unanimously agreed that he wasn't the right guy for the job. And for all the "MBA" talk, the guy doesn't even have a damn MBA!
 
^ I was talking about the "managerial skills are general" "a competent manager can manage anything" pushback I got when I cited his lack of transit experience.
 
^ I was talking about the "managerial skills are general" "a competent manager can manage anything" pushback I got when I cited his lack of transit experience.

Fair enough. My stance from that start is that a competent manager may be able to manage anything to some extent (and fix some of the T's issues) but Ramirez never showed himself to be a competent manager.

The T needs to either hire a transit expert or hire a proven successful manager of a large complex organization. Obviously in the perfect world the T would find both in the same person. But Ramirez's CV shows him to be neither.
 
So, any opinions on Poftak as the replacement GM?

I've had a decent impression of him from watching some of the FMCB meetings and seeing the sorts of questions he's asked/comments he's made, but that's my only knowledge of him.
 
Agreed. A manager with high overall competence can surround themselves with experts - some of Amtrak's good CEOs didn't have railroad experience, but spent a lot of time listening to those who do - but a top-tier transit agency like the MBTA really should have someone who's both a good manager and a transit professional. Ramirez, to the surprise of no one, was neither.
 
Big news from NYC:

For the past 50 years, management has constantly slowed down trains by adding unnecessary speed restrictions in the name of safety. Over time, these speed restrictions have only gotten worse and longer. Additionally, faulty devices meant that trains had to go below the speed limits set to avoid tripping up the red signals by mistake.

NYT Article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/nyregion/new-york-subway-delay.html

More than two decades later, those rules have slowed down trains more than is necessary for safety, which contributes to a system plagued by delays.

Now the subway’s leader, Andy Byford, is changing the rules in some areas to speed up trains as part of a major effort to improve service for frustrated riders. Over the weekend, the speed limit was raised on parts of two lines in Brooklyn — the N and R trains — from 15 miles per hour to as much as 30 miles per hour. Other lines will be sped up in coming months.

“We want to keep pushing trains through the pipe and moving them,” Mr. Byford said in an interview. He outlined his plans on Monday to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s board, which oversees the system.

The changes to the speed limit are one piece of Mr. Byford’s sweeping plans to turn around service and modernize a system that descended into crisis last year. Workers have also started to replace faulty signals that trigger a train’s emergency brakes at low speeds, a problem investigated by The New York Times and The Village Voice that has also led to slower service.

Subway riders often wonder why an express train suddenly crawls along slowly instead of zooming to the next stop. Slow train speeds are less disruptive than major delays caused by train breakdowns and sick passengers, but they have added to the feeling that the system is constantly delayed.

Mr. Byford says he is confident that trains can travel safely at higher speeds and that fixing the balky signals will allow train operators to travel at the correct speeds.


Why am I posting this?

Because surely the MBTA had had the same problems - especially on the Green Line.

Such as places where trolleys have to stop, even though parralel car traffic can blast through.

https://goo.gl/maps/tm7FcMQ6cA12

Advocates need to push for a system wide review.

Is the red line still crawling across the brand new bridge?
 
Advocates need to push for a system wide review.

Is the red line still crawling across the brand new bridge?

A system wide review is in the works. Now, this is the MBTA, and I can't tell you if they're actually going to use this review to fix the unnecessary speed restrictions right away, but over time, they will get better at keeping the speed restrictions updated or at least make sense. I don't want to comment any further on how this will happen, because the plans are still in the works.

Faulty signals will be entirely replaced with the new, simpler and more high-tech signals being installed on the orange and red lines at a cost of $218m, as well as the green line D branch, and they have a contract going out for bid for the blue line in the next year or so. Plans are in the works for the entire central/downtown subway signal system to be updated. In addition, with the exhaustive and comprehensive green line retrofit coming in the next 5-10 years, they will have to analyze these speed restrictions and signal issues.

And yes, the Red Line has been painfully crawling across the Longfellow, at least when I'm riding..
 

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