General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

tysmith95 said:
At least with the Subway the MBTA can use the new trains as an excuse. However for the Commuter rail there are no procurement's and few improvements, so why the fare increase?
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From the last stats I saw from the T (I think they are from 2015?) , heavy rail is subsidized at about 61 cents per passenger trip, light rail at $1.39, and CR at $5.75.
 
Has anyone else noticed that the countdown boards on the Orange Line seem to be having update failures?

They seem to count down toward arrive for a bit, then freeze for perhaps 5 minutes, then jump to a new count. Sometimes one line will blank out, sometimes both lines will blank out before the jump.
 
On the 1800 series cars, the GPS system is screwed up. A stop is announced AFTER the train has been there & is on its way to the next stop!!

Found that out last Saturday. Also, the Andrew stop is a dump!! Dirty water that leaked I somewhere & trash has collected in most of the corners! What a sham!! The place looks all run down & is in need of another makeover already!! :mad:
 
Jahvon09 said:
On the 1800 series cars, the GPS system is screwed up. A stop is announced AFTER the train has been there & is on its way to the next stop!!

Found that out last Saturday. Also, the Andrew stop is a dump!! Dirty water that leaked I somewhere & trash has collected in most of the corners! What a sham!! The place looks all run down & is in need of another makeover already!! :mad:
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There's no GPS on the trains. They ping an RFID tag mounted trackside to get the station ID for the next stop. The ASA computer on the 01800's has always had trouble flubbing the ID's. From Day 1. After a ton of painful debugging it's better now than it was in the late-90's, but has never gotten anywhere close to glitch-free like the nearly identical Green and Blue ASA mostly are.


Pretty sure Andrew hasn't gotten any renovations whatsoever in 3 decades. Central, Kendall, DTX, Broadway, and Andrew are all similar 1986-88 vintage makeovers done for the platform lengthening program to introduce 6-car trains. Park Under has had somewhat more touches since, but is more or less in the same boat having last major reno in the 80's. They're all showing their age with grime, peeling paint, water damage, and failing light fixtures. Unfortunately since they don't really have any critical access deficiencies to correct, cleaning up the aesthetics is going to rate low on a threadbare maintenance budget.

That said, a power washing would do a world of good at these stops to give cleaner appearance and better air quality. It brightened up Davis and Quincy Center instantaneously when they did it there.
 
The MBTA doesn’t appear to believe in replacing burnt out light bulbs. Instead, they replace, or usually add, a fixture.
 
RandomWalk said:
The MBTA doesn’t appear to believe in replacing burnt out light bulbs. Instead, they replace, or usually add, a fixture.
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Boylston is a great example of this, last time I really looked up in that station the number of old disused light fixtures really surprised me. Though it was really dark that day so I can't rule out them all just being broken...

MBTA awarded a 15,000,000 General Engineering Contract to Network Rail yesterday (https://cdn.mbta.com/sites/default/files/fmcb-meeting-docs/2019/02-february/2019-02-25-fmcb-general-engineering-contract-original-accessible.pdf) I only find that interesting because Network Rail is the ex-British government, technically private but mostly governmental organisation that owns and maintains all of the railways in Great Britain.
 
RandomWalk said:
The MBTA doesn’t appear to believe in replacing burnt out light bulbs. Instead, they replace, or usually add, a fixture.
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Some of it is the radical changes in technology, shape, and energy efficiency of the bulbs--not just that CFLs came and went, and that LEDs are still rapidly evolving, but also that the other vapor lamps have been adapting to stay relevant.

Fun historical reference: the mineralized gas mantle was introduced into gas lamps to triple light output for the same gas (at a time when electrici arcs and then filaments were on their way to undercutting gas on price by 10-to-1), a lot like the way that LEDs have done to the other technologies.
 
Speaking of Boylston St - I have always wondered about the space next to the stair (example) - it seems like there would be enough space there to add in at least an escalator that would help a bit for more thorough put (and people that might have trouble with stairs).
 
bakgwailo said:
Speaking of Boylston St - I have always wondered about the space next to the stair (example) - it seems like there would be enough space there to add in at least an escalator that would help a bit for more thorough put (and people that might have trouble with stairs).
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Did it have a wooden escalator? Was that one of them that caught on fire?

Edit: Appears not? Here's a plan from 1942 with no escalators: https://www.wardmaps.com/viewasset.php?aid=19443
 
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Boylston is a tricky case because it's so little-modified since 1897 that major renovations would run up against its NHL/NRHP status. I believe the best-case scenario would be to rebuild the two former headhouses and use them for elevators and escalators. That would restore its street-level appearance closer to the original, while making it fully accessible.
 
HelloBostonHi said:
MBTA awarded a 15,000,000 General Engineering Contract to Network Rail yesterday (https://cdn.mbta.com/sites/default/files/fmcb-meeting-docs/2019/02-february/2019-02-25-fmcb-general-engineering-contract-original-accessible.pdf) I only find that interesting because Network Rail is the ex-British government, technically private but mostly governmental organisation that owns and maintains all of the railways in Great Britain.
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Should see some pretty drastic improvements system wide in the coming years if we continue to stick with them and management continues to listen to the pros.
 
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Just read this reddit comment and was curious if anyone here could comment on the veracity the claim that the central subway is well below capacity is. I trust y'all more than someone on reddit.
 
whittle said:
Just read this reddit comment and was curious if anyone here could comment on the veracity the claim that the central subway is well below capacity is. I trust y'all more than someone on reddit.
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Lousy comparison to be going back to 1911. No Boylston St. subway extension and no Lechmere Viaduct extension back then. And no signal system until those extensions went online. The entire subway--Public Gardens portal to Haymarket portal, Pleasant St. portal to Haymarket portal, and only 5 subway stations--was just a collector and looping mechanism for surface lines. Line-of-sight operation, uniform 5 MPH speed limit, and packing of those 38 ft. trains as close as they could get knowing that the speed limit was uniform.

It stopped being like that very quickly. Within 3 years the extensions opened, the signal system went online, and 2-car trains of center-entrance crowd-swallowers started operating. A more appropriate comparison would be sometime post-1919 when the subway was complete and platform extensions + a supplemental order of center-entrance cars allowed triplets to run for the first time. The comparison with that year probably still is far from accurate, but at least you're talking dispatched traffic control and trains of substantial length and heft starting to resemble a high-capacity light rail operation.

Also...this "OhRatFarts" Reddit guy can't possibly make realistic comparisons to people being moved without knowing the seating capacity of the 1911 trolley fleet. In 1911 BERy was using Type 1's, Type 2's, Type 3's, Type 4/4A/4A1/4A2/4A3/4A4's, various open- and closed-car 1890's streetcar stock, and "foreign" power from other streetcar companies who were still running into the subway.


Green can definitely do better, and we'll see just how much so when the GLT data analysis comes out. But 108 years ago is a bunk comparison. And, really, the needs for moving riders around have evolved so much that looking anywhere many decades into the past isn't going to be a useful metric matching closely with modern needs.


EDIT: Until GLT results are published, EGE's master's thesis on GL capacity is the closest thing there is to a definitive answer on what the modern Central Subway can handle.
 
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F-Line to Dudley said:
Lousy comparison to be going back to 1911. No Boylston St. subway extension and no Lechmere Viaduct extension back then. And no signal system until those extensions went online. The entire subway--Public Gardens portal to Haymarket portal, Pleasant St. portal to Haymarket portal, and only 5 subway stations--was just a collector and looping mechanism for surface lines. Line-of-sight operation, uniform 5 MPH speed limit, and packing of those 38 ft. trains as close as they could get knowing that the speed limit was uniform.

It stopped being like that very quickly. Within 3 years the extensions opened, the signal system went online, and 2-car trains of center-entrance crowd-swallowers started operating. A more appropriate comparison would be sometime post-1919 when the subway was complete and platform extensions + a supplemental order of center-entrance cars allowed triplets to run for the first time. The comparison with that year probably still is far from accurate, but at least you're talking dispatched traffic control and trains of substantial length and heft starting to resemble a high-capacity light rail operation.

Also...this "OhRatFarts" Reddit guy can't possibly make realistic comparisons to people being moved without knowing the seating capacity of the 1911 trolley fleet. In 1911 BERy was using Type 1's, Type 2's, Type 3's, Type 4/4A/4A1/4A2/4A3/4A4's, various open- and closed-car 1890's streetcar stock, and "foreign" power from other streetcar companies who were still running into the subway.


Green can definitely do better, and we'll see just how much so when the GLT data analysis comes out. But 108 years ago is a bunk comparison. And, really, the needs for moving riders around have evolved so much that looking anywhere many decades into the past isn't going to be a useful metric matching closely with modern needs.


EDIT: Until GLT results are published, EGE's master's thesis on GL capacity is the closest thing there is to a definitive answer on what the modern Central Subway can handle.
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Thanks F-Line; that historical context does really show how the comparison is is not apt.
 
Immediately after the subway opened in 1897, it was scheduled for 250 TPH (14-second headways). But, exactly as F-Line explained, those were thoroughly different operating conditions. At that point, it was nothing but a short tunnel to get streetcars off downtown streets - not a quasi-rapid-transit service as it is today.
 
Doesn't that mean that guy is spreading disinformation? And he did it while tearing down another guy while also getting ~35 upvotes and thus 35 different people now believing what he said?
 
ant8904 said:
Doesn't that mean that guy is spreading disinformation? And he did it while tearing down another guy while also getting ~35 upvotes and thus 35 different people now believing what he said?
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If you're hoping that r/boston will not immediately fall in love with a comment that the only thing preventing [insert pie-in-the-sky transit proposal] is government under-investment and mismanagement; then you'll be fighting a lost battle. Most people on reddit aren't looking for new revelations so much as reasons to continue believing what they already believe.
 
I didn't make it, but supposedly there was a packed house for the fare proposal meeting tonight in Boston.
 
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