General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

Im not pro "bye". If theres so few riders, making it a flag stop doesnt really hurt.

My understanding with Mishawum is that Anderson was badly designed to only allow access from the east. Mishawum serves both directions. Upgrading Anderson is needed first.

Mishawum got an attempted reboot with ADA ramps in anticipation of better surrounding TOD, and was expected to stay even with a complete Anderson. The speculation was a real reach, and predictably the car-centric surrounding development did zilch to move the needle. Now that the big-box sector is thoroughly (terminally?) shitting the bed there's nothing left to reach for. Worse...since 128 is hard to cross on Mishawum Rd. with the extremely pinched sidewalks on the overpass, it's also a zero at encouraging any walkup from residential to the south.

They tried...multiple times...to try to get something going there. It just doesn't have it.
 
Mishawum got an attempted reboot with ADA ramps in anticipation of better surrounding TOD, and was expected to stay even with a complete Anderson. The speculation was a real reach, and predictably the car-centric surrounding development did zilch to move the needle. Now that the big-box sector is thoroughly (terminally?) shitting the bed there's nothing left to reach for. Worse...since 128 is hard to cross on Mishawum Rd. with the extremely pinched sidewalks on the overpass, it's also a zero at encouraging any walkup from residential to the south.

They tried...multiple times...to try to get something going there. It just doesn't have it.

A serious "last mile" solution is needed for the area. Theres a decent amount of jobs. Could be bikeshare now, self-driving shuttle van in 2037.
 
From my perspective, it's not obvious to me what the benefits to closing stations are, though? What are the actual cost savings?
  • Maintenance: how much maintenance do these stations really get? I'm sure it's not non-zero, but? I mean, there's snow removal?
Pretty much. The ones on the closure list are all non-ADA, so it's a deferral of upgrade monies they'd have to spend later. In the case of Plimptonville the funded double-track Phase III through there sticks another fork in it for access to the opposite track.

  • Lighting: seems like a very small savings, and potentially not even available if you need to keep the lights on for liability reasons
Def negligible with LED's. I wouldn't be surprised if we eventually start seeing solar cells on the canopies powering the station lights off-grid, so that will really really bring utility costs down. There's also the ASA scrolling displays...but the modern-install ones use less juice than the 20-year-old (red LED) ones at a lot of stops. Also nothing preventing radio-controlled e-Ink displays where it's not worth the cost to do a full install.

  • Parking: probably the biggest immediate savings -- end the contract with the "pay to park" company, although likewise lose out on any possible revenue -- again, absent snow removal, it seems like there's very little maintenance cost here
Yeah, although parking revenue collection needs a shitload of efficiency-minded reform. If AFC 2.0 weren't such an integration dumpster fire, we'd have co- Charlie + EZ-Pass (for garages and/or controlled-exit lots) parking fare integration yesterday. Nevermind the number of overly parking-centric stops to begin with. They lose the biggest share of money on those concessions because of slophouse administration.

  • Operations: Okay, so you shaved 2 minutes off the train's runtime... that's not really, you know, a lot
And totally situational, to boot. Do you skip stops because you're running layer-cake services (see: Worcester Line, Newton...or possibly Haverhill-via-Wilmington skipping West Med or Wedgemere) where differing schedules need to be balanced? Okay...but then the layer cake is valuable enough in itself that you've got crossovers for managing the meets/overtakes and well-defined service tiers still keeping everything slotted with logic. Is this the NEC? Yeah...with the Amtrak vs. Purple speed differential past Ruggles you've got a new outbreak of conflicts if Forest Hills starts appearing on any Providence/Stoughton schedules. Ditto if Hyde Park can't be rebuilt as 2 side platforms w/ 2 center passers after Tk. 4 comes back. Ditto why there will never be calls for the 1970's East Foxboro stop to come back as a flag stop between Sharon and Mansfield when CR has a shot of topping 90 MPH on that stretch.

Other than that, we simply don't have enough differentiation between key stops and anti-key stops to systematically treat the nothingburgers as a separate class. Especially when ADA has to be considered. Every stop, whether new or accessibility-unupgraded, needs a hook of some sort.

I suppose that if you severely cut multiple stations on a line, you could justify running shorter sets with smaller crews, but... again, like, what's the point?

None...because shorter sets don't really make a difference.

(1) The braking profile of current T push-pulls mandates 4-car minimums or else there's a speed restriction. With xMU's all their studies to-date (both the older DMU look and the current EMU RFI) eyeball 3-car self-propelled minimums, not a whole lot different. Now...Amtrak maintains its brake systems to run as small as 1-car trains on the Springfield Shuttles and Metro North as small as 2-car in CT branchline territory, but as a scale fit 4 is roundest number that makes sense for the T's systemwide fleet management for push-pull (as will be 3 cars when we're running self-propelled). Braking systems today are technologically way, way different than when we were running 1-car RDC singlets 50 years ago; that's not a relevant example at all. It also makes no fuel/acceleration difference because the weight of an empty car is so cosmically lower than the weight of a full car.

(2) Even in the coming era of self-propelled cars, the downtime required for switching out cars to right-size consists is a huge time/cost chew. Obviously it needs a cumbersome switcher assist when it's push-pull, but considering that some of our likeliest EMU buying options may have unpowered sandwich cars there's also limits to how much fine-tuning becomes self-limiting. Especially given Reason #1 re: braking and the non-difference of empty car weight, it's never going to make sense to cut it below 4 P-P or 3 self-propelled cars. Just balance the staff accordingly and keep the extra cars closed when it's dead and that literally is the cheapest ops. Now...when we finally put fleet shortages behind us and have more uniform-configuration sets there'll need to be a lot more attention paid to optimal consist size on greater-than off-peak, and balancing where applicable extra frequencies vs. crowd-swallowers. South Station in particular is going to need that because of the size/demand disparity between Providence/Worcester vs. branchline trains that may need to use the same platform. But that's extracurricular to this discussion of minimums. Minimums are pretty well-defined vs. the spread, for very practical reasons.

With the exception of Cedar Park, these proposed closures seem like a cross between "closing stations we've long wanted to close" and "sacrificing low-ridership and unadvocated stations in order to be seen to be doing something." All of which distracts from the things which will impact more people...

It would be easier if (1) Cedar Park weren't such an outlier, and (2) these closures were breached previously in a forum less politicized than this service cuts scare package. Plimptonville, for instance...we know the Norwood-Walpole double-track Phase III project was probably going to whack it because running wrong-rail for the inbound flag stops just to reach the P'ville platform just wasn't worth it, and neither is touching the station in any way to enable 2nd-track boarding. The DT project didn't explicitly say anything about it; that's just sort of assumed. Likewise, the Rail Vision's needs for tightening bolts on Rockport schedule-keeping for :30 + :30 churn balance with Newburyport makes Prides Crossing an obvious one. But that hasn't been stated until now. The Weston trio vs. the 128 superstation: obvious that Hastings and SH are goners and that KG is transitional-only until the 128 stop gets built. Those areas can be way better served by buses to :15 Urban Rail terminating at the superstation. But, frustratingly, the Rail Vision makes no mention of the 128 superstation. Says a lot about infills elsewhere on the system...but brainfarted there despite advocacy that's been cooking hot >decade.

As for Cordage Park...we don't even know how the fuck service levels are capable of increasing so the Plymouth Line gains a mandate to clean up some of its initial missteps. South Coast FAIL Phase I pitting itself against Cape Cod threw that question into chaos. I guess we'll have to wait for a manufactured crisis like Kingston Collection's big-box moonscape closing its doors to throw the end of the line into existential crisis before somebody posits the question.

...like buses. As far as I can tell, there isn't actually published list of proposed route changes? Even though it looks like there is a map included in the powerpoint with exactly that information? (i.e. the list seems to exist, somewhere, internally)

There's a spreadsheet of bus routes GIS-fed into the interactive map, downloadable off the site they set up for the presentation. It's an absolute Yellow-paint bloodbath. Cuts to the Melrose routes, for instance, dovetail with the CR cuts in that the axe is so brutal it's just going to maim transit shares across town and take everything with it. I don't know if there's a lot you can read into it, though, since this was clearly the scared-straight presentation. You could get lost in the weeds there weighing pros/cons and what is/isn't likely to be real. Definite regional bias, though. North region and especially North Shore...which already get the poor end of the stick for bus frequencies...are gutted like a fish. Nothing multimodally makes a lick of sense anymore in context if those cuts are to be real.
 
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From the 2018 counts, here are the 20 lowest stations by total bidirectional boardings:
  • Silver Hill (11): bye
  • Plimptonville (12): bye
  • Prides Crossing (15): bye
  • Hastings (18): bye
Yup. Although, as mentioned, Silver Hill is *theoretically* barterable if you had a bus on 117 and sidewalks from the corner because it's a fit for station spacing between the 128 superstation and Lincoln and is fully grade-separated. The gravel driveway/kiss-and-ride is earthen-graded to the platform; inexpensive paving + lighting can make that fully ADA-accessible. Then a simple 1-car mini-high can suffice for platform access using the existing crossover games for reaching the one side. But Town of Weston will have to be willing to spend for the accessible pavement grading, lighting, and sidewalk on at least 1 side of Merriam St. to meet the T halfway with a state-paid mini-high installation that keeps it on the flag schedule. And you know they won't see the value in doing any of that...so despite these hypotheticals it's a goner.

  • Plymouth (21): not useful now; as F-Line said, good for a future downtown extension
I wouldn't say the site isn't useful now. The service is broken and doesn't have a way to get un-broken as long as the state keeps being coy about how the Old Colony main is going to fucking function with South Coast Rail attached and Cape studies proceeding apace. Even the Rail Vision's placeholders about a Quincy Ctr. passing track are complete gobbledygook because they don't say if the station platform itself is going to get doubled (necessary along with easier JFK double-up as a first step). And much as Cordage underperformed for 20 years on TOD before finally kinda sorta getting a scaled back identity for itself, Kingston is such a major problem because of the short-term bet on (exceedingly poor integration with) big-box surroundings now going through an extinction-level market contraction. The infuriating thing is that it's going to take an induced crisis like the bottom falling out of Kingston Collection to highlight that this corridor needs some definite 'vision thing' elbow grease refresher on the eve of its 25th anniversary.

  • North Wilmington (58): not bad for 20 parking spots. Useful village stop that would benefit from residents-only parking expansion.
Will have to move back to Salem St. on the Wildcat if Haverhill RUR divorces from Reading Urban Rail in the Rail Vision...but that's arguably a superior location to begin with as Salem St. can draw from Tewksbury to the west while Route 62 has slightly too much catchment duplication with the main Wilmington stop. I would say the current stop shows that there's enough latent demand despite its compromises that it would flourish on the new permanent Haverhill alignment.

  • Greenwood (92): Village station, might benefit from better frequency once Reading is decoupled from Haverhill
  • Melrose/Cedar Park (99): I think you could make a case for combining Cedar Park and Wyoming Hill (with a trackside pathway to Emerson Street) which would be marginally closer to the downtown area, but eliminating Cedar Park outright makes no sense.
Under Urban Rail the spacing's just too perfect, though. If anything some more buses on a corridor other than Main St. might be the missing ingredient to really making these all idealized walkup stops. There is serious proposal for a trackside Community Path all the way from Oak Grove to Wakefield + inclusive of the eventual Danvers trail head as there's side room to grade virtually everywhere except on the existing rail overpasses where 1+ blocks of street-side cycle path stitches together. The only place it can't go is Reading because of the constraining wetlands near Quannapowitt. But you're talking a GLX Community Path analogue, not a consolidation vector. The corridor's going to blow up mega with :15 short-turn service, and eventually has favorable Orange tinge to its far future when NSRL forces some tough pair-matching realities better solved by rapid transit. But this is kind of why more connecting buses...not a giant axe like just proposed...is what Melrose needs. It's a corridor that'll feast ridership once it gets critical connectivity mass; starving it is the absolute wrongest thing to do.

  • Beverly Farms (107): Now we're getting into the realm of stations in reasonable village centers, but lacking enough density for high ridership. Many can be improved, though.
  • Rowley (113): Same here.
In both cases :30 RUR service is probably enough critical mass to kick their butts into higher gear. Farms obviously shouldn't have Prides so closeby, but alone it's entirely appropriate for spacers.

  • Kendal Green (114): Makes sense as Weston's station until the 128 superstation comes about
Note: Consolidation doesn't mean "losing" KG, either. Driveway to the Weston transfer station alongside the platform is only 800 ft. away from the coming Central Mass trail. And the 128 superstation will be by Biogen on the other side of the Central Mass overpass. Totally reasonable accommodation to have direct 128 station + CM trail access from Church St. lot in exchange for giving up the KG stop.

Wedgemere, incidentally, had 310 daily riders in 2018 - with 103 parking spaces. (Winchester Center had 456 riders with 237 spaces, for comparison.) It clearly serves a heavily walk-up ridership base that would be significantly inconvenienced by the extra walk or bus ride to Winchester Center, and it has 70% of WC's ridership. Even with Woburn and Tewksbury infills, it's still only a 9-stop local to Lowell. I just can't see that being a fight the MBTA would ever want to pick for a minor ops convenience.

Problem is the Wedgemere platforms are curved and thus a royal P.I.T.A. to raise full-high on a freight clearance route unlike 100% tangent Winchester Ctr., and it doesn't feature a pre-existing major interlocking for tying a signalized gauntlet into easily like Winch Ctr. It's an expensive fix: gauntlet it at longer-than-usual length because of the adjacent river bridge, and have that switch be incredibly close to the second trailing interlocking going in for Winchester's gauntlet. Or...you can upgrade pedestrian access from Winch Ctr. through Ginn Field to fashion a lit Baker St. entrance, use the post-GLX bus revamp to institute a "94A" Davis-Winchester on similarly brisk/frequent schedule that stops @ Bacon/Mystic Valley with more frequent pipeline to rapid transit than Purple Line alone, and start to 'superstationize' Winch Ctr. as a breakout hub.

For one, this solves a potentially vexing problem of feeding Haverhill frequencies alongside Lowell while keeping clock time to end-of-line under an hour. Haverhill's probably going to want to skip West Med (which can be tri-tracked for full-highs) after most of its ridership empties down the steet to GLX Mystic Valley, and probably also Wedgemere if the time savings of hitting the Winchester-Montvale-Anderson-Wilmington quartet banks slack for adding much-needed infills further out (e.g. South Lawrence, Ward Hill, Rosemont) within the hour target.

So maybe Wedgemere doesn't go away seeing as how it's a 100% ADA-compliant mini-high at good state-of-repair...but I don't think you bother upgrading it to full-high because of all that extra gauntlet klunkiness, and because of that you'll be diminishing it more towards flag status while transitioning Winch Ctr. to 'superstation' emphasis. Certainly by having Haverhill skip it out of expediency even if it's a keep (along with a more readily full-high upgradeable West Med) for Lowell schedules. :30 service tops...not :15. And maybe the ultra- long game is an indeterminate eventual drawdown as Winch gets cemented as the half of the pair where all the gravity pulls.
 
Wedgmere should be part of the green line and problem is solved

Eh...plant the flag at MVP and revamp the too-sparse North region buses. That's a generation's worth of improvements right there because of how damn immediate the rapid transit transfers become. We gotta pivot immediately to load-spreading Green builds first before further Medford troubleshooting: GLX Union-Porter and at least one Urban Ring quadrant. Plus GLX-Needham may go front-burner as necessity of the Rail Vision's expunging of Needham from Purple Line. But, really, the multimodal universe out north looks very bright indeed if MVP Station opens if you figure Alewife busways + Route 16 BRT spanning Alewife-MVP-Wellington in the cards, more route variety proliferation to the north, and so on. We just can't fuck it up by bludgeoning these 'burbs with the currently-proposed COVID axe. North region gets utterly decimated by that, and the squander (on the eve of GLX, no less) becomes very hard to recover from.


For future considerations, figure that RR traffic is going to eventually force the issue of the West Medford grade crossings first. Lowell :30 RUR + Haverhill :30 RUR, 6 Amtrak round-trips and then some, the extra NHDOT-Concord super-express service layer run above-and-beyond the Lowell locals (at minimum NH showing a pulse to advance the studies), and some not-PAR freight carrier giving a damn about growing Port of Boston carloads all end up imposing a saturating ceiling that more than justifies the cost of a trench cut under High St. to eliminate the crossings. ROW is 4-track wide because of an ancient freight siding thicket that once went to a freight house abutting the Mystic, incline down from the foot of the Mystic bridge to High St. is within FRA grade tolerances and within height clearances for 17 ft. tall freights under 25 kV wire. Canal St. can be treated with half- road bridge, half- rail trench at its partial position on the incline. If the retaining walls are poured at the ROW property lines any/all gets pre-provisioned for 2 RR x 2 GLX tracks through the cut. At station site under High, wide enough for a Purple Line island + passing track sans GLX (or interim until GLX)...or 2 thru RR tracks + a smaller GLX island with no CR station. All you would have to do to bring it over is twin-up the Route 16 and Mystic River arch bridges with abutting modern copycat spans to link it up.

Further out, you can quad-track the existing river + road overpasses @ Wedgemere by removing the platform extensions on top of the bridges for more track space, then fitting the shorter GLX platform between the road and river on an island with down-and-under access to the headhouse. Winchester Ctr. you'd stay off the viaduct incline and go at ground-level into the west parking lot for a surface-level stub-out station right at the Waterfield St. CR headhouse. If ever continuing the rapid transit build further to Woburn you'd then be cutting a trench in this parking lot and (very briefly/shallowly) subwaying under the rotary to switch sides of ROW from Laraway Rd. (west) to Shore Rd. (east) before popping back up...station changing into a trench cut instead of surface stub-out. But consider all of that extracurricular some wholly separate phase to be mounted well, well after the Winchester extension. Figure that the enabling linchpin for getting Winchester on the board in the first place is paydirt RR traffic levels through the West Med crossings so you can do that expensive trench grade separation. You'll have other priorities like the UR to tend to with Green Line first, but an MVP-Winch extension is pretty much plug-and-play fully provisioned once you rope in that prerequisite grade separation project...whether you take advantage of it early/immediately or wait awhile to thrash through other urgent priorities.
 
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Yup. Although, as mentioned, Silver Hill is *theoretically* barterable if you had a bus on 117 and sidewalks from the corner because it's a fit for station spacing between the 128 superstation and Lincoln and is fully grade-separated. The gravel driveway/kiss-and-ride is earthen-graded to the platform; inexpensive paving + lighting can make that fully ADA-accessible. Then a simple 1-car mini-high can suffice for platform access using the existing crossover games for reaching the one side. But Town of Weston will have to be willing to spend for the accessible pavement grading, lighting, and sidewalk on at least 1 side of Merriam St. to meet the T halfway with a state-paid mini-high installation that keeps it on the flag schedule. And you know they won't see the value in doing any of that...so despite these hypotheticals it's a goner.

It's Weston. Good luck getting Weston residents to take the bus.
 
It's Weston. Good luck getting Weston residents to take the bus.
Honestly can’t blame anyone who doesn’t want to rely on a 30 minute headway bus, let alone one with a transfer to a 25 minute headway CR. Especially those who make the 200k+ required to live in Weston and 100% have a car.
 
Is this another one of those "scare the shit out of the local municipalities" moves by the MBTA so that they can get more funding?

Yes. And it's wholly expected that there'll be a massive federal bailout for transit from Biden + House...though Senate control not being known until the Jan. 5 pair of Georgia special elections makes that probability not quite a lock.

The difference here is that MA is hitting the service cuts threat way heavier than virtually any other state with this extreme-arbitrary cutoff 'cliff' where everything gets gutted to the core. Other states/agencies are waving the armageddon emergency flares too (mainly to keep the feds' attention), but projecting shorter-term and "preserve everything we can keep our hands on" rule-of-thumb overall in marked contrast to this 'cliff'-of-no-return red line in the sand we're being presented with here. It is correctly being tarred as kickoff of a death-plunge negative feedback loop of lower ridership begatting more cuts begatting lower ridership...with associated economic ruin wreaked asynchronously on lower & working classes and associated asynchronous carmageddon on the roads for the commuters who economically have options. Not a pretty future at all. In other states that death-plunge negative feedback loop is being duly acknowledged as a very very bad outcome to avoid at all costs...reflected in the much more aggressive "preserve everything we can keep our hands on" attitudes to their scare-cut proposals. Here in "Governance-by-Pioneer-Institute-whitepaper" land it's being treated as some sort of feature. Divorced from reality doesn't begin to explain all that's wrong with that approach, but it's very reflective of the world Baker once came from in his past career (and, unfortunately, further sign of lost-touch to the world he currently inhabits).

It doesn't help that the FY budget the Legislature just passed basically tabled any/all halfway debateable or controversial measures for a de facto Continuing Resolution. On the revenues OR expenditures side. It's a stunningly timid budget in complete defiance of what year just happened. Coming off COVID of all crises it's a DEFCON 1 sign of systemic brokenness right there. If the likes of DeLeo are such slaves to unanimous-consent measures or nothing at all for sake of their power bases, we are fucked at solving this pandemic existential crisis alone...let alone all the other existential crises spawned from it. So the cowards in the General Court are just as much a problem, though Baker/Pollack seem to be using that as cover to thumb-suck back into the thinktank womb rather than step up and real-world this.


Those combining forces explain why the first 3 days of public reaction has been far angrier and unified around "BULLSHIT!" than you would normally see this early in the game when talking points have largely yet-to-coalesce. 2020's been a way hair-triggerier year to taking grievances to the streets. The early whiff we're getting is that this move has that kind of potential...whereas in previous service cuts proposals you'd see much more of a "Herald vs. Globe" public reaction self-divide right from the get-go. Not only is it easy to grasp the negative-feedback mechanism at work while we're trying to fish the local economy out of the COVID toilet, but the implicit attitude also says too much about how the powers that be have no stomach to tackle anything else COVID-recovery with any urgency. And that implication cuts across all classes enough to enflame a wide swath of populous. Again...contrast with other states & transit agencies that have to by-necessity make the same scare proposals, but are taking way greater PR pains to explicitly limit rather than implicitly invite perma-cuts...i.e. the "bug vs. feature" distinction. Way more urgency is being shown by those states to NOT get their citizens taking to the streets over transit cuts being the opening salvo to cutting everything and never taking on a challenge. Massholia seems to baffingly be inviting that kind of angry reaction. We'll have to see where it leads...if the anger does snowball.

But as crisis management goes, this is a piss-poor opening salvo for keeping cooler heads. Who knows what that signals about Baker. Definitely I think it's a sore indication that Pollack & Poftak are way, way past their expiration dates at retaining any public credibility. And that does matter when it's an FCMB of varied opinions they have to sway.


TLDR version:
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^^^odds of this guy getting hit with a tornado just got large.
 
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Honestly can’t blame anyone who doesn’t want to rely on a 30 minute headway bus,

As a bit of a connoisseur of MBTA buses (grizzled 171 bus vet from back in the day) in the 93 to 90 quadrant, I'll say there's a big difference between 30 minute headways and 30 minute headways with predictable arrival times. When times are not predictable, those headways suddenly become 45-60 minutes because a bus is always late and/or early. I gave up on catching the 350 bus en-route in Winchester because it seems to have a window of+- 25 minutes to get to my stop AND (particularly inbound) the predictions from apps are often very wrong.

In Melrose, the 137 bus complements the 136 bus, so losing one of those two doesn't seem like a huge deal, aside from losing the frequency. The 131 is a bigger loss, IMHO, since it serves the East Side neighborhoods that are just out of decent walking range of Main St. and the 137 buses. I rode it daily for several years, and the bus was generally full near morning/evening commutes and wasn't terribly frequent, but it was VERY predictable. Perhaps the pandemic has eased parking at Oak Grove, so being forced to cars won't be so bad for people.
 
The difference here is that MA is hitting the service cuts threat way heavier than virtually any other state with this extreme-arbitrary cutoff 'cliff' where everything gets gutted to the core.

Unfortunately, some areas (San Francisco) straight away axed everything in March and are only very very slowly bringing things back.

IE, SF Muni, which operates a system similar to the green line, simply shut all the trains down.

San Franciscans waiting for the return of Muni Metro are going to be waiting a while longer.

Some currently dormant rail routes are likely to come back online early next year, followed by a gradual, line-by-line return to operation for the rest of the system to make sure everything’s working properly, Julie Kirschbaum, director of transit for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, told the Board of Directors Tuesday.

Muni Metro has been effectively shut down since March — save for a severely botched attempt at a restart in August — and the transit agency has said it’s attempting to make that down time productive by addressing long standing infrastructure challenges for San Francisco’s subway, including track replacements, upgrades to communications and emergency systems and quarterly maintenance.


On the flip side, NJ Transit is running a 99% full schedule with no plans to cut anything. Thanks Governor Murphy.

NY MTA cut overnight service...but didnt save a penny because theyre running full service just without passengers. Thanks Governor Cuomo.
 
In one of the earlier FMCB meetings, around April or May I believe, they had the same tone regarding maintaining service and maintenance: that they would resume, financially, as if we were in a normal year, despite the decreased revenue, with an additional $52 million for cleaning. The only noted changes they were going to make was offsetting new safety department hires over 2 years rather than 1. Obviously somebody in Baker's office wasn't a fan of that...
 
This is also exhibit A as to why transit shouldnt rely on fares. Instead of spending 1 billion on Charlie 2, they should eliminate fares and cover the cost of the system via property taxes
 
Muni Metro was supposed to come back in August. The reason that it was re-shut down was because of a COVID case in the dispatch center (essentially quarantining all dispatchers for several weeks) and a bad set of wire splices that were failing on a literally daily basis. Muni also runs a rather denser bus network - and with much better frequencies that the MBTA. Major routes run on 5-10 minute headways, and minor routes 15-20.
 
Muni Metro was supposed to come back in August. The reason that it was re-shut down was because of a COVID case in the dispatch center (essentially quarantining all dispatchers for several weeks) and a bad set of wire splices that were failing on a literally daily basis. Muni also runs a rather denser bus network - and with much better frequencies that the MBTA. Major routes run on 5-10 minute headways, and minor routes 15-20.

For a few months, they did drastically cut their bus network though running only a "core service plan"
 
NY MTA cut overnight service...but didnt save a penny because theyre running full service just without passengers. Thanks Governor Cuomo.

I'm sorry but what. Like, they kept the same ops schedule, running trains all night... but without allowing passengers? (Somewhat off-topic, feel free to relocate.)
 
I'm sorry but what. Like, they kept the same ops schedule, running trains all night... but without allowing passengers? (Somewhat off-topic, feel free to relocate.)

They might be running slightly less service, but yup. New York doesn't have enough yard space to store all their trains, so they have to keep some of them on the rails at all times.
 
Are they running them with reduced crews? (i.e. no conductors?) Like, is there any nominal justification to be had here? Reduced cost from staffing stations or something? I feel like a bad railfan but I somehow had missed that they were still running trains, all this time...
 

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