General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

KCasiglio said:
They told the city on Tuesday morning about both closures and were committed enough to appropriate the shuttle bus money, but needed to work out some details on the green line before announcing, no clue why and big agree that is a bad look and confusing for customers.

The orange line shuttles coming from the north will go to government center. The city wanted them to go all the way to back bay but that’s not happening
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So in effect they've split the region in half, with no way to make connections from either Red or Blue at the other Downtown stops, when nothing has actually gone wrong on the Green (that we know of) before GC. So why not cut it at GC?
 
Equilibria said:
So in effect they've split the region in half, with no way to make connections from either Red or Blue at the other Downtown stops, when nothing has actually gone wrong on the Green (that we know of) before GC. So why not cut it at GC?
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From their official announcement, it looks like there are a few simultaneous projects they're trying to accomplish during this:
  • GLX Medford branch tie-in (affects Union Sq - Lechmere)
  • Lechmere viaduct catenary "adjustments" (affects Lechmere - North Station)
  • Government Center garage demolition (affects North Station - Gov't Center)
(if you were asking why they're closing from Union Sq all the way to Gov't Center)
 
devnull said:
From their official announcement, it looks like there are a few simultaneous projects they're trying to accomplish during this:
  • GLX Medford branch tie-in (affects Union Sq - Lechmere)
  • Lechmere viaduct catenary "adjustments" (affects Lechmere - North Station)
  • Government Center garage demolition (affects North Station - Gov't Center)
(if you were asking why they're closing from Union Sq all the way to Gov't Center)
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Oh - I had read earlier that it was supposed to be to Copley. GC is better.
 
I thought I had seen this and then couldn't find it but now have found it again:
Parking: The MBTA will continue to charge for parking at MBTA lots and facilities at Orange Line stations, and will communicate lost-parking impacts related to staged shuttle buses in advance if necessary.
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This seems very unfortunate to me. We want to encourage riders to avoid driving into the city and still charging for parking seems counterproductive.
 
Quick map I made in MS Paint. Will be relevant on 8/20.

MBTA_8_20_22.png


On Monday 8/22 (if the MBTA sticks to its own timeline), you can add back in the Fairmount Line and the E-Branch to Copley and remove the Green Line between Government Center and Union Square.
 
ant8904 said:
By spending $37 million dollars and hire a whole company - Yankee Line.
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That doesnt answer the question. If every t ansit agency is the company is unable to hire enough drivers, how can Yankee Line do it? Do they have 200 drivers getting paid to sit at home on the off chance the MBTA calls?
 
jass said:
That doesnt answer the question. If every t ansit agency is the company is unable to hire enough drivers, how can Yankee Line do it? Do they have 200 drivers getting paid to sit at home on the off chance the MBTA calls?
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They're a charter company, aren't they? They presumably have employees to drive their buses. Presumably they decide that a guaranteed, large contract is better than their usual fare of bus charterings (does make me wonder if any of their smaller customers might get dumped to focus on the OL).
 
jass said:
That doesnt answer the question. If every t ansit agency is the company is unable to hire enough drivers, how can Yankee Line do it? Do they have 200 drivers getting paid to sit at home on the off chance the MBTA calls?
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obviously this doesn’t cover all of it but yankee is currently doing the Braintree branch shuttles which will be over before then. Are theyoperating the E line shuttles too? I never get out that way.
 
bigeman312 said:
Quick map I made in MS Paint. Will be relevant on 8/20.

View attachment 26990

On Monday 8/22 (if the MBTA sticks to its own timeline), you can add back in the Fairmount Line and the E-Branch to Copley and remove the Green Line between Government Center and Union Square.
Click to expand...
Great minds think alike -- I've just been working on one with the bustituted routes included (like I did during the Green Line closure in June). Once the official shuttle routes are announced, I'll finish it and post it here.
 
Riverside said:
Great minds think alike -- I've just been working on one with the bustituted routes included (like I did during the Green Line closure in June). Once the official shuttle routes are announced, I'll finish it and post it here.
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Im looking forward to it! Feel free to download mine and work off of it. Caveat: I definitely didn’t it quick and dirty.Forest Hills should be listed as a Commuter Rail stop on the Providence/Stoughton Line in addition to the Needham Line, for example.
 
Brattle Loop said:
They're a charter company, aren't they? They presumably have employees to drive their buses. Presumably they decide that a guaranteed, large contract is better than their usual fare of bus charterings (does make me wonder if any of their smaller customers might get dumped to focus on the OL).
Click to expand...
Every transit agency in tbe country is throwing thousands of dollars in signing bonuses for every living person with a commercial drivers license.

I still don't see how they are going to find 200 to 250 additional drivers to work 30 days straight.

Plus, it sounded like Yankee line struggled to get the 60 buses and all the operators for the Blue Linen shuttle earlier this summer. Are there buses available from Canada? Is bus driver a NAFTA visa category?
 
as02143 said:
I still don't see how they are going to find 200 to 250 additional drivers to work 30 days straight.
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Do you have information suggesting that they need 200-250 additional drivers, or is that number out of thin air? More to the point, Yankee obviously has buses and drivers (even if maybe not quite 'enough'), I don't see why they'd simply have to add a whole new fleet of people and vehicles to handle a contract rather than, say, use their existing one. (Whether that would force them to cancel other charter contracts is a different question.)
 
Posting reddit because I'm not going to remake the twitter post myself. Rep. William Straus is now suggesting the FTA take over the whole thing.

https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/wh574s

I'll be honestly I don't really follow the guy, but I do remember the last time I saw his name on this board, he was called a gaslighter with a context of suggesting to end the MB TA and absorb it into MassDOT. Fed Takeover or State takeover, I'm not sure if he's trying to make fake political bluffs, make it someone else problems, or genuinely see it as solutions.

More critically, I don't know what would actually work to fix it. My gut says the Feds are probably best (Though painful still)
 
bigeman312 said:
Quick map I made in MS Paint. Will be relevant on 8/20.

View attachment 26990

On Monday 8/22 (if the MBTA sticks to its own timeline), you can add back in the Fairmount Line and the E-Branch to Copley and remove the Green Line between Government Center and Union Square.
Click to expand...

Don't forget their also closing the union square branch now for 4 weeks.
 
Using the closure of the Green Line Extension as the excuse to turn the T over to the Feds reads as a knee-jerk reaction (gaslighting may also be at play here a la MassDOT-Run-MBTA wouldn't have crumbling infrastructure if they were in charge). It's allowing the garage to be demolished quicker and safer for riders, corrections that will toss out a long-standing speed restriction, track work that needs to happen for the Medford Branch tie-in, and sound barrier installation. Those all seem like reasonable projects to take advantage of if you're not going to be able to travel through Haymarket anyways. Maybe it could be done quicker (I'm not sure the extent of the sound barrier installation), maybe the track work could've been coordinated before the opening (I don't know the details) but it's not grounds for FTA coming in. What's the FTA going to do about any of those?
 
bakgwailo said:
Don't forget their also closing the union square branch now for 4 weeks.
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I didn't. As stated in the post above, the Fairmount Line and the E-Branch to Heath are scheduled to reopen before the Union Square branch closes, so I had to pick a time period for the map to be accurate. I picked the time during which the most closures are taking place at once (8/20), for full effect.
 
bigeman312 said:
I didn't. As stated in the post above, the Fairmount Line and the E-Branch to Heath are scheduled to reopen before the Union Square branch closes, so I had to pick a time period for the map to be accurate. I picked the time during which the most closures are taking place at once (8/20), for full effect.
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Ahh, fair enough I missed that. I thought they overlapped - minor miracles I guess, right?
 
ant8904 said:
Posting reddit because I'm not going to remake the twitter post myself. Rep. William Straus is now suggesting the FTA take over the whole thing.

https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/wh574s

I'll be honestly I don't really follow the guy, but I do remember the last time I saw his name on this board, he was called a gaslighter with a context of suggesting to end the MB TA and absorb it into MassDOT. Fed Takeover or State takeover, I'm not sure if he's trying to make fake political bluffs, make it someone else problems, or genuinely see it as solutions.

More critically, I don't know what would actually work to fix it. My gut says the Feds are probably best (Though painful still)
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to me this reeks of wanting to look like you are Doing Something while passing all the actual work and responsibility onto someone else. Keep the narrative on institutional incompetence rather than the state’s neglect
 
ant8904 said:
Posting reddit because I'm not going to remake the twitter post myself. Rep. William Straus is now suggesting the FTA take over the whole thing.

https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/wh574s

I'll be honestly I don't really follow the guy, but I do remember the last time I saw his name on this board, he was called a gaslighter with a context of suggesting to end the MBTA and absorb it into MassDOT. Fed Takeover or State takeover, I'm not sure if he's trying to make fake political bluffs, make it someone else problems, or genuinely see it as solutions.
Click to expand...

I am the person who called Straus a gaslighter, in this post. That was based on my experience on watching him in action six years ago trying to convince Wareham and Bourne town leaders and the public to support the South Coast Rail project's crappy phase 1, routing commuter rail trains via Middleborough, as he claimed it would advance prospects for commuter rail to Buzzards Bay as well, even though phase 1 would remove the option of extending the existing Middleborough/Lakeville service trains as a direct service to Buzzards Bay.

More critically, I don't know what would actually work to fix it. My gut says the Feds are probably best (Though painful still)
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And that's the problem. This boils down to management accountability. At this point, I am long convinced that's not coming from the current (and likely next) governor, the state legislature, MBTA chairman Steve Poftak or the MBTA board of directors. So yeah, federal intervention looks to be the best of dismal options, unless this becomes a state election issue.
 
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