General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

[Java King]

I generally like the new "regional rail" schedule where they have spread out the trains more evenly across the hours of the day. As you can see, the Greenbush departures from South Station are every hour until the evening when there is a 2 hour+ headway. A train at 7:25pm and another at 9:25pm would make this schedule MUCH more convenient. I was in downtown Boston recently, and I had to decide to run for the 6:25pm train or stay in Boston for dinner, yet be locked into a 2-hour window. I ultimately decided to take the 6:25pm and have dinner in Scituate, and I was still home well BEFORE 9:27pm if I had taken the later train. These kinds of unworkable schedules cause people NOT to take public transportation. It's so frustrating when the remainder of the service is generally good. Maybe this should have been in the Regional Rail - North South Link discussion, but it doesn't really have anything to do with the North South link. I think it's more of a lack of budget for additional trains.

 

[Jahvon09]

Eng sees FTA letter as no big deal - CommonWealth Beacon

ON MAY 19, the Federal Transit Administration emailed a letter to top officials at the MBTA telling them a plan the agency developed for addressing the

commonwealthmagazine.org

 

[stick n move]

I generally like the new "regional rail" schedule where they have spread out the trains more evenly across the hours of the day. As you can see, the Greenbush departures from South Station are every hour until the evening when there is a 2 hour+ headway. A train at 7:25pm and another at 9:25pm would make this schedule MUCH more convenient. I was in downtown Boston recently, and I had to decide to run for the 6:25pm train or stay in Boston for dinner, yet be locked into a 2-hour window. I ultimately decided to take the 6:25pm and have dinner in Scituate, and I was still home well BEFORE 9:27pm if I had taken the later train. These kinds of unworkable schedules cause people NOT to take public transportation. It's so frustrating when the remainder of the service is generally good. Maybe this should have been in the Regional Rail - North South Link discussion, but it doesn't really have anything to do with the North South link. I think it's more of a lack of budget for additional trains.

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Yea this seems like something we should be able to fix right now without having to put any shovels to ground with expensive capital projects. We should be utilizing what we have to its full extent before we ever start on ssx or nsrl.

 

[Java King]

Yea this seems like something we should be able to fix right now without having to put any shovels to ground with expensive capital projects. We should be utilizing what we have to its full extent before we ever start on ssx or nsrl.

I couldn't agree more! We have such good "foundational infrastructure" that most regions envy! I just wished we used our resources to their fullest extent.

 

[bigpicture7]

As mentioned here upthread, Cambridge recently commissioned a new Grand Junction Transit Feasibility Study. The Cambridge Transit Advisory Committee just hosted a meeting for an in process update on the study this past Thurs (June 1):

Transit Advisory Committee

The Transit Advisory Committee will advance an agenda for a robust public transportation system for those who live and/or work in Cambridge.

www.cambridgema.gov

They posted the meeting presentation:
Discussion: Grand Junction Transit Feasibility Study

Of note:
-There will be another update meeting in September
-Seems like final report/recommendation is due end of year

Regarding the study itself, not much new/surprising in there...but
-Looks like they are ruling out anything but FRA-compliant equipment (e.g., no light rail or BRT)
-They are continuing to mention a fairly dense set of stops (Cambridgeport / Mass Ave / Kendall / East Camb / CX), which seems tough given the bullet above (EMUs?)

P.S., not sure where I should be posting these updates. If this heads the route of CR equipment, then I supposed it could go in CR thread. There's no grand junction specific thread that I'm aware of. Suggestions welcome.

 

[Brattle Loop]

Regarding the study itself, not much new/surprising in there...but
-Looks like they are ruling out anything but FRA-compliant equipment (e.g., no light rail or BRT)
-They are continuing to mention a fairly dense set of stops (Cambridgeport / Mass Ave / Kendall / East Camb / CX), which seems tough given the bullet above (EMUs?)

That Urban Rail section...

Is there even anything FRA compliant that looks like that? The T's probably not gonna go for time-separation (and CSX probably won't either, though they don't actually use that branch anymore). Of course, it should be studied, it's not like there have ever been any other studies about FRA-compliant transit on the Grand Junction...oh, wait.

I appreciate that they're doing something, but that corridor is not a good candidate for FRA-spec service.

 

[jklo]

P.S., not sure where I should be posting these updates. If this heads the route of CR equipment, then I supposed it could go in CR thread. There's no grand junction specific thread that I'm aware of. Suggestions welcome.

The Allston/West Station project, since that is still presumably a prerequisite for anything being done with the GJ.

 

[bigpicture7]

The Allston/West Station project, since that is still presumably a prerequisite for anything being done with the GJ.

Good idea, but I think that one might become even more of a multi-headed monster since it's already dominated by the I-90 improvement project. Yet, I don't love the idea of creating a new GJ thread either, since it would inevitably overlap with discussion about West station, which clearly has a place in that other thread. Yet this Cambridge initiative takes things in weird directions too (note the discussion of alternate termini near NS in the above presentation). Hmmm...mods?

...Is there even anything FRA compliant that looks like that? The T's probably not gonna go for time-separation (and CSX probably won't either, though they don't actually use that branch anymore). Of course, it should be studied, it's not like there have ever been any other studies about FRA-compliant transit on the Grand Junction...oh, wait.

I appreciate that they're doing something, but that corridor is not a good candidate for FRA-spec service.

I hear you on all counts. The list of prior studies on slide 10 is staggering in its magnitude and timespan. It's frustrating that they don't dive much into equipment in this one (in the last slide they consider "urban rail" to be separate from "commuter rail" and "light rail," so what equipment do we think they are referring to there?) Also, I was not aware of the Sullivan Sq/Chelsea branch concept until seeing this.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

That Urban Rail section...

Is there even anything FRA compliant that looks like that? The T's probably not gonna go for time-separation (and CSX probably won't either, though they don't actually use that branch anymore). Of course, it should be studied, it's not like there have ever been any other studies about FRA-compliant transit on the Grand Junction...oh, wait.

I appreciate that they're doing something, but that corridor is not a good candidate for FRA-spec service.

This gets back to the last feasibility study they did for sending the Worcester Line to North Station. It was only during peakmost service when Red and Orange were straining under load that the service demonstrated a time improvement over transferring at Back Bay to OL for North Station or transferring at South Station to RL for Kendall. That study showed almost no demand on the off-peak when travel times vs. the transfers were relatively par. And that was with Kendall being the only considered intermediate stop. With RLT/OLT eventually bringing 3-minute rapid transit headways to the BBY and SS transfers, the time advantage at peak over the Grand Junction diversion pretty much evaporates. Now this latest study is considering up to five intermediate stations. There isn't an EMU on the market that'll pound the time penalty for so many stops down to par so it even has a fighting chance of meeting or beating the transfers for the Kendall + NS lion's share, and if it's DMU (which it might have to be because of the clearance constrictions for 25kV overhead) it's going to be considerably slower still. The route really is that slow as long as it's tethered to the distended end of the northside terminal district. Plus it assumes that West is going to be built up into a firing-on-all-cylinders destination unto itself within the next 15 years, when it looks for all reality like Harvard is just land-parking the Beacon Park slab.

It's not that case with the Urban Ring where you'd be opening up radial transfers to Kenmore and/or LMA, Sullivan, Harvard, etc. And this doesn't do any transfers behind prepayment. I fear they're backing themselves into a very limited corner eliminating all other modes besides the FRA-compliant shuttle. There should be at least two modal considerations going forward for future study to benchmark against themselves.

 

[jklo]

This gets back to the last feasibility study they did for sending the Worcester Line to North Station. It was only during peakmost service when Red and Orange were straining under load that the service demonstrated a time improvement over transferring at Back Bay to OL for North Station or transferring at South Station to RL for Kendall.

That seems hard to believe when from Boston Landing, MBTA's own trip planner says it's 37 minutes to Kendall using CR+Red and 35 minutes to North Station using CR+Orange. An offpeak bus can make the trip to Kendall in 25 minutes, with multiple stops and not even going the most direct route. The train would have to be going like 2 mph over while in the Junction.

 

[Delvin4519]

Interesting choice to run a Green Line shuttle bus from Medford to Union Square to Lechmere.

Any ideas on if it's possible to optimize this routing?

 

[Tallguy]

That seems hard to believe when from Boston Landing, MBTA's own trip planner says it's 37 minutes to Kendall using CR+Red and 35 minutes to North Station using CR+Orange. An offpeak bus can make the trip to Kendall in 25 minutes, with multiple stops and not even going the most direct route. The train would have to be going like 2 mph over while in the Junction.

How many times do we have to rediscuss this? If GJ is to provide useful transit, the only mode is LRVs, from West Station to Sullivan Sq. Time separated for FRA moves AT NIGHT, if you must, but trollies, people!

 

[bakgwailo]

How many times do we have to rediscuss this? If GJ is to provide useful transit, the only mode is LRVs, from West Station to Sullivan Sq. Time separated for FRA moves AT NIGHT, if you must, but trollies, people!

Yeah. Or just... completely separated at all. Pretty much the corner stone of the Urban Ring as LRV to connect from Logan (stretch) to Kenmore in the north east and north west quadrants.

 

[Riverside]

I generally like the new "regional rail" schedule where they have spread out the trains more evenly across the hours of the day. As you can see, the Greenbush departures from South Station are every hour until the evening when there is a 2 hour+ headway. A train at 7:25pm and another at 9:25pm would make this schedule MUCH more convenient. I was in downtown Boston recently, and I had to decide to run for the 6:25pm train or stay in Boston for dinner, yet be locked into a 2-hour window. I ultimately decided to take the 6:25pm and have dinner in Scituate, and I was still home well BEFORE 9:27pm if I had taken the later train. These kinds of unworkable schedules cause people NOT to take public transportation. It's so frustrating when the remainder of the service is generally good. Maybe this should have been in the Regional Rail - North South Link discussion, but it doesn't really have anything to do with the North South link. I think it's more of a lack of budget for additional trains.

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My vague recollection is that the evening/night schedule ridiculousness was the result of (what I interpreted as) some political "cost-cutting" theater a year or two ago -- remember how they were threatening no Commuter Rail service at all after 9pm or something absurd?

Which is to say, I'm relatively confident there is no physical nor logistical reason why they can't run hourly trains until at least 9pm, and I'm not super convinced that it's actually saving that much money either.

 

[jklo]

and I'm not super convinced that it's actually saving that much money either.

I have no idea how much diesel a train consumes but a 40+ mile trip can't be that cheap. When you figure that ridership might be in the single digits you can see why they don't want to run more.

 

[Riverside]

I have no idea how much diesel a train consumes but a 40+ mile trip can't be that cheap. When you figure that ridership might be in the single digits you can see why they don't want to run more.

I mean, trains, even diesel trains, are shockingly fuel efficient. (Also, as far as I can recall, no one has used fuel costs as the justification for cutting service.) Likewise, IIRC, the weight of a train derives primarily from its passenger load, so, insofar as fuel costs do contribute, they’ll be lower in off-peak.

But anyway, to @Java King’s point, the lack of flexibility itself depresses ridership even further. You’re always going to have some low ridership runs at the shoulder periods of any service — that’s part of what enables higher ridership during other periods.

 

[bigeman312]

Interesting choice to run a Green Line shuttle bus from Medford to Union Square to Lechmere.

Any ideas on if it's possible to optimize this routing?

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I just rode this today and I think this is a cleverly optimized routing. I boarded with somebody at who alighted at Union, for example. A clever way to include all GLX stations on a one-seat ride. I am certainly open to seeing a better routing though.

 

[Teban54]

MBTA officials say improvement is at least a year away - Trains

BOSTON — Major improvement in Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority rail operations will take a year or more, MBTA board chair Thomas Glynn said in an online forum Thursday. “I think people will see a different T a year from now,” Glynn said, according to a Boston Herald report, “but I...

www.trains.com

 

[Delvin4519]

MBTA officials say improvement is at least a year away - Trains

BOSTON — Major improvement in Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority rail operations will take a year or more, MBTA board chair Thomas Glynn said in an online forum Thursday. “I think people will see a different T a year from now,” Glynn said, according to a Boston Herald report, “but I...

www.trains.com

I'm not going to be too sure about this until the fiscal cliff gets resolved. After FY24, the T's going to be 500 million short of operating expenses. I don't even know if the state level has the political will to fix the mechanism that funds the T short.

 

[Tallguy]

I mean, trains, even diesel trains, are shockingly fuel efficient. (Also, as far as I can recall, no one has used fuel costs as the justification for cutting service.) Likewise, IIRC, the weight of a train derives primarily from its passenger load, so, insofar as fuel costs do contribute, they’ll be lower in off-peak.

But anyway, to @Java King’s point, the lack of flexibility itself depresses ridership even further. You’re always going to have some low ridership runs at the shoulder periods of any service — that’s part of what enables higher ridership during other periods.

An empty k car weighs at least 120k. 180 people, a full car, would add 36k