General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

Well, I didn't know that the problem was quite this bad - apparently the urine detector pilot was a failure, but uniquely to most pilots this one came with a pretty thorough report as to why it didn't work and why they killed it early. What did come out was basically hourly data as to pee/no pee in 4 elevators, and this tells me is that Chinatown Station, whenever it's on the docket for modernization, really really needs a public bathroom put in, because more than 205 urine incidents in just 84 days just isn't sustainable and is just gross.

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Stlin said:
Well, I didn't know that the problem was quite this bad - apparently the urine detector pilot was a failure, but uniquely to most pilots this one came with a pretty thorough report as to why it didn't work and why they killed it early. What did come out was basically hourly data as to pee/no pee in 4 elevators, and this tells me is that Chinatown Station, whenever it's on the docket for modernization, really really needs a public bathroom put in, because more than 205 urine incidents in just 84 days just isn't sustainable and is just gross.

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An initiative to add/upgrade/make_available restrooms across the MBTA system would be a hugely beneficial project.

Imagine a world where you could expect to find bathrooms of at least airport-level quality at any given T station. That should not be a crazy thought.
 
This is a very serious problem with the MBTA!! Pissing in the elevators by drunks & just plain disrespectful people who just plain refuse to obey the rules!!!! I can't tell you how many times that I've stepped into an elevator & found out that it reeks with smelly urine that's been there for days, even MONTHS & HAS NOT BEEN DISINFECTED OR CLEANED UP!!! That is so disrespectful distasteful & downright mean & nasty!!!! And if you walk in in the middle of them urinating, either they keep on, or they stop and put it away!! If you say something, they get belligerent & say; I gotta go somewhere. Like they just don't care at all!!!! :eek: o_O
 
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jklo said:
Couldn't they just put a porta potty?
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I guess that they could, but the problem there is that men would go in there & start urinating right on the floor if they feel like it!! There's just no stopping them from being so disrespectful!!! Some would probably defecate & miss the toilet, going right on the floor!!! Part of the reason why I don't take water pills until I get back home. I don't want to have to go into a men's room & see that!!! I'd loose it (get mad) right there!! :eek:
 
bigeman312 said:
An initiative to add/upgrade/make_available restrooms across the MBTA system would be a hugely beneficial project.

Imagine a world where you could expect to find bathrooms of at least airport-level quality at any given T station. That should not be a crazy thought.
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Probably never going to be airport quality for more than about a day.

Hate to say it, but most airports don't have to worry about people using the restrooms to do drugs, sleep, etc.
 
It might not be okay with the MBTA doing this, but can the City of Boston get away with putting bathrooms that charge money like some European cities? That would indirectly help the MBTA to an extent and allow us to use bathrooms that is (hopefully) less disgusting.

That said, while the MBTA might not able to ever reach airport standards, MBTA can do better with its bathrooms. A good amount of the poor experience is not from pee on the floor but like choosing the ugliest sink and tiles. Or never bothering to fix the toilet paper holder but use a chain or something like that. Stuff like that can be done better.
 
ant8904 said:
Along with busses, it's probably worth noting the schedule changes to trains.

First, I'll quote u/Chemical-Glove-1435 who been consistently publishing slow zone updates. It's just easier to read the bullet points and than the PDF.

So that said, his post notes this

So that said, I decided the compare between the March 2023 and July 2023 schedule. The main website listing Summer 2023 Service Changes a pretty detailed list of bus schedule updates but all I can see for trains are just "Service frequency decreases and departure times change on all branches throughout the day on weekdays." (and it's notable it's only for Orange, Green, and Blue - I'm keeping a pin on that to follow up later on this post).

Old (Effective March 12, 2023): https://web.archive.org/web/2023030...oute_pdfs/batch_6375/RL-OL-GL-BL-SL-S2-P4.pdf (Web archive to keep the link relevant)
New (Effective July 2, 2023): https://cdn.mbta.com/sites/default/files/media/route_pdfs/batch_6559/SUBWAY-S3-P4.pdf

Which my own analysis found a few additional notes.
  • There is no longer "peak trains" for Orange Line. March 2023 was peak OL was every 7-10 min, off-peak 8-12. Now will be every 10-12. This does make Saturday more frequent than weekdays
  • Orange Line Sunday will increase frequency from every 11-13 mins to 10-11 mins
  • Mar 2023 Weekday Peak Red Line was officially every 7-8 on min within trunk, 13-15 min on branches vs July 2023 Weekday peak will be every 9 minutes within trunk, 16 min on branches
  • Mar 2023 Weekday Off-Peak Red Line was officially every 8 on min within trunk, 16 min on branches vs July 2023 Weekday Off-Peak will be every 9 minutes within trunk, 18 min on branches
  • Mar 2023 Saturday Red Line was officially every 8 on min within trunk, 16 min on branches vs July 2023 Saturday will be every 11 minutes within trunk, 22 min on branches
  • Mar 2023 Weekday Off-Peak Blue Line was officially every 11 mins vs July 2023 Weekday Off-Peak Blue Line will be every 7-12 mins
  • Mar 2023 Weekday Weekend Blue Line was officially every 9 mins vs July 2023 Weekday Off-Peak Blue Line will be every 10-12 mins
While Transit Matters do have their headway data set and someone is probably already doing it, we should start archiving these PDFs. Not that waiting up to 22 minutes needs reminding that it's not normal, it is probably still important that we can still remember what headways used to be on official records. Especially if even the current numbers becomes the "good old days".
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Checking the MBTA schedules, it seems though the Red Line is set to 18 trains weekdays and 16 trains on weekends. There is a 18 minute weekday headway and a 22 minute weekend headway.

I went through the pre-FTA subway schedules and took the number of trains and travel time to get the headway time. This means slow zones weren't in the original schedule prior to the FTA.

If the Red Line is running 18 trains weekdays and 16 trains on weekends. The headway without the RL's slow zones would result in a 11.3 - 11.7 minute headway on weekdays, and a 13.2 - 13.6 minute headway on weekends. In the Red Line trunk, the headway would be 5.6 - 5.9 minutes weekdays and 6.7 - 7 minutes weekends without slowzones (currently 9 and 11 minutes).

This means the Red Line's slow zones are adding 7 minutes of headway on weekdays, and 8 minutes on weekends. The Red Line's headway is approximately 50% longer than if the slow zones were not there.

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There's a good video discussing all-things public restrooms here:
(I swear, it's more interesting than it sounds)
In short, other countries have more and better maintained public restrooms, including at train/subway stations. It is doable. It just costs money, and we generally don't in North America. One consequence is apparently filthy/unusable elevators.

Also, public restrooms used to be more common here, I think. There is a now-historic "comfort station" in Uphams Corner. It was built by BERy for the comfort of their streetcar passengers. I'm curious what else like this existed.
historicboston.org

Upham’s Corner Comfort Station, Dorchester, MA (1912) - Historic Boston Inc (HBI)

The former rest station, a stucco 940-square-foot facility with full basement, underwent a $1.9 million historic rehabilitation with improvements that created Comfort Kitchen, a full-service café with dinner operations. Architects for the development were Utile, Inc. Architecture + Planning, and...
historicboston.org historicboston.org
That was for a streetcar. Nowadays, major transit hubs like Ruggles don't have a single public toilet.
 
ritchiew said:
Nowadays, major transit hubs like Ruggles don't have a single public toilet.
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FYI, if you need to use the restroom at subway stations and ask the T staff, they'll usually unlock the staff restrooms for you. I've done this at several stations, including Ruggles itself.

This doesn't undermine the need for public restrooms, of course. Simply opening up the staff restrooms for public use sounds like an easy solution.
 
ant8904 said:
That said, while the MBTA might not able to ever reach airport standards, MBTA can do better with its bathrooms. A good amount of the poor experience is not from pee on the floor but like choosing the ugliest sink and tiles. Or never bothering to fix the toilet paper holder but use a chain or something like that. Stuff like that can be done better.
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While MBTA upkeep of things is....suspect, I feel like these are likely related to the level of extreme abuse these facilities are often subject to.

It doesn't take too many times of someone smashing up the sink or otherwise ruining it before you just decide to put the ugliest, cheapest, sturdiest, prison-grade one in.

A chain is a crappy toilet paper holder, but if someone's going to try to wreck it weekly, at least the chain either won't break or can be "fixed" by a guy with a drill in 5 minutes.

Other than a paid attendant I don't have much in suggestions for how to make people not destroy bathrooms, though.
 
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bigeman312 said:
An initiative to add/upgrade/make_available restrooms across the MBTA system would be a hugely beneficial project.

Imagine a world where you could expect to find bathrooms of at least airport-level quality at any given T station. That should not be a crazy thought.
Click to expand...
Somewhere in there they addressed the lack of bathrooms issue with “it was found that increasing number of bathrooms has little impact on public urination.” And I think that comes from the lack of public bathrooms in the US overall. It’s just become so ingrained for people to pee when and where you need to because there will be no bathroom. Bathrooms need to be made available and people need to be patient for public urinators to get used to them being around before calling them off as a waste.
 
So this is sad and compelling:
According to a publicly posted memo from the Cambridge Redevelopment Authority, 2019 mode choice data showed that 41% of commuters arrived to Kendall Square by "driving alone," while 38% arrived by transit. The 2022 data now shows that the mode share of those who arrived in Kendall by driving alone increased to 50% and those who arrived by transit dropped to 27%.

See: Memorandum - 2022 KSURP Annual Transportation Report
Quote from therein: "Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the mode share for driving alone had been decreasing for many years"

1) Hey MBTA, get the freaking Red Line working well asap
2) This finding is important for Boston/MBTA overall because Kendall is a useful reference frame. It is a place where some critical mass of people are always going to be working in-person (labs, etc). The simplistic narrative of "get people to return to the office so that transit demand and fare revenue rebound" is dangerously narrow-minded: here you have a place where people do need to come during the work week, but because the transit sucks they are choosing to drive. If the MBTA wants ridership and fare revenue, it, foremost, needs to fix transit, not simply expect that people will use broken transit because the need to be somewhere.
 
I would take any Kendall numbers with a grain of salt. Lots of labs and those employees like to live in the burbs.
 
www.bostonglobe.com

Lynn is trying to reinvent itself. Will inertia at the MBTA derail its plan? - The Boston Globe

The city is building new, affordable housing near the commuter line — only to have the transit agency close the station.
www.bostonglobe.com www.bostonglobe.com

Nor is it commuter rail. According to a T spokeswoman, the Lynn station won’t reopen before 2030 because three bridges within the footprint of the station need repairs and/or possibly replacement during the $72 million project. Meanwhile, design work for the platform is proceeding.
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This is insanity and it should be a major scandal. Lynn is a city of over 100,000 largely low income people. This would be like if the MBTA shut down the entire Red Line past Kendall and told Cambridge to just deal with it.
 
Equilibria said:
This is insanity and it should be a major scandal. Lynn is a city of over 100,000 largely low income people. This would be like if the MBTA shut down the entire Red Line past Kendall and told Cambridge to just deal with it.
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Totally agree. I'm guessing ridership was terrible before the closures which is why they are being lazy about it.
 
Pretty on point commentary about transit equity and how little the MBTA cares about the needs of our majority minority communities, like Lynn.

You know that no one would suggest Newton could go without Commuter Rail for 7 years!

Of course the real problem is that Lynn really needs BLX, not just Commuter Rail. Ridership would look more like East Boston ridership with BLX level (and time of day) service.
 
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