This is mainly a dispatcher thing, right?
Surprise - no one is parking and riding... "Collectively, these North Shore lots and garages in the MBTA's daily reports have had about 2,000 vacant parking spaces available by the end of the morning rush hour, with a total utilization rate that's consistently less than 50 percent."
View attachment 41242https://mass.streetsblog.org/2023/0...-parking-garages-are-mostly-empty-this-summer
1. This proves we should not reserve real estate for parking where housing desperately needed.
2. Is anyone surprised that after brutal delays, unpredictability, and neverending doom&gloom media coverage that people think bumper to bumper driving is less risky than the T? We need both a performance and public image rehab.
As part of that 1A catchment, I can attest to voting with my modeshare, and becoming part of the traffic.While l agree massive parking facilities next to transit isn't the greatest land use, l think the occupancy rates dont prove that point. Lower overall ridership (esp off peak) is the tradeoff when parking rather than dense land use is placed next to transit. If the service is better than the alternative and the demand is there, the parking will be utilized (particularly if parking is essentially free like it is now).
The more damming takeaway is that even with the tunnel closed, people voted with their modeshare and the quickest/ easiest/ most convenient way to get downtown for the majority of the the 1A corridor catchment is to drive rather than taking rapid transit. The demand is there; if the Blue line had sub 5 min headways and ran track speed, those lots would be full.
They were able to add more trains on the Orange and Blue lines, so I'm inclined to think a lot of the dispatcher issues are being resolved.This is mainly a dispatcher thing, right?
All these are absolutely factors for the current mess on the Red Line. It will likely be several more years before the order is complete -- at the rate they're going (4 cars/month on the Orange Line with months being missed here and there), if there are no new deliveries on the Red Line till the Orange Line order is complete, that basically takes you to the end of the decade. In the interim, older cars will continue to develop more problems. And Red's slow zones are so bad that the headways are worse than they were a year ago, even though last December there was an increase from 15-16 sets at peak to 18-20 sets at peak on the Red Line.They were able to add more trains on the Orange and Blue lines, so I'm inclined to think a lot of the dispatcher issues are being resolved.
The current problems for the Red Line seem to be:
- Slow zones that increase total trip time significantly, thus lengthening headways if the same number of trains are running
- Slow zone specifically near Alewife that hurts its ability to turn around trains even more
- Lack of trains to be added, with the old trains having problems and the CRRC delivery being non-existent
I know at least a couple of years ago there was a project designed to rebuild that crossover - part of the entire "build the T out of its maintenance hole" thing - it was supposed to be finished in fall 2022, but I don't think that project status has been updated since like 2019, 2020. Does anyone know if it, you know, actually got built?
- Slow zone specifically near Alewife that hurts its ability to turn around trains even more
... But after 14 months and a reduction in the job qualification requirements, the agency remains short of its hiring goals for the control center. The T has 25 dispatchers, one more than the “minimum target” to cover current operations, but two are retirees and five dispatchers have found new jobs within the T, but haven’t been permitted to move into their new roles. Six workers are training and one will soon start, and if all are successful, the T said it will need two more full-time dispatchers and five backups to reach its “best in class target” of 32 dispatchers.
It also includes some detail about a couple April safety incidents related to dispatchingFor riders, the staffing shortage marked the beginning of service reductions on the Red, Orange, and Blue lines that have continued for much of the last 14 months. While the T said it boosted service on those lines earlier this year, the expansion of speed restrictions in March erased the gains. The T added Blue Line service this summer during the Sumner Tunnel closure and more Orange Line service is planned for the fall, the agency said.
I feel like this needs more explanation. If the only qualified applicants are current T employees, then the T should already know how many are potentially qualified based on years of experience, etc. It should be pretty transparent whether there are enough potential internal applicants to fill the needed seats. (I am guessing that there are not, though I have nothing solid to base that on.)The T’s quest to find heavy rail dispatchers has been a standing issue at monthly Board of Directors workforce subcommittee meetings.
Only current T employees are eligible to apply, and selected candidates get a $10,000 signing bonus and at least 10 weeks of training.
In early April, the T sought to increase the candidate pool by lowering the minimum eligibility requirements. Instead of requiring at least four years of T experience and at least two years working on heavy rail lines, employees with three years at the T and one year on heavy rail are now eligible, according to a T presentation from last month.
Ninety-nine workers applied under the new standards, but 86 percent didn’t have the necessary experience, the MBTA said.
Why would you compare government transportation spending against consumer goods pricing? It's like comparing banana yields to two point conversion successes.
All these are absolutely factors for the current mess on the Red Line. It will likely be several more years before the order is complete -- at the rate they're going (4 cars/month on the Orange Line with months being missed here and there), if there are no new deliveries on the Red Line till the Orange Line order is complete, that basically takes you to the end of the decade. In the interim, older cars will continue to develop more problems. And Red's slow zones are so bad that the headways are worse than they were a year ago, even though last December there was an increase from 15-16 sets at peak to 18-20 sets at peak on the Red Line.
View attachment 41582
The Orange Line is still being affected by fleet issues, too (not enough new trains delivered to run full service; when the December service bump happened, Orange was meant to go to 13 trains from 10 at peak with old trains slated to re-enter service, but the FTA revoked clearance to use the Hawkers after an incident nine days prior that ended up being caused by a mismounted third rail. Combined with issues that developed with the CRRC fleet around this time, there were many times around the holidays where only 6-7 sets ran on the Orange Line even at peak.)
Only Blue is running "normal" peak service (11-12 sets at peak). With more new cars having entered service in recent months it's likely the Orange may see another peak frequency increase for the fall rating, especially as the Orange's worst slow zones are concentrated on the northern part of the line, compared to being all over the place on the Red.
Finally, I think there are still some issues with operator retention but I'm not 100% sure on this.
I've basically given up on going into Boston from Porter on the Red Line. It's just so damn slow. Easier and more convenient to Uber or drive in.
It is not clear to me the T has a future other than basically being the transportation option of last resort going forward.
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Red Line and Orange Line are both getting much much more slower and slowing down to a crawl, much faster and more rapidly, than they sped up.
We're quickly approaching the point of where it would be better to run no service, have shuttle buses on the entire line in bus lanes, so they can get 24/7 access to repairing tracks. They could do the entire southside for a month and then the entire north side for a month. Especially with just running a few extra trains on the CR braintree branch, I have no idea why they even bother running southside service right now if the entire line is 10mph.View attachment 41801
Red Line and Orange Line are both getting much much more slower and slowing down to a crawl, much faster and more rapidly, than they sped up.
View attachment 41801
Red Line and Orange Line are both getting much much more slower and slowing down to a crawl, much faster and more rapidly, than they sped up.
Also, the bus routes serving the Salem St corridor in Malden (106, 108, 411, 430) finally have their schedules coordinated.