General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

Koopzilla24 said:
September was the best month for weekday ridership so far following the pandemic.

Commuter Rail ridership is up to 94% of September 2019. Bus, 81%. Rapid transit 56%, which isn't great but relative to its prior peak of 51% that's a sizable jump and the first time rapid transit ridership has crested 400k in this era. Bus ridership also saw a considerable jump from a prior high of 314k. What I'm curious about is how the Red Line shutdown played into this. The MBTA data says that they counted all 30 days for Red Line ridership, averaging 122k on weekdays (the same as the Orange Line, only differing by ~100 riders) so that must be essentially the ridership with no Braintree Branch. The way they had the shuttle buses drop off at Ashmont probably contributed to somewhat stable ridership despite the shutdown. The real standout was the Green Line averaging 110,769 weekday riders. Almost on par with heavy rail.
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Where did you get the line-by-line breakdown from?
 
The Orange Line is now back. Hopefully we can see some good results in the very few days we have before the federal election that's looking more increasingly grim.

Typically the first few days always have signal problems for some unknown reason. No early morning data from TransitMatters at the moment.

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So like, if the tracks are in much better shape on the orange line, what are the odds of increasing the operating speed sometime in the next say 5 years?
 
sean99090900 said:
So like, if the tracks are in much better shape on the orange line, what are the odds of increasing the operating speed sometime in the next say 5 years?
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Not impossible, (According to one railroad.net poster the max speed used to be 50, no source provided) but it's probably not a priority either. The only place you'd really see significant time savings is between Malden Center and Wellington as that's the only place with stops over 1 mile apart. For reference, NQ and JFK are 3.6 miles apart. Just to model the time savings we'll use R160s from NYC since I can immediately find numbers for them. They have an average acceleration of 2.5 MPH/s, which means that they take .14 miles to accelerate to 50 MPH, compared to around .09 miles to accelerate to 40 MPH. I'll assume a similar distance for deceleration because I'm lazy, it's actually a bit shorter. Add a few seconds onto the time savings if you'd like. So with a maximum speed of 40 MPH, JFK-NQ takes ~5:40, but with a max speed of 50 MPH it goes down to ~4:40. Malden Center and Wellington are 1.7 miles apart, so running the numbers again gets you 2:50 at 40 MPH, or 2:20 at 50 MPH. For stops spaced .5 miles apart like on the SW corridor, it's 1:01 at 40 MPH vs 0:56 at 50 MPH.

Assuming an average 10 second penalty between stops, excluding the downtown stops which are closer than 1500ft between them and with the 30 seconds for Malden Center-Wellington, that gives a very rough estimate for the total end-to-end time penalty for the Orange Line of about 2 minutes. Not really a big deal, and less than the ~2:30 just on the Braintree branch of the Red Line.
 
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Standing at Sullivan on the inbound platform and there’s two CR coaches parked on track 21 (IIRC). I’ve never seen MBTA equipment parked there ever since I’ve been coming to this station.

Anyone know what gives?
 

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North Shore said:
Standing at Sullivan on the inbound platform and there’s two CR coaches parked on track 21 (IIRC). I’ve never seen MBTA equipment parked there ever since I’ve been coming to this station.

Anyone know what gives?
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They might be going for scrap at Schnitzer Steel in Everett via CSX. 4 others in the retired 1600-series Bombardier cab cars were scrapped there earlier this year.
 
TheRatmeister said:
Not impossible, (According to one railroad.net poster the max speed used to be 50, no source provided) but it's probably not a priority either. The only place you'd really see significant time savings is between Malden Center and Wellington as that's the only place with stops over 1 mile apart. For reference, NQ and JFK are 3.6 miles apart. Just to model the time savings we'll use R160s from NYC since I can immediately find numbers for them. They have an average acceleration of 2.5 MPH/s, which means that they take .14 miles to accelerate to 50 MPH, compared to around .09 miles to accelerate to 40 MPH. I'll assume a similar distance for deceleration because I'm lazy, it's actually a bit shorter. Add a few seconds onto the time savings if you'd like. So with a maximum speed of 40 MPH, JFK-NQ takes ~5:40, but with a max speed of 50 MPH it goes down to ~4:40. Malden Center and Wellington are 1.7 miles apart, so running the numbers again gets you 2:50 at 40 MPH, or 2:20 at 50 MPH. For stops spaced .5 miles apart like on the SW corridor, it's 1:01 at 40 MPH vs 0:56 at 50 MPH.

Assuming an average 10 second penalty between stops, excluding the downtown stops which are closer than 1500ft between them and with the 30 seconds for Malden Center-Wellington, that gives a very rough estimate for the total end-to-end time penalty for the Orange Line of about 2 minutes. Not really a big deal, and less than the ~2:30 just on the Braintree branch of the Red Line.
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My ca ~2001 copy of the OL track profile says that the entire Northern OL, from Community College to Oak Grove, was actually rated for 55, outside the stations themselves, and the same is true on the southern end from Green St to Forest Hills. That's actually higher than the Red, but likely due to the original plan of running express service to Reading. While I agree it may not result in meaningful service improvements to actually operate at those speeds, especially compared to slow zone free speeds, I don't think we should accept degraded service "because it's good enough." If the T is meant to eliminate its technical / sogr debt, running at design speed everywhere should be part of the deal, but at least here it probably shouldn't be a priority over other sogr needs.
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TheRatmeister said:
Not impossible, (According to one railroad.net poster the max speed used to be 50, no source provided) but it's probably not a priority either. The only place you'd really see significant time savings is between Malden Center and Wellington as that's the only place with stops over 1 mile apart. For reference, NQ and JFK are 3.6 miles apart. Just to model the time savings we'll use R160s from NYC since I can immediately find numbers for them. They have an average acceleration of 2.5 MPH/s, which means that they take .14 miles to accelerate to 50 MPH, compared to around .09 miles to accelerate to 40 MPH. I'll assume a similar distance for deceleration because I'm lazy, it's actually a bit shorter. Add a few seconds onto the time savings if you'd like. So with a maximum speed of 40 MPH, JFK-NQ takes ~5:40, but with a max speed of 50 MPH it goes down to ~4:40. Malden Center and Wellington are 1.7 miles apart, so running the numbers again gets you 2:50 at 40 MPH, or 2:20 at 50 MPH. For stops spaced .5 miles apart like on the SW corridor, it's 1:01 at 40 MPH vs 0:56 at 50 MPH.

Assuming an average 10 second penalty between stops, excluding the downtown stops which are closer than 1500ft between them and with the 30 seconds for Malden Center-Wellington, that gives a very rough estimate for the total end-to-end time penalty for the Orange Line of about 2 minutes. Not really a big deal, and less than the ~2:30 just on the Braintree branch of the Red Line.
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Stlin said:
My ca ~2001 copy of the OL track profile says that the entire Northern OL, from Community College to Oak Grove, was actually rated for 55, outside the stations themselves, and the same is true on the southern end from Green St to Forest Hills. That's actually higher than the Red, but likely due to the original plan of running express service to Reading. While I agree it may not result in meaningful service improvements to actually operate at those speeds, especially compared to slow zone free speeds, I don't think we should accept degraded service "because it's good enough." If the T is meant to eliminate its technical / sogr debt, running at design speed everywhere should be part of the deal, but at least here it probably shouldn't be a priority over other sogr needs.
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2 minutes is still pretty signficant in amount the off-peak headways can decrease.

8 trainsets on Sunday means you shorten Sunday headways by 15 seconds.

Fall 2024 schedules use runtimes as of mid-2024, which was 42 minutes for a one way trip. Early data from TransitMatters suggests OL is currently able to run a one way trip in 36 minutes. For sake of simplicity, let's say a roundtrip of the OL includes 9 minute buffers on either terminal.

# TrainsetsFall 2024 schedules (mid-2024 runtimes = 42 mins one way)

Headway:		36 minute runtime (estimate of one way trip for full speed OL today)

Headway:		35 minute one way trip runtime (raise speed from 40 -> 55 MPH)

Headway:
8 (Sunday)12.8 min11.3 min11 min
911.3 min10 min9.8 min
10 (Saturday)10.2 min9 min8.8 min
119.2 min8.2 min8 min
12 (Weekday evening)8.5 min7.5 min7.3 min
13 (Weekday interpeak)7.8 min6.9 min6.8 min
147.2 min6.4 min6.3 min
156.8 min6 min5.9 min
166.4 min5.6 min5.5 min
17 (AM/PM weekday peak)6 min5.3 min5.2 min

IMO I still think making the Orange faster at 55 MPH is a worthwile endeavor. Saturday and Sunday headways each shave 15 seconds off the wait time from the scheduled headway.

10.2 minute headways on Saturday is unacceptably long and requires printed timetables with scheduled departures. 9 minutes is still meh, but 8.8 minute headways allows for 7 trains per hour service, which is SUAG, and means timetables are only needed for Sunday service. Weekday interpeak and evening service also improve decently. Today's it's every 7.5 - 9 minutes, but frequency increases to every 7 - 7.5 minutes. Raise operating speeds from 40 to 55 and headways further decrease to every 6.8 - 7.3 minutes.
 
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