General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

[HenryAlan]

One Billion Dollars gets you 21 miles of double catenary? Reasonable? On what world?

That's not what I meant by reasonable, sorry. I used it to mean that the estimate probably is in the right ball park for what it would in fact cost.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

That's not what I meant by reasonable, sorry. I used it to mean that the estimate probably is in the right ball park for what it would in fact cost.

At MBTA track-mile scaling applied to the 1996-99 New Haven-Boston electrification, $30B is THIRTEEN times more. Are you really arguing that we have 13x construction inflation in 26 years for utterly generic railway electrical engineering? 3x, 5x...yeah, I could easily accept that. 7x at can't-manage-a-project-to-save-our-lives and here-Caltrain-hold-my-beer total boondoggle defeatist terms...yeah, I could even believe that. But 13x???

Sorry...that's off-the-wall enough to need explanation. And they're not explaining it. They're just shoving a nice round scare number in our faces that no math on earth can seemingly square and running with it sans fact check. Hazard a guess, please, as to how that can possibly be "in the right ball park." I would love to hear the step-by-step logic behind that.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

If I understand correctly, the reduced bus service is due to a group of factors:

1. fewer operators (getting close to being resolved)
2. fewer busses
3. bus maintenance facilities under construction, which maybe is causing #2?

#3 is a very long-term project IIUC. Arborway is only at 15% design, and there are 9 total existing facilities. Does this mean they cannot increase capacity until all maintenance yards are complete ~2040?

A lack of busses feeding stations such as Alewife, Harvard, and elsewhere might contribute to lower subway ridership as well.

It's the operators, not the bus supply. The T has bought so many new buses that they had a legit glut going into the last batch of retirements. To the point where they now maintain a 28-bus "winter contingency" fleet of surplus straight-diesels on-standby at Southampton at all times, but rarely used in actual service. Their current roster is not utilized to full capability because of the operator shortage and the slow climb out of the COVID service cuts.

The bus facilities capacity has been static for almost 2 decades. If anything, it's more elastic than it's ever been because they've scrapped virtually all of their retired buses instead of long-term mothballing them in various yards for years on end. Full BNRD implementation is contingent on the new/expanded facilities being able to redistribute bodies more strategically around the system, but a climb-back to pre-COVID service levels is well within the capacity of the existing facilities because...well...these are the same exact facilities that ran the pre-COVID service levels (only with fewer dead/retired buses being squirreled away like acorns and taking up space).

 

[themissinglink]

MBTA Board Updates: The T's Budget Is 'Stable' But Standing On Shaky Ground - Streetsblog Massachusetts

The T's budget team predicts a deficit of $155 million in 2026 that would grow to nearly half a billion dollars by 2028 – and that's after accounting for a $500 million annual increase in state funding from the Governor's proposed budget.

mass.streetsblog.org

At its monthly board meeting on Tuesday, the MBTA revealed that its budget deficit for 2026 would be larger than previously estimated, but assured riders that they could fill the gap without service cuts by drawing from its reserve funds.