General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

PaulC said:
How about the status of the plans to convert the seaport silver line to a trolley.
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Dunno about that, Paul, but I did recently note a new spur to the Silver Line:

5867707432_562f445f68_o.jpg


I gotta check this out...
 
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Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

I saw that yesterday!
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

I'll mostly be drilling holes into them about the South Coast Rail Project, but I'll make sure to bring up the Silver Lie (both sections).

And I'll be asking why so much was pumped into these, and continues to be, when the Red Line AFAIK is still on the verge of destruction and we're running our Orange Line fleet straight into the ground.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Please, please ask them about the fact the Silver Line Waterfront has been crumbling to dust for YEARS and they won't even acknowledge the fact the pavement has literally gone from concrete to gravel in some sections, and is generally a terrible mess that is uncomfortable to ride over. (and in light of the Big Dig highway tunnel problems that have come to light recently, the fact that the pavement seems to be wet 24/7 is a bit alarming too)

I've never been able to get any kind of response on the issue from anyone at the T.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Arborway said:
Please, please ask them about the fact the Silver Line Waterfront has been crumbling to dust for YEARS and they won't even acknowledge the fact the pavement has literally gone from concrete to gravel in some sections, and is generally a terrible mess that is uncomfortable to ride over. (and in light of the Big Dig highway tunnel problems that have come to light recently, the fact that the pavement seems to be wet 24/7 is a bit alarming too)

I've never been able to get any kind of response on the issue from anyone at the T.
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The media doesn't seem to be picking up on it either. I'm not sure why there's all this fuss surrounding only the highway tunnels, there needs to be more awareness about it. It really is quite atrocious. The first time I road the Silver Line, I almost got sick from all the bumping around. It's only worse now with all the deterioration.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

I was unable to get a shot of it, but there was another sign on the red line that was badly faded and had hand written station names. The best was that they misspelled station i South Station. It was spelled South Staton.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Shepard said:
It's a good thing our forward-looking leadership did everything they could to keep Boston off of this list: http://www.fta.dot.gov/planning/planning_environment_12798.html
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That is a depressingly high number of cities still tilting at the BRT windmill. None worse than the New Britain-Hartford Busway salting a viable commuter rail corridor. That billion-dollar fraud makes Silver Line Phase III look like a model of fiscal sensibility. At least the odds of it actually being built are 2% because a couple of the towns en route (already served by the new New Haven-Hartford-Springfield commuter rail) have listed defeating the traffic pattern-destroying busway as their #1 municipal priority.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

How is it a city like Dallas has been able to secure so much federal funding for their rail expansion which is going to put it well ahead of other sprawling cities like Houston, Miami/Ft. Lauderdale, Charlotte and Phoenix.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

mass88 said:
How is it a city like Dallas has been able to secure so much federal funding for their rail expansion which is going to put it well ahead of other sprawling cities like Houston, Miami/Ft. Lauderdale, Charlotte and Phoenix.
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Dallas has been extremely well-organized and aggressive at pursuing system expansion and building its ridership. And doing so in the face of a lot of corruption when the system was being planned and constant threats from the transit-hostile Legislature to cripple its funding. DART became the largest LRT system in the country in route mileage 6 months ago when its latest extension opened, and after only 15 years of operation is already 7th in the country in LRT system ridership with 70,000 riders per day. The T is the largest LRT system with 215,000 riders per day, almost a third larger than #2 San Fran. So going from zero to one-third of the Green Line's riders in 15 years flat in the middle of Texas sprawl and Texas politics is pretty damn impressive. For fed funding it's a matter of rewarding them for really dogged effort. This latest 14-mile extension to DFW Airport got planned later than our Green Line extension and is probably gonna open earlier despite umpteen attempts by the Legislature to kill it.

You can get anything done if you want it bad enough, are willing to fight tooth and nail for it, and are organized enough to slice through all the filth and politics with eyes on the prize.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Interesting news from today's Metro:

MBTA: Ridership in May was highest ever
STEVE ANNEAR
Despite gas prices leveling off and college students returning home for summer, May was the busiest month ever for the MBTA, and the busiest month for bus services in almost a decade.

Lydia Rivera, spokesperson for the T, said the last two months of daily ridership on the MBTA surpassed 1.3 million people.

Rivera said the use of real-time apps and other newly implemented programs may have played a role in the heavy ridership.

System-wide average weekday ridership for May increased by nearly 5 percent since last year, she said.
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Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Stupid question: Since the T operates in the red do they lose more money with every new rider?

The only positive would be the T being able to go to the Legislature with these figures and saying, "See! They like us, they really, really like us!"
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

statler said:
Stupid question: Since the T operates in the red do they lose more money with every new rider?
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They don't really run any extra trains or anything so basically they only stand to gain money.

I have to wonder if the parade day skewed the month's average though.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

BostonUrbEx said:
They don't really run any extra trains or anything so basically they only stand to gain money.

I have to wonder if the parade day skewed the month's average though.
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? The Bruins parade was in June, not May.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Although it's possible that the influx of Hockey fans coming from around Canada and the US into the city did skew the numbers during the playoff.

Celtics were playing for the first 2 weeks of May as well.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

KentXie said:
Although it's possible that the influx of Hockey fans coming from around Canada and the US into the city did skew the numbers during the playoff.

Celtics were playing for the first 2 weeks of May as well.
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Yea, Hurricane O'Reilly's was their hangout and base while in town........
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

datadyne007 said:
Interesting news from today's Metro:

MBTA: Ridership in May was highest ever
STEVE ANNEAR
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Might be because the real-time tracking and app usage is giving them an accurate picture of live ridership for the first time ever. Entirely possible the counts have been naturally deflated a little all this time because the manual-count snapshots just don't cover every imaginable detail. And not like fare evasion or anything like that...there's almost certainly little obscurities even turnstyle counts wouldn't match 1:1.

It's a good thing, though...more ridership means more funding. They're not supposed to be turning a profit with increased ridership. The goal is to justify investment and to financially get the revenue curve tracking better with the expense curve. In theory...with most systems...at least. Mass. has a lot of de-@#$%ing up to do with its dysfunctional transportation to get those curves behaving anything close to normally.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

statler said:
Stupid question: Since the T operates in the red do they lose more money with every new rider?
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At first?
No.
Later? Yes.


Heres why:

The system runs exactly the same every weekday. If there is a cholera outbreak and nobody rides, or if everyone randomly chooses to ride, service level is the same.

Same amount of staff, same amount of gas, same amount of electricity etc.

So each additional rider is $1.70 in pure "profit". Theres no additional cost to the MBTA.

So as ridership goes up, losses per person goes down.


What happens is eventually ridership reaches a certain point where additional service is needed. So as soon as an additional bus or train is dispatched, costs jump. So yes, that "last" person cost a whole lot of money.


Example:
MBTA system has...

Fare: $1
Cost per bus to operate: $80

100 riders. They fit on 3 buses (capacity 120)
So you make $100 revenue, you spend $240.
MBTA loses $140

20 people decide to start riding.

120 riders. They fit on 3 buses (capacity 120)
Now you make $120 in revenue, and still spend $240
MBTA loses $120

Now 5 more people decide to ride.
125 riders. Now you need 4 buses (capacity goes to 160)
$125 in revenue, but now you spend $320
MBTA loses $195.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Thanks Jass. That's kind of how I had it figured in my head.

There may be some other small incidental costs with perhaps extra customer service requests, security issues, extra time spent cleaning stations & vehicles, etc...
 
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