General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

[Shepard]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

^ Really um... Ride these lines outbound between 5 and 6 pm and report back.

 

[mass88]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

^ Really um... Ride these lines outbound between 5 and 6 pm and report back.

Ugh. I am talking about in the morning rush hour time period. After Kenmore B and C line trains are pretty much empty.

 

[jass]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Ugh. I am talking about in the morning rush hour time period. After Kenmore B and C line trains are pretty much empty.

How do the cars teleport from kenmore to BC to make the very popular inbound trip?

 

[KentXie]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

That sounds more like an anomaly in service than anything. What station(s) have you experienced that at? That would point to a LOT more expressing of trains on the B line than there is. I average getting expressed once a week on 10-14 trips. The number of times I catch a B without having to wait through a parade of C, D and E trains at Government Center is also once a week at best.

There should be more B and D trains rolling through, but not at a ratio like you have described. If that were the case, 80 percent of B and D trains would be completely empty.

I've seen that pattern many time. Most of the time for me, it's B-B-D-C-D-B-E. The worse part of it is that often time the E pulls in as a single car and by then the train is full. I've been in cases at Boylston and Copley where I waited for over 20 minutes because whenever the E came in, it was a single car train. I forced my way on when the third and first E line train to have two cars rolled in.

 

[KentXie]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

I wish more E-trains got expressed Symphony to Brigham Circle (and Brigham Cir to Sym) more often. They only do it when things get really f'ed up, but stops like MFA and NEU are horrific during the rush with the tourists and students paying fares in pennies and dimes.

That happens often enough. During school, I run into around 2 trips going outbound a week (I normally don't leave campus) where they expressed from Symphony to Brigham, dropping off a car load of passengers off to serve maybe a quarter of car still left on the train. Occasionally the next train doesn't come for another 5-8 minutes. Going inbound is even worse as the train often expresses from Longwood to Symphony. It's the worse during the winter time since you have to wait outside in the elements.

 

[Shepard]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Mass88 - sorry for misunderstanding your point.

I have a feeling that I read a discussion on railroad.net about why it wouldn't be so easy for them to reassign trains at their downtown loop/terminus to make them fall into a more rational order - something about how doing so would make the number of trains per line at any given time unpredictable. If someone knows or can locate that conversation (I couldn't find it using the forum's search) please let us know...

Certainly something should be done to rationalize the order of trains through the central subway. Perhaps another logistical "fix" would simply be a display showing how long the wait for the next train of each line will be, or upcoming trains out to 10 minutes. Living in Washington Square I would happily take a D to Beaconsfield and walk if I knew there were a 10 or even 5 minute wait between the arriving D and the next C.

 

[whighlander]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Problem is the mix of the D with its entirely controlled by the T schedule due to the Subway-like limited access ROW and the other lines more or less involved with street traffic and pedestrians

Beyond Kenmore or Symphony even in the E/B protected right-of-way -- there is the issue of cross traffic and pedestrians and the occasional out-of-own idiot who gets confused and stuck in the intersection blocking the Green Line transiently.

Then once you lose the protected ROW -- you have to share the street -- multiplyig the idiot-factor

 

[omaja]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

I've seen that pattern many time. Most of the time for me, it's B-B-D-C-D-B-E. The worse part of it is that often time the E pulls in as a single car and by then the train is full. I've been in cases at Boylston and Copley where I waited for over 20 minutes because whenever the E came in, it was a single car train. I forced my way on when the third and first E line train to have two cars rolled in.

What I don't get is how I am usually seeing the complete opposite out of Government Center. Today it was E-C-D (3-car)-D-C-B (3-car) for me.

Regardless of what the pattern is, there should never be two identical letters back to back. Maybe I'm just failing to see how difficult it would be to, in today's case, reroute the second D train as either an E or B train, for example?

 

[mass88]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Mass88 - sorry for misunderstanding your point.

I have a feeling that I read a discussion on railroad.net about why it wouldn't be so easy for them to reassign trains at their downtown loop/terminus to make them fall into a more rational order - something about how doing so would make the number of trains per line at any given time unpredictable. If someone knows or can locate that conversation (I couldn't find it using the forum's search) please let us know...

Certainly something should be done to rationalize the order of trains through the central subway. Perhaps another logistical "fix" would simply be a display showing how long the wait for the next train of each line will be, or upcoming trains out to 10 minutes. Living in Washington Square I would happily take a D to Beaconsfield and walk if I knew there were a 10 or even 5 minute wait between the arriving D and the next C.

It was more of a musing. I figured the infrastructure was not in place for loop trains to run. It would certainly help in the morning and evening rush hours.

I am also a bitter C line rider who gets annoyed when you will have 3 and 4 B and D line trains come in before a C line train does.

 

[jass]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Everybody loves the silver line!

BRT wins!

Ridership for the first six months of this year on the two Silver Line bus routes that serve the waterfront from South Station is up by nearly 6 percent on weekdays, 14 percent on Sundays and a whopping 61 percent on Saturdays, according to the T’s latest figures. Officials credit jobs created by new companies, an increase in housing and a flood of restaurants in the past year that is attracting people on the weekends.

http://bostonherald.com/business/general/view.bg?articleid=1354356&position=0

 

[jass]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Dudley line was also popular.

Must be the people who followed the 10+ signs inside south station directing them to this stop.

I swear, there were more dudley signs that waterfront signs

 

[gooseberry]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

People who don't mind traveling at walking speed love the Silver Line (waterfront). Seriously I gave up trying to take it and just walk to South Station because it's faster.

 

[omaja]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

So wait... they're crediting the increase in jobs as the first reason for a spike in ridership on days when people aren't working? Talk about illogic.

 

[BostonUrbEx]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

So wait... they're crediting the increase in jobs as the first reason for a spike in ridership on days when people aren't working? Talk about illogic.

I was thinking the same thing. What are they smokin'?

 

[jass]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

So wait... they're crediting the increase in jobs as the first reason for a spike in ridership on days when people aren't working? Talk about illogic.

Well to be fair, the restaurants are pretty huge and must employ hundreds of people.

 

[datadyne007]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Also, more jobs = more money in their pocket for weekend leisure, which they use the T to get to (sports games, shopping, restaurants, etc).

 

[jass]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Has it been two years since the bus lanes were put in? Still very well respected. SL flew by

 

[erikyow]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

MBTA chief to become new transportation secretary

MBTA chief to become new transportation secretary

By Noah Bierman, Globe Staff

MBTA General Manager Richard Davey will step up to become the state’s new transportation secretary, a senior Patrick administration official said this morning.

Governor Deval Patrick will name Davey at 12:45 p.m. today as the replacement for Jeffrey Mullan, who is retiring to return to the private sector.

Davey will take the reins of the transportation agency on Sept. 1. His replacement at the MBTA will not be named today. Davey will take time to choose his own replacement, either on an interim or permanent basis.

Davey was named to the top post at the MBTA in March 2010. Previously, he had been general manager for a year and a half at the Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad, the company that operates and maintains the MBTA’s commuter rail service.

The MBTA was a target of criticism earlier this year when numerous commuter trains were delayed.

Davey acknowledged in March that the delays were more numerous than in the past and he understood riders’ frustration. He said that most were caused by the unusually tough winter and an aging fleet of locomotives. He said the T was moving to address the problems by upgrading its locomotive fleet.

Mullan said in mid-July that he was stepping down.

Mullan has been embroiled recently in a controversy over a 110-pound light fixture falling in a Big Dig tunnel in February and the delay in state officials notifying the public about it.

But two people close to the governor told the Globe that Mullan, who became secretary in October 2009, had asked for a raise in May because he was facing financial strain from his children’s school tuition.

Too bad. Davey was starting to shake things up a bit around the T. Hopefully he'll choose his successor wisely and will still have some indirect influence over T decisions in his new role.

 

[metasyntactic]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Maybe as Secretary of Transportation he can shake up MassDOT and make them not suck.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Maybe as Secretary of Transportation he can shake up MassDOT and make them not suck.

Think small victories first: maybe he can get his office fully unpacked within the average lifespan of an EOT chief's job tenure.