General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

omaja said:
This is very, very apparent. The entitlement with respect to the T that is displayed by BU's student population is no doubt a product of how the administration treats the privilege of having such a service right through its campus.

As for the Comm Ave reconstruction, I wish the MBTA would man up and outright eliminate two or more stops between BU Central and Packard's Corner. So much redundancy that can be better served via BU's own shuttle system and/or the 57 bus. But alas, BU West, St. Paul, Pleasant and Babcock have "always" been there so, you know, they are so vital to the community and need to stay.

I'm still wondering why they didn't combine BU East and BU Central into one station back when they reconstructed the Kenmore-BU Bridge segment. The stations are a block apart for crying out loud.
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I always wonder why they don't just set a certain time period of the day where the train would not stop at certain stations along the path.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

KentXie said:
I can't speak for BU because I don't go there often enough but there are no "enormous" sidewalks along Huntington Ave with the exception of that one section where Marino and Speare Hall is located, unless enormous sidewalks constitute allowing 3 people walking side-by-side. You can make a case for Columbus Ave but there are already a bike path running through the sidewalk.
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I did have BU more in mind. Enormous in my definition also includes having enough room for outdoor seating, large planters and other obstructions unrelated to public mobility. example here: http://www.universalhub.com/2012/summertime-pedestrian-hazard-back-bay#comments
BU for its short-sighted lack of building set-backs in construction wants taxpayers to fund landscaping for them on public sidewalks, which they consider part of their campus.

As for bike racks cluttering sidewalks, they can replace curb extensions in the roadway as a device to keep parked cars from being too close to crosswalks and corners. They also give pedestrians some sense of protection with much less visibility blocking than cars providing protection. Best, they can be removed in winter for much easier snow plowing.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Mark02474 said:
The current system levies based on population. Do it by service instead. Each bus/subway stop gets charged for so there is an incentive to reduce them and thus the operational cost to the MBTA and the time cost to riders suffering slower journeys. If an institution or business wants a stop, they can pay for it (and name it), be it BU, a hospital, or other employer. Cambridge and Brookline get far more service than they pay for. Somerville wants its unfair share too with the GLX.
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Your suggestion is a regressive idea and will have unfortunate outcomes for neighborhoods which already get shafted in the public transit service game (e.g., Roxbury).
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

KentXie said:
I always wonder why they don't just set a certain time period of the day where the train would not stop at certain stations along the path.
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I have thought that as well, at least for an experiment to see how ridership reacts. But at the same time, if they can be eliminated at peak hours, they can probably be eliminated entirely to eliminate all of the fixed costs with maintenance, signage, etc. along with the scheduling headaches.

I have a feeling B Line ridership will be significantly more impacted by the fare increases than it would be by eliminating Allston, Babcock, St. Paul and BU East.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

I'd rather see commitments to upzoning the land around transit stations, which will return its benefit to the community and the city through increased tax revenue.

As for BU sidewalks, they fill to capacity every 60 to 90 minutes on a school day. The surge is really quite something to see.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

metasyntactic said:
Your suggestion is a regressive idea and will have unfortunate outcomes for neighborhoods which already get shafted in the public transit service game (e.g., Roxbury).
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Boston already pays the largest amount and Roxbury is part of Boston, so, no, Roxbury doesn't get hurt any more than Back Bay. The amounts are by city and town, so larger cities like Lynn and Chelsea could save money. Rich ones like Cambridge and Brookline would pay more if assessments were made by service instead of population.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

BU plans to contribute no money to the project. When a developer wants to build an office park, mall, or even a single large store, they pay for road upgrades. Not BU. I pointed this out at the hearing and some VP at BU got up in a huff and claimed BU chipped in for the Kemore Square part and does its part (MassDOT people were amused at my question and the outrage by BU for even asking why they don't pay for something for them). Later on, I found out that BU helped pay for the Kenmore Square project at the last minute because it wasn't going to happen otherwise - the taxpayer funds weren't enough to cover the project costs. BU owns Kenmore Square too, so, they should have had their checkbook open at the beginning anyway.
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I'm no BU apologist, but I think your info is off here. The first phase of Comm Ave improvements (the one beginning at Kenmore) was jointly funded by the City, State and BU. The City/State were making traffic and pedestrian improvements. BU (wisely) stepped up to the plate and said, "If we pitch in some cash can the project include some beautification as well."

BU was not proposing to build a new "office park or mall" so your comparison is weak. This was purely a roadway improvement project and BU kicked in some cash to increase the quality/quantity of plantings, sidewalk furniture, etc. This is exactly how it should have worked out.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

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How about a marketing scheme for "MBTA Green Line Rush+" a la the Washington Metro's enhanced rush hour service? Instead of adding more trains, though, we'd be streamlining stops by eliminating the least used or most redundant ones. The stops in red would be skipped during rush hours 6:30-9AM and 3:30-7PM.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

I spent an unfortunate summer having to stand a wait for, then pile in, then slog on the B line and contemplated a variety of solutions. I didn't do any actual analysis but maybe others have and I'd be interested to know various pros/cons.

Your map seems helpful, but seems kind of limited in it potential only skipping a couple stops.

Most stops on the green line are reasonable walking distance, even if you skip one. What if they had during rush hour lines B1 and B2. Both trains hit every other stop, but don't duplicate any stops- except maybe the most significant or remote (thinking of Harvard ave.). During rush hour most people are going on and riding it to at least Kenmore and beyond. These riders get half the time on the train and don't have walk any further to their stop. This method also prevents bunching that also happens if you had a more traditional 'express' train that made a handful of major stops, which still often gets stuck behind a local and becomes self-defeating.

The downside is long waits on the platform as a warm or cool train (depending on season) goes by. The basic calculation that would have to be figured out is a) would this time be saved by a quicker ride or potentially b) in which since every train on Comm. Ave gets to its end point quicker, do you have the effect of increased train frequency and cut down on both travel time and maintain (or ideally decrease wait time) without eliminating stops and service that people and businesses have come to rely on.

Any thoughts on this? Am I overlooking anything big?
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

choo said:
Most stops on the green line are reasonable walking distance, even if you skip one. What if they had during rush hour lines B1 and B2. Both trains hit every other stop, but don't duplicate any stops- except maybe the most significant or remote (thinking of Harvard ave.) ...

The downside is long waits on the platform as a warm or cool train (depending on season) goes by.

Any thoughts on this? Am I overlooking anything big?
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Signal priority would be much more effective without inconveniencing customers.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Omaja - nice concept, but without signal priority I don't see this having too much of an impact. Of all these stops, I think only Brandon Hall (maybe a couple others) isn't at an otherwise signalized intersection where GL trains are often stopped anyway.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

I think it would work if the Green Line data became available on NextBus.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

HenryAlan said:
I think it would work if the Green Line data became available on NextBus.
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Not everyone is yet leashed to the Internet or Smartphone. Inexpensive ($2-300 vs $10,000) information displays for use in public places have been demonstrated and really need to be deployed so nobody gets mad at the MBTA when an express flies by.

A little discretion granted to drivers with GPS data showing other drivers on their route (and # of available spaces) could help too. A full-ish bus bunched with nearly empty one behind could skip some stops to extend the gap instead of playing hopscotch. MBTA management prefers to treat drivers like dim children, unfortunately, though some prove them right.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Matthew said:
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skip-stop
Generally not liked because it increases effective headways, which counts towards overall trip time. See CTA history, for example.
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Bus skip stops work well, especially when buses can easily pass one another. Hence, another reason travel lanes on roads should not be reduced to make bicycle-only lanes. Mass Ave in Arlington is an example of where removing the second outbound lane is a stupid idea. There are many stops, long distances, and much bunching.

The Green Line is a perfect example of why elevated train lines were created. The trains are not delayed waiting for grade level crossing of vehicles and pedestrians. Using air space doubled utility.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Shepard said:
Omaja - nice concept, but without signal priority I don't see this having too much of an impact. Of all these stops, I think only Brandon Hall (maybe a couple others) isn't at an otherwise signalized intersection where GL trains are often stopped anyway.
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It isn't just about signalized intersections, though. Even if the train has to make a stop at the signal, the greater waste of time is having to make the stop to deboard/board passengers (which are a relatively small number during rush hour). Couple that with the fact that these stations are already well served by nearby stops and it seems like a no-brainer.

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As an aside, my commute tonight took 90 minutes... 25 of which included waiting for a B train to show up at Government Center. You would think they might have alerts playing in the station to notify us that they must have been looping every B train at Park Street. But of course, there was not. They couldn't even be bothered to have a message on Twitter or their website. To make matters worse, once a B rolled through, one of the side doors was not functioning. What an absolute joke.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

omaja said:
It isn't just about signalized intersections, though. Even if the train has to make a stop at the signal, the greater waste of time is having to make the stop to deboard/board passengers (which are a relatively small number during rush hour). Couple that with the fact that these stations are already well served by nearby stops and it seems like a no-brainer.

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As an aside, my commute tonight took 90 minutes... 25 of which included waiting for a B train to show up at Government Center. You would think they might have alerts playing in the station to notify us that they must have been looping every B train at Park Street. But of course, there was not. They couldn't even be bothered to have a message on Twitter or their website. To make matters worse, once a B rolled through, one of the side doors was not functioning. What an absolute joke.
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When they loop B's (or D's) at Park, they usually have the drivers of all the other lines announce to take this train one stop.

In other Gov't Center news, my train from Lechmere the other day got looped onto the 3rd track at Gov't Center to go back. It was my first time ever arriving on that track. Quite exciting.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Mark02474 said:
Bus skip stops work well, especially when buses can easily pass one another. Hence, another reason travel lanes on roads should not be reduced to make bicycle-only lanes. Mass Ave in Arlington is an example of where removing the second outbound lane is a stupid idea. There are many stops, long distances, and much bunching.
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You should check out Washington St. in Roslindale. There is a narrow, single lane section between Rozzy Square and Forest Hills, complete with bike lanes, and in spite of all that space denied to drivers, the buses still manage to pass each other. Of course, there would be more room for cars if the 10 bus lines following that route could be scaled back in favor of an Orange Line extension. But folks like you killed that idea when the funding was available.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Yeah, I often hear an announcement at Gov't Center over the PA, telling people to go to Park Street for the next "B" or "D".

I am starting to wonder if the increased trip times on the "B" line -- due to the new policy -- are causing them to miss trips, if they aren't increasing the number of vehicles in service.

I have seen bus drivers with full buses skip stops when they knew the previous bus caught up to them. Actually I saw it today on the 66 too, but we weren't really that full, but I knew there was another bunched behind us.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Right - I hear the announcements often as well. For whatever idiotic excuse (laziness, apathy, masochism...), there was never an announcement by the drivers or anything over the PA/electronic signs in the 25 minutes of waiting. So no one knew that all of the "Out of Service" and "Govt Center" trains arriving inbound were turning around as Ds.

Funny thing is that most of the time when I hear a driver announce to take any train to Park for B service, a B is the very next train that pulls up at Government Center. So if you're a poor soul that followed their announcement, you'll be standing all the way from Park to your destination; whereas if you had waited, you'd easily have a seat.

Among the laundry list of improvements that seem relatively easy to implement, I really wish they would use the electronic signs to list upcoming trains instead of useless information like the date/time or nonsense from the RMV.
 
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