General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

DominusNovus said:
Sounds fun! Let me know if you guys ever want some sponsorship for an event, I work for a brewery.
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If your brewery is near transit and you are able to host a Beer & Transit (in some kind of tap room/event space), we'd love to consider it!
 
Per NETransit, Green Line Type 9 car 3900 was accepted for revenue service yesterday, though it hasn't yet made its inaugural run. If car 3901 gets accepted by end of business today, the pair will debut for revenue service TOMORROW the 21st.

Live tracking site here shows where any given car number is in-service in real time, so pull that up if you want to try and chase them around the system to grab a ride. 3900-01 have already been showing up on this tracker for over a week just on their test runs.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Per NETransit, Green Line Type 9 car 3900 was accepted for revenue service yesterday, though it hasn't yet made its inaugural run. If car 3901 gets accepted by end of business today, the pair will debut for revenue service TOMORROW the 21st.

Live tracking site here shows where any given car number is in-service in real time, so pull that up if you want to try and chase them around the system to grab a ride. 3900-01 have already been showing up on this tracker for over a week just on their test runs.
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This seems like a weird time to but going live with a new Green Line car. Maybe it's different in transportation but in the technology field we usually hold off pushes of new code or software until after Christmas and New Years because a lot of people take time off around this time.
 
Blackdog said:
This seems like a weird time to but going live with a new Green Line car. Maybe it's different in transportation but in the technology field we usually hold off pushes of new code or software until after Christmas and New Years because a lot of people take time off around this time.
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How could “a lot” of people take time off at the same time at a transit agency? Much like a hospital, they don’t.
 
fattony said:
How could “a lot” of people take time off at the same time at a transit agency? Much like a hospital, they don’t.
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Actually, at hospitals a lot of people do take time off at the same time.

They do it by not scheduling elective procedures, closing ambulatory clinics, and trying hard to discharge as many patients as possible in advance of the holidays to reduce census.
 
Joe Pesaturo has confirmed #3900 will be entering revenue service today at midday on the D-Line.
 
JeffDowntown said:
Actually, at hospitals a lot of people do take time off at the same time.

They do it by not scheduling elective procedures, closing ambulatory clinics, and trying hard to discharge as many patients as possible in advance of the holidays to reduce census.
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Yup, a better example might be airports, where its all hands on deck.
 
Type 9s have been reported in service hauling cargo
 
jass said:
Wow incredible, like upgrading from a 2002 civic to a 2008 civic! Screens and everything, gee whiz. At this rate, the type 10s might even have USB ports!
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Yeah. They (just 24 of them) were ordered ages ago just for the GLX (to run the proper service levels), so they were based on Type 8s (for the interest of time since the GLX was supposed to be opening much sooner) with some updated tech features like flip seats, screens, better braking, thicker wheels, etc. Type 8s always felt like mid-90s cars procured in the mid-00s and now Type 9s feel like mid-00s cars procured in the mid-10s. Always a decade behind.
 
datadyne007 said:
Yeah. They (just 24 of them) were ordered ages ago just for the GLX (to run the proper service levels), so they were based on Type 8s (for the interest of time since the GLX was supposed to be opening much sooner) with some updated tech features like flip seats, screens, better braking, thicker wheels, etc. Type 8s always felt like mid-90s cars procured in the mid-00s and now Type 9s feel like mid-00s cars procured in the mid-10s. Always a decade behind.
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I honestly have to wonder what people expect from their transit if they're pooh-poohing the looks and layout as dated. Does low-floor bus livery, which pretty much hit its functional apex a dozen years ago, also unleash a stream of verbal vomit because every subsequent order isn't packed with new Jetsons shit the critics, when pressed, can't ever seem to name??? C'mon...a transit vehicle has one primary purpose: get you from Point A to Point B accessibly and reliably. If these trolleys do just that no one is going to give a shit about aesthetics. And if they tap the 30-car escalator option in the order to front-load permanent rollout of 3-car trains with today's stock a half-decade ahead of the Type 10 order, there's immediate-gratification service enhancement in it too.

Yes, this order was placed before the GLT commission opted to study a dimensional change for Green Line trolleys...damn timelines! But the car design is heavily modified to fix everything Breda was too incompetent to fix about the high/low-floor hybrid. And it has new 2010's propulsion, MU trainlining, and computers establishing an elastic forward-compatibility standard to minimize electronic modding to the more off-shelf Type 10 model TBD. 20 full years have elapsed since the first Type 8 went into service. Quite a lot has changed under the hood, whether that consequential performance & reliability stuff meets one's own arbitary definition of transpo livery feng shui or not. :rolleyes:
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
I honestly have to wonder what people expect from their transit if they're pooh-poohing the looks and layout as dated. Does low-floor bus livery, which pretty much hit its functional apex a dozen years ago, also unleash a stream of verbal vomit because every subsequent order isn't packed with new Jetsons shit the critics, when pressed, can't ever seem to name??? C'mon...a transit vehicle has one primary purpose: get you from Point A to Point B accessibly and reliably. If these trolleys do just that no one is going to give a shit about aesthetics. And if they tap the 30-car escalator option in the order to front-load permanent rollout of 3-car trains with today's stock a half-decade ahead of the Type 10 order, there's immediate-gratification service enhancement in it too.

Yes, this order was placed before the GLT commission opted to study a dimensional change for Green Line trolleys...damn timelines! But the car design is heavily modified to fix everything Breda was too incompetent to fix about the high/low-floor hybrid. And it has new 2010's propulsion, MU trainlining, and computers establishing an elastic forward-compatibility standard to minimize electronic modding to the more off-shelf Type 10 model TBD. 20 full years have elapsed since the first Type 8 went into service. Quite a lot has changed under the hood, whether that consequential performance & reliability stuff meets one's own arbitary definition of transpo livery feng shui or not. :rolleyes:
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I agree with this, kinda glad you said it first. Its not like people are changing physically that much in a decade, so as long as the design is human-centric, its not like it matters if its super up to date.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Does low-floor bus livery, which pretty much hit its functional apex a dozen years ago, also unleash a stream of verbal vomit because every subsequent order
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Holy shit please tell me you don't actually believe this.

American buses are frozen in time, as you pointed out, with a model that showed up over a decade ago.

But theyre horribly inadequate compared to global best practices.

Lets start with low-floor for one. US buses, at best, are 60% low floor. Europe has had end-to-end low floor available for over two decades.

In fact, the companies that build US buses are so incompetent that none of them have figured out how to get a 3rd door on a 40 foot bus, or a 4th door on a 60 foot bus. DC had to important buses from Europe to get a 3rd door, and were only able to do so because they paid for the buses without a federal grant.

Again, that's a standard found around the world.

And that's not even getting into customer comfort!

Or, hell, safety. We've got serious issues with street design because US transit agencies demand 11-foot lanes so their buses can fit. Why is this? Because US buses have side mirrors that extend straight out, adding a foot to each side of the bus.

Rather than best practice designs which allow the mirrors to extend FORWARD, thus allowing buses to run on 9-foot lanes.

And don't get me started on the blind spots found on US buses. Instead of solving that through better design, US transit agencies stuck a speaker on their buses to tell pedestrians "caution bus is turning" because the drivers cant see shit.

"functional apex"

Jesus Christ. American exceptionalism.
 
jass said:
Holy shit please tell me you don't actually believe this.

American buses are frozen in time, as you pointed out, with a model that showed up over a decade ago.

But theyre horribly inadequate compared to global best practices.

Lets start with low-floor for one. US buses, at best, are 60% low floor. Europe has had end-to-end low floor available for over two decades.

In fact, the companies that build US buses are so incompetent that none of them have figured out how to get a 3rd door on a 40 foot bus, or a 4th door on a 60 foot bus. DC had to important buses from Europe to get a 3rd door, and were only able to do so because they paid for the buses without a federal grant.

Again, that's a standard found around the world.

And that's not even getting into customer comfort!

Or, hell, safety. We've got serious issues with street design because US transit agencies demand 11-foot lanes so their buses can fit. Why is this? Because US buses have side mirrors that extend straight out, adding a foot to each side of the bus.

Rather than best practice designs which allow the mirrors to extend FORWARD, thus allowing buses to run on 9-foot lanes.

And don't get me started on the blind spots found on US buses. Instead of solving that through better design, US transit agencies stuck a speaker on their buses to tell pedestrians "caution bus is turning" because the drivers cant see shit.

"functional apex"

Jesus Christ. American exceptionalism.
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Yes, thanks for exactly proving my point with the perfectly spittle-soaked strawman. The reason these dream Euro buses are not for sale in the U.S. is because most foreign models have not been offered up for sale compliant with the APTA Bus Transit System Standards for U.S. traffic safety. Your problem is regulatory, not technological. Instead of spewing the hottest of takez about stoopid transit systems that don't have a choice what regs to follow, try suggesting a solution where dream Euro bus reference model is matched to stateside regs with the fewest possible modifications. Or call your Congresscritter to lobby for a change to the regs. It worked on passenger trains with the reformed FRA safety standards just passed.
 
Question prompted by the RER thread: Why wasn’t the Red Line Kendall portal rebuilt or repaired during the Longfellow work? It looks rather weathered. I assume it’s somewhere on the MBTA’s capital program.
 
RandomWalk said:
Question prompted by the RER thread: Why wasn’t the Red Line Kendall portal rebuilt or repaired during the Longfellow work? It looks rather weathered. I assume it’s somewhere on the MBTA’s capital program.
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Out-of-scope for the Longfellow...but, yes, it needs urgent attention as the ornate stonework is rapidly disintegrating.
 
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