General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

tysmith95 said:
They should have championship parades on the weekend, not on a Tuesday when people are trying to get to work.
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Also, weekend doesn't automatically solve things:
IIRC, the 2011 Bruins parade was on the weekend, and an overwhelming number of people attended due to them being much more available than during the week (and more able/willing to be totally inebriated), resulting in the city getting completely trashed along the parade route.

Maybe that's still less disruptive for businesses, but it incurs substantial other costs.
 
odurandina said:
Commuter Rail INCREDIBLE JOB today!!

Green Line.... well... it happens!
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We've now had 12 parades since 2001 around here. All but one of them have been on a weekday.

Regular (daily) commuters have chosen to do one of the following:

1) Knowing that trains rapidly reach capacity, they take a much earlier train than they normally would to ensure they get to work on time. My wife chose this route, taking a 6:30 train instead of her normal 7:20.

2) Possibly in conjunction with #1, go to a stop farther out on a line to ensure they get on a train before it gets full.

3) Work from home or delay their trip into the city.

4) Make zero changes to their commute, only to stand and wonder why they can't get to work on time.


The T is far from perfect. But they added trains where they could. They are being somewhat proactive with queues at North Station. They are doing something to try to help things out. The system has physical limits. We're seeing that today.

But at the same time, there is some onus on commuters, especially daily ones, to be a bit more proactive on days like these.
 
North Shore said:
Because the effects on the evening commute would actually be worse.
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Evening commute is always more spread out than the morning commute. Its easier to stay late at work or catch a dinner than wake up at the ass crack of dawn.

But look, the current parade hours are 11am to 2pm.

So you have your parade tourists rolling into town from 8am-10am (aka morning rush) and leaving from 2pm to 5pm (aka start of evening rush)

If you the parade start at 4pm and end at 7pm you have you suburbanites pouring into the city from 12-4 (no issue) and leaving from 7-10pm (no issue)
 
Have to think policing/security is much easier in the daylight.

North Shore said:
We've now had 12 parades since 2001 around here. All but one of them have been on a weekday.
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IIRC the Red Sox 2004 parade was not on a weekday. So if the Bruins parade was on a weekend that would be two.
 
jklo said:
IIRC the Red Sox 2004 parade was not on a weekday. So if the Bruins parade was on a weekend that would be two.
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The Sox parade in 2013 was also on a weekend.

Pats parades are always on weekdays because the playoffs always end on (Superbowl) Sunday. Outside of the Pats, Boston's recent championship parades have been 50:50 weekday versus weekend (Sox '04, Bruins, and Sox '13 on weekends; Sox '07, Celts, and Sox '18 on weekdays).
 
On the news tonight they said the city is going to do the red-blue connector but it could take up until 2040.... wtf.
 
tysmith95 said:
They should have championship parades on the weekend, not on a Tuesday when people are trying to get to work.
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That's what Aloisi was saying all across media yesterday. He said the T was very up-front with the City about what their max possible throughput was in a special event, and these crowds were so record for a parade that it simply outstripped all capacity to a degree of danger that couldn't ever be mitigated. He put blame on the event planners for not heeding the facts/warnings and bleating "Take the T! Take the T!" without thought to the spelled-out doomsday they were given ever becoming real.


I know there are logistics issues and all with the City and Pats re: availability, but they knew a record crowd was coming due to the weather and that should've trumped the "...but we've done this before without problems" complacency. No one's excusing the T for having a half-decade car shortage on commuter rail, but long-term issues are long-term. When you KNOW right up front that it's a numbers game, and that the projected numbers are tripping alarms...you don't discount the alarming hard numbers to 'experience' or whatever crowd-control planners were doing yesterday instead of looking at 1.5 million = 1.5 million = 1.5 million flooding the city from all corners.
 
They could always do what SEPTA did for the pope.

"Um we cant handle crowds so we're actually going to shut down service instead of increase service, thanks bye"

Regular Septa:
nrg-regional-rail-rail-transit-line-map-700x700.jpg


Special events please dont use us we cant run trains SEPTA

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The stops indicated are the only ones trains stopped at.
 
^ That could be a very good idea if they re-invested the station dwell thereby saved into faster operations (more turns per hour)

The T could have focused on only stations with the highest capacity, like all-door boarding or slack parking.
 
Arlington said:
^ That could be a very good idea if they re-invested the station dwell thereby saved into faster operations (more turns per hour)

The T could have focused on only stations with the highest capacity, like all-door boarding or slack parking.
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But therein lies the rub. . .

The T could do a lot of things, but someone on the event logistics side has to be an equal partner in that planning because the T doesn't have the authority to act alone on someone else's behalf. And City of Boston didn't do that here. Didn't even advise on the matter. They pretty much just said "do what you did for the other 10 title parades" even though the crowd predictions were running close to a half-mil HIGHER because of the weather...then continued to blitz the airwaves with "Take the T!" advisories aimed at drivers. The T ran all the service it could with the equipment it had, and ended up melting down in exactly the proportion the crowd was an above-and-beyond blowout.

How exactly are they, as a 175-municipality chartered service district of the Commonwealth, supposed to act alone to fill all gaps that event planners in the City of Boston and/or state government would not do? Remember...we had our "Pope vs. SEPTA" moment during the 2004 Democratic Convention where all parties joined hands and immaculately planned for the service disruptions. And we have the annual statewide holiday status of Patriots Day smoothing over jurisdictions between the towns affected by road/transit closures on the Marathon route. Whether individual offices in downtown Boston were closed or not yesterday because of compromised access, it was still a regular Tuesday workday for the extreme majority of the T district. If the extremeness of the crowd AND the needs of daily commuters couldn't be accommodated by achievable train service, then the event planners should've had something to say about blunting that risk instead of just letting the entirety of the CR system drown a gruesome death.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
But therein lies the rub. . .

The T could do a lot of things, but someone on the event logistics side has to be an equal partner in that planning because the T doesn't have the authority to act alone on someone else's behalf. And City of Boston didn't do that here. Didn't even advise on the matter. They pretty much just said "do what you did for the other 10 title parades" even though the crowd predictions were running close to a half-mil HIGHER because of the weather...then continued to blitz the airwaves with "Take the T!" advisories aimed at drivers. The T ran all the service it could with the equipment it had, and ended up melting down in exactly the proportion the crowd was an above-and-beyond blowout.

How exactly are they, as a 175-municipality chartered service district of the Commonwealth, supposed to act alone to fill all gaps that event planners in the City of Boston and/or state government would not do? Remember...we had our "Pope vs. SEPTA" moment during the 2004 Democratic Convention where all parties joined hands and immaculately planned for the service disruptions. And we have the annual statewide holiday status of Patriots Day smoothing over jurisdictions between the towns affected by road/transit closures on the Marathon route. Whether individual offices in downtown Boston were closed or not yesterday because of compromised access, it was still a regular Tuesday workday for the extreme majority of the T district. If the extremeness of the crowd AND the needs of daily commuters couldn't be accommodated by achievable train service, then the event planners should've had something to say about blunting that risk instead of just letting the entirety of the CR system drown a gruesome death.
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This. All of this.

People love to sh*t all over the T for what happened yesterday. They used all available rolling stock, added extra trains and set up queues at North Station.

Could they have done more? No question.

South Station was a total cluster. Daily commuters were majorly impacted.

There should have been additional staffers at stations to help with crowd management for starters.

But where were the media blasts Sunday night and Monday advising people that trains would be probably be crowded and to make alternate plans (WFH, flex scheduling) if possible. They do that in advance of major snowstorms, why not here?
 
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I have no criticisms for how the T/Keolis handled yesterday.

It took a few consecutive blizzards for us to create standard, templated plans for winter weather operations. Now we have such plans, and can turn them on and off based on the weather, right?

Presumably if a Philadelphia team ever has a huge championship celebration downtown, SEPTA may reach into its "Pope file" and rerun that plan.

Also if CR does have things it does when it is crushed with people (such as running a whole series of Lowell trains Express to downtown)... If that worked out well, it should be part of any plan. If that turned out to be a bad strategy it should not be part of any plan.

All I am suggesting is that there should be a "super crush" plan--probably coming from the Governor's Office-- and all I am asking is whether SEPTA's limited stop strategy might be applicable here? (Particularly given that up thread the first social media observation was that three trains in a row went through Anderson without stopping)
 
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Arlington said:
All I am suggesting is that there should be a "super crush" plan--probably coming from the Governor's Office-- and all I am asking is whether SEPTA's limited stop strategy might be applicable here? (Particularly given that up thread the first social media observation was that three trains in a row went through Anderson without stopping)
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Essentially, the Pope plan was that a shit ton of suburban people would drive to the stations with the most parking, pack the train, and thus there was no point stopping on the way as no one could get on.

Which is exactly what happened with the Pats parade, so yes, it makes sense to copy that. Pre-planning the express runs avoided people being left behind on platforms and also allowing trains to finish their runs faster and thus go out for another round.

HOWEVER, the Pope plan completely screws over regular transit riders who do not have the luxury of driving to a park and ride because they walk or take the bus to their local station. In that regards, it is incredibly unfair because advance notice does not solve the "I dont have a car" issue.


My solution: Theyre called the New England Patriots, not the Boston Patriots. Hold their parade in Worcester or Providence.
 
There is absolutely no way Worcester or Providence could host such a parade. Part of being the only big city in New England means Boston gets all of the only in big city events.
 
jass said:
Essentially, the Pope plan was that a shit ton of suburban people would drive to the stations with the most parking, pack the train, and thus there was no point stopping on the way as no one could get on.

Which is exactly what happened with the Pats parade, so yes, it makes sense to copy that. Pre-planning the express runs avoided people being left behind on platforms and also allowing trains to finish their runs faster and thus go out for another round.

HOWEVER, the Pope plan completely screws over regular transit riders who do not have the luxury of driving to a park and ride because they walk or take the bus to their local station. In that regards, it is incredibly unfair because advance notice does not solve the "I dont have a car" issue.
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It seems that the really simple solution to that would be to make ever other (or every third) run an express run.

Since the T put on extra runs they should have made those runs express. Not sure why they didn't do that.
 
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