General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

[ceo]

Quoting with permission a friend's Facebook post about her 4-year-old:

In case you are wondering what it's like to raise kids in Boston, Clark built this North Station out of blocks and then 4 train tracks connecting to it. He said they were all commuter rail tracks, but tracks 1, 2, and 4 are closed for construction so you can only get on at track 3. He also said that all but one of the commuter rail cars is closed and you have to walk all the way to the end to get into the open one. When asked why, he said "nobody knows". When I asked which of the two Dunkies in North station the people are going to go to he said "MOM, they already HAD breakfast at the dunkies near their HOUSES."

 

[Koopzilla24]

Buses can probably deal with the 8in platform, but I can't see them being able to handle 14in without mods? I know Seattle had buses using its downtown transit tunnel until relatively recently, but I think those buses needed substantial mods rendering them unable to flex to other routes? Plus, I feel like bus docking would be an issue with curbs that high.

I’m not sure what Seattle’s deal was but New Flyer’s bus step height is 14”. Central Square’s (Cambridge) southbound bus stop has a bit of sunken asphalt in the back half that drops the road against the curb making it too high for the front overhang to pass over (don’t ask why I can confirm the overhang does not pass over) but when doors are open it lines up perfectly with the sidewalk level so I’d imagine that curb is ~14” there. If it is too high, the same way that the buses can kneel they can actually raise but annoyingly it’s a toss up of which buses will actually do it. Not sure if that’s a software thing or what

 

[bigeman312]

MBTA winter 2024 subway schedule changes ...

• Orange Line will now run extra trains during rush hours only. Midday, evening, and weekend service are unchanged.

...

Orange Line trains at seven minute peak headways is such great news.

To put it in perspective:

• This will be the first regularly scheduled headways <8 minutes since June, 2022, when there were still old 01200s running on the line.
• Ridership is bouncing back in a big way, so the demand is there for this increase:
  • For a long time, 6/16/22 (Game 6 of the 2022 NBA Finals, which was at TD Garden) was the only 90,000+ ridership day on the Orange Line since pre-COVID.
  • That mark was finally topped again this fall. Seven times in October, as well as three in November through 11/24.

 

[Delvin4519]

Orange Line trains at seven minute peak headways is such great news.

To put it in perspective:

• This will be the first regularly scheduled headways <8 minutes since June, 2022, when there were still old 01200s running on the line.
• Ridership is bouncing back in a big way, so the demand is there for this increase:
  • For a long time, 6/16/22 (Game 6 of the 2022 NBA Finals, which was at TD Garden) was the only 90,000+ ridership day on the Orange Line since pre-COVID.
  • That mark was finally topped again this fall. Seven times in October, as well as three in November through 11/24.

I would first caution that 7 - 8 minute headway is probably more like an average headway of 7 min 45 secs - 7 min 55 secs between trains.

7 - 8 minute headways (8 tph) requires 14 trainsets. The current fall schedule calls for only 12 trainsets, so going from 12 to 14 trainsets is a huge change. It is possible to achieve 7.5 - 8 minute headways with 13 trainsets, but that requires all slow zones to be fixed. Currently, Orange Line headways are 1 minute and 30 seconds longer in between trains due to the slow zones. (Since April, this difference is down to 47 - 55 seconds, but schedule runtimes weren't updated this fall).

Without slow zones, 14 trainsets grants a headway of 7 minutes and 17 seconds during peak hours (due to dwell times), if there were 14 trainsets on the Orange Line on Sunday, a train would arrive every 6 minutes and 17 seconds (without slow zones).

 

[Delvin4519]

MBTA vacancies update for buses, now down to 225.

However, none of the benefits are translating into more bus service yet. Since there's an 8-12 week lag time for new hires, plus 3 - 4 months of training, any increases lags by 7 months. This winter will therefore run the least scheduled bus service in the past 12 months.

This winter 2024, the MBTA has enough to run about 84% of pre COVID service.
By April 2024, the MBTA will be able to increase to 88% of pre-COVID service for spring 2024, undoing 1/4 of the service cuts. This will allow to the MBTA to revert to the spring 2023 bus schedule prior to the Summer 2023 service cuts.
By July 2024 the MBTA will be able to run close to 92% of pre-COVID service for summer 2024. This should undo 50% of the service cuts faced currently, (approx spring 2022 or summer 2022 bus schedules).
Numbers for fall 2024 (September 2024), we should have hard data by February 2024.

Date	Count	Vacant	Change	% of pre-COVID max	Max count
5/2/2023	1,622	201	N/A	88.97%	1,823
6/29/2023	1,611	212	-11	88.37%	1,823
7/26/2023	1,548	368 (275 pre COVID)	-63 (-93)	84.91% (80.79% BNRD)	1,916
8/30/2023	1,559	357 (264 pre COVID)	+11	85.51% (81.36% BNRD)	1,916
10/4/2023	1,621	295 (202 pre COVID)	+62	88.91% (84.60% BNRD)	1,916
10/23/2023	1,693	223 (130 pre COVID)	+72	92.86% (88.36% BNRD)	1,916
11/28/2023	1,691	225 (132 pre COVID)	-2	92.75% (88.25% BNRD)	1,916

 

[Jahvon09]

The MBTA has removed 12 speed restrictions on the Green Line so far.

MSN

 

[Jahvon09]

Honestly, I just can't see for the life of me, why the D Line is down again for freaking track work after the MBTA said that everything was done there!!!! This crap seems like the 1,000th time that line has been shut down for so-called track work!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Stlin]

Honestly, there's other interesting things in that slide deck. For one, they've got a new Trainee-in-waiting / "System Navigator" role which will reduce the lag between offer and employment pending training class date - it looks like it's set up such that you'd spend 4-6 weeks of 40hr pay for basically doing Red Coat / transit ambassador work before your class dates, so you don't spend as much time waiting about unpaid for it. That 8-12 week lag being seen by the January class is a long time to working folks - imagine having an offer in hand Nov 28 with a report date of Jan 22. That said, 4-6 weeks can still be a long time, but should hopefully reduce people taking other jobs and therefore the incidence rate of hired-but-did-not-start (that alone is the 2nd biggest line under separations).

They also distributed *118* conditional offers for Track Laborers back in October - with a class size of 20 I'd expect to see decent attrition on that one due to the aforementioned hiring lag problem but it's a great sign that the T is taking seriously the need to maintain the system and more importantly have the folks in house to do it. Certainly they make the point that it's the pool from which all the more technical MOW folks are drawn from.

Another is their new "Rail Vehicle Maintenance Technician Trainee Program" which basically looks like a year long apprenticeship program to get people up to speed on fixing trains. That's great news generally because that's high-value high-return training, customized to the T's needs. It's not exactly training you can get off the shelf, meaning if folks stay within the MBTA system that's amazing.

Both of those stand to reduce the dependency the T currently has on 3rd party contractors to do a lot of work, and I'm hopeful that they're successful in rebuilding in-house capacity.

 

[Delvin4519]

Honestly, there's other interesting things in that slide deck. For one, they've got a new Trainee-in-waiting / "System Navigator" role which will reduce the lag between offer and employment pending training class date - it looks like it's set up such that you'd spend 4-6 weeks of 40hr pay for basically doing Red Coat / transit ambassador work before your class dates, so you don't spend as much time waiting about unpaid for it. That 8-12 week lag being seen by the January class is a long time to working folks - imagine having an offer in hand Nov 28 with a report date of Jan 22. That said, 4-6 weeks can still be a long time, but should hopefully reduce people taking other jobs and therefore the incidence rate of hired-but-did-not-start (that alone is the 2nd biggest line under separations).

They also distributed *118* conditional offers for Track Laborers back in October - with a class size of 20 I'd expect to see decent attrition on that one due to the aforementioned hiring lag problem but it's a great sign that the T is taking seriously the need to maintain the system and more importantly have the folks in house to do it. Certainly they make the point that it's the pool from which all the more technical MOW folks are drawn from.

Another is their new "Rail Vehicle Maintenance Technician Trainee Program" which basically looks like a year long apprenticeship program to get people up to speed on fixing trains. That's great news generally because that's high-value high-return training, customized to the T's needs. It's not exactly training you can get off the shelf, meaning if folks stay within the MBTA system that's amazing.

Both of those stand to reduce the dependency the T currently has on 3rd party contractors to do a lot of work, and I'm hopeful that they're successful in rebuilding in-house capacity.

November 28, 2023 to January 22, 2024 is a very, very long time. Plus the 4 month training time and that's how we end up with a 6.5 to 7 month lag time in total for increasing the headcount. Given all this, and the T is only at 92% of pre-COVID staffing for buses, the soonest the MBTA could potentially return to 100% of the pre-pandemic bus service is looking to be around Labor Day Fall 2024.

Bus riders are going to have to put up with the reduced schedules and long headways for a very, very, very long period of time. The winter 2024 bus schedule will be in place for almost 4 months, until April 6th, 2024, before the 1st round of service increases even begins. COVID hit March 2020 with the first round of schedule reductions, followed by bus operator attrition at the start of 2021. So this is looking to be almost 5 years of reduced service.

 

[bigeman312]

So far, there have not been improvements overall as a result of the recent Green Line closures, according to transitmatters’ data. Does anyone know why?

It’s super early, so this post is not meant to be a complaint or an act of despair. Just curiosity, given that the Ashmont Branch closures saw improvements right away day 1.

 

[Delvin4519]

So far, there have not been improvements overall as a result of the recent Green Line closures, according to transitmatters’ data. Does anyone know why?

It’s super early, so this post is not meant to be a complaint or an act of despair. Just curiosity, given that the Ashmont Branch closures saw improvements right away day 1.

Probably lots of disabled streetcars inside the tunnel. There's been a dozen of them since Wednesday.

Also the Green Line have manual speed limit signs. If they forget to take them down and replace them with new speed signs, then they need to do them. Plus, there's also the possibility some of the GL slow zones have been there for years and years like the orange line curve near back bay, so some of the GL operators might be used to slower speeds.

Or there is too much traffic inside the central subway tunnel.

If the time savings are 1.5 minutes on the E branch, 30 seconds on the B, and 2 minutes in the central tunnel, then any of the disabled streetcars will easily wipe out the time savings from the charts.

Both images are different dates (Wed/Thurs 12/6, 12/7).

IMO I'd wait until all the tunnel repairs are done by late March 2024 before comparing to pre-repair times pre November 2023. There's still dozens and dozens of slow zones to fix next January and March, and only 10 or so were fixed in the first round.

 

[TheRatmeister]

So far, there have not been improvements overall as a result of the recent Green Line closures, according to transitmatters’ data. Does anyone know why?

It’s super early, so this post is not meant to be a complaint or an act of despair. Just curiosity, given that the Ashmont Branch closures saw improvements right away day 1.

I'd suspect that since GL travel times are so variable you'd need weeks of data to actually be able to tell a difference.

 

[bigeman312]

Thank you for the thoughtful responses, but they don’t quite address my inquiry, with the exception of this:

Also the Green Line have manual speed limit signs. If they forget to take them down and replace them with new speed signs, then they need to do them. Plus, there's also the possibility some of the GL slow zones have been there for years and years like the orange line curve near back bay, so some of the GL operators might be used to slower speeds.

I’ll ask it more specifically.

The minimum and 10th percentile travel times over the span that was closed were faster in the overwhelming majority of the days leading up to the shutdown than in both of the days post-shutdown, so far. Basically, there hasn’t been a faster trip that has occurred on the Green Line post-shutdown than what was seen pre-shutdown.

This would not be expected to occur if slow zones were removed, even if there were many disabled trains. This would also not require a plethora of data to see, but rather just a single data point.

Again, it’s too early to draw conclusions as they might still be doing post-shutdown punchlist items overnight or there might be some things at play that @Delvin4519 pointed out (operator behavior, signage to be changed, etc.) Just wondering if anyone has insight beyond unsubstantiated speculation as to why there hasn’t been a speed increase yet.

 

[stefal]

... Unless my ears have just fooled me, the Boylston screech seems to be gone... (For now...)

 

[Stlin]

I'm just going to reattach this slide from the November subcommittee meeting. This closure, not including the lechmere viaduct, was supposed to eliminate 4.3 minutes of slow zones, per the T's own documentation. That is an amount of time that should be visible, even with the green line's data fuzziness.

So while I can only speculate on why we haven't seen actual speed increases yet on the E, I've also pulled the full list of Slow zones removed per the T's own tracker and NBC10 reporting. Evidently, lots of their slow zones overlap to one degree or another, so removed slow zones are in green, while orange are slow zones that still remain within the slow zones removed, not including Boylston Station itself.

 

[Delvin4519]

I'm just going to reattach this slide from the November subcommittee meeting. This closure, not including the lechmere viaduct, was supposed to eliminate 4.3 minutes of slow zones, per the T's own documentation. That is an amount of time that should be visible, even with the green line's data fuzziness.

So while I can only speculate on why we haven't seen actual speed increases yet on the E, I've also pulled the full list of Slow zones removed per the T's own tracker and NBC10 reporting. Evidently, lots of their slow zones overlap to one degree or another, so removed slow zones are in green, while orange are slow zones that still remain within the slow zones removed, not including Boylston Station itself.

View attachment 45439

I've looked into the segment between Brigham Circle to Boylston, as those where all the slow zone removals occurred, except for 1 on the B branch, but I couldn't find any time savings.

If the B branch was 0.3 minutes, that should've meant 2 minutes per direction between Brigham Circle and Boylston, but I don't see any. Red lines indicate expected gains if the T was to be believed.

 

[thepianoperson]

There seems to have been some big improvement after 6ish today? Same in the other direction but a bit less drastic of a drop - guess we’ll just have to see what tomorrow looks like.

 

[Delvin4519]

View attachment 45442
There seems to have been some big improvement after 6ish today? Same in the other direction but a bit less drastic of a drop - guess we’ll just have to see what tomorrow looks like.

Trips are often faster after the evening rush hour ends. It is best to analyze day to day data.

Below is November 16th, the same day 3 weeks before the shutdown and before the holiday weekend.

Trips took 16 - 20 minutes between 8PM and 10PM on 12/7. On 11/16 pre-shutdown, trips between 8PM and 10PM... seem to have took 16 - 20 minutes as well.

 

[HenryAlan]

... Unless my ears have just fooled me, the Boylston screech seems to be gone... (For now...)

Interesting. The MBTA put out a video recently on social media explaining that the Type-10s would eliminate the screech due to some special lubricating system. That makes me think they don't have any plans for addressing it prior to Type-10 rollout. If they did something more recently that addressed the sound, I'm surprised they didn't crow about that, too.

 

[stefal]

Interesting. The MBTA put out a video recently on social media explaining that the Type-10s would eliminate the screech due to some special lubricating system. That makes me think they don't have any plans for addressing it prior to Type-10 rollout. If they did something more recently that addressed the sound, I'm surprised they didn't crow about that, too.

A friend said they heard it yesterday, but I've also seen a handful of tweets saying it's gone. I'll pay more attention next time I'm heading Arlington -> Boylston.