General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

[Jahvon09]

Surprised this was not mentioned again, but on the MBTA, doors were closed with a passenger still inside the doorway, trapping the passenger between the doors for a little while. This "doors closing on top of passengers" incident occured on the Green Line at Medford.

The latest door incident on the MBTA occurs in the wake after a previous door incident resulted in a fatality on the Red Line back in 2022.

T investigating after Green Line door closes on woman helping child off the train

The MBTA pointed to possible operator error as the cause of an incident Monday where the Green Line doors closed on a woman's leg.

www.boston.com

Sadly, this crap is going to keep on happening until a sad & tragic event quite similar to the one that happened in '22 on the Red Line surfaces again!! I don't want anyone to get killed, but it's their own frigging fault, simply because they just keep on doing stupid shit!!!! What stark-raving idocy!!!!

 

[RandomWalk]

Not sure which thread to post this in. Ended up catching one of the old Budd cars that used to be stored under 93 being moved through West Medford earlier today. I assume it’s going somewhere to finally be scrapped.
View attachment 46528

I would guess Billerica.

 

[Delvin4519]

Shuttle buses replaced Orange Line service between North Station and Mass Ave., due to a smoke problem at Chinatown. The Orange Line service suspension comes in the midst of the Green Line shutdown between Medford and Heath Street, and between Babcock Street, Kenmore, and Union Square. While shuttle buses replaced service on the Orange Line downtown, this means no subway line between North Station and Back Bay with both the Green Line and Orange Line offline downtown.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1743759535397835184

 

[Delvin4519]

Dangerous cause for concern for the MBTA, if the MBTA depends on the state. There is already a fiscal cliff coming by June. Now it seems the fiscal cliff might come even earlier for the MBTA.

25 Investigates: Sources say Gov. Healey to announce emergency budget cuts

25 Investigates has learned Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey plans to announce emergency budget cuts following six straight months of lower than projected revenues, according to multiple sources.

www.boston25news.com

Thoughts and clarifications on this issue?

 

[bakgwailo]

Dangerous cause for concern for the MBTA, if the MBTA depends on the state. There is already a fiscal cliff coming by June. Now it seems the fiscal cliff might come even earlier for the MBTA.

25 Investigates: Sources say Gov. Healey to announce emergency budget cuts

25 Investigates has learned Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey plans to announce emergency budget cuts following six straight months of lower than projected revenues, according to multiple sources.

www.boston25news.com

Thoughts and clarifications on this issue?

Could be off, but isn't this essentially a less than 5% off the estimate quarterly? As far as budgeting seems really not catastrophic.

 

[stefal]

What's the point of our state's $7 billion rainy day fund?

 

[as02143]

What's the point of our state's $7 billion rainy day fund?

I'm still wondering what the point of the referendum to add a billion to the tax rolls was....if the Commonwealth's electeds are going to just overturn it.

 

[Koopzilla24]

Putting my response to this here as the more relevant place for it:

I don't know exactly how Charlie 2.0 is supposed to work when it comes to paying with cash, but as the study shows people thought it was more reliable. Those long dwells from people loading cash and crowding around the front door are brutal.

Transit buses are impossible to run remotely close to breaking even due to capacity v cost and will always have by far the lowest fare recovery ratio. AFC 2.0 essentially turning bus fare paying into an honor system will in my opinion be the perfect fit for the city of Boston combined with the prior point in the thread that a lot of bus passengers are transferring to rapid transit anyway.

The idea is that everyone will be more easily able to obtain and reload a Charlie card and pay transit fares in general. For cash users that means more locations like convenience stores with the ability to do so. Since not everyone interacts with rapid transit stations that have fare machines or a convenient 7/11 this system would mean cash users, usually lower income jobs or older individuals, can still use the service between being able to recharge a card with the lack of strict fare policing. At the same time it’d make sense to expand income-based fare free programs.

Rather than having a big fare evasion problem the city of Boston has a fare collection problem. Every day thousands of Green Line riders on surface stops don’t tap their cards and nothing is really done about it. Bus drivers wave on most passengers that are struggling to get a card to work or trying to add cash on a busy bus. Commuter Rail conductors are all over the place with collection or not. I don’t take any issue with this since it keeps passengers more honest with the unknown of if they’ll be forced to pay or not but everyday I see many people going out of their way to pay even when they’re told by an operator or staff that they don’t need to. Making paying fares easier via the tap readers at every door will likely be a positive for fare collection. Pre-pandemic even the Green Line had a recovery ratio of 42%.

 

[Teban54]

Putting my response to this here as the more relevant place for it:

Transit buses are impossible to run remotely close to breaking even due to capacity v cost and will always have by far the lowest fare recovery ratio. AFC 2.0 essentially turning bus fare paying into an honor system will in my opinion be the perfect fit for the city of Boston combined with the prior point in the thread that a lot of bus passengers are transferring to rapid transit anyway.

The idea is that everyone will be more easily able to obtain and reload a Charlie card and pay transit fares in general. For cash users that means more locations like convenience stores with the ability to do so. Since not everyone interacts with rapid transit stations that have fare machines or a convenient 7/11 this system would mean cash users, usually lower income jobs or older individuals, can still use the service between being able to recharge a card with the lack of strict fare policing. At the same time it’d make sense to expand income-based fare free programs.

Rather than having a big fare evasion problem the city of Boston has a fare collection problem. Every day thousands of Green Line riders on surface stops don’t tap their cards and nothing is really done about it. Bus drivers wave on most passengers that are struggling to get a card to work or trying to add cash on a busy bus. Commuter Rail conductors are all over the place with collection or not. I don’t take any issue with this since it keeps passengers more honest with the unknown of if they’ll be forced to pay or not but everyday I see many people going out of their way to pay even when they’re told by an operator or staff that they don’t need to. Making paying fares easier via the tap readers at every door will likely be a positive for fare collection. Pre-pandemic even the Green Line had a recovery ratio of 42%.

I'll also add that fare boxes on buses and the Green Line are often not maintained well. There have been too many times where I got a free ride because of malfunctioning fare boxes.

I do think fare evasion on commuter rail is actually worth paying attention, though, as its effects on revenue seem much greater than rapid transit and buses. Does AFC 2.0 allow easy installation of tap readers at commuter rail stations without the need for fare gates, like several other cities are doing? Is that in the plans?

 

[The EGE]

Transit buses are impossible to run remotely close to breaking even due to capacity v cost and will always have by far the lowest fare recovery ratio. AFC 2.0 essentially turning bus fare paying into an honor system will in my opinion be the perfect fit for the city of Boston combined with the prior point in the thread that a lot of bus passengers are transferring to rapid transit anyway.

In general, that's true, though some MBTA routes do run with relatively high farebox recovery. In 2012, the SL1, SL5, and Waterfront shuttle (SLW) all had farebox recovery slightly over 100%, and the other SL routes were close. A few other routes (1,17, 21, 39, 117) had net-cost-per-passenger between 50 and 75 cents, corresponding to a recovery ratio of ~65-70%.

Farebox recovery on the buses would go up significantly with shorter and more consistent running times (all-door or off-board fare collection, transit lanes, signal priority, etc), especially with the additional riders that will attract. I suspect it would also improve with improved dispatching (i.e. consistent terminal departures), more spare operators for fewer dropped trips, and better midday and evening frequency - even though all of those cost money, frequency and reliability are what attract riders more than anything else.

Source: https://old.mbta.com/uploadedfiles/Fares_and_Passes_v2/Route Performance Indicators 7-6 Fixed.pdf

 

[Koopzilla24]

I'll also add that fare boxes on buses and the Green Line are often not maintained well. There have been too many times where I got a free ride because of malfunctioning fare boxes.

Just happened to me this morning on the 39. Basically a daily occurrence in my travels. Also the Green Line rarely has fare collection at the end termini cause the system isn’t on or the operator isn’t present but doors are open.

I do think fare evasion on commuter rail is actually worth paying attention, though, as its effects on revenue seem much greater than rapid transit and buses. Does AFC 2.0 allow easy installation of tap readers at commuter rail stations without the need for fare gates, like several other cities are doing? Is that in the plans?

Because of zone fares some sort of tap in tap out is needed for any card payment. Maybe something like the Twin Cities’ Light Rail platform tap thing where you can scan or tap your card while waiting to board then if you exit downtown you’d go through one of the fare gate stations, and otherwise you’d tap out on a platform again. The presence of security cameras combined with occasional onboard ticket verification would deter a lot of fare evasion but I’m not sure how to go about handling forgetting to tap in or out while remembering the other. The other question is station ownership. I think most commuter rail stations are owned by their respective towns so I don’t know where the bill falls for the upkeep of these systems but if towns have to pay even just the utility costs some might be against it. The alternative would be tap points on trains themselves but the current rolling stock with the worst door setup in America would result in immense dwell time increases.

As-is the only plan is AFC 2.0 in North/South Station and Back Bay but that could be extended to the genuine stations where you enter a building or structure first like Lowell and Worcester.

In general, that's true, though some MBTA routes do run with relatively high farebox recovery. In 2012, the SL1, SL5, and Waterfront shuttle (SLW) all had farebox recovery slightly over 100%, and the other SL routes were close. A few other routes (1,17, 21, 39, 117) had net-cost-per-passenger between 50 and 75 cents, corresponding to a recovery ratio of ~65-70%.

Farebox recovery on the buses would go up significantly with shorter and more consistent running times (all-door or off-board fare collection, transit lanes, signal priority, etc), especially with the additional riders that will attract. I suspect it would also improve with improved dispatching (i.e. consistent terminal departures), more spare operators for fewer dropped trips, and better midday and evening frequency - even though all of those cost money, frequency and reliability are what attract riders more than anything else.

Source: https://old.mbta.com/uploadedfiles/Fares_and_Passes_v2/Route Performance Indicators 7-6 Fixed.pdf

As a whole bus transportation systems are difficult to get good fare recovery but you make a very good point about individual routes and the improvements that can be made to increase fare revenue through ridership. It’s interesting that there’s seemingly no strong correlation between ridership, route length/characteristics, and cost per pax.

 

[Teban54]

but I’m not sure how to go about handling forgetting to tap in or out while remembering the other.

Singapore requires both tapping on and off for all their transit modes. Their solution for forgetting to tap off is that you will pay the highest possible fare if your tap expires after a while or if you tap onto a different mode. I'm not sure how they deal with forgetting to tap on, though (that's not as much of a problem for Singapore, as all rapid transit stations have fare gates, buses only have front door boarding, and there's no commuter rail). That system is also inapplicable if some card readers are intended to be used for bidirectional traffic (all-door boarding on buses, readers at stations without fare gates, etc).

 

[TheRatmeister]

Singapore requires both tapping on and off for all their transit modes. Their solution for forgetting to tap off is that you will pay the highest possible fare if your tap expires after a while or if you tap onto a different mode. I'm not sure how they deal with forgetting to tap on, though (that's not as much of a problem for Singapore, as all rapid transit stations have fare gates, buses only have front door boarding, and there's no commuter rail). That system is also inapplicable if some card readers are intended to be used for bidirectional traffic (all-door boarding on buses, readers at stations without fare gates, etc).

Different system, but for NS in the Netherlands if you have a personal OV-Chipkaart and you miss either a tap in or out (Which can happen since some stations, notably Schiphol Airport, don't have fare gates) you can go in and retroactively add one to be charged the correct fare, otherwise you're charged a penalty fare. Presumably if you do this a lot you get some kind of extra punishment or something.

 

[JeffDowntown]

One of the beauties of tap-in, tap-out systems is the operators get real, accurate data about the actually trips passengers take. (Not the weak sauce infrequent survey pseudo info the T collects.) With that data you can optimize the system profile (routes, timing, expansion planning, etc.) to actually serve your customers.

 

[Delvin4519]

MBTA vacancies update for buses, January 2024:

The formula the MBTA used to calculate bus vacancies has changed yet again this January, to exclude in trainees from the operational count (those in training will now be included in vacancies). No changes to historical data was provided by the MBTA, meaning the data for December 29, 2023 is not directly compariable with May - November data.

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
12/29/2023	1,684***	232 (139 pre COVID)***	-7***	92.37% (87.89% BNRD)****	1,916

 

[Delvin4519]

MBTA actually has a slow zone tracker for the Green Line that's almost just like the one TransitMatters uses, but it's not public. They only give us the map that doesn't tell users how much travel time to add, unlike TransitMatters.

Green Line peaked at ~38 minutes of slow time. It's now down to ~15.8 minutes of slow time on the Green Line (Mattapan Line has 0 slow zones since October 2023).

I'm not sure about the Mattapan line but the October lifting of Mattapan slow zones don't seem to show up in the data.

https://cdn.mbta.com/sites/default/files/2024-01/1.%20QCO%20Update%20JAN%20SHE%202024%20Board.pdf

(slide 2, zoom in towards the bottom center)

Analysis of TransitMatters 12/26/2023 data has 29.9 min for the Red Line, 11.0 min for the Orange Line, and 3.3 min for the Blue Line.
The MBTA's data for 12/26/2023 stated 34.3 min for the Red Line, 14.9 min for the Orange Line, and 3.4 min for the Blue Line.

TransitMatters is able to capture 84% of the MBTA's heavy rail slow zone delay, 8.4 min of slow time on heavy rail is not captured by TransitMatters. (44.2 min / 52.6 min).
Success rate for TransitMatters capturing slow zones is 87.1% for the Red Line, 73.8% for the Orange Line, and 97% for the Blue Line.

 

[Teban54]

I'm not sure about the Mattapan line but the October lifting of Mattapan slow zones don't seem to show up in the data.

The MBTA time tracker seems to be empirical, based on real-time performance of vehicles, as opposed to a theoretical calculation using slow zone locations and speed. Given that the Mattapan Line closure is from October 16-29, its impacts on the time tracker would show up on October 16, when there are no longer any Mattapan trolleys contributing to the time wasted, as opposed to October 29. And October 16 does seem to show a drop in runtime on the plot.

The other possibility is that the Mattapan Line is too short and its effects get washed out by the Green Line.

 

[Delvin4519]

The MBTA time tracker seems to be empirical, based on real-time performance of vehicles, as opposed to a theoretical calculation using slow zone locations and speed. Given that the Mattapan Line closure is from October 16-29, its impacts on the time tracker would show up on October 16, when there are no longer any Mattapan trolleys contributing to the time wasted, as opposed to October 29. And October 16 does seem to show a drop in runtime on the plot.

The other possibility is that the Mattapan Line is too short and its effects get washed out by the Green Line.

The GLX also had slow zones lifted around the same timeframe, October 12th, given the plot in the powerpoint slides does not have enough image resolution, it seems to be almost impossible to discern any of the Mattapan's slow zone delays. After GLX slow zones were lifted, the Light Rail delay time reverted to pre-GLX slow times, but slightly higher than pre-GLX slow time.

 

[The EGE]

One of the beauties of tap-in, tap-out systems is the operators get real, accurate data about the actually trips passengers take. (Not the weak sauce infrequent survey pseudo info the T collects.) With that data you can optimize the system profile (routes, timing, expansion planning, etc.) to actually serve your customers.

Tap-in / tap-out data is nice to have, but by no means necessary. It's only worth implementing if you have a distance-based fare system (like the commuter rail) where the tap-out is needed to finalize the fare. There are other data sources that are sufficient for planning work:

• Automatic Passenger Counters (APCs): These sensors detect movement across the door thresholds of buses and rail cars. They're standard on newer vehicles - all buses except the oldest 8 in service have them, and I believe the Type 9s and the new RL/OL fleet do as well. (Not sure about commuter rail cars.) It gives you the number of ons and offs at each stop (when combined with vehicle location data), so you have data for crowding and time-of-day ridership at a stop-by-stop level of detail. Some systems even do fancy things like real-time indication of which cars on a train are the least crowded.
• Origin-Destination-Interchange (ODX): This method uses successive taps on the same farecard to interpolate what trips were made. For example, if the system sees my (anonymized) car tap at Copley and then 15 minutes later on a 57 at Kenmore, it can assign that first trip to the first westbound Green Line train that arrived after I tapped in. If I tap on a northbound 86 at Brighton Center 3 hours later, it can interpolate that I took that 57 to Brighton Center. (There's more fancy things going on in the algorithm, but that's the basics.) The MBTA and MIT were actually some of the earliest to develop the method. It's not 100% accurate (though impressively so when I tested it against my own trips) but the end result is basically the same as tap-in/tap-out data.
• Trip modeling: This is used to estimate larger-scale demand by inputting existing service and ridership data into a model that simulates people deciding on when/if and how to make trips. It's used for estimating future demand, and for figuring out how changes to the network (like building a new line) will affect travel patterns.

Combine those with faregate data and smaller focused investigations when needed (like manual counts to verify the high-tech methods), and that's the basic data that transit planners use.

 

[Teban54]

Tap-in / tap-out data is nice to have, but by no means necessary. It's only worth implementing if you have a distance-based fare system (like the commuter rail) where the tap-out is needed to finalize the fare. There are other data sources that are sufficient for planning work:

• Automatic Passenger Counters (APCs): These sensors detect movement across the door thresholds of buses and rail cars. They're standard on newer vehicles - all buses except the oldest 8 in service have them, and I believe the Type 9s and the new RL/OL fleet do as well. (Not sure about commuter rail cars.) It gives you the number of ons and offs at each stop (when combined with vehicle location data), so you have data for crowding and time-of-day ridership at a stop-by-stop level of detail. Some systems even do fancy things like real-time indication of which cars on a train are the least crowded.
• Origin-Destination-Interchange (ODX): This method uses successive taps on the same farecard to interpolate what trips were made. For example, if the system sees my (anonymized) car tap at Copley and then 15 minutes later on a 57 at Kenmore, it can assign that first trip to the first westbound Green Line train that arrived after I tapped in. If I tap on a northbound 86 at Brighton Center 3 hours later, it can interpolate that I took that 57 to Brighton Center. (There's more fancy things going on in the algorithm, but that's the basics.) The MBTA and MIT were actually some of the earliest to develop the method. It's not 100% accurate (though impressively so when I tested it against my own trips) but the end result is basically the same as tap-in/tap-out data.
• Trip modeling: This is used to estimate larger-scale demand by inputting existing service and ridership data into a model that simulates people deciding on when/if and how to make trips. It's used for estimating future demand, and for figuring out how changes to the network (like building a new line) will affect travel patterns.

Combine those with faregate data and smaller focused investigations when needed (like manual counts to verify the high-tech methods), and that's the basic data that transit planners use.

Funny enough, I actually have some questions on this topic recently:

1. How much do transit agencies balance the use of APCs and ODX? The APC data for MBTA buses each fall are easily accessible, but a major drawback is that it doesn't model the origin-destination pairs well*. On the other hand, ODX data is highly inaccessible, so I'm not sure if it was because they haven't done it for a long time or just didn't publicize the data due to privacy and other concerns.

• (*) For example, suppose 10 passengers board the 66 bus at Harvard, 10 board at Union Square Allston, 10 alight at Coolidge Corner, and 10 alight at Roxbury Crossing. The same data can be interpreted with two extremes: one would indicate that people use the 66 for either Red-to-Orange transfers and shorter trips to nearby neighborhoods, and another would suggest that there's demand from the Allston-Brighton-CC area specifically to Harvard and Roxbury that can't be served well by anything along the Green Line.

2. I saw that MBTA had a post in 2016 about the Origin-Destination-Transfer (ODX) model developed by a group of MIT researchers, but the demonstration website (below the video) no longer works. Does anyone happen to know if there's still accessible data on the model (for MBTA)?