General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

Milton doesn’t have much of an argument and as a suburb bordering Boston, they really “need” to do more (I know that’s not illegal argument, but it’s ridiculous that any municipality bordering the city has such restrictive development).

How is Holden on this list, though? They’re not even close to a T station.

This is more of a planning comment but the problem in the US really is local control at the expense of regional and national policy. And in Mass, it’s even worse because each municipality wields more power and independence than in most states. Federalism and independent towns all lead to the same problems. https://jacobin.com/2023/12/federalism-disaster-labor-states-rights-racism-democracy
 
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Riverside said:
Holden borders Worcester, and station-adjacent communities are also covered (though by a different set of standards, IIRC).
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I guess they do share a border, but having lived in Worcester for 4 years, it sure felt like Holden was nowhere near close. While as I said before the state (in an ideal world) break the backs of any and all zoning restrictions, claiming that any town all the way out to Worcester that borders a town that has a commuter rail station is a reach that's bound to be assailed....
 
FK4 said:
I guess they do share a border, but having lived in Worcester for 4 years, it sure felt like Holden was nowhere near close. While as I said before the state (in an ideal world) break the backs of any and all zoning restrictions, claiming that any town all the way out to Worcester that borders a town that has a commuter rail station is a reach that's bound to be assailed....
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I live in Worcester and Holden is close enough to the east side that I considered a daycare there. It's really not that far. Again, you can't get much closer than. Sharing a border
 
ctsketch said:
I live in Worcester and Holden is close enough to the east side that I considered a daycare there. It's really not that far. Again, you can't get much closer than. Sharing a border
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I don’t know, it feels pretty one size fits all to me if the only criterion is that your town borders any municipality that has a commuter rail station somewhere within its borders, regardless of how far that commuter rail station is from Back Bay or South Station. Whether it’s a 20 minute drive to a parking lot and then a half hour ride to Boston, vs a 20 minute drive to a parking lot and then a 90 minute ride to Boston (which is what it is from Worcester to South), makes a difference in terms of how likely someone is to avail themselves of the T.
 
There is no mandate to build housing, just to have some amount of higher density housing. I live in Groton - similar situation, but did use the T to commute to Cambridge multiple years.
 
FK4 said:
it feels pretty one size fits all to me
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Yes, but there are benefits to a one-size-fits-all rule. The rule is clear. There is no complicated system to figure out what each town should do. Towns can't come pleading for a special exemption. There are no new processes towns can use to drag this out for years. Disputes for what towns must do aren't handled on case-by-case bases.

And besides, the State is only requiring towns to do what they should be doing anyways: allow more people to build multifamily dwellings, if they want. Disallowing multifamily dwellings is most egregious when the land is near some public transit, but I think these new zoning requirements would be good for every town in the state.
 
ritchiew said:
Yes, but there are benefits to a one-size-fits-all rule. The rule is clear. There is no complicated system to figure out what each town should do. Towns can't come pleading for a special exemption. There are no new processes towns can use to drag this out for years. Disputes for what towns must do aren't handled on case-by-case bases.

And besides, the State is only requiring towns to do what they should be doing anyways: allow more people to build multifamily dwellings, if they want. Disallowing multifamily dwellings is most egregious when the land is near some public transit, but I think these new zoning requirements would be good for every town in the state.
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Agree especially with the last part, and I read something in the globe recently that said the state actually has ultimate power over zoning rules. We can dare to dream that the state will ever enforce them across the state, but in a better world, the government would definitely do that.

Back to the T—do towns adjacent to towns and cities with T service receive any funding from the state, or contribute anything to the T?
 
FK4 said:
Back to the T—do towns adjacent to towns and cities with T service receive any funding from the state, or contribute anything to the T?
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Not fully answering the question, but I assume this requirement was applied to what's officially called "MBTA District". It was expanded in 1999 to include cities and towns that are adjacent to commuter rail stations. A map of how the MBTA District evolved over time can be seen here, and this document has a brief history on the expansion.

Since the map linked above was made, Fall River and New Bedford voted to join the MBTA District in 2022. These news reports give a bit more insight to what this means for the municipalities:
MBTA charges its member communities an assessment, or fee, to maintain rail service; however, this fee is offset by any fees the community pays to other regional transportation authorities. Fall River pays about $1.5 million to SRTA for municipal and regional bus service, which is higher than its calculated fee to the MBTA, thereby erasing any bill for rail service.
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In reality, New Bedford will get the train for free. While MBTA communities do have to pay a fee to the transit authority, they get to deduct any contributions they make to regional transit services. Last year, New Bedford spent $1,304,651 on the SRTA bus system, which is more than the $699,347 it would have had to pay to the MBTA, so the fee comes to $0.
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(Off-topic: Shoutout to the original SCR terminal station names on the map. Battleship Cove and Whale's Tooth are such a badass pair of names.)
 
The T added more slow zones they they removed slow zones in the past several weeks. The Red Line is now slower than it was post-Ashmont shutdown after Halloween 2023.

www.nbcboston.com

More MBTA slow zones added in February than removed

The MBTA’s effort to remove all slow zones by the end of the year hit a bit of a snag Tuesday night, according to the T’s speed restriction dashboard. The MBTA added 24 new slow zones, while only eliminating 15. Compare that to this past December and January, the T moved at a record pace...
www.nbcboston.com www.nbcboston.com

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Delvin4519 said:
The T added more slow zones they they removed slow zones in the past several weeks. The Red Line is now slower than it was post-Ashmont shutdown after Halloween 2023.

www.nbcboston.com

More MBTA slow zones added in February than removed

The MBTA’s effort to remove all slow zones by the end of the year hit a bit of a snag Tuesday night, according to the T’s speed restriction dashboard. The MBTA added 24 new slow zones, while only eliminating 15. Compare that to this past December and January, the T moved at a record pace...
www.nbcboston.com www.nbcboston.com

View attachment 48306
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According to this Boston Globe article (paywall bypass):
Spokesperson for the agency Joe Pesaturo said the T performed a geometry scan, which uses a machine to detect track defects that a human eye can’t catch, on the Red, Orange, Blue, and Mattapan Lines in February. Some of the restrictions added in February were a result of this scan, and the rest were the result of other inspections that month, Pesaturo said.
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So there were more slow zones because the T actually took the initiative to inspect the tracks -- and publicly reported them -- instead of hiding them like they used to do for years or even decades (even including GLX).
 
Teban54 said:
According to this Boston Globe article (paywall bypass):

So there were more slow zones because the T actually took the initiative to inspect the tracks -- and publicly reported them -- instead of hiding them like they used to do for years or even decades (even including GLX).
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That is a reasonable part of the interpretation. And is potentially a good thing.

But there is a second worrisome layer here that suggests that the T infrastructure is so neglected that it is at the stage of deterioration where, even with the amount of shutdowns T riders are enduring, deterioration is happening faster than fixes can be made. There is a point in deferred maintenance where this happens, and only major rebuilds can fix the issues, $$$$ and months of total shutdowns.
 
Teban54 said:
According to this Boston Globe article (paywall bypass):

So there were more slow zones because the T actually took the initiative to inspect the tracks -- and publicly reported them -- instead of hiding them like they used to do for years or even decades (even including GLX).
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This might be giving the T too much credit. They do these scans fairly regularly. From the discussions back when the GLX rails were found to be too close together, it looked like they do these scans twice a year, so they have very recent geometry scan data to compare to. It is also inconceivable the T would have decided on the massively disruptive year of shutdowns without this basic information. It doesn't sound right that they were concealing major track problems in, say, November but now they're telling the truth. I think all that T spokesperson was saying was "We looked at the tracks again, using our routine and standard tools, and we found more problems than we had six months ago."

JeffDowntown said:
But there is a second worrisome layer here that suggests that the T infrastructure is so neglected that it is at the stage of deterioration where, even with the amount of shutdowns T riders are enduring, deterioration is happening faster than fixes can be made. There is a point in deferred maintenance where this happens, and only major rebuilds can fix the issues, $$$$ and months of total shutdowns.
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How bad the new slow zones are, that kind of depends. If the new slow zones are showing up in sections that have already been shut down and overhauled, then that's a huge problem. Then, yeah, it would look like we're not making any progress, even after massive disruptions and repairs. From a quick scan, that doesn't seem to be the case. The new slow zones are in the bulk of the system that hasn't gone through shutdowns yet. It's not good to have more slow zones, but also, this should be kind of expected. The already-deteriorated sections of track will deteriorate even faster, and lots of maintenance efforts are being concentrated elsewhere. Also, hopefully, the kinds of defects they're finding are the those that will get fixed anyways when that track eventually gets its scheduled shutdown and overhaul.
 
I think it's also likely that regular surveys should expect to find defects. The difference lies in whether those are addressed through repair, or through designation as a permanent slow zone. A stable system isn't going to be one without defects. It's going to be one where defects are routinely identified, temporarily marked as slow zones, then quickly fixed. Hopefully many of these new slow zones fall in to that category.
 
By their very nature, the tracks are constantly deteriorating. Keeping them in good order is a constant, Sisyphean task.

In my opinion, the key thing to look for is not whether new speed restrictions are imposed after inspections, but how quickly they’re cleared. The big problem is that for years now, the T has used speed restrictions as a substitute for actually fixing the problems and has allowed deteriorated conditions to fester for months or years.

As an example, North Station to Haymarket on the Orange Line was dropped to 10 mph in both directions a couple weeks ago (presumably as a result of these geometry scans), but it was fixed in about a week with overnight work. I'm cautiously taking that as a sign that things are indeed changing for the better to help keep everything in good condition even after the big shutdowns.
 
HenryAlan said:
I think it's also likely that regular surveys should expect to find defects. The difference lies in whether those are addressed through repair, or through designation as a permanent slow zone. A stable system isn't going to be one without defects. It's going to be one where defects are routinely identified, temporarily marked as slow zones, then quickly fixed. Hopefully many of these new slow zones fall in to that category.
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Yeah, I agree, but just to nitpick: Really ideally, I want a system where the T regularly find defects, but fixes them before they require a slow zone. Having to set a slow zone at all should be a sign that we might need better schedules for repair/replacement/inspection, because things should not have gotten this bad. That's a maybe-impossibly-high bar. I'm sure no system in the world gets that perfection. But it should be the goal.
 
HenryAlan said:
@ritchiew, yes, I agree with that. Ideally, the repairs happen quickly enough so that any slow down is too brief to be noticed or remarked upon other than in a regular end of month maintenance report.
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Exactly. Proper preventative maintenance identifies potential issues before they affect the quality of service. And they are fixed before permanent and more expensive deterioration occurs.
 
ritchiew said:
Yeah, I agree, but just to nitpick: Really ideally, I want a system where the T regularly find defects, but fixes them before they require a slow zone. Having to set a slow zone at all should be a sign that we might need better schedules for repair/replacement/inspection, because things should not have gotten this bad. That's a maybe-impossibly-high bar. I'm sure no system in the world gets that perfection. But it should be the goal.
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Part of the reason why this is not the case right now may also be that any personnel that are capable of track maintenance may be fully occupied for the scheduled closures. I imagine (or hope) regular maintenance will pick up once we're done with these surges early next year.
 
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