Green Line Extension to Medford & Union Sq

[jbray]

MBTA plans them and recommends them to the right of way owner, so either the municipality or the state agency that owns the roadway, for final approval.

Does anyone know why the bus stops didn't get changed for Medford/Tufts? I took the 96 for fun(?) to get back to Ball Square and it makes no sense that they kept the old bus stops.

 

[737900er]

Just pulling the data for the day you cite (which was a Saturday), I'd argue that it's the Central Subway that's responsible for more of the problems on GLX than Huntington Ave signals/traffic.
The Huntington Ave line entering the Subway doesn't actually look that bad compared to the Highland Branch which should be the best performer.



When it gets out of the Subway it's way worse, as you show.


This is of course why GLR is so important

I couldn't find any data on this, but anecdotally the B and C have very high dwell times on the Lechmere-bound track at Government Center. The operators have to get out of their seats and walk through the car to make sure everyone got off before they can take the loop. This is not a very rapid process and Union Square or Medford/Tufts trains frequently have to wait at the threshold of the station while the operators clear the train. Presumably it will be even worse with a Type 10 unless they're just going to use CCTV. Making this process faster and/or changing the B back to Park Street is probably some of the lowest-hanging fruit to generate reliability improvements on GLX, short of restoring 2-train berthing.

 

[Delvin4519]

I couldn't find any data on this, but anecdotally the B and C have very high dwell times on the Lechmere-bound track at Government Center. The operators have to get out of their seats and walk through the car to make sure everyone got off before they can take the loop. This is not a very rapid process and Union Square or Medford/Tufts trains frequently have to wait at the threshold of the station while the operators clear the train. Presumably it will be even worse with a Type 10 unless they're just going to use CCTV. Making this process faster and/or changing the B back to Park Street is probably some of the lowest-hanging fruit to generate reliability improvements on GLX, short of restoring 2-train berthing.

Aren't the platforms at North Station a lot longer? I feel like I recall having to walk quite a ways from the southside entrance at North Station a lengthy ways all the way to the front of the two set streetcar on the Lechmere bound track. I'm not sure but perhaps at North Station they may be able to hold two sets of streetcar pairs on the platform simutaneously. The "please stop here" sign for the first car also has a bit of a decent gap before the platform ends as well, so the first set of streetcars may be able to berth further towards the end of the platform to maybe make room for a second set of streetcars.

This also allows an Orange Line connection for Kenmore bound bus riders, so that the downtown transfers actually function as opposed to limiting Kenmore bus transferees to either a Red only or Red/Blue transfers, missing the Orange transfer.

 

[Brattle Loop]

Aren't the platforms at North Station a lot longer? I feel like I recall having to walk quite a ways from the southside entrance at North Station a lengthy ways all the way to the front of the two set streetcar on the Lechmere bound track. I'm not sure but perhaps at North Station they may be able to hold two sets of streetcar pairs on the platform simutaneously. The "please stop here" sign for the first car also has a bit of a decent gap before the platform ends as well, so the first set of streetcars may be able to berth further towards the end of the platform to maybe make room for a second set of streetcars.

North Station's platforms are longer, but Government Center's absolutely can fit two two-car trains, they used to do it all the time. (I presume that went away after one of the Green Line's collisions.) Even when they had two trains stop simultaneously, it only helped when a Lechmere-bound train was in front of a train terminating at GC, because if it was the other way around, the in-service train inevitably still waited to stop in the usual berth. That'd probably still end up happening at North Station with dual-berthing there, and absent much better dispatching or building the crossover from Track 3 to Track 4 at Park Street there's no real way to reliably ensure the going-out-of-service trains are following the in-service ones on the platform.

 

[Delvin4519]

changing the B back to Park Street is probably some of the lowest-hanging fruit to generate reliability improvements on GLX, short of restoring 2-train berthing.

The B was extended from Park to Gov'y since without it, it breaks the color transfers from Blue Line bus transferees with Kenmore bus transferees. It's not as bad as the broken Kenmore bus transfers <---> OL northside bus transfers since Kenmore still had 2 branches feeding into Government Center as opposed to single branch headways to get to North Station. Blue Line bus transferees had already limited connectively with no Red (already talked about massively with Red-Blue) and somewhat limited connectivity with Kenmore bus connections with only 2/3rds of Green. It's literally the same problem as the NSRL link, so it requires rail service to at least get to the opposite side of downtown's rail terminal to cover the demand shortfall.

This article from 2021 about the extension of the B from Park to Govy.

A 'subtle' but permanent change is coming to the Green Line this weekend

The MBTA is switching up several Green Line branches' downtown northern terminuses this Sunday, as Green Line Extension testing begins.

www.boston.com

Officials hope that lengthening the B Line will provide better connectivity to the Blue Line and a better distribution of service through downtown Boston.