Late night T service take 2

They should probably have at least one later outbound commuter rail trip for the suburbanites, maybe leaving 2 hours after the last current train.
 
Matthew said:
I'm guessing you're thinking of Roslindale.

Maybe once the Belmont NIMBYs scream about late night 73 service the T can simply redirect those bus-hours down to where they'll be appreciated instead. ;)
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Yeah, although there are a few other spots like that. But Rozzie is probably the most egregious. Just using the 34 and 34E, for example, which are essentially the same route (the E just extends to a further away end point), a consolidated route would carry enough passengers to be number 10 on the list, and yet no service will be provided on that corridor under this plan. Then there are all the other Washington St. buses....
 
The key bus routes list is rather arbitrary and I don't really know all the factors that led to the selection of those particular routes.

Actually, it really makes much more sense to designate "key corridors" and then try to provide service guarantees to all the stops in the corridor, one way or the other. Those key corridors could then be integrated with city planning for transit-oriented development and orientation.

Speaking of late night commuter rail, I know the Framingham line sends out a train just after 2 a.m. but I don't think it's in revenue service. The last revenue trip is inbound just after 1 a.m. But I hear it go by every night that I'm still up.
 
The T does at least recognize one important corridor, that being the 116/117. When you combine the ridership numbers from the two routes (that are essentially the same except for a random Revere detour), you actually get in the top 10 for ridership all week long.

Late night service to E Boston, Chelsea, and Revere will prove extremely useful for the working class people and not just drunk college students.
 
Completely agree with you Matthew, there are corridors (like Broadway in Everett) that have massive ridership but remain overlooked and definitely are deserving and NEED the late night service. That last 109 trip of the night almost always has standees. And the 104 and 109 combined would be #15, more than the 71. I only use the 109 as an example. Check those 70 and 86 numbers too. I am worried that these non key bus routes might be relegated to non service for a significant amount of time, especially in areas, like Everett and Malden, that are low income and very much need this kind of service.
 
These are good ones too. I have personal experience with the 70 and 86, I know how they get. I don't know Everett at all really, though.

The 116/117 already has two early morning trips through the tunnels to Haymarket. That could be the seed of early morning service expansion for East Boston, Chelsea and Revere.
 
radioI84 said:
Completely agree with you Matthew, there are corridors (like Broadway in Everett) that have massive ridership but remain overlooked and definitely are deserving and NEED the late night service. That last 109 trip of the night almost always has standees. And the 104 and 109 combined would be #15, more than the 71. I only use the 109 as an example. Check those 70 and 86 numbers too. I am worried that these non key bus routes might be relegated to non service for a significant amount of time, especially in areas, like Everett and Malden, that are low income and very much need this kind of service.
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Of course, the real issue with these corridors is that they shouldn't be served by buses at all. If they have high density use, that's a case for rapid transit. And some key bus corridors could probably become RT corridors pretty easily. And by this, I don't necessarily mean rail, but dedicated bus lanes, shared by multiple routes could really lead to quite a bit of improvement at fairly low cost.
 
jass said:
Rather than looking at the standard ridership list, it would make more sense to factor in the 15 busiest bus routes from 10pm to close and from 4am to 6am.

Those would theoretically be the ones that already attract night riders.

IE: If route x is super busy from noon to 5pm, but dead from 9pm to midnight....then skip it.

....
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Yeah, I think this would make more sense and be more utilized. I'm fine with only 15 routes, so long as they are the right ones.
 
cozzyd said:
They should probably have at least one later outbound commuter rail trip for the suburbanites, maybe leaving 2 hours after the last current train.
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That one's not as easy to pull off, because there's a lot of nocturnal freight that either starts up or kicks up a notch after the last CR trains of the night. Some of them 6- or 7-night-a-week jobs that do overlap with a Fri. or Sat. Night Owl. Old Colony main has a CSX Sun.-Fri. that blocks the M'boro/Plymouth split when it's shunting tanker cars together in Braintree Yard. Pan Am has a Lowell Line nightly working Wilmington-Somerville that at any given time could be blocking one track or the other moving from siding to siding. Lowell station, the Fitchburg west of Littleton, and the Haverhill north of Wilmington all get long-haul jobs across the Pan Am mainline. CSX fouls Framingham station emptying and restocking the 2 yards there every night. And if this Marine Terminal container facility Massport is pursuing kicks into high gear then Fairmount, Widett Circle, and Track 61 could see 6-night-a-week movements of 20+ cars at a time.

You'd be able to do it some places...Providence/Stoughton, Reading, Eastern Route, Needham, inner Fitchburg. But it wouldn't be all that equitable with big destinations like Brockton essentially verboten, Lowell mostly out of the question, Framingham/Worcester unpredictable because of interference around the yards, Fairmount + Seaport potentially very short-lived if the Marine Terminal operation gets going, etc. And would be a hideous money bleed when considering that both northside and southside nerve centers have to be kept open to run just a handful of trains on half or fewer of the lines.


Bridge too far, I think. It's the inevitable price we have to pay for keeping daytime freight interference to a bare minimum on the commuter rail. Those deliveries have to get their slots sometime; they're too important to the economy. Better those slots be between 11:30pm and 4:30am than 11:30am and 4:30pm.
 
Did anyone else notice this line in the Globe, btw?

McCarthy said that T officials are hiring 80 to 100 additional employees to help . Hiring more employees instead of paying overtime is not necessarily cheaper, McCarthy said, but will make the service more reliable.
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WTF?! 80-100 additional employees for 2 nights a week of last-departure 2:20 a.m. service?

This has got to be some kind of scam.
 
Matthew said:
Did anyone else notice this line in the Globe, btw?



WTF?! 80-100 additional employees for 2 nights a week of last-departure 2:20 a.m. service?

This has got to be some kind of scam.
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On the bus operations side, there have been more stringent hours of service requirements enacted on a federal level in recent years, that restrict how many total hours a week (including overtime) can be worked by a driver with a Commercial Drivers Licence (CDL) and how much rest time there must be between shifts. The MBTA has already been pushing the limits of how many total hours of bus service can be provided by the existing number of bus drivers, especially because of the weekend shuttles required for the Assembly Sq project, the Longfellow Bridge project, and the Red Line Columbia Junction project. They have to hire up if they are going to meet the increased hours for later service, even if only two days a week.

On the rail side, its not just additional hours for train operators, its also additional hours for customer service agents at each station. Multiply 3 hours per week by each staffed station, and that will require more staff even if overtime is used to account for some of the increase.
 
Are they going to be able to avoid the 200% pay increase for those hours past 1 a.m.?

I guess they're using this as a reason to shore up their staffing in other hours... does that bode well or ill for continued late night service in future years?
 
Matthew said:
Are they going to be able to avoid the 200% pay increase for those hours past 1 a.m.?

I guess they're using this as a reason to shore up their staffing in other hours... does that bode well or ill for continued late night service in future years?
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I don't think they said they are allocating all of the cost for increasing the staff to late night service, just that they need the additions to meet the increased hours. I suspect they might be able to reduce the use of overtime during other hours thanks to the increase in staff required.

Per the union contract, there still is a differential for work between 2 AM and 4 AM, although I don't think its actually as high as the 200% number that has floated around over the years. I think it comes out to something like 8 hours pay for 6.5 hours of work for assignments in those hours. On the rail side, they have several overnight assignments for crews that run the work trains, and I believe that is how the pay for those pieces of work is calculated.

Added edit:
I checked with an MBTA employee friend, the agreement is a 2-4 AM night piece of work is 8 hours pay for 6.5 hours work, but if the piece of work exceeds 6.5 hours, than the time and a half overtime rate is charged for the additional hours.
 
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winstonoboogie said:
I don't think they said they are allocating all of the cost for increasing the staff to late night service, just that they need the additions to meet the increased hours. I suspect they might be able to reduce the use of overtime during other hours thanks to the increase in staff required.

Per the union contract, there still is a differential for work between 2 AM and 4 AM, although I don't think its actually as high as the 200% number that has floated around over the years. I think it comes out to something like 8 hours pay for 6.5 hours of work for assignments in those hours. On the rail side, they have several overnight assignments for crews that run the work trains, and I believe that is how the pay for those pieces of work is calculated.

Added edit:
I checked with an MBTA employee friend, the agreement is a 2-4 AM night piece of work is 8 hours pay for 6.5 hours work, but if the piece of work exceeds 6.5 hours, than the time and a half overtime rate is charged for the additional hours.
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Winston -- the T still needs to have a serious beating administered to clean-up the foul activities: pensions, discipline for drivers, construction scams

The next governor will have to find a good and thoroughly committed Sec of DOT who can hire a competent manager of the T and then have a major showdown with the unions and the legislative sycophants for the unions -- the T's costs are still way too high
 
whighlander said:
Winston -- the T still needs to have a serious beating administered to clean-up the foul activities: pensions, discipline for drivers, construction scams

The next governor will have to find a good and thoroughly committed Sec of DOT who can hire a competent manager of the T and then have a major showdown with the unions and the legislative sycophants for the unions -- the T's costs are still way too high
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There's still the matter of being able to get a House Speaker and Senate Prez. who don't reflexively gut every major legislation pushed through by the Gov. as a periodic reminder of who's really boss in this state, and bully their caucus to vote down the line. We found that out yet again with Patrick's transportation bill. It's still very much Billy Bulger's and Tom Finneran's Legislature. And that rot doesn't just clear up immediately because (so far) DeLeo and Murray are slightly less heavy-handed and corrupt than their several predecessors. A whole culture of fear and top-heavy power consolidation has to get rolled back before serious reform is going to gain traction. It is what it is, and it'll probably take flipping a whole generation of the membership and a couple more chamber heads to flush the bad old days out of the system.

Getting stuff done now is unfortunately going to require working with the same old forces, and tempering ones enthusiasm for dramatic, whole-hog reform with incremental compromises likely being the best we can get. It's going to take an aggressive Gov. to stay on-task with that and start racking up those incremental reforms, but that's how it has to be. Changing a whole political culture doesn't happen in a day, year, or decade.
 
Running Late(r): Late-Night T Service to Start Late March/Early April

When it comes to post-midnight T service, we’ve gotta use it or lose it.

Praise the ghost of John Winthrop: Late-night MBTA service is finally real. Starting in late March, the T and select bus routes will stay open until 3 a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights. So please, ride the damn thing.

When the MBTA tried its Night Owl bus service back in the 2000s, it died quickly from lack of ridership. The new program was designed as a one-year trial run, and will cost the state $20 million. Granted, things are a little different this time. For one, there’ll be actual trains running along T routes (instead of shuttle buses), and we now have apps to help us time our ride.
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The columnist seems to believe late-night service will start in about a month. Also, a post on railroad.net claimed that service will start March 22 (the same day Government Center shuts down and a new pay period of some kind begins for T employees).
 
MBTA tweeted that it will begin at the end of March. The 22nd makes sense since it is the start of the Spring schedule.

This columnist makes the mistake I am worried about, actually. He focuses on ridership between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m.

He forgets that many people may be more willing to take the T, even if they ride before 1 a.m., knowing that they are not stranded in case they need it later.

Also I'm pretty sure there's other stuff rolled into the $20 million that isn't directly related to late night service.
 
Matthew said:
This columnist makes the mistake I am worried about, actually. He focuses on ridership between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m.

He forgets that many people may be more willing to take the T, even if they ride before 1 a.m., knowing that they are not stranded in case they need it later.
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I think this is pretty applicable. i have not gone downtown for late night events (ok drinks, but movies and shows too) because I was going to cut the last T close and risk a $25-40 cab ride depending on where i was. If you know that circumstances may push you to 130 but not be on the hook for fighting for a closing time cab, you'd be more likely to go downtown, even if you get on a 1245.
 
Hopefully the service sees solid ridership and the MBTA keeps it around. Getting a cab in Boston can be a total crap-shoot after 12:30 am on the weekends. Between fighting other people, dealing with cabbies who will pre-screen you before they agree to take you and then having to deal with cranky drivers who insist you pay cash, having an option to take the T will be welcomed for me.

I am a big fan of Uber but their surge pricing can make getting home a bit too much.
 
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