Late night T service take 2

[Matthew]

And regarding key bus routes, I think that folks in Roslindale ought to be organizing and pestering the T to recognize the 34/34E/40 as a key bus trunk, much like they already do for the 116/117. Regardless of late night service.

 

[George_Apley]

It's not perfect, but it's good for a start. They should be starting small and growing incrementally where demand dictates. Maybe Roslindale will be under-served relative to other neighborhoods when the program starts, but Roslindale is going from no late night bus service to having the 32 run late-night.

Somerville, too, may be under-served at the start of the program, but they go from no late night service to having the Red Line serve Davis (and surely the Orange Line at Assembly soon).

These areas go from no service to imperfect service. Rome was not built in a day. My optimistic guess is that the pilot will not be exactly the same as the ultimate service that goes into place. Heck, if I were running the T, it would be "let's start with minimal service for 2 months and see where demand dictates more service be added." This is a pretty robust pilot.

I agree. Of course that's how it will go. Still, won't stop me from griping that my neighborhood isn't served now!

 

[George_Apley]

And regarding key bus routes, I think that folks in Roslindale ought to be organizing and pestering the T to recognize the 34/34E/40 as a key bus trunk, much like they already do for the 116/117. Regardless of late night service.

While they're at it, start organizing and pestering to extend the OL to Rozzie...

 

[The EGE]

Write to the T.

No seriously, send them an email.

Several things have become very clear recently, based around one fact: late-night service was planned on short notice due to politics, rather than through the usual planning process. There were not community meetings. There was not a draft service plan and a final service plan released over a murderously long period.

That means that, among other things: They don't have any fixed metrics yet for determining success or failure of the one-year trial. They don't have any basis for evaluating which corridors actually need service. And they don't have any real guess as to how well this is going to work.

They literally just took the existing key bus routes. That's not unreasonable. They don't have to print out brand new night service maps; they don't have to add new bus stops; etc.

But they're going to have to be flexible if they want this to work. And that means responding to demand where demand exists.

They don't actually know where demand is. I was told matter-of-fact that ridership drops off enough past 10pm in Somerville that they didn't consider late-night service there. They're not wrong; they don't just understand that half-hour and hour headways to the residential and nightlife areas of Somerville means that people aren't going to use those buses.

So write and tell them that Roslindale Square needs late-night buses. Tell them that the combination of eight bus routes means that people would use a single bus there. The T doesn't seem to understand the concept that bus routes on a single corridor are additive. It's the same reason that none of the Somerville routes are on the list - the major corridors have two or three overlapping routes.

 

[Ron Newman]

Seems to me that a 'Green Line Extension' night-owl bus route would make sense to add, given the large number of bars and clubs around Union Square.

 

[George_Apley]

^ Yeah, I would say at least a bus between Lechmere and Union, or Central and Union. Ideally a bus between Lechmere and Davis via any of the main streets running the length of Somerville. Pick the 80, 87, 88 or 89, or somehow mix-match them .

EDIT: Maybe something like this:

 

[masswich]

I think that starting with the 15 key bus routes and the rapid transit lines makes sense.

I suspect it will not do that well though. There are a lot of people out after 1 pm. but I just don't know how many of them come a long way to go out - and of that group, how many of them aren't driving (let's hope with a DD) or sharing a cab. I know other large cities have late night service. But are any of them as relatively small as Boston? And do we know that those services don't lose lots of money?

I hope I am wrong. But I also wouldn't want the T to spend lots of money subsidizing late night service at the expense of it's core hours.

 

[Arlington]

^ Yeah, I would say at least a bus between Lechmere and Union, or Central and Union. Ideally a bus between Lechmere and Davis via any of the main streets running the length of Somerville. Pick the 80, 87, 88 or 89, or somehow mix-match them .

EDIT: Maybe something like this:

THis does point out how badly the T needs to consolidate routes into fewer, more-key, more-frequent services "worth walking to" and "worth planning a trip around" Rather than ones that, while they come "right to your doorstep" do so only every 30 mins or an hour. We have Key Corridors that get no attention because a bunch of low-frequency routes serve them hourly on a party-way hit-and-run basis.

 

[Matthew]

Speaking of, here's an article which attempts to get at the idea of Key Corridors.

 

[datadyne007]

The schedule has been released:
http://www.mbta.com/uploadedfiles/Documents/Schedules_and_Maps/Upcoming_Schedules/Subway/rtRapid.pdf

 

[fattony]

Am I reading that right? I get 6-7 minute headway on Red all the way into Late Night?

That is awesome.

 

[oyhimylm]

In my experience, the Orange Line definitely operates at 15 minute headways late at night and at less busy times during the day on the weekend.

Is organization so bad that they can't manage to hit the planned 10 minutes, or am I missing something?

 

[George_Apley]

^ The Orange Line has a shortage of trains. Wellington Yard is pretty much empty during peak. I'm guessing during off-peak they take some cars out of circulation for preventative maintenance, or just to give them a break.

 

[Matthew]

OL peak headways have now slipped officially to 6 minutes, it seems.

Anyone know when Green Line peak headways on "B" and "D" went to 7 minutes? I can't find PDF schedules from 2013.

 

[winstonoboogie]

In my experience, the Orange Line definitely operates at 15 minute headways late at night and at less busy times during the day on the weekend.

Is organization so bad that they can't manage to hit the planned 10 minutes, or am I missing something?

On weekends and/or evenings when service is cut-back to Sullivan Sq. for Assembly station construction, they can only operate trains every 15 minutes because of the single track operation from Community College to Sullivan

 

[winstonoboogie]

OL peak headways have now slipped officially to 6 minutes, it seems.

Anyone know when Green Line peak headways on "B" and "D" went to 7 minutes? I can't find PDF schedules from 2013.

They are always conservative when they list headways in the public timetables.

Orange Line peak headways are 5/5/5/6 (every fourth train comes after a 6 minute gap, otherwise it is a 5-minute headway)

B Line and D lines headways are every 5/6 headways (5.5 average) except when a three-car train is scheduled. They run a 7-minute headway in front of each scheduled three-car train trip

Also, Red Line peak headways are actually 8.5 minutes for each branch, and they run two extra Braintree trains in the peak of the peak, the combined headway briefly gets down to 3 minutes southbound around 5:00-5:20 PM.

 

[Matthew]

FWIW, I have not seen a three car train on the "B" branch for months. But I don't stand around and try to spot one either, so okay.

Thanks to the Internet Archive, I can see that as recently as Fall of 2012, the "B" branch is listed with having 6 minute headways. But 3-car operation had already been re-inaugurated in 2011. So does this represent a degradation, i.e. from 6 minutes in front of a 3-car train to 7 minutes in front of a 3-car train, in the last two years?

Also, in the Winter 2014 timetable, the "C" branch had 7 minute headways listed, but in the Spring timetable it will be back down to 6 minutes. "C" never gets three car trains. So I presume that means that "C" just had something like 6/7 and is now down to just 6 because of the Gov't Center closure?

 

[winstonoboogie]

FWIW, I have not seen a three car train on the "B" branch for months. But I don't stand around and try to spot one either, so okay.

Thanks to the Internet Archive, I can see that as recently as Fall of 2012, the "B" branch is listed with having 6 minute headways. But 3-car operation had already been re-inaugurated in 2011. So does this represent a degradation, i.e. from 6 minutes in front of a 3-car train to 7 minutes in front of a 3-car train, in the last two years?

Also, in the Winter 2014 timetable, the "C" branch had 7 minute headways listed, but in the Spring timetable it will be back down to 6 minutes. "C" never gets three car trains. So I presume that means that "C" just had something like 6/7 and is now down to just 6 because of the Gov't Center closure?

Three car trains are officially scheduled inbound from B.C in the AM at 6:38, 7:02, 7:32, 7:56, 8:19, 8:43, 9:13, and 9:38. If they don't have enough cars and/or crews to run a three-car, they will usually try and send out a two-car train after a six-minute gap instead of the scheduled 7-minute gap intended for a three-car. There hasn't been any change in B-line frequencies, just how the data is displayed. At some point someone, or maybe just some program, decided to display the longest scheduled headway at any time in a time period in the public frequency chart, which is usually longer than the actual average scheduled headway in the peak.

C-line has been improved from every 6.5 to every 5.5 minutes during the peak with the Government Center closure, to provide more service to Haymarket/North Station.

 

[davem]

FWIW, I have not seen a three car train on the "B" branch for months. But I don't stand around and try to spot one either, so okay.

Thanks to the Internet Archive, I can see that as recently as Fall of 2012, the "B" branch is listed with having 6 minute headways. But 3-car operation had already been re-inaugurated in 2011. So does this represent a degradation, i.e. from 6 minutes in front of a 3-car train to 7 minutes in front of a 3-car train, in the last two years?

Also, in the Winter 2014 timetable, the "C" branch had 7 minute headways listed, but in the Spring timetable it will be back down to 6 minutes. "C" never gets three car trains. So I presume that means that "C" just had something like 6/7 and is now down to just 6 because of the Gov't Center closure?

Remember they are sending out the Type 7s for rebuilds, and there are a decent amount of wrecked cars. Copy/pasting from NETransit:

Green Line Out of Service Cars: 34 cars (24 Type 7s, 10 Type 8s)
Type 7 overhaul program –Alstom Hornell NY: (7 cars): 3614, 3615, 3625, 3633-(B-end sideswipe damage), 3634-(A-end sideswipe damage), 3640, 3677
Type 7 at Alstom, frame or body damage, for evaluation (1 car): 3636-(B end frame damage-sent to Hornell to evaluate A-end for possible future reuse)
Type 7s stored at Riverside, frame or body damage (8 cars): 3602-(A-end derailment and impact damage), 3613, 3630-(A-end frame damage), 3654, 3679-(A-end frame damage), 3693, 3703-(wrecked beyond repair), 3707-(A-end frame damage)
(3 cars from this group may eventually be repaired and overhauled as part of 20-car option in the overhaul contract, 1 car may eventually be converted to work car, remainder expected to be used as parts source and scrapped)
Type 7s stored at Riverside awaiting slewing bearing repairs (4 cars): 3609, 3621, 3641, 3650-(cars will eventually be overhauled at Hornell)
Type 7s awaiting repair Riverside (4 cars): 3629-(resistors), 3644-(floor work), 3702-(carbody damage), 3718-(slewing bearing)
Type 8 awaiting slewing bearing repair at Riverside (1 car): 3854-in shop
Type 8 awaiting drawbar/sill/carbody repairs at Riverside (1 car): 3808
Type 8s awaiting parts at Riverside (8 cars):3807, 3832, 3843, 3844, 3873, 3886, 3891, 3893
Retired Type 8, now used as static display/training aid at Broadway station security training facility (1 car):

 

[Matthew]

Oh, I know there's a bunch of cars out for repair, which is why I thought the published headways were increasing. Peak headways have gone up from a listed "5 min" in 2007 to "7 min" today. According to winston, this is just a matter of the way they are showing it, and not a fundamental degradation in service due to something like lack of cars.