MBTA Buses & Infrastructure

KentXie said:
Another smart idea is to take out St Paul Street and Babcock Street. That stretch of road only needs 3 stations (BU West, Pleasant Street, Packard's Corner) instead of 5.
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That's already in progress. BU West, St Paul, Babcock and Pleasant are being consolidated into 2 stations instead of 4.
 
Re: Summer St, Congress St, SL1, and SL3

dwash59 said:
Presumably they would work the way they work in the post you link to in the paragraph after this sentence. You have floating bus stops...

Video is from the UK, so everything is on the left, but here's an example.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlyBu-GDpE4
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In that video, it looks to me like the private property fence line is such that the road is wider at the floating bus stop than at the area after the bus stop.

If you build Ari's proposal, it looks to me like the road is wide enough for the not-at-the-bus-stop cross section, but are you going to demolish parts of buildings at Melcher and A St to make room to widen the street for the floating bus stops?
 
citylover94 said:
Edit: Loop routes like the one you are describing are not very effective especially if they run in a one way circle. The reasons for this are that people don't want to have to ride three quarters of a loop to get from one point to another when a non-one way loop route would get them there faster and it also makes scheduling in breaks for drivers difficult because the route never ends but people have to be kicked off the bus at some point so the driver can have a break. I don't know if this would work well here, but my guess is there are other better options than a loop even a two way loop that is essentially just a random circulator for airport/Chelsea to downtown access that replicates service that already exists and can be improved.
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One other issue with the existing highway ramp configuration is that an eastbound bus on Summer St can very easily stop at the Convention Center and then proceed to the on ramp next to the Ted Williams Tunnel (assuming the T can get permission to use that ramp). In the reverse direction, there's no easy way to stop right in front of the Convention Center on the way to South Station without taking a major detour that would delay passengers going to South Station.
 
early morning buses and end of night service

Early morning bus service expands starting Sunday.

The 3:00 to 4:00 AM full schedule is: 28 departs Mattapan 3:20, arrives Dudley 3:30, another 28 trip departs Mattapan at 3:59; 15 departs Kane Sq 3:33, arrives Dudley 3:40; 171 departs Dudley at 3:50, gets to Andrew at 3:58 (and continues to make airport terminal stops at 4:09 through 4:21).

I find this baffling in terms of vehicle utilization. If the 3:20 to 3:30 28 becomes the 3:59 Mattapan 28 departure, why doesn't it run in revenue service from Dudley back to Mattapan? If the 15 becomes the 171, why does it wait 10 minutes at Dudley?

It also appears that the last outbound 28 trip on weekdays, scheduled to arrive at Mattapan at 1:34 AM, deadheads back to the Southampton garage. Is there any good reason not to run this in revenue service to Dudley? (Maybe Blue Hill Ave to Hampden St is slightly shorter than going through Dudley Sq?) And do the last few inbound trips on 28 get enough riders heading to Ruggles to justify running them in revenue service beyond Dudley?
 
Re: early morning buses and end of night service

Would it make any sense to add an outbound 28 trip departing Dudley at 3:05 AM and arriving at Mattapan at 3:15, and an outbound 18 trip departing Andrew at 3:25 AM with Dorchester Ave @ Hancock St being the last 18 stop with early morning service? It looks to me like that might be doable with paying the drivers for an extra 5 or 10 minutes at the start of the shift, if it turns out that the drivers are currently getting paid for deadhead time.
 
location of batteries in battery powered buses

https://electrek.co/2018/04/06/electric-bus-rolls-over-crash-new-flyer/ claims in the body of the article that Proterra puts the batteries in the floor, and has a comment claiming BYD does likewise (at least in London), and in the body of the article claims that New Flyer puts batteries in their all electric buses in the roof, and it appears that recently there was a data point collected which suggests that the roof is not such a good place if you prefer buses that don't roll over...
 
The Sullivan lower busway and parking area is getting reconfigured starting this month. There was a public meeting last week, a powerpoint with schematics is available on the linked event site.
 
Re: location of batteries in battery powered buses

Joel N. Weber II said:
https://electrek.co/2018/04/06/electric-bus-rolls-over-crash-new-flyer/ claims in the body of the article that Proterra puts the batteries in the floor, and has a comment claiming BYD does likewise (at least in London), and in the body of the article claims that New Flyer puts batteries in their all electric buses in the roof, and it appears that recently there was a data point collected which suggests that the roof is not such a good place if you prefer buses that don't roll over...
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On the other hand, if you click the load more comments thing several times, it appears that things may not be that simple; one comment claims ``The BYD buses I've had a close look at have a split battery pack with 1/2 on the forward roof section and the other 1/2 at the rear where the diesel engine would normally reside.''

Part of some other comments from the comment section of that article:

While both buses are equipped with ramps, the New Flyer has a 6:1 slope ramp, while the Proterra has a steeper 4:1 ramp. This may be no biggie to you able bodied folks, but to someone in a wheelchair it is huge.

Also, the New Flyer has a lower floor, which facilitates un-kneeled loading at near curb height, a great feature for the elderly or those with strollers. The Proterra has added height caused by the floor batteries.
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After some searching (because Proterra doesn't list the numbers), found that the step heights raised/kneeled are as follows:

Proterra: 15.9"/13.1"
New Flyer: 14"/10"

For you and me that's nothing major, for someone with mobility issues that's can be huge.
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Investing more in raised boarding platforms instead of just using the default sidewalk height is probably appropriate, but if New Flyer has a different height than Proterra that would make a mixed bus fleet problematic (but I guess both buses can line up with a 14" height, maybe, depending on if Proterra can go to a mid level position), and 8500 bus stops is a lot to rebuild.

It's not clear to me that there's any good reason why you couldn't put all the batteries under the raised floor at the back of the bus, but apparently bus manufacturers generally don't do that.

And this appears to be the official statement:

New Flyer has made repeated attempts to contact Electrek regarding factual correction of this story. As Electrek has not responded, New Flyer would like to set the record straight here:

Preliminary findings suggests operator error as the likely cause of the accident and not the position of battery packs on the New Flyer bus. Blaming the positioning of batteries is irresponsible speculation, and ALL North American electric bus manufacturers (New Flyer, BYD, Proterra and others) have provisions for some rooftop located batteries.

It is irresponsible for any party to suggest without evidence that an incident involving a test bus at New Flyer’s facility has any relevance to battery location.

All New Flyer buses on the road today meet or exceed all applicable motor vehicle regulations and safety standards.
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And yet sometimes the regulations haven't caught up with technology changes or just aren't optimizing for safety very well...
 
HenryAlan said:
Seems like a missed opportunity to really actually fix things.
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A half-assed solution you say?
It will help get people to school and work on time, but, as you say, won't be the game changer to get people back onto public transportation.

When this was first publicly discussed about 18 months ago at City Hall, the Mayor's Dept of Neighborhood Services Dan Murphy and Councilor's Tim McCarthy's office were very worried about the handful of businesses on the SB side of Washington that just might suffer if customers couldn't park on that same side of the street. They were only slightly less worried about on-street parking, despite the parking study showing most cars parked on that section of Washington Street were not local.

Timid steps by a very wary Administration; hopefully these will be the first of many more and larger steps.
 
I'm a lot more disappointed by how slowly the morning inbound bus lane is happening for the 34 relative to Everett's upper Broadway timeline than I am by excluding the afternoon outbound bus lane from the initial phase. Depending on whether you count the two days this operated in December or not, there's either a 12 month delay or a 17 month delay from when Everett's upper Broadway bus lane happened and when Boston's 34 bus lane pilot started. And Everett immediately made their pilot permanent instead of taking a break for the winter the way Boston did.

Apparently Everett is different than the 34 in that Everett doesn't have significant traffic congestion in the afternoon, which means that in Everett's case, taking away morning rush hour parking from businesses that mostly don't open until after the morning rush hour ends didn't really seem to have much chance to harm much of anything (and it seems to be the case that there's enough parking available near Broadway but not on the southbound side for the breakfast businesses).

Many people who will complain loudly to politicians seem to not be very good at understanding proposed changes if they haven't experienced those changes themselves. Clearly there are folks here who are understandably frustrated by this aspect of human nature, but I think implementing the morning only bus lane as the first stage is going to be useful for providing a clear demonstration of the benefits of a bus lane that will be difficult to argue against, and it will be useful to have that demonstration and experience in place when we have the discussion of making the afternoon bus lane happen.

Do Dan Murphy and Tim McCarthy's office have an estimated number of people who they think might be affected by the parking difficulties that we could compare to the number of affected bus riders? Can we get bus riders to talk to these businesses about how much time they waste on the bus, and if they're shopping there regularly, to maybe talk about considering a boycott of the business if it won't support the bus lane?

It would also be great to get these businesses to estimate how many people they think use nearby parking to shop, and how long they expect people to occupy those parking spaces, and therefore how many parking spaces their business uses, and then to look at how many immediately adjacent on street parking spaces actually exist for that business. I think I read something somewhere in the last several months suggesting that if you do this math you may find that fewer than 10% of the customers of a business can fit into the parking spaces right out in front of the business.

I'm also wondering if we should be continuing the 34's bus lane south of Roslindale Sq and disappointed we aren't seeing any significant discussion about short term bus lane projects elsewhere within the Boston city limits.

https://twitter.com/wutrain/status/983837972968693760 suggests it would be useful for people who support the bus lane to provide feedback to the city via meetings, phone calls, or email.
 
Joel N. Weber II said:
I'm also wondering if we should be continuing the 34's bus lane south of Roslindale Sq and disappointed we aren't seeing any significant discussion about short term bus lane projects elsewhere within the Boston city limits.

https://twitter.com/wutrain/status/983837972968693760 suggests it would be useful for people who support the bus lane to provide feedback to the city via meetings, phone calls, or email.
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The lane is not for just primarily for the 34 bus but actually for the many routes that travel from Forest Hills to Roslindale Square - all of the routes do not continue down Washington St and the 34 bus alone does not have the ridership to justify continuing the bus lanes past Rozzy Sq - there are a lot more worthy routes and corridors than Washington Street south of Rozzy Sq.
 
It might make sense to continue the lane as far south as Albano St. Several of the bus routes do leave Washington at the Square, but three besides the 34 continue on Washington. There is a significant morning backup between Albano and the square, but not further south than that. That's only one more block, it should be feasible.
 
Joel N. Weber II said:
Do Dan Murphy and Tim McCarthy's office have an estimated number of people who they think might be affected by the parking difficulties that we could compare to the number of affected bus riders?
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While I'm sure what has to be the busiest store on that section of Washington St, Archdale Liqueur, has quite a few customers, I'm sure their daily customer base is far, far less than the 19,000 daily bus riders along this corridor.

But, I also tend to think that much of the concern from Dan Murphy and Tim McCarthy's Office is based on years of experience from businesses telling them repeatedly and loudly that each and every parking spot is worth tens or hundreds of thousands in revenue. (Having heard this in several towns, I suspect that this "fact" comes from a trade magazine based in the car dependent suburbs). Just as they have heard from residents that parking is so problematic that every new dwelling must have at least two off-street parking spaces, no matter how close to transit, because the resident fears that someone might take their very own parking spot in front of their house.

At some point, I think, that Dan Murphy and Councilor Tim McCarthy's office began to believe this. Or maybe they just truly fear the backlash if they even suggest that removing parking, even temporarily, is a public benefit.

I know that at least one person at BTD has asked businesses along the stretch what they think, was told the answers were a very interesting mixed bag.

WalkUP Roslindale will be promoting the trial and asking for the public to contact City officials and tell them how much better their commute is, so will LivableStreets Alliance. I can't imagine that Transit Matters won't get involved with trying to promote the heck out of this. Rozziebikes is trying to promote a few group rides along the bus/bike lane (it functioned well as a shared lane last fall when I rode my bike on it). They and LivableStreets will be talking it up at the Rozziebikes free bike repair day at Archdale Development on May 5th.

Since Bike to Work week happens during the trial, I'm sure Michelle Wu and Tim McCarthy (and other City Leaders) will be asked to join the Roslindale convoy to City hall on Bike to Work Friday (Tim rode last year, and a very pregnant Michelle started us off) I hope to see them both this year.
 
What exactly is Tim McCarthy himself busy doing that's more important than finding ways to save time for 19,000 bus riders such that he chooses to delegate this to a staffer?

Late in the first week of the pilot, could advocacy groups work with the businesses who enthusiastically support the afternoon bus lane to get those businesses to put up signs (perhaps in windows of those businesses where they'll be visible from the sidewalk on Washington St) expressing that support?

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2017/11/21/bus-lanes-are-the-new-parking-lanes/ discusses arrival mode surveys. Is there some way the city and/or advocacy groups could work with businesses that want more data to survey the customers of those businesses to figure out how they arrived (and intend to depart) when they shop and whether they or other members of their family or household ride the outbound buses during the afternoon weekday rush hour?

It appears that several blocks of Washington St between Forest Hills and Roslindale Sq have residential buildings on the southbound side of the street. Could we have a phase where there's an afternoon bus lane next to the residential buildings and next to the businesses that support the bus lane, but with the businesses who are less convinced keeping their on street parking?
 
I don't think Councilor McCarthy has delegated this to a staffer, but his Chief of Staff, Lee Blasi, seems to play an oversized role in anything parking or transportation related. She has repeatedly expressed skepticism about reduced parking minimums and development. She is very supportive of business parking and appears to think their existence relies on it.
 
If the staff of an elected official is opposing density and transit, have any advocacy groups had a discussion with that elected official (preferably citing meeting minutes with comments by that staff member and references explaining how those things the staff member is saying end up harming transit usability and housing costs) about whether that elected official supports the staff member's statements or is going to have a conversation with the staff member about toning down those comments in the future?
 
Fields Corner to Arlington Center via Dudley, Ruggles, and Harvard

If you use the Measure Distance tool in Google Maps to make a straight line from Fields Corner to Arlington Center, it's 9.25 miles as the crow flies and goes quite close to Dudley Station, Ruggles, and Harvard Sq.

If we wanted to create a new bus route that roughly follows that line, perhaps it could follow Adams St, Quincy St, Blue Hill Ave, Clifford St, Warren St, somehow get from Dudley Station to Ruggles Station, then Ruggles St, Louis Prang St, Fenway, Park Drive, find its way to and across the BU Bridge, then Brookline St, Putnam Ave, Mass Ave, Waterhouse St, Garden St, Sherman St, Rindge Ave, Cedar St, Mass Ave, although a few of these streets are small residential streets where bus service might be challenging.
 
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