MBTA Buses & Infrastructure

Might as well have double decker bendy buses.

the_big_bus.jpg
 
@Tangent

I should point out that LRT shouldn't be this expensive or this long. There is something wrong right now where our projects keep become expensive bloated projects. Talk all your idea of using BRT in place of LRT. But the factors that made LRT around here so insane would make BRT grow insanely too. If you want to counter the Silver Line to Chelsea as an argument against this, I have to point out, how would you try to implement what they to doing with Chelsea to GLX. The corridor won't work.
 
ant8904 said:
@Tangent

I should point out that LRT shouldn't be this expensive or this long. There is something wrong right now where our projects keep become expensive bloated projects. Talk all your idea of using BRT in place of LRT. But the factors that made LRT around here so insane would make BRT grow insanely too. If you want to counter the Silver Line to Chelsea as an argument against this, I have to point out, how would you try to implement what they to doing with Chelsea to GLX. The corridor won't work.
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Rail versus buses are like weddings versus just throwing a big party. As soon as you mention "rail" it jacks up the prices.
 
tangent, your name is apropos.

Anyway, blowing up half of Boston in order to double the size of the Green Line tunnel in width, ... that is a truly insane proposal. Want to talk about cost? Probably more expensive than the Big Dig to convert the Green Line to 4-lane BRT.

And for what?
 
Some smart commentator (Alon Levy?) said that the T doesn't have any really "big" bus routes because we've got an unusual amount of good trolleys still (unlike, say, SEPTA's thin/dangly streetcars)

Sounds right to me--but also not something you need to "fix" with bustitution, but rather leverage (eg. GLX + Crazy pitches beyond Union Sq)

Meanwhile, we have world-class BRT hardware including a subway tunnel and the Skoda dual modes, but can't even get really basic stuff like
- Permission to use the downramp into the Ted Williams
- Signal priority for SL1/SL2 across D street
- Signal priority for SL4/SL5 along Washington (can that be?)
- Extend south of Dudley Sq

There's just no way to promote more BRT until we do basic stuff we should have already done.
 
winstonoboogie said:
The 23 is about 5 miles Ashmont to Ruggles, the 28 is 6 miles Mattapan-Ruggles. As a comparison, SEPTA's Route 23 (their busiest route with 22,000 riders) is over 13 miles long.
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http://www.humantransit.org/2013/08/translink-high-and-low-performing-routes.html argues that running buses in as straight a line as possible with routes 60-90 minutes one way works well.

It looks like the typical morning peak trip on 28 is scheduled for about 38 minutes, and the outbound trip scheduled to end at 6:01 starts at 5:13; the outbound trip starting at 4:12 is scheduled to end at 5:05. The 23 trip scheduled to end at 5:49 starts at 5:03 PM.

If you draw a straight line from Mattapan to Dudley and extend it north, it more or less goes through Kendall, and if you draw a straight line from Ashmont to Dudley and extend it, it more or less goes through Central Sq in Cambridge. I think this argues that 28 should be extended to Kendall and 23 should be extended to Central. (Perhaps this would be a tiny step towards reducing crowding at the downtown subway transfer stations.)
 
Additionally, if 23 were providing Dudley to Central service on a more direct route than 1 currently does, then it would make sense to reroute 1 so that instead of serving Dudley, it would continue further east on Mass Ave, probably ultimately terminating at UMass-Boston.
 
CSTH said:
Specifically - inbound in AM the backup on 90 itself can get back to airport station, though the wait from the airport onramp (which the silver line uses) is usually a lot lighter - can take 10+ minutes to get through even from the airport (and 20+ from 1a). And sometimes even the inbound 'tubes' themselves get real slow in the AM, even after the merges at the tunnel entrance, because ~75%+ of the traffic is headed to the single-lane exit for 93 / South Boston, which means a lot more slow merging as you exit the tunnel...(a lot of folks are surprised that the exit for 93 comes up so quick, so they hit the brakes hard in the left lane as they come out into the daylight...)
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Is the failure mode that the total number of vehicles trying to use this single lane exit exceeds the 1500-2000 vehicles per hour that a free flowing lane can accommodate, or is there queue storage for the South Boston traffic light that backs up into the shared lane that also goes to I-93 south and/or backups on I-93 south with queue storage clogging access to South Boston?

CSTH said:
Outbound is even more of a mess .... within 1/4 mile before the tunnel entrance you have heavy traffic entering from both the 93 ramp (which is in its own 'tunnel' segment all the way from southbay) and the southie surface ramp (which wraps around the vent building in front of the BCEC). Then you have the HOV lane merging just inside the tunnel entrance too. If you're coming on 90EB that means again it is 10+ minutes from about where the BCEC is to the airport anytime between 4:30 and 6pm, but god help you if youre on one of the onramps. It probably takes the SL 20+ min to get from the haul road to the airport, and if you're coming from 93 at rush hour ... fuhgeddaboutit (unless you're in the HOV lane/tunnel, which is always pleasantly / depressingly vacant at all hours).

And sometimes PM rush hour 1A traffic from the traffic lights way up by Suffolk Downs backs up into the tunnel
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Is there clear evidence that the Callahan + Ted Williams tunnels having more lanes than 1A isn't the problem all or nearly all the time and not only sometimes? (Obviously some traffic like SL1 turns off before the Callahan traffic merges with the Ted Williams traffic to continue onto 1A, but if the queue storage for the 1A merge is long enough, the queue gets stored in what otherwise might be a free flowing highway that SL1 could make efficient use of. And building more tunnel capacity to store queues is not very cost effective.)

I'm wondering if adding a third northbound lane on 1A to 145 or so without adding a third southbound lane might help SL1.
 
City Observatory has a piece on bus service cost inflation that's making its way around Transit Twitter this lunch hour: http://cityobservatory.org/is-wmatas-transit-cost-problem-a-national-issue/

Although focused on WMATA, they pulled National Transit DB figures for most of the major metro areas as well. Hourly costs for Boston are up 32% from 2000-2013 and are now at $155 per hour of service. Per-mile costs are up 47% (now at $15), while service miles provided are down 11%. Note that the cost increase are on top of regular ol' CPI inflation.
 
Scipio said:
City Observatory has a piece on bus service cost inflation that's making its way around Transit Twitter this lunch hour: http://cityobservatory.org/is-wmatas-transit-cost-problem-a-national-issue/

Although focused on WMATA, they pulled National Transit DB figures for most of the major metro areas as well. Hourly costs for Boston are up 32% from 2000-2013 and are now at $155 per hour of service. Per-mile costs are up 47% (now at $15), while service miles provided are down 11%. Note that the cost increase are on top of regular ol' CPI inflation.
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Any indication much of that was the run-up in fuel costs vs wage increases?
 
That's hard to figure from the annual reports, comparing 2000 to 2012 wages actually fall a little bit (after adding in inflation), BUT "Purchased Transportation" increases about nine-fold. "Materials and Supplies" increases by about 70%.

There is time series data by mode if you look around on their site but it's always a challenge to navigate.
 
bus costs

Is there any data available for Worcester RTA's cost per hour for Proterra buses vs diesel buses?
 
It looks like some of the Proterra buses didn't get delivered to Worcester until early 2014 (maybe the first few got delivered in Dec 2013 or so?), so the 2012 report probably reflects an era when every Worcester RTA bus had a diesel engine.

Proterra's probably also a bit of a moving target, in that they've recently announced longer range buses (which are also longer buses), and it wouldn't be surprising if the reliability of the buses is improving a bit as they learn and work out the bugs.

Foothill Transit might be worth looking at if we want to find the transit agency with the longest Proterra experience. (There's also a Jay Leno video on Youtube showing the Proterra bus, with the guy from Foothill Transit claiming the Proterra bus is low maintenance.)
 
Re: bus costs

Joel N. Weber II said:
Is there any data available for Worcester RTA's cost per hour for Proterra buses vs diesel buses?
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I remember reading that they were taking the Proterra's off of certain routes, because they couldn't handle the hills all that well. There's also the complication that they only have 1 bust port at the hub with a charger. (Don't know whether that's changed or not)

Whether or not that influences their cost per hour - is something that I don't know.
 
NEW 60 FT BUSES!!!

MBTA Purchases Dozens of New, High Capacity Buses

The MBTA’s Fiscal and Management Control Board has approved the purchase of 44, sixty-foot long buses for the Silver Line and other high volume bus routes. The diesel hybrid buses will replace the existing CNG-powered buses that began serving the Silver Line in 2003.

The existing fleet of 60-foot long, articulated buses is approaching the end of its useful life, and needs to be replaced.

“Delivery of the new buses will begin next summer and continue through the winter of 2016/17 until the 44th and final bus arrives,” said MBTA General Manager Frank DePaola.

Under the contract approved unanimously by the Fiscal and Management Control Board, New Flyer, Inc. will be paid $52.6 million to manufacture and deliver the low-floor buses that will serve Silver Line-Washington Street and MBTA Bus Routes 39 and 28.

“The Silver Line is the MBTA’s busiest bus route, providing direct service between Dudley Square and Downtown Boston” said General Manager DePaola . “These new vehicles will help us ensure the delivery of reliable and safe service to thousands of daily bus riders.”

http://blog.mass.gov/transportation/mbta/mbta-purchases-dozens-of-new-high-capacity-buses/
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