MBTA Buses & Infrastructure

A lot of the terrible bus-bus and bus-train transfers can be chocked up to the MBTA's "bus stop safety standard" or however they word it. It really just means they don't want to slow cars so they put stops on the far side of intersection where possible, or in Mountfort St's case on the 47, as far from the main intersection as possible since a bus stopping close would impede a lane of traffic for 30seconds every 20 minutes.

Longfellow said:
Overheard a MBTA bus driver speaking to a passenger this past week: He says he works 13 hours a day, and fighting with the RL shuttle buses for space on Mass Ave means he gets home 30 mins later than usual every day (can explain more about the issues in Harvard Sq right now if needed). He said that loads of drivers lose their spouses as a result. Not putting him on blast, but certainly these people have a difficult job, especially with a driver shortage.
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Based on my personal experience I think he's talking about a split shift rather than 13 hours straight of work. Though I've had an 11 hour straight schedule before so it could be. When the two separate 4hr rush hour shifts are split by a few hours (and may or may not include the time it takes to go to and from the garage) it can become pointless to go home in between shifts if you live too far away. This means that you're essentially stuck on an extended lunch in uniform not wanting to get too far from where your next shift starts so it might as well be part of the workday.

For an example, I used to be scheduled on a split shift that was 6-11am then 3-6pm. I luckily live in the city but on the opposite end from the garage I worked out of so it took about 40min to get home but that gave me a couple hours to relax and eat. Some of my fellow drivers however lived in Brockton. Driving there and back, which many many operators have to because they are the ones driving the first transit trips of the morning, means using up gas and hours of their time so most just sat in the garage, took naps, went for a walk, etc.

The getting back later is also a negative externality of buses running late. Shift schedules are based off when your last run is supposed to finish. Let's say your last run on the 39 is scheduled to terminate at Forest Hills at 6:10pm. If it's 6:15 and you're just getting back to Forsyth St, tough luck you still need to finish that route however long it takes. This means that depending on traffic, accidents, and closures you're never really sure when exactly your work day will end. Makes it difficult to hold relationships if you're never consistently around and when you are you're always exhausted.

The main point im driving at is it's probably not that drivers are getting 13 hour days because they're making up for the shortage but rather everything operates on split shifts and time overruns make it difficult to live a consistent daily life schedule.
 
Sorry to ask this but can someone share the link/s for that long document that analyzed each mbta bus route recently? Google isn’t retrieving it. It was separate from the redesign plans I think—it had a section for every single bus route.
 
FK4 said:
Sorry to ask this but can someone share the link/s for that long document that analyzed each mbta bus route recently? Google isn’t retrieving it. It was separate from the redesign plans I think—it had a section for every single bus route.
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Here you go
 
Some random person on zombie reddit bashing the new T104 for not serving the actual airport.

So... should the T104 actually serve the actual airport like this post seems to be asking for, or should it stay as is terminating at "Airport"?
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Delvin4519 said:
Some random person on zombie reddit bashing the new T104 for not serving the actual airport.

So... should the T104 actually serve the actual airport like this post seems to be asking for, or should it stay as is terminating at "Airport"?
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Tbh, it's not an unreasonable request. I wonder if there is politics between the T and Massport as to who can run buses on airport property.
 
Riverside said:
Tbh, it's not an unreasonable request. I wonder if there is politics between the T and Massport as to who can run buses on airport property.
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Other MBTA buses run on the airport. Obviously the Silver Line but also the 171. And the 117 does it three times a day, looks like the new 116 will continue that.

It's more about simplifying routes and reducing trip time variability, with the trade off of needing connections. That's been the goal of the BNRD from day one. Human Transit by Jarrett Walker is a good read on why that's important, it has been the base for a lot of transit agencies bus network redesigns of late.

Also from a purely practical standpoint a circular endpoint to a trip is undesirable, it makes it difficult to schedule layovers which exacerbates bunching. Look at the SL1 which has a circle at one end and no layover capacity at the other, headway management is impossible.
 
Delvin4519 said:
Some random person on zombie reddit bashing the new T104 for not serving the actual airport.

So... should the T104 actually serve the actual airport like this post seems to be asking for, or should it stay as is terminating at "Airport"?
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In an ideal world, absolutely.

But the practical problems make this a non-starter, IMO. As @HelloBostonHi mentioned, loop termini are a pain for scheduling, and airport traffic would likely make sticking to a schedule basically impossible. I think those issues would result in major compromises to service along the rest of the route, which will ultimately be where most of its ridership comes from.
 
Delvin4519 said:
Some random person on zombie reddit bashing the new T104 for not serving the actual airport.

So... should the T104 actually serve the actual airport like this post seems to be asking for, or should it stay as is terminating at "Airport"?
View attachment 58620
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I think considering that most 104 riders are getting on the Blue Line inbound.. this isn't necessary.
 
My massport shuttle experience is, getting on one that doesn't go where the signs indicated it would go, driver getting mad at me for thinking that. Also randomly laying over in the rental car lot mid-journey, because let's add 20 min to your journey for no reason.
 
Longfellow said:
Also randomly laying over in the rental car lot mid-journey, because let's add 20 min to your journey for no reason.
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The fact that every airport shuttle does this is a pretty clear indication of who it is that MassPort wants to serve -- tourists and business travelers. I have this strange idea that a local government agency should give at least some thought to serving the local people.
 
sneijder said:
I think considering that most 104 riders are getting on the Blue Line inbound.. this isn't necessary.
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^^^ This is the correct answer.

The top priority should be to get people en mass to where they are going. If the 104 were actually an important and useful route for lots of people to get to Logan, then yes, it should do the the full loop around the terminals. And if the loop would cause scheduling problems for the 104, then it would be worth putting in the effort to try to fix them, or just throw more buses at the route.

But the 104 won't be popular for actually getting to/from Logan, with or without the terminal loop. People traveling to Boston are mostly headed downtown and especially Back Bay where the largest clusters of hotels are. Locals trying to get to Logan are extremely diffuse, spread out through all of eastern Mass., and there will be very few locals in that narrow Chelsea/Everett walkshed trying to get to the airport on any given day. There will be some, but that's dwarfed by the number of people just trying to get to the Blue Line. In that case, it's not worth causing scheduling/bunching problems along the whole route in order to help a tiny number of people going to Logan. It's best to just let them transfer to the shuttles. I don't know where you draw lines in this trade off, but I don't think this case is particularly close.
 
HelloBostonHi said:
Human Transit by Jarrett Walker is a good read on why that's important, it has been the base for a lot of transit agencies bus network redesigns of late.
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Super off topic, but there's a new, updated edition of this book. I haven't read either edition. Does anyone know if they are substantially different? There's a waitlist at the library to get the new one.
 
There are certain key nodes of bus-only travel in Boston that are subject to such neglect it really reflects poorly on the MBTA as well as on the city for failing to advocate in whatever way actually works to make these areas better.

The main gate to Franklin Park is a major crossroads of bus routes, and in addition, the gateway to the city's biggest park. The bus stops are so incredibly run down it's embarrassing. For example: the stop that's at the beginning of Circuit Drive doesnt even have a "no parking - bus stop" paint; it only has a single bus stop sign hanging off a half-leaning telephone pole, and between the curb and the sidewalk is a strip of dirt/mud and a bunch of park benches with nary a shelter in sight. Some of these are things the city could tackle: like, pave over the dirt where a major bus stop is? Build a bus shelter (Im sure there is some park/historical nonsense to get through for this, but it's doable). It just says a lot about a city's lack of concern for its people, especially its poor people, by the shoddy care provided to places like this. The same was true for years of the #1 stop at Hynes. I know it's not some huge revelation that city's and polities treat poor people like dirt but there are some areas where it really stands out and it shows.
 
FK4 said:
There are certain key nodes of bus-only travel in Boston that are subject to such neglect it really reflects poorly on the MBTA as well as on the city for failing to advocate in whatever way actually works to make these areas better.

The main gate to Franklin Park is a major crossroads of bus routes, and in addition, the gateway to the city's biggest park. The bus stops are so incredibly run down it's embarrassing. For example: the stop that's at the beginning of Circuit Drive doesnt even have a "no parking - bus stop" paint; it only has a single bus stop sign hanging off a half-leaning telephone pole, and between the curb and the sidewalk is a strip of dirt/mud and a bunch of park benches with nary a shelter in sight. Some of these are things the city could tackle: like, pave over the dirt where a major bus stop is? Build a bus shelter (Im sure there is some park/historical nonsense to get through for this, but it's doable). It just says a lot about a city's lack of concern for its people, especially its poor people, by the shoddy care provided to places like this. The same was true for years of the #1 stop at Hynes. I know it's not some huge revelation that city's and polities treat poor people like dirt but there are some areas where it really stands out and it shows.
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It's a reflection of the transportation that the decision makers and staff use. We've always seen this reflected in the attention going to roads and highways, but even within transit it's why the commuter rail gets such outsized attention compared to its ridership. People aren't taking the bus to the state transportation building. They certainly aren't taking two buses.
 
HenryAlan said:
The fact that every airport shuttle does this is a pretty clear indication of who it is that MassPort wants to serve -- tourists and business travelers. I have this strange idea that a local government agency should give at least some thought to serving the local people.
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I think that the majority of shuttle riders are also going to the car rental counter. Even if there wasnt random 20 minutes of stopping, I don't think magically the majority would ride through the car rental center.
 
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