MBTA Commuter Rail (Operations, Keolis, & Short Term)

ceo said:
Don't they already double-berth the trains? I recall reading somewhere, probably here, that they moved the block boundary to the middle of the platform so they could do that.
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They do, but they expect longer trains from each origin point for the WC so it gets harder. I could see real-deal max length 9-packs being used from Boston for the event. The dwell times are definitely icky with up to half the cars on each train overspilling the ends of the platform. The passing track at the station is new-construction for the expansion of regular Commuter Rail service to F'boro, so they're looking to take advantage of that infrastructure that wasn't there when the current platform was built (I'm guessing CSX doesn't carry many high-and-wides to Attleboro and doesn't mind crawling at restricted speed on a temporary basis).

I hope Kraft is paying for nearly all of this, because Foxboro is already a 725 ft. long platform with fully up-to-spec ADA mini-high. It doesn't fall within the T's Top 50 systemwide accessibility needs.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
I hope Kraft is paying for nearly all of this, because Foxboro is already a 725 ft. long platform with fully up-to-spec ADA mini-high. It doesn't fall within the T's Top 50 systemwide accessibility needs.
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The article indicates they want to build full-high platforms to handle the increased passenger volume more efficiently.
 
ceo said:
The article indicates they want to build full-high platforms to handle the increased passenger volume more efficiently.
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More coverage from @StreetsblogMASS here.

This quote is of note:
Gesner's presentation said that the T typically carries about 7 percent of the audience to a sold-out Gillette Stadium event – roughly 4,500 attendees – in two 10-car trains.
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Given the event trains almost always sell out at $20 a ticket I think they could do a lot better than 7 percent with better service even for standard events. Hopefully the permanent full high allows that.
 
The feasibility study for a potential infill station at Osgood Landing in North Andover on the Haverhill line that was performed by Jacobs Engineering on behalf of the North Andover Planning Department is on the Select Board agenda for their upcoming meeting:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/15kKnlzlbBPUskPMl-MttRdfqTW-hDSKX/view

Related: The MBTA bridge replacement project for the Western Main line over South Elm St., just north of the Braford Station in Haverhill, began its shutdown period last night with the demolition of the existing bridge and moving in of the new bridge scheduled to take place between Friday night and Sunday morning.

I'll try to post pictures.
 
North Shore said:
The feasibility study for a potential infill station at Osgood Landing in North Andover on the Haverhill line that was performed by Jacobs Engineering on behalf of the North Andover Planning Department is on the Select Board agenda for their upcoming meeting:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/15kKnlzlbBPUskPMl-MttRdfqTW-hDSKX/view

Related: The MBTA bridge replacement project for the Western Main line over South Elm St., just north of the Braford Station in Haverhill, began its shutdown period last night with the demolition of the existing bridge and moving in of the new bridge scheduled to take place between Friday night and Sunday morning.

I'll try to post pictures.
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$55M at 40% contingency. And they're projecting more riders than any other Haverhill Line stop for greenfield TOD.

Yeah...I'm gonna say all those numbers don't wash.
 
Ward Hill makes much more sense as an infill stop; North Andover would be too close to Lawrence Station.
 
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themissinglink said:
Ward Hill makes much more sense as an infill stop; North Andover would be too close to Lawrence Station.
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The proposed station site is roughly halfway between the actual towns of North Andover and Ward Hill, and halfway between existing Bradford and Lawrence stations. I would prefer simply naming it "Osgood Landing" instead of either of the two municipalities.

F-Line to Dudley said:
$55M at 40% contingency. And they're projecting more riders than any other Haverhill Line stop for greenfield TOD.

Yeah...I'm gonna say all those numbers don't wash.
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Note that the ridership figures are the sum of boardings and alightings. Comparison to the 2018 data that they mentioned:
Boardings + Alightings (2018)Diverted to Osgood Landing
Haverhill598160
Bradford375? (not listed)
Lawrence911260
Andover73920
Osgood Landing814 total
(334 from TOD)		480 diverted from other stations
To expect 334 riders from TOD, almost entirely from "North Andover MBTA Communities Zoning", they must be betting on these 58 acres being really successful for multi-family housing:

1748658890491.png


Also, the study expect ~30% of riders from Lawrence to divert to Osgood Landing:
  • According to the 2015-17 passenger survey, 20% of riders at Lawrence walk to the station, and the other 80% come from some vehicles (729 riders based on 2018 data). (The 2015-17 survey has the total ridership at 666, which is a large discrepancy from either one-way or two-way riderships in 2018.)
  • So the study suggests that 36% of riders who are driving to Lawrence would be diverted to Osgood Landing.
  • Osgood Landing can't compare to Lawrence for riders from the west/northwest (e.g. NH I-93). From the northeast, Haverhill is shorter in distance, and Google Maps agrees that it's faster (even after accounting for the drive Osgood Landing staying on the subway longer).
  • The drivers who would find Osgood Landing more convenient than Lawrence seems to be those from due east: Georgetown, West Boxford, etc. I'm skeptical that they account for a huge portion of Lawrence's riders.
 
Teban54 said:
The proposed station site is roughly halfway between the actual towns of North Andover and Ward Hill, and halfway between existing Bradford and Lawrence stations. I would prefer simply naming it "Osgood Landing" instead of either of the two municipalities.
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Ward Hill is actually another proposed station location about a mile and a half outbound from Osgood Landing, at the Industrial Ave. exit off 495. I actually think that one would fare a little better than Osgood Landing, being near some existing not speculative TOD at the industrial park, a bit more residential density, and the 495 exit one up from the MA 213 interchange where it would tap some more useful park-and-ride traffic from a wider spread of the region and at wider relief for Lawrence garage. Osgood Landing would have to hit a grand-slam on all counts to pay for itself. Ward Hill can hit a triple and do just fine.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Ward Hill is actually another proposed station location about a mile and a half outbound from Osgood Landing, at the Industrial Ave. exit off 495. I actually think that one would fare a little better than Osgood Landing, being near some existing not speculative TOD at the industrial park, a bit more residential density, and the 495 exit one up from the MA 213 interchange where it would tap some more useful park-and-ride traffic from a wider spread of the region and at wider relief for Lawrence garage. Osgood Landing would have to hit a grand-slam on all counts to pay for itself. Ward Hill can hit a triple and do just fine.
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Full disclosure: I live just under a mile from Osgood Landing.

That said, Bradford Station is not much more of a drive, really and have ample parking (even more so once Haverhill reopens). But the Haverhill line schedule doesn't work for me when I want to go one or get out of town. Osgood Landing is also the spot where the MVRTA Boston shuttle bus used to pick up/ drop off passengers. It could work - but...

Once of the reasons this location was picked for the MBTA Communities Zoning overlay was that it had already been zoned for large scale residential development, but the parcel has yet to make economic sense to develop. The Town of North Andover hedged its bets slightly knowing that any development was years away which helped sell it to voters.
 
The stairs/ramps/elevator and the half of both inbound and outbound platforms closest to the Quill rotary at Winchester Center opened yesterday. The other half of the station had opened last year.
 
www.boston.com

Commuter rail union says legal loophole leaves operators in danger

“We carry the same passengers, and in some cases, work on the same platforms as the other MBTA public employees," a union member said.
www.boston.com
After an MBTA conductor was allegedly assaulted and threatened with a handgun last month, the worker’s union is reigniting calls to legislate more protections for MBTA commuter rail employees.

“The whole idea, hopefully, is that, with different penalties, people will think twice about laying a hand on or assaulting any of our members,” said Cole Czub, vice chairman of the Bus and Transit Assault Prevention and Safety Committee of the Sheet Metal, Air, and Rail Transportation Union’s Transportation Division, which is also called SMART-TD.
[...]
Union leadership is calling attention to a legal loophole that puts MBTA workers and employees working on the commuter rail in different legal categories when they are assaulted. In Massachusetts law, the charge of assault and battery on public employees, including MBTA transit workers, carries a stricter sentence than assault and battery.

However, commuter rail conductors aren’t technically public employees because they’re employed by Keolis, which has operated the MBTA’s 14 commuter rail lines since 2014. A bill in the Massachusetts House seeks to expand the law protecting public employees to apply to all transit workers.
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Looking at the consultant RFQ, we now have some details on the Ts plan for new diesel locomotives. While they appear to have discarded the idea of multi-mode locomotives, the T appears set to buy a minimum of 10 new diesel locomotives over the next 7 years. If the T is looking for service proven off the shelf designs though? Besides the Charger, are the F125 and MP54s even still being offered by their builders?
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Additionally, the design RFQ is out for Lynn replacement, up to 15% design but like newtonville will likely end up being a short platform - it appears that the design target is 600' and not the otherwise standard 800'.
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Stlin said:
Additionally, the design RFQ is out for Lynn replacement, up to 15% design but like newtonville will likely end up being a short platform - it appears that the design target is 600' and not the otherwise standard 800'.
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I'm really not a fan of this design. The substandard platform length isn't great - I really don't like the pattern of ignoring the agency's own standards - but it's not the end of the world. 600' is enough for a 7-car set, and I can't imagine we'll be seeing 8-car sets on the northside anytime soon. Avoiding the bridge decks may make construction easier/faster/cheaper, and they can always extend the platform if need be.

The rest of the design I'm more worried about. Only one elevator, and the alternate accessible route is a 500-foot long ramp from the far end of the platform. If the elevator is broken, that's a 1,000-foot detour, half of it on a ramp. Super-long ramps are poor accessibility solutions since they require extra time and effort to use versus an elevator.

There's also no stairs on the west half of the platform, just the convoluted ramp. In my opinion, adding a second elevator and replacing the ramp with stairs to Market Street would be a far better design at similar cost.
 
Stlin said:
Looking at the consultant RFQ, we now have some details on the Ts plan for new diesel locomotives. While they appear to have discarded the idea of multi-mode locomotives, the T appears set to buy a minimum of 10 new diesel locomotives over the next 7 years. If the T is looking for service proven off the shelf designs though? Besides the Charger, are the F125 and MP54s even still being offered by their builders?View attachment 64050
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The T isn't going to sniff at the MP54AC, even though it is still available for order from MPI. Those are genset locomotives (genset = 2 small, fast-spinning DMU-like diesel engines in lieu of 1 large, slow-spinning prime mover). The T won't even maintain its two NRE genset work locomotives because the engines themselves are a lot more complex to service, opting to throw them in storage in Rochester while they use the revenue fleet for switching. Literally refuses to maintain.

The F125 is still factory-orderable from EMD, but it's hard to see how that can compete with the Siemens Charger. There's only 40 of them, all with Metrolink, vs. 460 bought and counting of the Charger with 15 different buyers. And the F125's Caterpillar prime mover doesn't have many customers, either, so the parts market doesn't figure to be that hot either.

There's nothing orderable with a similar GE/Wabtec GEVO prime mover of the HSP-46's for parts commonality. In order to get a Tier 4 emissions-compliant GEVO engine, you have to equip it on a six-axle instead of four-axle locomotive because of the additional weight of all the emissions controls. Six-axles are dominant in freight-land but extreme overkill for passenger operations, rough-riding, and beat the snot out of the track. The T really boxed itself into a corner with the HSP-46, because it was known from Day 1 that the Tier 4 requirement was coming (the Tier 3 HSP-46 snuck in just before the compliance deadline) and they left themselves no possible upgrade path for follow-on orders.


If it's "Revenue Service Proven" that they want, I don't see how it's going to be anything other than the Charger. That's literally the only one that anyone's buying. And there's now so many of them that the aftermarket will be as flush for midlife rebuilds and resales for another 3+ decades like the F40's were. If we ever get our EMU house in order, we're going to need to be able to sell some of our displaced diesels. Nobody's going to touch the HSP-46 unicorn on the aftermarket with all the problems it's had. That pretty much means you must have Chargers in order to recoup the investment post-electrification. And, yes, we need more diesels even though we need electrification quite very badly, because the GP40MC's are a half-century old, too old for another rebuild, and simply don't have more than a handful of years of passable service left in them before we've got nothing to run. If Regional Rail-like service increases are going to come before most of the wires get strung up, the existing diesel numbers are going to have to stretch even if we do start making soonish gains on the electrification front. So if it's an emergency (and it is), better to future-proof by buying a diesel that has actual bankable resale value in a post-electrification universe.
 
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