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

The escalator at South Station is apparently not maintained directly by the T, and Channel 5 reports the T has sent a letter about the damn thing being perpetually out of service.

www.wcvb.com

Despite promises for fix, South Station escalators still not working

The MBTA told 5 Investigates it is "not pleased" with the property management company, sending them a notice of default with a demand for a corrective actions.
www.wcvb.com www.wcvb.com
 
According to the story, Ashkenazy has promised that the down escalator will be fixed within 48 hours, and the up escalator within 2 weeks. If I might make the tiniest little suggestion... once the down escalator is fixed, how about running it going UP?
 
Calling all transit nerds - I usually take the Greenbush but today I took the Fitchburg line, it flies! Why is the the Greenbush so slow? Or is it the difference between double decker coaches vs single? Fitchburg was single Greenbush always has double.
 
617 said:
Calling all transit nerds - I usually take the Greenbush but today I took the Fitchburg line, it flies! Why is the the Greenbush so slow? Or is it the difference between double decker coaches vs single? Fitchburg was single Greenbush always has double.
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It's not the cars. I'm pretty sure the flats are 79-mph max and the bilevels are 90-max. Fitchburg had a ton of track work in the not so distant past, which might have something to do with it.
 
617 said:
Calling all transit nerds - I usually take the Greenbush but today I took the Fitchburg line, it flies! Why is the the Greenbush so slow? Or is it the difference between double decker coaches vs single? Fitchburg was single Greenbush always has double.
Click to expand...

You would think the newest complete line in the system would be the one of the fastest. All high-level boarding at stations, newer track, etc.
In case you didn't read this before, Transit Matters produced a report on improving all the Old Colony Lines.
Old+Colony+Final.pdf (squarespace.com)
 
617 said:
Calling all transit nerds - I usually take the Greenbush but today I took the Fitchburg line, it flies! Why is the the Greenbush so slow? Or is it the difference between double decker coaches vs single? Fitchburg was single Greenbush always has double.
Click to expand...
Do you usually experience delays on the Greenbush or does it generally travel slower than the Fitch?
 
617 said:
Calling all transit nerds - I usually take the Greenbush but today I took the Fitchburg line, it flies! Why is the the Greenbush so slow? Or is it the difference between double decker coaches vs single? Fitchburg was single Greenbush always has double.
Click to expand...

This is due to track speed limits.

Most of the Greenbush Line's track is defined as Class 3 with a 60 mph speed limit.

Most of the Fitchburg Line's track used to also defined as Class 3 with a 60 mph speed limit. A $306 million improvement project was conducted from 2009 to 2016. Two of the components of that project, new signals and track work, allowed most of the line to be re-classified as Class 4 with an 80 mph speed limit, starting in 2016.
 
BosMaineiac said:
Do you usually experience delays on the Greenbush or does it generally travel slower than the Fitch?
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Yes delays sometimes due to train traffic what is that? And one time police activity but in general it’s just slow (I take the boat most days when im in a rush). I was surprised how fast another line felt. Like wow
 
Some construction work on the bridge over the Commuter Rail tracks near Hyde Park station (3.18.23):

MBTA Construction.JPG
 
617 said:
Yes delays sometimes due to train traffic what is that? And one time police activity but in general it’s just slow (I take the boat most days when im in a rush). I was surprised how fast another line felt. Like wow
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There is also a single track line between Braintree and Boston that the Greenbush and two other Old Colony lines have to share. This is due to the shared ROW with the red line and space constraints on either side of it. The MBTA has said this is a major choke point for these lines and it undoubtedly leads to delays from time to time.
 
bigeman312 said:
This is due to track speed limits.

Most of the Greenbush Line's track is defined as Class 3 with a 60 mph speed limit.

Most of the Fitchburg Line's track used to also defined as Class 3 with a 60 mph speed limit. A $306 million improvement project was conducted from 2009 to 2016. Two of the components of that project, new signals and track work, allowed most of the line to be re-classified as Class 4 with an 80 mph speed limit, starting in 2016.
Click to expand...
Greenbush isn't Class 4 because all the sharp curves meant it never had a chance to clear 60 MPH between stops.
 
Java King said:
You would think the newest complete line in the system would be the one of the fastest. All high-level boarding at stations, newer track, etc.
In case you didn't read this before, Transit Matters produced a report on improving all the Old Colony Lines.
Old+Colony+Final.pdf (squarespace.com)
Click to expand...
That TM report is a hot mess with all the 100 MPH running. Easily the single worst and most flawed of the bunch they've released. In short:
  • Greenbush would be a rolling vomitorium at those speeds. Absolutely no one would take such a careless view of basic rider comfort.
  • Optimizing the cant deficiency (superelevation of curves) of the curves to make it less of a rolling vomitorium costs premium $$$$...money not accounted for at all in their lowball estimates.
  • Those speeds invalidate in-full each and every quiet crossing on the corridor, which is politically impossible with all the vociferous opposition it would drum up and also costs a shitton of money in crossing upgrades to reinstate...money not accounted for at all in their lowball estimates.
  • At those speeds some of the crossings are no-go even as non-quiet crossings, increasing the large sums of upgrade money required and haggling with local governments...money not accounted for at all in their lowball estimates.
  • Infill stations were chosen based on warp-speed track meets on the minimum-most double-tracking humanly possible as a means of pinching pennies, not based on places with studied-out travel demand.
Basically...they fed some platonic ideals into a train sim, let 'er rip without taking anything else into account, zeroed out every associated cost they could to get the train sim to agree, and presented the results as a sort of drunken bar bet. Thankfully their subsequent reports on other lines have gradually gotten better, but the OC one is...very very bad.
 
617 said:
Ok so the Greenbush is slow and prone to delays along with old colony. What’s the next worst? It’s clear that not every line is created equal. What’s the best? Fitchburg seemed fast but honestly it’s still hour+ headways at peak which makes it hard to rely on. Mbta just sucks in general every mode. The boat is the prob the best bc it’s completely outsourced. Wish it ran later and on weekends.
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I’m responding here, as this thread is more appropriate for this discussion.

The Fairmount Line has the best on-time performance (99%) and the most frequent service (every 45 minutes from 5:00 am to 11:00 pm). It’s also the shortest Commuter Rail Line. Essentially, it’s the Commuter Rail Line that most resembles rapid transit.

The Providence Line (specifically the Providence branch of the Providence/Stoughton Line) is the highest ridership line, the highest-speed line (on average), and the longest line.
 
bigeman312 said:
The Providence Line (specifically the Providence branch of the Providence/Stoughton Line) is the highest ridership line, the highest-speed line (on average), and the longest line.
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I've done around 1,000 round-trips from South Station/Providence in the past half-decade. For what it's worth (nothing), I can only recall TWO infrastructure-failure delays, with all other (relatively rare) delays on the line being accounted for by:

--brush fires on the tracks during fire season,
--passenger disturbance (there was an OD once, and heart attack/stroke another time),
--the usual brief congestion in the last 500 yards to South Station, as the Southside branches converge,
--being periodically shunted off to the side for 1-2 minutes to let an ACELA take its right-of-way past
--too few cars causing massive passenger crowding, leading to overly-long de-boardings at Sharon/Mansfield

In sum, the PVD line is stupendously reliable--I'm surprised to learn it doesn't get a 99% on-time, but I guess that's because all-of-the-above get factored-in?--but it's also anomalous because AMTRAK does the corridor maintenance, not MBTA/Keolis, right?
 
DBM said:
it's also anomalous because AMTRAK does the corridor maintenance, not MBTA/Keolis, right?
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Interestingly enough, per Amtrak's Asset Line Reports, in 2018, responsiblity for the NEC segment between South Station and the RI state line was transferred from Amtrak to the MBTA.
20200531_023222.jpg


In other news, on short notice the CR managed to put together a pair of extra trains to accommodate Parade travellers - while it may have been better to just have added them to the schedule earlier so that they're known to exist, I don't exactly think of the CR as a mode being particularly great at demand response so Ill say this is very good to see, but we should see more of it on a ongoing basis.
Screenshot_20230319_173507_Twitter.jpg

Screenshot_20230319_172725_Twitter.jpg
 
bigeman312 said:
I’m responding here, as this thread is more appropriate for this discussion.

The Fairmount Line has the best on-time performance (99%) and the most frequent service (every 45 minutes from 5:00 am to 11:00 pm). It’s also the shortest Commuter Rail Line. Essentially, it’s the Commuter Rail Line that most resembles rapid transit.

The Providence Line (specifically the Providence branch of the Providence/Stoughton Line) is the highest ridership line, the highest-speed line (on average), and the longest line.
Click to expand...

now that I ride it I’d love to see CR improvements but I won’t hold my breathe. Resources are spread too thin on expansion. The fitch line had maps posted everywhere showing south coast rail…why bother?
 
617 said:
now that I ride it I’d love to see CR improvements but I won’t hold my breathe. Resources are spread too thin on expansion. The fitch line had maps posted everywhere showing south coast rail…why bother?
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Phase 1 of South Coast Rail (service to Fall River and New Bedford via Middleborough) is scheduled to be complete this year. It's fully funded and most of the construction is complete. For example, here is a picture of the completed Freetown Station from last December. The Fall River Secondary is substantially complete, while the Middleborough Secondary and New Bedford Main Line are in progress.

We are in the home-stretch. At this point there may be delays that cause South Coast Rail not to open until next year, but it is very likely to open within the next 14-months, barring major unforeseen issues. The quality of service is a different conversation entirely.
 
Hi folks, I was looking at aerials of the Eastern Route through Lynn. Does anybody know how the T uses the small rail yard located just north of the GE plant? Here is a photo of the site I'm talking about. It looks like at one point it may have been half of a wye to the Saugus branch, but the grade actually seems like that may not have worked. Has it always been a yard? Is it used for deliveries to GE, or just storing equipment? I was kind of surprised that in the aerial, it has multiple rail cars on a siding, including tank cars. But it's not listed as a T yard here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Massachusetts_Bay_Transportation_Authority_yards#

1680553995398.png
 
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