Replying to comments re the new commuter rail schedules here.
In general, I wonder if we are seeing the influence of Eng's tenure at the LIRR -- I feel like we are seeing more "creative scheduling" than the T has historically been willing to do, in a way that reminds me of LIRR/MNR schedules. This reinforces my theory that Eng has been saying things like "Why are we running trains past platforms at Readville and South Attleboro without stopping?" and "Yes, I know it'll be too difficult to get the first train of the day all the way out to Haverhill, but there's no reason we can't start that trip at Lawrence, is there?". All of which is encouraging to me, as it suggests a willingness (and the needed political clout) to shake the T out of its provincial "we've always done it like this"-ness.
Other random things I noticed
Notably, I think this may be the first time that Anderson/Woburn has been listed on an ordinary
Haverhill Line schedule (it's been listed on a number of "recovery service" or "severe storm service" or bus diversion schedules).
Yes, I wonder if this is an "art of the possible" decision, perhaps due to trains being turned or staged at Readville Yard? Or are these accommodating freight moves in and out of the Yard? It's also interesting that this practice is also done on weekends -- the "creative scheduling" is mostly weekday-only otherwise.
It's hard to tell for sure, but I also think it may be a single set that consistently turns at Fairmount rather than Readville.
(Oh, looking below at the Franklin Line schedule, it looks like there is potentially some correlation between a Franklin train through-running and the previous/subsequent Fairmount train originating at Fairmount instead of Readville?)
This is maybe the most interesting thing about these new schedules. I wonder if this is being done as a "practice run" to test the viability of using a Readville Transfer more broadly. I'm sure Eng has been thinking about LIRR practices at Jamaica, so I wonder if he has theories he wants to test out.
The 4:23am one seems pretty gratuitous, and probably was just the easiest way to add a third inbound departure. It actually looks like there are four outbound departures though, departing Boston at 11:18am, 2:20pm, 3:52pm, and 5:40pm.
I'm still a little more optimistic than I think you are, though. Pre-pandemic, if we look at trains that arrive at South Station between 7am and 9am (i.e. the start of the whitecollar workday), there were five departures from S Attleboro:
- 6:09am
- 6:32am
- [gap for a train that originated at Attleboro]
- 7:23am
- 7:39am
- 8:00am
By my read of the 2018 passenger counts, 78% of South Attleboro's boardings came from trains that arrived in Boston before 9am. 62% came from those five trains listed above, with the 7:23am crushing the competition, 6:32am coming in a strong second, and the 6:09am pulling in a respective third place.
| Pre-Pandemic Departure | Boardings | Post-Pandemic Equivalent |
|---|
| 5:09 AM | 98 | |
| 5:34 AM | 88 | |
| 6:09 AM | 123 | 6:11 AM |
| 6:32 AM | 185 | |
| 7:23 AM | 251 | 7:21 AM |
| 7:39 AM | 59 | |
| 8:00 AM | 77 | |
In other words,
they are restoring two of the three most heavily utilized departures (which alone account for 33% of all boardings all day). If they manage to attract ~half of the riders from the 6:32am, that's
41% of South Attleboro's total all-day boardings... achieved with just two departures (which equals 10% of departures all day -- achieving 41% performance with 10% of the resources is a pretty good ROI).
South Attleboro historically was in the top 12 stations across the whole system; at 41% ridership, it would be comparable to
Littleton/495, Wakefield, Canton Center, Roslindale Village, Newburyport, Lawrence, Waltham, and
Greenbush. (33% puts us on par with Hanson, Lynn, Needham Junction, Whitman, and Cohasset.) Pretty much all of those are seen as successful stations.
Going outbound, the six highest ridership trains totaled 763 alightings at South Attleboro (70% of overall alightings). The trains departing BOS at 3:55pm and 5:40pm accounted for 273 (25%); adding the 4:53pm train in brings us to 423 (39%). (The spread of ridership on the afternoon departures is more evenly distributed, with the 4:53pm and 5:40pm leading the pack, but not as severely as the morning trains.)
Anecdotally, my experience was that if you were lucky and could leave work early-ish, you'd catch the 4:53, but if someone insisted in running the end-of-day meeting all the way to 5pm, you got stuck on the 5:40. So I'm guessing a fair fraction of the 4:53's ridership would consider the 5:40. So I'd SWAG it that the
T's new afternoon departures will capture about 33% of the pre-pandemic ridership. Again, that's not amazing, but it's still solid and would put
South Attleboro right in the middle of the pack systemwide.
So, I dunno. It's definitely an anemic schedule for sure, and the lack of flexibility will probably dissuade some riders. On the other hand, South Attleboro is in a lower farezone than Pawtucket/Central Falls, so perhaps that will in turn attract riders. Overall, though, getting between 33% and 41% performance out of 10% of resouces... that seems like a reasonable ROI to me.
