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

Looked at Worcester and H2H is gone. The train that leaves at 8 is still there but it's all stops (brutal)

PM departure times are also quite a bit different.
 
It might well be the first time since the 1890s, or even before, that a Providence train stopped at Forest Hills. There were local stops at Forest Hills, Jamaica Plain, Boylston, Heath Street, and Roxbury Crossing, all at the locations of modern Orange Line stations. A third track was extended to Readville in 1873-74, which allowed separation of local and express service; it's entirely possible that most Providence trains ran express north of Readville after this point.

In 1896, the New Haven began operating Forest Hills turns on 30-minute headways (doubled to every 15 minutes in 1897) to compete with streetcars, shortly after the completion of the grade separation north of Forest Hills. The Elevated obliterated ridership; the Forest Hills turns were back to every 30 minutes by 1904, and discontinued in 1909. Forest Hills and stops to the north were largely handled by Dedham trains (via both West Roxbury and Readville, often as a single loop) thereafter; my 1915 timetable shows only Dedham trains plus some Canton Junction and Mansfield locals making stops at Forest Hills and north.

Roxbury and Heath Street were probably closed in the 1920s or 1930s; Forest Hills, Jamaica Plain, and Boylston were closed in 1938 as part of the 88 stations case. They reopened briefly in 1940 with one daily round trip apiece; the Forest Hills stops were both on Mansfield locals, but the other two stations may have been Providence trains.

Forest Hills reopened as a stop for Needham trains only in 1973. Needham service was suspended in 1979, and resumed to the new station in 1987. I believe Forest Hills has been solely a Needham Line stop since then - until now.
 
I just took a read through the Commuter Rail section of Jonathan Belcher's inimitable history of the MBTA service district (starting on pg 356 of the PDF), and I think you are correct -- the only references to Forest Hills are on the Needham Line. So it may very well have been, as you say, well over 100 years since a Providence train was scheduled to stop at Forest Hills.

It is interesting though that it was only -- I believe -- in the early 2000s that commuter rail maps moved Forest Hills off of the "main line" more clearly to the branch line. There's an interesting mindset shift there.
 
Riverside said:
I just took a read through the Commuter Rail section of Jonathan Belcher's inimitable history of the MBTA service district (starting on pg 356 of the PDF), and I think you are correct -- the only references to Forest Hills are on the Needham Line. So it may very well have been, as you say, well over 100 years since a Providence train was scheduled to stop at Forest Hills.

It is interesting though that it was only -- I believe -- in the early 2000s that commuter rail maps moved Forest Hills off of the "main line" more clearly to the branch line. There's an interesting mindset shift there.
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The pre-1987 NEC embankment did have a number of additional NYNH&H-era stops approximating most of the Orange Line relocation, and additional infills out to Readville...but most of the service that covered (rather than expressed over) all of that denser spacing was 'circuit' in nature, like a 19th c. version of the Rail Vision's Urban Rail scheme: Terminal<-->West Roxbury<-->Dedham Center<-->Readville<-->Terminal. So while there were matching platforms at FH for the mainline, functionally nearly all service had already crossed over onto the Needham split and hit the westerly side platform only. I don't think the easterly mainline-facing platform was ever used much at all...and most definitely was derelict by the MBTA era when they decided to reanimate the westerly platform for Needham-only. The 'circuit' was the prevailing local pattern from the pre-Civil War Boston & Providence RR to the mid-1950's. And FH was doubled-up with dense another 'circuit' after the 1911 completion of the Needham Cutoff spanning W. Rox & Needham Jct. with the Boston & Albany's similarly highish-density Needham pingback via the Highland Branch & NEC.

So it didn't matter as much that FH wasn't featured on the mainline because it was covered by plenty of one-seat service via the the default hyper-local service 'circuit' patterns of the day using the Needham Line. B&A service never touched the easterly platform to begin with on its pingback, and I'm not sure NYNH&H bothered to double-dip either on most published schedules for the Readville-SS half of the 'circuit' pingback except as a flag stop. Thru service to Millis, Medway, Woonsocket etc. only existed after the Needham Cutoff in 1911 an only had access to the westerly platform because of the junction crossovers precluding easterly platform access; therefore FH may have been an outright skip on a lot of longer-distance schedules. The T didn't bring it back until after Millis had been expunged from the system, so I don't think stopping there was ever a historical expectation for Norfolk County commuters (Woonsocket only lasted 20+ years on the FH alignment after the Cutoff opened before getting chopped back to Bellingham, then West Medway).


The post-'87 mainline platform has never been used for any NEC service except in emergency service disruptions because of the way it squeezes to one side. If you did the Needham rapid transit conversion and tied the far side of the island into future Track 4 FH-Readville...it still would not be a candidate for any Providence/Stoughton/Franklin runs because of the awkward crossover games of having to switch to the far westerly tracks to reach the platform. Same sort of deal that's forcing a dilemma of whether Hyde Park can be rebuilt at all (and to what practical use) when Track 4 comes back, because if it requires an island squished to the western tracks rather than a side-platform setup it induces dispatch conflicts galore.
 
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It looks like the prevailing conclusion then is that this is the first time in well over 100 years that a Providence train has stopped at Forest Hills for scheduled service.

So that's neat.
 
Riverside said:
Forest Hills appears on the Providence schedule for the first time in (to my knowledge) at least 10 years; in fact, it's may be that it's been over 30 years since a Providence line train stopped at Forest Hills for scheduled service
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As you noted, it facilitates a Needham shuttle, much like many of the trains that terminate in Providence are timed for a cross platform shuttle to Warwick. Some people are strongly opposed to shuttles, but I suspect folks in Rhode Island will be pretty happy that the arrangement means quite a few more intra-RI trains.

Quick look at some other schedules, and I see a lot to like. Needham, for example, is almost perfectly clock facing. There's a 5 minute time shift during the 2PM hour, but then it goes back to clock facing. When ridership ticks back up, they can probably add just two morning trains and two afternoon trains to restore commute service. For the rest of the time, it's already a better schedule than typical for that line.

Other lines that I know less well seem to be getting similar adjustments, all looking like they are moving in the direction of RUR logic based scheduling.
 
If the previously proposed Franklin Line extension to Milford was to be constructed, would a station in Bellingham be sited in Bellingham Center or at Depot Street? I'm curious as to whether a station site was ever identified by any previous study for this commuter rail extension.
 
anthtucker312 said:
If the previously proposed Franklin Line extension to Milford was to be constructed, would a station in Bellingham be sited in Bellingham Center or at Depot Street? I'm curious as to whether a station site was ever identified by any previous study for this commuter rail extension.
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This is a bizarre one, because the study was conducted/paid-for/completed (with considerable local coverage and status updates) but never ever publicly released. We know zilch, nada about station sitings, schedules, ridership. Nothing about how Milford vs. Hopedale alternatives benchmarked against each other. It just got thrown straight into a file cabinet without ever surfacing a final report. It's the only such study of its kind that was confirmed completed but never saw the light of day.

Milford Branch passenger service ended during the Depression, and back then Bellingham Jct. (Depot St.) was the station because that's where the Charles River RR (a.k.a. Needham Line) crossed and served up heavier frequencies straight from Boston than the radial route out of Franklin, pooling both lines at a union station. No idea what the study from 10 years ago was favoring.

I suspect the extreme sluggishness of the schedule on such a corkscrewingly curvy branch (Franklin/Dean to Forge Park is already excruciatingly slow despite full-modern signaling and state-of-repair) would've inhibited ridership too much to give it a recc'd rating. Unless you could hand over some lesser intermediates inbound of Walpole exclusively to Foxboro schedules so the Franklin/Milford side could tart itself up with liberal skip-stopping I just don't see how that would thrive. Smallish towns + pushing buck-thirty on the clock for an all-stops local + high Zone fare isn't much of a recipe for success.

The branch is very healthy for freight and isn't going anywhere, so is always a prospect they can revisit if RUR service densification adds extra gears for a schedule-salvaging skip-stop. It's fully compatible with BOTH Foxboro locals and a Woonsocket-via-Blackstone extension each @ :30 frequencies since a re- double-tracked mainline is zippy and has relatively dispatch-straightforward traffic profile for its ample capacity. But probably not until you've densified the other all-local patterns enough that you can mount Milford as a semi-express points inbound of Walpole that knocks end-to-end times well under 1:15.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
This is a bizarre one, because the study was conducted/paid-for/completed (with considerable local coverage and status updates) but never ever publicly released. We know zilch, nada about station sitings, schedules, ridership. Nothing about how Milford vs. Hopedale alternatives benchmarked against each other. It just got thrown straight into a file cabinet without ever surfacing a final report. It's the only such study of its kind that was confirmed completed but never saw the light of day.

Milford Branch passenger service ended during the Depression, and back then Bellingham Jct. (Depot St.) was the station because that's where the Charles River RR (a.k.a. Needham Line) crossed and served up heavier frequencies straight from Boston than the radial route out of Franklin, pooling both lines at a union station. No idea what the study from 10 years ago was favoring.

I suspect the extreme sluggishness of the schedule on such a corkscrewingly curvy branch (Franklin/Dean to Forge Park is already excruciatingly slow despite full-modern signaling and state-of-repair) would've inhibited ridership too much to give it a recc'd rating. Unless you could hand over some lesser intermediates inbound of Walpole exclusively to Foxboro schedules so the Franklin/Milford side could tart itself up with liberal skip-stopping I just don't see how that would thrive. Smallish towns + pushing buck-thirty on the clock for an all-stops local + high Zone fare isn't much of a recipe for success.

The branch is very healthy for freight and isn't going anywhere, so is always a prospect they can revisit if RUR service densification adds extra gears for a schedule-salvaging skip-stop. It's fully compatible with BOTH Foxboro locals and a Woonsocket-via-Blackstone extension each @ :30 frequencies since a re- double-tracked mainline is zippy and has relatively dispatch-straightforward traffic profile for its ample capacity. But probably not until you've densified the other all-local patterns enough that you can mount Milford as a semi-express points inbound of Walpole that knocks end-to-end times well under 1:15.
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Very odd as to how the study was completed but never published, I would assume that an attempt to inquire about what happened to the study would be futile (especially since its been a decade since it was supposed to be released) but maybe it would be worth a shot.

I had always thought that the need to find a new layover site for the outer Franklin Line would've "made up" for the poor travel times, but maybe I'm wrong.

Extending the line to Hopedale as opposed to Milford seems like a crazy-transit pitch level pipedream, however.
 
Milford sits in an odd place within greater Boston. At 26 miles from downtown, it's actually "only" as far as, say, Lawrence, and not much farther than Lowell. But when you draw a straight line from Milford to Boston, it passes through a whole lot of nothing. Like, the next densely settled area on your way in is... Needham. And even if you fudge it a bit, the closest thing you have to a "density corridor" going into Boston is Medway, Millis, and Medfield, which really is not much.

Which then creates a challenge from a rail service perspective. If there's nothing between Boston and Milford, then the only way to run a "profitable" (or "efficient") rail route is to do a dog-leg or triangle thing -- which is basically what the via-Franklin alignment does. Head out to 495 from Boston, and once you hit it, bear a right for another six miles. Ends up adding about 10 miles as the crow flies, and, as F-Line mentioned, makes a lotta stops on the way.

A one stop extension to Bellingham makes some sense -- two miles of active track, and an all-stops local can be in Boston in 1:15-ish. And I mean, yeah; if you're there, it's very tempting to go just the extra 4 miles further to Milford, which is bigger, denser, and more like other towns already served by commuter rail. But yeah -- Bellingham is already pushing it.

Strictly pen-on-paper, a slightly more direct alignment would be to Framingham via Holliston -- Framingham is more of a destination unto itself than is anything on the Franklin Line, and the overall alignment is a bit less roundabout than Franklin. But most of that ROW has been abandoned for about 50 years. And of course there's not a whole lot between Milford and Framingham either. There's another ROW that went to Hopkinton before hooking in at Ashland, but it's very curvy, and was abandoned in the 1930s.

Tl;dr: Yeah, when/if the Franklin Line graduates into a stricter commuter vs medium-distance tiered system, where trains from Milford/Bellingham and Woonsocket/Blackstone can run express past Walpole, a commuter rail extension to Milford could be workable. But it faces some unusual hurdles because of the lack of density between it and Boston.
 
Riverside said:
Milford sits in an odd place within greater Boston. At 26 miles from downtown, it's actually "only" as far as, say, Lawrence, and not much farther than Lowell. But when you draw a straight line from Milford to Boston, it passes through a whole lot of nothing. Like, the next densely settled area on your way in is... Needham. And even if you fudge it a bit, the closest thing you have to a "density corridor" going into Boston is Medway, Millis, and Medfield, which really is not much.
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Which is interesting because the Needham/Millis Line was the primary user of the old Bellingham Jct. station, with the on-branch service between Franklin and Framingham-or-Hopkinton mostly being radial-oriented from the intersecting mainlines (as well as some complex B&A vs. NYNH&H service blending in the Milford vicinity until antitrust forces discouraged that). Few people rode the whole circuit; ridership would take big dumps at Franklin/Dean, Bellingham Jct., Framingham-or-Ashland where the straighter/faster mainlines intersected.

Unfortunately the short distance from West Medway to Bellingham Jct. was abandoned by the end of the 1930's and re-rationalized as a stub-end service until it ended early in the MBTA era. Which deprived the routing flex of being able to span branches. Millis-West Medway ROW is still fully intact as municipal-owned land despite its late-60's abandonment missing landbanking and the T's bulk purchase of ex-New Haven assets. But West Medway to Bellingham is hella superduper obliterated by multiple housing subdivisions plopped directly on top of the ROW. There isn't even a plausible roundabout detour route to avoid the encroachments and stitch it back together in crayon-draw fashion. That always limited the Millis/Medway restoration prospects, because it was a stub-end in the middle of extremely small towns. If Bellingham Jct. were still reachable then Milford would be a much more straightforward proposition run via Needham Jct. Way faster-on-clock than the Franklin jog, more naturally aligned to road traffic patterns between the towns. You could almost sell the service as the "Small Towns Corridor" with that being a strength.

But it's missing a critical leg that can't be plausibly backfilled even in a Crazy Pitches universe...so none of the available constituent parts work all that well. And that's why we've moved on from Millis rail in any way/shape/form (honestly, it probably works better now as a bus into Walpole timed with buff RUR service levels), and why demographically decent-looking Milford is such a square-peg fit with reference schedules and layout of fare Zones.
 
Riverside said:
Milford sits in an odd place within greater Boston. At 26 miles from downtown, it's actually "only" as far as, say, Lawrence, and not much farther than Lowell. But when you draw a straight line from Milford to Boston, it passes through a whole lot of nothing. Like, the next densely settled area on your way in is... Needham. And even if you fudge it a bit, the closest thing you have to a "density corridor" going into Boston is Medway, Millis, and Medfield, which really is not much.

Which then creates a challenge from a rail service perspective. If there's nothing between Boston and Milford, then the only way to run a "profitable" (or "efficient") rail route is to do a dog-leg or triangle thing -- which is basically what the via-Franklin alignment does. Head out to 495 from Boston, and once you hit it, bear a right for another six miles. Ends up adding about 10 miles as the crow flies, and, as F-Line mentioned, makes a lotta stops on the way.

A one stop extension to Bellingham makes some sense -- two miles of active track, and an all-stops local can be in Boston in 1:15-ish. And I mean, yeah; if you're there, it's very tempting to go just the extra 4 miles further to Milford, which is bigger, denser, and more like other towns already served by commuter rail. But yeah -- Bellingham is already pushing it.

Strictly pen-on-paper, a slightly more direct alignment would be to Framingham via Holliston -- Framingham is more of a destination unto itself than is anything on the Franklin Line, and the overall alignment is a bit less roundabout than Franklin. But most of that ROW has been abandoned for about 50 years. And of course there's not a whole lot between Milford and Framingham either. There's another ROW that went to Hopkinton before hooking in at Ashland, but it's very curvy, and was abandoned in the 1930s.

Tl;dr: Yeah, when/if the Franklin Line graduates into a stricter commuter vs medium-distance tiered system, where trains from Milford/Bellingham and Woonsocket/Blackstone can run express past Walpole, a commuter rail extension to Milford could be workable. But it faces some unusual hurdles because of the lack of density between it and Boston.
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Run a train through those towns, though, and they’d probably undergo some pretty rapid and significant growth (particularly in light of the new zoning law). Every time I drive through Medfield I’m tempted to pull up Zillow—the little downtown is that beautiful—but I would never actually consider living there because of the lack of a train connection.
 
@HelloBostonHi posted a screengrab of the construction schedules which were recently shared during a public meeting.

Of note to me is that, based purely on the Gantt charts below, it would appear that they anticipate South Attleboro reopening around May, as opposed to Winchester Center, which apparently will be closed for much longer.

I'm not sure I really believe that though? Unless they have opted to do a quicker short-term/more focused repair at South Attleboro in order to get it open again?

HelloBostonHi said:
And back on topic here is a far better screengrab of the construction schedules for this summer.
screenshot_20210330-002450_drive-png.11745
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Any info as to what happened to the "Norfolk Station Improvements Project"? It was formerly listed on the MBTA bidding site for September 2020 but it disappeared sometime in 2020. I'd be willing to guess it was a COVID-related project cancellation, but I wasn't sure if there was any other reason provided.
 
Worcester losing the Heart to Hub train is awful and should be causing Worcester folks to bark.

It also reaffirms my decision to lease a car last summer as a wise one as I used to take the H2H frequently after spending weekends in the Woo.

The fucking T is a joke and people wonder why nobody wants to take it vs drive. It is unpredictable, unreliable, and expensive. In a world where you may only need to commute into Boston 2-3 times a week a 10-12k/mi year lease @ 200-250/mo is just a much better allocation of money.
 
anthtucker312 said:
Any info as to what happened to the "Norfolk Station Improvements Project"? It was formerly listed on the MBTA bidding site for September 2020 but it disappeared sometime in 2020. I'd be willing to guess it was a COVID-related project cancellation, but I wasn't sure if there was any other reason provided.
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It's not mission-critical in priority. Franklin double-tracking Phase II is proceeding apace south of Norfolk (Google shows a lot of progress), but there aren't any meets on pre-COVID schedules that are compromised by the Norfolk platform itself being single-tracked. They're grading it all to lay down the second track through the station and MA 115 grade crossing because that's most prudent use of committed funds, but will backfill the platform abutting that new track later. Instead, what's ultimately intended to be a set of leading vs. trailing crossovers bookending the station will just turn for the interim into de facto double-to-single track-and-back-again switches. Much like Andover on the Haverhill Line persists in that setup right this moment until the Town DPW next-door relocates and they can backfill the extra platform (except unlike Andover with its freights and Downeasters there's no regularly-scheduled anything @ Norfolk that skips thru...so that completed second iron between station crossovers will just be a Maintenance parking spot and not much else until further notice). The train will thus always cross over and immediately cross back until they fund coming back to do the 2nd platform + full-high raising of the existing one. They have all the time in the world to do that platform backfilling because there won't be any direct meets here until you pulse schedules up to near-RUR service levels.
 
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F-Line to Dudley said:
It's not mission-critical in priority. Franklin double-tracking Phase II is proceeding apace south of Norfolk (Google shows a lot of progress), but there aren't any meets on pre-COVID schedules that are compromised by the Norfolk platform itself being single-tracked. They're grading it all to lay down the second track through the station and MA 115 grade crossing because that's most prudent use of committed funds, but will backfill the platform abutting that new track later. Instead, what's ultimately intended to be a set of leading vs. trailing crossovers bookending the station will just turn for the interim into de facto double-to-single track-and-back-again switches. Much like Andover on the Haverhill Line persists in that setup right this moment until the Town DPW next-door relocates and they can backfill the extra platform (except unlike Andover with its freights and Downeasters there's no regularly-scheduled anything @ Norfolk that skips thru...so that completed second iron between station crossovers will just be a Maintenance parking spot and not much else until further notice). The train will thus always cross over and immediately cross back until they fund coming back to do the 2nd platform + full-high raising of the existing one. They have all the time in the world to do that platform backfilling because there won't be any direct meets here until you pulse schedules up to near-RUR service levels.
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Thanks for the clarification.
 
meddlepal said:
Worcester losing the Heart to Hub train is awful and should be causing Worcester folks to bark.

It also reaffirms my decision to lease a car last summer as a wise one as I used to take the H2H frequently after spending weekends in the Woo.

The fucking T is a joke and people wonder why nobody wants to take it vs drive. It is unpredictable, unreliable, and expensive. In a world where you may only need to commute into Boston 2-3 times a week a 10-12k/mi year lease @ 200-250/mo is just a much better allocation of money.
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The T (and to a lesser extent MassDOT in general) is going to need to contend with major changes to the commuter market in the next few years. In particular, the T -- possibly for the first time -- is going to need to take seriously what I call the "consultant's commute": the worker who travels into the office a few times a week, or even a few times a month, and who is equally likely to do a very long day at the office when in-person (arrive at 7:30, depart at 6:30, that kind of thing) as they are to do a shortened day at the office, where they are only there for key meetings (e.g. arrive at 10:30, depart at 3:15).

Amtrak has had "consultant commuter" schedules to NYC, and to lesser extents the other BosWash cities, for years now. The old Empire Service schedules to Albany make that clear -- they're clearly intended for riders who need to travel to NYC on a somewhat flexible schedule, but aren't going to be making the ride every day. In fact, you can do such a commute to New York from destinations ranging from Washington to Springfield, Albany to Harrisburg. (And, arguably, the truly long-haul Metro-North commutes -- the runs that stretch toward two hours or more, from Poughkeepsie or Beacon, Southeast or Wassaic, New Haven or anything involving an SLE transfer -- are also much friendlier as "consultant's commutes," though I'm sure there are plenty of daily riders.)

For a long time, the T has banked on the commuter rail -- and to a lesser extent, the Park-n-Rides at Riverside and on the Red Line -- being the only option for riders because the alternative was to contend with the dual hells of 93 and downtown parking. For all of the drawbacks of the commuter rail -- unreliability, inconvenient schedules, uncomfortable seats in overcrowded cars with underpowered air conditioning -- it still beat out crawling up 93 at 5 mph in bumper-to-bumper traffic at 6:45 in the morning, every morning.

But you're right -- especially now, when such a hell would only be visited upon someone several times a month, and where they may be less traffic and where there may be more flexibility about when you actually need to be in the office -- the T is no longer going to have the captive lock that it once did.

Ironically enough, I think the solution for the "consultant's commute" (presumably geared more toward white collar workers) is the same as the one currently being implemented to support blue collar workers in places like Lynn and Brockton: regular all-day clock-facing service that's hourly if not better. Or, as TransitMatters puts it, Regional Rail.

For what it's worth, I do believe that there is a role for express/limited stop trains from Worcester and Providence. I realize I'm possibly in a minority here, but both of those cities share the combination of high ridership and long journey -- especially Worcester. Obviously these needs must be balanced against each other -- in a full-build electrified Regional Rail network with high-level platforms and short dwells, I think the need for express service is less acute, and more problematic to implement for crowding out regular local service.

But in the interim period, where for example you see 30 min/60 min headways peak/off-peak, I think there is a role for a small number of limited-stop trains in between those peak trains, in order to drop those 80-90 minute journeys down to 60-65 minutes. I do think there is a role for that in the medium-term. And I suspect that we will see the return of H2H later this year -- we're still in an awkward phase of reopening, and it looks to me like the T really wanted to demonstrate that they know how to make clock-facing schedules, so I'm guessing that combination played into the removal of H2H in the proposed spring schedules.

(And I will say this -- it is beautifully clock-facing. Trains leaving Worcester every hour on the hour from 5am to 7pm? Framingham inbound locals departing every hour on the :55 from 4:55am to 7:55am? Outbound Framinghams leaving South Station on the :35 and Worcesters leaving on the :05? I can't remember ever seeing anything like that. Providence's isn't quite as elegant, although you can tell they tried. Providence itself gets an inbound train every hour on the :15 [±3 min, with one exception] all day from 4:15am to 8:15pm. Outbound service is a bit messier, but basically is every hour on the :25 from 4:25 am to 8:25pm, with one -5 minute exception at 6:20pm, and one gap at the 5pm hour -- a very long-running gap caused, as best as I can tell, by conflicts with Amtrak's dual Acela and Northeast Regional departures during that block. But yes -- clearly much more of an intention for clockfacing schedules than I can ever remember seeing in the past.)

(Talk about missing the forest for the trees... in my previous readthrough these schedules, I didn't notice this clockfacing stuff at all. But now that I'm looking, it's everywhere.)
 
Riverside said:
But in the interim period, where for example you see 30 min/60 min headways peak/off-peak, I think there is a role for a small number of limited-stop trains in between those peak trains, in order to drop those 80-90 minute journeys down to 60-65 minutes. I do think there is a role for that in the medium-term. And I suspect that we will see the return of H2H later this year -- we're still in an awkward phase of reopening, and it looks to me like the T really wanted to demonstrate that they know how to make clock-facing schedules, so I'm guessing that combination played into the removal of H2H in the proposed spring schedules.
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Clock facing doesn't matter for someone that far out. It's all about reliability and travel time. Even with the lousy time slot H2H was a nice perk and pre-virus seemed reasonably popular.

I think the removal of H2H was more about them wanting to cut service because of the single digit% ridership; but since the spending bill required them to not cut jobs they are running a bunch of empty trains off peak that are cuttable once the money runs out.
 
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