As awesome as this will be for bicyclists, ultimately, all I can think of here is that, in terms of mass-transit connectivity... you can't bring them on the Green Line.
No matter how much the specific Green Line model gets improved over the generations (be they Breda-, Boeing-, Kinki- or Other-manufactured), as long as the Green Line is trolley-based, instead of subway-based, we're always screwed:
1.) no bicycles permitted onboard
LRV bike racks are old hat. They're more standard than optional on new makes these days, anyway. We need 100% low-floor vehicles in order to do them, and need the 'stretched' trains where a single Type 10 car is as long as 1-1/2 current cars and has the extra doors. Current half-high/half-low fleets eat up too much interior space at the step interface and the cars have too few doors to speed boarding/alighting for bike patrons. It's a legit bottleneck on the current vehicles, but we'll be free-and-clear with the wholesale fleet replacement.
Tell you what...if the first public presentations on the Type 10 interior livery
DOESN'T include combo wheelchair berth/bikeracks aboard every car...scream real loud. They'll be totally out of excuses.
2.) dwell times at stations suck due to how long it takes for everyone (but especially the elderly/infirm/disabled) to climb up the steps, vs. subway cars with their flush-to-the-platform boarding.
To be a relic of the past when all low-floor vehicles are adopted. Full-level platform boarding requires re-topping the ADA platforms to 10 inches, but even if it isn't full-on level it's 1 step at worst and a bridge plate interface. This will cease to be any issue after the half-high/half-low cars are purged.
3.) trolleys derail more than subways (A LOT more in terms of derailments per mile, no?)
No. This is dead wrong and over-alarmist. LRT as mode does not have any above-and-beyond derailment risk over HRT or RR. The Bredas
particularly being a flawed center-truck design prone to it is not an indictment of the mode; it's an indictment of a crappy design/designer. And "per mile" is
not a reliable metric for measuring MTBF, because the way duty cycles vary lash-up to lash-up makes sample-size comparison futile. There are official duty cycle metrics for measuring all manner of faults in the shop and with accident statistics...but it is NOT milepost-based.
4.) slower than subways (?)--maybe I'm wrong on this one, but I feel like the Green Line on straightways doesn't exceed 30 mph, from having peeked over the conductors' shoulders from time-to-time to glance at the speedometer. The Blue/Orange/Red exceed Green Line speeds to a significant degree, surely?
Completely and totally false. The Green Line is speed-rated for 50 MPH on the D Line's Newton straightaways with the block signals timed accordingly, though in-practice it has been internally bulletin-restricted to 45 since the deadly 2007 rear-ender crash because of lack of enforced-stop signaling and some signal heads on the D that are prone to sun glare visibility issues. GLT signal upgrades will directly address that, and the speed limit will be re-uprated north of 50. Speeds also currently exceed 40 on the E between Prudential and Symphony because of the very uncongested Huntington tunnel. The fastest HRT speeds are the 49 MPH max allowable by the Red Line's ATO signal system on parts of the JFK-North Quincy stretch. On the Blue Line, because it operates on old-timey trip-stops for signal system enforcement, operators have leeway to gun it in between signal blocks before they're assessed a speed penalty...so it is physically possible to see a radar gun reading of 50+ for short inconsequential stretches. But likewise the signal system there is not set up for traffic management @ 50+, so it's only a momentary occurrence. The D Line's block signals being for-real timed for 50 MPH makes Green the
one and only rapid transit line in Boston set up to run that fast.
Also...let's get our basic terminology straight before this gets even more confusing. A "subway" is a grade-separated any-mode tunnel. The running applications are LRT vs. HRT.
5.) Less efficiency in terms of packing in bodies per train-set. Green Line can't couple as many cars and each car carries a lot less bodies than the subway cars. This is a crippling issue during rush-hour, I'd argue.
FALSE. A 48.5 ft. long Blue Line 0700 car seats 35 passengers per car. A 46 ft. long
PCC seats 41, a 72 ft. long Type 7 seats 46, and 74 ft. long Type 8/9's seat 44. Max-size GL trains are 3-cars @ 132-136 seats total, while max-size BL trains are 6-cars @ 210 seats total. However, until 2007 when the Blue Line platform lengthening project was completed the max-size BL consist was only 4-cars/140 passengers...a mere 4-6 seat difference from Green LRV triplets that have intermittently run ever since the late-70's with modern vehicles and 1920's with various streetcar-make predecessors including the PCC's.
The Type 10 order and GLT platform lengthening makes it such that all GL trains systemwide will eventually be run as 2-car 'supertrain' sets with equal-or-better capacity to the 3-car sets that have only been intermittently used throughout history until now. Unless Blue adopts Orange-like dimensions after Red-Blue eliminates the length-stunting Bowdoin curve and adds seats, every peak-period Green Line train post-GLT projects to be at about 70% the capacity of any current (or open-ended future) Blue set).
And again...the fact that the half-high/half-low layout of the Type 8's/9's is very flow-inefficient for the bodies it does pack is something that will be completely going away when we adopt stretched all- low-floor trains.
What else? Am I wrong on any of these? Long-term improvements? (assuming that switching to subways on the Green Line is a permanent non-starter)
You're not just wrong on any of them...you're wrong on ALL of them. And each is point-by-point being addressed by GLT.
Again...if this rant was spurred on by lack of onboard bikes, make sure your voice is heard when the Type 10 interior design is public-previewed because onboard racks are standard-issue in LRT World today and there will be zero excuses for Boston not following suit when we adopt that new stretched low-floor design.
