MBTA "Transformation" (Green Line, Red Line, & Orange Line Transformation Projects)

I typically dont head that far out on the D, but the couple of times l have the trolley has come to a complete or near complete stop [at the trail crossing between Newton Center and Chestnut Hill] before proceeding without any peds in sight. I assumed this was standard Ops, but based on F lines reply did l just hapen to get overly cautious motormen? Probably a 10 second waste compared to staying at track speed, so not a huge deal overall. But on the other hand, with the abysmal travel times to Riverside post crash, any time savings helps.
 
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I typically dont head that far out on the D, but the couple of times l have the trolley has come to a complete or near complete stop before proceeding without any peds in sight. I assumed this was standard Ops, but based on F lines reply did l just hapen to get overly cautious motormen? Probably a 10 second waste compared to staying at track speed, so not a huge deal overall. But on the other hand, with the abysmal travel times to Riverside post crash, any time savings helps.

It might be situational when they do/don't pause. In the fallout from the fatal rear-ender the NTSB fingered signal visibility in sun glare conditions, which is why speed limits have been so punitively restricted. The crossing may be lumped in with a bulletin-ordered auto-pause at low sun angle (sun glare can get pretty bad outbound on the PM rush...not sure if conditions are reciprocal on the AM inbound). But it's not 24/7...or at least not adhered to every single time. I haven't ridden the D past Reservoir since probably mid-'18, but don't recall any patterned time-bomb stops out there (at least nothing above background level...i.e. normal yellow signals from congestion ahead). It'd definitely have been bitched about extensively if it were an all-permanent feature, because if you've ever been a standee on a Type 7 (pre-rebuild at least) at 45 MPH you know how violently the Kinkis can rock from side-to-side at full throttle. Moderate-hard braking is downright uncomfortable on that stretch if you're clinging to a pole while getting thrown around like a ragdoll under centifugal force. It's the only major ride-quality flaw those cars have vs. their predecessors or successors, but can literally beat the snot out of you on this stretch of D.
 
Progress still utterly glacial, but a 17th Type 9--car 3917--finally got accepted into service after months of the ticker being stuck at 16. All 24 cars have been on the property since early-Oct., so who the hell knows what the delay is with the remaining 7 acceptances, all of whom are lighting up the new train tracker with regular testing so presumably aren't being held at Riverside shop for any warranty problems. And car 3906, delivered in early Fall 2019, is still bafflingly AWOL from the revenue acceptances after 1 full year for reasons completely unknown.
 
I typically dont head that far out on the D, but the couple of times l have the trolley has come to a complete or near complete stop [at the trail crossing between Newton Center and Chestnut Hill] before proceeding without any peds in sight. I assumed this was standard Ops, but based on F lines reply did l just hapen to get overly cautious motormen? Probably a 10 second waste compared to staying at track speed, so not a huge deal overall. But on the other hand, with the abysmal travel times to Riverside post crash, any time savings helps.

It's a 10 mph crossing just like all of the Greenline road and pedestrian crossings. It's very lightly used and seems a ridiculous rule especially at night or in the winter. However they will actually setup a radar trap there sometimes to get an operator or two. An official in a T car will be stationed there and may even lock the gates when they do vehicle testing which is often after last train (i.e., about 1 - 3 AM). Always seemed like overkill to me and never heard of anyone ever getting hit here. BTW - There are signs posted that warn of "High Speed Trains".
 
Progress still utterly glacial, but a 17th Type 9--car 3917--finally got accepted into service after months of the ticker being stuck at 16. All 24 cars have been on the property since early-Oct., so who the hell knows what the delay is with the remaining 7 acceptances, all of whom are lighting up the new train tracker with regular testing so presumably aren't being held at Riverside shop for any warranty problems. And car 3906, delivered in early Fall 2019, is still bafflingly AWOL from the revenue acceptances after 1 full year for reasons completely unknown.

3918 follows into service just 4 days later, so there's now 9 pair lash-ups in revenue service. NETransit now accounts for the final 6 non-accepteds as indeed "in testing" (confirming what the TransitMatters New Train Tracker has unofficially showed for some time), so no mechanical problems apparent including with mysteriously tardy car #3906. They're just backed up because reasons.

Hopefully this bodes for rapid pace rest of the way and a complete wrap on the order within the dwindling calendar year. Next fleet focus is going to be loading up for procurement bear on parts sources for the concerningly bloated and growing dead line of out-of-service Bredas...which isn't doing ADA compliance any solid while the Kinki rebuilds are running ahead at such large disparity of available service units. Too many all high-floor 7-7's projected to be backfilling post-COVID peak slots in '21 unless they can start moving much faster getting those too-long shuttered Type 8's into the shop for overdue repair.
 
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3918 follows into service just 4 days later, so there's now 9 pair lash-ups in revenue service. NETransit now accounts for the final 6 non-accepteds as indeed "in testing" (confirming what the TransitMatters New Train Tracker has unofficially showed for some time), so no mechanical problems apparent including with mysteriously tardy car #3906. They're just backed up because reasons.

Hopefully this bodes for rapid pace rest of the way and a complete wrap on the order within the dwindling calendar year. Next fleet focus is going to be loading up for procurement bear on parts sources for the concerningly bloated and growing dead line of out-of-service Bredas...which isn't doing ADA compliance any solid while the Kinki rebuilds are running ahead at such large disparity of available service units. Too many all high-floor 7-7's projected to be backfilling post-COVID peak slots in '21 unless they can start moving much faster getting those too-long shuttered Type 8's into the shop for overdue repair.
Given the headways that the T is talking about in the "Leaving Behind" process, are we thinking that we'd even see that many 7-7s? It feels like they're running skeleton services on the branches -- 13 minutes on off-peaks? Which in my mind, sounds more like 15 minute services. And, what, on the weekends 20-25 minute gaps?
 
Given the headways that the T is talking about in the "Leaving Behind" process, are we thinking that we'd even see that many 7-7s? It feels like they're running skeleton services on the branches -- 13 minutes on off-peaks? Which in my mind, sounds more like 15 minute services. And, what, on the weekends 20-25 minute gaps?

If that bluff gets called, which is no sure thing. But even the most pessimistic amongst us can't pin on a dartboard where the moving target of service cuts is specifically going to land after all the back-room dealing settles and winners/losers are picked out. The state was being intentionally obtuse with its blanket statements for good reason.


Right now at full non-COVID blast the Green Line requires 75 two-car pairs for peak service. Shop rotations for inspections, pantograph shoe replacements, set-asides for test trains or work shifts, shift breaks for breaking/re-mating consists, forced idles for monitoring of minor aches & pains, after-shift cleaning of TBD severity (now more than ever!), and multitude of other micro-needs means that on any given day in the neighborhood 10% of the in-service roster is unavailable for one reason or another between 5:00am and 12:30am. The next day it's a completely different ~10% by car numbers, but similar spread. As a mode, mixed-running LRT has drastically lower spare ratios than the bus system...but notably higher than the HRT system where lash-ups stay intact and on-call way longer.

So with 85 "revenue rostered" Bredas you're only daily talking 76-78 available for an ADA pairing, functionally the barest minimum. With actuals that may be optimistic in real life given how many aches & pains the cars are developing in their advancing age. Some (not many, but some) inevitably get 'wasted' into 8-8 consists when there's a yard mismatch of available singles to mash up...though that tends to vary by-shift rather than all service day. That's scraping the hull already on unblemished ADA service. Pre-COVID the 7-7's were indeed out there at peak, though by-practice never on consecutive trains. If there's too many of them, however, it gets hard to prevent incidences of multiple consecutive high-floor trains at the Kenmore branch mash-up (and Copley) because slotting is chaotic amid bunching and schedule adjustments. The ~10 Type 9 consists that will be daily-available going forward are thus really crucial, because they can keep the 7-7's held down to incidental occurrence rather than frequent-enough recurrence that the 'prevent-defense' for consecutive all-high-floors @ Kenmore becomes too unpredictable to shoot for.

You're gonna need to get the Breda dead line repaired, however, when GLX Phase I reopens Lechmere and first-wave beyonds. Because if the dead line is 10%+ then the spares ratio of ~10% on top of that starts scraping the hull again. The sidelined units all need lots of long-term repairs to get back, because during their outage they have been raided for day-to-day parts to feed the in-service units. So each of those cold bodies will be in-shop for many weeks to couple months each getting more substantially put back together when all parts are finally available. Which puts urgency on these procurement items to stock up the parts. Doesn't get any easier when attrition is taking its toll on the in-service units and all of them must also get programmed for selective component replacement lest they be the next ones to hit the dead line and start getting raided for spare parts in the short term that consigns them to longer shop gestation in the long term before they can come back. We'll have a pretty flush roster for '21...but if there's any procurement delays in acting on the Breda supply chain (note: unpredictable by supplier nature because of how godawful-custom those turkeys are), LRT Division starts looking at fleet bottlenecks anew for '22-23 after just pulling itself out of a years-long vicious cycle of exactly the same. Pays to be proactive. And being proactive here will not involve taking COVID's temperature for how many moving parts (sic) it entails.
 
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If that bluff gets called, which is no sure thing. But even the most pessimistic amongst us can't pin on a dartboard where the moving target of service cuts is specifically going to land after all the back-room dealing settles and winners/losers are picked out. The state was being intentionally obtuse with its blanket statements for good reason.


Right now at full non-COVID blast the Green Line requires 75 two-car pairs for peak service. Shop rotations for inspections, pantograph shoe replacements, set-asides for test trains or work shifts, shift breaks for breaking/re-mating consists, forced idles for monitoring of minor aches & pains, after-shift cleaning of TBD severity (now more than ever!), and multitude of other micro-needs means that on any given day in the neighborhood 10% of the in-service roster is unavailable for one reason or another between 5:00am and 12:30am. The next day it's a completely different ~10% by car numbers, but similar spread. As a mode, mixed-running LRT has drastically lower spare ratios than the bus system...but notably higher than the HRT system where lash-ups stay intact and on-call way longer.

So with 85 "revenue rostered" Bredas you're only daily talking 76-78 available for an ADA pairing, functionally the barest minimum. With actuals that may be optimistic in real life given how many aches & pains the cars are developing in their advancing age. Some (not many, but some) inevitably get 'wasted' into 8-8 consists when there's a yard mismatch of available singles to mash up...though that tends to vary by-shift rather than all service day. That's scraping the hull already on unblemished ADA service. Pre-COVID the 7-7's were indeed out there at peak, though by-practice never on consecutive trains. If there's too many of them, however, it gets hard to prevent incidences of multiple consecutive high-floor trains at the Kenmore branch mash-up (and Copley) because slotting is chaotic amid bunching and schedule adjustments. The ~10 Type 9 consists that will be daily-available going forward are thus really crucial, because they can keep the 7-7's held down to incidental occurrence rather than frequent-enough recurrence that the 'prevent-defense' for consecutive all-high-floors @ Kenmore becomes too unpredictable to shoot for.

You're gonna need to get the Breda dead line repaired, however, when GLX Phase I reopens Lechmere and first-wave beyonds. Because if the dead line is 10%+ then the spares ratio of ~10% on top of that starts scraping the hull again. The sidelined units all need lots of long-term repairs to get back, because during their outage they have been raided for day-to-day parts to feed the in-service units. So each of those cold bodies will be in-shop for many weeks to couple months each getting more substantially put back together when all parts are finally available. Which puts urgency on these procurement items to stock up the parts. Doesn't get any easier when attrition is taking its toll on the in-service units and all of them must also get programmed for selective component replacement lest they be the next ones to hit the dead line and start getting raided for spare parts in the short term that consigns them to longer shop gestation in the long term before they can come back. We'll have a pretty flush roster for '21...but if there's any procurement delays in acting on the Breda supply chain (note: unpredictable by supplier nature because of how godawful-custom those turkeys are), LRT Division starts looking at fleet bottlenecks anew for '22-23 after just pulling itself out of a years-long vicious cycle of exactly the same. Pays to be proactive. And being proactive here will not involve taking COVID's temperature for how many moving parts (sic) it entails.

This makes me wonder how much of the SF Breda's have parts interchangeable with the Boston Bredas.
 
This makes me wonder how much of the SF Breda's have parts interchangeable with the Boston Bredas.

Not much for the most highly design-customized parts like joints and trucks for that problematic center section, because Muni's LRV2's are hugely wider than the Type 8's and have a completely different unicorn center design. And the Muni Bredas are their own notorious vat of suck overall for fit/finish maladies, paralleling the T's experience at taking nearly 8 years to get a chopped-down procurement entirely in service via hundreds of warranty mods deviating from original blueprints. SFMTA is scheduling all 150+ of their units for retirement by 2027--same timeframe as our Type 10 order. Only they already have their replacement make on the property in the standardized, sterling-reputation Siemens S200, which was ordered for fleet expansion and will have all its contract options drained over the course of several installments to unify the fleet. Muni similarly have an uncomfortable glut of long-term OOS Bredas acting as de facto parts donors for the active fleet while they try to load up for some selective parts replacement packages to get the cold bodies in the dead line back up and running and to harden the rest of the service fleet for their last 5-7 years of duty.

Stuff like propulsion/HVAC guts and electrical controls aren't really a problem because they're fairly standard as 1st-gen AC traction vehicles go, with a lot of electrical only lightly-evolved from the Type 7's to make (mostly well-behaving) inter-generational trainlining possible. The Bredas have never been known for the kind of maddening propulsion crap-outs and herky-jerky starts/stops that the electrical-unicorn Boeings were notorious for both here and in SF. Electrical guts are mostly straightforward, easily sourced from the supply chain, and easily repairable. It's frame-related parts that are extremely difficult to find because of the hyper-customization, the smaller-than-expected orders, the cut-short projected lifespans and lack of any rebuild market, and all the warranty mods that sprayed different generations of parts across the fleets during their tortured rollouts. AnsaldoBreda is suitably open-book (enforced in part by the early-termination settlements on the order) for allowing third parties to fabricate to their custom parts, but it takes a lot more lead time to get that stuff than the average maint-related procurement and often requires triaging with multiple vendors before enough parts are amassed to do a round of selective systems replacement. The market has spoken about these turkeys re: how much overall interest there is in feeding a dead-ender's supply chain.
 
Unexpected 3-car set of Type 9s running on the D this morning. Taken at Brookline Village.

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Unexpected 3-car set of Type 9s running on the D this morning. Taken at Brookline Village.

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No ads in the side frames, so looks like a test train.

Yes...triplets testing is standard-issue part of the burn-in process. Probably also some limited 4-car testing with the CAF's because that can occasionally happen in a contingency when 2 separate trains have to be lashed into one for a bulk move (either in service disruption or more often a non-revenue bulk transfer of equipment between yards). All existing cars on the roster are capable of up to 4-car (with OPTO/single-operator from the lead car) as a baseline spec, even though there aren't any end-to-end service patterns with compatible platform lengths. Triplet burn-ins are usually something you'd see primarily on the D, maybe occasionally on the B since those are the two lines that can (and have in recent years) done regular-service triplets and the hills on the B are a useful reference test for tandem braking.
 
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Per NETransit, year-AWOL Type 9 car 3906 is finally accepted into revenue service. No one has any idea what took it so fucking long.

Still 5 cars in the clownshoes-slow testing line.


Additionally, the timetable for Mattapan PCC rebuilds has been updated after nearly a year's radio silence. Right now cars 3234 (out-of-service since 2012) and 3265 (out-of-service since 2009) are still at Everett. It's now expected that those 2 will be back in-service allowing the other 6 active cars to get rotated to Everett two-at-a-time, with last non-rebuilds pulled from service by end of 2021. That's a significant picking-up of the pace, so the two pilots must be very close to done and scope-of-work on the 6 active cars now narrowed down enough to predict a timetable.
 
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
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.
3.) trolleys derail more than subways (A LOT more in terms of derailments per mile, no?)
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?
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.

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)
 
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Iirc some (although not all) of the issues you mentioned are solved by the coming type 10 procurements. All low floor and higher capacity.

Your bicycle point is spot on though, and the MBTA has shown little interest in facilitating it. During the height of the pandemic I was kicked off an absolutely empty red line train around 9am because I figured why not bring my bicycle in. Also the lack of movement on fare integration with bluebike is confusing to me
 
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.
 
Glad to hear I was mistaken on much of this... obviously I'm not up-to-speed on all of the pending upgrades that will make improvements to the Green Line relative to the other lines. Good news!
 
What speed is the Green Line rated at when it goes underground (non E)? Those feel like the times when it's crawling the most. I know Boylston has that elbow turn, but the rest from Kenmore inbound is pretty straight. Also feel like it rarely if ever goes above 25/30mph. In contrast to the Red or Blue which seem to keep a regular higher speed.

And regarding body packing efficiency, how come we're omitting standing passengers? Sure the number of seats is equitable, but there's a good deal more width to stand on Red or Blue trains. Longer train cars without the bit of waste at the kinks too. I don't have actual figures to compare (and can't for the life of me find them online) so would be happy to see those.
 
What speed is the Green Line rated at when it goes underground (non E)? Those feel like the times when it's crawling the most. I know Boylston has that elbow turn, but the rest from Kenmore inbound is pretty straight. Also feel like it rarely if ever goes above 25/30mph. In contrast to the Red or Blue which seem to keep a regular higher speed.

The most congested part of the tunnel between Kenmore-Arlington with the densest signalling blocks is routinely slow because all of the blocks are occupied by trains. Keep in mind the comparison with HRT is out the window here because the branch merging/splitting is an order of magnitude different on Green, so it will never be the object to "move fast" on this stretch. Saturating service density will always be key-most.

GLT also has this covered, as by virtue of installing transit-priority street signaling on B/C/E and ending the "gargage in/garbage out" bunching chaos at the portals lets the density on those Central Subway blocks get packed breakneck-tight without as many actual OTP demerits from red lights. And the all-low floor cars will tame boarding dwells significantly at all stops, closing the doors faster to aid in the "orderly saturation" effort. Installation of enforced-stop signalling means trains don't have to pause in bunches and can run closer--but in motion--behind the next train's taillights for better flow. And in turn the Type 10's will have much brawnier braking/acceleration for following close than the current fleets have. The endgame is still different vs. the HRT lines' schedule optimization, but GL schedules will be better by being way more predictable and the Central Subway will gain outright bandwidth as a result of the cleanup. Now...there's still a five-alarm need to build Red-Blue and eventually Green-Seaport to take the double-transferee swells off the Park Upper + Park Under platforms before that one station's doors-open dwells continue to pose a throughput limiter, but GL ops itself will be conditioned to pounce as a result of all that's pre-planned.

And regarding body packing efficiency, how come we're omitting standing passengers? Sure the number of seats is equitable, but there's a good deal more width to stand on Red or Blue trains. Longer train cars without the bit of waste at the kinks too. I don't have actual figures to compare (and can't for the life of me find them online) so would be happy to see those.

Again...it makes little sense to keep talking about this as a forever thing when the Type 10's are going to 100% reboot the interior layout with all- low-floor design, stretched length with extra doors per car and 2-car consist capacity equal on any/all regular shifts to the 3-car capacity rarely deployed these days in the wild, and level/near-level platform interface at all of its more numerous doors. The half-high/half-low interior of the Type 8's/9's is terrible...worse for standee capacity and moving around than even the all- high-floor Type 7's. Duly acknowledged!...that's been a #1 gripe for 23 years now. But if we're going to complain about that, duly acknowledge that ALL incumbent interiors are on active sunset for the new order. It's being fixed. If there's any remaining gripes (as above, if that 1st public presentation DOESN'T include bike racks that are now de facto standard on low-floor LRV's around the world...scream real loud because there's no excuse for that omission), predicate them on what might still be subpar with an all- low-floor, extra-door, wholesale-rearranged interior. It's uselessly burying the lede to skip the coming attractions and imply we need to blow up the entire Green Line because today's interiors are what you experience, therefore that'll always be the experience. No...that'll be false in less than a decade's time; the GL is already funded to be "all blowed up" by the powers that be over that very same loading problem. Things will be extremely different afterwards.
 
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As long as American transit agencies remain terrified of doors, bikes are difficult. Everything should be doors.

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