Reasonable Transit Pitches

tangent said:
They aren't clear on the purpose of the road... Could be a backup plan in case Boston continues to give them problems on proximity of the main entrance to Boston.

http://www.everettindependent.com/2...on-st-building-for-road-horticulture-storage/

I think using gateway shopping center road for access would be very good if there is room under the bridge. Not sure about that.
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There's no room under the bridge for a road, and Gateway/Mystic View is up high on an embankment. They'd have to overpass. Wouldn't be too difficult to do.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
There's no room under the bridge for a road, and Gateway/Mystic View is up high on an embankment. They'd have to overpass. Wouldn't be too difficult to do.
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Probably just go for a pedestrian connection then, seems there is room under the bridge and from the aerial view it appears there is already some well trodden path. I had thought a pedestrian walkway was being talked about, but I don't see it on the site plan that comes up.

The closer you get to the Costco loading docks with an access road the less it feels like a world class hotel/casino entrance. If you could keep the road along the water with a pedestrian walkway on the water side, then that could be quite nice and be a wynn-win
 
On the question of South Station capacity: what are the impediments to short-turning trains at Back Bay? Furthermore, what are the drawbacks to running inbound Fairmount (or even Old Colony) trains across the Fort Point connector and having them head back out as Stoughton, Franklin/Foxboro, or Needham trains (or vice-versa)?

Obviously you miss South Station, but Back Bay still provides good access to the rapid transit system, and does bring you closer to the LMA, so there could be some positives.
 
Riverside said:
On the question of South Station capacity: what are the impediments to short-turning trains at Back Bay? Furthermore, what are the drawbacks to running inbound Fairmount (or even Old Colony) trains across the Fort Point connector and having them head back out as Stoughton, Franklin/Foxboro, or Needham trains (or vice-versa)?

Obviously you miss South Station, but Back Bay still provides good access to the rapid transit system, and does bring you closer to the LMA, so there could be some positives.
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Well, the BCEC dinky's initial plan was to skip SS and short-turn at BBY. If you do it on the Worcester platforms and not NEC platforms and hurry up to get the reversing done in under 10 minutes it is viable because any other Worcester slots still have the other platform to pass through and things are not so jammed here that something gets blocked. And they were conceding that BCEC would probably be a bit far off the 15 minute frequencies of the rest of the Indigo Lines because of the track crossings at Southampton, so goal is to take what they can get and not hold it to the same frequency standard. Actual southside engineers on RR.net who do fast short-turns every day confirmed that the BCEC plan is doable. They're not sure how full-blown once-every-15 Riverside to SS service would affect those margins in addition to the BCEC shuttle because they don't have real service projection numbers for either route to crunch up, but BBY is definitely safe and solid in current and near-future conditions for reversing direction from BCEC.


Problem is Boston MPO already studied exactly what you're proposing 10 years ago. Two such Indigo-frequency concepts, in fact:
-- Readville-Allston Landing (i.e. West)
-- JFK-Allston Landing.

Each skipping SS, each at Indigo frequencies, each predicated on low-capacity DMU equipment to minimize trainset operating costs.

And, unfortunately, both routes flopped hard on ridership. For Readville-Allston it was only +80 new riders not taking any current mode of transit and +900 daily per mode. For JFK-Allston it was +100 new transit riders and +2200 per mode. Even with each proposal lowballing the equipment costs by assuming DMU's, these two routes ended up off-scale as two of the worst operating cost-per-rider expansion proposals in the entire PMT because of how meager their ridership was. We're talking like 20 times higher op cost per daily rider than the regular upgraded Fairmount Indigo route. That's how big an orders-of-magnitude whiff they were. Not-recommended ratings for both, and likelihood of them ever being studied in more detail is slim to none. There's just too many other destination pair possibilities way more deserving to chew on, and no way things have changed enough in 10 years--or will change enough in the next 10--to close such a ridership gap and get either concept anywhere close to the viability threshold for further consideration.


So, no...while technically feasible, unfortunately the demand has spoken rather unequivocally: thou shalt not pass South Station. The BCEC dinky might be able to get away with this because the Silver Line is a South Station direct and that dinky is designed primarily as a bus capacity not frequency reliever during convention crush-load. But absolutely no other one-seat configuration draws riders away from the Red Line.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Well, the BCEC dinky's initial plan was to skip SS and short-turn at BBY. If you do it on the Worcester platforms and not NEC platforms and hurry up to get the reversing done in under 10 minutes it is viable because any other Worcester slots still have the other platform to pass through and things are not so jammed here that something gets blocked. And they were conceding that BCEC would probably be a bit far off the 15 minute frequencies of the rest of the Indigo Lines because of the track crossings at Southampton, so goal is to take what they can get and not hold it to the same frequency standard. Actual southside engineers on RR.net who do fast short-turns every day confirmed that the BCEC plan is doable. They're not sure how full-blown once-every-15 Riverside to SS service would affect those margins in addition to the BCEC shuttle because they don't have real service projection numbers for either route to crunch up, but BBY is definitely safe and solid in current and near-future conditions for reversing direction from BCEC.


Problem is Boston MPO already studied exactly what you're proposing 10 years ago. Two such Indigo-frequency concepts, in fact:
-- Readville-Allston Landing (i.e. West)
-- JFK-Allston Landing.

Each skipping SS, each at Indigo frequencies, each predicated on low-capacity DMU equipment to minimize trainset operating costs.

And, unfortunately, both routes flopped hard on ridership. For Readville-Allston it was only +80 new riders not taking any current mode of transit and +900 daily per mode. For JFK-Allston it was +100 new transit riders and +2200 per mode. Even with each proposal lowballing the equipment costs by assuming DMU's, these two routes ended up off-scale as two of the worst operating cost-per-rider expansion proposals in the entire PMT. Not-recommended ratings for both, and likelihood of them ever being studied in more detail after whiffing by that order of magnitude is slim to none. There's just too many other destination pair possibilities way more deserving to chew on, and no way things have changed enough in 10 years--or will change enough in the next 10--to close such a big miss on ridership and get either concept anywhere close to the viability threshold.


So, no...while feasible, unfortunately the demand has spoken rather unequivocally: thou shalt not pass South Station. The BCEC dinky might be able to get away with this because the Silver Line is a South Station direct and that dinky is designed primarily as a bus capacity not frequency reliever during convention crush-load. But absolutely no other one-seat configuration draws riders away from the Red Line.
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Appreciate the response– but, as I understand it, any proposal for a B&A – Old Colony/Midland route is DOA anyway because of the Shore Line tracks it would have to disruptively cross. I know that distinction is probably moot, since we miss South Station either way.

But I wasn't suggesting this so much for local service (ie. Readville-Allston Landing), but as a way to turn commuter rail trains. I'm imagining it could be a way to get Needham trains out of South Station, or possibly provide direct access to Back Bay from the OCR (which is less of a priority).

How much of ridership hit on longer-distance service do we see?
 
Riverside said:
Appreciate the response– but, as I understand it, any proposal for a B&A – Old Colony/Midland route is DOA anyway because of the Shore Line tracks it would have to disruptively cross. I know that distinction is probably moot, since we miss South Station either way.

But I wasn't suggesting this so much for local service (ie. Readville-Allston Landing), but as a way to turn commuter rail trains. I'm imagining it could be a way to get Needham trains out of South Station, or possibly provide direct access to Back Bay from the OCR (which is less of a priority).

How much of ridership hit on longer-distance service do we see?
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Doesn't really matter because then you're trading South Station as capacity limiter for NEC as capacity limiter on the wraparounds and getting little to no gains on schedule to offset that huge ridership killer of missing the Red Line. It's a sack for a sharp loss in the aggregate.

Anything that has to use the NEC side of Back Bay and short-turn on those platforms is no-go because it really is that busy. That's why any/all proposals for packing Indigos into that station take the far less busy Worcester side. That's further exacerbated by schedule variability. You can time a BCEC shuttle accurately to a free short-turn slot because it's an incredibly short route. You can accurately pack a Riverside-SS train once-every-15 in both directions and self-adjust it at the intermediate stops without getting entangled with a longer-distance Worcester slot running skip-stop through all of Newton and Allston because Riverside's so short. You probably can time those JFK-Allston and Readville-Allston trains accurately on the wraparound because they're intra-city (and they don't foul Southampton at all to reach the wye like the BCEC shuttle does).

You can't time the 495-belt trains that accurately. You just can't predict within 5 minutes' accuracy what the cumulative door-closing dwell times are going to be on a Middleboro or Franklin train. If that one person is sprinting like mad from the parking lot to make a train about to depart or there's ice on the platform making last boarders lag...the conductors aren't assholes, they'll hold the door because that's Customer Service 101. That variability is bug-not-feature. But unfortunately that makes the long-haul routes particularly ill-suited for terminating at BBY or cross-cutting traffic from the wye to BBY in much lower-margin slotting. So the variability neutralizes the chance to pack extra slots. Because those extra slots at BBY can't be reserved 5 minutes early or 5 minutes late like a stub platform at SS can. So long-haul routes end up out, the much shorter and less variable intra-city routes are in. But unfortunately no intracity route produces the ridership without South Station as last stop, so all of those except for odd little BCEC end up out too. If odd little BCEC even survives Amtrak's scrutiny over fouling Southampton.



Needham is in its own category because its constraint is NEC capacity and not South Station capacity. There's no give at all for more peak slots or reverse-peak slots. Ruggles getting expanded and becoming a stop for nearly all CR trains pretty much freezes that ceiling forever. Needham needs both the peaks and reverse-peaks it's never going to get; those rush-hour trains are crowded, and the outer-neighborhood buses are terrible. There's some very useful potential for more off-peak slots, but with caveat that the best it can do is still a far cry from real Indigo frequency threshold so it never hits that clock-facing critical mass that triggers all the ridership to come out of the woodwork like it would on a once-every-15 Fairmount or Riverside. So while Needham needs whatever extra off-peaks it can get as a basic public service, it can only do so as a system loss leader and somewhat of a charity case because the best it can swing is still some muddled 'tweener land of not-good-enough frequencies to draw the crowds. And a Forest Hills short-turn shuttle that stays off the NEC is a nonstarter even at good frequencies for same reason JFK-Allston and Readville-Allston are: thou shalt not pass up South Station and deprive thine of Red.

Stuck between rock and hard place. And whatever gains from SSX flush the NEC wide open with more slots are going to send the spoils to Providence and Amtrak first, Stoughton/South Coast next. Needham will always be left begging because there's always a bigger mouth to feed. It's not fair, but that's its lot in life as the commuter rail's squarest peg. Deep future there's only one way up for the corridor: take it off commuter rail, give it in halves to Orange and Green. Won't be soon, but will someday be unavoidable.


With Foxboro they're not even chancing it: no NEC running ever so there'll never be dilemma about getting squeezed out of slots, and passengers can't feel sorry about losing God-given right to a BBY stop thet never had. With Franklin, when they have to start getting more and more of their schedule punted over to Fairmount after 2030 as next-gen HSR starts gobbling more slots...well, they'll quickly get over it because avoiding the NEC will be their only means of ceiling-free service increases by that point in time.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Anything that has to use the NEC side of Back Bay and short-turn on those platforms is no-go because it really is that busy. That's why any/all proposals for packing Indigos into that station take the far less busy Worcester side.
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I'd say the Worcester platforms are the obvious choice, but that's still no picnic.

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No, definitely no picnic. That's why when the southside ops guys were doing the maths for the BCEC turnarounds they gave the whole up-front caveat they don't know what the plan is for Indigo-Riverside or anything else Indigo the state wants to wrap through there. No such study numbers exist because the proposals themselves don't exist beyond Gov. Patrick's PowerPoints (though we can conjecture that the big one--Riverside--is a safe ops bet because it takes a fully orthodox path into SS). So the ops guys' informed answer could change when you start plugging other stuff onto those Worcester platforms.


My educated guess is that orthodox Riverside + unorthodox BCEC would be tight but thumbs-up to do in simultaneous regular service. They came out right up front and said that BCEC makes no once-every-15 promises due to the Amtrak yard congestion. Thus it would be the movement tasked with ceding its priority at the wye in any conflict situation...to minimal inconvenience of its own riders because the route's so short. That's the fail-safe that makes it work at BBY (we still don't know Amtrak's take on Southampton, though).

But start layering on any other short-turn shuttle, wraparound route, or otherwise unorthodox services through here on top of that and all viability bets are off. There is "a" ceiling on the Worcester side since everything--Riverside, Framingham locals, Worcester locals and expresses, Amtrak--has steep future service growth attached to it. And "a" ceiling on those cross-cutting movements from the wye that bank across the NEC. Just can't measure what that ceiling is when we've got little more than a map to work with on what these non-Fairmount Indigo and shuttle services are supposed to be.
 
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Here's a reasonable transit pitch: Create limited stop express routes for the busiest/longest bus lines along with prepayment (and ideally bus lanes, but I know that's a tough one.) Stops should only be at major squares and other transit stations. They should run at headways no longer than 15 min for the same length of service as the locals. (You could divert local buses from these routes to serve the express routes.)

#1, with stops only at
Dudley Square (Silver Line), BMC, Washington St (Silver Line), Mass Ave Station (Orange Line/Green Line E), Hynes (Green Line B/C/D), Beacon St, MIT, Central Square (Red Line), Harvard Square (Red Line)

#66, with stops only at
Dudley Square (Silver Line), Roxbury Crossing (Orange Line), Brigham Circle (Green Line E), Brookline Village (Green Line D), Coolidge Corner (Green Line C), Comm Ave (Green Line B), Union Square (multiple buses), Barry's Corner (multiple buses), Harvard Square (Red Line)

Other candidates: #39, #57, #77, #86
 
cden4 said:
Here's a reasonable transit pitch: Create limited stop express routes for the busiest/longest bus lines along with prepayment (and ideally bus lanes, but I know that's a tough one.) Stops should only be at major squares and other transit stations. They should run at headways no longer than 15 min for the same length of service as the locals. (You could divert local buses from these routes to serve the express routes.)

#1, with stops only at
Dudley Square (Silver Line), BMC, Washington St (Silver Line), Mass Ave Station (Orange Line/Green Line E), Hynes (Green Line B/C/D), Beacon St, MIT, Central Square (Red Line), Harvard Square (Red Line)

#66, with stops only at
Dudley Square (Silver Line), Roxbury Crossing (Orange Line), Brigham Circle (Green Line E), Brookline Village (Green Line D), Coolidge Corner (Green Line C), Comm Ave (Green Line B), Union Square (multiple buses), Barry's Corner (multiple buses), Harvard Square (Red Line)

Other candidates: #39, #57, #77, #86
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Isn't your #1 limited basically CT1 (most of the way?)
 
You mean basically the CT1 + all-door-boarding, right? ;)

The problem is that you're proposing to split frequencies between two overlapping routes. I'm not sure there's that much to be gained. Bus routes in Boston aren't really that long. The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Agency runs a frequent, 24-hour, bus route that is 25 miles long. They introduced an every-15-minute during the day 'rapid' version some years ago that even carries a signal priority transponder. The improvement is marginal, and you end up with this weird situation of wondering whether you should walk over to a 'rapid' stop or stay where you are. And that's with an enormously long bus route that, end-to-end, does benefit from skipping stops. But no one rides it end-to-end. Not even the bus drivers (they change over at least twice, mid-route).

For short bus routes under 5 miles, which are most of ours, there's a lot of confusion to be caused, and I'm not sure there's much advantage over good fundamentals: better station spacing, better frequency, all-door-boarding, good bus stops, etc.
 
Yeah there is some overlap with the CT1, but I usually take the #1 to or from Harvard, so the CT1 is useless for that, and it doesn't run on the weekends or at night, when is often when I'm taking it.

Riding the #1 regularly, I can tell you that it spends a LOT of time starting and stopping at each and every stop. And the dwell time at some stops is WAYYY too long (especially at Hynes) because everyone has to pay when entering.

Also, somehow Boston and Cambridge have timed all the traffic signals so that the bus is guaranteed to hit every one of them red. I'm not sure how they pulled this off, but they did.
 
All-door boarding, signal priority are the things to do it sounds like to me. With all-doors, go to 60-foot buses. Hopefully of a design with wider doorways. Of course that requires the T to get their act together on bus yards.
 
60-footers wouldn't be necessary immediately though, right?

Capacity on the 40's during rush hour is pretty acceptable when the buses are running on schedule (no bunches of two buses leaving the terminal with a 20 minute wait for the next). With better stop spacing and bus lanes, vehicles should be able to complete their trips more quickly and more reliably, allowing the same number of vehicles to support shorter scheduled headways.
 
Buses get bunched because of overcrowding. Sixty footers can help with that, so long as all doors are used.
 
He has a point with respect to bus lanes. Reason #2 for bunching is pockets of traffic.
 
Would it be unreasonable to have these infill stops on the MBTA?

1. between Wellington and Malden stations on the Orange Line, located at the intersections of Pearl and Medford St. Call it "Edgeworth" or "South Malden". Provides transit to south malden, medford, and the northwestern portion of Everett across the Malden river

2. on the Red Line Braintree between North Quincy and JFK, Morrissey Blvd at Pope's Hill St and Teneaen St. Would be situated above the somewhat stretched-rotary there. Provides access to Tenean Beach and an area of Dorchester that the Red Line simply passes through without stopping. Call it "Pope's Hill" or just "Tenean Beach" which appears to be the closest attraction.

3 (very unreasonable). Also considering that the outbound green line between Boylston and Arlington always stops at this one segment of the subway (literally every time I've ridden it for the past year and a half), approximately under the intersection of Boylston and Charles St S (just after what used to be the Public Gardens incline), why not just make an outbound-only station there called "Public Gardens" with an exit/entrance leading directly into the gardens. I"m sure it'd pick up many passengers
 
1. Conceptualized, but never went into planning. It may have been a station in the past (B&M) but I'm not positive. IIRC it was. I'd support this being an Orange Line stop -- it would have some decent walkshed catchment. I know Van even tossed it in on some of his maps.

2. This (Pope's Hill) was once a station on the Old Colony. It was also conceptualized for the Red Line but didn't go into planning. IIRC, Braintree residents didn't want "the wrong crowded" to take the train down to their pristine sanctuary. :rolleyes: There's some mild/moderate support for this station among Dot residents.

3. No way. First of all it is a stop simply for checking the brakes and a secondary effect of maintaining spacing. Secondly, Arlington and Boylston are way to close to each other! I'd rather see those two stations closed and then open a station here.
 
I think the reasons Edgeworth and Popes Hill were never seriously considered is that at the time (mid 1970s) both OL and RL extensions were about getting suburbanites into downtown as quickly as possible. Even today these infill stations would have low ridership unless some serious TOD was proposed. So it makes sense that stations that once existed along steam railroads would be condensed for rapid transit.
 
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