Reasonable Transit Pitches

[fattony]

I like the general thought process here -- take a more holistic view of the service. I think ultimately speed + frequency (i.e. overall journey time and convenience) will supersede everything else, but that doesn't mean you can't make legitimate improvements through this thought process.

I agree with this. You can allocate a small fraction of the budget to beefing up amenities, but they should always be a distant second to the fundamentals.

 

[HenryAlan]

A bar car or snack bar wouldn't work on the 'T because 95% of the ridership is on too short a ride to make it worth bothering to get up for that drink. What might be a good idea, though, would be the sale of canned beverages in stations, explicitly for enjoyment on the train. They have that in L.A. and plenty of people enjoy a beer or three on their trains.

 

[KCasiglio]

A bar car or snack bar wouldn't work on the 'T because 95% of the ridership is on too short a ride to make it worth bothering to get up for that drink. What might be a good idea, though, would be the sale of canned beverages in stations, explicitly for enjoyment on the train. They have that in L.A. and plenty of people enjoy a beer or three on their trains.

*eyeballs the Patriots game day trains*

As long as it's just for the CR and not the whole T I think that's a great idea.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

*eyeballs the Patriots game day trains*

As long as it's just for the CR and not the whole T I think that's a great idea.

The T does have a couple shop-converted snack cars for Cape Flyer for exactly that kind of special purpose. Cape Chamber of Commerce cobbles together the concessions funding, so T only provides the car.

When the upcoming 80 & 200 car bi-level orders purge all the rolling ruins from the fleet, the Pullman flats--being the only extras with life left in them--are fungible for conversion into more bike/ski and snacky cars. However, it would have to be under similar Flyer funding setup where third-party biz underwrites it...otherwise even the Pats train isn't long enough a schedule anymore to float the cost.

So yes, there's both equipment and opportunity in the pipeline. But think public-private instead, because CR is much too short-haul for the T to get anything solo out of the perk that'll underwrite the naturally crummy concessions ROI.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

A bar car or snack bar wouldn't work on the 'T because 95% of the ridership is on too short a ride to make it worth bothering to get up for that drink. What might be a good idea, though, would be the sale of canned beverages in stations, explicitly for enjoyment on the train. They have that in L.A. and plenty of people enjoy a beer or three on their trains.

More vending machines at remote stations--especially the ones that don't have a Dunks or other eating options within 2-5 min. walk--would be a good place to start. Pursued diligently there's got to be a concessions contract out there somewhere with a vendor that can eke a profit on it. You just need decent analytics to ID the stations that net enough foot traffic to do the business.

Think Japan with their weird vending machine culture. If you can buy a Coke, some chips, some cell phone earbuds, and a fidget spinner from some solar-powered auto kiosk on a remote mountain trail (for real...it's quintessential Japan Obscura), you probably can do it at Hanson, Wyoming Hill, or Montserrat. Just would obviously have to be snackies/disposables and not alcohol (we aren't THAT Japan-weird with our vending machines).

 

[KCasiglio]

The T does have a couple shop-converted snack cars for Cape Flyer for exactly that kind of special purpose. Cape Chamber of Commerce cobbles together the concessions funding, so T only provides the car.

When the upcoming 80 & 200 car bi-level orders purge all the rolling ruins from the fleet, the Pullman flats--being the only extras with life left in them--are fungible for conversion into more bike/ski and snacky cars. However, it would have to be under similar Flyer funding setup where third-party biz underwrites it...otherwise even the Pats train isn't long enough a schedule anymore to float the cost.

So yes, there's both equipment and opportunity in the pipeline. But think public-private instead, because CR is much too short-haul for the T to get anything solo out of the perk that'll underwrite the naturally crummy concessions ROI.

I think you misread me, I absolutely agree the rides are too short for in car sales. But being able to buy a beer at SS/BB that I'm authorized to bring on the train would be nice and something I think a lot of people would take advantage of, even if it's not a significant revenue stream.

 

[tysmith95]

That's the great Lynn Terminal bus equipment drain at work. So many buses have to make that distended Wonderland + downtown run down 1A from the lack of rapid transit transfer at the terminal that the entire 4xx series drains its equipment reserves faster than the extra past-Lynn mileage is capable of replenishing it, leaving the whole North Shore network effectively anemic. Salem hub-let sees the worst of the diminishing returns, because there's not nearly enough bodies laying around to operate much of anything route-wise that originates there detached from the Lynn-Downtown conveyor belt. What little coverage Salem does provide as a node in its own right has to keep extremely fragile balance with the equipment threaded between Salem-Lynn-Boston.

This is where the BLX-Lynn drumbeat gets loud as hell, because if you solve for the Wonderland+Downtown equipment drain you get an order of magnitude's worth of replenishing bodies to operate out of Lynn Terminal-proper as new routes and sharply increased frequencies. The equipment rotations would, for the first time since the T took over the independent Eastern Mass Street Railway bus system in 1968 and added all those taffy-stretched inbound legs in '69-70, actually be balanced enough to self-sustain that district. Salem hub-let becomes a big winner there as it can finally get a dedicated bus supply to cement its presence as a last-mile feeder of some importance, such that a Salem-Marblehead route would probably go near top of the list as first route expansion opportunity out of there.

Regarding Buses in that area, Beverly is under-served by bus considering the density on Cabot/Rantoul and the employment hub at Cummings Center.

Bus 451 is the only one serving that area, and its frequency is pretty terrible (8 round trips on weekdays, no weekend service).

 

[CSTH]

I think you misread me, I absolutely agree the rides are too short for in car sales. But being able to buy a beer at SS/BB that I'm authorized to bring on the train would be nice and something I think a lot of people would take advantage of, even if it's not a significant revenue stream.

Pro tip; there's a liquor store on the other side of causeway. My friend told me you can put a can of beer into a medium size coffee mug. Can't confirm.

 

[HenryAlan]

Pro tip; there's a liquor store on the other side of causeway. My friend told me you can put a can of beer into a medium size coffee mug. Can't confirm.

Another option -- I have something that looks like a metallic water bottle, but actually hides a bottle of, shall we say soda, inside it, insulating the "soda" and keeping it nice and cool. Take a drink, and it looks like you are having some refreshing water.

 

[bakgwailo]

Just to clarify, I wasn't talking about an actual car - just a snack cart. I would also think it would probably only work on the Worcester "Express" train and maybe Providence line.

 

[George_Apley]

Lol @ surreptitiously getting blasted on the Commuter Rail... what is this, LIRR?

 

[HenryAlan]

Lol @ surreptitiously getting blasted on the Commuter Rail... what is this, LIRR?

I've never used my bottle cooler on the 'T, it's mainly for my kids' baseball games. Open container is frowned upon in local parks.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Just to clarify, I wasn't talking about an actual car - just a snack cart. I would also think it would probably only work on the Worcester "Express" train and maybe Providence line.

Unfortunately there's 4 decades of accident data in CT and NY to reference for patrons who did not enjoy the bar cars responsibly and got into fender benders within 2 miles of the station parking lot, so that guy unfortunately comes with a wicked insurance premium your fellow non-drinking riders probably don't want to be paying as a surcharge baked into their fare.


Also: look at the airlines these days, and how you practically have to book an international flight to get them to part with a bag of peanuts for your comfort. It's a polar bear's market for transpo concessions. And not just in this country. With few exceptions where onboard wining/dining is hard-wired into the culture they're all slashing back to the bone. We're kind of lucky Amtrak has drawn a line in the sand that it promises not to undercut for what minimum amenities it sees as a consistent part of the experience for corridor routes over X length and nearly all LD's. If they followed the airlines' cold business logic, it would all be gone by now.

Again...Cape Flyer + Cape Chamber is the model here: let private enterprise like a biz coalition fund the perk, and the T only needs to supply the car/cart infrastructure. Some MetroWest coalition could absolutely step up for the Heart2Hub train, or Kraft for the Pats train, or etc. etc. on Providence if we want to take up Gov. Raimando's request for some kind of premium express service. The Cape did it with relative ease for the Flyer, and it's a nice little bonus on that long Hyannis schedule. But it all boils down to whether anyone with pockets is willing to step forward, and if so who and for what kind of commitment. It's not something we can rationally expect as a public service, or to be backed by public funding if the private sponsor flakes out. Concessions are the very last thing the T needs to be concerning itself with...but also something they can do straightforwardly if the private side takes it up to ensure the T never ever has to concern itself with the logistics of providing concession service.

Do we have those biz leaders on these corridors? Maybe...if they can be rustled together. I'm sort of doubtful that there's enough spirit of magnanimity out there in the Eastern MA biz community to get much of an enthusiastic coalition going for this, but let some dealmaker give it a shot and see what comes of it.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Lol @ surreptitiously getting blasted on the Commuter Rail... what is this, LIRR?

Ironically, the Amtrak Montrealer had somewhat of a notorious reputation back in its day (1970's to mid-90's) of being a raucous party & booze train. Since the route mimics a semi-express Northeast Regional for half the distance it led to a lot of amusing staffer stories about some business-class schlub getting up to relieve himself and opening the door to the facilities only to find a couple college kids joining the "15 ft. High Club" inside.

This contrasted with the Adirondack out of NY, which the state and Amtrak contracted out to Delaware & Hudson RR for ops back in the 70's and early-80's. D&H conductors has a reputation for being far more...er, puritanical...than their Amtrak counterparts on the Montrealer when it came to c'est la vie onboard. So this resulted in some double-secret marketing policy where if you wanted to go to Montreal out of Penn Station the Amtrak tix agent would...for lack of better word..."profile" you to see if you were more the dry-train or wet-train kind of type. And try to sell you (or, if you've made up your mind, warn you) accordingly. The Adirondack was always a bit faster than the Montrealer on the timetable, but if you wanted to have little memory of what transpired between the Penn and Gare Central platforms...the Montrealer was definitely for you.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Regarding Buses in that area, Beverly is under-served by bus considering the density on Cabot/Rantoul and the employment hub at Cummings Center.

Bus 451 is the only one serving that area, and its frequency is pretty terrible (8 round trips on weekdays, no weekend service).

Yeah, that's the symptom of anemia showing itself in spades. 451 fits exactly the profile of a route that would hugely benefit from more equipment supply netting immediately better headways and longer service hours. It can't get any of that because it's one of the furthest-flung routes from Lynn Terminal and hardest of all the 4xx's to triage a stable equipment supply out to, and because every year that 1A congestion gets a little bit worse on the distended Wonderland/Downtown runs is another year that all the 4xx's turn a little bluer in the face from less available oxygen.

It'll eventually come to a point where they have to do something. One...either build a whole new very small Fellsway-type garage up in Salem and equip it with an entire from-ground-up supply chain, which would be a very crummy and inefficient commitment of resources. After all, they're trying to consolidate garages into just a couple monster super-campuses for the whole of the system center and a few well-spaced radial terminals to balance geographical spread with more pound-for-pound reach per garage. So sinking coin into brand new mini-satellite facilities because of bad car traffic of all things ends up being miserable ROI for purely helpless/defensive rationale vs. the greater congestion problem.

Or...on the other hand...the BLX study they're slowly getting backed into doing shoots a tangent out to the implications for this North Shore bus supply problem. And...well...things start getting a whole lot more interesting on which fiefdoms within the agency suddenly come out of the woodwork as big cheerleaders for the project. Bus ops: they goin' be big cheerleaders.

 

[BostonUrbEx]

It'll eventually come to a point where they have to do something. One...either build a whole new very small Fellsway-type garage up in Salem and equip it with an entire from-ground-up supply chain, which would be a very crummy and inefficient commitment of resources.

Why not make a larger Lynn garage? Like that honkin' big vacant GE lot next to the new Lynn Market Basket, and sell of the existing garage. Or, the cheapskate alternative, buy a chunk of GE's excess parking immediately across the street from the existing garage to store more buses.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Why not make a larger Lynn garage? Like that honkin' big vacant GE lot next to the new Lynn Market Basket, and sell of the existing garage. Or, the cheapskate alternative, buy a chunk of GE's excess parking immediately across the street from the existing garage to store more buses.

Because size isn't the problem, throughput is. At peak when the yard is fairly empty is when the choke gets felt hardest, because that's when the buses going 1A can't get back from Haymarket in time for the next outbound headway. An unusually high number of the spares have to get cannibalized for run-as-directeds so rotations don't get blown, and all of the routes have some degree of greater-than-norm instability on late schedules if something ends up totally hosing the Sumner/Callahan or Ted. More supply doesn't change that, because the pressure point is driving them to using ever more run-as-directeds to plug blown gaps rather than cycling them in as regularly-scheduled headways.

Lynn will get its apportionment of the new +60 'found' fleet expansion buses from yesterday's FCMB item, but it will have comparably lower effect on new service than the other garages getting them. When applying the extras, the T is probably going to stack them more heavily to the downtown routes and Quincy/South Shore over Lynn/North Shore because the wheels can more immediately and demonstrably hit the ground as capacity increasers to good effect. On the North Shore it helps for sure, but the effect is badly muted by the siphon compared to how much more impact these extras can immediately provide elsewhere. Longer term, the "super-campus" garage facilities consolidation plan the agency has more or less settled on and which is just waiting for Baker/Pollack to bat a funding eye at also helps Lynn via the proposed new Wellington 200+ unit 60-footer garage and its subsequent 40-footer load relief on Charlestown. Existence of that build comes with immediate domino effect of outright closing Fellsway and outright relocating all heavy-repair functions out of Lynn to Charlestown (i.e all 'dirty' work except for the barest-essential S&I functions you need in the middle of a service day) to reallocate almost all of the Lynn facility space to 'pure' storage instead of storage + repair. Also a good move, as it densifies Lynn's capacity within the current footprint to same degree as an otherwise outright expansion of the facility would, addressing most of the need to go bigger or search for a new slab of land. But unfortunately that's also barely staying ahead of attrition, so while a nifty efficiency gain and cost reducer it's not going to do a hell of a lot for frequencies because the run-as-directed % is always going to be a higher share of equipment usage in the 4xx district than at any other. And also, bigger is not necessarily better when it's those fringe-most routes out in Beverly, Danvers, Peabody that have the fewest coping strategies available to them for their equipment chain being decimated by congestion all the way in to Haymarket. If anything can be reshuffled to give a 4xx route higher frequencies, it's only going to be the shorter-haul routes that stay in closer range to Lynn netting the spoils because they're less intrinsically vulnerable to the Downtown drain. The limits of the district--and the vexing case of Salem being such a badly underserved hublet of diverging routes from a further-away point of very high density--unfortunately mean that the only real lasting deke for the equipment drain is to build that Fellsway clone at Salem and detach it entirely from Lynn. Which, as above, is shitty facilities ROI cutting the total opposite direction from where they see max cost efficiency and max penetration payoffs from the big garage consolidation plan. Maybe they have to take that hit and do Salem regardless for lack of other options, but it's going to be a turd on the budget if it comes to that.

Salem CAN be wonderfully and efficiently fed out of a Lynn where routes actually turned around at Lynn in 1:1 inbound-outbound balance, so loss-leader garages are a crummy way on-spec of addressing that problem. But you need BLX and the home-station rapid transit transfer to make it happen. No other solution, including the whole universe of RUR frequency hacks which still unfortunately leave a critical disconnect from Wonderland-Maverick, solves it all lock/stock the way the mere existence of that extension does. Daunting expense at all, it's the only option that hits multimodal paydirt and licks the very biggest of the North Shore's transit deficits in one shot.

 

[ssresident]

MBTA’s Quincy bus depot could move to site of former Lowe’s
On the surface this looks like a good idea, so naturally the city councilor for the neighborhood comes out against it. There is a gate from the parking lot into the neighborhood, but in my experience I never saw it open. No reason why they can't put up a taller fence and some trees for a buffer.

 

[Equilibria]

MBTA’s Quincy bus depot could move to site of former Lowe’s
On the surface this looks like a good idea, so naturally the city councilor for the neighborhood comes out against it. There is a gate from the parking lot into the neighborhood, but in my experience I never saw it open. No reason why they can't put up a taller fence and some trees for a buffer.

The Lowe's site is larger than the current site. Assuming that the T builds a bit more of a spread out facility, that still leaves a ton of room for a buffer.

I think this councillor is going to lose. Sounds like the Mayor's supportive, since the current site is on a riverfront in a location the City would love to have for recreation.

Also, if this goes anywhere we should probably be discussing it on the MBTA bus thread.

 

[KCasiglio]

The gate is open to pedestrians and bicycles to cut through but not vehicles. Palmucci is correct, the neighborhood is going to be livid and it's an older, very involved group. The proposed redevlopment of Southside Tavern on Liberty St drew a huge crowd for the first public meeting.

There was a proposal recently that I believe went nowhere to build a self storage complex on the other side of the station next to Home Depot. It would make a lot more sense if the bus depot could go on that side and allow this to develop into a multi use site.