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Green Line? More like Slow Line
By adamg on Fri, 02/27/2009 - 8:01pm
Based on angry twittering, the outbound Green Line was not a happy place this rush hour, what with people getting stuck on trains between Park Street and Boylston for 20 minutes, people at Riverside reporting 40 minute delays, one person reporting a two-hour commute.
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Why is the Green Line unreliable and regularly over capacity?
I have used the Green Line Riverside outbound in the late afternoon recently. It's often a step above a third-world bus with live chickens in the aisles and people clinging to the top. Only one step above.
I know Green Line trains can be pleasant, when they're running on time and not over capacity, and when you don't really have to be anywhere soon.
I want to be able to advocate a mix of walking and public transit, but the only public transit that I feel reasonably positive about right now is the Red line.
Is the Green Line problem that the MBTA does not have enough funds to do what needs to be done? Or are there engineering or construction problems to solve? Or is it process and management?
the problem with the green
the problem with the green line is that the trains make WAY too many stops once they come above ground. They should remove about 2/3 of the stops through Brighton and Brookline. When a train is stopping every 1/10th of a mile, of course it's going to take a long time to travel several miles. The trip from Riverside into town takes 40 minutes even when everything is running SMOOTH.
That's just the slow part.
That's just the slow part. Not the unreliable or over capacity parts.
It's a major arterial line
It's a major arterial line that operates glorified streetcars constructed to the dimensions of 112 year old tunnels. The T can't even order the same equipment other cities use because the Green Line needs cars that are smaller than anything a transit system would introduce this century (or the last).
It is fed by several lines with much-more passenger capacity per train. You're dumping the Orange, Blue and Red heavy rail rapid transit lines AND the commuter rail into something that can hold far fewer people. Now, not everyone is taking the other lines to reach the Green, but enough people do to make it a problem.
It's fed by surface lines with far too many stops and no traffic light preemption, destroying headways.
The original plan to convert the Green to heavy rail and loop the C (which would stay a streetcar) at Kenmore would have done wonders.
No one will pay to fix the problem now, and nothing the MBTA is planning at the moment will offer vehicles traveling faster or carrying more passengers than the Green of today. The opposite, actually.
Green Line
Thanks, very informative.
That plan to convert to heavy rail: would that reuse the existing tunnels, largely unchanged?
What about running more trains (or longer trains) at times of day when more capacity is needed? Is that possible, or are we at the capacity of the tracks?
Green Line Heavy Rail
A better explanation of the plans to convert the Green Line. But the tunnels would largely remain unchanged, but I think there might have been issues with the Boylston curve. Needless to say, the Green Line subway platforms were built as long as they are for a reason.
Right now they can run 3 car trains, but the platforms at Kenmore, Copley and Arlington are partially closed for an indefinite period of time, so that's a no-go. By the time they are done we'll probably be looking at the much-delayed Government Center renovation. So who knows when they'll be back.
There have been questions raised about the ability of the Green Line's power system to handle three car train running systemwide, but I'll defer to someone else to examine that.
can still run longer cars, just inform people
WHen the MTA was working on a platform(s) down in the Coney Island zone, I think, there were jsut lots of announcements for people to not board the last cars of long trains if they were planning to get out there... and that's in NYC where you can pass between the cars.
Really, are a couple of short stations a good reason to not run appropriately-sized cars on a line that has lots of stops far beyond those stations?
Remove traffic lights
Here's one way to improve Green Line performance:
Remove all traffic lights on Beacon Street except for: St Paul Street, Coolidge Corner, and Washington Street.
Remove all traffic lights on Commonwealth Avenue except at BU Bridge, Harvard Avenue, Washington Street, and Chestnut Hill Avenue.
At each intersection where a traffic light is removed, install a raised crosswalk to slow car traffic, so that pedestrians can still safely cross the street. (Raised croswalks are also known as speed tables. To see how a raised crosswalk works, take a look at Rindge Avenue or Oxford Street in Cambridge.)
Raised crosswalk?
Don't half ass it. I lived in Cambridge for a year...all raised crosswalks do is fuck up people's cars.
Go all the way and build a legitimate pedestrian bridge.
Speed tables reported effective
-- http://trafficcalming.org/speedtables.html
I wouldn't be surprised if Cambridge did studies on their speed tables. I can tell you (from what I've seen so far, being a new volunteer on a city committee) that a lot of research seems to go into these measures, both before and after.
Anecdotally from my own experience, I've seen a speed table in Cambridge calm traffic substantially. I've also seen grossly irresponsible speeding on a parallel street two blocks over.
I'm not saying that speed tables would be the ideal solution for getting pedestrians across the street in this hypothetical Beacon and Comm. Ave. scenario. Someone more knowledgeable than me would have to do the research and planning. Just pointing out that speed tables can work.
Raised crosswalks exist for a reason, Will:
So that people won't speed. They want people to go slower....and for obvious reasons (pedestrians, etx.). One is supposed to slow down..a lot, at a raised crosswalk. That's the whole idea. Of course anybody who goes too fast over those raised crosswalks can expect to screw up his or her car. That's the bottom line.
That's the point of cars, isn't it?
So I can move at 25 miles per hour? I have a properly functioning set of eyes and a windshield...I'm entirely capable of spotting pedestrians, and adjusting my speed as necessary. I don't need a speed table to slow me down when there's no people around.
I think you're totally missing the point, Will.
Those raised crosswalks also actually serve as speed bumps. In many places where these raised crosswalks are in place, it's because enough residents of those particular streets have rightly complained about car drivers barrellilng up and/or down those streets. The raised crosswalks are to prevent that. 25 miles an hour is too fast, which is why people often screw up their cars on those raised crosswalks. Too bad for anyone who messes up their car when they're driving too recklessly over those raised crosswalks.
Answer: no
The point of cars is not so that people can move anywhere they want to, any time they want to, at 25 miles an hour. Yes, people are capable of adjusting their speed as necessary. However, history shows that people do not always adjust their speed when necessary. The result is that sometimes they run over children and other people. It is a particular problem with children, who are harder to see from a car, and move more erratically. When people hit children at 25 miles an hour, the children tend to die.
The reason speed tables are used is to force the issue and make it much more likely that people, instead of insisting that they can go 25 miles an hour whenever they want to, because it's their god-given right, actually stop, or at the very least, slow down at those places where it is not their right. This is good for the children.
Why do you hate the children?
Good point, anon.
Pedestrian's rights, especially young children and elders' limb and lives are at stake here. The raised crosswalks are for pedestrians' protection.
that's a great theory...
...but not true on any non-passenger-car suspension.
If you've got an SUV or one of those "crossover" vehicles, the raised crosswalks are worthless. Modern suspensions often have progressive springs, shock absorbers have bump stops, etc. In short, no, you're not going to "screw up your car."
Fire trucks and ambulances, however, are another matter entirely- they have suspensions set up for carrying tons of weight and not allowing the truck to have excessive body roll when cornering. A fire truck at normal speeds will be launched so hard it slams the guys inside up against the roof. The driver has to slow for them (if they see 'em) and that slows response time. Fire chiefs around the country are fighting back against the No Speeding In My Neighborhood hysteria; people are throwing up speed bumps and raised crosswalks like crazy, and affecting emergency vehicle response time.
Speeding doesn't kill people. Braking distances quoted by "experts" haven't been true for decades (and braking is irrelevant- most situations call for swerving.)
What kills people? RECKLESS driving...
That's why it's good to have
That's why it's good to have engineers and planners who figure these things out on a case-by-case basis.
Speeding doesn't kill people?
Speeding = significantly decreased response time
The threshold for doing the right thing when there's about to be a problem is already very short when the speed is ANYTHING above walking-speed.
The issue is about how people are hard-wired to perform, reaction times, time needed to "think" and so on. Remember that we are talking about creatures that can be so distracted that they blow through stop lights in their cars (no interpretation of the signal is needed after a year or so of driving) merely because they are talking on cell phones or even talking to a passenger. Yeah, the creatures that drive vehicles are, by design, that vulnerable to screwing up.
So I can't agree that a decreased response time doesn't kill people. It's got to. Our capacity for managing things is pretty much completely used up as soon we're driving a car is above walking speed. That's what speed limits are supposed to do - calibrate the speed of the vehicle to the capacity of a typical driver for those times when something goes haywire.
If nothing ever went wrong while driving, we wouldn't need speed limits.
QED
removing lights
too many busy streets to do that.
Carlton, Kent, Dean, Winchester, Centre, and if you even took out the smaller ones those cars would simply have to go to the other roads...
Oxford St not the best example
The raised crosswalks are no guarantee for pedestrian safety. In fact, the Oxford St raised crosswalk is being looked at for its role in a pedestrian death in January:
http://www.cctvcambridge.org/node/8836
The problem is not the number of stops, it's
both a) the fact they do not run enough trains, which results in serious delays at all the stops as people try to crowd on and b)the fact that the dispatchers seem to have this compulsion to try to correct any schedule irregularities (however minor) immediately by rerouting inbound trains (such as turning GC trains at Park Street) at the drop of a hat. This latter practice actually excerbates delays on the system, especially for folks east of Government Center.
And, despite the T's claims to the contrary, there is easily sufficient capacity on both the branches and in the Central Subway to run more trains (this issue was studied in both the original evaluation of the light rail option for Silver Line Washington Street and, more recently, in the cancelled Arborway restoration). Of course, to attain this means the T would have to give up some of their current practices, like the huge number of unnecessary absolute stop signals in the Central Subway (which several operators I've observed tend to ignore anyway) and the totally unnecessary practice of not permitting more than one train to berth (load/unload) in a station at a time even though there's platform capacity to safely do so. And they would also be forced to rewire the signals on the Lechmere Viaduct - which (IMO) should be done ANYWAY.
As for the "endless string" of traffic lights on the B and C surface lines, there's an easy solution for that. Implement priority control for the street cars. Oh wait, the T (or was it the City of Boston) doesn't want that either. And, despite the special "streetcar" signals recently installed during the Beacon Street reconstruction, they DID NOT provide priority traffic signal control for the Green Line as part of the project. Rather, the streetcars move in the same signal phase as Beacon Street through traffic does.
transit priority finally coming to boston signals?
See section 8.0 number 2. (on PDF page #34) and keep your fingers crossed: Request for Qualifications For general design services and traffic signal retiming in the City of Boston. http://www.cityofboston.gov/transportation/pdfs/Ge...
Plenty of problems
1) The whole concept of going to work at 9 and leaving at 5 needs to go away. It's 2009. We all have the Internet now. We don't need downtown companies luring all these people in at the same time every day.
2) The aforementioned problem with Green Line surface stops. ELIMINATE HALF OF THEM. If you don't care to walk an extra two blocks, perhaps Boston is not the city for you.
3) Pensions. Explain to me why we need to pay people not to work. There's a slice of the budget right there.
4) Fares. Why are they so low if the T is in such debt? Raise the prices. If anybody bitches, explain to them "either pay the current price and get shitty service, or pay the higher price so that we can build a better system. Your choice." You get what you pay for...transit is no different.
I will have to head into town during the day in a couple of weeks...I'm not really looking forward to my T ride.
pensions?
Will when you are old and can't afford to take care of yourself...what should we (society) do with your living body?
That's my problem
Not yours. It's up to me to save and invest my money properly.
as you can see its all of our problems
I don't trust everyone in this country to take care of themselves like you might be able to.
Short term thinking on your part
So if your parents don't save and invest their money properly, will you support them? Say you become so ill you spend every dime you saved on health care.
I take it you shall be taking your own life so as to not be a burden on society.
People get pensions because they earn them. People get Social Security because they earn it. Study your history, if your talking to your parents or grandparents ask them what it was like.
Clueless
Do you even know what a pension is? Do you know how it works?
Major hint: it is a system funded by employee contributions. You pay in for many years, you get it back with interest.
Yeah
And where do they get the money to make the contributions in the first place?
I'll bite
They get the money from working.
Your turn.
Maybe they make too much money in the first place
Your turn.
Sooo....
If a worker makes enough money to save for retirement through a pension plan, that's too much money?
I guess I'm glad we don't live in a world you made, Will. It'd suck.
A fine idea. Won't happen.
I think there's little confidence that higher fares would lead to better service. Taking commuter rail as an example (a little off the topic, but it's what I know), last year's fare increases were followed by a drop in on-time performance. Most of us are paying more to park, with absolutely no change in the lots, or improved convenience in paying.
I think that in order for riders to accept the major fare and funding increase that would be needed to actually improve the system (and retire the debt), the T would have to include an explicit plan for where improvements will be made, when, and which heads will roll when it doesn't work out that way. The T also needs to face the fact that its employees are largely perceived as nasty freeloading nepotists. I don't see any of that happening in a credible way anytime soon.
And Grabauskas and his staff need to start riding the T more. Preferably wearing nametags.
Absolutely true, oddjob60.
It's disgraceful that we've got fare increaases on the T, and even lousier performance. The Green Line is often not that dependable on the long run, but the Lechmere line is by far the worst, imho.
Rapid Transit?!?
No, more like the Slow Transit.
With so many people being
With so many people being unemployed, you'd think the T would be less crowded. Shouldn't the poor folks be sitting at home or doing community service or something? Oh wait, they're too busy blogging and tweeting.