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North Station delays
By roadman on Thu, 06/02/2016 - 6:03pm
All trains have 10 to 15 minute delays per the station PA announcements. No phone alerts about this, but just got a reminder alert about the July fare increases - ugh!
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Is it me (ok its not) or has
Is it me (ok its not) or has the new schedule made every train seemingly 2-4 minutes late... or at least a lot more trains late than they were previously...
I got into North Station this evening about 5:50 on a N/R train and other than the Downeaster it was LITERALLY THE ONLY TRAIN SET IN THE STATION.
At 5:50...you know the time folks arrive at the station if they work until 5 in Cambridge, Longwood etc.
sheesh
Hi John -
Yeah, having the same problem at South Station. Keolis customer service informed me that it will take time as they are still "adjusting" the change in schedules.
Last week, my Franklin line train home never arrived at the said time at Endicott (6:07pm), being roughly 5-10 minutes late. We also had Amtrak signal problems which made us roughly 20-25 minutes late. This week appears to be better but we are still a few minutes here and there off schedule.
South Sta. delays
Seconded. A 5-10 min delay seems to be common for afternoon/eve trains on the Worcester/Fram line. I am trying to be understanding of Keolis/the T while they work out the bugs on a pretty big schedule adjustment and because of the ongoing construction but patience is becoming scarcer.
Being 5-10 mins off schedule might not seem like a big deal to some, but to others it is. In my own example, P593's (5:15 from South Sta) frequent lateness under the new schedule (train leaves at same time, is supposed to get to the stop I need 3 mins earlier than under the old schedule), is preventing me from committing to a day care pickup that I should be able to do with time to spare. This throws my whole family's schedule into disarray, and affects the number of hours that I can work (I would be able to work more if the train begins to reliably operate on time because I wouldn't have to take an earlier train).
Bottom line is that these seemingly little things matter. I am acutely aware of the fact that I am just one person, but this situation must be affecting others (judging by the number of people sprinting off the train when it is late), and in the aggregate, that is a lot of lost productivity.
Was it any better before the
Was it any better before the schedule changes?
During my (fortunately brief) time commuting on the Commuter Rail, 20 minutes late was totally normal.
The answer is "yes", in general. But they still have problems.
The idea that was conveyed by Keolis is that they needed to make these adjustments (removing trains as well as station stops) to make everything flow better. Hopefully that will happen at some point.
So now we have more folks packed on trains as well as delays. South Station, last night, was a clusterF*&k; no where to stand either on the platform or in the Station due to train delays.
I have a very simple solution
I have a very simple solution to this problem. It's called voting. You should try it. If you have already, you should think about who you've voted for and if they've been in office while this whole debacle has unfolded.
I totally agree
Unfortunately (well, fortunately, for the most part), my Rep, Denise Provost, was literally the only member of the House not to roll over when Charlie said he needed to cut the transportation budget. And I don't really want to move to vote one of the others out. Sigh.
More delays
The new schedules have 3 trains leaving n. station at 5:35. This is peak rush hour and it is not uncommon to have 1000+ people waiting to board these trains. Once boarding is announced, usually 5 minutes before the scheduled departure time or less, it is nearly impossible to wade through all the people to reach the platform. Horrible planning!
The new schedules also have three trains leaving
North Station at 6:05 (Amtrak Downeaster, Newburyport, and Reading). Additionally, as these trains are leaving, three inbound trains are approaching. This makes six trains the dispatcher has to route and keep track of (no pun intended) in under a ten minute span. This is hardly efficient and makes unnecessary additional work for the dispatcher, especially if the outbound trains were staged such that they have to cross the other's route when departing (i.e. Newburyport leaves from Track 8 while the Downeaster leaves from track 4).
There were quite a few...
...periods with three departures before as well. The three 5:35's used to be three 5:30's, and they worked reasonably well. Sometimes one gets held for a minute or two, but especially the expresses will likely make up the time.
I still think that a lot of the challenges are working out the unseen logistics - as of now, the dispatchers have only had a couple weeks to get used to the new patterns (not just the scheduled moves, but all the non-revenue yard and terminal moves as well). Yes, there will definitely be some adjustments needed to schedules, but it's going to take a while for all of the operating personnel to work out the day-to-day routine (and more importantly, to develop the plan B scenarios for when things go a little haywire).
That said, something odd was going on last night. There were some scattered delays on the outer ends of lines early in the afternoon which seemed to ripple through rush hour with "delayed due to late arrival of the inbound train." Seems like too many trips may be relying on equipment that doesn't have a long enough layover at North Station.
Also worth noting that this week they'd been cancelling several short-turns, so there might have been a bit of an equipment shortage at work again forcing tighter than planned turns last night.
Excellent observations
And all this only underscores why having some reserve equipment and crews on hand, as railroads used to do once upon a time, is necessary to insure reliable performance.
When a failure of a single train in the middle of the afternoon (as happened on the Haverhill Line yesterday) has such a ripple effect that it affects the departure of other trains over two hours later, there is something that's basically wrong with your scheduling.
reserve equipment
I agree with the sentiment, but I am sure that you can envision the howls of "hackery!", "more wasteful public spending!", "use it for increased frequency on [my] line!", etc. that would accompany an announcement that even a single train set with a single crew was being held in reserve.
I view that response as at least as big a problem as anything else. The notion that any kind of redundancy is wasteful is really going to get us one day (e.g., if a few, literally 2 or 3) overpasses disappeared overnight, this entire section of the country would be effectively cutoff since almost everything comes by truck now). This is a separate and scarier conversation though.
Agreed
Not sure that there's a crew shortage (other than when they can't get to their next run because they're stuck on a delayed train), but there's definitely been a coach shortage (many trains running less than what they should), and there's still not enough locomotives to go around when too many fail at once. There's a lot more units with the HSP's online, but about 12-14 F40 rebuilds have been allowed to drop now. I hope we don't get into problems because of that over the summer.