By adamg on Mon., 3/13/2017 - 3:05 pm
The Globe reports the state's looking to save some money; proposal would also make cuts to the Ride.
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The Globe reports the state's looking to save some money; proposal would also make cuts to the Ride.
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LIRR runs ONE car trains on the Greenport line
By rb
Tue, 03/14/2017 - 9:03pm
In revenue service: https://youtu.be/00wYtEjqyWc?t=5m49s
And the LIRR is a very
By DTP
Wed, 03/15/2017 - 9:05am
And the LIRR is a very special circumstance, given that the vast majority of their trackage is solely theirs to operate on, and is geographically isolated from the rest of the national rail system.
The Greenport Branch is also completely unsignaled territory, with only a handful of round trips per day. Only 2 go as far as Greenport. (Schedule)
So shunting track circuits is not really an issue, except in the limited time that they share space with mainline trains. And all the crossing protection on the branch can be set up specifically for those super-short trains.
That's the typical American
By anon
Thu, 03/16/2017 - 2:48pm
That's the typical American railroad mentality: When you have an unreliable life-critical safety system, don't fix it -- just throw some more weight at the problem.
DMUs can be coupled together,
By anon
Thu, 03/16/2017 - 2:46pm
DMUs can be coupled together, to run a longer train at rush hour.
Or kept as smaller trains to run more frequently. Even rush hour frequencies are way longer than they should be.
DMUs coupled together are
By DTP
Fri, 03/17/2017 - 9:11am
DMUs coupled together are ridiculously inefficient though. I can't find it right now, but there was a study done by a commuter rail agency that tried DMUs (maybe Tri-Rail?) that determined that once you've coupled together more than 2-3 DMUs, the fuel efficiency seriously suffers compared to a locomotive hauling coaches.
Plus the operational issues that come with that - assuming that you can't pass through from one to the next.
So much for Baker winning re-election
By GoSoxGo
Mon, 03/13/2017 - 4:51pm
Please, SOMEBODY, take the reigns on proposing an INCREASE in public transportation funding.
A special tax earmarked specifically for capital public transportation projects?
Yes, please.
Elmininating weekend commuter rail service is completely unacceptable.
Sadly, he'll get reelected if he runs.
By CopleyScott17
Mon, 03/13/2017 - 7:16pm
The suburbs and rural areas love him. He's a Republican and he keeps gas taxes down and tolls cheap and highways plowed! Who cares if he screws over the city folk?
Yeah because the rural folks kept voting for that deval guy!
By Good for the Goose
Mon, 03/13/2017 - 8:02pm
Deval was also a car-centric republican, right? That's why he was popular out in the sticks. Yee HAWWW!
Funny!
By CopleyScott17
Tue, 03/14/2017 - 6:17am
I'm always amused by the kneejerk "But Deval...!" reactions posted every time we call out Baker.
Drapeghazi!
By Sock_Puppet
Tue, 03/14/2017 - 7:20am
Never forget!
What the heck?
By anon
Mon, 03/13/2017 - 5:02pm
TOURISM will suffer.
How many people come into the city on the train?
Also, Gov. Charlie Kochman clearly doesn't ever ride the commuter rail to the nice beaches on a weekend in the summer - you know, when the trains are packed?
Federal regulations allow two
By anon
Mon, 03/13/2017 - 5:46pm
Federal regulations allow two-person train crews (or maybe even one person). The T should do whatever it takes to make sure they aren't staffing more people than the minimum on weekends, before cutting service.
Think how good they'll look
By mg
Mon, 03/13/2017 - 7:15pm
when they announce that they've seen the light and will only cut weekend trains by half. Compare that to the reaction if they'd announced a 50% cut originally.
Doomed to fail...
By ginzingirl
Mon, 03/13/2017 - 7:47pm
Weekend commuter train service was doomed to failure from the outset. Unfortunately a train timetable that has 2.5/3 hour time gaps between trains just does not cut it. I'm a big proponent for public transit, but cutting service dooms it to failure. If people assume that it's not going to be there when they need it, they adjust their behavior and it is never even considered a viable option in the first place. Ah, for the utopia of Europe where even on a Sunday trains to my family's home town (some 30 miles outside a "world class city") run every hour throughout the day.
An example of making things up as you go
By Waquiot
Mon, 03/13/2017 - 8:39pm
When I first saw this, I was going to accuse Adam of not reading the article, since in my paper Globe today (yes, print, so I don't feel like looking it up on the interwebs to link to it) there was an article on temporary weekend closures to install PTC to satisfy the Federal Railroad Administration. But no, probably a day after announcing temporary closures on the week-end, they announce permanent closures on the week-end.
No clue.
Saw the same
By Daan
Mon, 03/13/2017 - 9:02pm
I saw the same article. Was the MBTA feeding false information to the Globe? Or is this a balloon to see how much controversy is created? Perhaps it's a game where Shortsleeve, et al. say they need to cancel and then say, oh, but we know some people want the train so we'll be nice guys and just half the service.
I do not trust the people who manage the T. Tonight there were 3 # 39 buses bunched up at Perkins and South Huntington after rush hour. At least 2 were bunched leaving Back Bay. This is typical for the 39 line. Yet the T folks refuse to deal with this problem. Ironically the stops eliminated a few years ago were supposed to improve the route. Instead the route is still a mess.
T managers seem to have their heads in the ground where large events are concerned. Last week there was an event that resulted in 300 - 400 people waiting for a Silver bus at South Station. The delay was at least 15 minutes plus the especially large number of folks who wound up at the station. The T apparently was lost where making sure there were enough Silver buses at 9:30 AM on a weekday morning.
I will give them that the Orange line seems to be running better. At least there are less occasion of 3 FH bound trains for each Oak Grove train on the end of morning rush hour.
But that will probably resume when they close an Orange line track for what is becoming another interminable transportation project at FH.
Do the masters of state government just hate public transportation? It is hard to believe that these masters of governance are more than ambivalent about public transportation, leaning toward viewing it as a necessary evil. Or does the majority of the legislature just see people who use Boston oriented public transportation as various colors of trash to be squeezed for money? And to return the squeeze with what an angry monkey throws at people?
ridership data
By Saul
Mon, 03/13/2017 - 8:53pm
I took the most recent Blue Book data and entered the numbers for number of trains and ridership into a spreadsheet, broken down by weekday, Saturday and Sunday.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_5A9ziNUWs...
Overall, Saturdays see 28% of the number of trains a weekday sees, with 20% of the ridership. The Saturday percentage of riders on the Haverhill and Lowell lines is greater than the Saturday percentage of trains that run, and the number is close for the Rockport/Newburyport line.
Given the pathetic weekend schedules — 3-hour gaps on some lines — these numbers are not so shabby.
From the article:
Either weekend ridership has markedly slipped from 2013, or neither Keolis nor the T has any real sense of ridership. (Not surprising, given the manual nature of commuter rail fare collection.)
Change the fare collection method?
By Anonyme
Mon, 03/13/2017 - 10:04pm
This comes up again and again. Staff collection method just do not seem to work. So maybe go to turnstiles. Yes, it might cost a considerable amount of money. But it yields two things: cash, every time someone rides, and data that will show real ridership stats.
Weekend ridership I'm sure is
By DTP
Mon, 03/13/2017 - 11:23pm
Weekend ridership I'm sure is down significantly since 2013 - given how much fares have increased, how much gas prices have decreased, and how much CR ridership is down overall.
And don't forget...
By octr202
Tue, 03/14/2017 - 10:32am
...since that time we've also had major construction shutdowns on Fitchburg and Old Colony lines, and sometimes Haverhill. That's naturally going to cause a ridership drop.
For the record, I'm fine with weekend shutdowns line-by-line as needed if there is significant work to do. That's normal, and though ridership losses are unfortunate, it's a necessary evil. Killing the whole weekend system just seems like a play out of the bad old days of death by temporary substitution or closure.*
*This is where my Philly-area roots make me even more worried...just look at the history of big chunks of the rail system abandoned there in the 80's and 90's.
It's always a bad sign when
By DTP
Tue, 03/14/2017 - 12:10pm
It's always a bad sign when you have to invoke comparisons to S(IN)EPTA!
SEPTA commuter rail somehow
By anon
Thu, 03/16/2017 - 2:58pm
SEPTA commuter rail somehow manages to run a heck of a lot more frequently than the T, despite similar ridership numbers.
Could you imagine a commuter rail line that runs every half hour off-peak on weekdays, and every hour on weekends? And 1:30 am outbound departures on weekends? SEPTA has plenty of them.
Here is the discussion of
By anon
Mon, 03/13/2017 - 11:27pm
Here is the discussion of budget reduction options direct from the source:
http://www.mbta.com/uploadedfiles/About_the_T/Boar...
Keeping weekend Commuter Rail service and the Ride...
By Peggy Wargelin
Tue, 03/14/2017 - 12:12pm
If you value weekend commuter rail service, support services enabling disabled people access to doctor's appointments, and/or want to reduce greenhouse gases to help address global warming, write or call your state representatives and let them know! State Senator Michael Barrett said at a panel I attended that even 10 emails from constituents would put an issue on his radar.
It really does have an effect. We were able to save the West Concord commuter rail station last year when they proposed to eliminate it for budget reasons.
Thank you.
So since I can only get
By anon
Tue, 03/14/2017 - 4:00pm
So since I can only get service 5 days a week will my $200 a month pass be reduced?
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