Outraged Liberal had a really awesome, customer-friendly day that surely Dan Grabauskas would approve of:
Walking into the lavish turnstile area (how many years have you been working on that station now?) I was informed there was no outbound service to BC, but there were plenty of buses upstairs.
Yeah, right. Not a one. At 5 p.m. So I start walking in the drizzle, hoping it would stay that way.
Imagine my surprise when I got to Blandford Street and saw a two-car train loading for a trip. Outbound. And of course, no kindly MBTA customer service representative to explain what the blankety-blank was going on.
etc. etc. ad nauseum, ad infinitum.
If Gov. Patrick wants some fanatical new supporters, he can start throwing his weight around on behalf of Green Line riders. This just doesn’t cut it for any self-respecting city. It’s a poorly kept-up, 19th century system for a 2007 city. A joke. An embarrassment. An inconvenience, and annoyance, a waste of time, a bait and switch. Enough.
As a daily rider of the D line (and sometimes C), I’ve actually noticed a marked improvement in service in recent months.
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Back during the winter, there were mornings when I’d wait 20-30 minutes for a train. I distinctly remember one 3-degree morning when 100 or so commuters stood in the cold for 45 minutes.
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But in the last few months I’ve experienced very few days with long waits. Even when I arrive at the platform only to see the train pulling away, I rarely have to wait longer than 5-10 minutes for the next train.
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Sure, there’s the occasional switching issue or traffic jam when the lines converge, but I think they’re doing a fairly good job with the system they have.
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Yes, the T needs serious work, and I’m hopeful that the forthcoming transportation finance commission report includes significant T debt relief in order to give the authority the resources it needs to catch up on its capital projects backlog and maintain service.
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FWIW, there’s a hearing by the Transportation committee this Thursday for bills relating to railroads and the MBTA, including H. 3694 , which directs the state to assume the T’s pre-forward-funding “legacy debt”.
since cycling is faster and funner ™.
It does seem, however, that their “regular time” operations have improved somewhat. Where they don’t seem to have strong performance is during “event time” or “something broke time”. I have no sense for legitimate “emergency time”. This isn’t a surprise — being prepared for those types of events require being overstaffed during “regular time” just in case “something broke time” shows up, and since most “event time”s don’t fit in well with reasonable employee scheduling start times or work lengths, it requires over-staffing the “regular time”s surrounding the “event time” to have the “event time” staffed appropriately. For a system struggling with their budgets, they can’t afford to be adequately staffed for the exceptional times because it means they’ve got to over-staff some of the time, and they just can’t afford to do it.
The T is absolutely struggling with two financial burdens: the debt financing agreed upon before the T knew they’d be expected to pay for it with forward funding, and the pension & retirement obligations from contracts signed 1960-1980. It’s not that the retirement packages pay too much, it’s that they start too early. Retiring with full benefits at 40 is problematic because the T will pay out for another 35 years or so. They’ve got to honor their prior contracts, but at the same time they just can’t afford to keep giving such long-lengthed pension benefits. I have no idea what the current retirement packages for MBTA employees are… anyone else know?
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The Lege doesn’t have to take all MBTA debt to have a substantial impact on MBTA finances. It doesn’t have to take any current debt at all — why not let the Lege finance one of the upcoming MBTA projects on the state budget, and never put it on the MBTA budget? Then they’re getting their capital improvement projects done, but not paying the interest on one or more of them in the future — resulting in a little less budget going toward debt payoff, and hence a little more toward service.
Unless you have suffered as a daily rider of the B line you really have no idea how bad the Green line can be. This line has a stop every 100 feet and sometimes it can take more than 45 minutes to go the 4 miles from Packard’s Corner to Park Street. There is definitely room for improvement.
I used to walk over to Beacon Street (for the C line) or further (for the D). Even with a 15-20 minute walk, the trip was far shorter.
The green line might be slow and have lots of stops. But the red line is like a sauna – zero ventilation, zero A/C, muggy, humid, gross. On 90+degree commutes, people are sweating, babies are crying (the kind of crying that sounds like they’re overheated) – it’s just not healthy.
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MBTA: Speed up the green line and ventilate the red line and things would be much more comfortable.
and nobody wants to pay for them.
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Want the T to be faster?
1. Expand the tunnels from Kenmore to Gov’t Center so that you’ve got 4 tracks, not two. This would allow some trains to express from Kenmore directly to Park, Gov’t Center, and past. Why is this so key? Because it would really cut the commute on the B, C, and D lines if they’ve got to switch to red, blue, or orange during rush hour.
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It would also allow trains to be routed around disabled trains, thereby dramatically reducing the ripple effect of a single disabled car.
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Additionally, it would be especially nice for special event overload issues, be they at Fenway, Boston Common, or otherwise.
2. Bury more line. For the B, a really elegant [and expensive] method would be to bury the green line and Comm Ave from the BU Bridge to Kenmore. This would do the following: (a) allow the B line to merge the first two stops above ground: Blanford and BU East. That speeds things up. (b) allow the B line to open up all the doors for a few more stops, thereby speeding up entry and exit. (c) allow the B line to not wait at a few more traffic lights, thereby speeding up the trip time. (d) hide the line, thereby not encouraging BU students with monthly passes to ride the line for one or two stops instead of walking, thereby reducing ‘valueless riders’ and hence increasing speed and reducing crowding.
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Additionally, (e) cars coming down Comm Ave would use the tunnel to “express” that mile or so to Kenmore Square, making auto travel faster and less congested. (f) BU would have an honest to goodness campus for that stretch, instead of being partitioned by 8 lanes of parking and travel.
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Like I said, it’s expensive, but it would really improve the B line ridership, I’d expect that it would shave 6-8 minutes from the trip, while also reducing crowding and reducing variance in trip time. That’s pretty significant in terms of improvements, and it would benefit everyone who uses the B line, including [especially!] those farther out, who suffer the most from a long commute and crowding.
You could do the same for the C, but the C line isn’t suffering quite like the B line is, and I expect that people in Allston/Brighton would [rightfully] revolt if the MBTA spent money to bury the C in Brookline instead of the B in A/B. The D line has it’s own dedicated track, so there’d be very little gain there except new real estate opportunities. I know very little about the E, so I can’t comment wisely on that one.
3. Extend the platforms on the Green Line. The MBTA is actually doing this. The idea is to lengthen the platforms so a 3 car train can pull up and serve all 3 cars. This way they can throw on a 3rd car during rush hour, and handle more riders. This is obviously a slow and expensive process, since there are very many above ground T stops on the green line [at least 50 I’d think]. So, they’re doing a few every year, improving handicap access, [maybe] improving shelters, and lengthening the platforms to allow for 3 cars. Trouble is, you can’t really use this feature until most/all of the platforms are 3 car lengths, so these expenditures won’t yield fruit for a while.
4. North/South rail link! Currently, North and South stations aren’t connected via commuter rail. This creates all sorts of stupid transit problems, and dramatically increases the subway traffic in North and South Stations, and Park Street Station [the busiest in the system], as well as increases crowding on the inner parts of the green and red lines. Connecting North and South Stations by commuter rail would allow people using commuter rail to avoid the middle connections of the subway, instead pushing further on commuter rail. It’d be easier, result in fewer car switches, be faster, and reduce congestion thereby improving the MBTA for all riders. But again, it’s expensive.
All of these projects would be extremely effective at improving quality of service for the subway systems. But, you’ll never see any of them done any time, because (1) MBTA’s forward funded system prevents them from taking on much in the way of capital projects since they were handed all sorts of debt a few years ago and have a system that needs so much money spent on maintenance, and (2) because of the Big Dig, we won’t see any Federal money for quite some time.
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Until this country decides to really ramp up the money spent on mass transit systems, the MBTA is going to limp along. It’s unfortunate and frustrating, but I don’t see how the MBTA will be able to pull this off on their own, nor why they should be expected to, since a successful subway system has tremendous positive externalities and no detrimental externalities.