Hey, this is pretty cool. I’m riding the Lowell Line Commuter Rail train into town, and lo and behold, I ended up on one of the new wi-fi enabled cars. Free wireless for the duration of your ride.
There’s lots to complain about with respect to the T and other transportation issues in MA. So it’s only fair to offer congratulations when they get something right. This is excellent. đŸ™‚
Please share widely!
I’m just asking.
and I love that it’s on the T. I hope they expand the service; it adds a great reason to ride the rail instead of driving — making productive use of transit time.
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p>I’d love to see the model expanded to ports (air, bus, train) and public buildings beyond libraries, like say all places where public meetings are held in local government.
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p>On the commuter rail, the seats are too small and there is (literally) no legroom. The seat in front of you is right about against your knees and is angled over your lap. This makes normal laptop operations somewhat problematical. Theres no counterspace and or table space either. So, the seating isn’t comfortable for anything more than 20 minutes. This really isn’t enough time to do more than setup and shutdown… However, if you have to be on the train for more than 30 minutes you can’t get much more productive as you’re cramped and stuffed into the seat and your laptop won’t open all the way so you either have to bend into it or contort it away from you… Believe me, I’ve tried. I’ve settled on a Sony Vaio that’s absolutely tiny but allows me semi-comfortable (read: not yogic) typing positions when I’m up against a deadline or something and I need to squeeze every minute. Most days, however, I just read a paperback novel.
Usually, on the way home, I stand up after the Littleton stop and remain standing, trying to get the circulation in my legs restarted.
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p>If they are going to extend the lines longer distances this issue will come back to bite them. And especially if they are going to sell it like you just did: “a way to make productive use of transit time.” I come in from Leominster every day and every day I wish I could afford parking… Bench style seating, fitted as tightly as possible, designed for quick trips doesn’t cut it much past Concord.
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but some folks are smaller than others, and some laptops are micro sized, barely bigger than a blackberry. As for startup and shutdown — get a Mac… I never turn mine off; the powersave is so good I don’t need to.
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p>Unfortunately, it’s unlikely that it could generate enough demand to justify more spacious seating. But hey — it’s not too tight for David!
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p>depending on whether or not I’m wearing my ‘fro, I’m between a shade over 6’0″ and a hair under 6’1″… Taller than some, shorter than others…
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p>I’ve used several Macs on the commuter rail. Same story. I can’t get a workable position between me and the seat in front of me. Sometimes, when nobody is seated next to me I can turn and use ’em that way.
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p>My Sony Vaio is a subnotebook (runs linux) and is acceptable but really only just barely. I really only use it on the train when I must.
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p>Might that not be a little backwards? You can’t say that more spacious seating won’t generate more demand, can you? I mean, they’ve already made some concessions to seating more generous than that available, say, on a subway or bus… It seems to me that there’s some acknowledgment already that further distances require better seating, no?
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p>How many people, right now, don’t take the T because they don’t wish to give up the spacious seating in their car? (I know that, were I better able to deal with the variable costs of parking and gas, I’d drive exactly for that reason.) It’s probably a lot more than you think. Certainly, one of the key motivators, or so I’m told, of SUV purchases is spacious seating.
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p>Nor, do I think that wholesale changes need be made along the entire length of a given number of train cars. I bet that if you took one, maybe two, cars per run, rip out 3% to 5% of the seats and respaced the remained for better legroom and some small table/counter space or back-of-seat trays, you’d be well on your way to a big big win. Cost would be minimal compared to, IMHO, the number of people who would take a second look… Probably would not cost much more than it would to take one, maybe two, cars per run and make them wi-fi capable and paint it all fancy… oh, wait…
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p>Also, David didn’t say how long his ride was. Does he think he could blog from the T for more than, say, 35-45 minutes? Just curious.
a window seat. Then you have space. The older blue seats seem smaller than the maroon seats. I am OK using a Macbook. It is tight with a macbook pro
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p>By American height standards, you’re very tall. The average man is slightly under 5’10”, and you’re taller than the vast majority of women. Even if the average height of a man were 6’0″, we can say with high certainty that you’re taller than 75% of the American population (half the men, all the women). In fact, you’re taller than the average man by 2″. Based on this chart you’re at roughly the 75th percentile for men; making you taller than 7 out of 8 Americans.
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p>You are quite tall.
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p>In fact, I can say that more spacious seating will generate more demand, as will anything that improves the quality of service. More space per car will also generate less revenue per (full) car. The question is: will the added demand generate enough additional revenue to make up for the lost revenue because the car holds fewer (paying) customers than it used to? I have no idea, but I doubt it.
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p>How much more would you pay for (how much) extra room?
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p>Not relevant since there are empty seats now. In fact, at least on my line, going inbound the seats don’t fill up until South Acton, the 6th stop from the end of the line and they empty at that point going outbound. In fact Acton seems to be the ‘tipping point’ such that there are some train runs that move (full) between North Station and South Acton only (don’t go past So Acton). So, for the matter of spacious seating vs demand we’re really only talking about that last leg (or a whole new run that bypasses So. Acton like an ‘express’) Its a subset problem.
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p>The MBTA don’t charge per seat. They charge by destination. You buy a ticket based upon how far you want to go. So, if there are 100 empty seats now and I remove 20 of them to provide space that lures 65 new people unto the train that’s a net gain in revenue of those 65 passengers. That revenue gets eaten into slightly if I have to add a car and/or a conductor to handle the increased load over all the run, but that’s an optimization cost that would amortize.
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p>Why would I have to pay more? Right now they charge me at zone 8 more than someone paying a zone 5 fare for the same service. I just get to sit in the seat longer. After the initial ticket check all the conductor does is manage entry and exit, so it’s not like I’m more work for him/her. I simply don’t understand your objections to this…
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p>Commuter rails can’t gain or lose cars in a run — it takes too long. So in the morning they start out big and empty, and as they approach the city center, they get full. If the train is full near the end of the line, that’s a full train. Sure, with enough additional demand they could make another run, which is nice because it gives people more precise scheduling too. But, it’s a sticky problem — if another 30 people want to ride and there’s not enough room on the current run, they can’t start a new one. They need “enough” more people.
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p>That’s a distinction without a distance. I’m using “seat” to mean “a space on the train for an allotted amount of distance”.
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p>Slightly? Adding another car and conductor is a slight increase? Hardly. It’s a huge increase. You’ve got to have the rolling stock, maintain it, and clean it. You’ve got to staff it, and you’ve got to pay for the extra fuel to pull it and it’s contents. That’s not a slight increase — that’s “the” increase. Since there’s a spot on the line where the train is full, if you remove 20 seats in a car you’ve got to add another car to handle them. In other words, if you remove 20% of the seats, you’ve got to add 1 more car for every 4 (or fraction thereof) on the line already. That’s a substantial increase. So yeah, those new 65 people provide new revenue, but removing 20% of the seats have increased your costs dramatically — by almost 20% on a day-by-day basis because most of the costs are marginal and scale with the number of cars.
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p>So the question is — would people pay 20% more in fare to remove 20% of the seats so the cars are roomier? If they wouldn’t pay 20% more, then the proposal, while certainly making the trains more comfortable, is a financial loser relative to the status quo. As for those 65 new people, given that the T loses money, you’re not going to make it up on volume.
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p>You’d have to pay more because it would cost the T far more money to move the same number of people if each car’s capacity is reduced by 20%. Given that at Acton it’s full, a 20% reduction means 20% drop in passengers, or increased cars.
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p>Why do you think first class airfare costs more than coach? It isn’t the food or free booze, and getting on the airplane first isn’t exactly a big winner — it’s the extra space on the vessel. If two first class passengers weren’t willing to pay as much as three coach passengers (roughly), planes wouldn’t have first class sections. Same goes here. If people aren’t willing to pay more to take up more space, why wouldn’t the carrier cram many people into the space?
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p>You need not reduce the capacity for each car. I thought I was being clear, but I guess I was not: You only need to reduce one, maybe two, coaches per x miles EXTRA past the tipping point. If you have six coaches in total you can have one roomier coach for longer distance travellers. These will fill up first (with the longer distance travellers) and the remainder will fill as normal. So instead of reducing the the entire train by 20%, I’m reducing one (maybe two) cars by 20%. For one coach on a six coach run, that’s a total reduction of only 4%. 7% for two coaches.
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p>They, in fact, already do something akin to this: each run on the Fitchburg line has an ‘old-style’ (circa 1950s ) coach at one end of the train. These old style coaches already have significantly less seating (they have only 2×2 seats where the newer coaches have 2×5 seats, but they are not roomier… they are there because they are the only coaches that have a bathroom). So, I’m not actually talking about something that isn’t already in place (from a per seat per run view). I’m just proposing they tweak it.
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p>Airplanes are neither A) modular or 2) intermittent so the comparison is inapt. In an airplane you PAY for the seat. In the train you pay for the destination.
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p>My point was that I’m already paying more than twice as much as somebody who’s only going half as far. A zone 4 payer pays $101/month. I pay $250/Month for a Zone 8. I’m not getting twice the distance and I’m getting exactly the same seat. Why should I pay more? In fact, using this metric, the zone 5 payer (210/month) pays 2xZone4 but doesn’t go all the much further…
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p>This is a really interesting idea. I’m not sure if it’s fair, if it provides the right incentives, etc… but it is certainly interesting. On the inbound, I could see how it fills up first; on the outbound, do you only allow the long-trippers access, or is it first come first serve?
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p>Now, what happens at Acton? Is the train full now? If so, if you reduce capacity by 4% (or 7%), doesn’t that mean that people in Acton who used to be able to board the train now get shut out because of insufficient number of seats? Of course, this can be mitigated by adding a car to the train (a reduction of 4-7% but an addition of more than that). It would cost a bit more, but I’m not necessarily opposed to it. Would you pay 5% more for the ticket if it meant that you were going to end up with a roomier seat?
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p>That’s why the fare to BWI is the same as the fare to LAX. Oh wait, it’s not. It turns out that you also pay for the destination in an airplane; they just guarantee you a seat for safety reasons. It’s exactly the same concept. You buy a ticket. You get on a vessel. They close the doors. The vessel moves. You arrive elsewhere. You get out. What’s different? The fact that an airplane says “12A” and that a train says “coach general admission”? They still limit the total number of riders due to physical space, and if you increase the legroom between rows you have a smaller capacity.
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p>As for the modular, they certainly are. Not because planes are linked together, but because the airline chooses the size of the plane for the run. They could use any number of different sized planes based on forecasted demand. As for intermittent, fly BOS to NYC — the planes are every hour on the hour. Other routes are a few times a day, once a day, a few times a week, whatever — that’s still intermittent, albeit on different time cycles.
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p>That doesn’t sound fair to me, but not being privy to the ins and outs of the run I have no idea what the rational is for the pricing scheme. On the plus side, the further from the city the lower the housing prices (shrug).
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p>To be clear, I’m not arguing against the idea in general. If the train always had spare capacity for the whole run, removing a few seats to make the rest more comfortable makes a lot of sense, with no fare hike. But, if reducing the capacity on a car means that they have to add an additional car to the train to serve the same number of customers, then cost just went up, and the question becomes: should the faregoers pay that extra cost or should it be absorbed into the system as a whole? The answer to that question isn’t obvious to me either.
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p>As I wrote at the top of this post, I now understand your proposal a bit better and find it intriguing.
the nice thing about wifi is that the data will be clear — the MBTA will have a clear record of how many MAC addresses are logged on at any given time so they’ll know just how many customers value it.
My legs don’t come close to touching the seat in front of me unless I slouch really badly. I see some people use laptops all the time on the Needham line, so it can be done. I have used mine on the train the few times I actually bothered to bring it to work.
Better internet service via an iPhone or iPod Touch. Woo hoo!
to do any online banking etc on their wifi.
It’s always safer to do your online banking over email with trusted associates from Nigeria.
to make my $10,000 cash deposits and withdraws at those 7-11 off-brand ATMs, but not before carefully counting all that money aloud first. Twice.