T reaches agreement with Breda
Color me skeptical, but I have my doubts that a new contract extending the MBTA’s “worst purchase ever” will in fact “result[] in fewer delays.” I’d like to see the numbers on what connection delays have with the number of seats on tracks at any given moment. In fact today my red line train from Downtown Crossing was stuck for a few minutes in the little passageway between Downtown Crossing and Park Street. I presume we were sitting behind another train. In this case, having fewer trains on the tracks would have sped things up.
Once again, I’d like to call on journalists not to take official pronouncements at face value.
The problem isn’t too many trains, it’s bad utilization. You’re stuck behind that guy between stations because they have two trains tailgating each other instead of spreading out their arrival times.
This is especially bad because it means that you get 1 train that arrives and everybody piles onto it. Then, the next train arrives almost immediately and nobody’s there to get on. This gets worse as the trains keep moving. It would be better to more evenly space out the train arrival times so each train is more evenly loaded.
As far as the green line getting more cars, etc. It’s funny that they are bragging that the Green line is going to be great because the fleet of trains is so huge. The presumption is that there will be more trains to service all those stops they have. That’s great…except that they are going to extend the Green line to Medford shortly. The Medford->Lechemere line is likely to be a very busy corridor and soak up a good portion, if not all, of those extra cars. So those extra cars are going to be fabu for the next couple of years or whatever, then it will be back to business as usual.
Thanks, Grabsukidooka! (I dunno why it’s so much fun to mash up that guys name…but it is!)
Comment by mrz — November 12, 2007 @ 3:23 pm
My annoying T anecdote: I rode the green line in from Newton about this time last year, and we kept tailgating the train in front of us and having to stop in between stations for 3-5 minutes at a time. R and I could not figure out why the conductor couldn’t just wait those 3-5 minutes at a station, instead. That way, people could actually have a larger window in which to catch a train, thus keeping a few souls from having to stand outside in the holy-crap-its-cold Boston winter. If you have to stop continuously anyway, why not at the most convenient place?
Comment by #7buslady — November 12, 2007 @ 6:37 pm
I suspect it’s because they don’t offer information about the cars in front or behind to each car’s driver. They just say “Run this route and stop at each stop for about 3 minutes”. Thus, the T cars are probably run like a bus. So if a driver gets ahead of things, they’ll end up tailgating another car.
If they had more info “depart station now” or things were a bit more automated, this would be less of an issue.
Comment by mrz — November 13, 2007 @ 9:49 am
But the problem is that we stopped between stations about 5 times, with the train in front of us in full view just down the tracks the whole time. We knew we would be playing this game, so why not at least wait at the station for a few minutes until the train in front is at least out of sight? We never saw a train behind us, so I’m guessing it wouldn’t have hurt to do so.
If Boston wanted to spend the money (instead of on TV’s, maybe?), they could become more automated and provide better service. I realize that BART is a bit of a different animal (fewer trains, more distance between stations, newer, etc.), but the BART folks know where every train in the system is sitting at any given moment, and their on time rate is around 95%.
Comment by #7buslady — November 13, 2007 @ 6:14 pm