Where on this platform do I stand?

For a new rider on the commuter rail, one of the most basic questions is “where do I stand” to wait for the train?  There are long areas astride the tracks for boarding and disembarking. The areas typically are long enough to accommodate a maximum-length train of six or maybe even more cars, at eighty-five feet apiece.  That’s more than 500 feet, or well more than a football field — endzones and all.  In other words, it’s a lot of space to cover.  And there is only one of me, the rider.

The question of where on the platform to wait is all the more pressing because the midday trains only open a few doors.  There may be 12 doors to the train but rest assured only two of those doors will open — the doors where the MBCR conductors are located.  The same train generally will follow the same practice … but different trains apparently follow different practices.  Some trains board passengers on the leading cars, while other trains board passengers on the trailing cars.

How can a rider predict where on the platform the train will stop and which doors will open?  The easy answer is that you should stand with the other riders.  But that only works if you are slow to arrive at the station and time the train closely.  As you can see there are no riders in this picture of Mishawum/Woburn station a few minutes prior to the arrival of a Boston-bound train.

How about standing on the elevated platform?  The MBCR and MBTA have made handicap accessibility a priority, so more boarding is conducted from the platform in recent years.  However, clearly not all elevated platforms are in use.  You can see the picture above was taken from an elevated platform that was in a state of disrepair and not the correct choice.  The train did not board from the elevated platform.

In fact, riders boarded on the far end of the Woburn/Mishawum stop, and that only was clear when the usual riders began gathering in that area just moments before the train arrived.  There has to be a better way to help riders who are unfamiliar with a train or a station.

Walk this way to board the train

And it turns out that the MBCR already has the solution, in the form of the sign to the left posted at the Needham Junction station.  Call it obvious (or brilliant) but it is a hurtling leap forward in communications with riders.  Stand where the sign says to go and you will be alright.  Now if we could just get these signs at all of the stations!

Crowd waiting for rider to drive inactive bus

The 57 bus.  What can I say?  Forty-five stops in five-and-a-half miles of Brighton, Allston, Newton, and Watertown.  One stop for every 650 feet.  In traffic.  It isn’t exactly the kind of ride that anyone really looks forward to.

But the 57 gets riders.  Lots of riders.  One might think that would prompt the T to emphasize frequent, reliable operations.

Why then, does the T allow excessive numbers of riders to accumulate at peak hours, waiting for that bus?  The T’s foot-dragging seems doubly strange when there is both an inactive bus and a driver waiting at the 57′s origin in Kenmore Square, just waiting … waiting … waiting for … I’m not sure, just waiting.  Ten minutes, fifteen ….

This picture was taken on a Tuesday evening at 9:15 p.m., at Kenmore square.  This was the scene for perhaps 20 minutes (that I personally saw); I would guess that the earliest arrivals were waiting at least 40 minutes.  The group in the picture (which continued to form for some time) is actually quite large; the people are standing right up to the edge of the curb, and not exclusively for the view of the inactive bus directly in front of them.  The erstwhile bus driver was sipping a latte, taking it all in.  And this was (according the the Red Sox recap) about an hour before the end of the game.  This was not part of the post-game rush.

The run at 9:12 p.m. run obviously was dropped.  It seems very doubtful as well that the 8:52 p.m. or 9:00 p.m. routes ever left the station either.  If they occurred, they certainly failed to accommodate everyone who was waiting for the bus at those times.  At least two other empty (or nearly empty) buses went through the station while the group was waiting.  One was “Out of Service,” and the other was running a route that no one apparently was riding.

Eventually the loitering bus driver restarted the bus, marked it as the 57, and pulled it to the curb.  The driver must have been scheduled for the 9:24 p.m. run.  Never mind that the three preceding runs of the 57 bus never happened.  It was a cozy ride with the large group that had gathered to wait, made more unpleasant by the over-earnest warnings of a second T employee who urged packed-in riders to stand behind the yellow line or else.

In another context, for another agency, this would be a sign of part of an organization headed in the wrong direction, unable to motivate employees to provide critical services in an appropriate manner.  But for the T, unfortunately, it is another night of business as usual.  At least on the 57 bus.

If highways were regulated like railways, you would drive a vehicle like this.

In the 1970s, the federal government instituted automobile regulations to increase vehicle fuel efficiency — in part by decreasing vehicle weight.  The initiative, called “CAFE” or “Corporate Average Fuel Economy,” has been renewed and enhanced as recently as 2007.  Heavier vehicles tend to be safer vehicles, but Congress and the President have judged that the gain in efficiency at the cost of safety is worthwhile and justified.  The stakes are high; roads are dangerous, automobile accidents are common, and literally thousands of people die each year as a result of the CAFE efficiency standards.  The government made a tough choice and for four decades the decision has withstood constant scrutiny.

At the same time, the government has effectively been mandating heavier, more polluting, less useful passenger trains.  Although rail collisions are rare (particularly compared to auto accidents) the federal agency in charge of the national rail system has banned lightweight railcars from the national rail network.  Never seen a single-car train beyond the interior suburbs?  That’s because they aren’t allowed there.  Trolley and subway cars operate only on closed-off portions of the rail network that are physically disconnected from the national rail network.  Passenger trains must be bulked up in weight to be allowed on traditional rail corridors, even where freight traffic is rarely seen, if ever.  For example, the Acela Express Amtrak trainset nearly doubled in weight to comply with the regulations, and as a result it developed numerous design and performance problems.

To recap: the feds required passenger trains to get heavier or be banned from the basically safe national network at the same time that other federal regulators have required passenger cars operating on a dangerous road system to shrink in mass.

The two sets of regulations could not have been more different.  Imagine for a moment what the roads would look like if they were operated like the rails.  So much for the freedom of the open road; that would be history.  If you owned a subcompact car– or an SUV for that matter– you would only be able to drive on your driveway, unless you first put up barriers to block off the local road network from the national road network.  To be able to drive on a national highway or Interstate, you would need to buy a vehicle the size of a cement mixer, and fill it with cement.  Everyone would be required to do this, because (in the language of the rail regulators) otherwise the passenger automobiles would be too lightweight to avoid deforming in a head-on collision with the heaviest tractor-trailers on the road.  Vehicle fuel efficiency of these passenger-cement-mixers would be abysmal, people would be forced to pay for excessive vehicles and unwanted tons of cement, and maintenance costs for the vehicles and roads would be much higher.

In effect, rail regulations would convert a useful network of highways into isolated islands of local roads interspersed by connections that are accessible only to impractical overweight passenger vehicles.

No one would seriously suggest that we should have regulations on the highway system like the ones that have been imposed on the rails.  That begs the question why we have such onerous rules for trains.  A passenger train that can survive a high-speed collision with a locomotive may well be safer to its passengers in that respect.  However, the result of the requirement has been a far less connected and useful, and far more expensive, passenger rail system that has forced more and more people into their automobiles.  And automobiles are proven to be far more lethal to passengers than trains, in addition to the deleterious impact of automobiles and asphalt on the environment.

So in its zeal to make passenger trains safer by making sure that no passenger rail car on the national network will deform if was unfortunate enough to collide with a coal freight train (whether or not anyone could remember a coal train operating in that location), the federal government has undermined the competitiveness of rail technology and forced everyone to take much more serious risks on the highways, where the risk of death is many times higher than the rails.  And where no one expects a passenger automobile to bounce back from a head-on collision with a semi-trailer.

Maybe it’s time that regulators considered that heavier passenger trains and a less connected rail system are not actually a safer or more convenient for the public at large.  A lighter passenger train (or trolley service on regular railways) operating on the national rail network might help drivers off of the roads … and that alone would save lives.

Unfortunately, the T never has gotten one particular aspect of its fares right: monthly passholders pay full fare in cash when they ride on a higher-level service.  A pass might be good for several dollars credit against the fare on one service, and not a dime on another.  The T inexplicably fails to give passholders the full value across the entire system that they purchased for one particular service.

An illustration might help.  There are two levels of express bus service, inner express and outer express.  The outer express bus generally travels to more distant stops.  An $89 inner express bus pass is good for the entire $2.80 inner express bus fare.  Not surprisingly, the pass is not good for the $4.00 outer express bus; there is a more expensive pass for that bus.  But here’s the riddle: if I offer an inner express pass good for a $2.80 fare, and the actual fare is $4.00 for the outer express bus, I only should have to pay an extra $1.20 cash, right?  Not so, at least on the MBTA.  Passholders receive no discount on the more expensive service.  They pay full fare, even though they hold a pass that would entitle them to credit for all of the fare on a different bus.  (And as an aside, there is an additional complication that the T charges different cash fares and prepaid pass/charlie card fares).

This has been a problem for years.  It is most obvious with the flexible passes for the express bus, commuter rail, and boat, because there are multiple levels of service.  However, “Link Pass” on the stored value card offers no solution, except to add a further technological hurdle to the administrative one.  Fare-takers on the commuter rail and boat don’t have the equipment to verify that a rider has a valid “Link Pass” on their stored value card.

To their credit, T fare takers typically are generous when it comes to making accommodations to passengers to ameliorate this nonsensical no-discount policy.  But wouldn’t it be better if the T used a more rational fare structure?  A $4 fare, minus a $2.80 credit for a monthly pass, ought to result in a $1.20 cash fare.

In 2005, Grabauskas took the job of general manager with a clear vision.  The T would treat riders like customers; the system would be reliable, clean, courteous, and safe.  But mainly clean.  And accessible; inaccessibility “impacts not only on the disabled, but on parents with children in strollers, as well.” Grabauskas professed to be a neatnik; he was particularly concerned about the condition of elevators and escalators.  He apparently believed that if he made the T a comfortable place to be, riders would flock and revenues would soar.  And, of course, he wanted to control costs.

So four years later, how did he do?

Grabauskas never shrunk from the gaze of his “customers,” for example writing a regular Q+A column in the free daily paper Metro, and appearing more than once on WBUR public radio.  He was determined to keep riders safe; he initiated random, highly visible police screening checkpoints.  He committed to spending hundreds of millions of dollars to make the T more accessible, installing announcement screens and elevated platforms on the Green Line.  He resisted union contract demands and agreed to wage increases only after being overruled by a labor arbitrator.  The T renovated the Charles Street station and installed a new train control system on the Red Line that permitted more frequent service.  And there is the electronic fare system.

The list goes on.  Grabauskas was nothing if not engaged in the goings-on at the T.  Perhaps one can disagree with him on policy matters — for example it might be reasonable to question the wisdom of a having a broke organization with heavy capital needs spend hundreds of millions of dollars in an effort to meet the unique requirements of less than 0.1% of T riders — but the man demonstrated integrity and dedication to his “customers.”

But many things never changed.  Yes, the trains still are slow and late.  Yes, the escalators have at times been scandalously unreliable.  Yes there still are door-openers on the  Red, Green, and Orange Lines.  Yes, Kenmore Station still is under construction nearly five years later.  No, Dan Grabauskas does not commute to work on the T.  Yes, the T still is broke.

No Cell Zone

But none of those were the reasons that Governor Patrick and his appointees gave for the reasons they had lost faith in Grabauskas.  The breakdown occurred, they said, because two Green Line drivers in two years apparently had ignored traffic signals for different reasons, and Grabauskas was not in Washington, D. C. when the NTSB released its report on one of the accidents.  And there was a power outage on the Green Line.  That’s it.  Never mind that Grabauskas nearly overmanaged the aftermath of the Government Center Green Line collision by banning cell phones from drivers.  And never mind that he was on an unpaid budget-related furlough at the time the NTSB report was released.  And never mind he is not the T electrician.

No matter; Grabauskas is out, but to Gov. Patrick’s likely chagrin, the former T general manager emerges from the tussle virtually unscathed.  That isn’t true for the Governor and his appointees.  The termination looks like short-term political retribution — at taxpayers’ expense.

Unfortunately, the real loser here looks to be the T.  The authority is leaderless at a critical time where the patchwork of agencies is being reexamined and when the modes of transportation finance are in flux in a way they have not been in memory.  The Governor has made noises time and again that he is a friend to transit.  Now he has an opportunity to go from words to action.

Stuck in Newton on the way to the ballpark

In a minature version of the Easter 2009 turnpike toll fiasco, insufficient staffing at the Riverside Green line terminal in Newton at noon on Sunday jammed traffic all the way back onto I-95/Route 128.  Red Sox faithful arrived at the station early for the 1:35pm afternoon start … and most still needed all of the time and patience they could muster.

Near Capacity Lot a Surprise for a Sunday

Turnout was strong for the short trolley ride to the stadium.  With the reduction in trolley fares inbound from the station a few years ago (from $3 per person to $1.70), families west of Boston seem to know a good deal when they see one.

Too bad the T and its contractor, Central Parking, didn’t get it right today, and they left T patrons idling in traffic for probably forty-five minutes each — right outside of the station.

Traffic backed up to highway overpass

The problem: Riverside station has staffed booths at the entrance to the parking lot, and in their wisdom, Central Parking and the T sent just one attendant to staff the collection booth for the entire thousand-space lot.  For occasional parkers, like weekend Red Sox fans, paying for parking is not a speedy proposition.  So the influx of fans piled up at the booth near the back of the station.  And then the line backed up through the station (blocking bus access). And then the line jammed up the local street outside.  And then it jammed up the Route 95/128 overpass, going so far as to stop traffic, bumper to bumper on the Route 95/128 off-ramp.

Transit-jam on highway off-ramp

I doubt many of those fans are feeling very smart now about their decision to ride the T.  A half-hour trip to the Sunday game turned into a two-hour nightmare.  It’s unfortunate that the T and Central Parking can’t figure out a way to collect weekend parking fees in an effective way.

Riverside Station entrance

When the Turnpike inexplicably jammed patrons earlier this year by understaffing collection booths, the head of the organization promptly resigned.  Although this jam was no less inexcusable, don’t expect the same thing from the T.  In some ways it seems to set the bar lower.  But at Central Parking on the other hand … there may be some anxious days ahead.

(eds. note: Red Sox game coincided with final day of the Tall Ships Festival)

South Station Red Line, Evening Rush Hour

What does a crowded platform mean?  Is it a sign of success or a sign of failure?  When the MBTA compiles its ridership statistics, do they record the situation in the picture to the right as a roaring success?  Do they simply say “there were like a thousand people who boarded that train at South Station during the evening rush hour; hooray?”

There isn’t really any question in my mind how the patrons standing on the platform would have answered the question.  When you get down to it, there really isn’t much difference between sucking tailpipe emissions on Storrow Drive and becoming better-acquainted than you’d like with strangers on the subway.  Probably the main difference is scenery; there’s no advertising on Storrow Drive.

The T doesn’t usually give live feedback, but on the day of the picture the train driver gave passengers who boarded from the very crowded platform an unusually syrupy-sweet send off.  She knew the crowded platform was trouble.  But when the transit scribes meticulously record the events of the day, how will they see it?  I wonder.

Can you spot three things that are wrong with this picture?

Some days, riding on the T is such an adventure. February 12 was just such a day. I took a picture. Can you see what’s wrong with that picture?

First, the train is in the station and the doors are open. When that happens everyone is supposed to board for a quick ride into the city, right? Not this morning. The train is full and the platform is full too.

Second — this one is more subtle — no one is getting on and no one is trying to get off. An experienced rider knows that T patrons will crowd around the doors for endless minutes after a full train arrives, hoping that persistence will be rewarded with a two-foot square spot on the floor of the train. Sometimes it happens, sometimes not, but a big group of people always try. In the picture, no one is trying. Why, you might ask? Because by the time the picture was taken the train had been sitting at the platform with the doors open for at least ten minutes. After a time the conductor announced that there was a “disabled train” ahead.

Third … the train isn’t actually full. Okay, so it’s not clear from the picture but the rail car to the left is sealed and dark. The doors never opened and no one was allowed to ride in it. This also happens from time-to-time without explanation. In good circumstances everyone crowds into adjoining cars. In bad … they pack the platform shoulder-to-shoulder waiting for the next train.

The train in the picture left the station after a wait of perhaps ten minutes more, and the crowd at the station pictured (Porter Square) mostly was able to catch the second train after this one (meaning some caught the next train and the rest caught the second one after).  Riders waiting at stations closer to Boston, i.e., Central, probably had to watch three or four full trans go by before they were able to board.

It’s enough almost to make you want to sit in traffic!

Bus stops, one passenger boards, and then the dozen or so riders watch the bus driver … turn off the bus and walk away.  Says nothing.  Just walks away.  Dude!  Where’s my bus driver?!

One rider picks up his cell phone.  “I’m hoping to make the 9 a.m. train at South Station, but our bus driver just got up and walked off the bus! I guess I’ll be stuck at South Station for two hours.”  A second Silver Line bus drives by without stopping.

Six minutes later.  The driver returns, still without comment, turns on the bus and resumes the route…

Perhaps it’s understood that if you’re on the T your time isn’t as important.  That you expect to endure a hassle, a delay.  There’s no hurry.  And maybe the driver had an emergency.  She did wait until the end of the airport dropoffs.  Not nearly as much urgency to get back to the city, right?  Well, not necessarily ….

Bus #1131 pulls into South Station at 9:01 a.m.  No hope of catching that 9 a.m. train.

5:58

I love the new digital displays in the commuter rail stations at Back Bay and South Station.  The old, fuzzy, monochrome television displays were due for retirement.  For now the systems display side-by-side. But that creates an unexpected dilemma.  With two displays apparently feeding from two separate computer systems, riders are left with the very basic question of …. what time is it?

5:54

The pictures on the left and right are from two displays side-by-side in Back Bay station.  One reads 5:54 and the other reads 5:58.  Which clock is correct?  I really don’t know!  I know what you’re going to say: maybe it is better not to know the time when you are dealing with the MBTA.  Perhaps, but these trains in particular run with big headways of 30 minutes to 2 hours.  There is a long wait between trains.  If you miss one, you’re in trouble.  It is important to know the time.

And as an aside, the new boards (on the left) have another bizarre feature.  When the time comes for the train to arrive in the station, whether the train is there yet or not the listing falls from the display.  What if the 5:59 train arrives at 6:01?  Tough luck; hope you saw the track number before it fell off the screen.

Gillette Stadium

I boarded the special so-called “Patriots Train” on Friday to see the 7:30 p.m. football exhibition against the Philadelphia Eagles. I was looking for good transit and railroading adventure. I found some adventure. As for good transit, there’s no shortage of promise — but the execution leaves something to be desired. Much like our pre-season Patriots!

View Patriots Train in a larger map

The Patriots Train is a great idea. The Patriots are Boston’s professional football franchise, but the football stadium is about twenty-five miles distant from Boston. Boston is the great walking city, and a train would be a great way to move the large group of people who are going from Boston to the game — without cars. In theory, this should be a marvelous success.

MBCR certainly puts effort into it. There was extra staff available at South Station at about 4 p.m. to run ticket collection and there were multiple audio announcements.

South Station: Where is the Pats train?

Good thing, too, because the train — being special and all — never got posted on the main announcement board. I asked why, and the answer had something to do with the board being new. I like the board, and the newness is a plus … but that hardly seems to be a good excuse. Some of the older television devices did carry the listing. The ticketing was a little bit of a hassle, but all of the agents clearly were putting in the effort to make the train a success.

Filled to capacity

They were undermined, as usual, by administration and infrastructure. Seating on the train was tricky. Who would have guessed that this train is very popular. MBCR used six cars on the trainset– five single-level cars and one bi-level. At South Station, MBCR opened only three of the six cars, and those filled quickly. Only when every seat was filled (and people crammed uncomfortably together), did the conductors reluctantly open a fourth car. There was enough room for small groups to sit together at Back Bay but by the time the train left Dedham Corporate Center — it was standing room only. There just weren’t enough seats. MBCR could have used at least two more bi-level cars and still filled every seat. And really, when you think about it, every one of the six cars on that train should have been bi-level cars because it’s a long ride (as I shall explain) and particularly on the return trip (after a long night cheering) some fans really are best left alone and without seatmates. Really. Both before and after they pass out.

The train left South Station promptly at 4:24 p.m., only moments later than the scheduled time. About three hours before gametime. Arrival was scheduled for 5:30 to 6:30, depending on your source. We arrived a little after 6 p.m. It might seem surprising that a 23-mile ride would take somewhere in the vicinity of one and a half to two hours. How can that be? Well, for my train part of the reason was inadequate railroad capacity on the junction between the Franklin Line and the Northeast Corridor in Dedham. There was a traffic jam! There is a single track for all of the trains, and our train waited for fifteen minutes to allow one train to pass in the other direction. Then we passed a third train who pulled onto a siding for us. Some way to avoid traffic! There just isn’t enough track; it’s a one-lane railroad.

Switching yard in Walpole

Then there’s the tale of two railroads. The map at the top shows the route of the Patriots Train in two colors. There are 19 miles marked in blue, and 4 miles marked in red. The blue miles are tracks regularly used for passenger service by MBCR. The red sections are not. There is a big difference. Just outside of Walpole Station, the train switches onto the last four miles of track, initially turning into a lightly-used rail yard. The crew requires about ten minutes in the yard to make the necessary adjustments to the track and to reverse the direction of the train. This part is the high-adventure part for a rail enthusiast, because it’s rare for fare paying service to enter these kinds of tracks. From the picture it should be obvious that they are far from pristine. That leads to a second problem. During these last four miles, the train’s speed is restricted to fewer than ten miles per hour. That is slower than your typical Patriot’s traffic jam. And it means that the speck of red-marked route on the map above consumes fully a third or half of the total time of travel on this adventure! Amazing.

Now don’t get me wrong, I liked the train very much. Part of why I liked it might have been the relief and amazement on arriving at the stadium and seeing the well-worn signs for the station. Very cool. The other riders were enthusiastic and friendly. And the staff was courteous. The wait for the train on the return was long (it was more like 40 minutes from the end of an uncompetitive game) and a handful of riders were somewhat unruly, and had there been a few more seats the wait would have been pleasant.

Overall, though, unless you’re looking for a train adventure, the Patriots Train just doesn’t make good transit sense. The fare is $12 round trip per person. No one goes to a game alone, so your fare really is at least $24. If you park at one of the MBTA lots, that’s another $2. Parking at Gillette Stadium is about $40. There isn’t much of a price advantage — if you have more than three people it actually costs a whole lot more than parking. Meanwhile you spend in waiting time whatever money you hoped to save. Travel time is entirely uncompetitive; the train takes roughly double the travel time of an automobile from Boston. And that is the most favorable comparison. And it doesn’t count time required for purchasing tickets on the front end and waiting for the train to leave after the game on the back end. Those activities added about an hour of travel time round-trip. And comfort? The MBCR dropped the ball by allocating too-few seats to the trains that they sent to the game. There just weren’t enough seats, and so the train wasn’t all that comfortable.

Train arrived at Foxboro

So what besides railroad adventure might make the Patriots Train worth the trip? Maybe convenience, or perhaps for a Bostonian sheer simplicity and avoiding the highways. But I’m not sure there is much transit value to commend the Patriot’s Train. Which is terribly disappointing. However, the train was different, and folks were friendly and enthusiastic enough so that the whole ride almost seems to make sense.

Well, I think I’ve found a far more efficient way to communicate with the MBTA. It’s simple. Here’s what you do: stand in front of whatever happens to be the problem, and take a picture. This morning I took two pictures. Well, in fairness I took about ten, but they were only of two things.

An escalator on the Red Line, unit No. 504, was condemned by an inspector a few weeks ago and it has been out of service ever since. It’s been about three weeks. So I stood at the top of the escalator and I took a picture. And elsewhere on the Red Line, beneath South Station, a message board that ought to be announcing trains has instead been spewing mystifying garbled nothings. As if the MBTA is trying to speak to passengers in some unknown alien language. I took a picture.

Gibberish on a message board at the South Station subway

Apparently nothing focuses the MBTA’s collective mind like the prospect of jpeg-based public humiliation, no matter how mild. Twelve hours later, the message board, although not fixed, was not displaying gibberish. And the escalator was running. That has to be the fastest response time ever! So, in the course of trying to snap a picture of what I assumed was the the MBTA’s language– the gibberish– I inadvertently began communicating well enough to be understood! Did I accidentally speak MBTA-ese?