by bostontrainguy
How about the "rehabilitation of the Falmouth Station"? Is there something new here?
deathtopumpkins wrote:I thought it was implied that traditional CR trains will NOT be making Indigo stops? The map omits dots for them. So as I understand it, at least during peak times, the traditional trains will be running express past the Indigo stops.That's exactly why it's not going to work. It prohibits most of the scenarios I outlined for these lines to evolve from ever happening. Eastern Route again being where the most failure points are. Salem is so ridership-oversaturated it can't be omitted by any trains whatsoever; that IS a station you build an express to while skipping others. So if the Indigos have to go out there because Lynn isn't nearly enough service for the North Shore or because this is the only way to plausibly turn a train, squaring Zone 3 has to be reckoned with. DMU's probably can't run on 20 min. frequencies at peakmost peak and have to throttle it down by 5-10 mins. when the Newburyport/Rockports (which keep growing) are gobbling their highest hourly % of slots at saturated track capacity, so someone holding an Indigo pass @ Indigo fare ends up seeing a frequency dip at the 8:00am, 5:00pm crunches where they need it most. And worse, if the CR fares to the same stops are more expensive the 9-5'ers will start passing up the push-pulls to overstuff the DMU's. Flipping the advantages of the vehicles on their heads. Those 6-car bi-level push-pulls have the seating capacity to swallow the peakiest of crushes but only do optimal farebox recovery at peak. DMU's can recover costs much better off-peak with their lower seating capacity but can't swallow the crowds. Those 2000+, 9-5'er dominated daily boarders at Salem being forced to pick either/or pricing end up overstuffing the DMU's and leaving lots of seats open on the push-pulls. The push-pulls bleed more money, people can't get seats at Lynn and Chelsea and pass up the DMU, or the T has to buy enough DMU's to run 4+-car sets at only a few hours of the day and confuse its vehicle strategy to the point where it takes heavier losses on all.
Also...what happens for somebody who gets off at Zone 5 Beverly Farms or Hamilton/Wenham if Salem has to get its Indigo-only fare slashed and CR remains different? If the Indigos truly are running that frequently while the branchline trains still require waiting on a specific schedule and 1 out of every X trains...what's to stop them from grabbing the first cheapie to Salem instead of waiting for a branch push-pull, then standing on the Salem platform for a few mins and waiting for the branch train to come...then saving a buck or two with a an Interzone fare that only jumps a couple Zones and getting home at exactly the same time? Any solution has to close up the additional loopholes that could pop up at any one stop. A total whack-a-mole game if they insist on separate fares for separate vehicles. It scales very poorly if you dream about additional Indigos or extended Indigos beyond this map.
Those are just the Salem/Eastern Route-centric big examples where the concept starts to collapse on itself. But start looking at the needs of each individual stop and each individual expansion point and you start to see other failure points creep in with this separation of DMU's and push-pull. It doesn't scale unless the fares are sympatico and can double-up with both types contributing to the overall headways when it matters most. Couple other small examples from that list I made:
-- Regional intercity lines and reverse commutes. The Fitchburg and Worcester upgrades have stimulating reverse-commutes to those cities as a major plank in their long-term growth. So say you start instituting Waltham/128 short-turns as a natural Indigo expansion. What does this do for the Brandeis students who live off-campus? What does this do for the Microsoft, Biogen, and Polaroid Complex mixed-use development employees who reverse-commute to that Kendal Green-replacement park-and-ride at Exit 26? Or all those frequent 128 office park shuttles that will inevitably crop up and take people from this Exit 26 stop or Anderson to the huge office buildings in Woburn or lining Middlesex Turnpike in Burlington?
-- What happens to the Worcester/Framingham locals that pick-and-choose their inside-128 stops? Newton Corner's bus connections are probably going to merit that as a stop on a few trains even if the other 3 Newton stops and New Balance get skipped. Jobs exist along the bus routes that converge there, and if the 71 gets bolstered with an extension from Corner from Watertown and sped up with some Key Bus Route initiative frills that may be a preferable transfer to Harvard for some.
-- What happens on Sox or Garden game nights when boardings are going to spike for EVERYONE?
Individual exceptions are not that hard to square. It's when they start piling up that the only viable solutions for squaring it all have to be systemic: redistributed Zones across the entire Indigo network and unskippable CR stops within the network, plus redistribution of the CR zones radiating outward.
In all likelihood though, you're right, and they'll need to adjust the zone fares down a bit. I just think that rather than jumping straight from $2 to $7.75 or whatever Beverly is now, they might want to gradually increment up to it.Definitely. And there's nothing wrong with making the CR-only audience pay a premium and have their Zones escalate faster overall in price outside the Indigo service area. That is the fair thing to do. But the recalibration is still going to result in fare cuts in the places like Beverly (with its 1750 daily boardings that are growing), with the systemwide farebox recovery suffering. Because those first 'tweener stops in Zones 3 & 4 after the end of the Indigos that have to get equitably adjusted down carry disproportionate system ridership. Those Zones 5 or 6 approaching 495-land that will carry steeper rises in fares tend to be much smaller ridership and tend to hit the branchline schedules more than the big Beverlys of the world.
MassDOT's being a little naive not taking this into account. Now...some give-and-take on the fares can ABSOLUTELY be a winner if it grows the entire CR mode's (any vehicle) system ridership over the long haul. But it is a heavier load in operating cost on a mode with poorer farebox recovery than rapid transit or bus. So the agency NEEDS funding certainty and Legislative reform before they ever have a fighting chance of seeing this vision through. 1 year with a funding crisis and the same old rope-a-dope on 1:1 trades of fare increases, parking increases, and service cuts takes the legs out from the CR system growth plan. It already has with that mode's decline in ridership (see that whole thread for the fare/parking hike hypotheses as to why). When that plan is more like a 10-year plan that will operate at steep losses for the first 3-5 years while it route-primes all these corridors. You can't have the annual spring/summer rite where the GM has to take to the airwaves with another "we're trending $20M short of target this year...gotta belt-tighten FAST" and execute 10-year growth plans. It just doesn't work.
The Legislature HAS to get off its butt and reform the whole funding source. It can't be tap-danced around any longer. These vision statements like Gov. Patrick's a few months ago that's now falling well short of required funding because the House Speaker and Senate Prez. gutted the bill, or this one now that leaves those details unexplained don't work without it. And end up being little more than disingenuous puff pieces when we know these little does of shock therapy are going to continue unabated without total reform.
