Proposed Revised CR Schedules for 2016

Squeaky wheel gets the oil. Don't let anyone tell you politics doesn't matter in this game...

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Starting in May, the Fitchburg Line of the MBTA commuter rail will add a train that reaches Fitchburg by 8 a.m.

MBTA Deputy Director of Railroad Operations Corey Lynch announced the plan for an early-morning train on Thursday afternoon, during a meeting with Montachusett area mayors, other officials, and residents.

"We had been holding off on looking at any additional changes until the end of the public comment period (on Friday)," Lynch said, "but at the request of the lieutenant governor, we took a quick look at this one, and it was a matter of shuffling some equipment around."

You have to wonder: Ms. Polito lives in Shrewsbury, quite the distance from the Fitch. Someone must have put a bee in her bonnet to speak up. Maybe someone in Andover, Shawsheen, Lawrence, North Andover and Haverhill could do the same?

leviramsey wrote:

octr202 wrote:

dbperry wrote:With regards to the Worcester-Framingham bullet train, senior MBTA management told me that it is purposefully skewed later in the commute to appeal to the 'millennial' workforce with their shifted workday - start later, work later. At least that's what their demographic research pointed them to. My impression is that it seems to be convenient that doing that also places the bullet train outside the height of the rush hours, where it would interfere with other trains on the line. They sounded pretty committed to trying the bullet train, at least on a 'pilot' basis. I didn't ask them about political pressure - but given the October Lt. Governor press conference about the bullet train, I would be surprised to see them yank it.

I've just added my report from the Natick schedule change public hearing to my blog:
http://dbperry.weebly.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Are there really enough millennials living in Worcester to fill a whole train? Even a short one?

Over a quarter of the population (so about 50,000) of Worcester in 2010 was between 18 and 33.

Lots of colleges: Clark (3,400 students), Holy Cross (2,900), WPI (4,100), and Worcester State (5,600), and UMass Medical (1,000) are within reasonable transit time from Union Station. MCPHS has an operation downtown (don't know the student count for Worcester vs. elsewhere). There are another 5,000 or so students between Anna Maria, Assumption, and Becker (though those are further out). The first three especially do a reasonably good job of producing graduates for tech/finance/law school. Definitely more than 100 millennials living in Worcester commuting to Boston; probably less than 2,000. 500 daily one-way trips seems like a good bet for the bullets.

However, 500 daily one-way trips...so maybe ~250 riders each way? Even if they cut the consist to three cars, that's still tying up a diesel, a cab car, and three train crew members (unless they also alter the staffing rule and assign just an engineer & conductor - no assistant conductor). I just can't fathom that adding an additional rush-hour limited stop (but not non-stop), or even a later commute "conventional" Worcester express wouldn't do much more good. Schedule trains for passengers first, then politics...

Rockingham Racer wrote:You have to wonder: Ms. Polito lives in Shrewsbury, quite the distance from the Fitch. Someone must have put a bee in her bonnet to speak up. Maybe someone in Andover, Shawsheen, Lawrence, North Andover and Haverhill could do the same?

I've hounded my legislative delegation a few times, let's just say the silence has been louder than the long waits between trains on the upper Haverhill Line. It's pretty clear why the Worcester and Fitchburg Lines get all the attention...

The Newton stops get very little attention.

octr202 wrote:

Rockingham Racer wrote:You have to wonder: Ms. Polito lives in Shrewsbury, quite the distance from the Fitch. Someone must have put a bee in her bonnet to speak up. Maybe someone in Andover, Shawsheen, Lawrence, North Andover and Haverhill could do the same?

I've hounded my legislative delegation a few times, let's just say the silence has been louder than the long waits between trains on the upper Haverhill Line. It's pretty clear why the Worcester and Fitchburg Lines get all the attention...

Because they have local politicians and authorities which want the attention?

Fitchburg isn't getting attention because the line goes through Republican territory. Legislators with districts containing stations on the line (ex. Boston/Cambridge):

- Rep. James Arciero (D)
- Rep. Cory Atkins (D)
- Sen. Michael Barrett (D)
- Rep. Jennifer Benson (D)
- Sen. William Brownsberger (D)
- Sen. James Eldridge (D)
- Sen. Jennifer Flanagan (D)
- Rep. Sheila Harrington (R)
- Rep. John Lawn (D)
- Rep. Alice Peisch (D)
- Rep. David Rogers (D)
- Rep. Dennis Rosa (D)
- Rep. Thomas Stanley (D)

For comparison, based on the cities/towns the Haverhill line has stations in:

- Rep. Paul Brodeur (D)
- Rep. Linda Campbell (D)
- Rep. Brian Dempsey (D)
- Rep. Marcos Devers (D)
- Rep. Diana DiZoglio (D)
- Rep. Paul Donato (D)
- Rep. James Dwyer (D)
- Rep. Kenneth Gordon (D)
- Sen. Kathleen Ives (D)
- Rep. Bradley Jones (R)
- Sen. Jason Lewis (D)
- Sen. Barbara L'Italien (D)
- Rep. James Lyons (R)
- Rep. James Miceli (D)
- Rep. Leonard Mirra (R)
- Rep. Frank Moran (D)
- Sen. Bruce Tarr (R)
- Rep. Steven Ultrino (D)
- Rep. Donald Wong (R)

2.8 D's for every R along the Haverhill Line (and for the outer Haverhill, the GOP is a lot more represented); 12 D's for every R along the Fitchburg Line. If Baker and Co. were using the new schedule to reward Republican areas, they're sure incompetent about it. There's only one CR line that more or less parallels a straight-shot, toll-free 6/8 lane freeway into Boston (well, maybe Kingston as well, but as bad as 93 is to the north, route 3 and the SE Expressway are consistently worse).

Apparently, business leaders in the Fitchburg/Leominster areas were asking their legislators and MART officials for a reverse commute train.

Due to a snowstorm on Monday 2/8/2016, two public meetings (Norwood and Woburn) were rescheduled to 2/22/2016. Therefore the MBTA decided to extend the public comment period for the Commuter Rail schedule changes to 2/22/2016. The public comment period for the fare changes was kept at 2/12/2016. The original notice is here, but it was replaced with a changed version here detailing the public comment period extension.

<<Proposed Commuter Rail Schedule Changes To go into effect on May 23, 2016>>

Anyone know if May 23 remains the target? Any idea if the originally proposed schedules will be tweaked as a result of the public commentary meetings?

There was this odd newspaper article published just last week. I say odd because it was not accompanied by any schedule announcement or information from the MBTA. My guess is that the Mayor got confirmation that his request was going to be implemented when the final schedules are published.

I haven't heard anything about May 23 changing, but I haven't heard anyone confirm it either (although I haven't asked).

Based on my conversations with the people making the schedules, I'm very confident that there will be tweaks between the drafts published in January and what goes into effect in May. Just my guess, and I also would have guessed they were only going to raise fares 5%, so who knows.

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FITCHBURG -- An MBTA morning train from Boston, that previously stopped in Littleton, will travel to Fitchburg starting May 23.

The train is for "reverse" commuters, people who are commuting to Fitchburg for work. The train will arrive in Fitchburg around 8 a.m. daily, Mayor Stephen DiNatale said on Thursday.

dbperry wrote:There was this odd newspaper article published just last week. I say odd because it was not accompanied by any schedule announcement or information from the MBTA. My guess is that the Mayor got confirmation that his request was going to be implemented when the final schedules are published.

I haven't heard anything about May 23 changing, but I haven't heard anyone confirm it either (although I haven't asked).

Based on my conversations with the people making the schedules, I'm very confident that there will be tweaks between the drafts published in January and what goes into effect in May. Just my guess, and I also would have guessed they were only going to raise fares 5%, so who knows.

http://www.sentinelandenterprise.com/ne ... ain-due-at" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

FITCHBURG -- An MBTA morning train from Boston, that previously stopped in Littleton, will travel to Fitchburg starting May 23.

The train is for "reverse" commuters, people who are commuting to Fitchburg for work. The train will arrive in Fitchburg around 8 a.m. daily, Mayor Stephen DiNatale said on Thursday.

Thank you, was this request from the Mayor a tweak to the proposed schedules released earlier this winter? Or a change to the schedules currently in place?

The plan as of today is to have the new schedules in place for May 23rd. There are some serious tweaks that need to be done to these schedules, running times are unrealistic and there are meets that are impossible on some lines and we still have the whole interfering with Amtrak scheduling....so we will see what actually happens

Something I was wondering about the schedules: does MBTA/Keolis have software to simulate operations on the entire CR system? If so, how sophisticated is it? In other words, can they plug in a paper schedule (and starting positions of the equipment) and identify where bad meets would occur?

BvaleShihTzu wrote:Something I was wondering about the schedules: does MBTA/Keolis have software to simulate operations on the entire CR system? If so, how sophisticated is it? In other words, can they plug in a paper schedule (and starting positions of the equipment) and identify where bad meets would occur?

I could be wrong, but I believe they engaged a consultant who ran a computer simulation.

MBTA F40PH-2C 1050 wrote:The plan as of today is to have the new schedules in place for May 23rd. There are some serious tweaks that need to be done to these schedules, running times are unrealistic and there are meets that are impossible on some lines and we still have the whole interfering with Amtrak scheduling....so we will see what actually happens

I'm hearing chatter of May 23 for the North Side, but a postponement until July for the South Side. This due to needing more time to incorporate public comments, and the Amtrak integration/Ruggles issues.

ohalloranchris wrote:Thank you, was this request from the Mayor a tweak to the proposed schedules released earlier this winter? Or a change to the schedules currently in place?

No idea, but you can trace it out / figure it out with all the old and new draft schedules here:
http://www.dbperry.net/MBTA/#Fitchburg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

BvaleShihTzu wrote:Something I was wondering about the schedules: does MBTA/Keolis have software to simulate operations on the entire CR system? If so, how sophisticated is it? In other words, can they plug in a paper schedule (and starting positions of the equipment) and identify where bad meets would occur?

At the public meeting I went to in Worcester, they spent more than a few minutes highlighting the simulations they ran. My understanding was that it was in-house, but they might have just been spinning it that way to not highlight consulting work. Section 4 starting on page 26 of this PDF describes the modeling and includes some interesting input parameters and output results pages:
http://www.dbperry.net/MBTA/articles/mb ... iative.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

My understanding from the public meeting was that the modeling simulates an entire day on an entire side of the system (and accounts for everything you could imagine - crew & equipment usage, meets and routing, etc.), but again, I could be mistaken or they may have been making it sound better than it really is. From the presentation pages, the modeling clearly predicts run times for each line.

Dave