I really like the addition of the Cape Flyer. That will potentially lead to more ridership, which could increase pressure to add more service.
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MBTA Commuter Rail (Operations, Keolis, & Short Term)
- Thread starter Balerion
- Start date
Replying to comments re the new commuter rail schedules here.
In general, I wonder if we are seeing the influence of Eng's tenure at the LIRR -- I feel like we are seeing more "creative scheduling" than the T has historically been willing to do, in a way that reminds me of LIRR/MNR schedules. This reinforces my theory that Eng has been saying things like "Why are we running trains past platforms at Readville and South Attleboro without stopping?" and "Yes, I know it'll be too difficult to get the first train of the day all the way out to Haverhill, but there's no reason we can't start that trip at Lawrence, is there?". All of which is encouraging to me, as it suggests a willingness (and the needed political clout) to shake the T out of its provincial "we've always done it like this"-ness.
Other random things I noticed
It's hard to tell for sure, but I also think it may be a single set that consistently turns at Fairmount rather than Readville.
(Oh, looking below at the Franklin Line schedule, it looks like there is potentially some correlation between a Franklin train through-running and the previous/subsequent Fairmount train originating at Fairmount instead of Readville?)
I'm still a little more optimistic than I think you are, though. Pre-pandemic, if we look at trains that arrive at South Station between 7am and 9am (i.e. the start of the whitecollar workday), there were five departures from S Attleboro:
In other words, they are restoring two of the three most heavily utilized departures (which alone account for 33% of all boardings all day). If they manage to attract ~half of the riders from the 6:32am, that's 41% of South Attleboro's total all-day boardings... achieved with just two departures (which equals 10% of departures all day -- achieving 41% performance with 10% of the resources is a pretty good ROI).
South Attleboro historically was in the top 12 stations across the whole system; at 41% ridership, it would be comparable to Littleton/495, Wakefield, Canton Center, Roslindale Village, Newburyport, Lawrence, Waltham, and Greenbush. (33% puts us on par with Hanson, Lynn, Needham Junction, Whitman, and Cohasset.) Pretty much all of those are seen as successful stations.
Going outbound, the six highest ridership trains totaled 763 alightings at South Attleboro (70% of overall alightings). The trains departing BOS at 3:55pm and 5:40pm accounted for 273 (25%); adding the 4:53pm train in brings us to 423 (39%). (The spread of ridership on the afternoon departures is more evenly distributed, with the 4:53pm and 5:40pm leading the pack, but not as severely as the morning trains.)
Anecdotally, my experience was that if you were lucky and could leave work early-ish, you'd catch the 4:53, but if someone insisted in running the end-of-day meeting all the way to 5pm, you got stuck on the 5:40. So I'm guessing a fair fraction of the 4:53's ridership would consider the 5:40. So I'd SWAG it that the T's new afternoon departures will capture about 33% of the pre-pandemic ridership. Again, that's not amazing, but it's still solid and would put South Attleboro right in the middle of the pack systemwide.
So, I dunno. It's definitely an anemic schedule for sure, and the lack of flexibility will probably dissuade some riders. On the other hand, South Attleboro is in a lower farezone than Pawtucket/Central Falls, so perhaps that will in turn attract riders. Overall, though, getting between 33% and 41% performance out of 10% of resouces... that seems like a reasonable ROI to me.
In general, I wonder if we are seeing the influence of Eng's tenure at the LIRR -- I feel like we are seeing more "creative scheduling" than the T has historically been willing to do, in a way that reminds me of LIRR/MNR schedules. This reinforces my theory that Eng has been saying things like "Why are we running trains past platforms at Readville and South Attleboro without stopping?" and "Yes, I know it'll be too difficult to get the first train of the day all the way out to Haverhill, but there's no reason we can't start that trip at Lawrence, is there?". All of which is encouraging to me, as it suggests a willingness (and the needed political clout) to shake the T out of its provincial "we've always done it like this"-ness.
Other random things I noticed
Notably, I think this may be the first time that Anderson/Woburn has been listed on an ordinary Haverhill Line schedule (it's been listed on a number of "recovery service" or "severe storm service" or bus diversion schedules).
- A bunch of inbound (And only inbound?) Haverhill trains going via Wildcat and stopping at Anderson/Woburn
Yes, I wonder if this is an "art of the possible" decision, perhaps due to trains being turned or staged at Readville Yard? Or are these accommodating freight moves in and out of the Yard? It's also interesting that this practice is also done on weekends -- the "creative scheduling" is mostly weekday-only otherwise.
- Some Fairmount Line trains short-turning at Fairmount
It's hard to tell for sure, but I also think it may be a single set that consistently turns at Fairmount rather than Readville.
(Oh, looking below at the Franklin Line schedule, it looks like there is potentially some correlation between a Franklin train through-running and the previous/subsequent Fairmount train originating at Fairmount instead of Readville?)
This is maybe the most interesting thing about these new schedules. I wonder if this is being done as a "practice run" to test the viability of using a Readville Transfer more broadly. I'm sure Eng has been thinking about LIRR practices at Jamaica, so I wonder if he has theories he wants to test out.
- All weekend Franklin trains will now run via Fairmount, with timed transfers with Providence trains at Readville. Transfers are timed for 7 minutes inbound and 9-16 minutes outbound. On weekdays, 6 IB and 4 OB also run over the Fairmount Line; all but 1 in each direction have timed transfers at Readville, but these are not indicated in the schedule.
The 4:23am one seems pretty gratuitous, and probably was just the easiest way to add a third inbound departure. It actually looks like there are four outbound departures though, departing Boston at 11:18am, 2:20pm, 3:52pm, and 5:40pm.
- The South Attleboro service isn't great. IB at 4:23 am, 6:11 am, 7:21 am. OB trains leaving Boston at 2:20, 3:52, and 5:40.
I'm still a little more optimistic than I think you are, though. Pre-pandemic, if we look at trains that arrive at South Station between 7am and 9am (i.e. the start of the whitecollar workday), there were five departures from S Attleboro:
- 6:09am
- 6:32am
- [gap for a train that originated at Attleboro]
- 7:23am
- 7:39am
- 8:00am
| Pre-Pandemic Departure | Boardings | Post-Pandemic Equivalent |
|---|---|---|
| 5:09 AM | 98 | |
| 5:34 AM | 88 | |
| 6:09 AM | 123 | 6:11 AM |
| 6:32 AM | 185 | |
| 7:23 AM | 251 | 7:21 AM |
| 7:39 AM | 59 | |
| 8:00 AM | 77 |
In other words, they are restoring two of the three most heavily utilized departures (which alone account for 33% of all boardings all day). If they manage to attract ~half of the riders from the 6:32am, that's 41% of South Attleboro's total all-day boardings... achieved with just two departures (which equals 10% of departures all day -- achieving 41% performance with 10% of the resources is a pretty good ROI).
South Attleboro historically was in the top 12 stations across the whole system; at 41% ridership, it would be comparable to Littleton/495, Wakefield, Canton Center, Roslindale Village, Newburyport, Lawrence, Waltham, and Greenbush. (33% puts us on par with Hanson, Lynn, Needham Junction, Whitman, and Cohasset.) Pretty much all of those are seen as successful stations.
Going outbound, the six highest ridership trains totaled 763 alightings at South Attleboro (70% of overall alightings). The trains departing BOS at 3:55pm and 5:40pm accounted for 273 (25%); adding the 4:53pm train in brings us to 423 (39%). (The spread of ridership on the afternoon departures is more evenly distributed, with the 4:53pm and 5:40pm leading the pack, but not as severely as the morning trains.)
Anecdotally, my experience was that if you were lucky and could leave work early-ish, you'd catch the 4:53, but if someone insisted in running the end-of-day meeting all the way to 5pm, you got stuck on the 5:40. So I'm guessing a fair fraction of the 4:53's ridership would consider the 5:40. So I'd SWAG it that the T's new afternoon departures will capture about 33% of the pre-pandemic ridership. Again, that's not amazing, but it's still solid and would put South Attleboro right in the middle of the pack systemwide.
So, I dunno. It's definitely an anemic schedule for sure, and the lack of flexibility will probably dissuade some riders. On the other hand, South Attleboro is in a lower farezone than Pawtucket/Central Falls, so perhaps that will in turn attract riders. Overall, though, getting between 33% and 41% performance out of 10% of resouces... that seems like a reasonable ROI to me.
Other observations:
- Providence/Stoughton
- This continues (I believe) the trend of being almost-but-not-quite clockfacing
- Not much peak service to Readville -- in fact, I think weekends get much more service than weekdays
- Fairmount
- Weekday 30 min headways from 5:30am to 7pm, with half-hourly southbound headways continuing to 9:30pm, with 45 min headways outside of that time (save for one 45 min headway in the 11am hour) -- you love to see it
- The weekend is interesting and seems more sensitive to peak direction:
- Inbound
- 30-min from 8am to 5pm, with one 45-min headway during 11-12:30 gap
- Hourly at other times
- Outbound
- Irregular in the morning, averaging to every 45 min, but varying from 30 to 90 minutes
- 30-min from 11:45am to 5:45pm
- Hourly starting during the 6pm hour
- Inbound
- I wonder what's weird about outbound during weekend mornings?
- Bear in mind how recently we had no weekend service on Fairmount
- Haverhill
- On initial read, I was like, "Wow, I guess midday travelers on Reading and south can just go pound sand?", but then I saw that @nbcroam explained that it's for construction
- Running express via Wildcat seems to shave off about 10 minutes compared to via Reading -- why do they not just do that all the time?
- Lowell
- Given Lowell's proximity, population, existing ridership, and relative speed, I'm surprised not to see more service
- Based on my read, the non-stop Haverhill expresses seem to have basically the same running time as the stopping Lowell locals; I wonder why the Haverhill trains don't stop, but I guess that, since it's a temporary thing, they don't want to introduce a new service that they will soon need to cut back
- Middleboro/Lakeville
- So are they just gonna go with the original plan to just blindly extend the existing Middleboro trains to Fall River and New Bedford? Because that's gonna suck. Not gonna mince my words. That would suck.
- The combined Old Colony schedules are actually pretty precisely rationalized right now, but I hope that some adjustments will be made so that it's not a matter of telling Fall River to just deal with either arriving in Boston at 8am or 10am
- I do wonder if they will later experiment with doing a cross-platform transfer at Braintree to boost frequencies
- Newburyport/Rockport
- Uses a handful of Beverly short-turns
- Lynn is no longer called "Lynn Interim"
- The current schedule largely accomplishes this, but definitely worth drawing attention to the fact that, like Fairmount, Lynn + Chelsea get peak half-hourly freqs and do pretty well off-peak as well
- I wonder if we're reaching the point where it's worth visually distinguishing the Fairmount Line and the Lynn/Salem/Beverly Line with different visual language on the system map
- Route 128 + Canton Junction (but not Hyde Park) are unusually close to this category, but would need some further rationalizing and potentially slight increases in service levels