Understanding bus RPI

The MBTA quietly added a feature to their website called "Bus RPI" which you can also access from a link at the bottom of the homepage. These "Route Performance Indicators" are essentially the same data as the Biennial Service Plan but should be updated more frequently. The current RPIs only include a subset of the information about each route that the Service Plan did, but hopefully that will be changed in the future. The intention of this release is to be more open about the service planning and scheduling process that goes on at the T.

Route Number, Route Description: these are fairly self-explanatory, I hope.

Route Type: divided up into Local, Key, Community, Commuter, Express or NA. The main importance of this field pertains to the goals that each type is expected to meet. There is also a difference in "average fare paid per passenger" for the different types. Under pre-FY2013 budgeting, the average fares are as follows:

• Local, Community and Key routes: $0.76
• Commuter routes: $2.15
• Express routes: $3.08

Average fare is computed by dividing the total revenue for all routes under that type by the number of riders of that type. It is smaller than a single ride cost because of numerous discounts, including senior, student and monthly passes. CTPS projections of the impacts of last year's fare increase seem to indicate that the new average fares will be approximately 23-24% higher, e.g. at $0.94 for local routes, but we won't know for sure until more data is released. Note that SL1, SL2 service counts as Rapid Transit for average fare purposes ($1.39) but SL4, SL5 receive the local bus average fare per passenger.

Net Cost per Passenger: This number is calculated by taking the difference between operating cost and revenue and dividing by ridership, for each route. However, revenue for each route is computed by taking the average fare for the route type and multiplying it by ridership, so it is not actually revenue that is specific to that particular route. In other words, Net Cost per Passenger is really operating cost per passenger minus average fare.

A common confusion with this metric is that it represents an amount that each additional passenger costs the T. That's not what this means. Take the popular route 1 bus which has a net cost per passenger of $0.63. If I decide to wander down to Mass Ave and hop on the bus, it does not cost the T an extra sixty-three cents. Instead, the T has invested approximately $18,500 dollars on a typical weekday to operate the full schedule of route 1 service. There are normally about 13,300 riders on a typical weekday, giving the net cost of (18,500 / 13,300) - 0.76 = $0.6309. Now add my trip to that total, and you end up with (18,500 / 13,301) - 0.76 = $0.6308, an ever so slight reduction in net cost per passenger. Bus service is a fixed cost, the net cost per passenger is the fixed amount distributed over all the users of the service, that's all.

The astute may notice that some routes have negative net cost per passenger. For example, the SL5 is ($0.03). This is a good thing, but once again, for the same reason, it shouldn't be treated as if each additional rider is profiting the T by three cents. It should also be noted that there are additional costs besides operating costs, which are computed by a formula which only factors in revenue hours and revenue miles.

The net cost per passenger metric is best used as a comparison between MBTA bus routes to see which ones are efficiently and effectively serving customers.

Service Delivery Policy Standards: A set of requirements for frequency, span, crowding, and cost which are more fully outlined in the Service Delivery Policy. Basically: is the service decently usable, and is it not costing us too much?

Ridership Info: This includes both daily (weekday) ridership, as up-to-date as currently available (seems to be 2010) and average rides per trip. The ridership numbers are not from the farebox, so they should reflect real ridership including people who show their passes and don't interact with the automatic fare collection machinery. The average rides per trip is simply ridership divided by number of (one-way) trips, which is intriguing, but the numbers currently shown are actually junk due to an error in formatting. Hopefully that will be remedied in the next RPI release.

Thanks to the MBTA's scheduling team for getting this data out, hopefully it will be expanded in the near future. I'm also looking forward to the next edition of the Blue Book.

Lead poisoning in Boston

I first noticed some reports of the plausible link (related paper) between lead exposure and crime rates a while ago, but Mother Jones recently ran a well-written article by Kevin Drum that everyone should read, summing up the case so far. We've known for a long time that lead is toxic and harmful to mental health, particularly in children, but it's only within the past few decades that we've come to understand that there is no safe level of exposure at all. This link may be one of the most significant public health and safety discoveries of the past fifty years, and it's a shame that it has received so little attention in the past. Hopefully that will change now.

Massachusetts has been a pioneer in lead abatement. I was curious to see how it was effective in Boston. The only report available that I could find with detailed information seems to be from September 2002, but it has some interesting data about elevated blood lead levels in children, from 1991 through 2001:

I took the data and put it into a chart format as well:

It's pretty easy to see that there's been a massive improvement in just those ten years. However, Dorchester and, for most years, Mattapan had the highest incidence of elevated blood lead levels. I don't know why this was the case. Lead exposure in the 20th century seems to have originated first from the use of lead in housing materials (such as paint), and then later from leaded gasoline used in cars. Dorchester and Mattapan have their fair share of older homes, but so does most of Boston. The Southeast Expressway was constructed in the 1950s, just in time for the gasoline-lead epidemic, and is adjacent to Dorchester and Mattapan. But the North End and Charlestown are also adjacent to large highways, yet they see some of the lowest levels of blood lead in the city. They are also both built environments that date back to colonial times.

I was unable to locate any more specific data on soil or other environmental sources of lead in Boston. There is a state website to find out specific buildings' inspection status, but that seems to be it, at least on public websites. A major flaw with the above data is that it only counts 10 mcg/dL as "elevated" but more recent guidelines suggest 5 mcg/dL as the threshold, and others suggest that any amount is too much. So it's quite possible the picture changes when you add the children who are at-risk with 5 or less mcg/dL of blood lead. Another flaw is the arbitrary choice of (BRA-determined) "neighborhood" as the geographical unit. For example, Dorchester is a very large neighborhood. Even when split (by the BRA) into "north" and "south", it is still a vast and diverse place with a large potential variance in lead levels between areas.

While reading the various articles about lead I kept thinking about a few paragraphs that stood out in the recent Boston Globe series on the area known as Bowdoin-Geneva:

In Bowdoin-Geneva, a 68-block swath of Dorchester set between the rivers of traffic on Columbia Road and Dorchester Avenue, spring brings the usual signs of renewal. But it also brings something more sinister. It is a prelude to summer, which plays out year after year in this neighborhood against a backdrop of danger and a soundtrack of gunfire. 

It is a problem that seems to simply never go away. The rate of shootings here over the last 25 years is four times what it is in the city as a whole — averaging 24 a year in the last decade.

[...] 

No one seems to know exactly why. The drugs that spawned deadly territory fights two decades ago are no longer the primary fuel. Poverty, assumed by many to be a progenitor of violence, is much less severe than it was a generation ago and less prevalent than in some other Boston neighborhoods.

And there is this not-very-well-known fact: Gangs were in Bowdoin-Geneva long before the neighborhood became what it is today — at least as far back as the 1950s, when bands of white kids claimed street corners, wore identifying colors, and assigned themselves names.

They most often fought with their fists then, not with guns. But, as though a legacy handed to succeeding generations, gangs have remained even as the income, race, and social makeup of the neighborhood have changed. Bowdoin-Geneva now is an intricate architecture of alliances and loyalties based on little more than streets where boys and young men live. Slights real and perceived trigger violence between them.

This behavioral description seems to be a tell-tale sign of lead poisoning, especially with its persistence across multiple generations and the socio-economic changes in the neighborhood. From the Washington Post article:

In 2002, Herbert Needleman, a psychiatrist at the University of Pittsburgh, compared lead levels of 194 adolescents arrested in Pittsburgh with lead levels of 146 high school adolescents: The arrested youths had lead levels that were four times higher. 

"Impulsivity means you ignore the consequences of what you do," said Needleman, one of the country's foremost experts on lead poisoning, explaining why Nevin's theory is plausible. Lead decreases the ability to tell yourself, "If I do this, I will go to jail."

Then I found this 2007 Boston Globe article:

According to statistics from the city, the number of new lead poisoning cases declined from 1,300 in 2000 to 460 last year. The cases are mostly found in pockets of Dorchester, Roxbury, Mattapan, and Hyde Park. The highest concentration appears to be in neighborhoods in Dorchester's Bowdoin-Geneva Street area.

In my unscientific opinion, lead poisoning is the prime suspect behind the troubles in this neighborhood. I would be interested to see the data that the city has apparently collected, and whether anyone is pursuing this topic more rigorously.

As the days lengthen and temperatures rise, the city too is looking to Bowdoin-Geneva. It has tried fitfully since the 1970s to find a cure for the troubles here. Now, after a spate of murders last year, the city is trying again, with a vow that this time it will make a lasting impact.

If they want to fulfill that vow, instead of just repeating it every year, then I would recommend a heavy investment in lead abatement---much more than already exists---for this neighborhood. It will take money as well as time, and will probably not feel as satisfying as hiring more police officers. But all the available evidence seems to say that it will work, and more than pay for itself as an investment in the next generation.

The decline and fall of an idealist

As I mentioned before the holidays, I stumbled across The Power Broker in the library and was intrigued enough to pick it up after paging through it. It is an intimidatingly long book, but I discovered that Robert Caro is a master of assembling the historical details into a smoothly flowing narrative, with developing characters and a plot. Each chapter has a theme, often drawn directly from a quote or description contained within the text. The book is not simply a biography of Robert Moses, but also features extensive information about the other New York politicos of the time, including Al Smith and Franklin Roosevelt as well as numerous less prominent figures. The backgrounds of Tammany Hall, the system of patronage, and the various "Good Government" movements opposed to that patronage, are also covered.

I'm only midway through Part IV, and I can only touch on a tiny fraction of the material so far in this space. Let's begin after the description of Moses' childhood and education at Yale and Oxford, when the year is 1913, and Caro starts part II with the chapter "Burning":

It must have seemed like a great time to be young and a reformer in New York. In all American history, in fact, it would have been hard to find a better time. The young idealist entered public service in the very year in which there came to crest a movement---Progressivism---that was based [...] on an idealistic belief in man's capacity to better himself through the democratic process. 

[...] 

In searching for the causes of these problems [sweatshops, child labor, poverty of the slums], Progressives settled on the most easily identifiable---the giant corporations and corrupt political bosses who they felt had stolen mythical America away from its people. To exorcise these demons---to force a return to the political democracy and economic individualism that Americans were fond of believing had once existed in their country---they advocated reforms equally simplistic, so simplistic, in fact, that they proved primarily that the old American impulse to do good was still intact. And they were reforms that a young man who wanted to do good, a young man like Bob Moses, could advocate with all his heart.

In just a few lines, Caro mocks the sentimentality and naïvety of American political movements but also praises them and sets the stage for Moses as a newly minted Ph.D. in the field of Civil Service reform.

Moses managed to obtain a position at the Bureau of Municipal Research's new Training School for Public Service through---ominously---nepotism but was too impatient and managed to get himself moved into the Bureau itself shortly. But that too was not enough. The Bureau had made its name by sniffing out graft in construction contracts, and the man appointed to conduct the investigation was John Purroy Mitchel. He successfully ran for mayor in November 1913 and appointed a Civil Service Commission to reform the system. And Moses was placed in charge of this commission, and he began work on proposal based on the British Civil Service he had studied at Oxford, a system of "open competition" and promotion based upon examinations and merit.

Each job could be scientifically analyzed to show its "functions" and "responsibilities." Each function and responsibility---and there were dozens of them for most jobs---could be given a precise mathematical weight corresponding to its importance in the over-all job.

[...]

It was the proposal of a fanatic. John Calvin specifying permissible arrangements for women's hair in sixteenth-century Geneva was not more thorough than Bob Moses enumerating the "functions" and "responsibilities" of New York's civil servants. No aspect of conduct on the job was too small to be graded. Even personality must be reduced to number.

Of course the system would mean the downgrading or elimination of tens of thousands of jobs held by Tammany Hall loyalists. And they rallied at public meetings. Moses even ventured to speak, believing in his system so confidently, but quickly became a figure of derision. Men plead for exemptions, and were granted them by Tammany judges. And in the end, John "Red Mike" Hylan used the system as a campaign issue against Mayor Mitchel in 1917, and won decisively.

The net result of his work was nothing. [...] Convinced he was right, he had refused to soil the white suit of idealism with compromise. He had really believed that if his system was right---scientific, logical, fair---and if it got a hearing, the system would be adopted. In free and open encounter would not Truth prevail? And he had gotten the hearing. But Moses had failed in his calculations to give certain factors due weight. He had not sufficiently taken into account greed. He had not sufficiently taken into account self-interest. And, most of all, he had not sufficiently taken into account the need for power.

He was out of work when he received a job offer from Belle Moskowitz, the reform-minded yet canny political adviser to Governor-elect Al Smith. She had helped Smith win the election and had secured his undying loyalty. To him, most reformers were wild-eyed, impractical "crackpots" but Belle was a different breed. Although Smith was a creature of Tammany, he was interested in real, practical reform and had the eloquence and standing within the machine to be effective. Moskowitz knew this when she signed up to help Smith, and when she hired Moses to be her chief of staff, she began to teach him the same sort of practical politics that had served the new Governor and her successfully.

The lessons started almost immediately. When Moses submitted a preliminary outline of suggested commission goals, he included a phrase straight out of the reform textbooks and his Municipal Civil Service Commission days: "Elimination of unnecessary . . . personnel." Mrs. Moskowitz struck the phrase out. Personnel, she said, were voted. You didn't antagonize voters.

It would take awhile, and although Moses would work on better reform proposals, they would have to wait because Smith lost re-election in 1920 and would not be re-elected until 1922. In the meantime, somehow, Moses became fast friends with Smith, a bond that would last until death. When Smith became Governor again, he brought Moses with him. And when Moses convinced Smith to focus on a parks program, Smith offered him the presidency of the planned Parks Commission.

Moses had learned how to draft crafty bills, a skill gained from Smith and Moskowitz. In the Parks Commission legislation, Moses inserted

a clause buried deep within the act empowered the Long Island State Park Commission to acquire land by condemnation and appropriation "in the manner provided by section fifty-nine of the conservation law."

[...] In 1924, "appropriation" had only one meaning in a legislative context: an allocation of funds by the Legislature.

[...] In 1884, the Legislature passed an act empowering the state to "appropriate" forest lands and defining "appropriation" as a procedure in which a state official could take possession of the land simply by walking on it and telling the owner he no longer owned it.

In other words, he exploited multiple meanings of a legal term in a way that only the most savvy of legislators would detect. His friend Al Smith was likely the only one who would know. By writing this language into the bill he gave himself, in effect, almost unlimited power to take private property. That was not all: he made it virtually impossible to be removed as president of the Commission, to be audited by an outside party, or to be questioned by any of the subordinate departments he controlled.

He would use this power almost immediately to begin seizing land for parks in Long Island. He used it to break the robber baron stranglehold on Long Island, who had long conspired to keep the "rabble" from New York City away from their estates. But he also used it to immiserate poor working farmers who happened to own land in the path of one of his planned "parkways." And more often than not, he was willing to make accommodations for the rich and powerful, while rolling over those who were not "elite" enough.

Under Belle Moskowitz's tutelage, Bob Moses had changed from an uncompromising idealist to a man willing to deal with practical considerations; now the alteration had become more drastic. Under her tutelage, he had been learning the politicians' way; now he almost seemed to have joined their ranks.

More, he was openly scornful of men who hadn't, of men who still worried about the Truth when what counted was votes. He was openly scornful of reformers whose first concern was accuracy, who were willing to devote their lives to fighting for principle and who wanted to make that fight without compromise or surrender of any part of the ideals with which they had started it.

Bob Moses was scornful, in short, of what he had been.

He created new parks, he restored old ones beautifully, he did a lot of nice things for the people of New York. But he also did a lot of terrible things to many individuals, and while he was happy to create amenities for "the people," he seemed to have a complete disregard for actual people---particularly minorities, the poor, or anyone who dared disagree with him.

"He doesn't love the people," [Frances Perkins] was to say. "It used to shock me because he was doing all these things for the welfare of the people . . . He'd denounce the common people terribly. To him they were lousy, dirty people, throwing bottles all over Jones Beach. `I'll get them! I'll teach them!' . . . He loves the public but not as people. The public is just the public. It's a great amorphous mass to him; it needs to be bathed, it needs to be aired, it needs recreation, but not for personal reasons---just to make it a better public."

There's so much more---funny, sad and fascinating---and I'm only partway through the book myself. I'm definitely glad I picked it up.

The road to hell

In a previous post I asked if you could guess the author of these quotes:

"In every city throughout the country and in the sprawling suburbs surrounding the larger cities, traffic is piling up in swollen gasoline gullies, throttling industry, commerce and business; blocking street cleaning, fire and police apparatus; endangering the lives of men and women going to work, of mothers pushing baby carriages, and of children going to and from schools and playgrounds." 

"Fully half of all traffic deaths are due to speed. Cars have become more dangerous than wars." 

"The traffic accident cost to this nation is almost beyond belief." 

"[Regarding railroad crossings at grade] It is the highway, not the railroad--the car, not the train--which creates the hazard and must be primarily responsible for its [the grade crossing] removal."

It was a little unfair, as far as I can tell these quotes do not appear anywhere online except for the last one which appears verbatim in an FHWA manual for some reason.

Surprisingly, the quotes actually come from a little self-serving memoir/screed written in 1956 by none other than Robert Moses. Yes, that one.  His book was lined up next to Caro's magnum opus in the library, and I couldn't resist picking it up in addition for a little light holiday reading.

Trans-Manhattan Expressway (source)

Almost needless to say, Moses' methods at solving these problems drastically varies from current thinking. Here's a sample:

"Parkways were designed, built and protected for pleasant, careful driving. Cross traffic has been eliminated by attractive stone-faced bridges. Wide rights-of-way have been landscaped with native trees, flowing shrubs and evergreens. They have been developed as shoe-string parks with pavements for passenger cars only. All this is a useless expenditure for the speeders, who, at the rate they travel, cannot distinguish a rosebush from a bale of hay."

Can such a hardened political operator be so naïve as to think people would cruise slowly through isolated highways "just because" there was a bunch of pretty grass at the side? To be fair, it's not just Moses who thought this way, such parkways were popular all over, particularly in Boston. Of course, designers such as Olmsted at least had the fair excuse of being dead by the time speedy motorcars were prevalent. Sadly, a whole lot of urban parkland was turned into a stinking, congested, polluted car sewer by the time people thought better.

Cross Bronx Expressway (source)

Here's another few examples of Moses-style "solutions:"

"1. More drastic regulation of speed without regard to unrealistic, theoretically designed limits and political pressure for higher limits. 

2. Stopping the senseless advertising of high-speed motors as a basis of sales. 

3. An unrelenting campaign to acquaint the public with the cause and effect of accidents and especially the terrible danger of excessive speed."

So the roads would be designed and overbuilt for speed, but arbitrarily low limits should be enforced and politically backed. We know how well that "worked" out. And he seems to have favored government intrusion into cultural matters such as advertising, as if that would somehow deter Americans from wanting overpowered engines, if it could even pass constitutional muster (which I doubt).

"We need many additional regulations and restrictions governing the use of motor cars, not only to make them safer but to facilitate their movement and increase their usefulness to the community. Tighter zoning requirements would be enormously helpful. These cannot constitutionally be made retroactive, but they can be extended and enforced on new structure and the rebuilding of old ones, so as to require offstreet loading and unloading facilities and parking spaces for a reasonable number of cars on the premises."

Well, we did get safer cars since 1956. But we also got the "tighter zoning requirements" and that has been an unmitigated disaster for cities, turning so many of them into poor simulacra of bland suburbia that people fled in masses for actual suburbia.

G.W. Carver Houses in Spanish Harlem (source)

But the real kicker is this one, where he rants against "extremists" who,

"...demand that in city centers, including residential as well as business districts, all private cars be kept out, that we cut in half the present number of taxis, that no parking, even with meter regulations, be permitted, and that we abandon all tall buildings for low horizontal structures on large garden plots. Dull, worn-out officials and irresponsible planners join in such proposals. But the process of change must be evolutionary and in charge of those whose aim is to modernize not revolutionize, to preserve values, not destroy them."

I think we can safely agree that banning private cars, and tall buildings -- in favor of large garden plots with low buildings -- is a bad idea. But, oh, the chutzpah. This from the man who brought upon New York City the horrors of the superblock, tower-in-the-park style housing project. A city which, I might add, was in no danger of losing its tall buildings or cars. And finally, that he thought of himself as evolutionary, that he was preserving rather than destroying? To address that I'll add one final quote from Robert Caro, my favorite one so far, although there is plenty more to review (italics original):

Webster Ave in Tremont,
as seen from the Cross Bronx (source)

When he [Moses] replied to protests about the hardships caused by his road-building programs, he generally replied that succeeding generations would be grateful. It was the end that counted, not the means. "You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs." Once, in a speech, he said:

"You can draw any kind of picture you like on a clean slate and indulge your every whim in the wilderness in laying out a New Delhi, Canberra or Brasília, but when you operate in an overbuilt metropolis, you have to hack your way with a meat ax."

The metaphor, like most Moses metaphors, was vivid. But it was incomplete. It expressed his philosophy, but it was not philosophy but feelings that dictated Moses' actions. He didn't just feel that he had to swing a meat ax. He loved to swing it.

Some preservationist he was.

Guess the author!

Don't have much time, but, came across a curious set of quotes in a book I was reading.

"In every city throughout the country and in the sprawling suburbs surrounding the larger cities, traffic is piling up in swollen gasoline gullies, throttling industry, commerce and business; blocking street cleaning, fire and police apparatus; endangering the lives of men and women going to work, of mothers pushing baby carriages, and of children going to and from schools and playgrounds." 

"Fully half of all traffic deaths are due to speed. Cars have become more dangerous than wars." 

"The traffic accident cost to this nation is almost beyond belief." 

"[Regarding railroad crossings at grade] It is the highway, not the railroad--the car, not the train--which creates the hazard and must be primarily responsible for its [the grade crossing] removal."

Anyone want to take a guess who wrote these words?

Replaying real-time bus data, expanded

About a month ago I posted a demo playback of the real-time data from Oct 11, 2011 for the 57 bus, taken from the MBTA Data Contest sample. Now I've expanded it to include all key bus routes, the Silver Line and the CT routes.

Real-time bus data playback

I've added a bunch of options as well, because displaying all of this information on one map can get very CPU intensive. Disabling the Stop Request/Door Open markers will ease up most of the burden. You can also select which routes to display using the checkboxes on the right, as well as toggling whether to show the lines of the bus routes.

The data take awhile to load so it's been split up into pieces which are loaded in the background while the simulation begins. A progress bar will be displayed on top until it finishes loading, but the map will start showing the bus data that have been already downloaded.

It's easy to forget the scale of the system when you ride the same way every day. Just take a look, as it starts early in the morning with a lone 28 bus, and then explodes with activity as it reaches the morning peak, until the entire map is crawling with buses. And these are only the key routes.

(Tested in Chrome and Firefox; IE users may be out of luck).

Government Center closure: shuttle routes

Since it seems we're looking at a closure of a major transfer station next September, let's look at some of the alternatives for replacing service. I'd prefer if they get the work done as soon as possible, say, 6 months instead of 24 months, but we'll still need some kind of shuttle service in the meantime.

They did not show the currently planned shuttle route between Bowdoin, Haymarket and State, but this is what I presume it will look like, operating clockwise:


View shuttle in a larger map
The roundtrip can probably be completed in about 10 minutes so this will likely use 2-3 buses, depending on how frequently they want to operate.

This planned route connects stations on the Blue, Orange, Green "C" and Green "E" lines but does not assist Blue/Red, Blue/"B", or Blue/"D" (except off-peak) connections. A shuttle between State and Park would assist every possible connection, however. But the T seems to have dismissed that possibility due to the one way roads and congestion around Park. I'm not sure what options they considered, but perhaps this was one of them:



View Park/State shuttle in a larger map
This loop would take about the same time as the previous option, maybe slightly less, but has the benefit of making all connections that don't involve the Silver Line. The drawbacks include the need to create a shuttle stop adjacent to the Park Street Church -- although there should be enough room -- and the possibility that a city bus cannot navigate the School Street/Water Street routing -- which I don't know answer offhand. Still, some creativity could be applied, such as using smaller buses or temporary street changes to make it work out.



View Park/Bowdoin/Haymarket/State shuttle in a larger map
If you want to avoid small streets, then here's another idea: take the original shuttle plan and add Park to it. This can be achieved by turning down Tremont Street, then back along Park Street and Bowdoin Street. Normally, such a loop would be obnoxious for people connecting from Park to State, but here we can take advantage of Bowdoin to shorten that transfer time. Riders going from Blue to Green/Red would take the shuttle from State to Park, but riders going the other way would make use of Bowdoin to shorten their trip. This obviously depends upon Bowdoin being held open full-time, as is planned. The bus stop and crosswalk in front of the Park Street Church would also still be necessary.

A few folks at the meeting called for the MBTA to investigate some kind of shuttle bus route from East Boston to the Red Line. I'm not sure if they'll consider it seriously, but let's take a look at a couple of ideas and see if they are feasible or not. Option 1:



View East Boston to Charles/MGH in a larger map
This option uses the Callahan and Sumner tunnels from Maverick to reach the West End and ultimately connect to Charles/MGH along Cambridge Street. As far as I can tell, there is enough clearance in the tunnels for buses, although they don't normally use them. Looking at Charles/MGH, the renovated station and circle are not at all friendly to buses (or people, for that matter). The road which runs underneath the station is named "Pleasure Road" (go figure) but it would require some heavy construction to place a bus stop there, as it is walled off from the station. That is unfortunate, since that road would be the ideal place for a bus stop. It seems that the most likely location for a shuttle bus stop would be along Cambridge Street west-bound as it enters the circle. There is a crosswalk to the station, and 3 lanes of traffic with plenty of room for a stop, along with a usable curb. Then the shuttle could enter the circle and turn around back east. Or, option 2:



View East Boston to South Station in a larger map
Instead of Charles/MGH, go to South Station using the Mass Pike. This essentially follows the path of the SL1. Presumably the diesel shuttle buses could not actually use the Silver Line bus tunnel, so they would be forced onto an Atlantic Avenue bus stop. Otherwise, this is like an additional Silver Line branch which serves East Boston residents from Maverick to Day Square. The main advantage of this route is that it could cut out a transfer for many residents of East Boston: instead of Blue-shuttle/Orange-Red, they could go shuttle-Red (and not have to add to the overloaded Orange Line). Another advantage is that it connects East Boston to both sides of the Silver Line. A disadvantage might be that it takes too long to travel from Maverick to South Station via this route, and therefore it is not worthwhile. On the other hand, it might be worthwhile just because it takes some stress off the central core (as an Urban Ring route might).

Anyway, happy to hear any more ideas, or if I missed something that makes these routes infeasible.

Government Center station closure: public meeting

Here are my notes from the meeting which took place today (hopefully slides will be on the website soon, some images posted here meantime):

• The speaker for the presentation was Don Schwartz of HDR.
• The new glass head-house will have entries on 3 sides with 6 doors.
• The old, closed-down Blue Line mezzanine will be turned into an emergency exit only.
• There will be a smaller head-house to accommodate that emergency exit.
• This will require shifting Cambridge Street slightly north:
• They will cut the median strip from 20 feet down to 6 feet in order to preserve existing parking and travel lanes
• They will also take the opportunity to paint bike lanes and widen the sidewalks
• The Scollay Square intersection will be redone to be more pedestrian friendly
• Curb extensions, exclusive pedestrian phase, fix it from being "just a road that happens to have pedestrians" to one that is friendly to walking
• The stairs outside the station head-house will be eliminated and the plaza will be flattened out for easier accessibility
• Inside they plan to have about 9-10 fare gates
• Two elevators going from street to Green Line, two separate elevators going from Green Line to Blue Line (site too constrained to combine them)
• There will be some sort of precast concrete floor that is "less slippery" and the stairs will "allow daylight" through to the station beneath
• There will be two sets of stairs and two escalators, so you can go left or right as you enter the station
• It looks like the stairs are aligned and adjacent with the Haymarket-bound track
• They intend to widen the Haymarket-bound platform from the current (less than) 3 feet to 10 feet.
• The power substation will be replaced in order to power the elevators

The "keep it open" alternative was considered and rejected:

• An extra year would have been devoted to constructing entirely temporary platforms and access
• 32+ weekend diversions of the "entire" Green and Blue Lines would be needed
• All Green Line trains would need to be double-stopped to let off passengers, due to construction blocking the platform

The "total closure" alternative they claim saves 18 months and $20 million. They project an additional 9-10 minutes of travel time for all passengers who were using the station and are now diverted.

• The Blue Line Bowdoin station will be open full-time on a trial basis: they will monitor usage and decide if it is worthwhile
• The Green Line "B" and "D" service will terminate and loop at Park Street station, except during the off-peak when service on the "D" branch will be sent further to turn back at North Station.
• As a result of the shorter trip-time, a single train in service on the "B" branch will be shifted to bolster the "C" branch instead.
• There will be a shuttle bus that loops between Haymarket, Bowdoin and State.

A lot of people came along to comments, and many were not happy at all about the closure:

• One of the biggest concerns from multiple East Boston residents was the crowding on the Orange Line, making it nearly impossible to perform the one station hop between State and Park during rush hour. The platforms at State are too small and overcrowded. It's already really bad on the Orange Line, this will make it worse. One of the responses from the MBTA Project Manager Tom Nee was that they had simulated the platform issues, using AFC data, and that it was feasible.
• Will there be out-of-system transfers? The answer: nothing more than is currently supported. They are "unable to reprogram" the AFC system to be more flexible.
• Along those lines several called for answers on the Red/Blue connector which should have been at least designed as part of the Big Dig mitigation. "Many of our concerns would fade away if that existed." Of course this was brushed off as out of scope.
• Someone asked why the Blue Line mezzanine wasn't being used as a proper entrance. The given reason was that it would require the relocation of many more utilities and have more impacts on the street. The cost was too high. The current plan only requires the relocation of one utility.
• It was estimated by one commenter that this would add at least 7 hours to every East Boston/Government Center commuter's trip time per week.
• Would the Blue Line platform gain additional ventilation? It seems that the answer was "no."
• Some suggestions: install a Hubway at Bowdoin, allow bikes on the Blue Line at all times, and set up a trial shuttle bus from East Boston to Charles/MGH and see if that helps alleviate some of the problem.
• The pavers they are choosing for the station came under criticism as being tough on disabled folks using wheelchairs. She also asked for more of the wider faregates because during rush they become monopolized by able-bodied folks in a hurry. Quote: "this is a station being built for the past."
• A few residents asked the project management to please go stand at State and the other downtown platforms during rush hour and see what it was like before they return to other public meetings.
• Nina Garfinkel from Livable Streets asked if they would consider "priority bus lanes" for the shuttles, more Hubway stations, and whether they had considered a good plan to guide people around the closure?
• A couple of people were wondering why the head-house was 2 stories tall and if they were considering sight-lines to the harbor and various landmarks (someone even claimed to like seeing City Hall!)? The answer was that the station fit into the BRA master plan and was intended to be a landmark itself, and that it was the smallest structure in the vicinity.
• A Blue/Red commuter said "it is bad NOW" and then asked if they could consider that shuttle between East Boston and Charles/MGH or South Station, or alternatively, work on making the Silver Line useful to East Boston residents.
• Is it possible to shorten the closure, 2 years is unreasonable? Fill station with workers, get it done, don't waste money on a glass cathedral.
• Would they confirm that there will be work done 24/7 for 2 years to get this done ASAP? Some nodding, but no firm answer.
• Granite stairs are difficult for those with poor vision to see when walking down on darker days, consider something more visible.
• Have new GM meet with the community before anything.
• The State Street platform is too narrow, did they account for baby strollers, carts, carriages, bikes and other obstacles in their simulation? It's a public safety hazard as is.
• Will there be a further walk from City Hall to the station? It seems as if it would only be very slightly, if at all, and the new path will be fully accessible and rebuilt all the way from point to point.
• Will the intersection be improved in the earlier phases in order to promote walking from Park Street to Government Center? No, they said that the street-level improvements will be one of the last things to happen.
• Can there be a shuttle from State to Park? The answer seemed to be "no" because there was no easy way to run a shuttle on that route due to one-way streets and congestion.
• Will there be a down escalator? Yes, one of the escalators will be going down.

San Juan

Been away for a little while, I was travelling and stayed for a few days in Old San Juan, which looks like this.

A very beautiful old city which dates back three or four centuries, perhaps even to the early 16th century. It is located on a small island connected by only two bridges to the larger island of Puerto Rico. It is a historically protected site, which is a good thing because the rest of San Juan looks more like this:

Estación Hato Rey

San Juan has extremely high density of cars, and it shows

The adjacent highway was even more of a parking lot than this

Tourism is obviously the biggest industry in Old San Juan, as it is a major cruise ship destination. Between that, the Governor's mansion, and the historical protections, there is a slightly artificial feel to it which can hardly be avoided. But despite that, there are still many local residents and businesses here. And it's a fun place. I think it is well worth a stop if you are in the area.

Your Vision, Our Future: A Transportation Conversation

A couple months ago, MassDOT began promoting a series of statewide public meetings called: Your Vision, Our Future: A Transportation Conversation. I attended the Boston meeting on Thursday. Secretary Davey stated at the beginning that they are listening to people from around the state in anticipation of January's finance plan. He said that we are "destined for a renaissance or a rollback." Then he turned the floor over to public comments.

I didn't have time to stay for the whole session, but here's the notes for what I said in my 3 minutes:

• Agencies must work together: BTD, BRA, MBTA, etc
• Transportation policy and land use are inseparable, is anyone from the BRA or city planning here? [no, it turns out]
• The T must work together with the city to eliminate minimum parking requirements particularly near MBTA stations
• Minimum parking requirements are a direct subsidy to automobile usage
• They create traffic congestion, hurt walkability through sprawl
• Every dollar of parking subsidy causes T ridership and revenue to drop
• If people don't pay true cost of driving, then the rest of us pay for it
• Turning to BTD, buses and trains carry more people than cars, but BTD treats buses as worth less than cars in road design.
• The T must work with BTD to change this attitude, get bus lanes and signal priority.
• For example, the Silver Line should have dedicated lanes all the way through Chinatown. It's not BRT if you don't do the important parts where it's "hard" to get done.
• Finally, improvements in service can save operational costs.
• Faster trip times mean fewer vehicles needed to operate the same service.
• The "front door only" policy on the Green Line must be ended
• It costs more money by slowing down trips than it saves in stopping fare evasion
• Sometimes trains easily sit for 5 minutes at a single station because of the bottleneck, people pushing in and out of the small front door
• It's not helping the T, it's just a form of collective punishment of the riders
• The T should treat customers as people, and have some pride in their work