Reliability

Article on NJT reliability has some interesting breakdown statistics:

In the 12 months ended June 30, trains went an average 83,815 miles (135,000 kilometers) between failures, the worst performance in at least four years, according to agency figures. The Long Island Rail Road gets more than double that distance, while New York City's subways travel more than 141,000 miles between breakdowns on average.

Wonder how the T does in comparison.
Full article:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns- ... story.html

typesix wrote:Article on NJT reliability has some interesting breakdown statistics:

In the 12 months ended June 30, trains went an average 83,815 miles (135,000 kilometers) between failures, the worst performance in at least four years, according to agency figures. The Long Island Rail Road gets more than double that distance, while New York City's subways travel more than 141,000 miles between breakdowns on average.

Wonder how the T does in comparison.
Full article:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns- ... story.html

I remember Alon Levy citing the MBTA (this data was almost certainly from some point in MBCR operation) as being a factor of ten worse than the LIRR, so I'd expect a Mean Distance Between Failures for MBTA CR of somewhere around 20k miles.

typesix wrote:Wonder how the T does in comparison.

MBTA makes this information public: http://www.massdot.state.ma.us/Portals/ ... t_2015.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
MBTA commuter rail was at 2,227 miles between failures in Q3 of fiscal 2015.
Red line: 38,152
Orange: 51,206
Blue: 38,593
Green: 2,952.
If anything is a clear indication of the results of failing to properly invest in infrastructure are, these numbers are it.
MBTA used to have its own "scorecards", and the archive of them is here: http://www.mbta.com/about_the_mbta/scorecard/?id=18476" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Wow! That's horrible. What is going on at Boston Engine Terminal? Sounds like Keolis doesn't have their arms around the problem.

That's the equivalent of breaking down in your private car every month. You'd either fire your mechanic and/or buy a different car.

What is meant by a failure?

1. The train is unable to complete the trip to the intended destination in normal passenger service?
2. Someone not on the train crew has to come and assist?
3. There is a delay exceeding 15 minutes due to mechanical difficulties or idiosyncrasies?

chrisf wrote:

typesix wrote:Wonder how the T does in comparison.

MBTA makes this information public: http://www.massdot.state.ma.us/Portals/ ... t_2015.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
MBTA commuter rail was at 2,227 miles between failures in Q3 of fiscal 2015.
Red line: 38,152
Orange: 51,206
Blue: 38,593
Green: 2,952.
If anything is a clear indication of the results of failing to properly invest in infrastructure are, these numbers are it.
MBTA used to have its own "scorecards", and the archive of them is here: http://www.mbta.com/about_the_mbta/scorecard/?id=18476" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Those numbers are for January-March 2015 when everything went to hell in the winter storms. I don't see any more recent reports.

RailBus63 wrote:Those numbers are for January-March 2015 when everything went to hell in the winter storms. I don't see any more recent reports.

They are, but the older reports don't indicate significantly better numbers.

Those MBTA CR numbers are so astronomically far off from NJT and LIRR that it makes me think there's a discrepancy in the way they're collected/reported/etc. I expect the MBTA to be under performing, but that's almost too much to believe.

As a daily LIRR commuter, those numbers aren't close to plausible. I seriously think someone specified the distance in meters instead of kilometers. Even then it would probably be somewhat underreported.