Keolis to introduce new schedules by 11/1/15

[The EGE]

You'll probably want to add Wellesley Square to any Inland Route / other intercity service unless you're really pushing for every minute. Moderately sized park and ride, convenient to 9 (RTE isn't too far around 128 from Riverside), and three colleges which always draw good intercity ridership. The old Inland Route regionals always stopped there.

[jwhite07]

You'll probably want to add Wellesley Square to any Inland Route / other intercity service unless you're really pushing for every minute. Moderately sized park and ride, convenient to 9 (RTE isn't too far around 128 from Riverside), and three colleges which always draw good intercity ridership. The old Inland Route regionals always stopped there.

"Always" is a bit of an overstatement... Amtrak served Wellesley with one round trip per day (the Bay State) from 1972 to early 1975.

[The EGE]

Right you are, thanks for the correction.

[dbperry]

"CH" left this comment on my blog post about the draft new schedule:

Talked to my state rep's person about this, esp the ridiculous lack of wellesley/newton trains after 8:15 or so and loss of the 6:05 evening. They talked to MBTA, which said the draft hasn't been released or reviewed by local officials yet, and no changes to the current schedule will be made until the spring. So, we'll see...

I asked recently (but before the comment above was published) at South Station about the new schedules and a Keolis customer service rep said they were being implemented in late November and they would be made public approximately 1 week prior to the implementation date.

Perhaps the November schedule changes are the minor tweaks (changes in dwell times, etc.) and then they'll make the big change for Framingham-Worcester in May 2016. That would make sense given the comments about the bullet train not being implemented until May.

[emannths]

11/1/15 is in the books. Any word of new schedules or new ETAs?

[sery2831]

Rumor is tomorrow we might know something.

[Diverging Route]

According to The Boston Globe, the new North Side schedules will be made public within two weeks, and implemented in mid-December (I'm hearing December 14). South Side schedules won't be available nor change until spring.

[harshaw]

They also should have a schedule for slippery rail season... since they can't seem (and perhaps this is reasonable) to run the trains on time right now.

[Diverging Route]

The new schedules are now published.

Discuss.

OK, I'll start. A gap from 6:25pm to 7:25pm outbound on the Lowell Line is huge. As my colleague OCTR202 points out, it's similar on all branches.

[The EGE]

Newburyport / Rockport: Weekday schedules looks pretty good overall. Times are actually tightened by a couple minutes for a lot of trains. They've turned most short turns into full branchline trains; that's more branch service but more crowding for Lynn/Salem/Beverly riders. No change to the weekend schedules. C'mon Keolis, clock-facing schedules. Clock facing. Schedules. They're not that hard to understand.

Haverhill: Times also tightened for Haverhill trains, especially the Wildcat expresses which no longer stop at any Lowell Line stops (even Anderson).

Lowell: Haverhill is no longer confusingly shown on the schedule, which is probably a good thing. Some trains tightened, a few given an extra minute or two.

Fitchburg: Reverse commuting to Fitchburg is now possible, and they've reduced some big gaps. Lots of time taken off the schedule - #404 becomes #406 and drops ten whole minutes. Silver Hill is shown regularly rather than with a note.

[deathtopumpkins]

I'm QUITE happy with the new Rockburyport schedules. Previously there was an inbound gap of over 3 hours on the weekday schedules from Newburyport, but now there's a train almost hourly!

And the late night train schedule looks good. I'm also quite happy with the fact that there are Newburyport expresses now! 2 Rockport and 3 Newburyport expresses during peak hours, compared to Rockport expresses and Newburyport locals previously.

I also note the inclusion of "severe weather" trains, that won't run in the winter. Hopefully this will help keep the trains that do run on some semblance of a schedule, and hopefully Keolis won't abuse this concept.

[saulblum]

I also note the inclusion of "severe weather" trains, that won't run in the winter. Hopefully this will help keep the trains that do run on some semblance of a schedule, and hopefully Keolis won't abuse this concept.

Am I the only one who initially thought, when looking at the trains marked by the bold purple background and "SW", that these trains would only run in severe weather and none of the others would?

[octr202]

I find it very interesting that the response is very positive here. I guess for outer-branch off-peak riders, it's better.

For rush hour, on most lines, it's worse. There's more frequent services at points, but big gaps created elsewhere. If you work hours like say 10am to 6pm, you're likely out of luck. I agree that's not "standard" hours, but these days a lot of people work odd schedules.

Today, for one, I had a meeting in Kendall Sq that was scheduled to 6 PM. It ran over to about 6:15 PM. Very glad to have the 6:55 PM Haverhill (via West Medford) train. Starting next month, if I can't make that 6:30, it's a 70 minute wait. 6:30 pm isn't a time to be cutting trains back to hourly or worse. I got home just about when I'd be leaving North Station under the new schedule, and now I can't even go to Anderson as an alternative since it has a big gap too.

And - start work at 10:00 AM? Not any more. Either arrive NS before 9:00 AM, or not until after 10 - or 10:30 on the Eastern!

There may be some good things off peak, but the peak hour schedules seem designed to cater to the 8-4 and 9-5 crowd only.

The provided "Overview" seems to indicate where some of the assumptions arise from: http://www.mbta.com/uploadedfiles/About ... edules.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

They assume that the morning rush hour ends (NS arrival time) at 9:00 AM, and that the evening ends with departures at 6:30 PM. They also assume that most riders are only 15-20 minutes from North Station to their workplaces. Unfortunately, three of the biggest growth areas (Seaport, eastern Cambridge, LMA) are difficult at best to reach in that time frame. Those travel times are more like 20-30 minutes, and that's w/o adding padding to the evening return trip (which you really want when you might have to sit at NS for over an hour).

At some point when I can read these in more detail, I'll also start to look at the little things that just make me wonder.

[dbperry]

I have added the new schedules to my archive of Commuter Rail Schedules. My archive isn't very deep for North Side lines, but you can compare back 1-2 iterations along with all the reduced service schedules for last winter.

http://www.dbperry.net/mbta" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Diverging Route]

Another head-scratcher:

On the Lowell Line, 304 is a local departing LOW at 0640, arriving BON at 0727. Just behind it is 306, departing LOW at 0650 (ten minutes later) and arriving BON at 0731 -- just four minutes behind 304.

It's a best-practice in scheduling to put the express AHEAD of the local, so that it increases the gap between trains, not decreases it. In the above example, any delay in 304 will have 306 "riding the yellows," and getting slowed or stopped.