Fairmount Line Discussion

Right now, the problem with the project is that it's kind of stuck somewhere between CR and Rapid Transit.
It's too short, and has too many stations to be CR, but the trains don't run often enough be RT. What
they need to dois start putting in some dedicated Readville 3 car train shuttles that would run up
and down the line, say every half hour or so. That would start giving them the service frequency
they need to turn it into an RT line.

At what point would the 3 car shuttles be operating at an acceptable profit? I.e how many riders would they need per 3 car train to justify it

No public transit is ever going to operate at a profit. That's not the way to think about this. Fairmount does have a ridership goal they want to reach, but that will require something much closer to the schedules envisioned in the studies. Which they are far, far from realizing because moving around the construction doesn't allow more than today. Per the Blue Book it's actually had a significant temporary ridership drop in the last few years because of construction-related service disruptions to existing riders.

They've got work to do. They need to get Fairmount and Readville platforms raised so they can use the auto door coaches. They need to get frequencies up to a tipping point. They have to find a way to get the fare collection closer to subway than CR zones (e.g. Charlie tap surfaces on the coach doors). And (easiest), they need to promote it when all the new stations save for latecomer Blue Hill Ave. are fully open and no longer subject to any residual construction mop-up. Then I think there'll be a big spike.

And don't forget, they have further ridership-boosting options from here if a Readville reconfiguration allows bi-directional access from Franklin or the NEC. A 1-stop extension to Westwood is probably in the cards when the NEC gets tri-tracked from Readville to Canton Jct. That is really, really low-hanging fruit that would supercharge ridership from 128 park-and-riders (and Westwood is underperforming because the surrounding TOD hasn't been built, so it needs some promotion). Plus Foxboro service potentially flushing in some suburban commuters to the transfer buses who today never see Dorchester because there's so few Franklin trains routed that way.

It's a long-term growth corridor from multiple angles. As much as it's promoted as a quasi- rapid transit line, it never intended to be "Ta-da!" done at the opening of the last new station. It's a long-term grower they have to steadily ramp up new ways to exploit. Service levels, routings, ease of operation on the customer end...all of that, well after the last shovel is out of the ground.

It's a long-term growth corridor from multiple angles. As much as it's promoted as a quasi- rapid transit line, it never intended to be "Ta-da!" done at the opening of the last new station. It's a long-term grower they have to steadily ramp up new ways to exploit. Service levels, routings, ease of operation on the customer end...all of that, well after the last shovel is out of the ground.

Actually, I noticed recently that with the possible addition of a new Brighton station and the new Yawkey station, that it would now be possible to run some
trains from Fairmount over to the Worcester line, with another stop at Back Bay. This would really help turn it into an attractive, quasi-subway service.
There is apparently an existing wye at South Station that would allow it to be done, although it looks like some serious upgrade of it would be necessary
to make it work. Has the T ever looked into this?

trainhq wrote:

It's a long-term growth corridor from multiple angles. As much as it's promoted as a quasi- rapid transit line, it never intended to be "Ta-da!" done at the opening of the last new station. It's a long-term grower they have to steadily ramp up new ways to exploit. Service levels, routings, ease of operation on the customer end...all of that, well after the last shovel is out of the ground.

Actually, I noticed recently that with the possible addition of a new Brighton station and the new Yawkey station, that it would now be possible to run some
trains from Fairmount over to the Worcester line, with another stop at Back Bay. This would really help turn it into an attractive, quasi-subway service.
There is apparently an existing wye at South Station that would allow it to be done, although it looks like some serious upgrade of it would be necessary
to make it work. Has the T ever looked into this?

The Boston MPO has looked into various shuttle implementations of this sort.

In short, no...it wouldn't work and was not recommended. Ridership was very low in every implementation studied, it chewed up SS slots better served by service increases elsewhere, and SS wye was not an option for the delays it would cause on NEC trains that had to stop and wait while the wye was in use.

South Station - Back Bay - Yawkey was the only high-frequency route other than the Indigo Line considered worthwhile in the 2004 PMT, and I suspect that especially with the addition of Boston Landing and rebuilt Yawkey it would be so today. That route provides an alternate to the crowded and slow Green Line, and increases South Station - Back Bay frequency (making life better for Old Colony and Fairmount riders, and increasing the viability of the Fairmount as an NEC bypass) without blocking NEC traffic.

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote: They have to find a way to get the fare collection closer to subway than CR zones (e.g. Charlie tap surfaces on the coach doors).

Has that been seriously discussed, or are you just guessing? I like the idea, and It seems like that'd be the only way to really market it as "rapid" transit. You have to make it as easy as possible for the rider to want to get on the train, and trying to explain the reasoning for buying a commuter rail ticket then a subway ticket will probably befuddle most.

Another option would be like Seattle: they have a reloadable smart card, but to buy a trolley ticket you need to "redeem" it to get a paper ticket.

wicked wrote:

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote: They have to find a way to get the fare collection closer to subway than CR zones (e.g. Charlie tap surfaces on the coach doors).

Has that been seriously discussed, or are you just guessing? I like the idea, and It seems like that'd be the only way to really market it as "rapid" transit. You have to make it as easy as possible for the rider to want to get on the train, and trying to explain the reasoning for buying a commuter rail ticket then a subway ticket will probably befuddle most.

Another option would be like Seattle: they have a reloadable smart card, but to buy a trolley ticket you need to "redeem" it to get a paper ticket.

Have they thought about going with a proof of payment system on the Fairmount? How hard would it be to put in fare control gates at the new more "rapid transity" stations?

The July 1st schedule is out, and it looks good. Four Corners/Geneva and Newmarket are open, and they've added 5 round trips to the schedule. That makes 20 all-flag-stops round trips plus a couple Readville/Fairmount-only moves.

There are now no gaps longer than an hour between trains, and from 920am to 320pm it's a clock-face schedule with exact hour headways. Not rapid transit quality yet, but it's getting better bit by bit.

That new schedule also moves Fairmount from Zone 1 to Zone 1A. It's a $3.50 price cut.

If they rezoned Fairmount they should rezone Hyde Park. But they didn't.

What should be done is devote a shuttle service on this line, and run it was 4 cars. A rush hour train out of South Station at 5:45p uses 2 flat cars...hopefully it catches on, don't want to see all this money and effort go to waste...

Amtrak7 wrote:If they rezoned Fairmount they should rezone Hyde Park. But they didn't.

Probably because it would be a mess to administer the same policy on Franklin and Stoughton trains. Hyde Park's probably going to howl about the deal Dorchester's getting out of this, though.

What they need to do is thru-route all Cleary Square/Hyde Park station buses to loop at Fairmount. Only the 24 currently stops there. The 32 and 33 hit HP but miss Fairmount and the 50 needs to have a short tack-on leg so it terminates at Fairmount. There's still a bit of transfer inequity between the stops that's going to artificially depress Fairmount utilization and artificially inflate Hyde Park's. And since the bus transfers are pretty crucial for neighborhood transit the zone difference is a problem. It makes little sense to leave Fairmount out of the transfer mix when that's the stop being scaled up to rapid transit-lite headways. If anything they need to be paring back HP service slightly to relieve NEC congestion and start shoveling those riders over to Fairmount. HP's got pretty robust boardings in the Blue Book, but what % of that breaks inbound vs. outbound? If more of those people are going in vs. out to Franklin or Stoughton...load-shift them over to Fairmount and 1A that fare.

I think they rezoned Fairmount to 1A so that people with weekly passes can use it to ride, to possibly increase ridership. This is speculation on my part, but I think the reason why Readville wasn't rezoned is because they don't want to rezone it for the Franklin line.

If they did re-zone the Hyde Park station then they'd have to re-zone the Readville station too since Readville is part of the Hyde Park neighborhood (and therefore part of Boston too) and it would just make no sense to have any other stations in the same section of the city not covered by any re-zoning that would bring ticket prices down. Now with that logic in mind it then makes no sense to NOT throw Hyde Park and Readville into a fare re-zoning plan too. It would allow for some sort of LIRR/Metro North-style "City Ticket" program for the Fairmount Line and Providence/Stoughton and Franklin Line between Readville and Back Bay/South Station. One possibility is perhaps changing fare zones for those two stops would bring in significantly less ticket revenue if they were re-zoned (even if ridership increased) and, thus, the T doesn't deem it viable(?).

Now (and just a guess, but) maybe this is some kind of strategy by the T to get Boston residents off of the Providence/Stoughton and Franklin Line trains and onto the Fairmount?