Pretty good transit service

I grew up in Boston and lived there until I was about 22. I rode the T everywhere. I remember the afternoon I rode the last bit I'd never been on -- in from Riverside to Reservoir. Commuter rail to the Children's Museum, Green and Red Lines to go to the Esplanade, Orange line to an intership at the EOTC office in the Transportation Building on Park Square, 51 and 39 buses to high school, etc. I had some complaints, and I wanted the Arborway cars back, but on the whole it was a great thing.
I've now lived in small Midwestern cities for 10 years. In Urbana I missed the light and heavy rail b ecause I am a railfan, but I could get about anywhere by bus. In Terre Haute, we have a rather pathetic system of airport-shuttle sized city buses. Not many people ride them, and most of the passengers are either handicapped, very old, on suspended licenses, or very poor. I ride these little buses with my daughter for nostalgia and out of a sense of duty. I try to get the city to at least make a map of the whole bus system and put up some bus stop signs so folks will know where the buses go and think of riding them.
Boston has it great. Sure there are various missing links, but the T is a comprehensive system that works as well as can be expected. You don't need a car to live there. Here, if I want to go to work, I can drive or ride my bike for half an hour (luckily half of that is on a rail-trail -- on a line that really was parallel to a better rail route and which probably has room to be rebuilt next to the trail if ever needed). No public transit at all. I like the bike ride, but not in midwinter or the rain. So I think that we should recognize a pretty good public transit system when we see it.

Can this be a nostalgia thread for railfans who no longer live in Boston? Certainly the way the MBTA is run now is a crying shame, but rail infrastructure that Boston has now puts other cities with similar populations to shame. Certainly cities like Baltimore and Milwuakee(for example), both of which are larger than Boston don't have a public transit system as comprehensive as the 'T'.

Washington DC, another Boston sized city, has an excellent subway system, but only because national pride demanded our capital have at least a half-way decent public transit system.

We can grouse about the MBTA administration all we want, and they certainly deserve it, but it's ultimately because we want what is already a good system to be well-maintained efficiently run as it deserves.

scoopernicus_in_Maine wrote:Washington DC, another Boston sized city, has an excellent subway system, but only because national pride demanded our capital have at least a half-way decent public transit system.

Washington D.C. has a tremendous subway system, but their Metrobus system is probably the worst managed big-city bus system in America. The MBTA bus system is a jewel by comparison.

Jim

A lot of the frustration and criticism comes from just that -- the fact that we have this potentially really good system, and making it live up to its potential seems perpetually unachievable.

We're very lucky in that our system survived with much more infrastructure than most beyond the 1950s (and in that we had a lot to begin with). And that we had a number of people with the foresight to modernize a lot of it.

But there are issues with funding and leadership that are probably bigger than the Authority itself, things that might take a non-transient governor and a not-so-chummy legislature (dream on) to address. The T is screwed so long as the current funding regime is in place. I think Grabauskas could make a big difference in day-to-day operations, but there need to be more proven managers like him over the long term.

RailBus63 wrote:
Washington D.C. has a tremendous subway system, but their Metrobus system is probably the worst managed big-city bus system in America. The MBTA bus system is a jewel by comparison.

Jim

Are you kidding me? Have you ever ridden a bus in Boston? They hardly ever run on schedule and the drivers on the busses are generally unfriendly unlike their counterparts on the rest of the T. Stops are terriblly marked though it is starting to get slightly better. All in all the T's bus service is pretty lousy.

danib, which bus routes are you referring to?

I ride the 57 every day to work, and only once have I had to wait more than 10 minutes for a bus. The stops are all very clearly marked and the shelters are all in great condition. As far as the drivers, I have yet to run into a really grumpy one. Most are not super-friendly, but they're also not total jerks either.

I've also ridden the 66, 502, and 504, and had similarly good experiences. In fact, a 502 driver was overly generous the day we had the unexpected afternoon blizzard. The 57s were running about 2 hours behind, so he let me go to Copley for free instead... certainly something he did not have to do.

cden4 wrote:danib, which bus routes are you referring to?

I ride the 57 every day to work, and only once have I had to wait more than 10 minutes for a bus. The stops are all very clearly marked and the shelters are all in great condition. As far as the drivers, I have yet to run into a really grumpy one. Most are not super-friendly, but they're also not total jerks either.

I've also ridden the 66, 502, and 504, and had similarly good experiences. In fact, a 502 driver was overly generous the day we had the unexpected afternoon blizzard. The 57s were running about 2 hours behind, so he let me go to Copley for free instead... certainly something he did not have to do.

Are you telling me that you have honestly rode on the 66 and you weren't stuck waiting for 20+ minutes during rush times just to see two or three come at once and all be packed? Also try taking routes that run less frequently such as the 65 and 9 times out of 10 you will see that it doesn't run according to schedule.

Overall I think the T does a good job but the bus service is deffinitly the area which needs the most improvement in my opinon.

I don't ride the 66 very often, so no I have not. I have heard of that happening though. The 57 clumps up like that too, where 2-3 buses show up at once, although in most cases at least one of them is pretty empty.

From what I understand the 57 and 66 either do or will soon have GPS on all the buses, so they can most closely monitor them and adjust accordingly.

cden4 wrote:From what I understand the 57 and 66 either do or will soon have GPS on all the buses, so they can most closely monitor them and adjust accordingly.

They've been saying that for years. They also said the silver line would have it too! And that it would have stop light priority. More empty promises...

Well, the Red Line and most Southside MBCR routes have been doing fine so far, based on the routes I ride. I've been lucky so far lately mainly with the South Shore QBE Red line and Old Colony/Attleboro MBCR routes.

And cden4, danib62, let's please discuss buses in the official bus topics. This thread has more to do with the train division and it's positive performances. Thanks guys.

danib62, I know the mods are getting this thread back to rail discussion, but check out this recent Washington Post report on problems with D.C. Metrobus service:

Progress Has Passed Metrobus By

We can discuss this further in the 'Official Bus Thread' if you'd like. I certainly haven't experienced MBTA bus service as bad as what the D.C. article describes.

Jim

RailBus63 wrote:danib62, I know the mods are getting this thread back to rail discussion, but check out this recent Washington Post report on problems with D.C. Metrobus service:

Progress Has Passed Metrobus By

We can discuss this further in the 'Official Bus Thread' if you'd like. I certainly haven't experienced MBTA bus service as bad as what the D.C. article describes.

Jim

Fine you got me. Our busses are better when compared to DC (still not saying much). Back to the trains... I agree that the rail division of the T is quite good and gets a lot more criticism then deserved. Theoreticly it could be better but they would essentially have to start from square one to acheive any major improvements. When compared with many cities with larger populations then Boston the T's subway service is superb. My limited experience with the ferries has also been quite pleseant.

When I compare the T today to when I first started riding it in the early '60's, when it was the old MTA there is no comparison. Run down stations, ancient equipment such as the "Dr Zhivago" 0600's on the Red Line and the old Blue line cars, with wooden seats, bare light bulbs and no air conditioning. They were great for railfans but not for the riding public.

Over the years things gradually improved as the region came to its senses and realized transit had an important role to play.

Having ridden the systems in Philadelphia (where I lived for 20 years) and London I have to say they all share a similar problem which is chronic under-funding, resulting in deferred maintenance and resulting reliability problems.

jonnhrr wrote:When I compare the T today to when I first started riding it in the early '60's, when it was the old MTA there is no comparison. Run down stations, ancient equipment such as the "Dr Zhivago" 0600's on the Red Line and the old Blue line cars, with wooden seats, bare light bulbs and no air conditioning. They were great for railfans but not for the riding public.

Over the years things gradually improved as the region came to its senses and realized transit had an important role to play.

Having ridden the systems in Philadelphia (where I lived for 20 years) and London I have to say they all share a similar problem which is chronic under-funding, resulting in deferred maintenance and resulting reliability problems.

Funny you should mention Philadelphia...our friends down at the SEPTA forum are saying almost the same things down the end of this thread about the R1 Airport Line.

jonnhrr wrote:When I compare the T today to when I first started riding it in the early '60's, when it was the old MTA there is no comparison. Run down stations, ancient equipment such as the "Dr Zhivago" 0600's on the Red Line and the old Blue line cars, with wooden seats, bare light bulbs and no air conditioning. They were great for railfans but not for the riding public.

Over the years things gradually improved as the region came to its senses and realized transit had an important role to play.

Having ridden the systems in Philadelphia (where I lived for 20 years) and London I have to say they all share a similar problem which is chronic under-funding, resulting in deferred maintenance and resulting reliability problems.

While it is true that today's cars are much more comfortable, MBTA service has deteriorated in other ways. One of the biggest issues I see is the runaway use of technology such as cab signals. Back in the days of wayside signals, knowledgeable operations and dispatching personnel had a lot more leeway in running trains closer together, and I recall trains getting the OK to pass a red signal to pull a train into an empty station when appropriate. Today's signal system seems unusually restrictive by comparison, resulting in slow running and unexplained stops between stations. It never seemed to work right when I commuted every day on the Red Line back in the 1980's and it seems even worse today. The trains themselves have also become far too complex. All of these technologies break down far too often compared to the 'Dr. Zhivago' and PCC technologies they replaced.

Jim