South Station Expansion Project Discussion

Those of you who insist that the T should be turning trains at South Station as quickly as possible and moving various activities to the outlying terminals instead of building more platform tracks at SS seem to be overlooking a couple of things.

Cleaning: The only place on the south side where I know they clean trains is the S&I facility at Southampton St. Trainsets get cycled through there once or twice a week. I've never seen cleaning crews waiting to board trains at any station. It's possible some cleaning gets done at the outlying layover points (not the stations) at night, though with no mini-highs at the layover pads I doubt it. In addition, the cost of having cleaning crews at the outlying terminals quickly exceeds the cost of providing any necessary facilities for them.

Administrative functions: Things like handing in passenger counts and cash fares that were collected. These want to be handled at South Station, where only a single clerk is needed for receipts, not at the outlying terminals where you'd have to pay someone to drive around collecting them.

Places to go: Trains can only leave South Station if they have somewhere else to go, whether that's a layover berth at Southampton St or another outbound trip. There are only so many of the former, and the latter can be expensive if there isn't sufficient demand for an outbound at that time or even impossible if there's no available track slots.

MBTA3247 wrote: Administrative functions: Things like handing in passenger counts and cash fares that were collected. These want to be handled at South Station, where only a single clerk is needed for receipts, not at the outlying terminals where you'd have to pay someone to drive around collecting them.

Cash should not be accepted on board, ever. There's no cash on board surcharge that's too high, but at a minimum it should be collected regardless of origin station (or alternatively, make every cash-on-board fare the maximum zone fare on the system). The vast majority of current and potential non-pass ridership have a smartphone and a credit card, or a CharlieCard (i.e. will be getting AFC 2.0). For the remaining few riders who are too young/old/poor/mentally-ill for smartphones, it's very likely cheaper to give them passes.

MBTA3247 wrote:Administrative functions: Things like handing in passenger counts and cash fares that were collected.

Turning equipment around as early as possible does not necessarily mean turning the crew around just as fast.

leviramsey wrote:

MBTA3247 wrote: Administrative functions: Things like handing in passenger counts and cash fares that were collected. These want to be handled at South Station, where only a single clerk is needed for receipts, not at the outlying terminals where you'd have to pay someone to drive around collecting them.

Cash should not be accepted on board, ever. There's no cash on board surcharge that's too high, but at a minimum it should be collected regardless of origin station (or alternatively, make every cash-on-board fare the maximum zone fare on the system). The vast majority of current and potential non-pass ridership have a smartphone and a credit card, or a CharlieCard (i.e. will be getting AFC 2.0). For the remaining few riders who are too young/old/poor/mentally-ill for smartphones, it's very likely cheaper to give them passes.

In order to eliminate cash you need to put ticket machines at each station.

I'm assuming the high cost for SSX includes replacing "Tower 1" and all the switches.

Designing a $2b station starting from assumptions about onboard cash collection and current fare technology seems pretty wrong. Organization before Signals before Concrete, is the rule. Get the processes behind fare collection organized, and, yes, potentially with FVMs at every platform. Frankly, something along those lines should have already happened so as to have unified fare media across all MBTA modes.

VRE (Virginia commuter rail) has worked pay-before-boarding from the start--you must do all fare payment/validation/activation before you step on the train, or explain to the conductor, before boarding, that it wasn't working for you*)

On board proof of off-board payment is the way this is all headed, starting with the Green Line (which saved about $500m in station complexity by adopting modern POP payment)

transitmatters is asking us to reimagine CR as TRANSIT--fast, frequent, and level boarding through all doors (picture Metro North or LIRR). Yes, that probably also means new fare collection--they want to charge subway fares wherever there's overlap, and probably a unified fare system.

VRE fare rules are:

Validate Your Ticket
Please remember to validate your Ten-Trip or Single-Ride tickets at the TVM every time before boarding trains. Tickets are not sold on board VRE trains. Virginia law (section 18.2-160.1) requires passengers to purchase and validate tickets before boarding VRE trains. Before each boarding, Single-Ride and Ten-Trip tickets must be validated at the ticket vending machines in station entrance areas. Monthly passes must be legibly signed or have your name printed on the back to be valid. Any passenger that is unable to validate their ticket by use of the validation machine must speak with the conductor prior to boarding the train. Passengers observed onboard without a valid ticket are subject to a fine of not less than $100.

Emphasis mine.

So the train staff are strictly verifying that you have paid, never doing ticket sales. It probably also means they have better fare compliance with fewer staff. Whooda thunk?

BandA wrote:I'm assuming the high cost for SSX includes replacing "Tower 1" and all the switches.

The MassDOT rail plan (page 10 of 131 in the PDF) has them as separate projects. Tower 1 is assigned a cost of "$$" while SSX is assigned a cost of "$$$"

They are separately planned as

Tower 1 Upgrade – This project would entail upgrading the signals, power,
and track. Track improvements could lead to increased reliability, better on-time
performance and reduced delays for trains approaching South Station. To obtain
the full benefit, track improvements are necessary and require the purchase of the
postal service facility. Signal and other components of this upgrade, which can
have substantial benefits on their own, can be done as early action items for the
South Station Expansion.

South Station Expansion – Seven new tracks and four platforms for a total of
20 tracks and 11 platforms would substantially expand the passenger capacity at
South Station. This project will allow for the passenger rail system to meet current
and future high-speed, intercity, and commuter rail service needs for rail trips
originating or ending at South Station. The project requires the acquisition of the
neighboring post office facility

... starting with the Green Line (which saved about $500m in station complexity by adopting modern POP payment) ...

Is that done yet?

Fiendish idea. Expressing selected AM trains past some of the innermost stops, then quickly turning the train at South Station, making the missed stops, and then laying up the train in a new or existing yard a few miles from South Station. For PM, pick up at selected stops going inbound to South Station, turn quickly, make outbound trip skipping the affected stops. (Don't ask me why the words "foldover" and "flipflop" came to my mind.)

Disney Guy wrote:

... starting with the Green Line (which saved about $500m in station complexity by adopting modern POP payment) ...

Is that done yet?

May 2020 is when AFC 2.0 turns on, May 2021 is when old fare system gets shut off. The system is all about tapping your fare media as you board...and on commuter rail, as you exit:

Commuter rail passengers would be required to tap both entering and exiting trains to measure distance traveled and assign fares accordingly, Block-Schachter explained.

On the commuter rail, the T believes the new system will allow conductors to merely verify payments rather than collecting them, speeding up a process that is often slowed or outright abandoned on crowded trains.

http://www.wbur.org/news/2017/11/20/cha ... ir-way-out" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
https://mbta.com/projects/automated-far ... on-20-afc2" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/ ... story.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

So I'd expect both door-taps for on and off, and perhaps an "we assume you ended at SS or NS if you didn't tap off in an earlier outer zone"

Either way,the key thing for terminal platform dwells is that by 2021, neither staff cash handling nor any ridership paperwork is going to be part of the staff's job in turning a train.

A contrary opinion: https://commonwealthmagazine.org/opinio ... necessary/

Expanding South Station track capacity is not necessary
...
In 2020 dollars, the most recent cost estimate for the expansion sat at $2.5 billion; even at high-end cost, this sum could complete the first phase of rail electrification (covering the Providence/Stoughton, Fairmount, and Newburyport/Rockport lines) and electrifying the Framingham/Worcester Line. But the Commonwealth has made no progress on modernizing the existing antiquated commuter rail system into the more reliable, more frequent, and more useful regional rail system that the MBTA committed to in 2019.

The MBTA has long argued that South Station expansion is the only way to increase frequency on the southern side of the commuter rail system. But several rail terminals accommodate more trains than South Station did as of 2019 with fewer tracks and platforms – because they operate according to a version of the operating philosophy often called “organization before electronics before concrete” and maximize the value of existing infrastructure with reliable trains and modern operating practices.
...
That leaves us with 11 tracks to manage 34 MBTA trains, or an average of three trains per platform per hour or nearly 20 minutes per train. Many systems throughout the world, including several in the United States, regularly turn their trains around at large terminal stations in under 15 minutes, and in many cases as little as five minutes, often on fewer platform and throat tracks than what South Station has. Many systems can achieve these turnaround times; the MBTA routinely turns trains in 10 minutes at outlying terminals like Worcester.
...

One thing in the article I agree with - $2,500,000,000 is hard to justify. If you applied a ticket surcharge to cover the cost the number of passengers would go to zero.

The escalated cost for the project is estimated at $3.296 billion,
as noted on page 36 of this NEC Commission document,
https://nec-commission.com/app/uploads/ ... df#page=36

Unfortunently the passenger flow is nearly as constrained as the tracks in the height of rush hours as well. It would be nice if the article hinted at any way of improving passenger flow, before or after the Ring of Steel is implemented. Finding a way of moving passengers from South Station track level either up to the first level of the bus station or underground to/from platforms would be like GCT's cross passageways.

Massachusetts ADA laws/rules would require an elevator for every stairway. Probably requiring wider platforms.

What would be neat would be robotic bridge plates that slide out from under the platforms after the train arrives. Then folks could cross behind the train and exit directly to South St (or Dorchester Ave), or just get to a less busy platform. If you had two trains berthed per platform you could have a bridge plate between trains and another at the rear of the trains.

I really wish people would stop giving transit matters a voice. Trains every 20 minutes when no one is riding them isn't "equity," it's waste. Running empty trains because you don't have station capacity at the hub is more wasteful than just increasing hub capacity. This elitist idea that diesel is as obsolete as coal fired steam power is asinine, systemwide electrification is not sensible, and NSRL already didn't happen. The fact that they're pitting NSRL against South Station expansion is apt to doom both projects. I'd rather spend our resources on expanding and improving service, not reinventing it to little net gain.