The T and Large Events

They are running at rush hour schedule all day. That sounds like a bit of prep, but they can just dust off the book every big event and go. If you follow the T on Twitter they've been showing pictures of their planning.

You are also underestimating the fans, I'm sure there will be quite a few people there.

So, besides the drunks yanked off 813 at Mansfield, how did things go on Parade Day?

Rockingham Racer wrote:So, besides the drunks yanked off 813 at Mansfield, how did things go on Parade Day?

So far it's been less than ideal. I'm on my way to South Station now and dreading it.

I counted at least a dozen extra CR trains. Both Providence and Franklin had at least 2. I hear crowding was extreme (and still is trying to leave the city). I know it sure was crazy on the Orange Line this morning.

Apparently North Station got so crowded at one point this afternoon with people waiting for trains that the T had to stop letting more people in - which led to BPD closing Causeway St because the crowd outside was so large.

I can't believe they didn't postpone this until the weekend.

DTP and Everyone:

The NFL Network carried WBZ Boston's coverage of the Patriots victory parade and towards the end
a crowd estimate of 500,000 was mentioned but right away thought was that the crowd was larger.

I believe the prime reason to have a victory parade ASAP is the availability of the team members
and staff because at the end of a team season players especially want to be able to go and be with
their families and friends wherever they may live around the nation. I would agree with having a
weekend parade if it was only a day or two's difference to plan a weekend date but in this case it
would have been six days later for a Saturday parade. I will add to that this being February the
weather has to be a factor here - today's parade lucked out with just a minimum of rain or icy
precipitation but with the possibility of significant snow later this week the timing was good...

I believe everyone involved realize that this parade would result in crowded conditions on all
rail transit routes serving central Boston and luckily this is a special occasion and not the rule
here for the MBTA's regular riders...MACTRAXX

I was denied boarding on the 821 so they could reserve some cars for passengers at Back Bay. Sitting on the 823 now dreading this ride.

What a mess.

MAC is right, the players are heading home today/tomorrow and don't want to hang out here in another storm on Thursday for the parade.

And as Coach said, we're already 5 weeks behind the other teams in preparing for the 2017 season. 5 more days would really screw them up.

I think the first Red Sox parade was on a weekend, that might be the only one that has fallen that way.

I had a feeling the commuter rail would be a mess, so I took 73 and Red Line. Was Packed but things moved. I didn't ride anything after the parade but Copley and Back Bay had lines out the door.

It appears from T-Alerts that the south side had more, and larger issues than the north side. Nearly every PVD train is > 45 minutes late.

I did a "run around," taking the Red Line to Davis, then 94 bus to West Medford to catch an outbound Lowell train. Funny thing is, that it didn't take much longer than my normal commute from Kendal Square via BON.

So reading the above, I take it things were less than optimal. Looking at the crowd, one has to wonder if school was called off in Massachusetts today...

How much better could they have done? I remember the Bruins parade in midsummer 2011, on a hot weekend day, and it was just as miserable getting in and out of the city then.

Ability to run extras is predicated on availability of trains and on the ability to staff those trains (it may bring on dispatching changes which make the schedule weird). On the weekend, availability is not a problem: the majority of the sets available on a weekend are idle on any given weekend day (I do wonder if the ops practice is to try to give most of the sets 1 weekend day on and 1 weekend day off, or if it's more like sets working the whole weekend and then having weekends off). The issue there is staffing, especially if contracts call for 5 days on out of 7 (in which case there's little ability to run extras without at least increasing the chance of cancelling rush hour trains on weekdays).

On a weekday, staffing isn't much of a limitation: it may mean going to the extra board for a day, but the bigger considerations would be managing fueling and also dispatching to keep trains moving. Those are a lot more amenable to something ad hoc: you might have to arrange extra diesel deliveries at the layovers or have some trains the next morning delayed or run odd sets, but the effects are temporary.

From an avoiding chaos standpoint, it's far better to have an event drawing hundreds of thousands downtown on a weekday than a weekend. A lot of the people downtown for that would be downtown anyway on a weekday, and adjusting to go from 60k to 100k is a lot easier than adjusting to go from 15k to 60k.

Would it be acceptable to have some trips leave early to be able to squeeze in an extra round trip during the morning or during the afternoon? For example a not too long time span with two scheduled trains might have three but the departure times would not be planned around the printed schedule.

At least the parade was not late in the evening resulting in a huge demand for service near closing time.

Disney Guy wrote:Would it be acceptable to have some trips leave early to be able to squeeze in an extra round trip during the morning or during the afternoon? For example a not too long time span with two scheduled trains might have three but the departure times would not be planned around the printed schedule.

At least the parade was not late in the evening resulting in a huge demand for service near closing time.

At least on the Providence line, there was no extra service during the PM rush but there was plenty of excess demand. It was an absolute nightmare that caused ripple effects throughout the evening, long after the parade ended.

Rockingham Racer wrote:So reading the above, I take it things were less than optimal. Looking at the crowd, one has to wonder if school was called off in Massachusetts today...

Indeed! But actually, several communities on upper 495 and Route 2 were indeed closed. Basically an arc from Worcester to Fitchburg to Newburyport.