Increase Worcester service start-up date.

[nomis]

Most likely track work ...

[MBTA F40PH-2C 1050]

Word is now the schedule and full re-opening of Yawkey is slated for the 13th of January.

Also, as of Monday track 5 @ Yawkey is in service, 7 will not be.

There is nothing in Monday's Bulletin Order in regards to track 7 being OOS, both tracks are in Service as of this past Monday, Dec. 23rd

[Komarovsky]

This is very good news. Hopefully now they can dispatch the inbounds and out bounds effectively between yawkey and back bay so late trains in either direction won't cause huge bottlenecks.

[The EGE]

Well, it's probably not too much of a help until the 2nd Beacon Park track enters service at an unknown date, but every bit helps.

[Komarovsky]

I've found that when the train that is inbound into back bay right before p523 is delayed its by just the slightest of margins(5-10 min). Even when that happens p523 ends up getting stuck at south station until the inbound essentially arrives there. That means a 5-10 minute delay ends up being a 15-25 minute delay for p523. If they can get both trains on different tracks east of beacon park, that eliminates the most common issue and delay a lot of evening commuters experience.

[Joe51]

There is now a link to a January 13, 2014 schedule on the MBTA website but it just shows the current schedule.

[Joe51]

Link is working now.

Much improved weekend service.

Worcester-Framingham-Boston is now has stops through Ashland, then Yawkey, Back Bay and South Station; leaves Worcester at 6:05am and South Station at 5:30pm.

[The EGE]

New schedule is up, and it looks mostly good.

The first thing is that the P numbers are gone. Weekday trips are just plain 500 numbers, Saturdays 1500s, Sundays 2500s. That synchronizes well with the rest of the system.

23 roundtrips, 20 of them to Worcester. The schedule is better balanced throughout the day; there's even halfway decent reverse commute options.

582/583 ditched the Framingham stop and instead make all stops between Ashland and Worcester. 582 is now down to 1:12 total trip time (from 1:23), and it now passes 504 in Newton so it has a clear shot and isn't eating its brake dust. 583's schedule was lengthened from 1:08 to 1:17 with the new stops.

Every train stops at Yawkey. Every single train. it's now a viable Green Line bypass at rush hour. But the trains aren't slower - most have about 5 minutes cut from their schedules. BOS-BBY is now 5 minutes instead of 6 - that may be optimism, or better dispatching.

Newton benefits nicely - they now have a number of new morning outbound and afternoon inbound flag stops.

And, finally, the weekend schedules are clock-facing. All trains go to Worcester, every 2 hours, all day.

They haven't added enough expresses for my taste, and maybe they can't until infrastructure work is done and new cars/locos are in service, but this is a darn good start.

[ns3010]

The removal of the P's was the first thing I noticed when I saw the new schedule. Could this be due to the changeover to full MBCR dispatching?

[harshaw]

533 fills a nice hole in the schedule. Previously to get to Westborough after 5:40 I needed to take the 7:18.

I wasn't expecting they were going to have *every* single train stop at Yawkey. No matter how you slice it that makes the commute longer every day. The one exception is the 508 which still arrives at south station at 828AM.

I am unhappy to see the 516 move to a later schedule. I have to ride this train a couple times a week due to day care reasons - it sounds trivial but that train used to arrive at 10 and quite often at 9:55 so I could squeak in right around 10. Now this means a 10:15 arrival at the office.

Also, Yawkee and Back bay are all marked as L meaning that they can leave ahead of time as there aren't likely people waiting to board the train. Maybe this means that the arrival time at south station will actually be shorter? The problem is that usually when a train is early to south station we end up sitting there a bit (presumably due to signaling issues).

They still didn't address one of the more bizarre aspects of the schedule which is that you can get board the 508 express at Natick but you can't get home on the 523 or 527 since it only stops in West Natick.

[Komarovsky]

I'm pleased with the small improvements that they've made with the express and super express trains, especially with the removal of the 6:15 inbound from Worcester that was constantly ruining P523's on time performance. I'm really glad they redid 582 and hopefully they'll get around to redoing 583 to see similar performance. That said, hopefully they'll be able to continue to make incremental improvements to the 508/527 trains to get them below an 80 minute trip time, which I think is one of the root problems with attracting ridership on the line.

582 and 583 have the right travel time, but 582 especially is way way too early to be attractive to the people who take 508 every day(myself included, and I live a 10 bike ride from the train station). 583 could become a nice alternate for a lot of 527 riders, myself included, since it would allow workers to stay past that magical 5 o'clock hour that tends to get you a lot of attention at the office if you stay past it. I'm kind of disappointed about 583's trip time, since it was still less than 70 minutes and represents to me what the ideal target time should be for the super expresses. Maybe once the 79mph speed upgrades west of Framingham go in in a year they'll be able to get closer to that goal.

Weekend service is finally where it ought to be, I hope that more people take advantage of it.

Still a few holes, notably between 512 and 516 in the morning(hour and 5 min) and 521 and 523 in the afternoon(hour and 10 minutes), but I'm sure they have their reasons for that. I'm pleased to see that they plugged the gap between the 6:00 and 7:30 outbound trains in the evening going west of Framingham. That will probably be a bigger gain on their part than adding new trains to plug the other holes I mentioned above.

Overall I'm pleased with the small improvements and I hope the T continues to work towards the larger ones.

[MBTA3247]

The removal of the P's was the first thing I noticed when I saw the new schedule. Could this be due to the changeover to full MBCR dispatching?

Yes, the P's were a requirement of CSX's. I believe they use the same prefix for all passenger trains running over CSX-dispatched track.

[Cannonball]

Schedule improvements are headed in the right direction.

On the weekend, I am still unsure if passengers leaving from Worcester headed to BBY would have enough time jump out and catch the Orange line to BON in time to make the 9:05 am departure of Downeaster 691 to Brunswick. Thoughts?

[TrainManTy]

On the weekend, I am still unsure if passengers leaving from Worcester headed to BBY would have enough time jump out and catch the Orange line to BON in time to make the 9:05 am departure of Downeaster 691 to Brunswick. Thoughts?

I used to commute Westborough -> Back Bay -> North Station (then walk to work) and it was doable in half an hour...barely. If the Orange Line is running slow it would be close.

I'm glad to see that they finally added a weekend morning train that could get a rider to a 9-5 on time.

[emannths]

I'd be really happy if I lived west of Natick. But selfishly, as someone that commutes from Wellesley Square, I can't say I like it. I aim to be butt-in-seat at my office downtown from about 8:30 - 5:30. With no evening trains between departing 5:35 and 6:40, I either have to leave early or stay pretty late. I'd rather the evening schedule be shifted about ~20 minutes later, with locals departing at 5:35 and 5:55 instead of 5:15 and 5:35. Though I normally ride 506, I do sometimes take 510 or 512, and their arrivals getting pushed back 3-6 minutes makes me feel like I'm being squeezed on both ends (yes, this is purely emotional).

Or I wish I had a job where I could make a 5:15 train with no one giving me the evil eye. Does everyone in Boston work 7.5hr days or something? With the new schedule, even if you clock in and out at exactly 9 and 5, you have one inbound train (506) and one outbound (531), unless you work on top of South Station and can make 529. That's fine, in most cases, since you can only ride one train at a time. But miss 531 and you get to wait an hour for the next train, and that's supposedly at "peak" times! Heaven forbid you want to get to work before 8:30, because then your only choice is catching 504 sometime before 7am. If you want to go in late and leave early, however, your options are much broader (three arrivals between 8:57 and 9:40, three departures between 4:25 and 5:35).

Sorry for a little bit of a rant. I was really hopeful that the new schedule would be an improvement for us Wellesley riders too. Especially if it came at the expense of the Newton riders.