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Run like the wind, or, at least, the Green Line

Boston Magazine reports on an upcoming race in which participants will attempt to outrun a Green Line train between BC and Blandford Street. Hey, if a guy dressed like a hamburger can do it ...

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Comments

I posted on the Boston Magazine story but figured I'd post it here for discussion too.

This article has a few factual errors (that they got by being lazy and assuming NESN was correct) as well as missing useful information that could have been learned from a recent forum regarding upgrades on the Green Line.

Rita was running alongside a C Line train not the B Line. It was also approaching (and stopping) at Saint Mary's Street stop at the time that she finally overtook it.

A 5 minute mile is a 12 mph pace. According to a recent MBTA forum on the Green Line: "Kane said that the average speed of the Green Line’s B branch is 7.8 mph, 6.9 for the C, 19.5 on the D branch and 8.1 on the E branch." ( http://allston.wickedlocal.com/article/20140611/News/140618759 ). Therefore, if the runners are world-class, I expect them to be able to beat all but the D Line.

In other words, they just need to keep up a 7:42 pace to beat the B Line, an 8:42 pace to beat the C Line, a blistering 3:05 to beat the D Line, and a 7:24 pace to beat the E Line.

PS - Given the extreme gaps in trains on the B Line at certain times of day like after the morning rush, it's entirely possible to just miss a train and walk from Washington Street to BU and beat the train without even breaking a sweat. I speak from personal experience on that one.

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Thanks for the detail. When I first saw this it looked kinda fun, but with the numbers you post above I think it might be a bit anticlimactic --> beat the B, C, or E lines = easy enough (assuming relatively straight track, road closed), beating B line = no way.

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You mean "beating D line = no way." That's the one you'd have to be the Road Runner (old cartoon, if other people from the 80s remember the Bugs Bunny and Road Runner show, and even before that) to beat. Yes, I know the Road Runner is older than that, that was the first time I saw him.

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The Bugs Bunny Road Runner show first debuted on Saturday morning TV in the 1960s. It used new "bridges and bumpers" to knit together classic Warner Brothers cartoons.

Unfortunately, due to the insatiable need of network executives to expose kids to more commercials (mostly for nutritionally questionable breakfast cereals and cheezy toys) and less programming, by the early 1980s the show had been shortened and otherwise re-formatted to the point that it was but a mere shadow of its former self.

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along the route to insure that the runners stop at red lights and yield to pedestrians like the Green Line trains have to?

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was on the B line between Warren Street and Harvard Ave, and my train was going so slow it got beaten by someone walking a Westie on the sidewalk.

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what 4 years and 200K get you from BC?

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The City of Boston refuses to implement the available techonology that would give Green Line trains priority at traffic signals.

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the City of Boston has nothing to do with the fact that T management schedules so few trains on the B line, even during rush hour, that you have insanely huge crowds, which result in longer dwell times than necessary.

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Give the train green lights the whole way and see what happens. Why should a train with 400 people on it (a three car train has a crush load capacity of more than that) have to wait for four drivers to take a left. Trains on the Green Line should never have to wait at a green light. Figure out how to do this (which has been done elsewhere) and you'll have a harder time running faster than the train. Cost? $30,000 per light (top of the range), so maybe $2m for the B, C and E lines. Benefit: 5 minutes saved for every trip. Couple that with off-board payment and you could probably shave off another 5 minutes.

Oh, but we wouldn't want to treat transit riders like anything but second class citizens! Let's build urban infrastructure for the less-than-half of people who drive to work.

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