MBTA commuter rail morning tardiness higher than implied
By neilv - Sun, 04/05/2009 - 6:12pm.
Noah Bierman reports a Globe analysis that peak morning trains are late more often than the reported numbers for the lines.
Take January, one of the worst months of the year on the tracks. If you took commuter rail during the morning rush hour, odds are that you were at least five minutes late -- the T's official definition of tardiness -- 38.4 percent of the time. [...] But officially, overall train service was late only 23 percent of the time. That's because off-peak trains were late much less often than peak trains [...]
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I don't have this experience at all
I've been taking the Newburyport/Rockport line pretty often and I can only recall two times that it was late in the past year.
It's official data
I wouldn't be surprised if on-time frequency varies by line.
The Globe article defines "on-time," and makes the point that on-time frequency varies by time of day.
The Globe analysis reportedly is based on data supplied by MBCR.
I haven't been skeptical of the analysis, since I assume the analysis results are trivial to verify, and I don't imagine any likely incentive for MBCR to fudge data to make MBCR performance appear worse than previously reported.
When did they imply differently?
I don't recall when the data has ever been displayed differently than an overall monthly average. So when did they imply that rush-hour service averages were better than the overall?
Definition of 'Late'
It's also important to note that the MBCR's definition of 'late' is a train that arrives 30+ minutes later than scheduled. So your train is considered 'on-time' if it arrives 29 minutes late.
The article states that the
The article states that the T actually considers a train 5 minutes late to be late. Passengers aren't eligible for the on-time service guarantee refund until their train is 30 minutes late.
Factually incorrect assertion
To correct incorrect information posted by J258, the definition of a late train, as defined by the contract between MBCR and the MBTA, is more than four minutes and 59 seconds from a train's scheduled arrival at its final destination.
This is the strictest definition of a late train in the commuter rail industry (by comparison, when Amtrak ran the MBTA's commuter rail service, their contract with the T defined a late train as arriving at its final destination more than five minutes and 59 seconds after its scheduled arrival.)
Please note that I am one of MBCR's public relations consultants.