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#worldclassbaby
n/t
I like that...
...they didn't even include the snowpocalypse breakdowns into the tally. So even if it were perpetual summer in Boston the T would STILL be the worst. Nice...very nice. Yet Mahty didn't mention transit ONCE in his state of the city speech....
Probably
Because Marty has no influence over the MBTA.
He does, however, control BTD
He does, however, control BTD, which could help the T tremendously with things like signal priority for the Green Line.
Well... technically...
He may have no statutory influence over the MBTA, but if the mayor of the dominant municipality in the region isn't able to exert some degree of political influence over the MBTA, then something's really odd.
EXACTLY
Why else does the T exist but to truck folks in and out (and around) of Boston? Thats like saying the mayor of NYC has nothing to say about their subway, the mayor of London has nothing to say about the tube. I mean, technically he has no AUTHORITY over it but I'd say the state of the city speech might be a good platform to express some concern over the city's struggling transit system and maybe reach out for some help with it?
Maybe I'M crazy....
Great point
Except the mayors of New York and London DO have say over their transit systems. Boston gets, or at least used to get, a seat on an advisory board, same as Quincy and Malden.
I mean, if we really want the Mayor of Boston to solve our transit issues, the answer is simple. Only run trains and buses within the borders of the city, like they do in the other named cities, and get Beacon Hill to cede some sales or income tax control to Marty, again just like in New York and London.
Otherwise, let's just all admit that it is a regional system run by the Commonwealth.
Mayor Walsh? "Influence over the MBTA"??
Mayor Walsh? "Influence over the MBTA"?? LOL LOL LOL ...Hysterical...You're either new to MA or completely naive. The MBTA has more "influence" in Massachusetts than John Gotti had over the New York mob...Nobody - NOBODY - in MA politics who is of sound mind ever messes with the MBTA.
Ever.
As Menino showed when he
As Menino showed when he pushed (successfully) to kill the green line return to JP (whether or not it was him that pushed it over the edge, the mayors office obviously thinks it has power). As the biggest municipality that pays into the MBTA, the mayor has sway. He should use it.
...
I am making my surprise face. Can you tell how surprised I am?
: |
Note that in their full
Note that in their full article they do note that Boston despite the number of failures, still does well in a nationwide comparison of percent of population that uses transit. They note that Boston is 5th after New York San Francisco, Washington DC, and Clarke County GA. They incorrectly assume however that Clarke County GA is Atlanta, but it is in fact college town Athens GA.
You can go to Table 16 here if you want to see the original source data for the comparison:
http://www.ntdprogram.gov/ntdprogram/pubs/dt/2014/excel/DataTables.htm
Note that in their full
Coming in behind Athens, GA is "doing well"? All that shows is that much of the time, taking the T (assuming it's running) is less miserable than driving.
It is not unusual for a large
It is not unusual for a large college town to have a high number of transit riders per population because students do use transit and students might not be included in the population data that the ridership is being compared to. For riders per total regional population, Boston (and Athens) were ahead of Chicago, Philadelphia, (the real) Atlanta, Portland, L.A, Dallas, Houston, ....everybody else
Cycling in college towns is another annomaly
Cycling is much higher on college campuses and college towns/cities than places not dominated by college aged populations or educational institutions. Davis CA, Urbana IL are two examples.
Statistical anomaly
In their chart, Boston has 33 times the population of Athens. So Athens had 13 million transit trips. Boston had 403 million transit trips. Are we really comparing these places?
Athens, GA
The full name is "Athens-Clarke County"
im sure
they got tired of being confused with that pesky ~*other*~ athens
its the other way around
People assume Clarke is in Atlanta.. when it's about an hour or so'd drive down the Atlanta Highway (US78) so you'd be looking for a love get away in your Chrysler as big as whale as you head on down to the love shack.
Oops was channeling the B52's there for a second
(on a side note, "Love Shack" was written about Athens, GA where the B52's are from... the "love shack" is now a Kmart on US78)
As a former resident of Athens - Clarke County, GA
I can't tell you how many signs for the Atlanta Highway were stolen when I lived there.
Anyhoo - unless they've been digging a lot of tunnels since I lived there in the early 90s, their transit system consists entirely of buses. That's it. No subway rails, no signal failures to worry about - none of that foolishness.
As for traffic, the only time I saw traffic jams was when UGA played a home football game so riders have a lot of confidence in the system. Riders being students who take buses to get around the humongous, sprawling land-grant university.
As others have already posted, this study doesn't take weather into account. Athens doesn't have a deep freeze like we do. It's probably around 45 degrees most days this time of year. We'd FREAK OUT when it got that cold because we didn't have mittens or winter hats.
What does that say about the
What does that say about the state of our infrastructure and mass transit in this country? Piss poor.
This makes me want to twirl..
This makes me want to twirl...or maybe hurl?
Come on increase!
Eeeesh
Wow. 2014 was nothing compared to 2015.
useless #
Total # of breakdowns doesn't mean much.
Breakdowns per vehicle or breakdown per 1000 miles traveled would be more meaningful.
I'm pretty sure
we'd be undisputed champs any way you look at it.
The data compared in the
The data compared in the article is only for commuter rail.
For heavy rail (Red, Orange, Blue lines), the MBTA had 472 major mechanical failures, 4th after New York, Washington, and Atlanta.
For light rail (Green Line and Mattapan-Ashmont), the MBTA had 983 major mechanical failures in 2014, 2nd after San Francisco with 1,539
For the humble bus, the MBTA had 1,592 major mechanical failures in 2014, 32nd highest with a lot of agencies with much smaller fleets having more failures.
Where are you reading this?
Look at the source table from
Look at the source table from the FTA, , Table 16
Those statistics are also
Those statistics are also recorded and can be found in the MBTA's Quarterly Reports (most recent).
For 2015 Q3:
Commuter rail: 2,227 miles between failures
Red line: 3,8152
Orange line: 51,206
Blue line: 38,593
Green line: 2,952
For comparison:
NJ Transit: 83,815 miles between failures
NYC Subway: >141,000 miles between failures
Long Island Railroad: ~160,000 miles between failures
LIRR commuter trains go 72 times farther between failures than MBTA commuter trains.
Yikes.
Thank you for drilling down
Thank you for drilling down to this. My computer was balking at some of the links.
I suspected the raw numbers would look even worse when adjusted for scale. Unfortunately, what you found tends to support that suspicion.
commuter rail
So if you consider that the typical engine (not sure if this stat is for coaches or engines) might travel 400 miles a day (that'd be four round-trips to Fitchburg or Worcester), you're looking at a breakdown approximately once a week, for any given piece of equipment.
A quick Twitter search bears this out.
https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=%40mbta_cr%20mech...
Looking at the VOMS number in
Looking at the VOMS number in the report. VOMS is the number of vehicles in service for the maximum regular service day (so, nothing like St. Pat's Day in NYC).
In that case, NJT puts out three times as many pieces of commuter rail equipment daily as MBTA (1296 to 416) and still had fewer major mechanical failures (219 to 213).
Go big or go home
Go big or go home....unless you take the T and never actually get home.
We beat out NJ transit?
Good God, that is embarrassing.
All according to plan
Step 1: disinvest and under fund a public organization
Step 2: blame unions and people rather than disinvestment
Step 3: undercut organization until a crisis is manufactured
Step 4: "necessary" take over of organization
Step 5: bust unions, raid pensions, cut service below sustaining levels
Step 6: privatize what is left
Step 7: profit for my friends!
Gee, what could possibly go wrong!
I think not recognizing that
I think not recognizing that there are huge issues at every level of the T, from the funding mechanisms to management down to the unions is disingenuous.
Precisely....
Except there is no poisonous possibility to the masses, so the long, slow journey will be accepted as fate by most.
This has gotta stop. Public transit must be expanded.
Electric trackless trolleys everywhere. Whats old is new again.
This map from 1910-ish shows the entire region was connected by trolleys:
www.hamptonhistoricalsociety.org/trmap.htm
The 1910 "public" transit was
The 1910 "public" transit was entirely run by private companies.
Precisely...
Fossil fuel lobbyists are trying to squash their final frontier.
WE NEED Electric travel everywhere!!!
Its possible, look what we had 100 years ago, before it was slowly bought out and destroyed by the oil companies.
Go everywhere with electricity!
http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~260320~5522938...
I hear laughter from NJ....
Sad... just sad
New Jersey
In New Jersey they let you board/depart trains without a train conductor nanny to remind you to watch your step. Amazingly the doors just open and people get on and off without any oversight.
I was shocked they I came to Boston only to find you had to wait for a conductor to leave the train. It's like we're a region of preschoolers.
Every NJT train I've ridden
Every NJT train I've ridden (which admittedly is limited to the NEC and NJCL) has had conductors attending the doors. This is standard practice nationwide. Primarily because a lot of equipment has manually operated doors, and at low-level platforms (the vast majority of the T system) the conductor has to open the stair trap.
YOU may be perfectly capable of opening the door, lifting the trap, and climbing down yourself, but what about elderly or disabled people? And who's gonna close the trap and door after you get off?
Maybe the changed it
I took NJT between NJ and NYC for years and all the doors opened automatically and without the need for a conductor to be near. Sure, every so often a door wouldn't open and you'd just go to the next car. Sometimes the doors got left open and I always liked watching the scenery pass without anything obstructing the view. (In the summer, at least.) This was 15-20 years ago so perhaps things have changed.
NJT heavy rail operation is larger than MBTA's system.
I took NJT commuter rail as
I took NJT commuter rail as an everyday commuter for 4+ years about 16-20 years ago, plus intermittently before* and since then either for excursions into NYC as a kid or visits home to NJ since moving away.
In my experience, there's always been at least one conductor to every two passenger coaches. I think it was mostly a function of that being a workable amount of territory for one conductor to cover, checking passes and collecting tickets. Yes, they'd have to go back and forth to open/close the vestibule platform over the steps, especially as our line was updating and the number of stations was fairly evenly split between those with high-level platforms and those still at grade. Trains on our line were never less than 5 or 6 coaches, so that meant at least three conductors. Perhaps off-peak did one conductor per three cars, but I don't think so.
(* - and by "before" I mean "all the way back to when NJT was chartered" I have faint memories of pre-NJT times, when (believe it or not) ConRail operated our passenger service (North Jersey Coad Line) after the Central RR of NJ or CNJ or PennCentral or whatever it was called then had breathed its last)
Talking of opening doors and platforms...
I used to get up from my seat on the morning ride in, a few minutes before arriving at Penn Station Newark, to get out to the vestibule and be in position (with a small crowd of others) to be one of the first off and able to dash across the platform to the PATH turnstiles. (This was when my morning train was a diesel express, and the coaches were all end-door only (maybe Comet II's?) - coaches with middle doors tended only to be on the (non-locomotive) electric sets).
I got cured of that habit one morning. I was in the vestibule, standing next to one door. The conductor came out to the panel in the other half of the vestibule to announce the next stop and get ready to pop the doors. Unfortunately - instead of keying bypass to open his door only to look, he keyed "all" and every door on that side of the train opened - 60 MPH and still a quarter mile short of the platform!!! Having avoided falling to my death or gruesome injury, I have happily waited in the aisle inside coaches since that day.
Are you talking about a line
Are you talking about a line with high-level platforms, like the Trenton line? Unlike a low-platform line, that wouldn't need a conductor at every pair of doors.
Does the MBTA allow unattended boarding on the Greenbush line, which is all high-platform?
On the other hand...
In NJ, someone has to pump your gas for you. Not sure if that's because "nanny" or "because jobs". Just a slightly tongue-in-cheek counterpoint.
Wow! We suck! We really suck!
We aren't just whining!
[duplicate]
[duplicate]
the mbta
is the boston red sox of transit
:(
Not quite
Even the Sox have a winning season every now and then.
three wins
in a hundred years
sounds about MBTA level territory
Touché
.
oh scummy
When you hit, you really, really hit. Bless you.
When's the Duck Boat Parade?
It should last at least several hours, as each boat has to wait every few minutes for a "schedule adjustment".
Wait til this winter really
Wait til this winter really kicks in, and commuters people REALLY find out how completely "effed up" Keolis, the commuter rail operator, really is.....The Keolis employees themselves are even joking about it! It's gonna be a HORROR SHOW.