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Go west, young man, MBTA, Keolis to tell Bostonians

The Worcester Telegram reports the T and the commuter-rail operator are going to try to convince Boston-area people to take the Worcester Line out west, because apparently they've got all these empty westbound trains in the morning and are somehow convinced a lot of people would take them.

Ed. note: It's been awhile since my reverse-commuting days out to Southborough and Framingham, but driving outbound on Rte. 9 in the morning was normally a breeze. Getting to South Station to start my westbound trek, however, would have been a nightmare (I did it once when my car was in the shop: 50 bus to Forest Hills, Orange Line to Downtown Crossing, Red Line to South Station, the then Framingham Line to Framingham and then the local Framingham bus up to Rte. 9, whee).


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Comments

...get on at Back Bay and avoid the transfer to the Red Line.

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That's a great idea for commuting, except for the fact that if you're going west in the morning, many westbound trains don't/can't stop at Boston Landing, Newtonville, West Newton, and Auburndale, so if you're trying to get on or off at any of those stations, you're SOL.

Also, if you're getting off at stations in Metro West, there's often no way to get from the station to your office, unless you summon an Uber/Lyft. Many of those stations are park-and-rides not near anything.

For non-commuting trips, for example Sundays, which they mention, maybe they should try running trains more than every 2 hours. And on the weekends in general, the last trains are too early for people spending a night out. It's not that people don't know about the trains. It's that the schedules are horrible.

This is why Regional Rail is so important. We need more frequent service that serves all stations, and we need stations to be located in walkable downtown areas, not far flung park-and-rides.

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rail!

But in all seriousness, they're park-and-rides for the same reason the trains in are full and the trains out are empty and the same reason that there's a distinct directionality to rush hour traffic on 93 and the pike. More people live outside the city and work in the city than the other way around.

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This is why Regional Rail is so important.

Yes I support TransitMatters Regional Rail Initiative, but like everything I question how we can pay for it. It's a great idea tho.

If we could do this, then reverse commuting would be a thing because now people could wager on 10-15 minute head ways during rush hour. its not subway headways (<5 minutes) but for some of outlying areas it would be a boon to have train service every 15 minutes. Then local RTA's can build service around this regional rail station making reverse commuting possible if your job is further away from the station.

As I always tell people, Almost 20+ years living here and I still do not own a car. Reverse commuting with decent regional rail headways would make working in Worcester or Framingham Possible for me.

A while back I interviewed for a job in Reading, which would be reverse commuting. Because of the Haverhill line schedule, my choices were 7:30a, 8a or 9:45a for arrival times at the station in Reading. Not too frequent. And it was just a bad in the evening, in the end the pay is what kept me away, but I feared what using the CR daily in that manner would be like. And if I missed a train.. ugh.

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Hell, the Needham line stations ARE in mostly dense, walkable areas - Rozzie square is just as dense as any of the OL stations in JP - and that STILL has a weekend schedule that makes it functionally useless for going anywhere on. It's easier to drive or, if you time it decently, bus to forest hills and get on the subway there.

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Zero. Zilch. Nada. Instead of proposing yet another project for Boston, Transit Matters should think about why each project fades away

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Adam, your commute wouldn't have been nearly as horrible on the T if you had just transferred from the Orange line to the Framingster line at Back Bay, instead of riding on to DTX then hopping on Red for 1 stop. Could easily have saved 20+ minutes.

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And even I would've probably figured that out eventually :-). But, as I mentioned, it was just one time.

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You can still buy a pretty nice house in Worcester for under $150K, a hugantic newer house for under $250K

If you work out there, you are going to want to live out there.

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Not unreasonable to think some people would want to live in Natick (or Framingham, etc), perhaps for the good schools and/or if one person works in Worcester and the other works in Boston.

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Maybe you've changed jobs but like where you live. Maybe one spouse lives downtown. Maybe you like nights and weekends in the city.

Those reasons may not resonate with most, but with more than zero.

For the big picture, yes it's an uphill fight to get folks to ride the rail reverse commute. But the trains are empty -- any fares they collect help the bottom line.

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Commuter rail expansion to Worcester will see trains filled with people both ways. Everyone will decide to ditch the Masspike and 9 for the train. Fast forward to 2018, several empty trains. Worcester, Greenbush, Silver Line, now the Green Line Extension. When does the failure end?

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and encourage business investment and development. This happens out west and to a degree down south. Our zoning laws and development regulations impede growth.

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The sad fact is we're still operating with a 19th-century transit system in the sense that the thing still exists mainly to get people into and out of Boston, at a time when large numbers of people would need public transportation from one suburb to another. I'm old enough to remember when 495 was mostly a desolate highway, where they had to warn you how far you were from the nearest emergency phone (yeah, yeah, kids, this is BC: Before Cellphones), not a crowded artery with rush hours in places that are no better than what you'd find on 128, because of all the people who moved to places like Franklin and Marlborough - people who have no choice but to drive to work.

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people who moved to places like Franklin and Marlborough ... have no choice but to drive to work.

They could, you know, not live in Franklin or Marlborough. They could choose to live somewhere else.

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in areas where they can afford to live, anon. You might of missed the ongoing Globe stories about how expensive it is (i.e. cost prohibitive) for most to live near where they work if those places are Boston and/or Cambridge

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Three words: off peak discount. They could do it next week if they wanted.

In addition to the infrequent schedules and inconvenient suburban stations (or inconvenient job locations depending how you look at it), the other major obstacle is the fares.

Why would anyone heading to, say, Framingham pay $18.50 per day plus subway fare to suffer all these inconveniences, if they had a car available? Monthly is $291.50, which is a little better, but there are *no* other discounts available if you're not commuting for a full calendar month.

Oh, and reliability. Maybe they've gotten better recently, but on-time performance has been terrible for the commuter rail. And hour+ delays are not uncommon when trains break down, which happens way more than it should.

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The reasons to take the train inbound include low time differential and low price differential. The roadway congestion makes it not so bad timewise to take the rush hour train, and the price of parking downtown makes the price of the train not so bad.

Reverse commute loses both of those advantages.

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