Hacker News Reader

The point is that the rail is already there, and the rail line is already pretty much the best in the US, and already has electrification, that the commuter rail trains don't use for entirely stupid reasons. And sure, buses are great, but one comumter rail train carries the same number of passengers as literally 20 buses. Given that the tracks to Providence are already there, some relatively minor improvements can make the trains suck much less. Your bus idea on the other hand seems like a good alternative to the South Coast Rail boondoggle.

Sure, but why should the MBTA care about the Providence Line in particular, as opposed to say, Worcester or other parts of Massachusetts?

Probably because it earns the most revenue, given its usage and distance.

Given that the MBTA is a money losing organization I'm not sure revenue maximization is necessarily the strategy that should be sought.

It's how you measure whether you're doing something useful.

No, because then it's what's optimized for. It's like if you run a hospital "like a business" -- it becomes optimized for making money at the expense of patient care.

Hospitals ARE a business.

The majority of US hospitals are not for profit.

https://bizfluent.com/profit-vs-non-profit-hospitals-9733.ht...

It's not like a hospital at all -- not that many hospitals couldn't benefit from being run better.

The revenue of a train line is proportional to passengers served and forms a baseline for the total value the passengers received from the service. There's no problems with stuff like quality of passenger care.

It's the most traveled line.

Sure, but by that logic, why not extend rapid transit -- it's far more traveled than all of the commuter rail lines combined.

Being from the London, where EMUs are pretty much the norm, this the improvements seem like a no-brainer.

And not having high level platforms in this day and age is bizarre I can only remember once in my life in the UK ever having to use a non high level platform and that was on the Bedford to Bletchley line (mostly used to transport rubbish to landfills)

Improvements in the public transit network in Mass are a non-starter right now.

Massachusetts has a republican governor that refuses to spend on public transportation until the some of the waste at the agency is eliminated through reform. The public transit agency in MA does have some issues but the conept that the governor of who claimed lots of business experience can't "improve things at the same time." means we're stuck.

We have ballot question to allow the state to raise taxes on the very wealthy to pay for transportation and education. Be interesting to see how that direct governance works

So when you raise taxes on the very wealthy, won’t the very wealthy just move to New Hampshire? What happens when you run out of very wealthy? I remember John Kerry has his yacht docked in a neighboring state because he wanted to avoid the high taxes. Why should the very wealthy pay for transportation if they rarely use it? Shouldn’t that be funded by riders?

A few might move, but most wont. Despite no income tax property taxes are really high in NH. The state is getting its money somewhere.

Plus the advantages of living close to where you need to be when traffic can be just terrible. I worked in an office in Bedford which moved north to Woburn MA half way between the Mass and NH borders. All of a sudden living in NH was an option. I think a lot of people considered it and like 2 moved, one had family up there and one was kinda a libertarian.

Its worth noting NH bid to amazon points out the close proximity to Boston for food, schools and theater. It close then you factor in traffic...

>As long as "undesirables" can easily go to your town via public transportation, NIMBYs will shut it down. See the Red Line extension to Arlington. Those folks are regretting that now.

I live in Medford right now, near the border with Malden. The "undesirables" are already here. And by "undesirables", I mean holy hell the Boston area is racist as fuck. The rest of this area is fine with black people living on the Orange Line. Hell, we might as consolidate the southern end of the Red Line with the Orange Line into a brand new "Line of Color", with the Green being the Finance and Colleges Line, the Blue being the Outer Suburbs Line, and the Red being the Yuppies Line.

Boston: get over yourself and desegregate!

>Heck, they were even going to end weekend service for the commuter rail.

If the Commuter Rail ran more than once an hour or so on weekends, maybe people would use it, or even be ok with living far away from a non-Green train line and just using Commuter Rail instead.

Your bus solution ignores what makes transportation networks slow. It's the intersections, not the roads between them.

A dedicated bus lane wouldn't help anything if those buses are getting on and off every exit through regular traffic.

True, however:

1. A single bus represents dozens of cars that would otherwise be on the highway in the case that all passengers previously had car based commutes.

2. As long as the average speed is greater than or equal to the car it would still be a net win. The system, combined with disincentives for car commuters would eliminate non high occupancy or industrial vehicles in the long run.

3. A bus solution would result in other improvements such as bus lanes, bus prioritization, etc as they become more ubiquitous.

> I'm 100% against new tracks being laid or any more capital expenditures...the current system needs better maintenance, first.

Maintenance of the current system requires capital expenditures. It becomes expensive to run old trains on old signaling systems, which is why both are being upgraded for the Red and Orange lines. It's expensive to be poor, and watching the MBTA operate try to operate is a heart-wrenching example of this. The downtown transfer stations are expensive failure points in part because they're handling the demand of Red <> Blue commuters who don't have a direct transfer at Charles/MGH because that would be "capital expenditures". It costs the MBTA more than $100 million in operational overhead yearly because the northern and southern halves of the commuter rail don't connect. [1]

> Here's one solution: create a new express lane on existing highways by removing a lane or repurposing the existing HOV lane. Make this new lane have a 80mph speed limit. Only allow buses. There you go.

The problem of urban transit is very rarely just how to move people quickly between stations — it's about how to insert them efficiently within walking distance of their destination. Previous generations were kind enough to leave us with a commuter rail system that is remarkably good at doing that across many towns in the region, and the solution — run more and better trains — is blindingly simple.

> but once you consider the commuter rail is already underutilized it's hard to imagine

The commuter rail carries 42% of passengers bound for Boston at rush hour so "underutilized" is a relative term. [2] The infrastructure (trainsets and railyards) makes it hard to run more efficiently at off-peak hours, which is again an operational cost that can be offset over time with capital expenditure.

[1] https://static1.squarespace.com/static/561e6ed5e4b039248a6a9... (table EX-3 on page EX-10)

[2] http://amateurplanner.blogspot.com/2017/03/how-many-people-u...

The main opposition in Arlington was they were afraid then proposed Red Line extension out to Bedford/128 wouldn’t happen fast enough (or at all) and the city center would become a commuter hub, not that they were afraid if the kind of people it would attract. The majority were for the extension through Arlington so long as it were done as one continuous project, guaranteeing the terminus wouldn’t be in the town center.

I'm not entirely sure I get your argument.

The MBTA faces a bunch of horrible infrastructure limitations:

1. Only two rails for all subway lines, so a lot of the maintenance requires downtime.

2. The green line is on horribly dated signaling mechanisms, and also has to deal with traffic at various points.

3. The commuter rail has terrible stations, often requiring a very long time boarding, and single tracks at many points.

Alot of that would make your operational complaints better. Sure, there are problems with the MBTA, but likely the solution isn't to avoid fixing anything.

I'd say my argument is that rail based transport is inherently flawed given the politics surrounding funding its maintenance. Using the highway is better and more politically digestible, IMO.

1. Buses would encourage better maintenance of roads -- roads that are used by regular people. Other people like that.

2. Buses can go anywhere cars can. They can be swapped out in a more modular fashion, and are more resilient to delays as rerouting can happen instantly.

3. Buses, finally, can be scaled more easily. A single small town in the South or North Shore that wants public transportation? They now have access with a single double decker, high speed bus.

Point of fact: `regular people ‘ use trains too.

Buses get stuck in traffic jams. This is the main advantage of a proper metro system: it bypasses all of the idiots that mess up the roads.

If you are talking about a small town then buses are the correct solution, but when you're talking about big cities the calculus changes considerably. A 15 minute train ride can take over an hour in a bus easily.

What if it actually was a high speed rail? Maybe more people would use it, or even expand towns around a highly available rapid transit resource.

The article didn’t mention new tracks. What do you think about the suggestions?

It's not bad. EMUs are a net-new capex, though.