Hacker News Reader

Comment by crzwdjk | 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.

View on HN

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...

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)

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com