Recent content by alewife

A 2-car train of Type 10s at 225' long won't fit on either the inner or outer loops at Heath Street. This presentation from 2018 gives the length of the inner loop platform as 131'. The outer loop isn't used in revenue service as the platform is not accessible, but some rough estimating using...

The transfer between the new 86 and 109 seems relatively convenient to me—northbound/eastbound, both routes will use the Harvard busway, and southbound/westbound, both routes serve Dawes Island and the Eliot St @ Bennett St stop. Hopefully the schedules are somewhat coordinated, especially for...

Stringing wires on the Fairmount Line should be a no-brainer—it connects to the electrified NEC on both ends and won't need any substations of its own. It also provides redundancy to Amtrak as an alternate route should there be any disruptions between Readville and South Station. If the T won't...

By their very nature, the tracks are constantly deteriorating. Keeping them in good order is a constant, Sisyphean task. In my opinion, the key thing to look for is not whether new speed restrictions are imposed after inspections, but how quickly they’re cleared. The big problem is that for...

The roster page got updated yesterday with some new information. On the Orange Line, 2 more cars (1502/1503) were accepted for service and 4 more cars (1506/1507 and 1508/1509) were delivered last month, bringing the total number of cars in service to 104 and the number of cars on the property...

It’s not so much a sign of AFC 2.0 as the last component of AFC 1.5. I believe the “Change Tickets” issued by fare boxes are the last remaining use of the old magstripe CharlieTickets that were otherwise replaced by tappable RFID tickets in AFC 1.5. When fully implemented, AFC 2.0 will phase out...

The BNRD changes the 455’s route between Wonderland and Lynn to match the 442’s through Point of Pines. That’s the portion getting the “frequent service” designation.

And maybe this is just my bias because it's my home station, but I think (at least based on predicted ridership numbers) Gilman Square is the busiest station north of Lechmere (except maybe Medford/Tufts). It feels like it would make more sense to express from there instead of East Somerville...

The static PDF map of the Bus Network Redesign does give the combined 35/36 between Forest Hills and West Roxbury the same visual treatment as the frequent-service "T" routes (which I believe also implies that headways are coordinated on the shared section). Other combined corridors getting the...

The slide deck from the subcommittee meeting shows only two other minor changes in this package—the elimination of "change tickets" issued for overpayment at fareboxes (which is the last remaining use of the old magstripe CharlieTickets) and extending the $10 Commuter Rail weekend pass to also...

That's true, but Boston is somewhat of an outlier even among cities with rail rapid transit in terms of having very little bus service downtown and essentially no bus service operating through downtown. The BERy was very aggressive in truncating surface routes to rapid transit transfer hubs...

They used the crossover between North Station and Haymarket for the last couple of garage-related closures as well. I’m not sure if they were doing work on a different portion of the garage, further away from the tunnel, or if the T revisited its safety analysis. Either way, it’s a very welcome...

A (hopefully final) Lechmere Viaduct update: the full length of the viaduct is now posted at 25 mph in both directions!

I commute over the viaduct daily, and here are my observations from yesterday evening and today: Going northbound (RR eastbound), there’s a posted speed of 20 mph the whole way across the viaduct. I’m not sure why that’s short of the promised 25 mph, but it’s still a massive improvement over...