
TransitMatters, a transit advocacy group in Boston - devy
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/10/25/what-works-boston-transit-221839
======
helen___keller
Improving regional rail in greater Boston can also serve as a key to improving
the housing crisis that the city is experiencing, especially if some of the
suburbs served by regional rail can be convinced to re-zone for higher density
mixed-use development in an area around their commuter train stations.

> millennials who’ve rejected suburban life to go car-free or car-light in the
> city

I'm one such millennial living car-free in Boston. I would gladly move to the
suburbs if I could complete all my ordinary day-to-day tasks (commuting,
grocery store shopping, hitting my favorite local restaurant, etc) without
touching a car. But the fact is, aside from the commercial/residential zoning
divide, having these stores in walking distance is not economically feasible
without a certain level of density that American suburbs just can't fulfill.
America's strange obsession with big lawns and single family housing has shut
down the dream of living without a car everywhere except for the urban cores
of the few top metro areas in the country. Furthermore, this dispersed
suburban housing style is enforced by local zoning ordinance (& requires
supermajority of town vote to change zoning rules in the state of MA)!

~~~
dsr_
Waltham has that. Within walking distance of the commuter rail station (which
is also a bus nexus), there are apartment buildings, two supermarkets, a large
number of restaurants, and most of the other non-big-box store types you want.
A nice movie theater, too. Waltham has a big stock of rental housing because
there are two colleges (Brandeis in the south and Bentley in the north). Crime
tends towards shoplifting and driving with a suspended license.

It's 23 minutes on the commuter rail to North Station, less to Porter Square.
The 70 bus runs to Central Square Cambridge, stopping at the Arsenal Mall
along the way.

Come be my neighbor.

~~~
helen___keller
Thanks for the reply. I've actually been looking at renting in Waltham when my
current lease ends (as well as a few other places I've been looking - Quincy,
Malden, Somerville). A while back I was thinking of buying, but prices are
really damn expensive right now.

~~~
stormcode
I lived in Quincy not far from the north Quincy redline stop. Aside from the
typical delays it was pretty affordable and there is grocery and shopping in
walking distance for the most part. Waltham has gotten a bit expensive the
past few years.

------
this2shallPass
It is amazing what this community advocacy group is accomplishing in Boston.
If you want to improve transit in the Bay Area and beyond, starting with SF,
there's a group of people volunteering at Code for America working on similar
things as TrasnitMatters for MUNI and Bay Area public transit. Not meeting on
Halloween this Wednesday, but the following Wednesday and each week at 115 9th
St (a few blocks from Market Street) at 6PM - ~9:15PM.

The group: [http://opentransit.city/](http://opentransit.city/) Part of SF
Code for America:
[https://codeforsanfrancisco.org/](https://codeforsanfrancisco.org/)

Currently using GraphQL, Node, Cassandra, HTML, CSS, JS, Bootstrap, and React.

Always open for developers, data scientists, product and marketing people,
transit people, and whoever else wants to improve public transit in the Bay
Area.

------
twoquestions
I'm more than a little glad that public transit is becoming cool again, and
people are seeing it as a thing they can improve rather than a "big bad
government" artifact.

Maybe in 20 years we might get some transit out here in the Midwest!

------
brlewis
This part's exciting for me:

"Early this year, TransitMatters’ leaders released their most ambitious
proposal yet: a “regional rail” plan to speed up and electrify the MBTA’s
sprawling, aging commuter rail system, which covers most of eastern
Massachusetts and Rhode Island. With faster, quick-accelerating electric
trains, and high-level platforms for every train car in each station to speed
up entry and exit, TransitMatters predicts that its plan could cut the
commuter rail’s Boston-to-Providence travel times from as long as 73 minutes
down to 45 minutes."

~~~
dsfyu404ed
This excites exactly nobody who rides the commuter rail.

What would excite us is more staff. You can only get on/off a train at a door
where there is a conductor (you only get on/off at a door opened by a
conductor) regardless of platform height, most time spend getting on/off is
waiting in line for everyone in front of you to go through whichever few doors
are open. We don't need faster clock speeds, we need more cores
(metaphorically speaking). Even the conductors complain about this. They could
literally hire more people tomorrow if they wanted to. Three is no need to go
through a long RFP + proposals + procurement process like they would need to
do for new rolling stock.

This entire piece reads like some aloof central planners telling everyone else
what they need without actually assessing the situation.

Another thing that would be exiting is trains that run on time. Whether they
run on diesel or whale oil won't matter to most people as long as they're an
improvement over the status quo. A week doesn't go by when there isn't a
(mechanical breakdown related) 1hr+ delay on any given line.

Edit: Yes, raised platforms are faster but they're not so much faster (and
they're certainly not cheaper) than utilizing the existing infrastructure
(i.e. all the doors on the train) to a greater extent.

~~~
r_klancer
1\. Raised platforms would allow using automatic doors and all-door boarding.
Right now, doors can't be automatic because you don't know which ones board at
platform level and which need to have the builtin stairs dropped down to track
level. As it is, not only does it take time for a conductor to drop the
stairs, but staffing is a major part of the T's operational expense for each
ride.

Also, the passenger throughput per door is higher when they can just walk off,
instead of having to teeter down stairs. (Not everybody can just hop down the
stairs)

Oh yeah, frustrated passengers opening the door and lowering the stairs
themselves is a dangerous no-no.

2\. Electric trains accelerate and decelerate much faster, cutting time off
the trip. They have more rated HP and can "burst" up to something like 2x the
rated HP when accelerating from a stop.

(Except on those fun fall days when the train slides on the wet leaves...)

Source: personal experience as an MBTA commuter rail rider (reverse commuting
to Concord) for four years, former occasional NJ Transit rider (on the
electrified Northeast Corridor)

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Sure all that stuff is nice but increased staffing can create the same
improvement as all of that right now without the massive up front cost of new
stations or rolling stock.

~~~
chad_oliver
Yes, but with massive ongoing operational costs. That's not sustainable.

------
favorited
As someone who took the E trains of the Green Line to high school every day,
the fact that they were holding up the entire system at night is not
surprising in the least.

------
rkochman
Was the author getting paid per use of the word “millennial“?

~~~
dang
That's certainly annoying, but please don't start a new thread with a shallow
dismissal. It leads to lousy discussion, and this article has a lot more
interesting stuff in it than that.

The guideline that asks "Please respond to the strongest plausible
interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to
criticize" applies to articles as well.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
dsfyu404ed
>TransitMatters has gone big, with an ambitious, high-cost proposal to speed
up and electrify the T’s diesel-chugging commuter rail system.

Make the damn thing run on time and nobody will care if it burns whale oil and
exhausts powdered asbestos

The schedule change for conductors was last week and we've already discussed
with the new conductor what kind of pizza we should order when we have our
multi-hour "the switches are frozen and nothing can leave north station"
delays this winter.

>Ofsevit steps off an MBTA commuter-rail train onto a platform, then turns and
looks behind him. His train car has already emptied, but the rear cars
haven’t. Instead of stepping quickly onto platforms, riders are stepping
slowly and gingerly from the train to footstools, then to the ground.

This is pure BS. There are no footstools or anything like that at Waltham. If
they wanted people to get off the train fast they'd let people exit at doors
where there isn't a conductor or they'd use more conductors to staff more
doors. This would also reduce conductor workload and let them eliminate all
the ticket checkers at the stations.

>high-level platforms for every train car in each station to speed up entry
and exit,

This requirement does not allow for partial implementation. Many towns are
stuck maintaining grandfathered in stations because they don't have the money
to do a full length, full height platform. If you want to save time open more
doors for people to use. Of course a bunch of transit budget planners in
Boston would rather tell the towns to build platforms rather than hire more
bodies to open more doors because the towns are the ones who have to pay for
the platforms.

~~~
cure
> Make the damn thing run on time and nobody will care if it burns whale oil
> and exhausts powdered asbestos

I beg to differ; it really stinks when one of those old diesel commuter trains
goes by. They are also very noisy (electric trains are basically silent at the
slow, slow speed of the MBTA commuter rail). Ask anyone who lives near or
passes by the tracks regularly what they think - there's tens of thousands of
us.

~~~
thrower123
You get used to it in an incredibly short period of time. I'm less than a
hundred feet from the Amtrak line, and you just don't even notice them going
by after a while. It's the 100+ long freights that aren't slowing down to stop
at the station in town that shake the windows....

