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That special all-you-can-ride weekend fare on commuter rail isn't much good if the trains are canceled
By adamg on Sun, 07/14/2024 - 12:13pm
Transitadvocate highlights some of the trains on various lines out of South Station that were canceled yesterday because of "crew availability issues." It got so bad, the entire Needham Line was replaced with some of the few buses not playing the role of the Red Line. A couple of specific trains on the Greenbush Line were also replaced by a bus as well.
Today's no better: Trains have been canceled on the Fairmount, Franklin, Greenbush, Kingston and Middleboro/Lakeville lines. A couple of trains on the Needham and Worcester lines were delayed due to staffing issues.
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Staffing shortages are part of the T's operations. If you really want a good system, give up your gig and apply to 10 Park Plaza. Get on that.
Also, what person tags Michelle Wu when it comes to Greenbush and Middleboro / Lakeville trains? Perhaps the Mayors of Quincy, Braintree, Weymouth, and Brockton would have a little more influence?
Do you really think she gives a second thought to whether someone from Cohasset can't get in and out of town on a Saturday?
Maybe not Greenbush
But she certainly cares about the Needham Line, which stops right in her neighborhood (and in West Roxbury), not to mention the Fairmount Line, which runs only in her city.
OK - You Are Correct.
Then again, there a lot of people who are all over the T for better service, yet I don't see a lot of them stepping up to help the cause.
Actual service work appears to be well beneath the calling a lot of the Twitter transit activists out there just like a large group of people at Abbondanza Housing Mass who love to "advocate" for housing yet somehow can't get anything built.
(For the record - I actually tried to get work at the T just after college and they were in a hiring hangover of Bulger cronies).
...not to mention the
...not to mention the Fairmount Line, which runs only in her city
That's only because Franklin joined NATO early enough. Otherwise, the Fairmount Line would have conquered suburbia like the Russians rolling into Crimea!
But...
...the Fairmont Line and the Franklin Line are connected. It's possible to run a train down the Fairmont Line and continue all the way to Forge Park, even if Keolis doesn't normally do that.
The Russians originally annexed Crimea in 1783. When I visited the place in 1975, almost everyone I met spoke Russian, even though Crimea had been part of Ukraine since 1954.
Franklin Line IS Fairmount Line on weekends
Take a look at the latest schedules. If you want to go between a Franklin Line stop and Ruggles or Back Bay, you have to transfer at Readville to/from a Providence Line train.
She cares about transit and
She cares about transit and proper functioning of the MBTA. Suburban lines running well, getting people into/out of the city, all that stuff. Stuff that mayors care about.
Commuter rail crews don't work for the T
They work for Keolis Commuter Services, the company the T has hired to run the service.
Staffing is Keolis's responsibility not the T's.
MBTA should give a refund…
…. if you can’t get on the train you want.
Not like you can use that pass some other weekend.
I have no idea if it’s offered but I’m guessing not.
Anyone know?
Actually, you can use the
Actually, you can use the weekend pass some other weekend, as long as it hasn't been activated (which you're not supposed to do until just before you board your first train).
Or punched
which is what they do to paper $10 weekend passes when first used.
This happened to me last Sunday, July 7, on the Franklin Line
trying to come home from an outdoor concert on Norwood Town Common. Rather than wait two hours for the next train, I biked all the way to Forest Hills where I could get on the Orange Line. That wasn't a great idea given the heat, even though the sun had set by then.
(By the way, nobody collected or looked at my ticket on the way *to* Norwood)
May I introduce you …
… to your new friend, the 34E bus.
Service every 40 minutes on Sunday from Walpole to Forest Hills. Put your bike on the front of the bus and save on the hills.
And another PDF where they forgot to clip the background layers and they bled across the whole page, which … actually kind of looks cool (but probably makes it harder to read for people with vision impairment).
The 34 is one of those odd Eastern Mass lines which the T took over and reaches way into RTA land.
Shhhhhh
Snitches and stiches and all that
Is this a wildcat strike?
or a Covid outbreak? If neither, what might cause it?
Probably a story there somewhere
Agreed, it would be good to dig up some info about what’s going on with trains being cancelled due to “crew availability”. Is everyone out sick? If so, not much that can be done. But if everyone scheduled their vacation time at once, backup plans could’ve been put in place - bring in some temp staff, etc…, or at least give commuters a heads-up well in advance.
Also a few weeks ago, they just canceled the Needham line due to “equipment shortages”. Once again it was very vague, like they just ran out of trains! Hard to keep the commuter rail going without enough trains or employees. Definitely seems like it’s worth looking into…
Probably neither
Barely paraphrasing Someone Who Knows Things …
Weekend schedules are highly dependent on crews taking overtime. Unlikely a sick-out issue, if it was it would be showing up elsewhere. It sounds like crews are declining overtime because Keolis's hiring is failing to outpace attrition. Probably doesn't help that there's less interest in OT during the summer, too. Also a question of the crew structures: are they short engineers, conductors or other trainmen, i.e. could this be mitigated with simpler staffing structures rather than needing multiple conductors on each train?
Agreed.
Agreed.
NJTransit rail went through something similar a few summers ago. Known to commuters as 'Summer Of Hell'.
Parts of it were of their own making - they were losing out on hiring (engineers) to other railroads in the region because they weren't paying as much. They had been behind on training classes for new engineers.
They were depending on a lot of mandatory OT to fill schedule, and union pushed back.
Ended up with LOTS of late-notice cancellation (late notice from the agency to commuters) of scheduled runs - late nights and weekends.
It was a real PITA. I was going back and forth to NJ somewhat frequently as my mother was not well. Once or twice going down, had an extra hour of dead time in Penn Station NY after getting off Amtrak because hourly service on NJT was suddenly every-other hour. On the return trip, I'd have to build an extra hour into my schedule to keep surprise NJT cancellations from making me miss my Amtrak connection.
On top of that, it was part of a long stretch where they (NJT) were doing a lot of trackside/signals work with schedule impacts (trying to finally finish Positive Train Control installation) AND Amtrak/LIRR had some tracks out of service at NYPenn for desparately-needed work.
You can't even begin an
You can't even begin an exciting career as a train conductor for Keolis unless you have a valid driver's license. The conductors do not drive the trains. They're missing out on loads of talent with that one requirement.
Not all the Needham trains were cancelled
I rode the first train of the day into South Station from Needham. Little did I know that I wouldn't be getting home until 3 PM, because no one at South Station ever made any announcements. I got there just before 9:15 expecting to take that train, but it wasn't there. The 11:15 train was announced as the one on Track 11, but after I boarded it, the conductor said it was going to Middleborough, so I got off and went looking for the Needham train, which was nowhere to be found. Not until more than an hour after that did I learn the trains weren't running, and only because the sign board said "Canceled"; there was no announcement.
I ended up taking a Worcester train to Wellesley Farms and walking home from there.
I love the small of incompetence in the morning... not. Keolis has up til now been pretty reliable, but if they can't run trains for lack of staff, they need to be fired and a new contractor hired to tun the service.