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Angry Steve Lynch is the best Steve Lynch: MBTA to bring back all the services it just cut
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As long as we're rubbing the
As long as we're rubbing the lamp, can the Fairmount Line finally have its 2003 level of service back, please?
Will we get weekend commuter rail and ferry service back?
Those of us who live in the city, and want to get out to the suburbs, exurbs, and countryside, really miss these services.
No idea about the Ferry, didn’t look
But the revised commuter rail schedules are posted. Service resumes and increases 4/5.
Not to mention....
..... those who work weekends, need to get to Boston for Sat medical appointments, or also would like to go somewhere else.
The problem is the T hasn't
The problem is the T hasn't figured out how to run the Commuter Rail efficiently.
Hauling around huge trains with multiple employees to carry a weekend load of a few passengers makes no sense. And then since it's so expensive to run, they only run it every 3 hours, making it useless.
The tracks are sitting there on weekends. Other cities around the world the size of Boston have frequent off-peak service. Single-employee self-propelled trains exist. Why can't we emulate this?
Not to mention....
..... those who work weekends, need to get to Boston for Sat medical appointments, or also would like to go somewhere else.
T isn’t even providing reduced services well
Out of curiosity, I just checked the Orange Line. 6 train sets being put offered with 15 minute headways (twice what is advertised.)
The derailment
is also impacting the OL for the next couple weeks.
That I appreciate
But what I don't appreciate is when they use a shutdown of a section of the line to scale back service throughout the line. They could easily fit 10 trains at Forest Hills if the need presented it, which is being presented now. The shift from a train every 6 minutes at rush hour to a train every 7 minutes I can understand, but not a shift to a train every 15 minutes. Back in the summer of 2019 I remember when Saturday afternoon service was on the board as 20+. No need to pare service down like that.
Trainwreck
Anyone who regularly rides MBTA public transit knows that ridership is down -- way down. So much so that even during peak commute hours that social distancing is typically possible. Lynch can rant as he may and so protect the number of hours worked by T workers, but the reality is that taking advantage of greatly reduced ridership to address chronic system problems is by far the better course of action. For example, reducing the levels of rolling stock in service can facilitate enhanced maintenance as equipment is rotated in and out of service as well as take on other T infrastructure maintenance. The long-term benefits so derived would far outweigh rolling lightly ridden rolling stock.
Once services go away, they
Once services go away, they are unlikely to come back, unfortunately.
True
That was the first thing I thought in regard to the timing of the service cuts. They seemed to be taking advantage of the low pandemic ridership. Then they'd just complain about finances as an excuse to prevent reinstating service once everyone is vaccinated and the numbers start to recover.