AT&T Station in Philadelphia, PA (formerly Pattison Station) - Will Boston's stations start getting new corporate names, too? (Image from Flickr)

The Public Citizen’s Commercial Alert released a public letter yesterday to MassDOT CEO and Secretary of Transport Rich Davey speaking out against the ongoing efforts to sell station names to corporations in an attempt to close the $160 million operating budget gap.

Commercial Alert is a Washington, D.C.-based consumer rights advocacy group under Public Citizen whose agenda is to ‘keep commercial culture within its proper sphere, and to prevent it from exploiting children and subverting higher values of family, community, environmental integrity, and democracy.’

This news came in yesterday evening from the Metro and was mentioned in this morning’s paper.

If the budget gap isn’t closed, the MBTA may have to reduce service or cut certain services entirely, but if the MBTA continues this path, the amount it will gain from the naming rights sale to close the gap is dubious.  While Commercial Alert’s primary objection to station naming rights is mostly to do with their issue with over-commercialisation and the idea that the city is explicitly endorsing certain products, behaviours, services, and corporations through naming stations after corporations, they also pointed out a fact that we have seen before:

As you know, attempts to sell naming-rights to T stations have not been successful in the past. Taken together, the lack of interest from corporations and the vehement opposition of citizens to these past plans should be enough to suggest that selling naming rights is still not the right direction for the MBTA. Not only does this plan compromise the public nature of transit services in the Boston area, it is also unlikely to alleviate the financial strain the MBTA is currently facing. In other cities, transit naming rights schemes have not yielded significant revenues. In Philadelphia, the recent deal between Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority and AT&T will yield $3 million over five years. In New York, a twenty year deal to rename a Metro Transit Authority station after Barclay’s will yield only $200,000 per year. Were the MBTA able to raise similar revenues from its planned naming rights sales, they would amount to a drop in the bucket when compared to the reported $150 million deficit the MBTA faces for fiscal year 2013. Moreover, private corporations stand to benefit from any revenues the Transit Authority is able raise; consulting firms in the aforementioned examples have taken significant cuts of sales revenues, as they will in Boston.

While we may need to pinch pennies and make every dollar count (which the old MTA CEO set out to do earlier this year), we need to decide if selling the names of our stations is worth the effort. Before we can make that assessment, we need to wait for IMG Worldwide to finish their assessment of the market; no doubt they will find tepid interest from corporations as has been the case in the past and for other systems.

Station naming is taking the front stage again, but where does that fit in with better public-private partnerships that can deliver better, more productive public spaces?

The question is on the table again as the MBTA moves forward with its interest in selling naming rights as IMG Worldwide as been announced as the firm that will conduct a ‘a thorough analysis to determine if there’s a market for naming rights and what the value would be’, according to Joe Pesaturo of the MBTA.

Boston is not unique in its operating budget issues, nor is it unique in some of its attempts to close the funding gap. About a year ago, Boston joined New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Austin, Toronto, and New Jersey in the growing list of North American transit agencies trying desperately to close operating gaps with a funding concept that is an illusion and hardly effective for actually raising the revenues that agencies claim.

To bring it home, one of my followers on Twitter brought to my attention a sponsorship from 1997 to 2000 by Citizens Bank to rename State on the Blue and Orange Lines to State/Citizens Bank. The sponsorship eventually failed and the station’s name was reverted.

Ben Kabak in New York has written numerous posts on the issue (in the numerous links above), so I won’t bother rehashing a topic. I will however highlight one particular public-private partnership that Chicago capitalised on, which was the $4 million rehab of the North/Claybourn station, all paid for by Apple. If we’re going to be selling the system to private entities, why not work with them to refurbish the system or even build out revenue-generating properties without selling the property or rights to profits (Chicago lost $11 billion from a poor leasing agreement of its parking meters to Morgan Stanley)?

While we shouldn’t necessarily be relying on commercial entities to be paying for and completely refurbishing our public infrastructure just so they can use them as their own vehicles for advertising, public transport is in an ailing state. Budgets are tight and will continue to get tighter until the costs (of construction and maintenance) are reined in and publicly owned property can be made more profitable.

Of the latter, these public-private partnerships could be used to capitalise on unproductive, low revenue-generating properties owned by the state, such as station head houses, rights of way, and station platforms themselves. Looking at just Porter Square, why is the Shaw’s located so far away from the public transport hub that likely brings in the majority of its business from commuters picking up their groceries on their commutes home? Why is there not a passage under Somerville Ave to connect to a basement level of CVS or another business and provide a safer crossing of the major boulevard? This is the ultimate form of not only transit-oriented development, but also leveraging MBTA property as convenient and profitable real-estate to developers. We may be far from Japan’s platform-side malls and ramen shops, but it’s high time the MBTA start pushing its property and really engaging with developers and private entities to serve the public more directly.

I’d rather be able to grab a fresh bowl of ramen and groceries conveniently on my commute home than ride through Apple/Copley Square or Macy’s/Downtown Crossing, especially if I know that one initiative is more likely to keep the trains running, the lights on, and the buses well-maintained.

It may soon cost you more to walk through these gates, but a fare increase shouldn't be the only option on the table.

Eric Moskowitz from the Globe lays out the situation accurately and succinctly:

If the T does nothing, it faces a projected $161 million deficit for the fiscal year that starts July 1, as costs such as utilities, health insurance, and federally mandated paratransit service rise faster than MBTA revenue, the chief sources of which are fares (about $450 million a year) and a percentage of the state sales tax (worth nearly $800 million).

The T faced a similar situation last year but avoided a fare increase by implementing one-time measures such as selling future parking revenue to investors for a lump sum. The T has also tightened pension eligibility, streamlined labor costs (including switching from two operators to one operator on multiple subway lines), auctioned surplus property, and sold ads on everything from station walls to its website.

The T last raised fares Jan. 1, 2007.

Just in time to be a part of this discussion, the MBTA Rider Oversight Committe has released a plea to riders to speak to their representatives and advocate for better MBTA funding, which will hopefully run in tomorrow’s Metro:

Riders, now is the time for us to stand up and speak out. The T’s red ink is much worse than you think. Next year, without increased funding, your bus or train could be the one that stops coming. Do we want the transit system we can afford or the transit system that we need? Rally round, and get engaged! Come join us at the public meetings and support the MBTA. Help us by calling your local and state representatives to insist they finally address the T’s funding gap. Fellow riders, it’s our T. It’s time for us to defend it.

In their letter, they speak to the better senses of the public, as does much of the press, trying to inform and arm the public with information to help advocate for a better solution, but many of the more radical options have been left out of the conversation, at least outside of twitter.

The last time New York City had to face these issues a few years ago, local politics included more vocal pushes for alternative funding vehicles to prevent a massive fare increase and service cuts. (They happened anyway because New York politics is a mess and has been one for a while.) Beyond typical ignorant ranting of government largess and inefficiencies, there were calls to start congestion pricing, tolling East River crossings, and even tax local businesses’ payrolls (which has not gone over well).

Suffice it to say, all of these seem to be third rail topics that neither the press nor local advocates are willing to propose. While the ROC and others, including Secretary Davey himself, are pointing at the Commonwealth’s legislature for relief, the fact remains that none of them are standing behind a unified message of what to ask for from the legislature in terms of bridging the funding gap, especially considering the Commonwealth is already trying to deal with a tight budget for every other state agency.

From my experience on twitter lately, it seems riders are more concerned with the platform experience more than the funding mechanisms behind the MBTA, more quick to bash it for inefficiency and waste than grant the agency a shadow of a doubt and look into reports about the funding situation. Advocates and members of the public in the know need to step up, do a better job to make the facts and options more accessible to riders, and stand behind a more cohesive message.

All I’m seeing is repeated messages of what we don’t want and what we don’t feel comfortable bringing up. I’ll start by throwing my weight behind moderate fare increases, congestion pricing, parking reform (market pricing), and better long-term real estate deals on MBTA/state owned property. Perhaps we could get started on making public-private partnerships to assure funding, quality construction, and well-capitalised reconstruction of ageing stations and the Green Line extension, because simply selling naming rights of stations to corporations is really selling out the system.

The MBTA could work on its photography, but at least we have photos.

This morning, the General Manager’s twitter account pointed riders to an album of photos on Flickr covering the painting that happened at the Davis Square station this weekend. They also added a few photos of the continued work on the spot repairs they have been doing to the floating slabs along the Red Line, the primary project causing the ongoing weekend service outages of the Red Line north of Harvard.

Before Rich Davey was General Manager of the MBTA three years ago, photos of work on the T were few and far between. Months after I started tweeting about the MBTA (prompted by the phenomenal 2009 derailment of the Red Line, which I experienced personally on a train) and in May 2010, shortly after Davey took office, the MBTA created their twitter account to directly address customers in real time.

Davey was able to sporadically update riders with photos covering things like his visit to Korea earlier this year to tour construction of the first cars in the MBTA’s new order of bi-level commuter rail cars.  This wasn’t nearly enough to assure the public of the work that it does and was far less than what the MTA in neighbouring New York City has been doing with Flickr to cover weekend work.

It’s good to see the MBTA has ramped up their own behind-the-scenes coverage of work, instead of having to be at the mercy of the press to cover their overnight and weekend work. This is photographic evidence to reassure the riders and general public that work is being done to the system, especially work that is invisible, but important, to riders. Now it’s up to the press, blogosphere, and twitterverse to get the word out.

At the same time, does it really matter that there are photos of work if trains are still late and the MBTA is unable to affect perceivable changes to service quality? Most riders will see these photos and immediately ask, ‘Why is my Orange Line train delayed?’

New A-frame signs and vinyl adhesive placards adorned platforms across the system today as the MBTA moves forward with its latest push against fare evasion.

The MBTA is at it again, but this time they’re not simply introducing more inspectors to roam the system with a campaign to get people to ‘pay [their] fare’ because ‘…it’s only fair’. MassDOT Secretary Davey has announced he is introducing legislation next January to the legislature to make more penalties for fare evasion more severe. All that has been announced is the increase of the first time fare penalty to $100, up from $15.

According to existing legislation (MGL Ch.159 Sec.101), there is a 12 month grace period to pay the pitiful fine before they notify you of your late payment and give you an additional 90 days beyond that before they prevent you from renewing your license. That is, if you even get charged the fine by the inspector or police officer. More often, they will simply ask you to pay your fare. Furthermore, these fines are non-criminal citations that barely have the gravity to make someone think twice about evading fare.

While Secretary Davey has yet to formally introduce the legislation, I am honestly unsure how effective these big pushes will be over time if the MBTA cannot sustain the manpower for frequent and random sweeps by plainclothes Transit PD with concealed ticket readers/validators (like transit gestapo…). You should always feel pressured to pay your fare in case you get fined; the fact that people still don’t feel that way today is proof this has already failed.

Further, $100 is hardly enough for a first time fine, especially when other systems, even in the US, charge considerably more. In Portland, Oregon, fare evasion will cost you $175 and in London, it is a misdemeanor for which you will receive a summons[PDF].

The most problematic behaviour induced by the current penalty for fare evasion and lax policy of enforcement is fare evasion on the Green Line. People often sneak onto trains through rear doors, especially on crowded trains. The incidence of random fare validation checks by plainclothes transit police is few and far between or at least infrequent enough to not deter even the least daring Bostonian (or exhausted commuter) from not paying their fare.

While the number of citations is up to 3,248 this past year from 818 in 2007, how effective has this really been in closing the gap? In 1984, the MBTA estimated a loss of $400,00 in fares from evasion, which adjusted for inflation would be twice that amount, not factoring in the last two decades of fare increases and record ridership (of which has been recorded through fare collection) the system has seen. The current loss could well be in the millions of dollars, enough to cover the cost of running a bus route or two, let alone the improvement of several routes as part of the MBTA’s cost-effective $10 million Key Bus Routes programme.

The platform-side ticket validators should be leveraged as part of the MBTA’s campaign instead of deploying personnel to simply monitor stations for a short blitz. They are at most major surface-station stops  so you can validate your card as you wait or as the train is loading and board at the rear doors. As it is, most people don’t see the purpose, few know what they do, and many don’t realise they even exist.

The tickets they vend are proof of payment (and a receipt if you don’t have a LinkPass) and you are supposed to hold onto them, not put them into the fare box on the train; some drivers will collect it from you if you hold it up and say ‘fare validation’, but they’re not really supposed to. If I board at the rear after validation and a driver asks me to pay up front, I politely shout back that I’ve validated my fare. Drivers should be reminding you to pay your fare, not commanding you to come up to validate.

The MBTA needs to stop with these high-cost, high profile efforts, properly deploy all-doors boarding, should have pushed for this legislation sooner, and should also be including into the legislation more robust provisions to ensure that tickets get paid on-time (or at all). The MBTA has botched up all-doors boarding and proof-of-payment several times; this time the MBTA has an excellent opportunity with the high-profile announcement of the upcoming legislation to really reduce fare evasion.

This legislation should have been put forward years ago as the CharlieCard was introduced and the infrastructure to support it was installed. It should not have been prompted by a severe budget shortfall, but it is possible the leadership to push such legislation may have not been at the top. Davey’s predecessors, both at the DOT as Secretary and MBTA as GM, were administrative characters who sought to run their systems, but were conservative in their approach to change.

While Davey may credit them for the work that they’ve done, she should take the credit for pushing through the significant changes he has done in his 3-year meteoric rise to his current leadership position. So far, he is taking to heart the popular mantra in transport: organisation before electronics before concrete[PDF]. Is he the Robert Moses-like leadership Massachusetts needs for its transport network?

I challenge him to prove his leadership by presenting a unified vision of transport for Massachusetts in the next decade, because in dire times, we still need a vision to work toward and not simply a state of good repair to settle for.

So you think you can run a transit system? The three-person search committee is beginning to narrow down candidates.

Despite initially tepid response to the open position for MBTA General Manager (and MassDOT Rail and Transit Administrator), a number of applicants have stepped forward in the month since it was last reported on the matter.

From the Board of Directors, John Jenkins, Elizabeth Levin, and Secretary Richard Davey comprise the three person preliminary search committee who met this morning to begin screening the applicants who have thrown themselves into the pool thus far.

Their intent is to narrow down the pool of applicants to three to four candidates to present to the board with a group interview of selected candidates. So far, there are over 40 applicants with varying degrees of operational and leadership expertise, including candidates with experience from Toronto’s TTC to San Francisco’s MUNI. 13 of those were put to consideration this morning.

Aside from the desired qualities listed in the posting on the MBTA web site, the committee repeated its desire for candidates with good on-the-ground, operational expertise balanced with well-rounded experience across organisation operations and strong leadership experience.

Through all of this, will we end up with a GM who can lead the MBTA and continue with the internal organisational reform started by Rich Davey almost two years ago? Unlike in New York, where there has been enough political conflict to lead their last and most qualified CEO to resign, Governor Patrick strongly supports both MassDOT and the MBTA and we rarely see him bash either of them. Does it help that the Governor’s office is not more than 850 metres away from both the Secretary’s and General Manager’s office, just across the Commons?

Suffice it to say, the upcoming MBTA GM will be managing the 6th most used public transport system in the US with the greatest debt of them all. S/he will need to work closely with the Governor, Secretary, and legislature in not only securing the funds necessary to operate the economic engine of the Commonwealth, but also show competence in affecting effective reform in the nation’s most organisationally flat public transport operator. With little political friction to deal with (compared to that of the MBTA’s closest neighbours in the US), the next GM will be able to focus on actually running the system and the search committee will be able to look for a candidate who has more public transport operations experience than New York’s new MTA CEO, who is more known for his political and financial management savvy than his (nonexistent) transit experience.

The position remains open to applicants until the end of this year and the search committee will continue to filter candidates as they come in.

Of significant interest is his mention of the DOT’s new complete streets training programme to help local DOTs better plan walkable neighbourhoods throughout the Commonwealth. New York State had hit several roadblocks with complete streets legislation, despite support and pressure from many advocacy groups, legislators, and AARP, until the unanimous passage of a complete streets bill this summer.

Secretary Davey also spoke about his push for transparency within the DOT starting with the introduction of quarterly accountability meetings as part of general ‘efforts to make reform visible to the public.’

The strongest message from his keynote was the issue of fiscal solvency and the DOT’s challenge to find new revenue streams and protecting the Commonwealth’s transport infrastructure from falling into neglect.

During the question and answer period, I asked him about the possibility of outlining and financing an Accelerated Transit Programme, akin to the $3 billion Accelerated Bridge Program. The ABP is fully funded by the state government and started as part of Governor Patrick’s transportation reform, which also consolidated all Commonwealth transport management entities and transportation assets under MassDOT, created in 2009.

Secretary Davey noted that he is looking to work with legislators to allow for MBTA bridges to be included in an upcoming ABP2, though this is a far cry from a transit-specific infrastructure rehabilitation programme.

Potential for an Accelerated Transit Programme

The advantage of a separate ATP from the MBTA’s 5-year Capital Investment Programme is the possibility of an ATP to be very targeted on a number of much larger, more visible projects, the latter of which is of particular interest to politicians and public officials for ribbon-cuttings and is an opportunity to bring hundreds of kilometers of track up to a state of good repair or higher.

An ATP would be the perfect programme to introduce a platform raising construction programme, DMU purchase for improved commuter rail service, commuter rail line electrification, or even the actual purchase of new Red and Orange Line cars (and not simply the planning and engineering of them for a wild $200 million, currently the only aspect of the project included in the 2011-2016 MBTA CIP). Might we even envision a proper build-out of the Silver Line as a fully traffic-separated light rail line? After all, Davey is now the chairperson of Massport, overseer of the area’s major airports and cruise ports. May he be able to convince the board to contribute to the ATP toward a true airport light rail?

With Davey’s position, the possibilities are endless. He has proven his competence as a personable leader who is able to establish and strengthen beneficial relationships, including that with the Commonwealth and its private railroads, CSX, Pan Am Railroads, and Norfolk Southern, a challenge New York State has found difficult in its attempts to build high speed rail between Albany and Buffalo.

Boston could be the first American city to consider modular freight transport utilising rail transit, right on the heels of Amsterdam’s and Paris’ current plans to utilise existing light rail to supplant commercial trucking within city limits. Service would have to be improved and signal systems upgraded to even entertain the idea of adding freight into an already troubled transit system, the perfect opportunity to turn an ATP into a public-private partnership that would bring in additional revenue to the Commonwealth for further investment in maintenance and expansion of its transport network.

But to what end investment in transit infrastructure? Public officials in the transit arena will name safety and accessibility as their top two priorities while quality of service and reliability are relegated to being tertiary priorities. While these priorities are not at odds, the most critical infrastructure investments to public opinion and use of public transport are weighted to service and reliability. Rarely do bus and train accidents happen, but they are certainly more publicised than a late bus or train, which has become acceptable and expected, even though the latter is more detrimental to the collective image and effectiveness of public transport.

This is the other advantage of a separate ATP. The CIP’s smaller safety and accessibility programmes (the latter of which have mostly been completed with the help of accessibility grants from the federal government) can continue unabated while the ATP can focus on literally accelerating transit by raising quality of service and improving the effectiveness of existing infrastructure.

Of course, above all of these necessary calls for improved infrastructure is the essential lesson of transportation management: Organisation vor Electronik vor Beton because transit is on the line.

Your MBTA app(s) will soon tell you whether or not your train is on schedule. (Image via Flickr)

The MBTA released realtime bus tracking data for all bus routes at the end of last summer and they haven’t looked back. Realtime tracking of buses has taken most of the worry out of riding the bus; even if it does have its glitches, it’s reliable enough to make riding more accessible for a whole swath of people who had previously been averse to riding buses, including this blogger.

Yesterday, the MBTA opened even more data up to the development community with realtime tracking data for commuter rail. Josh Robin, Director of Special Projects and Innovation at the T, led the announcement, impressing upon developers the fact that the feed is still in beta since there are still gaps in the data. In order to improve the consistency of the data, various backend technologies and practises still need to be improved at the MBCR, the MBTA’s contractor for commuter rail services.

Unlike buses and subway service where the greatest factor affecting customer perceptions is frequency, commuter rail is judged on its timeliness based on the published schedule. The feed will deliver not only the timeliness of a train, but also whether or not the train has stopped and it is unknown when the train will start again, as in instances where a train has broken down or there is any other blockage on the line.

The feed takes advantage of data that has already been available to the agency for internal management, as with the previous releases of realtime data for buses and subways. What’s new is the formatting of that data into something that can easily be used by developers to make the numerous user-friendly apps that have been published to date.

Developers should be including the new data into their apps soon, making commuter rail just a bit more accessible and taking the guessing out of riders’ commutes.

On track for progress

GM Rich Davey stopped by on his way out to thank the developers and answer any questions the crowd had. He reinforced the fact that releasing this data and enabling third parties to develop applications to make it useable for riders is part of his goal to find cost-effective ways of improving the accessibility of transit and the rider experience.

The MBTA's customer information endgame should be the repurposing of existing LED signs to display countdown information like this one in Washington, D.C. (Image via Flickr)

While I laud the MBTA for improving information delivery with a cost-effective solution (they have won numerous open data awards for their work), it only enables riders who own smartphones and is dependent on cellular network access. SMS bus tracking is available through NextBus, but no such service is available to riders for the Blue, Red, and Orange Lines and the recently added commuter rail. Further, cell service isn’t available at every underground station (though that’s slowly changing).

Ultimately, the MBTA needs to better format information on the many LED signs that are all over the system, including the commuter rail. At the moment, riders without smartphones or with no cell service only know when a train is near the moment an announcement is made – there is no persistent, in-station information about the next train, let alone the one following behind it.

I’ve spoken with the GM about this and he knows it needs to be done. Part of the problem is cost of labour  to retool the system and the cost of hardware to upgrade some LED signs that don’t have the resolution necessary to display some of this information. Meanwhile, the MTA in New York City is well on its way to have LED countdown clocks installed at every station, a system that was ultimately developed in-house at lower cost after many years of delays and budget overruns with outside contractors.

While countdown clocks won’t solve the many infrastructure-related delays that happen each day, both here in Boston and in New York, it arms riders with the information they need to make split-second decisions about their commute if they can take alternate routes. This damage control approach to customer service is pretty much the only option to improve perceived quality of transit so long as transit agencies aren’t given the money to bring their systems up to a state of good repair (the GM himself passingly lamented the fact that there simply isn’t money to get new Red Line cars – because of a $2 billion shortfall in federal, state, and local funding, the current capital investment programme[PDF] for the next 5 years only includes $200 million for engineering and design of new Red and Orange Line cars, not purchase).

GM Davey – Executive Transit Rider

When I asked GM Davey what his favourite app was (in front of a room of app developers), he noted that he regularly used a web site, partly because he had to switch back to his Blackberry from his Android since it was having issues syncing with the MBTA’s email services. He also noted that he had recently used the site on a trip via the 39 to dinner at Ten Tables in Jamaica Plain, for which he gave rave reviews. With that, I’m curious if there would be public interest in a (bi-)weekly blurb from the GM in the Metro about his experiences on the T.

Amtrak today released a video on their YouTube channel for their 40th anniversary, which shows different Amtrak trains across the country running smoothly and majestically over American landscapes to a gushing voice over describing the salient experiences Americans have had on these different trains.

This contrasts greatly with the lead video from Japan Railways, which surfaced yesterday on Reddit and rippled through my corner of the Internet. The video shows the reaction of many excited Japanese to the inaugural run of the newest extension of the Shinkansen high speed rail line through Kyushu. On 20 February 2011, well before a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami struck Japan and the official opening of the line on 14 March, people lined up along the line to greet the train and celebrate a rail link that provides greater mobility for the 13 million people in the region and millions of those who live directly in the service area of the line.

It is an overwhelming show of humanity that can drive one to tears and makes one wonder why we in urban areas of the US don’t also rally to celebrate the transit and commuter rail networks that move us to work and leisure, enabling the very places where we live to even exist. It’s true there are many contrasts between Japanese and American culture, particularly that Japan has more than a passing ‘affinity’ for rail systems, but is does this contrast exist because the Japanese have collectively seen the efficiencies afforded by transit and decided to properly invest in transport networks so that they do provide fast, on-time service?

Amtrak’s third annual National Train Day is coming up on 7 May, which makes me wonder how we can extend that to a further appreciation for and celebration of the transport networks we use and appreciate the people who operate them. Many European cultures and the Japanese highly regard their train and bus operators in a similar way we do police, firemen, and teachers, because they acknowledge these people are integral to the functioning of society. In America, the job is usually thankless and stressful. There are those of the riding public who greet, thank, and otherwise acknowledge the human behind the controls, but often the attitude is that these people are grumpy because all of them are simply bad, angry people.

Also, how can we each and encourage others to fight the temptation to feed our inner troll, taking part in the largely unproductive bashing of our service agencies and instead engage others in meaningful discourse that really talks about why our buses or trains are late, missing, infrequent, or inconvenient.

Look for some updates in the few days or throw some suggestions in the comments or on twitter.

High level platforms on the US top 3 commuter railroads enable those operators to safely carry large volumes of passengers every day. (Image via Flickr)

With this winter’s delays on the commuter rail, it’s clear that legislators and MBTA and MBCR administrators need to push harder for better infrastructure and the funds with which to furnish it. But let’s take a look at an issue that comes up every once in a while. Despite the MBCR’s best efforts at preventing boarding and alighting accidents, through policy or physically securing doors, these accidents happen. In the winter, steps that accumulate ice from billowing snow kicked up as the train moves along can be a liability for passenger accidents and hampers boarding and alighting efforts, even increasing boarding times as people take their time to prevent slips and falls.

I’m down on Long Island for a few days and I’m quickly remembering what fast, frequent, and convenient commuter rail service is like. I can take a train from Penn Station to my parents’ stop out in Wantagh, over 50km or about the distance from Boston South Station to Worcester, and reliably be there in 1 hour. Trains on my branch run every 30 minutes to every hour, depending on time of day. This is not only because the electric M-7s the LIRR runs have better acceleration rates than diesel trains, but also because of how passengers can get on and off of the train.

When visiting most any other commuter railroad in first world countries or even our neighbouring commuter railroads to the south, the contrast is very clear. Passengers board and exit at any door along the length of the train from automated doorways that sense obstructions and prevent the train from moving if any of them are open. This is how heavy rail transit, like the Red, Orange, or Blue lines, operate (except when rollingstock on rapid transit is also so old that door sensors don’t sense when people or objects are caught).

Ground level platforms are inexpensive, but that benefit is offset by lost time in boardings and liability from related accidents. (Image via Flickr)

The top two commuter railroads, Metro North and Long Island Railroads, only have high-level platforms like those pictured above. On the MBTA network, very few stations have full high-level platforms and many have portions that exist only to make the stations ADA-compliant, the construction of which has been furnished by MBTA a multi-year, $1+ billion ADA compliance project.

Even if the Legislature and federal grants furnished the money required for the MBTA to raise its platforms, newer passenger cars (rollingstock) would still need to be purchased in order to fully seize the benefits of high-level boarding. The current and on-order bi-level cars have the latent ability to coordinate closing and opening of doors along the length of the train. Almost none of the older single level cars have this ability; conductors would need to go to every door to open and close them, otherwise lock doors in place to prevent the train from moving with open doors.

New Jersey Transits bi-level cars with quarter-point doors over the trucks of the train only allow for high-level boarding, but give riders more options. (Image via Flickr)

Newer commuter rail trains also benefit from the flexibility of having doors not located at end vestibules in order to allow passengers to board and alight more quickly since doors are more evenly spaced along the length of the train. New Jersey Transit’s bi-level cars have ‘quarter-point’ doors, which sit over the trucks (the sets of wheels on a train), in addition to the conventional vestibular doors with ‘trap doors’ that permit low-level boarding. This isn’t the most optimal door configuration, even for bi-level cars, but permits greater flexibility for passengers who are boarding or alighting at high-level platforms.

Aside from platform improvements, a capital expense that would likely cost tens of millions to billions to complete, depending on engineering practices and station geometries, there are several changes inside trains that can happen, namely electronic fare payment. The CharlieCard is now three years late in arriving on commuter rail and I quite frequently still see tweets of people thanking the MBTA for not coming to collect their fare on the train.

If you look at the conductor in the lede photo, you’ll notice a small grey device on her belt – all Metro North conductors are equipped with one. This is a portable electronic ticketing machine and allows her to process credit and debit cards so passengers can pay for their fare without juggling cash. It is likely these machines can be upgraded to validate fare with RFID cards or future NFC technologies that the MTA is currently exploring with the MBTA and other regional transit operators. With deals and decisions to be made in the coming years, it’s likely the MBTA and others are cooling their heels and waiting for a standard to come in before purchasing soon-to-be-outdated portable fare collection equipment. Long Island Railroad was promised these handy devices in about the same time as the MBTA Commuter Rail, but LIRR conductors still don’t have them.

When all is said and done, both raising platforms, reconfiguring stations, and procuring portable fare collection devices will cost money, admittedly money no one seems to have, most especially the MBTA. Though, let’s remember that these are expenses that fall under the capital budget, which is almost exclusively furnished by MassDOT, state grants, and federal grants from USDOT funding programs and other agencies. Much of these capital expenses can also be covered by investments from the private sector in the form of associated transit improvements to improve the appeal of or as part of transit-oriented developments around commuter rail stations.

These improvements need to happen in order to improve safety and running times of commuter rail trains, which already suffer from conditions not seen anywhere else in the burgeoning metropolitan regions of the Northeast Megaregion.

Note: MBTA Commuter Rail trains do have to make one accommodation that LIRR, Metro North, and most NJ Transit trains don’t – MBTA shares many of its tracks with long, slow-moving CSX trains that are also important to Boston’s economy. It will take a much greater amount of infrastructure investment to solve that problem, but that isn’t to say DMU or EMU operation of MBTA Commuter Rail trains wouldn’t improve service.