Midday clock face scheduling on commuter rail systems

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I somewhat-infrequently take the MBTA’s commuter rail network, usually for work. The trains midday are rather infrequent (with up to two-hour headways) but usable. Still, I almost certainly have to check schedules  before scheduling meetings or figuring out what time to get to the train. But not always. When I have a meeting in Lowell, I always know that I have to be at North Station at 10 past the hour, and that I’ll arrive in Lowell at 5 til the hour, and that the train leaves Lowell at quarter past and arrives in Boston on the hour (and Lowell’s hourly bus routes are timed to this, too). No schedule? No worries.

If I boarded at any other station, I’d know the schedule there, too (Winchester: inbound :42, outbound :39). It’s much easier to remember how many minutes past the hour service depart than try to memorize an entire schedule. This is called clock face scheduling, and it makes it much easier to use transit.
Commuter rail in the US is commute-time oriented, with frequent services during peak hours and less frequent (and in many cases no) service midday. The frequency, as well as the, for lack of a better word, consistency (whether a schedule adheres to clock face scheduling) varies between systems and individual lines within a system. Midday train service is not heavily utilized, and most systems run full-length trains at these times, so there is certainly not a capacity constraint. However, in many cases, confusing-if-not-Byzantine schedules are a barrier to entry to new ridership, and Americans are happy to jump in their cars if given any excuse.

But, if it’s provided at even a minimal level of service, rail transit can provide decent service over long distances, particularly when not focused on park-and-ride type service but walkable, town-center service (so, generally on older suburbs which developed around rail transit). As important, commuter rail often links smaller cities—and their transit systems—in to the larger system, especially in New York, Boston and Chicago. Rail can provide service that buses can not, because they can operate at relatively high speed, stop in a town center, and then resume their speed without getting bogged down in ten minutes of traffic in each town or having to get on and off highways. The technology of using full train sets may not be ideal—shorter multiple-unit trains would be more economical—but the trains are there, so you might as well use them. 

Here’s a chart of commuter rail lines in the US which have midday service. Some lines have a single midday run; these were not included here. I’ve categorized each by its level of service and whether it adheres to a clock face schedule. The levels of service are:
  • Local-Express (multiple stopping patterns during the off-peak)
  • + hourly (better than hourly service)
  • Hourly (service approximately every hour)
  • – hourly (service less frequently than every hour)
And the clock face levels are:
  • Yes (schedules adhere to a clock face schedule; up to 2 minutes of variation allowed)
  • Mostly (most schedules are clock face, but there are up to 5 minute variation or one or two trains with a more significant variation)
  • Partially (part of the schedule is clock face, part is not)
  • No
“Headway” denotes the maximum midday headway, not the average. 30/60 denotes more frequent service on the inner portion of a long (>50 mile) line.
Finally, the “City” column denotes whether the line serves a secondary city at its terminus, or whether it serves mostly suburbs. Examples of “City” lines would be Lowell, Providence, Worcester (MBTA), New Haven and Poughkeepsie (Metro North), Trenton (SEPTA, NJT), Baltimore (MARC), Aurora/Naperville, Waukegan, Joliet (Metra), San Jose (Caltrain). These lines should see more ridership during the midday, and benefit more from hourly, clock face scheduling.
System
Line
Service
Clockface
Headway
City
LIRR
Port Jefferson
(inner)
Local-Express
Yes
30/60
N
Metro
North
Harlem Line
Local-Express
Yes
30/60
N
Metro
North
New Haven Line
Local-Express
Yes
30/60
Y
LIRR
Babylon
Local-Express
Mostly
35
N
LIRR
Port Washington
Local-Express
Mostly
35
N
Metro
North
Hudson Line
Local-Express
Mostly
65
Y
SEPTA
Airport
+ hourly
Yes
30
N
SEPTA
Paoli/Thorndale
+ hourly
Mostly
35
N
NJT
Northeast
Corridor
+ hourly
No
38
Y
Austin
Capital
MetroRail
Hourly
Yes
60
N
Caltrain
Caltrain
Hourly
Yes
60
Y
LIRR
Far Rockaway
Hourly
Yes
60
N
LIRR
Hempstead
Hourly
Yes
60
N
LIRR
Long Beach
Hourly
Yes
60
N
LIRR
Ronkonkoma
Hourly
Yes
60
N
MBTA
Lowell
Hourly
Yes
60
Y
METRA
METRA electric
Hourly
Yes
60
N
METRA
Milwaukee
District North
Hourly
Yes
62
N
METRA
Milwaukee
District West
Hourly
Yes
60
Y
METRA
Rock Island
Hourly
Yes
60
Y
METRA
UP North
Hourly
Yes
60
Y
Metro
North
New Canaan Line
Hourly
Yes
60
N
NJT
NJ Coast Line
(inner)
Hourly
Yes
60
N
NJT
Raritan Valley
Hourly
Yes
60
N
SEPTA
Lanesdale/Doylestown
Hourly
Yes
60
N
SEPTA
Media/Elwyn
Hourly
Yes
60
N
SEPTA
Warminster
Hourly
Yes
60
N
SEPTA
West Trenton
Hourly
Yes
60
N
UTA
FrontRunner
Hourly
Yes
60
Y
Tri-Rail
Tri-Rail
Hourly
Yes
60
Y
MARC
Penn
Hourly
Mostly
66
Y
MBTA
Beverly
Hourly
Mostly
79
Y
NJT
Main Line
Hourly
Mostly
70
N
SEPTA
Manayunk/Norristown
Hourly
Mostly
60
N
SEPTA
Wilmington/Newark
Hourly
Mostly
65
Y
NJT
Morris and Essex
Hourly
Partially
60
N
SEPTA
Chestnut Hill
West
Hourly
Partially
60
N
SEPTA
Fox Chase
Hourly
Partially
74
N
SEPTA
Trenton
Hourly
Partially
65
Y
NJT
Montclair
Hourly
No
60
N
SEPTA
Chestnut Hill
East
Hourly
No
72
N
DFW
Trinity Railway
Express
– hourly
Yes
90
Y
LIRR
Montauk
– hourly
Yes
120
N
LIRR
Oyster Bay
– hourly
Yes
120
N
LIRR
Port Jefferson
(outer)
– hourly
Yes
97
N
LIRR
West Hempstead
– hourly
Yes
120
N
MBTA
Fairmount
– hourly
Yes
120
N
MBTA
Newburyport
– hourly
Yes
120
N
MBTA
Rockport
– hourly
Yes
120
Y
METRA
BNSF
– hourly
Yes
120
Y
METRA
North Central
Service
– hourly
Yes
120
N
METRA
Southwest
Service
– hourly
Yes
144
N
METRA
UP Northwest
– hourly
Yes
120
N
METRA
UP West
– hourly
Yes
120
Y
Metro
North
Waterbury
– hourly
Yes
180
Y
Metrolink
San Bernardino
– hourly
Yes
120
Y
NJT
Bergen
County
– hourly
Mostly
96
N
NICTD
South Shore Line
– hourly
Partially
120
Y
MBTA
Fitchburg
– hourly
No
120
Y
MBTA
Franklin
– hourly
No
120
N
MBTA
Greenbush
– hourly
No
141
N
MBTA
Haverhill
– hourly
No
160
Y
MBTA
Kingston
– hourly
No
142
N
MBTA
Middleboro/Lakeville
– hourly
No
141
N
MBTA
Needham
– hourly
No
130
N
MBTA
Providence
– hourly
No
150
Y
MBTA
Worcester
– hourly
No
140
Y
Metro
North
Danbury
– hourly
No
180
Y
Metrolink
Antelope Valley
– hourly
No
180
Y
NJT
Atlantic City
– hourly
No
137
Y
NJT
NJ Coast Line
(outer)
– hourly
No
120
N
NJT
Pasack Valley
– hourly
No
180
N

 Lots of interesting things going on here:

  • Nearly every line with a maximum two-hour-or-better headways has 30-, 60- or 120-minute clock face scheduling. The only exception is the Trinity Railway Express between Dallas and Forth Worth, which runs every 90 minutes. 
  • With one exception, lines with better-than-hourly service adhere to clock face scheduling. The exception is the NJ Transit Northeast Corridor Line, which may be constrained by arrival slots in the Hudson River tubes (it does run at least every 38 minutes, however).
  • Amongst the major multi-line commuter rail networks (MBTA, SEPTA, METRA, NJT, MN and LIRR) only SEPTA has full hourly service on all lines, most of them operating on a clock-face or partially clock-face schedule (headways get shorter on the shoulders of rush hour, but while 45-minute headways provide more service, it might just confuse passengers and not actually encourage ridership). 
  • The New York services have hourly-or-better service on their main lines, but some far-out branches see less service. Most other agencies have some lines with hourly service, and some with less.
  • Most hourly services are operated on-or-near clock face, and even two outliers could, with minor changes, be made hourly.
  • All METRA lines in Chicago have clock face scheduling, and many the ones which are not hourly have only one two-hour service gap.
  • The MBTA, by these metrics, probably has the worst service of any major system. The Lowell Line is the only line with hourly, clock face service; although the Beverly-Boston portion of the combined Newburyport/Rockport lines has a similar level. While several MBTA lines are commuter-oriented, others serve some of the largest cities in the region: Worcester, Fitchburg, Lawrence, Providence and Brockton. 
So, yeah, the MBTA. Alon Levy wrote at some length about its poor service levels, and I concur. What’s particularly bothersome is that the MBTA has an example of a line which lines up against some of the better commuter rail lines in midday service in Lowell. And while Lowell trains aren’t packing five cars full, they regularly disgorge 100 riders each hour on to the platforms at North Station. I’m not necessarily saying that the T should try to improve the service on every line (without better funding, that’s probably a non-starter) but it certainly could use the Lowell line as a bit of a model.
The MBTA is also hamstrung by some single-track bottlenecks which hamper more frequent service, particularly on the Old Colony Lines and those to Franklin, Needham, Fitchburg and Haverhill (portions of the latter two are being double-tracked). And there are dispatching and scheduling issues to Worcester and Providence, respectively, and there is hourly, clock face service to Beverly before the split to Newburyport and Rockport.

Here are the minutes between trains for midday service between Worcester and Boston (the two largest cities in New England):

Inbound: 60, 140, 90, 110, 75, 90, 77. Outbound: 135, 85, 112, 53, 90, 80

And for Boston and Providence (cities 1 and 3):

 Inbound: 85, 90, 146, 149, 62, 48. Outbound: 60, 155, 85, 145, 105, 30

At 180,000 apiece, Providence and Worcester are two of the largest non-hub cities served by commuter rail (only Aurora and some cities in the LA agglomeration are bigger; I’m excluding major cities at the ends of smaller systems like Baltimore, San Jose, Fort Worth and Tacoma). And, yet, their service is sub-par.

Other MBTA lines are similarly random. I can’t imagine that the train times are a response to any specific peaks in demand at certain times, nor do they appear to be a response to other traffic on the railroad. They just don’t make any sense.

Still, this can be remedied. Fitchburg and Haverhill could have hourly service with ongoing improvements to their trackage (hopefully this will be a goal for the Fitchburg Line once it is (re)duplicated in 2014). The state is paying an arm and a leg to acquire the line to Worcester, and they ought to try to improve frequencies to the state’s second-largest city (outside of rush hour, private buses provide relatively-frequent service to Worcester, but don’t serve any towns in between). And while the Providence line does have intercity trains running at double the speed of the commuter rail, there are only two per hour, and with passing tracks stray commuter trains could be scheduled in between. Or—even better—the T could acquire electric motors or multiple units and run the Providence line under the wire, with faster running times and cheaper operation.
One hour frequencies certainly aren’t ideal—consider that in Melbourne, Australia (population 4m) most suburban lines run every 10, 15 or 20 minutes with a stated goal of clock face scheduling (and attract 700k riders per day, more than double Chicago and nearly as many as in New York City!)—but they provide a base level of transit. Two hour headways are quite minimal, and especially sub-par when they don’t even operate on any reliable frequency. More frequent and predictable midday service also help ridership during peak periods by giving commuters more of a guarantee that, should they have to leave at a non-peak time, there will be predictable service.

Combining hourly service and clock face schedules is the standard for American commuter rail systems, but many lines fall far short It should be the goal of commuter rail operators to offer at least this level of service whenever possible. The facilities are there and the vehicles are there. The trains won’t be full, but making schedules and service easier to understand will certainly increase ridership.

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