Tag Archives: boston

Chinatown to Charles: the Bermuda Triangle for bikes in Boston

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When I bike to work, my route is simple. I head down Main Street in Cambridge, cross the Longfellow Bridge, and take a right on to Charles Street. I go diagonally across Beacon Street on to the Common, bike down the wide bike path there, and then bike half a block (or, if I’m on a Hubway, a whole block), slowly, down a sidewalk to the office. It’s simple, relatively safe and even pretty fast.

On the way home, I don’t even bother to try the reverse. It is damn near impossible to get from the Chinatown/Theater District/Park Square area to the Longfellow Bridge, and the options are dangerous and annoying enough that I wind up on the Commonwealth Avenue bike lanes to the Harvard Bridge to Cambridge, a less direct, but much safer route. As such the inbound and outbound portions of my ride are, except for half a block of Mass Ave in Cambridge, completely different.

But what about when I have to go to Kendall? There are several options for getting to the Longfellow, each of which has some major bikeability issue. The main issue is that Charles Street is one way, with no provision for cyclists going northbound. It’s sidewalks are narrow and riding contraflow is a death wish (oh, and it’s illegal). Beacon Hill—the neighborhood it traverses—is comprised of one-lane, one-way roads, and they have been signed in such a way as to prohibit through traffic, which is sensible since it was laid out way, way before cars were invented. This would be fine, but there is no parallel to Charles Street. To the east is Storrow Drive. To the west is Beacon Hill. There’s no good way to get the third of a mile from the Common to Charles Circle.

I’ve gone through the options (none of them good) and rated each from 1-5 for three categories: bike-car safety (how safe is it in spaces shared with cars?), bike-ped safety (how safe is it on spaces shared with pedestrians?) and bikeability (is it really annoying to bike?):

The Storrow double-cross is what you get if you ask Google Maps. It’s a pretty bad suggestion. The two crossings are coded as bike lanes, and while they do provide traffic-free crossings of Storrow Drive, neither is bike friendly, at all. To get to the bridges, you first have to cross four lanes of traffic on Charles Street, without the benefit of lights, unless you dismount and use crosswalks at the corner of Charles and Beacon. The path on the north side of the Public Garden is not bikeable. I call this the Beacon Weave. It’s not much fun on a bike.

And all that does is get you to the bridges. The first crossing (1) is the Fiedler Bridge near the Hatch Shell. To gain altitude, it has two hairpin turns on each approach, the bottom of which is completely blind. Biking at a walking pace, or walking altogether, is necessary going up and down this bridge, which often has heavy foot traffic. Assuming you navigate that bridge, you get a couple hundred yards of easy riding before you have to navigate another double-hairpin bridge (2) to get back across Storrow. This one is less blind than the Fiedler, but it’s narrower and just as trafficked. Even then, that only gets you to the far side of Charles Circle, where you have to jockey in traffic turning off of the Longfellow and on to Storrow before you can get to the bike-laned regions on the bridge itself. This require four separate crosswalks or some creative light-running.

This route would be a bit more doable if there were a path from the river bike path to the Longfellow. But there’s not. It’s pretty nasty.

Verdict:
Bike-car safety: 3
Bike-ped safety: 1
Bikeability: 0
Grand total: 4

The Beacon Hill Stumble-Bumble is probably the most direct route, but it fails for a variety of reasons. Mainly, it involves going down several one-way streets the wrong way, which causes Google Maps to say things like “walk your bike” in the directions more than once. Plus, these streets are steep, narrow and have blind corners. It might be fun if you are a bike messenger, but if you value your life, it’s a pretty bad option. If a car comes the other direction, there is not enough room to pass with any degree of comfort and safety. And the streets are designed to not let you through, so if you don’t know your way, you’ll wind up lost and spit out on to Charles, Beacon or Cambridge Street anyway.

Verdict:
Bike-car safety: 1
Bike-ped safety: 2
Bikeability: 0
Grand Total: 4

The Beacon Hill Crossover is another Google Maps suggestion, and it’s slightly better than the first. It has you cut across the Common (or you can go around on Beacon), climb Beacon Hill, and descend on Bowdoin Street. That part of the route, aside from the hill climb, is not too bad. Then you hit Cambridge Street. Outside of rush hour, this isn’t that bad. During rush hour, this backs up off of Storrow Drive, and to get to the Longfellow you have to slalom slow-moving cars, and then get through the intersection at Storrow. There, it behooves you to find the left-most lane, because most of the traffic is turning right on to Storrow with no idea that a bicyclist might be going straight. Charles Circle is bike no-man’s-land (no-bike’s-land?) and it is several heartbeats before you are in the relative safety of the bike lane on the bridge. Oh, and there are always hordes of pedestrians running across Charles Circle to get to the T stop. A variant of this route via the less-hilly but longer and more-pedestrian-mall Downtown Crossing, which scores similarly, is shown as well.

Verdict:
Bike-car safety: 1
Bike-ped safety: 1
Bikeability: 3
Grand Total: 5

The Storrow Shortcut is the route I actually use. It isn’t pretty, but it certainly gets the job done. The main issue is that it requires either biking a narrow, decaying sidewalk along Storrow Drive or, more comfortably, actually biking down Storrow Drive itself! Google doesn’t realize that Storrow is not officially closed to bikes, and that there is a sidewalk along that route, so I can only show this route in driving directions. And, no, it’s not as crazy as it sounds.

On the few hundred yards of Storrow I bike, the road is three lanes wide and it has a narrow-but-painted shoulder line. It’s definitely better than the rutted-and-cracked sidewalk. Traffic is usually very slow there in the afternoon, and I can usually glide past the gridlock for the couple of blocks up towards the T stop. Once there, I hop on to the sidewalk and the unused part of Embankment Road and then under the bridge before hooking a left towards Cambridge. It avoids one-ways the wrong way, it misses the thick of the pedestrians, and it requires a minimum amount of weaving through traffic (but doesn’t miss the Beacon Street Weave). It’s ugly, but it works.
  
Verdict: 
Bike-car safety: 1
Bike-ped safety: 4
Bikeability: 2
Grand Total: 7


All of this, of course, could be solved with a two-way cycle track on Charles. This has been proposed, but has not seen any steps taken towards actual construction. Charles is three lanes of traffic and parking on both sides. Its shops are mostly pedestrian-oriented, and it probably doesn’t need this parking, but taking it out would cause an uproar. However, the street would, and should, function perfectly well with two lanes. And such a lane would funnel Cambridge-bound traffic from the Back Bay across the Theater District and Chinatown to the Financial District and even the Seaport. It would be well used.

Dear Mr. McGrory: stop the anti-bike/ped snark

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Brian McGrory is a columnist for the Boston Globe, and someone told me he’s a good one. However, he has it out for anyone not driving their own car, I think, unless he is being very coy and sarcastic. When Hubway was launching last July, he proposed banning bikes altogether. It’s pretty tongue-in-cheek. Obviously he doesn’t want to ban bikes, but he wants cyclists to do a better job of obeying the rules. Sure, he posits that all cyclists are lycra-clad speedsters who run red lights with abandon. (We’re not.) I get the point; but there was probably a better way to say it.


But was that an isolated incident of non-driving hate? Apparently not. Today, after last year endorsing a war against bikes, McGrory rails against the war against cars. Apparently—and believe you me, I have not noticed this—Mayor Tom Menino, in declaring his support of bikes and walkers, has actually declared war on the automobile. So “the car is no longer king” is a battle cry. Right.


McGrory’s latest column is pure rubbish. It turns out Menino wants to convert some parking spaces to “pop-up parks” or “parklets.” This sent McGrory in to a rage. The mayor is crazy! he writes. And he needs to be committed.


Apparently, the lack of vehicular traffic is to blame for every problem in the Downtown Crossing area:

The car is still banned from Downtown Crossing, even while it’s painfully obvious that the hard luck neighborhood would benefit enormously from vehicular traffic. Cities around the country have turned their tired pedestrian malls back into real streets with great success.

Oh, where to begin? First of all, many of the country’s de-pedestrianized malls have been in places like Buffalo and Kalamazoo, not the most vibrant of metropolises. Pedestrian malls are going strong in cities like Denver, Burlington, Minneapolis and Boulder, and New York has cordoned off main streets in its retail core to widespread praise. Second, it’s quite possible that a lot of the issues in the area are due to a massive hole, and the mayor has been instrumental going as far as to threaten eminent domain takings (nothing says blight like an abandoned building) to speed reconstruction forwards. Third, it’s not like the retail district there is dead. While it might not hop at night, during the day the area is filled with thousands (by some counts, a quarter million) of pedestrians daily. Adding a few hundred car trips would be to the detriment of these hordes.


And it’s painfully obvious that cars along the currently-pedestrian streets would help? Apparently McGrory hasn’t ever been to Filene’s or Jordan Marsh (or Macy’s). The streets in Downtown Crossing are one-way, one-lane streets. They are busy with pedestrians, cyclists and deliveries, and trafficked streets nearby usually feature stalled vehicles waiting for lights. I’m not sure how a few extra vehicles in the area—and no on-street parking, assuredly—would be a panacea for the woes. A Wegmans or Target and 500 units of housing, on the other hand, might help.


McGrory concludes, after positing not an iota of actual data, that “the mayor is at war with the car, and the drivers are the collateral damage.” He, as we have seen, believes everyone drives, or at least, everyone ought to. I would contend that the mayor is simply fulfilling the wishes of the majority of voters who elected him. (Yes, believe it or not, Hizzoner still stands for elections.) 51% of Bostonians don’t drive to work, and only 44% drive (it was 51% ten years ago). Yet most of the real estate of our rights of way is given over to cars, even if they are a smaller fraction of the users on a stretch of road.


Maybe, Mr. McGrory, the mayor is simply acting in the best interests of his constituency. Or, at least, the constituency who has actually gotten out of their cars in the top walking city n the country. If you’d like, I’d be glad to take you on a walk and bike ride to some of the places you’d like to have teeming with cars instead of vehicles. Let me know.

Road Width vs Road use

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When I was researching information about the new green housing development in Brighton I found some interesting numbers regarding the traffic on Commonwealth Avenue. As part of their permitting with the Boston Redevelopment Agency, a big PDF details the traffic patterns in the neighborhood, for both pedestrians and vehicles. Looking at the traffic numbers, I got the feeling that Commonwealth Avenue in Brighton is not equitably sized. In other words: the width of the road is not proportional to the number of users for each segment.

Here’s how the roadway in question breaks down (I measured it online):

The unlabeled gray sections are medians. Here it is simplified by use:

And here’s a pie chart of how many feet (the total width is 200 feet) are used for each use:

About two thirds of the street is taken up by traffic lanes, parking or medians which separate traffic lanes and parking (and provide no refuge to pedestrians and no landscaping). But of people traveling along Comm Av, fewer than two thirds are traveling by car. Many fewer. According to the study, there are, at the peak PM rush hour between 5 and 6 p.m., 1343 vehicles traveling along Commonwealth or turning on to or off of Harvard. Of these, 785 go through, and the rest turn. Counting each turner as half a trip, there are 1064 road users along this stretch of Commonwealth Avenue. Assuming some carpooling, this probably equates to about 1400 people per hour.

There was no count for cyclists. This is a frequented stretch of road by bikes, but it is certainly not bike-friendly. I’d guess that there are 50 bikes per hour in total at rush hour. (There are no marked lanes for cyclists and they have to choose between the trafficked main travel lanes or the carriage/parking lanes which have parked car hazards and more stop signs. Most choose the former.)

For pedestrians the counting is easier: there are about 300 walkers per hour.

As for transit users: the T maintains a six-minute headway along this stretch of street during rush hours. In recent years, they’ve moved from two-car trains to three-car trains, and about half the rush-hour consists along this line have three cars. That’s 25 vehicles per hour in each direction. In the peak direction, the T operates at or near crush capacity in this section, with 150 to 200 passengers per car (specs here). The non-peak direction probably operates at about one third that capacity, with 50 passengers per car (around all-seated capacity). This estimate gives us, conservatively, 5000 people per hour.

So, compare the chart above to this one:

The vehicle right-of-way, which uses the lion’s share of the street’s real estate, sees fewer than a quarter of the street’s users. Transit, with less than a sixth of the street width, carries more than triple that number. Per linear foot, the roadway and the sidewalk come out about the same. By passengers per foot of right-of-way per hour (ppfph) the numbers break down as:

  • Vehicle ROW: 11.1
  • Sidewalk: 12.5
  • Transit: 172.0

Note where the decimal is for the transit. It’s 15 times more efficient for each unit of real estate.

This can be documented for many other streets. Take the main cross street here, Harvard Street. It sees about 900 cars (1200 passengers) at peak hour, 350 pedestrians and (I’m guessing here) 60 cyclists (it was not counted in the bike count database since 1976). The street right-of-way is 78 feet wide, with 22 feet of sidewalk, 10 of bike lane and 46 for vehicles (travel and parking). Of course, the MBTA’s route 66 bus runs every 9 minutes at crush capacity (60 passengers per bus) in both directions, carrying about 800 passengers.

On Harvard, the sidewalks carry 15.9 pedestrians per foot per hour, the bike lanes 6 and the vehicle lanes 43.5. (Not terribly surprisingly, Harvard Street is usually gridlocked between 5 and 6 p.m.) This neglects to account for the efficiency of the buses. Buses demand some real estate, namely a 10-foot-by-50-foot bus stop every 1000 feet or so. That breaks down to one half of one linear foot, but for good measure we’ll assume the buses use that much street real estate during travel, and assign two of the vehicle feet to the buses. That changes the numbers:

  • Vehicle ROW: 27.3
  • Bike lanes: 6.0
  • Sidewalk: 15.9
  • Transit: 400
Does that mean that the 66 bus is more efficient than the Green Line? Certainly not. With 800 passengers per hour, the 66 is stretched to capacity: it gets bogged down in traffic, it frequently runs late or in bunches, and it crawls along its route. To add many more passengers, it would need its own lane. Even still, if, as a bus rapid transit, it took over the parking lanes (note: this won’t happen any time soon) and doubled its ridership (likely, considering how many people take it even despite its slothly pace, it would still be more efficient than the adjacent roadway.
(And one more note: we’ll look at the Red Line on the Longfellow Bridge soon, but the back of the envelope calculation is 15 trains each way carrying an average of 750 passengers each per hour in 30 feet of right of way, giving a ppfph of 750. A New York Subway line running every three minutes with 1000 passengers per train would yield a ppfph of 1333. A highway at peak capacity might be able to attain 2700 passengers per lane per mile—or a bit more with a lot of buses—for a ppfph of 225, but adding any more vehicles quickly decreases the speed and capacity.)

Not the worst kind of development in Allston

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The Boston Globe ran a piece recently about a “green” development in Brighton Allston. The part of Allston it’s in, near the base of Corey Hill, is generally thought of as the epicenter of cheap student housing in Boston: glorified (or not-that-glorified) tenements for $500 a room. A big developer got some nice press for their green housing development, and I began to cringe when I thought of the green-washing possibilities: the token solar panels and patch of grass on the roof paired with a guarantee of free parking with every unit! The thrown-together rain garden to drain the massive surface parking out back. The eminent-domained two family houses razed for a new building with a lower overall FAR and units per acre.

So I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that the development was, overall, not an overall detriment to the area. It’s scale is fitting with the neighborhood—four stories is de rigeur for that area. It has parking, but the variance is stepped down and spaces cost $165 to $200 per month, market rate for the area and 10% or more of the building’s rent (and they’re not bundled). This is my biggest peeve with so-called green projects: they are frequently either built in areas without transportation choices (this one is in a walkable, bikeable and transit-able neighborhood, even if it is on the B line) or, if they are, they either choose or are forced by their lenders to overbuild parking, which they then give away. Even at one space per unit, I think parking is overbuilt in this case. But at least in the case of “The Edge” (warning: big PDF) some of it is outside, and if it doesn’t sell it could be surreptitiously converted to open space.

Here’s the Globe’s map of the development. And a block-scale greening might just be a good investment for the developer, too.

There are other decent green features, at The Element (yes, these are stupid names, and yes there is a blog post about building names to be written), for instance. Like individual water meters: no more long hot showers for your $500 a month. (Can I complain? No, the landlord in my 1885-era house pays to water our garden.) And white roof and rooftop vegetable garden (a great amenity!). And a bunch of other garden variety green cues.

What is this housing replacing? Garages, abandoned light industry and parking. While losing the industrial buildings is sort of a shame, this neighborhood will probably never again have small-scale manufacturing. The project will build or rehab several hundred apartments for a price tag of $125 million, not a bad shot in the arm for the local economy. And since it’s on a streetcar line and a stone’s throw from Harvard Street, it’s a perfectly good place for even higher-density residential.

The site for the Edge is about 200′ by 175′, or about 4/5 acres, with 79 units—about 100 units per acre. With 1.75 people per unit, this is more than 100,000 people per square mile (more than the actual density, since it doesn’t account for nearby infrastructure). It’s not as dense as the grove of three-deckers I lived in on Harvard Ave in Brookline (almost double the density), but it’s not bad. These Allston census tracts clock in at 40,000 to 50,000 people per square mile—some of the densest in Boston (12,000 overall) and nearly as dense as Manhattan (66,000), so it’s about right for the neighborhood.

One qualm I have with most of this new development is that it lacks character, and from the pictures, this seems to be the case. Apparently everyone wants a sleek, modern granite kitchen and bare, white walls. I still think there’s a market for new 1920s-style apartments with accents like built-in pantries and wooden molding, but maybe I’m a crotchety old man who needs his scotch. Who know, maybe people love having everything sleek and white—I understand the ethic but think that it is overused.

And yes, it’s expensive. But every new unit of housing on the market should, if economics tells us anything, bring down prices for everyone (or allow more people to access the market). Economics—supply and demand—tells us that; prices are high in walkable neighborhoods because there is more demand than supply. There’s an ongoing, and well-founded, worry that new development will continue to marginalize low income populations. However, I think that it is more problematic when NIMBYs strike down denser housing because it is “out of character”, constricting supply and driving prices higher. Next: we need sustainable housing for low income residents.

Bike sharing trip lengths

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For a transportation data junkie like me, one of the great things about bike sharing is that the system lets you log in and see your trips. I’ve been riding Hubway for about a month, and I’ve taken 21 trips. Of these trips, 20 have been ten minutes or less. The one longer trip was 13 minutes. At no time have I gotten even half way to the 30 minute cutoff. Over on the right is a chart of the trips I’ve taken. The frequent four-minute trip is when I jump on a Hubway at Charles and ride it across town to my office, docking it outside the building. It’s faster than taking the T another stop, fighting the crowd at Park Street and either walking the Common or taking the Green Line one stop to Boylston.

This will probably change once Hubway launches in Cambridge, especially if they manage to put a station in the park near my house (not that likely, since it’s a mostly residential area, although it is halfway between Central Square and the grocery stores on the river, so there might be good traffic to those areas; I’ve been lobbying Whole Foods by Twitter to sponsor a rack there). I figure a trip on a Hubway from home to work would take about 16 minutes, so I’d still be well within the limit. And if I were taking a longer trip on a shared bike, I’d probably be cognizant of the time limits and swap a bike in and out at a rack (you just have to dock and undock) to reset the clock and get another half hour. Fifteen seconds of my time is certainly worthwhile to save a few bucks, and most trips are bound to pass by a Hubway rack.

Anyway, bike sharing in New York City is getting readier to launch and there’s a bit of a hoo-rah about how high its marginal hourly rates are. It is worth noting that the 97% of rides which are under 30 minutes in DC, as quoted by this article, (and 99+% are under an hour) are rides for frequent users on a monthly or annual pass. Capital Bikeshare publishes a lot of data (*) on their website (from which the chart below was taken) and the number of trips under an hour, for annual users, is pretty staggering. The number of trips under 2 hours—at which point trip costs really get out of hand, is 99.83%.

The main impact of overage costs are on casual users. For casual users, only slightly more than half of trips are completed within the free half-hour time limit, and 25% of trips are longer than an hour. So these folks pay. This is okay with me, for the most part, since they basically subsidize the riders who pay $50 to $100 and ride the bikes for several months. (If I make 20 trips per month of 8 months, my $50 Hubway fee will divide out to about 30¢ per trip.)

There seem to be two types of casual user (someone buying a single- or multi-day pass). One are people who want to try out the system (or use the system) in a similar manner to a frequent user and understand fully how it works. These folks probably fall mainly within the time limit. The second group are the people using shared bikes in place of rental bikes (which CitiBikes encourages on their website for longer-duration trips). This is basically how carsharing and traditional car rental operate. For a short trip (a few hours) a shared car is most certainly cheaper than a rented one. For a multi-day trip, it’s probably cheaper to go with a rental car. Bicycles, not surprisingly, have shorter trip times, and more disparity between low-cost (or no-cost) shorter trips and quite expensive long ones.

And rental bikes aren’t that cheap. The first hour is $14. Half a day is $39. These rates are more expensive than bike sharing for the first 90 minutes, on par from one-and-a-half to three hours, and cheaper beyond that. So if you want to rent a bicycle to roll around Manhattan all day, bike sharing probably isn’t for you. But take a look at the number of trips in DC longer than two hours. It’s only about 5% (and casual users only account for 1/6th of all trips). So the number of users dinged for particularly long trips is rather small.

There’s obviously a learning curve to the pricing scheme, and a number of Yelpers in Boston have apparently not understood it (although, frankly, it’s not that hard to understand). Apparently Hubway could do a better job of communicating this, and maybe CitiBikes should as well. What I really am surprised by is how someone would take bike with no lock and keep it out in a city for five or six hours! It’s not like they’re riding a century on it. I’d have to assume that even an oblivious tourist would get scared off by Boston traffic after a while, or run out of room on the Charles River paths and make for a cafe or museum. And in New York, where most any bicycle parked anywhere is asking to be stolen, having a rental bike is a liability. With a shared bike, all you have to do is find the nearest dock and leave the bike there. No lock required. With well-placed kiosks, this should be relatively easy.

What will be interesting is how this affects revenue from casual users (looking at the data from DC, I doubt that more than a handful of frequent users will ever pay an overage fee). While casual users do not account for much of the ridership, they do provide a good income stream. It’s possible that the higher rental costs will drive away prospective users. Even with higher prices, the drop in ridership will result in less revenue from casual ridership.

However, we’re talking about New York. There are a lot of potential casual riders (tourists), so it might be good to have higher prices as a bit of a barrier to entry to keep casual users from usurping the transportation demand aspect of bike sharing. And New York tourists don’t seem particularly price sensitive. Visitors to the City are paying $300 a night for a hotel room, $150 for tickets to a show and $40 for a pre-show meal at a mediocre Times Square restaurant. At those rates, what is another $25 to ride a bike around Central Park for a couple of hours? The higher rates—especially for casual users—strike me as a good balance between keeping bikes in the system available and maximizing revenue.

* CaBi has CSV files with every trip taken, too. I’m drooling.

How high are MBTA fares? Not.

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According to the news, Occupy Boston has a new target: the MBTA. This is wrongheaded. They should protest the crawl with which the legislature is able (or unable) to make changes to the T’s funding mechanism, the debt burden shouldered by the agency from the Big Dig and myriad other poor decisions by the state and by the T in the last ten or twenty years. But protesting a modest fare increase? Not helpful.


Back in January, when the draconian proposals came out, my reaction was “well it must not be as bad as last time—then they were threatening to shut down commuter rail at 7 p.m.” Because of intransigence on the part of the legislature, the T has to threaten huge cuts, and then make smaller ones, so it’s a better pill to swallow. This time, at least, people seem to realize it’s a problem. Whether the legislature will act is another question all together.


In any case, the T will be raising fares to $2. Monthly passes will rise to $70. This is what the Occupy folks are protesting. And, well, this is really not a big deal. Look at other cities fares:

(“Lower Fares” are shown where there is are multiple monthly pass levels except those based on peak and off-peak fares. Notes: Houston has no monthly pass system. Boston has a $48 bus-only pass, San Francisco’s higher fare allows in-city travel on BART, Denver sells a year of transit passes for the price of 11 months, Miami gives a 10% discount for group purchases. Washington DC has no monthly passes, but a $15 weekly bus pass and a $32 weekly Metro pass allowing fares up to $3.25, which covers travel within the city limits.)

Only two cities have lower fares than Boston, and neither of these has a comparable level of transit. San Francisco does sell a cheaper pass for non BART-users, but those are confined to MUNI lines which are, well, not particularly speedy (the longest MUNI lines are about the distance from South Station to Alewife, but they take more than 22 minutes to complete the route). If you look at the “Big Six” cities with MSA transit use over 10% and center city transit use over 20% (Boston, SF, Philly, Chicago, DC and New York), the average monthly pass is about $85. DC has no real monthly pass option. And New York tops out over $100. Of course, their trains do run all night.


Here is another way of showing that the MBTA fares aren’t that high—looking at fares for major transit systems through the last 100 years in nominal and current dollars.

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I left out DC (which has distance-based fares) and SEPTA (I couldn’t find fare history data for Philly) and threw in gas prices for fun. Note that the T has generally been about the same price as MUNI in San Francisco, and cheaper than Chicago and New York. (Except from 1920 to 1950, when Boston fares were a dime, and New York was a nickel.) The transit agencies all raise their fares to cope with increasing prices. And while the T has never hit the two dollar mark before, unless there’s deflation this year (there won’t be) it’s likely that prices will, in real terms, regress below the $2 mark in the next couple of years. It’s also significantly cheaper than New York and Chicago—especially since Chicago doesn’t have free bus transfers on single fares. And lest we complain further, Boston has had the lowest fare around since MUNI raised fares to $2 a couple years back.

Oh, and unless gas prices tumble real soon (and we’ll need another proper recession for that; in other words, we really don’t want cheap gas) any transit system is still cheaper than a gallon of petrol.


A few notes:

  1. New York has slight discounts—10% from 1993 to 2009, 7% since 2009, when purchasing at least $10 of transit fare. Chicago has charged between 10¢ and 30¢ for bus-train transfers since the 1960s. 
  2. Since most transit users (about 2/3 in Boston) use monthly passes—an advent of the last 30 years or so—their actual fare per ride, assuming 2.5 rides per day for a transit-dependent user, is significantly lower: under a dollar in Boston. In transit-heavy New York, assuming 3 rides per day yields a cost per trip of just over a dollar.
  3. DC’s higher fares and lack of monthly passes yield a higher farebox recovery rate compared with other systems of over 60%.
  4. Commuter rail fares are going up, too, but for a less sensitive population: 28% of bus riders have incomes over $75,000, while 72% of Commuter Rail riders do.
  5. Data sources for Boston (Note that this study has transit fare comparisons in it, but doesn’t use the most-frequently-purchased fares; for instance it shows a single ride in New York as $2.50 and in Boston as $2. Most users pay less.), New York, Chicago, San Francisco. Gas prices from the EIA. Inflation from the BLS.

The Portland-Boston options

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If you’re going from Portland, Maine to Boston, you have several choices. You could drive … if you like to be aggravated, spend a lot, have it take no less time and lose two (or more) hours of productivity. Or, you could take the bus or the train. This page has, previously, talked about buses and trains further south along the Northeast Corridor, but the conditions are different further north.

From Boston to DC, Amtrak is a luxury product competing with air travel, boasting faster travel times and more amenities. Buses are cheap (cheaper than Boston-Portland for twice the distance) but offer cramped seats, sometimes shady equipment and the opportunity to sit in traffic for six hours if you happen to hit rush hour (likely). From Boston to Portland, travel times are faster for the bus, costs are similar, and there is a sort-of symbiotic competition between the modes; the train actually provides mostly for trips which don’t traverse the whole of the route, the bus serves air travelers, and both serve as alternatives to driving (there are no Portland-to-Boston flights).

Here’s a quick comparison between the bus* and the train in several metrics.

(* We’ll discount the couple of Greyhound buses along this route, which take longer, have no Wifi, and an overall inferior product.)

First, why is driving a poor choice? The costs, mainly (even if you have free parking at your destination).

Car Bus Train
Fare — $16-27 $20-25
Tolls 6.50 — —
Gas $14 — —
Other maintenance $11 — —
Total $31.50 $16-27 $20-25

Notes:

  • Bus fares: $22 one way. $27 to Logan Airport. $32 same-day round trip and discounts for college students. Train fares depend on time of day, either $20 or $25 (a few very-off-peak trips are $15, college students can buy six trips for $76).
  • Tolls $3 in Maine, $2 in NH, $3 one way in MA (using Tobin Bridge).
  • Gas: 110 miles at 27.5mpg and $3.50 per gallon. Other maintenance: 10¢ per mile.
  • Add another $35 to get the IRS-computed cost of driving (55¢ per mile)
  1. Travel time — The bus is scheduled at 1:55, the train at 2:25. This seems like an easy win, right? Not entirely. Outside of rush hours or weekend getaway and drive-back times, the bus will probably arrive at its terminal faster than the train. During rush hour? The bus could spend an hour getting in to our out of Boston. Also, it partially depends on where you are going. If you are going to the Financial district or somewhere along the Red Line, the bus will get you nearer to the Red Line, although it’s a bit of a walk. For the Green Line or Orange Line, it’s more of a wash, and near North Station (say, for a basketball or hockey game) you’d be better off taking the train. If there’s bad traffic, the bus will spend quite a bit of time getting from one side of downtown to the other. So, verdict: Bus, but not always.
  2. Frequency — Here, the bus winds, rather handily. It runs every hour for most of the day. The train runs five trips daily, although there are more frequent trips during rush hours, quite useful for outbound commuting during rush hour when getting from South Station to Route 1 is particularly bad. Verdict: Bus, except perhaps at the peak of outbound rush hour.
  3. Guarantee of a seat — If you go to buy a ticket for the train and it says it’s sold out, it’s sold out, no ticket. (You could board and play dumb and buy a ticket on-board by phone, but you might wind up standing. I’m not sure if Amtrak overbooks, but if you have a ticket they will let you on. When trains are sold out they sometimes check tickets on the platform.) On the bus, you buy a ticket, and it’s good, well, forever, but there are no reservations: everyone lines up for the bus, and if there are more riders than there are seats, well, you wait for the next bus. At heavy travel times, this means that you have to show up half an hour before departure, negating any real travel time savings. Amtrak suggests you show up half an hour early, but I haven’t been the only one sprinting down the platform to make a train. Concord Coach would have to amend its ticketing policy to allow for seating reservations (i.e. sell tickets for specific times) to guarantee seats. Which would be nice. Verdict: Train.
  4. Comfort — Here, the train takes the cake, as it can exploit economies of scale in a way that the bus can not. A bus is, basically, an airplane with a top speed of 75 mph, legroom-wise (the windows are bigger). The train has seating pitch equivalent to airlines’ domestic first class and wider seats. And you can get up and walk around on the train. Verdict: Train.
  5. Luggage — The train and bus both have advantages here. On the train, you can carry on however much luggage you’d like and store it above you on the (large) overhead luggage racks. On the bus you can put luggage in the under-bus bins. You can take skis, for example, on either. Verdict: Both
  6. Bicycles — Both modes allow bicycles, with caveats. For the bus, the caveat is that the bicycle is only taken if there is sufficient room, which may not be the case at busy times (especially weekends when many passengers have luggage). On the train, bicycles are taken at all times, but there is a $5 charge, although you could probably get on without a bike ticket and no one would be the wiser. The bike on the train doesn’t go underneath with the potential to get rattled around, an issue if you have an expensive ride. Verdict: Both
  7. Arrival times — While Amtrak suggests you arrive half an hour before your train, your ticket reserves a seat. On the bus, that is not the case. (see above) If the bus is full when you show, you may be waiting for the next one. (They don’t specify this on the website, but suggest arriving especially early during the holidays.) Both experience delays, although not very frequently. Verdict: Both
  8. Airport service — Concord Trailways serves the airport directly, although they charge an extra $5 for the service, it is generally direct to and from Portland. Amtrak requires two transfers to the terminal, but for a $20 ticket it’s less than the bus, even with T fare. Verdict: Bus
  9. Food — On the bus, you get pretzels and a bottle of water. On the train, you can go to the cafe and buy a beer. It’s not free, but if you have your own water bottle Poland Springs is not that exciting. Verdict: Train
  10. Wifi/power/entertainment — This depends on how much you like PG-rated movies. If you do, the bus provides them for free. If you don’t, the train provides slightly better wifi. Both bus and train have power ports. The peak wifi connection speed on the bus is 45 KB/sec. On the train the use several providers and it’s over 100 KB/sec. Neither is fast, but one will load Gmail a bit faster. (Also, you can use your iPhone for ticketing on the train.) However, the train traverses some cell-signal-free areas in New Hampshire and Maine, the signal along I-95 is better. Oh, and if you make a phone call on the bus, you get yelled at; on the train you can go to the cafe or a vestibule and talk away. Verdict: Both
  11. Restrooms — If you have the choice, use the facilities at either terminal. If you require the restroom during the trip, the one on the train is slightly better. Verdict: Train
  12. From a transportation planning perspective — This is a bit of a harder question. Ostensibly, the bus breaks even but, of course, it is subsidized, significantly, by government-built and funded roads (or roads funded by the tolls of other travelers). The train has significant government investment in infrastructure, and a direct subsidy to cover operating costs (they’d have to double costs to break even). Both are energy efficient. Both are quite advantageous over automobiles. Taking the train may take a bit longer, but it’s a more comfortable ride, and, perhaps, non-drivers shouldn’t be forced in to uncomfortable conditions. The bus is at its top speed, but with more patronage and investment, perhaps, a train could make a non-stop trip in 1:30, which would easily negate the bus’s advantages. But, for now, we’ll go with a verdict of Both
So, which wins? Well, the train wins, 4-3-4. But really, the traveling public wins, with 25 daily departures along the route. Take whichever is more convenient, especially since travel time is probably the main factor for most trips and the bus (usually) wins out there. If you’re interested in comfort more than travel time, the train is where it’s at. For speed (and a movie) the bus is hard to beat, especially outside of rush hour. If you’re in Portland and a bus leaves in 10 minutes with a train in two hours, by all means get on the bus. Plan your day around the schedules, but it’s perfectly easy to treat the corridor like a transit system (albeit one with poor headways, although they are better than most MBTA commuter rail lines). Take whichever you’d like.

I will also point out that the Concord Coach provides one of the best intercity bus experiences I’ve had. Unlike many Boston-to-New York routes (and I’m including Bolt and Megabus, which will make random, 15 minute stops at gas stations in Connecticut for “snack” where is sure seems like there’s some payola from the gas station operator for bringing in 50 captive customers) the service is very professionally run. The buses leave from terminals, not streeetcorners, the staff answers questions, and it does not seem like a two-bit operation. Considering that 20 years ago the only bus service to Portland was provided by Greyhound, Concord Coach has proven that the market can be captured and expanded (in 1997 they only ran 9 round trips daily) with service and quality.

Expanding reverse commute options in Boston

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As with any city in the United States, many jobs in Boston are located away from the central business district, although those areas are not served by transit. Many jobs in Boston—in the Downtown, Back Bay, and Cambridge, are transit accessible, but many more are located in suburban office parks, far from the center of the city and with very limited transit options. There are shuttles from various transit nodes (namely Newton Highlands and Alewife) to locations along 128, mainly in Waltham. The MBTA operates limited bus service to the outer reaches of Waltham, Lexington and Needham along 128, although they are designed mainly for inbound commuting and their outbound scheduled times are likely too long for many commuters. There is limited availability and the speeds are not designed to be even close to being time-competitive with driving. However, there is ample office space which is inexpensive in comparison to downtown, and attracts all sorts of companies, even those with more urban employee bases.

There is transit service to near the Needham-Burlington employment node along 128 via the MBTA’s Riverside Line, but with a dozen suburban stops, it takes 45 minutes to reach the terminus from the core. With added shuttle times, it would create a quite-long commute. Two commuter rail lines pass through the Needham-Newton-Waltham-Lexington region, but neither has a station at 128, and their schedules are certainly not designed for reverse commuting. (It is also less desirable for park-and-ride commuters from Riverside and Woodland, as travel times to Back Bay and Downtown are not particularly speedy.) It is with these commuter lines—especially the Framingham-Worcester line—that there is potential for that to change.
There are two recent developments which make this change more feasible. One is the now-underway expansion of the Yawkey Station (named after the long-time (and racist) Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey) near Kenmore Square in Boston. Originally built to access Fenway Park, the station received limited service in the 1990s on one side platform, but is being rebuilt to accommodate stops from all trains. The station is a short walk from Boston University’s campus and the large Longwood Medical Area, both of which have significant employment and expensive parking. In addition, the parking lots surrounding the station will be redeveloped in to office space. With more frequent service, the station will better serve these communities.
The other new development is the (long-awaited) transfer of the Framingham-Worcester rail line from private ownership and dispatching (CSX) to the MBTA. The private dispatching has been blamed for delays which keep on-time performance on the line low, and the MBTA has been unable to increase service on the line west of Framingham because of limits in capacity. Still, the Framingham line sees ridership of nearly 20,000 (nearly 10,000 each way) a day (see this pdf for full statistics), second only to the Providence-South Attleboro line, which sees a significant portion of its ridership board at it’s own station at Route 128.
There are three major problems with the existing 128 station. The first is that it is not located near a major job node. There are virtually no jobs within walking distance, and no major job nodes nearby which could be reached in a short shuttle trip. In fact, east of the station, the Blue Hills take up several square miles of conservation land, which do not create many jobs. The station does serve about 2500 MBTA passengers daily and another 1000 Amtrak travelers. The second issue is that, when it was rebuilt in 2000, it was forecast to have more parking revenue that ultimately materialized, creating pitfalls for projects like it which are funded by parking revenues. Even with some MBTA parking facilites, like the Alewife, overflowing, 128 station sees hundreds of empty parking spaces every day. 
These are exacerbated by the third: the 128 Station is located in the center of the least-population-dense area along 128. With the aforementioned Blue Hills on one side and relatively sparsely-populated suburbs on the other, there are few commuters who traverse several exits on 128 for the speedy trip downtown. Those coming up I-95 from Providence would likely use some of the park-and-ride stations further south, which, thanks to the high-speed nature of the line, have shorter-than-auto times to Downtown Boston (from Mansfield to Back Bay, for instance, scheduled train times average nearly 60 mph, along a much straighter line than the often-jammed highways). Commuters to the southeast use the Red Line service, and those to the north are served by the paralleling Needham and Franklin commuter lines. 
A bus/rail transfer station with commuter parking at Route 128 in Weston, near the intersection with the Turnpike, however, may prove much more fruitful to the business and commuting communities, as it would address many of the issues which the current commuting options do not. First, it would be a boon to 128-bound commuters. (A local planning group is in early stages of discussion about this type of project.) The intersection of 128 and the Massachusetts Turnpike—which parallels the rail line—is only 11 miles from downtown Boston. Without freight traffic, rail service from Yawkey Station to this part of the line could be scheduled in 10 or 12 minutes—faster still if the grade-separated line was upgraded from a current speed limit of 60 mph. This would significantly shorten the transit time for many reverse commuters to the 128 corridor. Trains could be run at 20 minute intervals (they already are in the peak direction, so this would not require significant investment new equipment) with timed, coordinated shuttle transfers. In the future, an HOV/bus lane could speed these commuters to workplaces along the highway, and the current Riverside Line could be extended to this station. In addition to these outbound services, connecting bus service could be explored for inbound commuters with timed transfers at this station.
Such a station would not solely benefit non-traditional commuters. It would also be a boon to those Boston-bound (and, thus, not further encourage the less-than-ecologically sound movement of more jobs to the suburbs). With dedicated on- and off-ramps from 128 and the Turnpike, a garage could provide a seamless connection for park-and-ride commuters. Not only is I-90 more and more congested at rush hour (in both directions), but tolls are now $2.50 each way. Add in gas and parking costs, and $5 or $7 for parking to avoid the Turnpike would be a deal. In other words, there is already a $5 economic incentive to avoid the Turnpike, which could be a good push factor towards transit—if it were close to being time-competitive with driving. 
In addition, with more-frequent off-peak service levels, such a station would serve non-commuters as well. Visitors to Boston’s many cultural and entertainment options could be enticed with an easy, comfortable ride, and one which would incur a significant cost savings over tolls, gas and parking. The MBTA already serves many customers going to Fenway Park, this could be expanded significantly.
Now, these options neglect to mention the fate of Newton’s inner stations, which are currently served by some Framingham-Worcester trains. These stations—which once had frequent commuter service—were relegated by the Turnpike to one-platform stations with no reverse commute options. Still, these stations—Auburndale, West Newton and Newtonville, average about 400 boardings per day, more than the further-out Wellesley stations which have more service. This corridor is one of the most densely-populated in Newton (moreso than the area traversed by the Green Line), and more frequent service would certainly result in higher ridership. A local-express service could be added through “The Newtons” with local trains departing the hypothetical 128 station and stopping in Auburndale, West Newton and Newtonville (and, perhaps, additional stops in Newton Corner, Brighton and Allston) towards downtown, allowing transfers from service further west and multi-directional travel in Newton and Boston.

Here, for instance, is a potential schedule for this service and assumes some line upgrades. E = express, L = local stops, NB this is a general idea, and quite condensed, but does show that clockface scheduling (except for a peak-hour express from Worcester) would be feasible. This shows inbound scheduling; outbound would be similar (with a quick transfer at Route 128) with slightly later first and last trains:

6a – 9a, 4p-7p 9a – 4p, 7p-10p
Worcester 4:30a 5:30a :10 :20 :40 :00 11:00p
Framingham 5:10a 5:40a   6:10a :10 :30 :50 :10 :40 11:40p
L L L L E L L L L
128 5:30a 6:00a   6:30a :10 :12 :30 :32 :50 :52 :00 :30 12:00a 12:40a
L L E E L E L E L L L L L
Yawkey 5:50a 6:20a   6:40a :00 :12 :20 :32 :40 :52 :20 :40 12:20a 1:00a
Back Bay 5:52a 6:22a   6:42a :02 :14 :22 :34 :42 :55 :22 :42 12:22a 1:02a
South Sta. 5:55a 6:25a   6:45a :05 :17 :25 :37 :45 :57 :25 :45 12:25a 1:05a
Finally, there are not-insurmountable logistics towards building this type of service. The first is the ability to run two-track service between Boston and Worcester. The main current impediment to this service is through CSX’s Beacon Park Yard, which the freight railroad will mostly vacate as part of the deal with the state. This should allow the MBTA to build a second track through the area. Further west, service to the Newton stations would require platforms on both sides of the tracks, which is currently in planning stages for Auburndale (and likely relatively inexpensive for stations in West Newton and Newtonville).
The second is the ability to build a park-and-ride facility near Route 128. This, too, would present minimal issues—even for a three- or four-track station with local-express service. Why? West of Auburndale Station, the Framingham Worcester retains the four-track right-of-way which was present until the construction of the Turnpike between Back Bay and Framingham. The two tracks take up only half of the available real estate, and with shored-up embankments, there would be plenty of room for four tracks and platforms (currently, the right-of-way is 120 feet wide in this section). The office park to the north of the tracks could be connected to the station, and a parking facility could be built on the footprint of a large parking lot to the east of the offices. Furthermore, the parking facility could be connected, at rather minimal expense, to several of the ramps from 128 and the Turnpike, allowing easy access from the highways to the station. In addition, the station would allow access to the Leo J Martin Golf Course and Weston Ski Track, putting these recreational facilities within easy access of downtown Boston.


View Weston Sta. commuter rail in a larger map

Funding for this facility, and related commuter rail improvements would, of course, be a challenge. Certainly, parking revenues could help fund the parking facility, and maybe even subsidize rail operations. An additional toll surcharge could be placed on Turnpike commuters, but these drivers are already more burdened than others in Boston. Perhaps the nearby localities, which reap significant benefits from the office space in their midst, could be leaned on to help fund this type of project, which would benefit their residents and workers, and even provide some insurance to their suburban office parks against a future where higher gas prices make such car-centric facilities less economically desirable.

There is an obvious need for transit service along the Route 128 corridor. However, without smart investments in infrastructure, it will be hampered by slow service and unattractive to those who would most benefit.

(Or maybe I just want a quick train trip out to the Ski Track.)

Witches and Networks

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A couple items of note from the Boston Globe today (one pay-walled, one not):

1. This summer, we posted on the well-used but ill-marketed weekend train service to beaches on the MBTA’s Newburyport-Rockport line. This past weekend, and this coming weekend, the T is adding several trains on that line. Why? The line goes through (quite literally, in a tunnel) Salem, that of witch trials and general spookiness. Hallowe’en is big business in Salem, with the monthlong “haunted happenings” peaking on the last two weekends of the month. With roads closed and parking limited, the city actively promotes the use of public transportation, and the T obliges. (Oh, and parking gets a lot more expensive. Supply et demand.) With the city backing, the train schedule is more than doubled on weekend afternoons.

Obviously, there’s capacity on the line (which handles nearly no freight—the main choke points are Beverly Junction and the aforementioned one-track tunnel through Salem). Why is there no extra service in the summer? There are probably a couple of reasons. Salem wants as many people as to come as possible—at least before Hallowe’en evening when things can get rowdy. More feet on the ground means more dollars in the coffers. The beach towns are not likely pressing the T for more people to crowd the beaches. They’d be glad to charge drivers $25 to park, but only until the lots are full. Otherwise, there’s not a lot of money to be made on beach admission. Second, the witch tourism is planned far in advance and not very weather dependent (although it likely drops off in case of rain or—this year, apparently—snow). A rainy day does not see many beach-goers. Still, there’s no reason the T shouldn’t at least promote the beach service they have in the summer, even if it’s not to the extent of doubling spooky service.

2. There was a very interesting event on the T yesterday: a startup meetup in the last car of a midday Red Line train. (The Globe article is paywalled and I can’t find a free link. Update: here’s a free link) Apparently, a bunch of local startup firms all met on the Red Line, had short speeches between stops, and then networked. Great idea! As one of the top venture sites in the country (although lagging behind Silicon Valley) many of these types are already on the Red Line every day, so what a good way to get people together. Now, if only we could have rational development policies which did not underprice suburban office parks and pull these companies out to Waltham and Burlington, where innovators spend way too much time behind the wheels of their cars.

Which reminds me … this year, I’ve been tracking my travel. Every day, every mile, every mode. Seriously. I have a spreadsheet, and every month I post a “transport report” for that month. (Here’s January; you can click to subsequent months.) At first, I had no idea what I’d use the data for (other than fun charts. hooray fun charts!). But now I have some ideas:

v 0.1: Manual data entered in to a Google Doc, manual charts made in Excel
v 0.2: Once I figure out how to make PHP and JPGraph work (any help would be appreciated, seriously), have the charts update live from a Google Doc / database when the data is entered
v 0.3: Open this to other transportation geeks who want to provide this type of data, and see if it works—and what happens. When you think about every mile you travel and every mode, you tend to drive less.
v 1.0: Track transport and mode using smart phones (doable, I think, based on discussions from Transportation Camp last spring) and gather data, and develop a social network based on where people are and when. What do you do with these data? All sorts of things. Like:

  • Real-time updates about traffic and transit problems sent to people based on their past behavior (i.e., we know you take the Red Line or drive Route 2 between 8:15 and 8:25, but there’s a disabled train / traffic accident, so you should consider the #1 bus / going to Alewife instead)
  • Helpful hints to help people drive less. A system could weed out short trips which could be made by foot or bicycle. Or help people link trips together. Or even take shorter routes.
  • Let people meet others with similar commuting patterns. If enough people used the system, it might be able to pair drivers in to car pools (“we’ve determined that you and another driver have each driven alone from the same neighborhood to the same office park with 15 minutes of each other 23 of the last 27 days—here is a link to send them an email/fb message/tweet to try to form a carpool.”) or meet people on the train or bus. To make the solitary confinement of a crowded train less—well—solitary. This would be optional, of course, but could be very powerful
  • Provide really interesting data to planners on who is going where, when and by what modes.
Obviously, some work needs to be done. But it’s an idea. If you have any ideas for it, or want to be notified when I get the system off the ground (or even close to that phase) watch this page or email me at ari dot ofsevit at gmail.

Why doesn’t the MBTA better market beach service?

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It’s 8 a.m. on a Saturday, the sun is shining bright and the mercury is approaching 80˚. In Boston, these are signs for hundreds of thousands of city dwellers to move north and south and find refuge on the hot sands and cold waters of miles of beaches. While the states most picturesque beaches are probably on Cape Cod, there are many within an hour of downtown Boston. The ones to the north are particularly splendid, and hordes of travelers pack the roads to get there.

There’s a problem. Past Peabody, Route 128 is only two lanes in each direction and can’t cope with the excess traffic. And a bridge repair project has stifled I-93 from its usual four lanes to two, causing a massive back-up and extra traffic on Route 1, the only real alternate route to the northeast. (Fellow beach-goers today described traffic which only let up for a mile in a couple places.) Plus, if you brave the traffic (and survive), many beaches charge $20 or more for parking—often a long walk form the sand. And sometimes full. Tough luck after an hour-long drive.

Some close-in beaches, most notably Revere Beach (a 20 minute transit trip from downtown) are easily accessible without a car, but they are often quite crowded, and water quality is not particularly good near the city. There are, however, several beaches to the north of the city along the Rockport commuter rail line which are within a mile of train stations and can easily be reached from the city.

It’s almost impossible to drive to Manchester-by-the-sea’s Singing Beach, which has restricted parking (town residents only), but it may be the most accessible beach on the north shore as it is just half a mile’s walk from the train station. (There is additional parking for “outsiders” for $25—at the train station.) Several beaches in Gloucester and Rockport are about a mile from stations further out on the line. And Plum Island is a long walk from Newburyport but a manageable bike ride. For the beach, the train is relatively popular; a six-car consist today was about 80% full today from North Station until the train emptied out at Manchester for the walk to the beach. (And on the way home, the platform was crowded several deep and the conductors opened all cars to accommodate the crowd.) Service was punctual, and as fast as driving. With gas near $4 per gallon, it was cheaper, too.

A full train disembarks at Manchester-by-the-sea.

Obviously the train service is working, but the T doesn’t seem to realize that they have a product to market. Weekend service on the commuter lines has waxed and waned over the years, but is now provided almost universally. Headways are genearlly two hours with service in to the evening. Loads carried are light, but full, locomotive-hauled trains are operated. Except for special events (baseball games, major downtown events like the every-few-years arrival of Tall Ships) service is usually limited to one or two cars in a full-train consist. Since the trains are running anyway, any new person on the train is revenue with a marginal cost of nearly zero. So the T should promote the use of these trains whenever they can.

And sometimes they do. In the winter, Wachusett Mountain ski area has partnered with the T to promote the “Ski Train” to Fitchburg, with a shuttle service to the base of the mountain. And the T turned one of their train cars in to a “bike car” which is half seats and half bikes (similar to cars in regular service on Caltrain) which are used, weekends, only, on alternating trains to Rockport and Newburyport (all non-rush hour trains accommodate bicycles, however). They promote this car as a way to reach even more beaches (the south side has a similar car on the Greenbush line), but there’s little information on, say, exactly which stop you should go to get to which beach. Or a full schedule of non-bike car trains which go near the beaches. So if you want to go to the beach on the T, you have to plan it yourself.

Beach-goers line the platform awaiting a train back to the city.

Many people certainly do just that. But the MBTA should put a line item in its publicity budget to promote weekend commuter services to the ocean. With a ridership of 1.3 million daily, there is probably a large contingent that don’t know that it’s possible to spend the day at the beach without a knuckle-dragging slog through traffic or exorbitant parking fee. Ads on subways and buses with brochures or—these days—QR codes could steer people to information, and the agency could develop a website with various transit-accessible options (say, a commuter rail map with the distance from each station to nearby beaches).

Most weekend services surely run at a loss—operating a six-car train with 60 passengers is not particularly cost-effective. But every bottom you put in a seat is revenue for the MBTA—and quite possibly cars off the road. The T should do more to tell people the destinations it serves outside of home and work.