4 ms·

Out of personal curiosity: I was in Boston for a while maybe 10-12 years ago, and remember thinking that the T was so far beyond what most other cities had, and

Out of personal curiosity: I was in Boston for a while maybe 10-12 years ago, and remember thinking that the T was so far beyond what most other cities had, and served even the outlying areas well enough via the bus connections. (And I was previously from Philly, so no stranger to decent public transit) In that context I'm surprised to hear you say that the T sucks. Is it that my memory is far out of date with respect to how the city grew? Or are my standards very low? (Also viable is that I was lucky in that the routes I needed to take were well served, usually starting from Cambridge) To give another point of comparison, in Seattle now, I would give an arm and a leg for something even roughly comparable to my memory of the T, let alone SEPTA/subways. Baltimore was similar, in having little to nothing outside of unreliable and sparse buses, and token light rail only along 1-2 "primary" corridors.

deleted 9y ago
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nostrademons 9y ago
(I grew up in Boston but now live in Silicon Valley.) The T has great coverage but shitty service. Boston is second only to NYC in terms of the fraction of the city that you can get to via public transit. The Red Line covers most of the densely-populated Arlington/Somerville/Cambridge neighborhoods, runs straight into the heart of the city, and then services even the lower-income neighborhoods in Roxbury/Dorchester/Mattapan/Quincy. The Green Line covers the whole Back Bay and Brookline area. Orange Line will get you up to Tufts & Medford, and Blue Line covers North & East Boston. All of these except the outer reaches of the Green Line have reasonable transit times. By contrast, SF has good public transit if you happen to live in the BART corridor through Mission & Market streets, or around 4th & King or Potrero. But if you're in the Sunset, Presidio, Pac Heights, North Beach, Twin Peaks & highlands, Excelsior, or really anywhere else - you can forget about it. It takes as long to get from the Outer Sunset to Downtown as it does to get from Mountain View, 50 miles away, to SF. However, BART runs on time, as does Caltrain. To the minute, unless somebody kills themselves on the tracks. You know exactly when the next BART train will arrive, and when it will get to its destination. By contrast, when I took the Red Line to work I would frequently find myself sitting stopped outside Alewife or Harvard Square for about 20 minutes for track maintenance, or because they lost the third rail, or because there was another train in the station whose doors were jammed, or any number of other reasons that a well-maintained public transportation system shouldn't have.
- sokoloff 9y ago
  Or the “every 10 minutes #1 bus” wouldn’t come for 40 minutes, at which point 4 of them would arrive, nose to tail, as if they were drafting each other on a NASCAR circuit.
  - seltzered_ 9y ago
    The term you're looking for is bus bunching: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_bunching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_bunching Anecdotally, it seems to happen more on longer routes into a city center, and gets worse if there's traffic / bridge opens / etc. along the route.
- burfog 9y ago
  The MBTA's T, Red Line, in Boston around 1995: At the train approaches the station, people in the station hear an announcement and see it on a lighted sign. It is something like "Braintree train approaching", letting you know the direction and final destination. Inside the train, they see and hear something like "Approaching Park Street. Next Stop: Downtown Crossing. This is a Braintree train.". When the train stops, there is a similar announcement, again both voice and lighted display, both inside the train and on the station platform. People inside the train can read the brightly-lighted station sign through the windows, and people on the platform can read a brightly-lighted sign on the train itself. Another announcement is made just before the doors close, and another one right after. The other lines were about as good, with a few oddities like a human announcer on the Green Line. San Francisco's MUNI, around 2015, two decades later: There is no voice announcement or message display when I board the train underground, either in the station or in the train. Gee, I hope I'm going the right direction. The train pops out of the ground and runs down the eastern side of the city. It stops only when there is a person waiting at the stop or when somebody in the train pulls a cord, there are no station announcements in the train, and the signs on the stations are unlighted and/or hidden. There is simply no way to count stops to determine where you are. You have to truly recognize the city (for me: in the dark, as an out-of-town visitor) or stay focused on a GPS-based map display. I obviously couldn't do the former, and my phone battery was dying so the latter was a problem as well. So it looks to me like SF in 2015 can't match Boston in 1995.
maccam94 9y ago
The MBTA has suffered from funding issues, and it was saddled with billions in debt from the Big Dig. Many of the trains and track infrastructure are old and in need of replacement, but without the funds the MBTA has been forced to repair old equipment at higher cost. This article has more info: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2016/11/04/what-the-heck-is-wrong-with-bostons-mbta/ https://usa.streetsblog.org/2016/11/04/what-the-heck-is-wron...
lovich 9y ago
For the last few months at least the stickied post on the Boston subreddit has been "Is the T fucked today?". The system aged without improvements, and currently keeps actual blacksmiths on the payroll to make parts for the ancient cars that are no longer supported by the manufacturer. I believe they've been dropping a few billion on new cars/improvements but someone from Boston would be better able to report on that
Amygaz 9y ago
If we had to give grade to the MBTA, we would give it a D (passing grade), because they deserve a large area. However, everything else is bad. On top of that, all the improvements they are making are things that were needed 10 years ago, not things we will need over the next 10 years and onward.
lsllc 9y ago
The T is great -- if you live near it, otherwise it may as well not exist (otherwise walk/bike or maybe bus route if lucky). Trouble is, as the city has expanded massively in the last 20 years the T has stayed static. Even the Somerville/Medford-greenline extension has been watered down/will it ever happen? Cambridge, Somerville, Medford seem to have been instituting 25 mph limits and swapping out road-space for bike lanes. Seriously, who's going to try biking in 20" of snow. Or in the dark (Nov-March). I'd rather they just ripped up some big streets and replaced with green-line style light-rail as they have done in Manchester UK (metrolink?). For example: Rt 99 through Chelsea, Everett-Malden. Medford St / Rt 38. Mt Auburn/Rt 16/Watertown Sq. Fellsway/Rt 28 into Stoneham/Reading. (sorry, don't know much of south of the city but I'm sure there are equivalents). It just isn't possible to have such a densely packed city, constrained at the east by the Atlantic and allow one person-per-car ... not sustainable.

deleted 9y ago

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nostrademons 9y ago

(I grew up in Boston but now live in Silicon Valley.) The T has great coverage but shitty service. Boston is second only to NYC in terms of the fraction of the city that you can get to via public transit. The Red Line covers most of the densely-populated Arlington/Somerville/Cambridge neighborhoods, runs straight into the heart of the city, and then services even the lower-income neighborhoods in Roxbury/Dorchester/Mattapan/Quincy. The Green Line covers the whole Back Bay and Brookline area. Orange Line will get you up to Tufts & Medford, and Blue Line covers North & East Boston. All of these except the outer reaches of the Green Line have reasonable transit times. By contrast, SF has good public transit if you happen to live in the BART corridor through Mission & Market streets, or around 4th & King or Potrero. But if you're in the Sunset, Presidio, Pac Heights, North Beach, Twin Peaks & highlands, Excelsior, or really anywhere else - you can forget about it. It takes as long to get from the Outer Sunset to Downtown as it does to get from Mountain View, 50 miles away, to SF. However, BART runs on time, as does Caltrain. To the minute, unless somebody kills themselves on the tracks. You know exactly when the next BART train will arrive, and when it will get to its destination. By contrast, when I took the Red Line to work I would frequently find myself sitting stopped outside Alewife or Harvard Square for about 20 minutes for track maintenance, or because they lost the third rail, or because there was another train in the station whose doors were jammed, or any number of other reasons that a well-maintained public transportation system shouldn't have.

sokoloff 9y ago
Or the “every 10 minutes #1 bus” wouldn’t come for 40 minutes, at which point 4 of them would arrive, nose to tail, as if they were drafting each other on a NASCAR circuit.
- seltzered_ 9y ago
  The term you're looking for is bus bunching: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_bunching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_bunching Anecdotally, it seems to happen more on longer routes into a city center, and gets worse if there's traffic / bridge opens / etc. along the route.
burfog 9y ago
The MBTA's T, Red Line, in Boston around 1995: At the train approaches the station, people in the station hear an announcement and see it on a lighted sign. It is something like "Braintree train approaching", letting you know the direction and final destination. Inside the train, they see and hear something like "Approaching Park Street. Next Stop: Downtown Crossing. This is a Braintree train.". When the train stops, there is a similar announcement, again both voice and lighted display, both inside the train and on the station platform. People inside the train can read the brightly-lighted station sign through the windows, and people on the platform can read a brightly-lighted sign on the train itself. Another announcement is made just before the doors close, and another one right after. The other lines were about as good, with a few oddities like a human announcer on the Green Line. San Francisco's MUNI, around 2015, two decades later: There is no voice announcement or message display when I board the train underground, either in the station or in the train. Gee, I hope I'm going the right direction. The train pops out of the ground and runs down the eastern side of the city. It stops only when there is a person waiting at the stop or when somebody in the train pulls a cord, there are no station announcements in the train, and the signs on the stations are unlighted and/or hidden. There is simply no way to count stops to determine where you are. You have to truly recognize the city (for me: in the dark, as an out-of-town visitor) or stay focused on a GPS-based map display. I obviously couldn't do the former, and my phone battery was dying so the latter was a problem as well. So it looks to me like SF in 2015 can't match Boston in 1995.

maccam94 9y ago

The MBTA has suffered from funding issues, and it was saddled with billions in debt from the Big Dig. Many of the trains and track infrastructure are old and in need of replacement, but without the funds the MBTA has been forced to repair old equipment at higher cost. This article has more info: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2016/11/04/what-the-heck-is-wrong-with-bostons-mbta/ https://usa.streetsblog.org/2016/11/04/what-the-heck-is-wron...

lovich 9y ago

For the last few months at least the stickied post on the Boston subreddit has been "Is the T fucked today?". The system aged without improvements, and currently keeps actual blacksmiths on the payroll to make parts for the ancient cars that are no longer supported by the manufacturer. I believe they've been dropping a few billion on new cars/improvements but someone from Boston would be better able to report on that

Amygaz 9y ago

If we had to give grade to the MBTA, we would give it a D (passing grade), because they deserve a large area. However, everything else is bad. On top of that, all the improvements they are making are things that were needed 10 years ago, not things we will need over the next 10 years and onward.

lsllc 9y ago

The T is great -- if you live near it, otherwise it may as well not exist (otherwise walk/bike or maybe bus route if lucky). Trouble is, as the city has expanded massively in the last 20 years the T has stayed static. Even the Somerville/Medford-greenline extension has been watered down/will it ever happen? Cambridge, Somerville, Medford seem to have been instituting 25 mph limits and swapping out road-space for bike lanes. Seriously, who's going to try biking in 20" of snow. Or in the dark (Nov-March). I'd rather they just ripped up some big streets and replaced with green-line style light-rail as they have done in Manchester UK (metrolink?). For example: Rt 99 through Chelsea, Everett-Malden. Medford St / Rt 38. Mt Auburn/Rt 16/Watertown Sq. Fellsway/Rt 28 into Stoneham/Reading. (sorry, don't know much of south of the city but I'm sure there are equivalents). It just isn't possible to have such a densely packed city, constrained at the east by the Atlantic and allow one person-per-car ... not sustainable.