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Boston's subway system replacing 1890s-era wooden catenary system
- vjulian 11mo agoIf only they’d make the T fare free and run more frequently and later into the night. The C line in Brookline has the potential to be extremely convenient, but at present most of the time it’s easier to take an Uber, or drive.
- tapoxi 11mo agoIt's what, $2.40? I don't think they need to make it fare free.
- vjulian 11mo agoFree fares would significantly increase ridership, no?
- chollida1 11mo agoYes, and reduce its revenue that it needs to properly run and upgrade its existing infrastructure. Why do you think they charge in the first palce?
- venturecruelty 11mo agoBecause governments aren't allowed to simply provide services for free anymore. It is inconceivable that something like moving around on mass transit would be free at point of use.
- anthonypasq 11mo agobrother the MBTA arleady bleeds money at an astounding rate despite a large budget and fairs. Why would your solution to be to make the rest of the state pay more for services they cant even use rather than make the people that use it pay the true cost it take to run it? People that drive cars actually pay most of the cost to upkeep car infrastructure. people that ride the T dont.
- venturecruelty 11mo agoCall me crazy, but maybe mass transit doesn't need to make money to be useful. Maybe the entire point of government is to provide services to its citizens. I mean, I don't pay $2.40 every time we drone strike some Yemeni wedding, right? Why should I have to pay to take a train in a city, which is about a thousand times more useful to me? >People that drive cars actually pay most of the cost to upkeep car infrastructure. people that ride the T dont. This is... so ridiculously untrue. Most car-dependent infrastructure is funded with federal dollars, the vast majority of which are conjured up out of thin air and vibes.
- anthonypasq 11mo ago> Call me crazy, but maybe mass transit doesn't need to make money to be useful. This is such a heinous non-sequiter i dont even know where to begin. Government services take money to operate. Government services are paid by taxes. In a democracy, you need to make people agree that they want to pay taxes for particular services. The 60% of massachusetts residents who dont live in teh greater boston metro area do not want to pay for a service they dont use, so it is nearly politically impossible to raise the budget of the MBTA. So if you are a massachusetts state legistlator you have a couple options. you can allow the MBTA to continue to deteriorate while also going over budget every year (current state) or you could increase the fare to compensate for the actual cost it takes to run the service, or your third option, which is to decrease the amount of money that goes to an already deteriorating public service. edit: 50-55% of car related infrastructure costs are paid by gas taxes, tolls, excise taxes etc. currently <30% of the mbtas budget is covered by fares.
- Arainach 11mo agoServices have costs. They don't lose money. No one says the US military "loses hundreds of billions of dollars a year" or expects them to cover it back.
- anthonypasq 11mo ago??? did you actively not read my comment before posting this?
- pugworthy 11mo agoRider fair is only one way to fund transit. My city (Corvallis, OR) provides free bus service city wide since 2011. The newest addition is free bus service to surrounding cities (up to McMinville and down to Eugene). It's paid for with state and federal grants, university (OSU) contribution, as well as a utility fee.
- bluGill 11mo agoProbably not. For most people cost is not the issue of why they don't ride. Free would increase a little, but most people are not riding because the service isn't there. Service can be one of Frequency, speed, or ability to get to the destination. Transit needs to: Get you from where you are, to where you want to be, when you want to go, in a reasonable amount of time, for a reasonable cost. If you lack any of those things and transit isn't useful. Generally cost is the only part of transit that is reasonable (but not always) and so it isn't something to focus on. People who ask for free transit are really saying transit is for the poor and "normal people" should just drive.
- bombcar 11mo agoWorse, free fares can cause undesirables to cluster and abuse the system. Transit begin able to be paid with a phone has removed most or all the "friction" arguments, the need is to make it reliable (arrive on time) and frequent (so you don't have to meticulously plan your day).
- AnthonyMouse 11mo ago> Transit begin able to be paid with a phone has removed most or all the "friction" arguments That's the sort of thing that would get many people to avoid using it because of the growing (and accurate) sentiment that anything that requires you to use your phone is using it as a tracking device.
- potato3732842 11mo agoYou're not wrong. But the MBTA went to phones because an insane fraction of the cash they handle "goes missing".
- AnthonyMouse 11mo agoAnother problem solved by setting fares to zero.
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- pugworthy 11mo agoSpeaking generally, free fairs also provide various benefits to a community such as reduced use of cars and easier access for lower income access to jobs and services.
- anthonypasq 11mo agoyou probably dont live in Boston, because there is no one on the planet that drives into boston rather than taking the T because its too expensive. people drive downtown and pay $40 for parking instead of taking the T.
- AnthonyMouse 11mo agoThat's assuming there is nothing else on the ledger. Suppose you have to choose between a suburban house without any convenient access to mass transit (i.e. you're going to have to drive everywhere) or a more expensive unit which is closer to the city and is near a transit stop. Paying $40 for parking is going to offset the cost advantage of the less expensive housing and leave a lot of people near the breakeven point, and then a $100/mo difference in transit fares could be the deciding factor.
- anthonypasq 11mo agotheres plenty of essentially free park and ride stations. theres commuter rail access in basically a 1 hour drive radius of the city. nothing about what you said is relevant. rich people (of which boston has plenty even in the burbs where average house prices are 800k+) pay to avoid existing near poor people. they think they are going to get stabbed on the subway. if the subway was faster, safer, cleaner, but more expensive, more people would use it.
- potato3732842 11mo agoThere is nothing convenient about doing park and ride. It's something you do because whatever your other options are suck worse. Commuter rail inevitably dumps you somewhere you don't need to be so then you have to take the T from there. There is no way not to make it a slog of a commute with that many transitions.
- AnthonyMouse 11mo ago> Free fares would significantly increase ridership, no? It's not just about that. Higher transportation costs are heavily regressive. People with less money can't afford to live in the city and have to commute and then anything they pay to commute is independent of their wages, so $100 in fares is $100 whether you make $200k/year or $20k, whereas even the taxes like sales tax labeled as "regressive" would have the former person paying ten times more than the latter. Moreover, fares are often heavily subsidized to begin with -- in large part because of the above -- but then not zeroing them out requires you to still pay the full cost of the collections infrastructure. Which is actually really expensive, because then you need turnstiles, payment processing equipment, security to prevent theft or card skimming, billing departments to deal with credit card fraud or chargebacks, customer service when people have problems, enforcement against people who skip the fare, etc. None of those costs go away if the fare is even $0.01, but they all disappear when it's actually zero. And people who have never used it before then wouldn't have to figure out how to set it up, which is a significant source of friction independent of the fare and can cause people to just get an Uber (which they've already set up) or rent a car etc. Which causes people to never even try using mass transit, and then regard it as that thing they never use so why is the government spending money on it, instead of that thing that was convenient to use when their car was in the shop and made them realize that they can get by as a one-car household instead of two, or at least something worth supporting because they remember actually using it. On top of that, removing the fares is better for privacy because then you're not tying your movement history to your payment card.
- anthonypasq 11mo agothe MBTA already absolutely bleeds an incredible amount of money. No businesses in Boston are even open late, theres no night life. 90% of the young people in the city are nerds doing Phds. I loved living right on the red line, but its just not worth it unless we figure out how to make it not cost a fortune.
- fragmede 11mo agoWhy does it have to make money? We don't ever expect the welfare department to suddenly turn a profit, do we?
- mindslight 11mo agoI haven't been there in a while. Is one of the four bars in Brookline now open past 8PM or something?
- paleotrope 11mo agoThere are a few, but they are trying to fix that since no one stays up that late.
- vjulian 11mo agoThe Abbey is often buzzing until 2am. Food served after midnight, too.
- ttd 11mo agoIt's been a decade+ since I used to catch the Green line at Park St, but at that time it was the noisiest, squealiest station that I regularly used. Not surprising to learn that parts of that station are left over from the 1890s.
- beastman82 11mo agoIt's deafening
- drob518 11mo agoThe builders should be patting themselves on the back. The fact that some of this infrastructure was built in the 1890s is amazing.
- teruakohatu 11mo ago> dates back to the late 1890s and will be replaced with a modern, more durable, metal trough. I think any infrastructure that has lasted over 130 years is already quite durable.
- phailhaus 11mo agoIt's probably not the same wood since 1890. Requires more repairs and replacements.
- SoftTalker 11mo agoI think there's a good chance it is. Not out in the sun, not in contact with ground/moisture, pretty consistent temperature. Wood can last a very long time under those conditions.
- bluGill 11mo agoIt could be. A lot of wood has been around for longer than that. Wood is easier to damage so I expect some has been replaced over the years, but there is no reason to think it wouldn't last in that application.
- jeffwask 11mo agoYeah, I watch mine exploration videos and it's shocking how well wood in a dry and stable environment will last.
- paleotrope 11mo agoI wouldn't exactly call the environment on the green line as dry, especially in the summers.
- Perz1val 11mo agoMaybe the chemicals they've used to treat the wood were so hardcore
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- mikestew 11mo agoThe part relevant to the editorialized headline: “The MBTA will perform work in December to replace the wooden overhead catenary wire “trough” in the Green Line tunnel, which is original to the tunnel’s construction in the late 1890s. The trough houses the Green Line’s overhead wires and will be replaced with a modern, more durable, metal trough.”
- jeffbee 11mo agoBoston subway to replace cable duct that worked for 130+ years
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- jpmattia 11mo agoHold a chain at its ends, and let it hang down naturally. What is that shape called? A catenary and its equation is y = a cosh(x/a). Maybe you all knew that factoid already, but I learned the name of shape only recently.
- vasco 11mo agoAnd efficiency of the line depends on the curvature so for a given target efficiency you can calculate how far apart the poles can be. For electrical lines I mean.
- staplung 11mo agoI actually did already know that factoid but was struggling (am still) to see how it relates to a wooden trough that merely holds cables. Another interesting factoid about the catenary: Robert Hooke proved that it takes on the shape (though inverted) of the ideal arch, in terms of supporting loads above it. La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona is filled with them.
- ninju 11mo agoThe Gateway Arch is an inverted catenary structure https://www.nps.gov/jeff/planyourvisit/materials-and-techniques.htm#:~:text=The%20stainless%2Dsteel%2Dfaced%20Arch,hanging%20freely%20between%20two%20supports. https://www.nps.gov/jeff/planyourvisit/materials-and-techniq...
- SECProto 11mo ago> but was struggling (am still) to see how it relates to a wooden trough that merely holds cables. Overhead Catenary [1] is a standard term, for a system that has two wires overhead - one suspended from the posts (forming a series of catenary curve), the other suspended from that cable at regular intervals (and held level relative to the track). The wood in Boston's system seems to replace the catenary cable. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overhead_line#Overhead_catenary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overhead_line#Overhead_catenar...
- IAmBroom 11mo ago
- cbm-vic-20 11mo agoI really like those service diagrams to show which stations are closed and how to get around them.
- billfor 11mo agoSan Fransisco looked at replacing their metal ladders with wood and decided to keep making the wood ones. Sometimes there's good reasons to keep the old material, the least of which is that metal conducts electricity. Unfortunately there's not many people left that can maintain it and it's probably cheaper to just keep ordering metal replacements. It still doesn't mean it's better. https://sf-fire.org/our-organization/division-support-services/wooden-ladders https://sf-fire.org/our-organization/division-support-servic...