MBTA Service Plan 2008 and Its Implications for Salem

The MBTA has released its 2008 Service Plan.  This is an analysis of current bus and rapid transit ridership with recommendations for each route.

From the introduction:

The MBTA Board of Directors adopted the Service Delivery Policy in September 1996. This policy defined service standards and outlined a process to evaluate and modify service. Standards relate to:

• span of service
• frequency of service
• vehicle loading
• schedule adherence
• net cost per passenger

The first Service Plan was implemented in phases in 1998. This resulted in expansion of service and was the first attempt to apply Service Delivery Policy standards. A comprehensive data collection effort preceded the analysis. Recommendations were developed using both public comment and quantitative analysis.
Development of the second Service Plan began with public outreach in spring 1999 and concluded with implementation of service changes in summer 2002.
This plan brought many changes to routes on the
North Shore, and was the first time that these routes had been significantly altered in many years.

The 2002 Service Plan reshuffled virtually all of the North Shore bus routes.  It was a big change, though mostly for the better.

There are four bus routes that serve Salem, and they are covered in this year’s service plan.  I’ll quote the MBTA on each route and explain the impact to Salem T riders.  Note that the service plan does not cover commuter rail.

Route 450:  Salem Depot – Haymarket/Wonderland via Western Ave.

Route 450 links Salem with Boston via Western Ave. in Lynn. Weekday service operates to Haymarket, weekend service operates to Wonderland as Route 450W. Route 456 links Salem with Central Square in Lynn during weekday middays only.
These routes have been experiencing severe
problems with schedule adherence. New run times have been designed that should allow the buses to maintain a reliable schedule on both routes. In both cases, the new run times exceed the capacity of the current number of buses serving these routes. In light of the steady but moderate ridership on this route, adding more resources is not possible at this time.
It is proposed that the frequency of Route 450 and 456 in the midday be decreased, so that alternating trips operate every 40 minutes instead of every 30 minutes. Route 456 would operate later into the afternoon, with the last inbound trip arriving in Central Square just before 5:00 PM instead of the current 4:16 PM.

I regularly take both the 450 and the 456 and they fall behind schedule regularly.  Like most riders, I much prefer schedules that run every 30 minutes or 1 hour as that’s easier to remember, but it’s hard to argue with traffic realities.

Impact:  the 450 and 456 will run a bit less frequently on weekdays (when I travel) but no trips will be dropped.  No changes to weekend service were recommended.

Route 451: North Beverly - Salem Depot

Route 451 links North Beverly with Salem on
weekdays. On Saturdays a short route operates between Ellis Square in Beverly and Salem Depot.
This route is coordinated with Routes 465 and 468 at Salem Depot to allow for traveling through between Beverly and Danvers.
Route 451 fails the Cost Standard on Saturdays.
Since ridership is especially light on Saturday
mornings, it is proposed that the first round trip be eliminated. The first trip would depart from Salem Depot at 9:30 AM rather than 8:30 AM. It is expected that 2 customers would be affected by this change.
Departure times on Route 451 may need to be
adjusted to allow for planned run time changes and schedule adjustments on Routes 465 and 468.

Impact:  One trip on early Saturday mornings will be dropped.   No changes to weekday service.

Route 465: Salem Depot - Liberty Tree Mall

Route 468:  Salem Depot – Danvers via Water St.

I’ve listed these route after the 451 since the 451 and 465 run through-service for each other and the 468 is an alternate route for the 465.

Route 465 links Danvers with Salem via Peabody, and Route 468 provides limited Danvers-Salem service via Water/Margin/North Streets.
Both of these routes fail the Cost Standard on all
days of operation, and ridership data collected early in 2008 indicates that ridership on both routes has declined in recent years. On Saturday morning, the 9:00 AM trip from Salem and the 9:50 AM trip from Danvers are proposed for elimination due to low ridership. This change is projected to affect 7 passengers, who could take service an hour earlier or later. Route 468 already provides very limited service and is interlined with other routes in the area. Because of this, significant cost savings could
not be realized by eliminating Route 468, and this elimination is not recommended at this time.
There have also been requests to better coordinate arrival times at Salem Depot with connections to the commuter rail. This will be done, along with run time adjustments for a more accurate schedule. These changes can be made without additional costs.

Impact:  As with the 451, one Saturday morning trip will be eliminated.  Unlike the 451, this is a trip I actually take, since I like to get my errands done early to avoid being in a noisy mall around lunchtime.  (North Shore Mall, toxic noise, we has it!  Do not want!)

Mayor Driscoll once expressed a desire to have the bus schedules better coordinated with commuter rail, and the T cites this, though this should affect all of Salem’s T service, not just the 465.

Route 455: Salem Depot - Haymarket or Wonderland Station

Three morning trips and four afternoon trips on
Route 459 between Downtown Crossing and West Lynn were designed to provide reverse-peak connections between Terminal C at Logan Airport and Downtown Crossing. At the time, there was no Silver Line service to Logan Airport. Since Silver Line connections from downtown to the airport have become available, ridership on these trips has dropped almost entirely. It is proposed that these trips be eliminated due to low ridership. Schedule adherence is low on these two routes, and
running times will be examined and changed if
necessary to ensure reliable service.

Impact:  Virtually no changes for Salem riders on this route.  If you’re already in Boston and need to get to the airport or South Station, you know what to do already.

The MBTA is accepting comments on the service plan at serviceplan08@mbta.com through September 30th.

Bypass Road Dragway

 

As many of us predicted, the bypass road’s straight track is very attractive to racers.  A commenter on one of my bypass road posts complained about motorcycle races.  The Salem News was finally made to notice it:

SALEM — Since it opened outside her home last month, Carol Brunaccini says the bypass road has become a racetrack — and she means that literally.

"One weekend, we had a group of 20-something kids hanging out at the Carlton School," Brunaccini said. "I assume they were drinking because they had containers with them."

They were standing near the school parking lot cheering on about five motorcyclists who were drag racing up, then down the bypass road, Brunaccini said.

 

More quotes from a cop:

Even before the one-mile, $15 million straightaway to downtown Salem opened last month, police knew the road might tempt lead-footed drivers.

It's a speed demon's dream — flat, wide and straight.

"It presents an attractive opportunity for people to see how fast you can go," said Salem police Capt. Brian Gilligan.

Brunaccini said she's seen motorcycles doing wheelies on the straightaway.

One night while working a detail on foot near Bridge Street, Gilligan saw a motorcycle fly over the Salem-Beverly bridge and onto the bypass road.

"I'd characterize him as somewhere in the 80 to 90 to 95 mph range," Gilligan said. "You were crossing your fingers hoping the kid would make it."

I wanted to see that!

I’d love to be on the road with my camera just to see one of these guys sail over the March St. bridge.  Perhaps I can see someone attempt a Darwin Award!

Going south, the only things that would stop you are the side of the Jefferson complex and the Salem Depot platform, which is in a dip relative to the bypass road, so it’s easy to hop the fence to the tracks.  (I see people on foot hop the fence by the Jefferson all the time.)  

That’s one way to meet the 1 AM train to Rockport!

Going north, you can end up on top of Stromberg’s!

If I were to see any of these things with my camera, you’d see it on TV and YouTube as fast as I could get it there!

Brunaccini has a solution:

One partial solution, she said, is forcing commercial traffic, including trucks, onto Bridge Street, which she says has seen a dramatic drop in traffic since the bypass road opened.

 

Um, no.  That would not be such a good idea.   The very reason traffic is light on Bridge St. is precisely that the new road is open. 

Further south on Howard St., traffic heading for Bridge St. has to take a sharp right at the light.  The routing and intersection was designed to divert most traffic to the bypass.

If I lived on Howard St., I’d much rather see truck traffic go straight down the bypass than turning virtually in front of my house.  I can foresee a jackknifed trailer piled up on Bridge St. at Howard if this restriction were put in place.

I was and am dead set against the new road.  However, it is built and it is here.  It makes no sense to block it to trucks, especially as most truckers will not blow through the road at 100 MPH and they have federal regulations that your drunk maniac motorist doesn’t have to cope with.

Article:  Bedlam on the bypass - SalemNews.com, Salem, MA

Salem’s Last Road: Moving on

I’ve gotten a flurry of comments on the bypass road, all of them critical of the road and its impact.  I don’t usually respond to comments in the comments, figuring it’s a place for the readers  (and also that it’s hard to have a good dialogue in the comments, the way most blogs are set up.)

But one person (anonymous) assured me I had “no idea” of the traffic noise of the new bypass road at their residence.

Try me.

I took this video at the corner of St. Peter and Bridge, outside my apartment.  You can see it in the image that starts this post;  it is the pinkish-red building in the foreground.

I definitely hear traffic.  I hear trains.   I hear the “jake brakes” of large trucks as they go up and down the incline over the train tunnel.

I’ve said before I don’t like having a five lane road between me and the train station.  The Howard St. side of the Jefferson apartment complex is a cruel joke, locked in by roads on three sides.   The $16 million spent on the road looms large considering that the new train station will cost $30 million which could have paid for completely by the state, instead of having to seek private investment.

There’s a reason I called it Salem’s Last Road, because the cost (financial, municipal and emotional) of any more new roadways is far beyond any benefit we can get from them now. 

The bypass road is Salem’s counterpart to Boston’s Inner Belt Project, the proposed Rt. 695 spur off 95 that would have taken 7,000 homes and irreparably changed huge parts of Boston and Cambridge.

The difference is that the Inner Belt was stopped.  It turned out to be the beginning of the end for highways in Boston (heralding the Big Dig’s last hurrah.)

The Bypass Road wasn’t.

We can argue over which Bypass Road resident is most deserving of pity. 

That won’t change what happened.

Remember, too, that the northern side of Bridge St. was never “waterfront property”.  The Boston and Maine railroad property was there even before current residents of Bridge St. were born.

It was a transportation corridor to begin with.  No surprise that the state wanted to do something more with that right-of-way, and in those days that meant car traffic.

All of those years that politicians lobbied for new roads to solve our problems have come back to bite us.  I hope the next time I advocate for better pedestrian access and public transportation, that the bypass road critics will take note.

In the meantime, don’t blame me.  I only documented the project.  It’s not like the News or the Gazette would have spent time on letting citizens know what was being paid for in their name.  Talk to some of the dear old cronies out there sitting on their butts, the old Representative or Councilor or Mayor Whoosis’ who let this happen.

I’m not interested in tallying bypass road pity points.  I’m moving on.

P.S.  I’ve forwarded the comment about the motorcycle races to Mike Sosnowski.

Salem’s Last Road: John Keenan

John Keenan speaks at the Bypass Road’s opening ceremonies

Salem’s Last Road: Remarks of Luisa Paiewonsky, MassHighway

MassHighway Commissioner Luisa Paiewonsky speaks.

Salem’s Last Road: Kim Driscoll’s Remarks

Kim Driscoll speaks on August 18th, 2008 at the opening of the bypass road.

It was a windy day, and a little dangerous to get to the ceremony on the south end of the Veteran’s Memorial Bridge, as others have pointed out.

Past and Future of Traffic in Salem

The bypass road is open.  The complaints about traffic aren’t about to stop.  Now, the next round of screaming continues as the east ramp from North to Bridge Sts. is permanently closed to accommodate the courthouse project.

After following the bypass road project, the courthouse project and reading (and blogging) Jim McAllister’s article in the News several weeks ago, I ask: 

Why are we defending a highway ramp?  Why do we cry over “that poor slip ramp”, star of Harry Potter and the Magical Slip Ramp, that so many on Federal St. mourned?

Nathaniel Hawthorne didn’t drive on the ramp!  (He did use the old Salem Depot!)

I’ll say it again:  Hawthorne didn’t drive on the ramp.  OK, Federal St.?  OK?!

If we had truly valued history 50 years ago, we would have never built the overpass in the first place!  Yes, the railroad tunnel was desperately needed, but the road, not so much.

As McAllister points out, we lost so much of our history when we built that overpass:  Salem Arena, Leslie’s Retreat Bridge, Salem Depot.  Where’s the screaming?  Couldn’t be that the Federal St. gang wasn’t around then.  Nah.

The bypass road should have been canceled, too, when it was clear that it would be severely truncated from what was planned originally.  MassHighway took half of the proposed alignment in Salem and turned it into what is now a dog park.

The generation that built that overpass and demolished Salem Depot have a lot to answer for.  They remind me of the panelists on a local political show I used to crew for.

This show featured (and still features) current and former politicians in Salem who manage the political narrative for Salem, just as the late Tim Russert managed our country’s narrative for the elites he worked for.

One panelist, a former city councilor, was always complaining about Salem “these days”.  He complained about the loss of the old downtown and the loss of the front “castle” half of the armory after it was burned in an arson fire in 1982 and the city and the state dithered about its ultimate disposition, ultimately losing it a few years ago.

He was not a regular citizen, complaining about things he or she could not change.  He was a politician as inside as one can get, back in the days of smoke-filled rooms.

He was in office when the armory burned and afterwards.  He was around when our downtown decayed.  And he was most certainly in politics when decisions were being made about the train tunnel, the depot and the overpass after WWII.

There are still those like him around.  Saying how great it was in the good old days, complaining all the while about things and people of today.  They could have spoken out (if for no one else but for future residents of Federal St.) but didn’t.

I say to them:  Look in the mirror before complaining about those “kids of today”.  You made the decisions 50 years ago and we are poorer for it today.