Sam and I barely made the 42! We ran and ran and ran and we couldn’t find a stop, so we just kept going down Southbridge Street until finally, we came across the strangest bus stop in Worcester:

WOAH!

Goodness, the 558 is longer than I thought! Yeah, I have no idea why there’s an MBTA stop sign way out in Worcester, but this is where we got our bus. It was time to begin the 42’s journey down to Webster, which is at the Connecticut border. Oh yeah, it’s a long-distance route.

Here it is!

We were in an industrial area for a bit, but it morphed into houses and suburban businesses after we went under a railroad bridge. Our next bridge to duck under was I-290, and the road briefly split into one-way sections – we zoomed around the interchange with the highway. On the other side, it was once again industrial for the most part.

For lease!

We entered Auburn, but the industry continued as the quality of the road itself deteriorated. There was a stretch where it felt woodsy, but we soon burst out into a land of suburban businesses and the Auburn High School. We deviated into the Auburn Mall for a bit, then we came back onto Southbridge Street, still lined with suburban businesses.

Some stuff beyond the mall parking lot…

In a mess of highway interchanges, we went under I-90, I-290, and an interchange going to I-90. There was more suburban retail all the while, including as we turned onto Route 20, although it was still called Southbridge Street. We had been running with the 29, another long-distance route, this whole time, but we finally split off from it by turning onto Main Street next to a Walmart.

This looks nice!

Now in Oxford, we entered our first real residential area. However, the neighborhoods were all on side roads, while we just zoomed past them on Main Street. There was a short section with a post office, a field, and a fire station, but it was a lot less charming than that all sounds. From there, it was more or less back to being all houses, but there were a few sections of woods as well.

A side road.

We passed the Oxford Middle School and some businesses, but it was primarily, yes, still houses. They started to get denser, though, and Main Street became more walkable and charming. This culminated in Oxford Center, which was…really anticlimactic. It was just a burst of a few buildings and businesses.

South of the center.

There were more charming dense houses afterward, but as we got further from the center, the charm was gone. We went under a single railroad track, and the buildings along the road from there were a mix of everything. The street became Worcester Road as we entered Webster, and soon after that we passed a small shopping plaza named after the town.

Some houses on a parallel road.

After two cemeteries, we reached some suburban businesses and turned onto East Main Street. This was a mix of more retail and dense houses, with a bit of an industrial flair as we turned onto South Main Street. This led us into Webster Center, where we used Davis Street to loop around to the final stop of the route.

“Beautiful” Webster Center.

Now, of course WRTA has it’s “YOU CAN’T RIDE AROUND” policy, and this route runs every two hours…so Sam and I now had two hours to spend in Webster Center. We passed the time by:

• Visiting the Providence and Worcester Railfan Club Museum, which consisted of two traincars that could not be interacted with in any way
• Walking into nearby Dudley, just to enter a new town we’ve never heard of
• Traversing the length of the famous “Webster Riverwalk,” which took approximately two minutes
• Eating some surprisingly good pizza at a place called Northeast Pizza, which may very well not exist anymore because it doesn’t have Webster on its list of locations.

The Riverwalk in its entirety.

The bus we got from Worcester.

 The beginning of the ride was just retreading our steps down South and East Main Streets. Rather than going up to Worcester Road, though, we continued a little further to enter an interchange with I-395! The driver turned off the lights, and the only scenery from the highway was pure woods. It was AWESOME.

“Express.” BAM!

Once the highway became I-290, we could see a few buildings in the Auburn Mall complex beyond the trees. It was woods again from there, basically all the way until we took Exit 11 onto good ol’ Southbridge Street. We went through that industrial area where we originally got on the outbound bus, then it was a right onto the wide Francis J. McGrath Boulevard. This led us to the Central Hub, ending a 25-minute trip that would have taken an hour if it had been a local run.

Nothing but the harsh glow of the orange sign…

WRTA Route: 42 (Union Station Hub – Oxford – Webster via Southbridge Street and Route 12)

The 6 is a lot like the 3, except longer. Not only is the route longer, though – we also got the WRTA’s awesome full-sized Proterra on this thing! Oh my gosh, it was a beauty in every conceivable manner!

YES! OH MY GOSH, THIS IS AWESOME!!!

We began at Tatnuck Square, but the businesses of the square quickly gave way to houses as we headed down Chandler Street. The Worcester State University campus occupied one side of the road for a bit, then it was all residential again until the intersection with June Street. From there, the street took on a more urban character, with dense houses and apartments in between various businesses.

The rear window is back!

We passed Beaver Brook Park on one side and Foley Stadium (a small football and track stadium) on the other. There were a ton of businesses after that, with much fewer apartments and houses than before. We joined up with the 7 at the Family Health Center, and as we got closer to downtown Worcester, the buildings started to get even denser.

We’re really in the city now!

Now, the 6 does a really strange jog to Southbridge Street. I don’t know why it does that, but it was incredibly helpful for Sam and I as we got off the bus there to run to a southbound 42 to Webster. From there, the 6 goes straight to City Hall and on to the Central Hub.

Back in Tatnuck Square, here’s the back of the bus.

WRTA Route: 6 (Union Station Hub – West Tatnuck via Chandler Street)

Ridership: The 6 gets slightly higher ridership than the 3, but it’s still pretty bad: 292 riders per weekday and 186 per Saturday.

Pros: The route provides hourly service six days a week straight down Chandler Street, a dense, busy road with lots of retail, plus houses on the side streets. It also gets more people than the 3, so…I guess that’s a good thing.

Cons: Look, the 3 and the 6 are both underperforming routes. They’re both too short for their own good and they don’t get good ridership. The 6 is slightly more useful, but it still falls into the same boat as the 3.

Nearby and Noteworthy: Hey, Chandler Street has a ton of stuff along it! I can’t tell you what’s good and what’s not, but I can tell you there’s a lot of retail, particularly restaurants.

Final Verdict: 4/10
Okay, let’s talk about combining the 3 and the 6. What would that look like? I drew up a map to show how services would change:

So the 6 basically takes over the entire 3 route, and from the 3’s terminus, it continues to its current terminus at Tatnuck Square. Now, of course, we lose service on Chandler Street with this change. My solution for that was to reroute the 7 to go via Chandler Street and Park Ave, rather than its current twisty routing. I think it looks a lot cleaner like that! You do lose service in a few small areas, as indicated by the black lines, but there’s nothing lost that’s longer than about a five minute walk from the new routings. With this arrangement, you would be able to serve mostly the same areas with one fewer bus, and that could be used to improve frequency on one of these corridors or elsewhere.

Latest MBTA News: Service Updates

Ready for a super-short trip on the 3? This is gonna be a quickie!

Sweet, a Proterra!!!

We cruised down Foster Street making those awesome Proterra all-electric noises, and we soon came into downtown Worcester. Once we crossed Main Street, the road became Maple Street and it did an s-curve up a steep hill around a parking lot. Next to the Worcester Historical Museum, we turned onto Chestnut Street, going by some apartments, offices, and parking lots, before heading onto Highland Street.

Bam! Gotta love that rear-view window.

There were lots of businesses along here, but they soon thinned out to be replaced by houses (and a side street to Becker College, not that its presence is at all obvious). At the intersection with Park Ave, there was a Price Chopper and a huge park, which continued as we went by more houses and a high school. We made our way around the Newton Square rotary onto the residential June Street, taking it down to Chandler Street, where there were some businesses. However, on Chandler, they went away past the intersection until we looped around onto May Street at the Worcester State University campus.

‘Twas a quick trip indeed.

WRTA Route: 3 (Union Station Hub – Worcester State University via Highland Street)

Ridership: 245 people on weekdays and 67 on Saturdays…yeah, not too many people use the 3. My trip got 2 people.

Pros: The Highland Street corridor is certainly dense, and I imagine Becker College contributes to ridership on the 3. The route comes every hour on weekdays with an interline with the 30…

Cons: …but on Saturdays, it just runs on its own, so it’s actually more frequent at every 45 minutes. Thus, this brings me to my next point: this route is so darn short! It’s scheduled to take 22 minutes, but that’s more time than it actually takes, and the unique section of the route more or less ends 10 minutes in. The route also serves some of the more well-off parts of Worcester, which in itself means that less people are going to ride it. I mean, the subsidies for this thing are through the roof…$5.79 per passenger on weekdays and $8.12 per passenger on Saturdays!

Nearby and Noteworthy: It’s mostly residential, but some of the retail along Highland Street seemed pretty interesting – they draw a lot of people from the nearby Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Final Verdict: 3/10
The 3 gets a 3! I understand why the WRTA wants to run a bus down Highland Street, but this route is just too short to be useful, and that’s probably why its ridership is so low. I think a good course of action would be to combine it with the 6, but we’ll explore that further in the next post.

Latest MBTA News: Service Updates

Heyyyy, why does the WRTA website URL still reference the former 34? That’s no good! That was a Sunday-only variant of the 24/24A, but luckily it’s been eliminated, so we only have to deal with the 24 now.

…or, in this case, the 24A!

We began at the UMass Medical Center, a sprawling complex that feels like its own city. We came out of there on South Road, then we turned onto Innovation Drive, which ran up a hill to serve the Worcester Recovery Center and Hospital. Next, we turned onto Hospital Drive, leading us back down onto Belmont Street.

The woodsy campus of the hospital.

There was a bunch of forest on the north side of Belmont Street, but the south side was residential. The only thing that differentiates the 24A from the 24 is that it makes one deviation in each direction to two different apartment complexes; we went by Seabury Heights, the one served in the outbound direction. There was a lovely pond right after with its own little beach.

The pond, flanked by Seabury Heights.

We turned onto the narrow Hooper Street to perform the 24A’s inbound deviation. It led us past houses to the Green Hill Tower Apartments, where some sort of medical emergency delayed us a bit as we tried to loop around the parking lot. Eventually we just reversed our way out of there and headed back down to Belmont Street, running by the UMass Memorial Hospital.

You can see the emergency vehicles parked in front…

We went over I-290 and passed two churches and an apartment building. We then turned onto Major Taylor Boulevard, a wide road that had lots of office buildings along it. It led us down to Foster Street, which took us to our final stop at the Central Hub.

And here we are!

WRTA Route: 24/24A (Union Station Hub – UMass Medical Center via Belmont Street)

Ridership: The 24 gets great ridership, with 878 passengers per weekday and 327 per Saturday…I guess it wasn’t running on Sundays when the ridership data was taken.

Pros: Although this may not be the fastest route to the UMass Medical Center (that honor goes to the 15), it’s the most frequent one, running every half hour on weekdays (where every other trip is a 24A) and every hour on weekends (where most trips are 24As). It serves three major medical centers, and it runs by some dense residential areas on Belmont Street, too.

Cons: The 24A is the real elephant in the room here. First of all, what’s the deal with its single-direction deviations? Who’s going to use a deviation if it only does it in one direction??? If they really want to deviate, just go to Green Hill Tower Apartments, since that’s much further from the main road than Seabury Heights, which is basically right there. Also on the topic of the 24A, the weird supplemental 24A trips on weekday afternoons don’t seem to be helping anyone. They only end up bunching up with regular 24s, and even when they do leave at consistent headways, it doesn’t work – service from the hub runs at alternating headways of 15 and 30 minutes when the supplemental trip is going, and alternative headways are awful.

Nearby and Noteworthy: It’s really just a lot of hospitals. Chances are, if you need to visit a hospital in Worcester, you’ll end up on the 24.

Final Verdict: 6/10
The normal 24 is a great route. It serves a lot, it runs frequently, and it’s direct. The 24A, on the other hand, is indirect, badly-designed, and screws up the headways on the regular 24. So, uh, let’s just meet in the middle, huh? 6/10.

Latest MBTA News: Service Updates

WRTA has an annoying policy where passengers can’t “ride around” at the end of a route. This makes doing isolated routes like the 5 tough. Sam and I’s solution was to get off a little bit before the end and just wait on the other side of the road. We missed a pseudo-express section from the horrible-looking Southwest Commons (a CVS, a Chuck-E-Cheese, a Little Caesar’s, and an abandoned Big Y, probably because it was too far from PVTA-land), grabbing the bus on Grafton Street.

See you on the other side!

There were some businesses along Grafton Street, mixed with houses and an apartment development. Soon after passing an elementary school, we performed the inbound-only deviation into South Plaza, which was in much better shape than Southwest Commons. We picked some people up and returned to Grafton Street, passing more businesses and some houses.

Looking at South Plaza…although one business is definitely front and center.

Grafton Street became twisty and entirely residential. It was all houses until some retail at the intersection with Massasoit Road, and again at the one with Hamilton Street. We went around an oddly-shaped rotary at that second intersection, and there were now lots of businesses between the apartments along Grafton Street. We went under I-290 and the road paralleled its bridge, then we turned onto Franklin Street and headed into the Central Hub.

The intersection with Hamilton Street.

WRTA Route: 5 (Union Station Hub – Southwest Commons via Grafton Street)

Ridership: The 5 gets decent ridership, with 549 people per weekday, 153 on Saturdays, and 70 per Sunday. Those weekend numbers drop a lot, but since service also drops, the passengers per hour stay relatively stable seven days a week.

Pros: The Grafton Street corridor isn’t served by other routes past Hamilton Street, and this short and sweet bus connects it to Union Station. The route has a good schedule, as well; service is every half hour on weekdays and every hour weekends.

Cons: Does service really need to go beyond South Plaza? Southwest Commons just seems like a dead plaza that isn’t coming back anytime soon, so it’s a waste to run empty buses there. That also ties in with fixing the route’s rough 84% on-time performance rate. If buses terminated at South Plaza, they could lay over longer, so they would be far more likely to be on time.

Nearby and Noteworthy: South Plaza isn’t an exciting mall by any means, but it’s the best thing along the 5.

Final Verdict: 4/10
People seem to use the 5, but only up to a point, and that point is South Plaza. It shouldn’t have to run empty buses beyond there, at least until Southwest Commons gets something to fill that Big Y spot. It doesn’t help that vehicles are often late, and while that could possibly be attributed to the interline with the 27, terminating the route at South Plaza would help with that, too.
UPDATE 9/22/18: Well, the route doesn’t run to Southwest Commons anymore! Now it goes to “Blithewood/Massasoit,” a residential area. I think it’ll only generate a tiny bit more ridership than the old Southwest Commons terminus, but at least it’s an actual neighborhood and not an abandoned mall. The route has also been downgraded to an hourly schedule on weekdays, though. I think I’ll keep the score as is, but it was worth mentioning the changes that were made.

Latest MBTA News: Service Updates

RTAs often end their routes at malls, but Showcase Cinemas is a new one! Unfortunately, Sam and I weren’t able to catch the 14 from its true start point, so we began at its second stop, the Porter and Chester Institute. On weekdays, buses deviate directly into it, but this was a Saturday, so we picked it up on Brooks Street.

Well…close enough.

We were in a hardcore industrial area, running past tons of factories and warehouses as we turned onto Pullman Street. There was a Price Chopper as we turned onto Mountain Street West, and once we headed down West Boylston Street, there were now suburban businesses everywhere. We were on this until Quinsigamond Community College, where we went up a hill to serve the campus.

We’ve got a view!

We made our way out of the college onto Randall Street, a residential road that took us to Burncoat Street. Burncoat Street was lined almost entirely with houses, and it was up on a hill. A steep hill. We went by the Burncoat High and Middle Schools and later crossed over I-295 before joining up with Lincoln Street at Brittan Square.

I did say a steep hill.

Brittan Square was home to a hospital and some businesses, but Lincoln Street soon became lined with dense houses. We left the 23/26 by turning onto Gooseberry Street, which ran through a woodsy patch, of all things. Once it became Summer Street, we went by the Plumley Village Apartments, then there were a few office buildings before we looped around into the Central Hub.

Stopped at the Hub.

WRTA Route: 14 (Union Station Hub – Showcase Cinemas/Holden via Burncoat Street)

Ridership: My trip got a total of 2 people. Aww…well, maybe the overall ridership is better. Let’s see…on weekdays, the route gets 274 people on average, while on Saturdays it’s 75. Alright, so this is definitely a lower-ridership route.

Pros: Burncoat Street is a very important corridor to serve by bus; it’s residential, it’s dense, and most importantly, it’s way up on a hill. The route comes nice and frequently too, with service every half hour on weekdays and every hour on Saturdays.

Cons: No Sunday service is a real letdown, but I could see ridership being incredibly low if it did run. Honestly, it’s already pretty low, with some of the lowest productivity and highest subsidies on the WRTA – does this route really need half-hourly service on weekdays? Granted, the WRTA ridership counts were taken when the route came every hour, but I doubt the amount of people has gone up astronomically.

Nearby and Noteworthy: If you’re looking to see a movie, you can use the 14 to get to Showcase Cinemas! Just make sure it’s a matinee, since service stops at 9 PM…

Final Verdict: 4/10
The 14 seems like it runs too often for the amount of ridership it gets, but maybe that could be alleviated if it was combined with the 30! The 31 could cover service along West Boylston Street, while the 14 could run from the Hub to West Boylston via Burncoat Street. I’m not a fan of the redundancy of routes along Lincoln Street from Brittan Square, but it’s not the worst thing in the world.

Latest MBTA News: Service Updates

We’re going to the West Boylston Walmart on the 30. Fun stuff.

Nice wrap!

We headed out onto Foster Street from the Central Hub, then we turned onto Major Taylor Boulevard. There were lots of office buildings with parking lots along here, and they continued as we darted onto Grove Street for a brief independent section. After going by a repurposed factory, we passed some other industrial buildings, a field, and a cemetery.

A few offices.

We turned onto Gold Star Boulevard, joining the 31 and running past more industrial buildings and some suburban businesses. Curving under I-190, we passed the Greendale Mall and the street became West Boylston Street. It came along a train track with a huge freight train parked on it, while the other side of the road had retail and houses on the side streets.

Some houses going up a hill.

Once the track got sufficiently far from the street, industrial businesses occupied both sides of the street. We passed the monstrous Quinsigamond Community College up on its hill. The 31 left us on Mountain Street East, so finally, it was just us on West Boylston Street. It was still a lot of suburban businesses, but they were interspersed with short residential sections.

It’s gettin’ woodsy out here!

The street became State Road when we entered West Boylston, running past an interchange with I-190. It was still all businesses along here, with residential neighborhoods down side streets. Finally, we pulled into the West Boylston Walmart, the route’s final stop. From here, we took the bus back a ways, and it’s worth noting that it does an extra deviation into Wachusett Plaza coming back.

Have fun going back to Worcester!

WRTA Route: 30 (Union Station Hub – West Boylston Walmart via Grove Street and West Boylston Street)

Ridership: The 30 gets great ridership, averaging 929 people per weekday, 438 per Saturday, and 196 per Sunday. My trip only got ten passengers, but these numbers are great, so it was probably a fluke.

Pros: This is a direct trip running straight up West Boylston Street, and it comes at a great half-hourly headway on weekdays. That drops to every hour on weekends, but I think it makes sense. It’s also worth noting that the route terminates at Showcase Cinemas on Saturday nights to cover for the 14.

Cons: Dang, this thing is really redundant with the 31! About a third of the route is with the 31, and a large portion of the 30’s Worcester section runs with other routes, too. Also, does this thing have RIPTA-length layovers on weekdays? The schedule says nothing about interlining, which would mean that buses get 20 minutes of layover at the Central Hub! It’s not a huge deal, but it might be an efficiency problem.

Nearby and Noteworthy: Walmaht! Price Choppah! Woostah!

Final Verdict: 6/10
As far as serving the passengers goes, the 30 does a great job. When it comes to overall efficiency, though, that’s where the score drops. The route spends a ton of time with the 31, it doesn’t have any substantial independent sections until the northern third of the route, and buses may be laying over for long periods of time. I’ll discuss this more in the next post, but perhaps a cost-saving solution would be to combine it with the 14…

Latest MBTA News: Service Updates

It’s time for the 23’s cousin route, the 26! We’ll be covering a lot of familiar territory in this review, but we start off at a unique section: Great Brook Valley.

The bus at Great Brook Valley.

The route technically starts at the Great Brook Valley Pool, but Sam and I were a little dubious of that as a starting point, so we waited at the next stop, inside the Great Brook Valley apartment development. We boarded the bus on Tacoma Street, running down through the development. Next, we turned onto Boylston Street, which had houses and businesses on one side and industrial buildings on the other.

Lots of apartments.

We went around a rotary onto Lincoln Street, running past industrial buildings that turned into suburban businesses with parking lots. At the Lincoln Mall, we were joined by the 23, and thus the independent section was over. The suburban businesses continued until a huge office building before we went under I-290.

Hey, I took a picture of this exact same sign on the 23!

There were houses along Lincoln Street until we reached Brittan Square, where we were joined by the 14 and we passed businesses and a hospital. It felt much more urban, even when the square ended, with dense apartments and some retail along the road. Going under I-290 again, we merged onto Major Taylor Boulevard, taking us past tall office buildings with parking lots. Finally, it was a left on Foster Street, and it was a straight shot to the Central Hub.

Wow, a rare sunny picture at the Central Hub!

WRTA Route: 26 (Union Station Hub – Great Brook Valley via Lincoln Street)

Ridership: The 26 gets amazing ridership – in fact, it’s the second-busiest WRTA route on weekdays, and the busiest on weekends! The bus gets 1,117 people per weekday, 738 per Saturday, and 283 per Sunday. My morning Saturday trip got a full 20 people going inbound, which is great!

Pros: Like the 23, the 26 provides direct service down Lincoln Street, serving slightly different places at the end of the route. We know from before that both routes run every half hour on weekday to provide 15-minute service along Lincoln Street, but the 26 actually goes every half hour on Saturdays, too!

Cons: Unfortunately, that drops to every 65 minutes on Sundays. Why it can’t be every 60, I don’t know – it’s given more time than on Saturdays, which doesn’t make much sense. Also, there are a few weird service patterns here: on weekdays, there’s a timepoint for the “Great Brook Valley Community Center,” but no trips actually serve it; also, there are a few trips that only go to Great Brook Valley without running all the way to the pool, which just seems…weird. I mean, they’re less than a minute apart! Why does this route even serve the pool in the first place? And actually, why is it given five minutes to get from the pool to Great Brook Valley when that’s way too much time? Finally, like I said on the 23, the coordination between these routes needs to be a lot more obvious.

Nearby and Noteworthy: Basically the same stuff as the 23. Maybe the pool is fun in the summer!

Final Verdict: 7/10
I think this is a better route than the 23 because it comes more frequently on Saturdays and it has fewer timepoint issues. However, the coordination between these two routes needs to be better. Well, here’s something radical: what if we combine them? I can’t get the map to work properly for some reason (the timepoints move to the wrong places), but a link to it is here if you’re interested. Meanwhile, here’s the schedule (full version here):

Basically, I combined the two routes into a loop-like service, with buses serving one leg in one direction and the other leg in the other direction. There are two ways of going about this: one is to have every bus operate in the same direction every trip, and the other is to alternate between trips. I decided to do the latter option, just so that neither route gets preferential treatment. Passengers could stay on the bus to go around to their destination, although the layover time at The Fairways makes it inefficient to do – maybe all the layover could be at the Central Hub so people can ride through.

Anyway, the biggest asset to this schedule is that it offers consistent frequency with the same number of buses. That means we get 15-minute service on weekdays, 20-minute service on Saturdays, and half-hour service on Sundays.  That is so much better than the current weekend schedule where the buses just leave whenever they want! And the only increase in costs is on Sundays, where I increased the operating hours for both buses to create half-hourly service all day – if need be, it could be dropped to every hour for the first and last few trips.

This schedule highlights a general problem with the WRTA: they’re not operating their buses as efficiently as they could be. They’re facing huge budget cuts from the state government right now, and that’s awful, but it bothers me that they have some very easy fixes that can be made for no extra cost that would boost ridership. Think about how many more people would ride if they knew there was a bus every fifteen minutes on weekdays and every twenty minutes on Saturdays! This is something the authority could implement with the exact same amount of resources. The fact that they’re not taking advantage of corridors like this is baffling.

Latest MBTA News: Service Updates