MBTA Green Line 3-car train operating plans to enhance capacity and reliability

Transit agencies face a variety of challenges, from increasing ridership to changes in infrastructure, to system expansions, all of which require significant preparation to accommodate the changes without affecting passengers or the agency negatively. The MBTA Green Line, a Boston light rail system serving nearly 230,000 average weekday passengers, will be undergoing major changes in the next two decades, including nearly doubling of ridership and system expansion. In order to prepare for these changes, measures need to be taken to increase capacity and plan for operations on the new segment. Starting in Fall 2010, the MBTA added to a 2-car train operation, and subsequently increased, a number of 3-car trains on three of the four Green Line branches, in order to begin to address the capacity issue. This thesis analyzes service performance before and after implementation of 3-car trains to find that although scheduled capacity increased slightly, the actual capacity of the system remained constant during the morning peak period and decreased during the evening peak period. Furthermore, there were some negative impacts with respect to passenger waiting time and running times, thus worsening the overall passenger experience. However, since 3-car trains will be required for increasing capacity on the Green Line, it is recommended that trials of 3-car trains continue, with the restriction that only 2- or 3-car trains operate on a branch. Furthermore, field observations at terminal stations on two of the branches show differences in operations management practices, which help explain some variability in service along the route, and point to strategies to improve service reliability.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2012

Author dc:creator

• Malikova, Alexandra A

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Frederick Salvucci and John P. Attanucci.

• Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/74271

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/74271