Friday, December 09, 2005

Dwell On This

The Scene: Red line, northbound train
The Time: 18:00
The Problem: Dwell Time

As a daily Orange and Silver line rider, and a former daily Red line rider, I'm familiar with the differences between the lines.
Say what you will about the Orange line - old, dirty, etc., but the Red line has the longest dwell times. You know, how long it is between the stopping of the train at a station and when it leaves.
The Red line takes forever to leave the stations, with at least a 3 minute wait.
What used to be a 20 minute ride from South Station to Davis is now an extra 20 minutes with the longer dwell times.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

hmmmm....that may be true, But! let's think about the inconciderate passengers. The ones who cram in the cars until they can hardly breathe. Or the poor door person who risks losing their job for safety reasons, because the people don't want to wait for the next train. The train that they can see with their own two eyes, directly down the tunnel!

Anonymous said...

This is one case where automated trains in other systems are better... the doors open for x number of seconds and then they close, regardless of whether people are still trying to get on or not. The trains stay strictly on schedule, though, so any passengers that don't make it on the train KNOW the next train will be in exactly 5 mins or whatever the schedule is.