Why is the Fitchburg Line Commuter Rail so slow between Porter and North Station?

Question

North Station in Boston, Massachusetts and Porter in Cambridge, Massachusetts are two adjacent stations on the Fitchburg Line, a commuter rail line extending northwest from Boston.

The two stations are 3.4 miles apart. However, this trip takes 15 minutes inbound to Boston and 10 minutes outbound from Boston. That comes out to an average of 13.6 mph inbound and 20.4 mph outbound. Speaking from first-hand experience, the train often goes slower than this speed on sections of this track, going at a crawling pace.

It's quite frustrating being so close to the destination and moving so slowly. Why does the train move so slowly here?

Answer 1

There are probably a few factors.

1. Track design

The trains and most of the tracks are designed for an operational speed of 60m/h. However that's less the case in the densely populated cities. The tracks are old, have lots of switches close the main stations, frequent crossing with other traffic etc. It's not just North Stations: all trains in and out of South station are also excruciating slow close to the station.

North Station seems to be particularly bad not just for trains but for the subway as well. The green line crosses the river on the museum's bridge. There is an actual stop sign when it goes underground again at North Station, the posted speed limit is 3m/h (yes, that's THREE) and it's famous for it's screeching noise when going through the right turns at this spot.

2. Intentional mismanagement

A few years ago the Boston MBTA had the worst on-time record of all commuter rail systems in the US (which is already a low bar). At the time the governor yelled at them to fix it (threating reduced funding). Instead of improving the operational efficiency, they simply padded the schedules and increased the nominal ravel time. For example, the express lines from Worcester have a fairly long stretch without any stops (West Natick to Landsdowne). In normal conditions it's hard for them to go as slow as the schedule is planned so they have to stop somewhere in the middle to run down the clock. The choice of location appears to be up the engineer. On the inbound it's often the golf course in Weston and on the outbound it's Lake Cochichuate, both being the most scenic spots on the route.

Boston has outsourced the management of the Commuter Rail to French company called Keolis. Keolis has performed poorly and in 2017 the state decided to not renew their contract which even more lowered Keolis' motivation. Spooked by the pandemic, the state reversed that decision in 2020, so Keolis is sill mismanaging the trains.

The sheet amount of incompetence and not caring at all is hard to understate. A simple example: in Framingham the trains often arrive in the "wrong" track and there is no signage or indication for it. If you are waiting on the inbound side for an inbound train that happens to randomly arrive on the outbound side, you will miss the train. It takes a while to get to the other side and they won't wait. As a result, most people have taken to waiting ON THE BRIDGE that crosses the platforms as it's the midpoint between the two possible embarkation spots. It's still a mad scramble but at least you have a good chance of making it. Unless, of course, you are elderly, injured, disabled, have luggage, or have slightly limited mobility, in which case you are sheer out of luck,

Answer 2

Speaking from first-hand experience, the train often goes slower than this speed on sections of this track, going at a crawling pace.

It's quite frustrating being so close to the destination and moving so slowly. Why does the train move so slowly here?

Most of the line is straight, but the last mile is absolutely bonkers.

Entailing a bunch of tight curves where they pushed tracks around to fit a bunch of storage tracks next to the Boston Engine Terminal (maintenance yard).

Then a junction with the Rockport, Newburyport, Haverhill and Lowell lines. Crossovers galore, as 13 tracks neck down to four for the ...

... Bascule drawbridge over the Charles River. And immediately into

the fan-out at the station proper. This isn't even a proper yard throat; there just isn't space for that. Look at the south side of the bridge, there isn't even a crossover there, so each of the two drawbridges serves half the terminal, and trains either enter or exit on the "wrong side". If they lose a bridge they lose half their tracks. Really, the bulk of what could be laughably called a "yard throat" is on the north side of the drawbridge. The single ladder track used by your line is obscured under the US-1 bridge. Fortunately the other lines have another half mile to get sorted, but wow. That is a lot of track work in not a lot of space.

And to answer your question about "why so slow", all the switches are #8 (15 MPH) - they don't have the physical space for #20 (40 MPH) crossovers. And with the yard throat so spread out because of the drawbridge, yeah, you're going most of a mile *with some part of your train" on top of a 10-15 MPH switch.

Also, all these switches are signaled, which means a dispatcher has to talk to the train and work controls to get the track switches thrown over and the proper signal given. When they're at walking speed, they're crawling up on a red signal waiting for the switch to throw and get their green.

Hell of a place to put a train station.

So yeah, I know it's fashionable in Boston to paint the MBTA like a bunch of klutzes that can't punch their way out of a paper bag, but I can't honestly say Metra, Caltrain or GO/Toronto would do much better with those constraints. And really, yards like Chicago Union Station aren't fantastically better. The only people who really have it dialed in is Philadelphia - imagine the moment you reach the bridge you pick up speed and make normal stops again - North Station, City Hall, South Station and onward to Kingston, because most inbound lines run through to become outbound lines, dispensing with terminal nonsense. That's Philly.

And that bridge is a bottleneck, but mainly because there are 4 tracks not 8. (Because there was, but somebody really wanted a few grand of scrap steel).

However, this trip takes 15 minutes inbound to Boston and 10 minutes outbound to Boston.

That's a different thing. That's called "padding". Think about how train schedules work. If the train publishes a schedule, it can't leave the station early or it will leave people behind. However, that doesn't apply at the last station; they can certainly arrive early there, so that's the only place you can "pad" the schedule. By calling it 15 minutes instead of 10, that means if they are up to 5 minutes late, that counts as "not late".

Is it honest? Well, I don't know. What if they are on time but are delayed 4 minutes in the congested yard throat by late trains from Haverhill and Newburyport. Is it the crew's fault? No.