How are commuter rail track assignments determined?

[Chris Burgess]

A couple questions about the train/track assignments determined in North Station for the commuter rail:

*  Are the track choices a subjective determination by humans and if so, how do they make this decision?

* If not, what is the system that determines the track assignment and what variables feed into the calculations?

* how far ahead of the actual posting to the departure board is this assignment made; how much lead time?

* Is there a public feed that publishes this information prior to it being posted to the departure board?

* If there is no feed, is there a way to determine the track assignment prior to posting on the departure board other than asking a conductor?

 

Thanks

Chris

[Sting Peterson]

Hi Chris,

 

I don't work for the MBTA but, as a Commuter Rail passenger, I'm very interested in this topic.  There's supposed to be a public feed that provides the track assignment info that goes to the boards at South Station and North Station.  For info on the feed, check the Departure Board Feed .pdf at the following URL:

 

http://www.mbta.com/uploadedfiles/Departure%20Board%20Feed.pdf

 

An excerpt from it is pasted in below.  However, I couldn't seem to download the Departures.csv file this morning.

 

Departure Board Feed

The “departure board feed” is the contents of the North Station and South Station departure boards,

published to a data feed in CSV format. The file can be downloaded from

http://developer.mbta.com/lib/gtrtfs/Departures.csv

I'm considering sending a related inquiry to deve...@mbta.com about it.  I'm not sure if anyone has implemented the feed into an app yet, but I think it would be great info to have in an app.  Sometimes I'm running for a train after work and when I get to the station, it is so packed with people I literally can't get to the big board in the station or the smaller boards outside near the tracks.  In such cases, it's nearly impossible to tell if your desired train is on track 2 or 3 or 4 or 12, or if it's about to leave, or if it's not in because it's 10 minutes late, etc.  I recently discovered the T-on-Time app, which is pretty cool, but t would be awesome to have reliable track assignment info from the board in an app as well.

 

Regards,

Sting

[Andy Monat]

As Sting says, that departure board data is available shortly after the physical departure board shows it. See http://www.mbtainfo.com/commuter_rail/south_station_and_north_station_departures for the place on my site where that data is available, and perhaps it's on other sites or apps.

I presume there isn't a way to get that information any sooner than it appears on the departure board feed, but would love to be told otherwise by the people who work for the T.

I asked on Twitter how track assignments are done, and people I trust had some interesting observations; see https://twitter.com/mbtainfo/status/600322912017604608 and its replies. Namely, at North Station the trains are ideally put on tracks which roughly correspond to their destinations, so that the trains going the furthest east are on the furthest east tracks, which is to say the lowest numbered ones, and so on to the Fitchburg trains at the highest numbered tracks. That explains what I've noticed, that the Haverhill line train is very frequently on track 4.

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[Sting Peterson]

Andy,

The Departures page on your site is great. Thanks! 

Sting

[Stefan W]

Sting, my app also has live departure info: http://sites.harvard.edu/~wuensch/T/commuter-rail-map.html
It will appear 1) on the train marker and/or 2) just below the map and/or 3) in the Status columns of the table view
(http://sites.harvard.edu/~wuensch/T/commuter-rail-map.html#trains)


One of the most significant reasons why the train & track assignments aren't made available earlier is that the Conductor is responsible for checking the readiness of his / her train set before that equipment is cleared for the trip. The Conductor(s) have to inspect the entire train for safety & operations (lights working, climate control OK, doors unlocked, brakes tested, etc.) before passengers are supposed to board. (It's not enforced much because there's very little safety risk if people do board early, but there is a rule about it.) Also there can be last-minute equipment reassignments - sometimes _really_ last-minute! - due to other trains broken down, late trains holding up crew members, fuel running low. It would be a disservice to the riders to have them boarding until all the checks are done.

If you browse / search http://www.railroad.net/forums/viewforum.php?f=65 you'll find some discussions on this from Conductors & crew themselves.

[Chris Burgess]

Looks like track assignments are communicated to the conductors via radio communications. I wonder if it's possible to identify the radio frequency and listen in around the time the train is to depart.

[StefanW]

Definitely it is possible (and done by many railfans) to listen in to the Keolis radio channels. The same goes for Subway channels also.

You can find many sites where the frequencies are listed, such as http://newenglanddepot.homestead.com/frequencies.html

(I can't vouch for the accuracy of that site; I just found it via Google.)

I don't think it would be very useful though. The information booth staff member posts the trip on the "Solari" boards as soon as the Conductor calls it out over the radio. After that there's usually only a minute or two before it shows up in the departure boards data feed.

[Chris Burgess]

I wonder if it might be announced to the conductors sooner as we often see them heading to the train up to 10 minutes before it is posted to the board. 

Might take some experimentation. Thanks for the information!

[Chris Burgess]

For the sake of science, I can confirm that the radio is not a good solution.