YPT Boston Lunch and Learn - Commuter Rail Schedules

Join YPT Boston for our next Lunch and Learn presented by members Maeve Ragusin and Matt Moran on Commuter Rail Schedules.

HDR worked with MBTA Railroad Operations in their effort to develop new schedules for the entire MBTA commuter rail system.  The overall goal of the initiative was to improve reliability and resiliency of MBTA Commuter Rail Service and improve peak period operations.  The MBTA Commuter Rail System, originally developed in the 1800s, had not seen major changes to schedules in decades despite ongoing changes to infrastructure conditions and public ridership trends.  The existing network infrastructure and ridership trends were analyzed against operational requirements in order to develop optimal schedules for the system. 

In creating new schedules, the HDR team’s objectives included improving the consistency of on-time performance, optimization of equipment cycles, scheduled runtimes, turn times, station dwells, and resultant levels of passenger service. HDR utilized the Rail Traffic Controller (RTC), an operations modeling software to simulate the new schedules and test for resiliency against the existing track and signals infrastructure.