Lee Biernbaum

That's the nicest way anyone has ever called me bizzare.

Well, I guess by announcing now they ensured they'll also get fewer papers this year... they sure won't be getting my 6-10 paper reviews this august.

All in all, this is one of the major annual projects for my team and I'm super excited to share it with you all. Happy to answer any questions, hear feedback, or suggestions for next year's report in a thread here or a DM.

A diagram comparing platform accessibility standards for a hypothetical elevator under two policies: the new (2024) SDP policy, where all elevator outages are considered inaccessible, versus the old (2021) SDP policy, where unplanned elevator outages with alternative shuttle service are considered accessible, resulting in a lower accessibility score of 29% under the old policy compared to 71% under the new policy.

We've made a heap of changes to our accessibility metrics, including under-the-hood changes to our Platform Access metric which takes into account where we do (or don't!) have redundancy for elevators or where a single elevator serves >1 platform. Blog post for that one is coming up, so stay tuned.

A diagram comparing Bus Reliability Standards for an example bus stop, illustrating bus arrivals at Columbia Rd. at Quincy St. on August 26, 2024, in the inbound direction for Route 16. A canceled bus scheduled to arrive at 9:44 AM is excluded under the old standards but counted as a failure under the new standards, resulting in a lower reliability score of 50% under the new standards compared to 60% under the old standards.

It's the first to include the changes from the 2024 Service Delivery Policy update. We made tweaks to our measures, using new and better data sources, and better reflecting rider experiences (for example, we now penalize dropped trips). Blog post for more info: www.massdottracker.com/latest-posts...

A line chart comparing the On-Time Performance and Excess Trip Time performances for the Red Line from January 2022 to May 2024. In January 2022, Excess Trip Time was considered passing for approximately 80% of passengers, and On-Time Performance was considered passing for approximately 85% of passengers. On-Time Performance was mostly steady from January 2022 to May 2024, remaining between 80% and 90%. For the same time period, Excess Trip Time steadily declined from approximately 80% in January 2022 to approximately 15% in November 2023, before increasing to approximately 40% on May 2024. This is to demonstrate how Excess Trip Time is more sensitive to rider experience than On-Time Performance. For reference, when FTA service reductions were implemented in summer 2022, Excess Trip Time was approximately 60% and On-Time Performance was approximately 85%, and when Global Speed Restrictions were implemented in March 2023, Excess Trip Time was approximately 20% and On-Time Performance was approximately 80%.

This year's SDP Report implements our new reliability metric, Excess Trip Time. We're really excited about this one because you can see how it shows the degradation of service and the result of the work to address problems. Blog post for more info www.massdottracker.com/latest-posts...

A great part of my job is I get to lead the team writing the MBTA's Annual Service Delivery Report. Today we released our Fall 2024 report. cdn.mbta.com/sites/defaul...

Shout out to my team and the Data Viz folks at OPMI (none are on bluesky I think)

🧵on why I am particularly excited about this:

Everyone who helps the creation of meaningful accurate data for the good of the public: I admire your service and appreciate you
❤️🧡🤍🩷❤️

AASHTO Journal - Transportation Funding Restored After Inadvertent Suspension An executive order issued by President Trump aimed at rolling back “Green New Deal” spending on renewable energy and electric vehicle programs ended up temporarily suspending all highway  reimbursement payments to states for roughly four hours on January 21 due to a misinterpretation of the wording of the order.  [Above photo of President Trump via […]

They did exactly this last week on transportation funding, a trial balloon.

Froze all IIJA / IRA funds. Then issued guidance claiming that's not what they meant & the civil service hysterically overreacted.

AASHTO bought it uncritically.

aashtojournal.transportation.org/transportati...

AASHTO Journal - Transportation Funding Restored After Inadvertent Suspension An executive order issued by President Trump aimed at rolling back “Green New Deal” spending on renewable energy and electric vehicle programs ended up temporarily suspending all highway  reimbursement payments to states for roughly four hours on January 21 due to a misinterpretation of the wording of the order.  [Above photo of President Trump via […]

They did exactly this last week on transportation funding, a trial balloon.

Froze all IIJA / IRA funds. Then issued guidance claiming that's not what they meant & the civil service hysterically overreacted.

AASHTO bought it uncritically.

aashtojournal.transportation.org/transportati...

Hey @crew.bsky.social or other ethics experts.

In the absence of federal grants, what are the implications for the Hatch Act for state, local and NPO employees?

This is the kind of content the internet is best at. Can't wait!

Our ACTUAL neighborhood character fails nimby false claims to protect neighborhood character.

So I was a federal employee for years and I am going to repeat a fact that people forget every time a politician sings this song. The government is wildly understaffed and you will feel these kinds of cuts immediately because the people eligible for retirement make up the bulk of knowledgeable staff

Are places with bad pavement spending more because they have bad pavement? Are places spending little because they have less maintenance or reconstruction to do?

I doubt that explains everything and some time series variant would help get at that, but it's something one needs to consider.

I do have some direction of causality questions about this.

Putting aside all of the (really important!) questions about the nature and efficacy of policing... There is sort of a canonical example in economic modeling where the correlation between crime and number of police is similarly muddled.

Totally not the point and likely something someone coded years ago for some mild mannered fun, but isn't I kind of weird they suggest a hashtag for your announcement of your departure?

Go up or down a floor to stay inside and avoid that rediculousness!

My take during my 2020s re-watch/watch (moved somewhere without upn during the original run) was that was that the g*m*rgate folks didn't spring out of nowhere in the 2010s, they were shitty people mad at VOY and spiked the discourse.

Like they can be a really nice rule of thumb tool, but the idea that if we just college enough SPFs then we'll know all the things is... Rough.

For a horrible afternoon, try having someone with a stats background read documentation about SPFs.

Cmfs really walk the border between useful statistical inference and massively over fit numbers that are treated as mysterious sources of Truth with no real underpinning

Couldn't justify this session over other alternatives but wish I was there

To what degree is this a function of the state legislature killing the Urban Partnership Agreement program in 2008ish? I imagine a lot of local decision makers are reacting to that experience.

The whole shtick from Reason was a lot more charming in the 00s.

Which is to say, unlike in the service planning world, fare policy may really have two different demographic groups to address.

I found myself saying out loud yesterday that we may have a context where this dichotomy makes sense... Low income fare programs.

For most riders, reliability, frequencies, span are more important than fares.

But for a set of low income riders, fares are most important.

Sharing a short thread summarizing the #TRBAM workshop I co-organized on low-income reduced fare programs.

We learned a lot from experts about what works best and how we can design programs most effectively. Many thanks to the panelists and my co-organizers, plus great engagement from attendees.

Am enjoying #TRBAM but struck by the lack of vegetarian / pescataeian options at the convention center for lunch.

Appears to be limited to Ben's chili (2 locations, long lines), a sad grab and go hummus wrap (multiple), and a burrito (1 location).

Somehow the sub shop doesn't even have anything!

Prof. Candace Brakewood presents a keynote at a TRB workshop

Attendees at a TRB workshop

TRB workshop organizers and panelists

An example of a breakout discussion during a TRB workshop

Our #TRBAM2025 workshop brought together experts from the public transit and shared micromobility fields to share their research and best practices for low-income reduced fare programs.

A big thanks to my co-organizers Candace Brakewood, @leebier.bsky.social, and Adam Cohen!

Workshop on low-income reduced fare programs kicking off with a panel about transit discounts. Clearly a lot of interest out there! #TRBAM