Talk:MBTA Commuter Rail

Oldest chat
SPUI, actually "that sort of thing" (e.g., location hyperlinks of the form Philadelphia, PA) is the standard form for Wikipedia. You probably should not have reverted those changes.

Atlant 01:31, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * See User talk:Atlant --SPUI 06:10, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

MBTA ownership of abandoned and non-passenger trackage
This article should make some mention of rail lines the MBTA took over from other railroads and which have either been abandoned or have never operated in passenger service. Two obvious examples would be the Central Mass. line and the Millis line. It should also talk about the relation between the MBTA and Bay Colony Railroad. 121a0012 04:54, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

MBCR infobox
The MBCR infobox seems to think that the MBCR has been operating since 1964. This is clearly untrue. Perhaps MBCR shouldn't have its name at the top of the infobox? JNW2 02:13, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

And then someone changed it to read "1964 (MBTA)/2003 (MBCR)"; yet the article says that Amtrak didn't start running it until 1986, and that the MBTA didn't buy the tracks until 1973. I'm going to just change it to 2003, since the top of the infobox has an MBCR logo. JNW2 (talk) 21:39, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Map
The map should be edited to show the Greenbush Line as a solid line, now that it is active. JNW2 02:14, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * The map is still inaccurate.--Ami in CH (talk) 14:15, 13 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I fixed it recently and will continue updating the map. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 17:00, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Worcester/Springfield
I've removed this sentence from the body of the article:

There is a proposal to extend the Worcester/Framingham Line to Springfield, Massachusetts, though a more pressing need for more trains on the route probably will be addressed first.

While I will certainly not be surprised if the track purchase leads to more frequent service (possibly after upgrading to double track on part of the route), I'm not sure there's anything to cite that says that, and perhaps even the MBTA doesn't have a clear picture of how that will work out.

The Springfield thing seems pretty vague, and also should maybe be a link to the amtrak station article and not the city article. JNW2 02:14, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Purple Line
There were recently some edits concerning whether or not the commuter rail is ever called the "Purple Line." Although not an official designation, I have heard people use that term informally to mean the commuter rail system. There are references to this around the Web and here on Wikipedia under Purple Line. I think reference to this could be made here. What do others think? Frankg (talk) 03:21, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Its MBTA, not MBCR
This is an article on the MBTA, not MBCR. MBCR is a contractor, not the regional arm of the MBTA. The article is inaccurate. Would we have talked about Amtrak commuter rail when it was run by Amtrak, no. The graphics, should be MBTA not MBCR. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.216.58.26 (talk) 12:41, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, the article's title is MBTA Commuter Rail, not MBCR, and it really only briefly mentions the fact that it's operated under contract in two places. So I don't see how it can really cause confusion. As for the use of the "MBCR" logo in the infobox, considering it's all over the schedules, uniforms, etc. of the day to day operations, I fail to see how it is not representative of the Commuter Rail's public identity. oknazevad (talk) 06:08, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad Company does not operate these trains any longer, but the redirect is still in place. Any thoughts? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.182.207.237 (talk) 23:46, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
 * ✅: Everything's now redirected to the history section. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 20:17, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Appropriate level of detail
If level of detail posted by contributors is not appropriate, perhaps a helpful course of action is to move the detail to an appropriate page (or a new page if needed) instead of eliminating the detail.
 * Please see my response at Talk:Long Island Rail Road, where we've been having similar issues. oknazevad (talk) 05:58, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia is a place for people to share knowledge. I don't think it is appropriate for one person to decide for others what information to include. If the addition is too much, other users will remove it when they read it.

As for concerns about citations and verifiability, as a matter of policy I do not provide citations for my wiki contributions. If I did, there would be no difference between the revenue work I do as a researcher, and the non-revenue I do on wikipedia. My experience as a wiki user and contributor is that more is always better, and the onus for fact checking lies with the users, and not contributors, of information. All of the materials posted are likely verifiable by someone with good knowledge of the industry; if your industry knowledge isn't up to par, please consult with others to verify the information. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.101.142.135 (talk) 10:41, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
 * To the former, that is exactly what happened. I read you additions (after noticing them via my watchlist), thought there was some excessive detail and removed that which I thought was excessive and, while I was at it, took the opportunity to do other editing and cleanup to, I believe, improve readability and comprehensability of the article. Your wholesale reversions of my edits shows that, despite your claims above, you are attempting to not allow others to edit your contributions.
 * As for your second claims, just about everything in that paragraph flies in the face of the major wikipolicies of WP:NOT (which specificly states that Wikipedia does not contain every detail about a subject), WP:V and WP:RS which calls for citation on almost all additions and allows for the prompt removal of any uncited material, and WP:CIVIL, as your questioning of my level of knowledge of the industry is a bit insulting. Most worryingly, in my opinion, is your personal policy of intentionally not adding citations and placig the "onus for fact checking" on the users. These are grevious errors of Wikipedia policy, and undermines the reliability and usefulness of the project as a whole. Honestly, if you can't abide by the policies, maybe contributing to Wikipedia is not an activity you should be engaging in.oknazevad (talk) 19:28, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Is it still 5th busiest?
In 2010 Q2, our weekday ridership was still no. 5 but our overall ridership as fallen behind SEPTA for no. 6. (9,034,300 for us and 9,081,200 for SEPTA for April-June.) http://www.apta.com/resources/statistics/Documents/Ridership/2010_q2_ridership_APTA.pdf. Should that be changed or do we expect that their ridership will fall back below ours in the third quarter due to their Weekday fare increase in July?--98.229.215.43 (talk) 13:40, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
 * The third quarter report has been out for about a month now . The MBTA was ahead of Septa by over 8k each weekday during the period and 900k for the year to date. Grk1011/Stephen (talk) 14:20, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Article needs references
I have tagged the article parts which I feel need more references, when I get the chance I can browse through google for some but I have placed a clanup tag and reference tags in. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 20:51, 2 August 2011 (UTC)


 * I went through and cleaned up the references so they're all fully cited and mostly using templates. I've started adding references (and some more images). Pi.1415926535 (talk) 17:02, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Changes to the Page
The article had many mistakes in the equipment section. The Commuter Rail Exclusive Summary says that the GP40MCs were manufactured in 1974-75 for the new bidders for a new contract however article said 1973-75. So I changed it to 1974-75. Also on the retired equipment section I added the Amtrak F40s that were leased to the MBTA in 2002 when the MBTA F40PHM-2Cs were getting overhauled. Those F40s on Amtrak were previously retired from Amtrak and leased to the MBTA. Then after they got returned they were fully retired some were scrapped. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.30.34.177 (talk) 19:54, 23 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I'll cross-check your edits with the NETransit fleet roster which is considered the authoritative source. However, you got some things wrong in the history section - B&M assets weren't sold till 1976 as I just cited. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 20:11, 23 December 2012 (UTC)


 * ✅ I've cross-checked everything. The equipment section now matches the fleet roster, and I completely rewrote the history section. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 08:48, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

WikiProject Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority
Its' been proposed the MBTA had its own WikiProject. It's certainly a big and complex enough topic that it would probably be better served by its own dedicated WikiProject.

Several alternative names have been suggested, with wider geographic coverage.

Please discuss both at WikiProject Council/Proposals/Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. — Lentower (talk) 22:29, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

Broken Infobox
On my browser (Safari 9.0 and Chrome 43 on Mac OS X 10.11), the purple stripe that says COMMUTER RAIL at the top of the infobox seems to fill up the entire page horizontally. This doesn't seem intentional, perhaps a change in Template:Infobox rail caused this? RC Howe (talk) 23:56, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Me too. I'm looking. Sort of stylish though, isn't it? Mackensen (talk) 00:10, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I see the same thing using Firefox 39.0 under Mac OS X 10.10.4. Reify-tech (talk) 00:14, 15 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Fixed, by removing . This change to infobox rail broke it. Mackensen (talk) 00:17, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

rolling stock / MBB
"Only railcars ever built by MBB."

This is not true. For instance see https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Wagen. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.198.37.234 (talk) 15:25, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Seating capacities of coaches
Someone may want to check the seats per car cited in the table. The numbers for the bilevels--about 180 seats each--seem way off from those in comparable models. Kawasaki lists seats per car here; click through the tabs at the left for versions built for other railroads. Bombardier's Multilevels also don't have that many seats. It makes me think someone confused the seats per car with the total of standees and seated passengers per car, not just at Wikipedia but at the site that it cites, linked here. By so doing, this page, intentionally or not, inflates the true capacity difference between single-level and bilevel cars.

Rdhale92 (talk) 03:19, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Non-Revenue locomotives
MBTA previously had a GP9 numbered 904 and a GP40-1 numbered 3247. This used to be on the chart roster, but as the table no longer lists both, does it mean that they have been retired? Davidng913 (talk) 18:16, 20 January 2023 (UTC)