(The following report by Galen Moore appeared at BostonNow.com on December 13.)
BOSTON — At South Station, when one Commuter Rail train runs late, the rest can fall like dominos.
With all 13 tracks at capacity, a rush hour breakdown leaves dispatchers struggling to find a place to put the next train.
“If you do get a train delayed on the [Northeast] Corridor, there will be residual impacts,” said Amtrak Operations Manager Glen Underwood, who oversees dispatching of Amtrak, freight and Commuter Rail on Boston’s south side train lines. “It becomes very congested real quick.”
In a recent spate of Commuter Rail delays, south side lines performed consistently worse than their northern counterparts, according to data provided by Commuter Rail contractor Massachusetts Bay Commuter Rail Co. (MBCR).
In November, when average on-time performance fell to 69 percent across the system, seven of South Station’s 11 lines rated below that number. Only one of North Station’s six lines was below average.
Transportation Secretary Bernard Cohen is working to broker an expansion of South Station by taking over the post office next door, but that is likely about six years out, Deputy Secretary Thomas Cahir said.
In the meantime, the MBTA meets at least twice yearly with Amtrak officials and MBCR to discuss schedule adjustments, spokesman Joe Pesaturo said.
However, the most effective solution may be a planned replacement of the Commuter Rail dispatching system.
“The dispatching system will help to improve the amount of information available to the train dispatcher so movements can be better planned to avoid conflicts at South Station,” Pesaturo said.
That could alleviate the strain, said Himanshu Patel, director of rail market development at Bentley Civil, an international railroad operations consulting firm.
“It’s not necessarily a space issue, it’s a timing issue,” Patel said. “The only way it can be resolved is changing the signal configuration of the network.”
Pesaturo said a funding request is set to go before the MBTA board in February, and construction on the final phase of the project could begin by late next year.
Until the project is complete, problems will continue, Patel predicted. “When [a breakdown] happens, you end up delaying the entire network,” he said, “and it can take two or three hours until an engineer can make it up.”