Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Greater Boston Public Transit

Importance for articles

I'd like to have a standard set of indicators for what importance this project should place on what articles. This is my draft proposal, very open to suggestions, and based roughly on what User:Whoop whoop pull up and I have been adding. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 15:31, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

• Top importance (aiming for GA or featured status for all):
  • Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority; History of the MBTA; MBTA accessibility
  • Existing MBTA services: MBTA Commuter Rail, each of its lines, CapeFLYER, and the station list; MBTA Bus, the list of bus routes, Silver Line (MBTA), and Trolleybuses in Greater Boston; MBTA Boat; the four MBTA subway lines, four Green Line branches, and the stations list; The Ride.
  • The three downtown commuter rail terminals, the seven downtown transfer stations, Providence Station, and perhaps a small number of high-use stations like Harvard and Ruggles.
  • Active major capital projects: Green Line Extension, South Coast Rail

• High importance (aiming for GA for some, all up to B class save for perhaps the surface stops):
  • All active commuter rail, subway, and Silver Line stations; stations being constructed as major capital projects
  • Green Line "A" Branch, the three former elevated sections of the Orange Line, the five former commuter rail lines
  • Histories of individual active lines (should they get too unwieldy to be just part of the article)
  • Wildcat Branch, Grand Junction Railroad, Track 61, Framingham Secondary, and other important subsidiary lines
  • Predecessor companies: Boston Elevated Railway, the eight major railroads, Eastern Massachusetts Street Railway and its ilk

• Mid importance (aiming for C class, plus some GA or B)
  • Railroads serving the Greater Boston area other than the major eight, and branchlines with their own articles
  • All former MBTA stations, rapid transit stations closed before the MBTA era, and non-MBTA stations served into the MBTA era
  • Streetcar operators that are not major MBTA predecessors
  • Lechmere Viaduct, Haymarket North Extension, Southwest Corridor (Massachusetts) and other physical sections of current lines
  • Minor lists like MBTA crosstown bus routes
  • Shelved or cancelled projects like the Urban Ring (MBTA)

• Low importance (aiming for C class though some may only be start class, and those of other projects may be higher)
  • Former railroad stations that did not last into the MBTA era
  • Minor infrastructure like Egleston Substation
  • Tangentially related articles like Northeast Corridor and Lake Shore Limited that are primarily covered by other wikiprojects.

I mostly agree with your ranking, but I've got a few changes to suggest, based on what I've been adding: Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty | Averted crashes} 21:31, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

• Existing terminal commuter rail, subway, and Silver Line stations, plus some other important stations, as High importance, but other existing stations as Mid importance
• Minor former branches as Mid importance, minor former stations as Low importance

I definitely see where you're coming from, but the issue with that is that you get down the rabbit hole of what "important" and "minor" mean. It's better to have one base standard that covers all the cases, and a handful (subway to subway transfers are an obvious case) get higher importance, rather than arbitrarily pushing some to a lower improtance. Terminal stations don't also necessarily mean a lot; Bowdoin, Forge Park/495, Wickford Junction, and Oak Grove are all less important than the penultimate station on their lines.

Encyclopedias should serve their users first; it doesn't matter if we have a great collection of data if it's not useful or important to anyone. During the short-lived article feedback experiment, it became very clear that most readers were looking at current service information about stations - so that should be a focus of the project. Even the least interesting present-day stations - even if they'll never go beyond C-class - should be high importance for that sake. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 22:49, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Would it be ok to create a MBTA Commuter Rail day trips page

Hi! I'm interested in creating a new page on Wikipedia to list day trip destinations that are accessible on the commuter rail. Examples would be Salem, Crane Beach, Providence, CapeFlyer, Ski Train, Bike Train, Ayer rail trail, and many more. I think it would be great for people in Boston interested in making a local day trip using the T, and could help increase ridership on off peak MBTA trains that are mostly empty.

Do you think this would be ok to create? If so, do you have a suggested title of the page? Some possibilities are:

• Attractions on MBTA Commuter Rail
• MBTA Commuter Rail Day Trips

Tjmather (talk) 18:08, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

That's a good idea, but it's not within scope on Wikipedia, which is explicitly not a travel guide. Wikivoyage would be the proper place to make such a guide. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 18:19, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Logos in infoboxes

@Enginemen: I've removed the logos you added to the infoboxes for the various lines. I appreciate your effort to add them, but I think it's better without them for two reasons:

• All of them take up valuable real estate in the infobox. The purpose of infoboxes is to summarize the most important information in an article - see MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE. Adding the logos pushes all the other information downwards. I don't see a contextless logo as providing any useful information that's not already given by the photograph and/or the infobox title.
• Many of the logos you added aren't official logos. Files like File:MBTA Providence-Stoughton icon.png are intended for navigation on Wikivoyage; they're not from the MBTA and shouldn't be placed in an infobox where readers expect an official logo.

Best, Pi.1415926535 (talk) 22:14, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Salem station listed at Requested moves

A requested move discussion has been initiated for Salem station to be moved to Salem station, Massachusetts. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 10:18, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

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Line colors on diagram maps

I recently noticed that diagram maps like Template:Greenbush Line are made a lot more confusing to read because the Red Line is shown in blue, and the Commuter Rail is shown in red instead of its usual dark purple. There's some discussion of making these colors match the MBTA line names and map conventions, which are different than the Wikipedia colors which are used to distinguish metro rail from commuter rail. Please chime in at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trains#Line colors if you have any opinions. -- Beland (talk) 06:02, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Titles for bus route articles

As the MBTA begins implementation of its Bus Network Redesign project, I anticipate that I will create new articles for a number of routes. (Just about all of the planned frequent routes date back to the streetcar days, with substantial contemporary and modern coverage - see Ipswich Street line for the level of sourcing that tends to be available.) Currently, the informal naming convention is X (MBTA bus); however, that's only from two articles – 43 (MBTA bus) and 86 (MBTA bus) – created with that scheme in 2005, and there's never been a formal discussion. I'd like to settle on a naming scheme before I create more articles. I see six possibilities:

1. X (MBTA bus)
2. X (MBTA)
3. Route X (MBTA bus)
4. Route X (MBTA)
5. MBTA route X
6. MBTA bus route X

Of those, I think 5 or 6 makes the most sense, since they don't require disambiguation. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 03:51, 25 October 2024 (UTC)