So what about all those brand-spanking-new trains, anyway? The MBTA announced this morning:
Red Line Riders: To maintain scheduled headways (time between trains), shorter 4-car trains may now run in service. This will be done when a full 6-car train isn't available for service. In-station announcements, signs, and staff will be posted at key spots to help riders.
Previously, when we lacked the cars needed to run a full 6-car train, it wouldn't run in service and we would have to stretch out headways to offset the impact. Now, by running 4-car trains when this shortage occurs, we aim to keep up service reliability and frequency.
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Translations
By anon
Wed, 02/19/2025 - 12:05pm
<blockquote>This will be done when a full 6-car train isn't available for service.</blockquote>
"Many of our old cars are falling apart and dangerous. We are afraid there will be a disaster."
</blockquote><blockquote> In-station announcements, signs, and staff will be posted at key spots to help riders.</blockquote>
"Sometimes we will help riders, sometimes we won't. Sometimes announcements, signs, and staff will be there, sometimes they won't. Communication will be just as inconsistent as it always is, so plan on no communication at all in many cases."
<blockquote>We ask riders to be aware of and use caution near the open platform area at the end of a 4-car train</blockquote>
"So it's not our fault when someone falls or is pushed off a crowded platform in the rush to get on a 4 car train"
This
By johnmcboston
Thu, 02/20/2025 - 9:20am
If you keep an eye on T alerts, there are days where you have several instances of broken down trains - which is often one car failing. Reading between the lines I think they just cannot keep with repair of the old cars, and this is their best solution without stating the obvious. (2 6-car trains = 3 4-car trains).
They are pretending they will make up for it with shorter headways, but personally I think the increased boarding time of trying to pack 3 cars worth of people into 1 car will negate any time savings...
Where are all the new cars?
By anon
Wed, 02/19/2025 - 12:12pm
According to several sources, there have been 36 new Red Line cars delivered. Where the heck are they? Whenever I look at Transit Matters new train tracker, there are at most 2 trains with new cars on the entire Red Line at any given time, sometimes zero or only 1 train. So a maximum of 12 cars in use.
Where are the other 24 cars?
Where are all the new cars?
By anon
Wed, 02/19/2025 - 12:18pm
According to several sources, there have been 36 new Red Line cars delivered. Where the heck are they? Whenever I look at Transit Matters new train tracker, there are at most 2 trains with new cars on the entire Red Line at any given time, sometimes zero or only 1 train. So a maximum of 12 cars in use.
Where are the other 24 cars?
Getting ready
By Oxenfree
Wed, 02/19/2025 - 10:11pm
The cars don't come from the factory ready to start service. There's a breaking-in period they have to undergo where any defects can be identified and remedied before they start carrying passengers. This period has to happen on-site, where conditions are the same as they would be in normal operation, so they can't be broken-in in Springfield.
“Breaking-in,” translates to
By Frelmont
Thu, 02/20/2025 - 12:30pm
“Breaking-in,” translates to shoehorning these out of spec, chintzy, crap, corrupt purchases from CCP Trolling Stock and replacing all the components that don’t work.
Cabot Yards
By nathanw
Wed, 02/19/2025 - 10:41pm
Last month I drove past a set of new cars on a storage track connected to the MBTA's Cabot railyard, next to the South Boston Bypass just below the convention center. About here.
Is that safe? That doesn’t
By Frelmont
Wed, 02/19/2025 - 12:33pm
Is that safe? That doesn’t sound safe. All the riders on the platform standing where the missing two cars would have been will have to move en masse without jostling along the edge of the pit. Also, what of the visually impaired?
It's safe
By BostonDog
Wed, 02/19/2025 - 1:00pm
The trains are already shorter than the platform.
Moreover, it's a good idea if they are able to reduce the headway. More frequent trains are preferable to larger ones.
Huh?
By anon
Wed, 02/19/2025 - 1:16pm
I ride the Red Line every day. Red Line trains are not shorter than the platform in any Red Line Station I am familiar with.
A smidge shorter. I’m all for
By Frelmont
Wed, 02/19/2025 - 1:51pm
A smidge shorter. I’m all for reduced headway. I don’t want to breathe that sooty, subterranean air any longer than necessary. Are we getting more Red Line train drivers?
It's safe if they make sure
By Vicki
Wed, 02/19/2025 - 2:58pm
It's safe if they make sure that people know about it, so we can stand in the right places. And then walk from one end of the car to the other after boarding. I've done that for a lot of years, here and in New York, either because trains aren't all the same length, or because I got to the station just before the train pulled in and had to board the end car.
Yes it will be inconvenient for some people, but inconvenience isn't danger.
And, I just saw the bit about
By Frelmont
Wed, 02/19/2025 - 3:40pm
And, I just saw the bit about posting staff at key locations. I wonder if the yellow box on the Downtown Crossing platform was where the station person stood to be aligned with the end of the shorter train./?
How long have you lived here?
By SwirlyGrrl
Wed, 02/19/2025 - 5:36pm
On the red line, there used to be stations that wouldn't take 6 car trains. There were signs at the longer platforms telling you where the shorter trains would be pulling up. If you didn't want to deal with the ambiguity, you stood just short of the sign with the big "4/2" on it.
I'm trying to remember if it varied according to line - like the Braintree line got the sixes and the Ashmont got the fours? I first rode the T a day after the "new" Harvard Station opened. I was usually headed north so it was a matter of not going too far down the platform.
Why do any shorter trains
By anon
Wed, 02/19/2025 - 12:36pm
Why do any shorter trains exist?
OK
By ElizaLeila
Thu, 02/20/2025 - 12:21pm
OK Randy Newman.
😂
Used To Be 2 Cars
By John Costello
Wed, 02/19/2025 - 12:39pm
In ye old days of Reagan, typically at night or on a Sunday.
There was a plan in the 70's to just run a single car from Quincy to Harvard on Sundays.
Short trains
By anon
Wed, 02/19/2025 - 1:20pm
I had forgotten about those two car trains until you reminded me. They were very common in the 70s. I remember them from the Blue Line. You never knew which would come, a two car or a longer one. If I am not mistaken, sometimes trolleys on the green line would be single. It all seemed kind of random.
Two cars strikes me as an
By Frelmont
Wed, 02/19/2025 - 3:49pm
Two cars strikes me as an interesting sight. Picturing the aspirational one Red Line car pulling into the station brings to mind the Neighborhood Trolley from Mr. Rogers. It could take you to the stop after Alewife: The Land of Make Believe.
Two-car trains in Ye Olden Times
By octr202
Wed, 02/19/2025 - 5:00pm
At (old) Harvard, featuring cars still in service:
https://www.nycsubway.org/perl/show?18219
At Central, featuring cars no longer in service:
https://www.nycsubway.org/perl/show?18177
And at Kendall: https://www.nycsubway.org/perl/show?18226
Work rules for a long time required a guard for every two cars, so plenty of incentive to reduce to the minimum off-peak. That ended well before I moved here (mid-90's), but at the time you still frequently saw four-car trains on the weekends (even when demand often called for more).
The 1500-series cars used to have cabs on both ends
By necturus
Wed, 02/19/2025 - 5:12pm
The 1500-series were built to run as single cars. At some point the cars had the cabs at one end removed and were converted to run in two-car sets, like the 1600-series cars.
Both the 1500s and the 1600s are very old now. They were running in the 1970s.
Red Line platforms used to be only 4 cars long
By Ron Newman
Wed, 02/19/2025 - 12:43pm
The MBTA tore up Kendall and Central squares for years in the 1980s (maybe even early 90s?) to extend platforms to 6 cars. They probably did equally disruptive construction elsewhere on the Red Line for the same purpose, in stations that I didn't regularly visit.
Even after they finished this project, they sometimes still ran 4-car trains.
Also, I recall a similar platform extension project in the Orange Line subway downtown.
Now that you mention it that
By Frelmont
Wed, 02/19/2025 - 3:56pm
Now that you mention it running four cars rings a bell. I didn’t know stations were extended.
If you look closely at the older stations
By ScottB
Wed, 02/19/2025 - 4:43pm
You can usually tell where they were extended.
The Blue Line was only 4-car trains until 20 years ago or so. Aquarium was extended as part of the Big Dig project. The inbound platform at Bowdoin couldn't be extended so you can't board all the cars there.
The plan as announced, (if
By Not Charlie
Wed, 02/19/2025 - 2:17pm
The plan as announced, (if you know where to look and not speculate) will be setting markers on the platforms and also station MBTA staff or ambassadors on the platforms at the busier stations to direct people to the area where the 4-car trains will be stopping on the platforms.
As others have posted, "way back in the day" only a 2-car trainset was used in off peak hours and all day on weekends. A 4-car trainset was only seen weekdays during peak hours and on some special occasion days to move more people like on St. Patrick's Day after the parade.
The election to move to a 6-car trainset required multiple stations to be lengthened quite a few feet. as a result sections of the tunnel were hewn out to accommodate the longer trains. You can usually tell by looking at how some stations at the end look. At some stations it was the front, and at some it was the back. Worth nothing that the move to 6-cars also impacted the Orange Line and the same lengthening of the stations was required.
The MBTA wasn't even running
By Yawu Miller
Wed, 02/19/2025 - 2:51pm
The MBTA wasn't even running six-car trains in the '80s. It's a relatively new thing. And, no, people weren't falling off the platforms with any greater frequency back then than they are now.
Could they paint/shrinkwrap a
By Rob
Wed, 02/19/2025 - 4:34pm
Could they paint/shrinkwrap a Trombone Shorty -themed consist?
We need more whimsy in our lives.
Trepidation
By nathanw
Wed, 02/19/2025 - 10:45pm
Broadly speaking I'm in favor of frequency. But as someone who boards at Kendall outbound in the 5:15-5:30pm range (I know, I'm doing it to myself) who often has to wait for the second or occasionally third train to be able to get on... I'm kind of afraid of how this will go.
The Running of the Shorties.
By Frelmont
Fri, 02/21/2025 - 12:12pm
The Running of the Shorties.
Is it too much to hope for video of a flashmob of shorties running at a T station?
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