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Meltdown on the Red and Orange lines
By bostonzest on Wed, 09/16/2009 - 7:47pm
Above: Trying to bring order to chaos outside a shut Downtown Crossing station tonight. Below: Smoke fills the Downtown Crossing station before it was evacuated. Both photos part of 16WadeSt's subway meltdown collection. Also see: Photo of people being evacuated from a Red Line train.
Husband called to say he'll be late because the Red Line is down.
MBTA Alert says, "Red Line is being diverted to substitute shuttle bus service between Harvard Station and JFK/UMass Station due to a power problem. Buses are en route and should arrive shortly. "
Earlier:
"Red Line service is experiencing 15-20 min delays due to a power problem. 9/16/2009 6:46 PM "
Channel 5 and Boston.com are reporting that fires caused the evacuation of downtown red and orange line stations.
MBTA alert for Orange Line:
"Orange Line service is being diverted to the Green Line between Back Bay Station and North Station due to a power problem. Please use Green Line service between Copley and North Station for connections to the downtown and Back Bay areas.. 9/16/2009 6:47 PM "
T workers, cops waiting for something to happen at the closed Charles/MGH. EMTs waited downstairs as state troopers directed traffic.
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Boston Police Twitter
Boston Police said that there was a loud noise and then smoke showing between Downtown Crossing and South Station.
BostonTweet forwarded another person's comments while listening to emergency band radio that said the MBTA was requesting power restoration from the Fire Dept to move 3 trains currently on the Longfellow. They denied first request and are now moving equipment off of the tracks and area in order to restore power to that section.
Sounds a bit like a transformer caught fire or something.
WBZ's 9:00 news on Channel 38 reported the fire
was between South Station and Downtown Crossing on the Red Line and was very minor. They also report it took over an hour before the trains on the Longfellow and in the tunnel between Charles and Park were evacuated.
Give the frequency with which this sort of thing has been happening in the past few years, it seems to me that improving the sectionalization of the power districts on the Red Line would be a much more useful way to spend Federal stimulus money than squandering it on another "Barely Rapid Transit" boondoggle.
Of course, the would contradict the MBTA management's current mantra: Bus Transit is good - Rail Transit is bad
Yeah
Walked into Kendall Station a little after things broke. The inbound track had a train on it with doors open and no power, and you could see another train farther down the tunnel toward the bridge. After a few minutes a T guy said shuttle buses would be going to Harvard. When I got topside, there were no shuttles, but there was an 85 bus about to leave, so that was even better.
Yep, me too...
I walked into Kendall apparently right as things were going all haywire, and my husband ended up driving in to pick me up. There were no shuttle buses that I saw, for at least 40 minutes, and no announcements as to what was happening. It sucked.
Who is Husband?
Who is Husband?
Sorry, my husband, Ed
He was leaving work near the JFK station when this all began.
I typed fast and left out words here and there.
Penny
Guess I'm cabbing it home
Guess I'm cabbing it home tonight.
I refuse to deal with the shuttle bus nightmare.
Ditto!
Ditto!
Kenmore to park street. Get
Kenmore to park street. Get to park street and find out about situation. Take express shuttle bus to Harvard....which uses the mass ave bridge. Aka, I wasted 45 minutes of my life, when I could have just walked from Kenmore and taken the 1.
I got to Harvard and decided to take the 77 the rest of my way, but couldnt find the 77. Apparently, it only stops in the tunnel on Sundays and holidays?
77 always uses the Harvard Square tunnel
and it runs about every 10 minutes. I passed (or was passed by) several of them on my bike this evening.
Are you sure Ron? The sign
Are you sure Ron? The sign inside Harvard station clearly says sunday service only, and mbta.com says most (but not all) start at "Bennett Alley" instead of "Harvard Upper Busway & Red Line"
Im talking about the 77, not 77A.
Downstairs..
You have to go downstairs .. the 77 lets passengers off upstairs and boards downstairs on berth 3 (or 1, I don't remember), which is a different berth than the 71/73 board. The 77 never boards outside at harvard.
IIRC, the upper Harvard
IIRC, the upper Harvard Upper Busway is where passengers board the outbound buses that run north on Mass. Ave., including the 77, and on Concord Ave., while the lower busway is where the passengers on the end of these routes get off.
The "Sunday Service only" sign you saw (at the upper level, I believe), is where passengers board for the outbound 71/73 routes that run diesel buses on Sundays instead of the trackless trolleys, which board on the lower busway on the other days.
One of you says downstairs,
One of you says downstairs, the other says upstairs.... well either way, its underground, so Ill find it next time I need it.
The MBTA needs to fix the 77 portion of their website, as it does not accurately reflect that information.
While I was wandering around above ground, looking for bennet alley, I was wondering why there were no signs about buses anywhere. I ended up walking north on mass ave until I found a regular stop.
As for the other anon comment, usually Id pick up the 1 at Mass and Beacon, as its a shorter walk than going to Hynes. And yeah, our shuttle bus passed 200+ people at central, spilling out onto the street.
It's upstairs if you are leaving Harvard
Downstairs if you are arriving. The Sundays/holidays sign is for the 71 and 73.
Bennett Alley is the area next to the former Chili's, where the buses stop before going into the busway. I don't think passengers are ever picked up there, though some lines will drop off passengers at that stop (the 71, 73, and maybe a few others).
The stop in Bennett Alley
The stop in Bennett Alley was officially added to the schedule for several buses that go into Harvard (77, 96, etc) so that the drivers would make sure to pass it and stop there when they are turning around to go from the upper busway to the lower busway. This lets people more easily transfer to route 66, which stops there but doesn't come underground into the busway. The HTML schedules are auto-generated, and this confusion hadn't been noticed before. For the 77, the small number of trips run by trackless trolleys who are on their way to or from the garage in North Cambridge are showing up differently, which makes it more confusing.
I will let the MBTA know about this.
You would have had a heck of
You would have had a heck of a time going Kenmore to Hynes and taking the 1. I made the same walk and found myself standing with 30 other people at the 1 stop at Hynes. I started walking toward MIT, passing big crowds at each bus stop. After 10 minutes didn't see a single 1 go by. Flagged a cab at the bottom of the bridge and had him take me home, off the main roads that were choked with replacement buses. This was all between 9 and 9:30.
well
This is called everyday commute for regular #1 riders...
Orange Line has resumed running
between Back Bay and North Station, according to the latest T alert I just got.
What a Giant T Clusterf**k
It's absolutely pathetic when the Boston FD refers to this as business as usual, as reported on Boston.com:
Time to time? Good heavens. He's talking as if this is the normal course of things. I hope we are not reaching a point where his words are true.
Of course, it would be nice if T employees knew what they were talking about. The T rep at Orange Line/State Street was telling everyone to walk over to Downtown Crossing, where, he assured us, O Line trains were running to Forest Hills.
Walk over to Downtown Crossing, and they tell us to wait for shuttle buses to Back Bay. Well, looking at the throngs waiting for shuttle buses, I concluded it was easier to walk to Back Bay and catch the train from there. Turned out to be a smart move.
Terrible - arrived at DTXing
Terrible - arrived at DTXing at 9 to find fire trucks everywhere. Spent 17 bucks on a cab to JFK. Debris? I've seen all kinds of trash left on the track by all the little darlings waiting on the platform. How about more trash cans to hold all this flammable material? I've also seen boards and 2 by 4s dangerously close to the third rail at Park Street. Guess there's no money to get anyone down there to clean up said debris? Is it a liability thing here?
Typing this on City Hall Plaza
Got out of an event at the Vilna Shul, walked over to Charles/MGH - only to find it completely surrounded by emergency vehicles. Shuttle buses were coming over the Longfellow completely full, stopping only to let people off, not on.
BPD is diverting traffic off Cambridge Street at City Hall onto Tremont.
Rozzie vs. downtown
Kind of makes you wish you never left your 'hood, huh, Adam?
Yeah, but not for the reason you'd think
It's because almost every time I go out for awhile, some big news seems to break. Fortunately, my peeps had me covered tonight!
Stuck for 2 hours
I was stuck between MGH and Park underground from about 6:30 - 8:30 in the dark in the train. People were in reasonable spirits. They finally backed us towards MGH and evacuated the train. Our drivers were getting no info from T central control for like an hour, just told there were BFD on scene at South Station and Downtown Crossing.
To be honest, the most annoying part of it was the young girls chitting about how they were posting on twitter about being stuck and how twitter was so rad, etc. I'm glad technology is used mostly to complain, not to inform.
Other than that, I finished the book I was reading and was pretty much fine. I've had longer delays in airports.
*Schmooooch!*
Good night Buzz Fly By ... good night little Bike Friday Pocket Tourist.
Gadzooks I love me some folding bikes. (((hug))))
Yeah, I was really glad I was biking
Came down Cambridge street (around 7) and started to see masses of people waving for cabs.
Fought my way through the cabs swarming like sharks in bloody water, and got to Longfellow, where the sidewalk was packed with people hoofing it.
I was so glad I wasn't stuck on one of those trains in the tunnels...
Red Line back in operation around 9:30
Boston Fire tweets:
Tipping Point
It's interesting. Adamg - and the readers of this blog - have been pointing out for months that the MBTA is quite simply falling apart. It's been under-resourced for too long. All sorts of minor incidents and accidents have been piling up, none all that notable in its own right, but cumulatively, the conclusion is inescapable: the MBTA is at the breaking point.
Until tonight, I haven't seen that consensus reflected in the more mainstream press. Incidents, to the extent that they're reported at all, have been portrayed as one-off affairs, exactly as the BPD tried to spin this tonight. But here's the lede from the Globe coverage:
"Troubles continued to mount for the MBTA tonight as two fires forced the evacuation of hundreds of riders and shut down at least three T stations leading to chaos for travelers throughout the city."
Troubles continued to mount... - suddenly, we've got ourselves a trend. (We know it's a trend because later in the story the reporter points out that this is the third event in a series; ah, the journalistic rule of threes.) And once that happens, any further incident will be more newsworthy than if it had to stand on its own. People will go looking for confirmation. And, perhaps, fixing the system will start to become the priority it ought to have been months ago.
Grabauskas
I bet with every one of these incidents / stories etc, Grabauskas just sits back and (rightfully) laughs. I would.
Grabauskas laughing?
Trixie:
You clearly don't know the man. When he was at the T, he was genuinely and passionately concerned for the customers. That's not something he'd be able to turn off, even in the event of the railroading he received. I suspect, however, that when Aloisi was doing his post-incident press conference, Dan might grin a little at Aloisi's discomfort...
And..
And nothing in my post remotely claimed that Grabauskas didn't care about the riders that depend on the T (like me).
What he (and I) would be laughing at is the fact that we both know the MBTA system as a whole is starting to fail/fall apart -- and despite his best efforts there is nothing he could have done about it because he didn't get the support that he needed from asses like Aloisi or the state.... and incidents like this, while they suck for passengers (and i was affected this evening), just show that perhaps some support (money) is needed to fix it - something that Grabauskas had been asking for and only receiving backhanded shit from Alioisi.
The T riding bloggers...
...were ahead of the (presumably) car commuting journalists on this one.
But I have to say: Tonight was the first time I said to myself, "this system is in big trouble."
It is not just the MBTA. I
It is not just the MBTA. I think that the country is headed down this path in every realm. If we don't do something we'll be a second world country like Brazil--and we aren't doing anything.
Whit
The problem is for years
The problem is for years after WWII we built up our infrastructure. We built bridges and tunnels and highways and hired more and more people to work for local governments. There were moments when we spent a good deal on local government and less on Federal government. Now I feel like the federal government just gets bigger and bigger while local agencies collapse in on themselves. Look at the war in Iraq, 1 TRILLION dollars later. Saddam Hussein was not going to come kill me in the middle of the night but do you know what could kill me? Riding on a speeding train that for some reason failed to stop and slammed into the station. Driving over a bridge where pieces are coming off. Swerving to avoid a pothole and hitting a truck. A 10 ton slab falling off the roof of a new tunnel crushing my car.
The Evil Ghost of Howard Jarvis
The federal tax burden was rising, yet people get most of their services from local government. People felt they could control their local taxes. So people were organized for a mass shooting of themselves in the foot.
Then the "cut fed taxes" went into effect and guess whose taxes got cut and what federal supports were yanked to compensate? Yep.
There is also an element of local government not responding to people's needs and forming it's own fifedoms that couldn't give a shit about serving the public ... that also leads people to cut taxes because the system resists reform unless it has its supply lines attacked. Unfortunately, the worst patronage hacks were the last to get the axe and you end up with both starved and incompetent local governments.
"Signal Problems"
Now I know why they like to blame everything on "signal problems": The entire organization and state government are NOT GETTING THE MESSAGE!
Now, hopefully these journalists will do some
further investigating and force the T and BFD to provide credible answers to two basic questions:
First - Once it was determined that the Red Line electrical fire was located between Downtown Crossing and South Station, and was quickly contained (one news report said it was put out with a single fire extinguisher), why did the BFD not let the MBTA restore power in the section between Kendall and Park Street so they could move the stranded trains into stations?
Second, Why is the T's power distribution so archane that they have to kill power all the way between Kendall and Broadway for a minor fire outside of Downtown Crossing?
Oh, I forgot. Everybody in Boston media these days is too busy playing Woodward and Bernstein in their chase for the irrelevant e-mails from City Hall (like "The toner is out in the copy machine again") to do some real investigating on an issue that actually affects the common individual.
You say that now but lets
You say that now but lets say it's not the mayor's office, maybe its MBTA big wigs. Maybe they were discussing something they wanted to keep from the public, maybe there is a safety report in there. If those emails are deleted we can not see them. The two stories should both be followed because they affect each other.
Good points. However, my irritation with the e-mail issue is
the media and mayoral candidates' position that "these e-mails were deleted, therefore, there MUST have been something incriminating in them, why else would they be deleted". Where's the independent evidence to support this view and justify the City's investigation? And, please don't say it's because "the Globe has a hunch about this."
Sounds a lot like "guilty until proven innocent" to me. Hopefully, the City's expensive investigation (BTW, at the taxpayer's expense, not the Globe's or the mayoral candidates - who stand to benefit if incriminating evidence is found) will reveal nothing.
(for the record, I do not support either Menino or any of his challengers)