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When Green Line trolleys were orange
By adamg on Mon, 09/15/2014 - 10:12am
Tim Murphy gives us a look at Packards Corner in the 1940s, when you could still take a trolley from downtown to Watertown Square, back in pre-MBTA days.
Imagine how bad this area would be today if there were still no traffic lights?!
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Comments
Cars going behind and in
Cars going behind and in front of the trolleys to end up in the same direction. That's insane. Can't imagine what it was like during a Braves game.
It is nice to see what it looked like before students started mucking it up.
Great footage
One thing: there was a lot less delay to the trolleys back then, at least. Nowadays the train almost always gets caught up for a minute or two.
A few fun things I spotted:
There's a lot more trees. The city must have cut down most of these trees at some point.
No stupid fence in the middle of the street!
Everyone's parked almost completely perpendicular to the curb.
A bicyclist trying to make a left onto Comm Ave, amid the chaos, at 0:19.
A car pulling a quick U-turn ahead of the 3-car train in front of Commonwealth Chevrolet, 0:46.
Zero pedestrians attempt to cross the street at all in the footage, whereas today this is a very busy intersection for people on foot.
Also, at the very end of the video, take a careful look at the little bit of footage of the trolley coming down Comm Ave between Summit and Warren: notice how the tracks and the roadway are arranged? The tracks are completely on the north side of the road. That's because Comm Ave was widened in the 1950s, and that grassy field was taken and paved over. The tracks were moved slightly south and Comm Ave was split into a dual-carriageway with the tracks in the center. That's one of the reasons why the Warren Street intersection is so screwy today.
No stupid fence in the middle
While I admit to personally thinking the fence is annoying, imagine how many more people would get mauled by trains if the fence wasn't there preventing them from trying to cross Comm Ave over the tracks.
Beacon Street does not have a fence
How many people get "mauled" crossing Beacon Street? None that I've heard about, and I keep tabs.
Beacon Street, for the most part, does not have a fence in the middle. The tracks look like they did a century ago, plus further tree growth. That's because Brookline doesn't treat its residents like crap. At least not in this regard.
If Boston actually cared about safety, they'd do something about the speeding cars. You know, the ones that keep on hitting people...
You don't have to do much
You don't have to do much digging in the Globe archives to find stories over the years about people being struck on Commonwealth Ave. by streetcars as well.
Yes, I remember a few, like
Yes, I remember a few, like when that car full of drunk BC students turned in front of a trolley a couple years ago. The fence didn't change anything there.
On a related note, I was checking out safety statistics from NTD yesterday and learned, to my surprise, that the MBTA Green Line is one of the safest systems -- of any mode -- in the country. It had the lowest number of injuries per passenger-mile of any light rail system in the US.
Some of that may be due to the sheer volume of passenger-miles traveled on the system, but it's still quite impressive, considering.
There are old stories from
There are old stories from the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s of pedestrians being hit by streetcars. The decisions to install fences in the past came after a series of accidents..
A few samples:
April 2, 1981:
An elderly woman was fatally injured yesterday when she was struck by an MBTA streetcar on the Green Line in Brighton, according to a transit authority spokesman.
Dec 3, 1983:
An unidentified elderly woman was struck and killed by an MBTA Green Line outbound train last night on the tracks opposite 1050 Commonwealth av., in Boston,
Dec 17, 1990
A 22-year-old Waltham man died yesterday and another was hospitalized in critical condition after the pair was struck by a Boston-bound Green Line train in Brighton Saturday night.
Dec 4, 1967
A Boston University coed from Hamden CT is in fair condition at Beth Israel Hospital Sunday night after being struck by a streetcar on Commonwealth Ave.
So my immediate questions
So my immediate questions would be: why don't we see the same issues cropping up along Beacon Street in Brookline, and, how many of these incidents were caused by the miserably tiny platforms found in Brighton along the "B" branch?
The sample of accidents were
The sample of accidents were all people crossing mid-block, not people at platforms. I would suggest Beacon St, has always had fewer incidents because the number of people crossing the street period and mid-block in general, is lower than on Comm Ave.
However, Beacon St. has not been without incidents:
December 28, 1994:
Police have identified a man struck and killed by an MBTA trolley in Brookline late Christmas Eve.
Vladislav Mouzychencko, 36, of Brookline, died of extensive injuries after being taken to Beth Israel Hospital, MBTA police said.
Witnesses said Mouzychencko, who was hit around 11:15 p.m. Saturday, appeared to be walking across the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority tracks at Beacon Street between St. Paul and James streets, when he was hit by an inbound Green Line trolley.
An emergency crew worked for more than a half hour to free Mouzychencko.
An alternative reason
Vastly lower speeds than other systems. Far fewer and less serious injuries at 5mph than at 25mph or more.
Possibly it's speed
But when people talk about the average speed of the Green Line it's usually low because of all the stopping. In between stops the trolley typically goes 25 mph, and more on the Riverside branch. So it's not clear to me that average speed is the right metric here.
I genuinely don't know what's led to the high safety ranking of the MBTA light rail compared to the rest of the country. Especially with how the T's been in the news over the past few years for problems with the signal system, derailments and collisions. And the general decay/poor state of the system.
I'm curious now, and thinking about it some more. If you or the anon who posted above have any more thoughts, I'd be happy to hear them.
If you look at the NTD data,
If you look at the NTD data, MBTA light rail carries a very large number of people per vehicle mile, so they are carrying more people in total and more people per mile that other systems. The number of accidents probably is influenced more by the number of vehicle miles operated vs. the number of passengers (the more miles you run, the more chances for accidents). So carrying a lot of passengers on a small number of vehicle miles probably contributes to a low accident per mile rate.
Some of the newer light rail systems have also had a lot of accidents because drivers are just not use to dealing with light rail/streetcars. Houston has a small system (although it will be getting much larger), but they have had a very high number of grade-crossing accidents. That might go down as the system becomes more mature and local drivers realize it is not a good idea to take a left turn in front of a light rail train when you don't have the light.
Slower speed is also a factor. In the NTD data, divide revenue vehicle miles by revenue vehicle hours and see what the average MBTA speed is compared to other systems. For the 2012 data, my quick calculation shows the MBTA is the slowest at 9.4 miles per hour, average for the mode is 15.8 miles per hour.
I spent some time debating
I spent some time debating whether to use passenger-miles vs vehicle-miles vs train-miles. I ultimately settled on passenger-miles because I was looking at it from the viewpoint of someone asking the question "am I safe riding the T?" and also because the FHWA publishes fatality rates per passenger vehicle mile traveled, which I felt was more comparable to PMT.
It's arguable though. And probably I should consider looking at rates-per-trip rather than rates-per-person-mile, since the nature and length of trips tends to be different on different modes.
And while the Green Line performs very well in terms of passenger productivity, I don't think that should necessarily be held against it when looking at rankings. After all, it is quite an achievement to carry so many passengers with so few injuries, no matter over how many miles that is.
I already talked about speeds above so I'll let that go.
Anyway, that's where I'm at right now in my thinking.
Thank God...
...no iPhones.
Packard's Corner lights
I don't have to imagine - I can remember, since the present lights are a shockingly recent addition. Before the current arrangement, there were blinking red or yellow lights, but no full traffic-controlling lights.
Yeah, I was going to say, it
Yeah, I was going to say, it wasn't that long ago that they put (non-blinking) traffic lights on that intersection. Some time after I moved to Allston in 1993, if memory serves.
I haven't been through there in a while; is the intersection itself still one large mass of unmarked asphalt?
EDIT: Google maps helps me answer my own question. Yes. Yes it is. Nice to see that some traditions are alive and well in Boston.
Great Clip, But Too Short - I Need More Trolleys and Trains!
Frequent passenger service using DMU "Budd cars" ran between Boston and Troy, where you could connect with other passenger service to New York, Montreal, or Chicago, among other places.
Alas, the last passenger train departed Troy for Boston in 1958. The railroad promptly demolished the huge Union Station in downtown Troy, just so they wouldn't have to pay taxes on it! My mother often said what a tragedy it was; that the station was so beautiful, and how convenient it was to commute to and from Troy by train!
Further Imagining
Think of what carnage would have been seen in that film had the drivers been engaged in the things some drivers now do routinely, such as texting.
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
BRING BACK THE A LINE!!!
Please and thank you.
throwing the switch
How did the switch get changed between Brighton and Commonwealth Aves. Did the motorman have to get out and do it?
Crowbar?
Good question. I know at Cleveland Circle, now, they send a worker out with a crowbar-like tool to pry the switch into the right position for the loop spur that goes to Commonwealth Ave. But that is not used as frequently as an A-B line split would have been used.
Back in the days of the PCCs
and center-entrance cars, power controlled switches were operated remotely by the approaching train. If the operator wanted the "normal" route, they would simply apply power. If the operator wanted the "diverging" route, they would apply both power and braking. The system would sense the increase in current, and throw the switch motor.
This system continued in use until the introduction of the Boeing LRVs. Apparently, the difference in current draw between "power alone" and "power and brake" on the Boeings was not high enough to throw the switches to the opposite position.
The Type 7s and Type 8s currently use an automatic vehicle identification (AVI) system to automatically throw power switches - although the AVI system is less than totally reliable, often requiring the operator to step off the car and use the pushbuttons that are now provided at all power switches on the Green Line.
LRVs and PCCs
My Dad is a retired T driver. He started to drive the Green Line in the 70s and talks about the LRV vs PCC. Some of his stories from driving then and what was happening behind the "scenes" makes me think if it was bad in the 70s, what is it today?