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Nighttime Oak Grove commuters will need to be more resilient for the next month or so
By adamg on Mon, 06/22/2015 - 8:52am
We've had quite enough of this, thank you very much. Feb. photo by Rich.
Starting tonight, the T will be shutting down the Orange Line between Wellington and Oak Grove starting at 8:45 p.m. at night so workers can get the tracks ready for winter - except for Friday and Saturday nights, when service will run as usual.
You may recall that particular stretch of Orange Line proved particularly troublesome in the winter of our discontent. Workers will be installing heaters along the third rail and at switches to prevent the tracks from turning into a glacier again, in a $12.7 million project, MassDOT reports.
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Comments
I'll take it
While there's never a great time for bustitution, I'll gladly take it now when it's warm out (and after rush hour) if it'll prevent the Oak Grove to Wellington/Sullivan shitshow that happened this winter.
It would have been cool if we
It would have been cool if we still had Vornado's Filene's Basement pit. They could have filled it with snow in February, and then in July we might still have some left.
Great...
But I still have the whiskey-filled flask as a reminder that all of the braintree red line branch basically didn't work for the month of March...any "improvements" planned there, or should I just buy a bigger flask?
That's OK
We're used to it.
I wish I documented how often there has been bussing after 8:45 on that end of the Orange Line for the last five years.
Last 5? Last 15.
I still remember that signal project about 10-ish years ago. Seemed like night busing for years.
More like ten years of crap
More like ten years of crap like this. Remember the signal upgrades around 2004 and 2005 that turned this into a "one-track operation" (just as bad as the buses if not worse) at night?
Saw that picture and I was
Saw that picture and I was like, "What...What's going on?"
Heaters
The MBTA spends hours shutting down tracks to install heaters for switches. The Long Island Rail Road dumps kerosene over switches and lights them on fire when needed, saving time and service. Tiny track fires are surprisingly beautiful.
There's so much trash and
There's so much trash and spilled liquor in MBTA track beds that attempting the LIRR solution likely would burn most of Charlestown to the ground.
that pic...
...gave me a palpable chill from the top of me head to the soles of me feets.