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Red Line riders ready to blow: A train at Central just won't go
By adamg on Thu, 09/15/2016 - 5:37pm
On the Red Line, giddy up and go is now giddy up and went as riders pour into stations, where they are forced to just stand there due to a train that died at Central Square around 5 p.m. At 5:41, Kathleen Mulligan reported:
Literally approaching an hr into my commute to go from kendall to park.. 2 stops
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Comments
I don't understand, if you're
I don't understand, if you're going 2 stops from Kendall to Park today why not just walk?
Yes, that doesn't account for the red line being unreliable but still, at least take your fate in your own hands.
Because The Ⓣ Doesn't Give Passengers Useful Information
If told their commute of two stops would take an hour, of course most passengers would choose to walk. But when the Ⓣ offers nothing but vague announcements, how do you decide when it's time to give up?
The message boards keep displaying trains should be arriving in just a couple of minutes, instead of indicating that service is actually suspended.
The Ⓣ's "Borg Queen" announcement voice only says thing like "minor residual delays" — she never mentions anything about futility.
"You will be delayed"
Man, I'd love to hear this. I might actually get a laugh while standing on a platform with a thousand of my close new friends.
Because the moment you start
Because the moment you start to walk is when the trains start moving again.
smh
Mutha of Gawd! Why is no one held accountable for the embarrassing condition the 4th largest transit system in the most wealthy and powerful nation on earth?
You pull at one thread
and the whole rest of the mess will come undone for all to see and sth at. Keep on voting Democrat though. Nothin' spells accountability like wasting the one mechanism you have as a citizen to push back against public stupid and just give 'em a slap on the back and a hearty thumbs up.
Who's in charge here?
The governor is Charlie Baker, a Republican. You know, Republicans who say government screws up everything and then take office and prove it?
It sucked under Deval,too;
you know, the previous 2 term 'progressive' Democratic governor. The practices going on now took YEARS to develop, under the accountability of a Democratic governor and majority 'Great' and General Court.
Oh...and we've had a Democratic president since 2009 and Democratic controlled federal representatives and federal senators.
Let's Get Real Here...
Neither party wants to fix the T.
They will if you vote with your votes
instead of just assuming a Democrat is pro-transit and keep on re-electing them to the city councils and state house on the sole grounds that Republicans are icky.
That's the biggest free pass to be stupid and wasteful that big city pols everywhere in the US have: "Vote for Us because the other guys are the Them that we'll protect you from."
Unfortunately, the vast majority of people who voted for Baker
Unfortunately, the vast majority of people who voted Charlie Baker into the State House as Governor of the Bay State are people out in the 'burbs and the 'boonies who don't use public transportation at all to get into the city, and don't give a hoot in helsinki about those who do. It's rather sickening.
Thank you, Charlie Baker, for making already-horrible situations on the T worse!
Very simple really
It's a sad situation for sure but Deval took the action to purchase new trains, but we will not see that until 2019 or so. We have to wait for the assembly plant to be completed. While making them build in MA was nice, it helped create jobs here. Either way the company would have had to build a plant someplace in the USA to fulfill federal laws that state a certain percentage of each rail car build has to happen on US soil.
These trains are old. They break often. Parts are worn. Parts are not easily available. Sometimes parts have to be made out of sheet metal in the T blacksmith shop in Everett. Yes, they actually have a shop that does that.
Case point... The Cineston Controllers, the throttle and brake handle, are in constant use. Those parts are over 30 years old. When worn out the whole controller can fail. When that happens the emergency brake goes on and that's that. The relays (electrical connections) associated with that also wear out and you don't go. It's often a safety feature that stops you dead.
I was on a train (Orange Line) that was held at Haymarket once and I had clear view of the dash in one of the middle cars. I watched the air brake gauge rise and fall as we tried to start up. The problem was they could not get a safety lock and the emergency brakes would come on. Each time that happens you have to lock down the controller and start from scratch. That takes a couple of minutes. Do that several times in a row and you wind up sitting there 10 minutes or more.
Trains cannot pass each other so everything backs up. Using switches to run on the wrong track is also not an option. The feds require loads of paperwork for that, believe it or not. It's often easier just to push the dead train out of the way rather than have to stop and start generating miles of paper to do it another way - and pushing the dead train that way takes less time - I kid you not. It also takes time to start up bus substitutions. They don't have emergency crews waiting to do that like the fire department. Bus substitution always means they are robbing bus lines elsewhere to make up the needed shuttle service.
These are not autos that can pass a car with a flat tire.
Reform before revenue
That's the ticket!
Union Busting as a means of Gutting Public Services
That's the excuse.
Gotta keep those Koch Bros. happy!