Chaos at Back Bay as smoke fills Orange Line train

And yes, many of us are ready for a tax increase if it means bringing the MBTA up to the 21st Century.

We can't keep passing the buck onto the next political cycle. Action needs to be taken NOW so that in 10 years we won't all be sitting in gridlocked traffic 18 hours a day -- that is what is going to happen unless we inject massive funding into the system NOW to modernize the aging signal system, speed delivery of new buses and trains, and complete smart and necessary expansion and capacity-increasing projects.

With all of the massive development under construction in Boston and surrounding communities, the forgotten impact is how people will commute to and from all of these jobs and residences. Hint: road capacity is not increasing, either.

Great post, but you're missing a few key things...

Sure, while no one cleans the track pit like they're supposed to clean the platforms and concourses, but that doesn't mean it can't ever be cleaned. Most competent subway systems employ a large vacuum that runs on each line periodically, sucking up any trash and debris down there. That's why systems like New York, for example, rarely if ever have trash fires, while we have them once or twice a week! This is a problem that was solved decades ago. We just need to get with the times.

And it's true that you can't just go buy a subway train off the shelf, but you're ignoring the fact that there are manufacturers in the US currently building subway cars that we could have ordered from. There was absolutely no need to require that they be built in Mass at a new facility. If we had bought them from an established manufacturer with an existing US presence, we'd be receiving the first of our new trains right about now. Instead we won't have them all until 2022, and that's optimistically assuming no delays.

Finally, as for using the proper emergency exits - you're proposing the entire train use the end doors. The problems with that are threefold:
1) The end doors wouldn't put you on the platform, they'd require jumping or climbing down into the track pit, then climbing up onto the platform. Good idea if a train needs to be evacuated between stations, bad idea at a station, especially with a track fire. And high potential of someone getting hurt. You say exit onto the platform just like the operator does, but the operator doesn't have his own door to the platform - he exists the cab into the car, then uses the regular door, or climbs out the end door.
2) That would take a LONG time to evacuate everyone.
3) People in the middle of the train are nowhere near an end door, and unlikely to sit there, twiddling their thumbs until they succumb to smoke inhalation. They're going to go out the nearest window. The DC Metro demonstrated last January what happens when people patiently sit there waiting for instructions and a proper evacuation from someone with authority - 84 people were hospitalized and one died. The windows are meant to be used to evacuate in an emergency, because you could not safely evacuate everyone through the end doors in a timely manner. Every bus, train, etc. has windows intended as a secondary evacuation route.

You also seem to be missing the fact that this was a crowded, rush hour train. You can't expect people to just calmly file into the next car, when the next car is just as crowded as the first.

I'm not saying that fires becoming a regular occurrence is a good thing, just that other parts of the country are having transit troubles of their own. Then, you can go to Europe and hear people gripe about the shortcomings of their transit systems (London, for example.) In short, the T can do better, but can't we all?

I learned a while back to take internet gripers with a grain of salt. So many boston.com articles (back when they reported on things) would have comments from people saying they were going to move to Arizona. Then, I read an article about Phoenix on the Republic's website. Most of the commenters there were talking about moving to Idaho. I have never read the comments on an article in a Boise newspaper, so I don't know what the next step is.

We were talking about a subway fire, not a commuter rail fire.