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The Red Line is a hot mess that the T says it's trying to address
By adamg on Wed, 05/02/2018 - 5:54pm
A Red Line rider fell ill on an outbound train approaching Andrew Square at the height of rush hour. Somebody on the train decided that warranted pulling an emergency brake, so the train ground to a halt in the tunnel, rather than pulling into Andrew, where EMTs could more easily reach the ill passenger. Now the T reports delays of 25 to 30 minutes in both directions as an MBTA worker tries to "reset the train."
It gets even better, um, worse, on, of course, the hottest day of the year, anguished Red Line riders report:
@mbta can you ask the conductor for the red line train with car 01651 to pleaaase stop screaming into her mic with the same detailed announcement that we're standing by? She's on a 30 sec repeat schedule and I'm losing my mind #MBTA #redline
— Morbidda Destiny (@ameliamulligan) May 2, 2018
Something I’ve been thinking about since I started taking the #MBTA regularly: god forbid there was ever a real emergency and the conductor needed to communicate with passengers. Many of the speakers on the train cars produce nothing but static.
— Abby E. Conway (@aelizabeth) May 2, 2018
WHY DO PEOPLE PULL EMERGENCY BREAKS. GOD WHY. THE MBTA IS NEVER ON TIME AND THIS IS SOMEHOW WORSE. #MBTA
— Carina (@carinaaenright) May 2, 2018
*walks into Central Square station, sees a full, stationary train, hears reports of 30 minute delays, immediately walks out again and beelines for nearest bar* #mbta
— Michael C (@wintersoldier35) May 2, 2018
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Comments
Delay was mechanical first
Train lost air and it sounded like brakes were affected. 10 minutmtes into delay, a medical emergency took place.
Seems to me
There should be a campaign for the emergency brake, since fare payment and "say something" are deemed worthwhile causes too.
Why don't they just replace
Why don't they just replace trains with those moving walkways you find in airports?
Because too many people just
Because too many people just STAND on the moving walkway, blocking forward motion by everyone else
In the last, say, 100 years,
how many instances have there been when it would have been appropriate for a passenger to pull the emergency brake?
Have you heard the cautionary
Have you heard the cautionary tale of Charlie?
I thought not. It's not a
I thought not. It's not a story the Baker Administration would tell you...
It's delays, then.
It's delays, then.
At least one
Red line train without driver
You mean like
A runaway driverless train on the Red Line.
(Sorry for the lack of link to Adam’s writeup of the incident.)
Required equipment for that
Required equipment for that rare eventuality.
Should airlines discontinue the expense of providing life vests? After all, they're only useful in one or two out of tens of thousands of commercial flights. They are, however, mighty damn useful in one or two out of few dozen flights of large passenger jet crashes - the same way the emergency brake is useful in the few cases of trains taking off without operators or cars decoupling or Lucy Ricardo stopping a jewel thief, etc....
A more appropriate question - in each Red Line car, is there a functioning emergency alarm and/or intercom button (preferably one beside each emergency brake) so someone in an emergency can spread the alarm to somebody who might be able to initiate help without a counter-productive stop?
Well, a couple of years ago
I got stuck in a car that kept blowing through each station without the doors opening. Luckily the intercom to the driver worked, unlike what happened this past February during a same situation, or I would of pulled the break.
There have been
And, in all honesty, it should have been used in this situation, too, for a medical emergency. But, the passenger should have pulled it after the train got into the next station, not in between (providing that the intercom wasn't working).
My friend had story about a
My friend had story about a crowded train where a person pushed on as the doors closed around his arm. He couldn't pull it in because he was holding his brief case. So when the train started to move the emergency break was pulled. The driver came into car screaming "who pulled the emergency brake!!" All of the passengers screamed back "look at his arm!"
Emergency brake
On each end of a red line train, there is a PEI (passenger emergency intercom) with a sign pointing to it. All the passenger had to do was hit that button and the train operator would have responded. But instead, someone decided to pull an emergency brake and make the train stop between stations. Then the T gets blamed because the trains are now going to run late.
Unless the intercom didn't work
The T is to blame
What it helpful about an emergency brake that takes 30 minutes to reset? That is the problem. Why do you expect random riders to know about this?
There's the deeper question
Why does it take 30 minutes to reset the emergency brake?
Inaudible Communications
"Something I’ve been thinking about since I started taking the #MBTA regularly: god forbid there was ever a real emergency and the conductor needed to communicate with passengers. Many of the speakers on the train cars produce nothing but static."
Not only that, but the drivers seem to literally not know how to use the PA system on the train to communicate. Either they mumble inaudibly, as if they dread public speaking, or conversely they hold the microphone too close to their mouth which distorts what they say, or they click off the system mid-sentence before they finish what they are saying. All of this combined with a sometimes heavily accented driver render the communications useless. I think the T should invest in microphone training for the drivers, seriously. It doesn't have to be a big deal, I'm sure even a one day training would be helpful.