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Why, yes, the Orange Line is still slow; unnannounced extra track work, dontcha know
By adamg on Wed, 10/05/2022 - 9:19am
WBZ reports the reason the Orange Line remains particularly slow after being shut down for a month in part to make it go faster is because the T found extra track work to do between Assembly and North Station, which it's doing at night, at least, and for which it has no current scheduled end date (plus, of course, 5 to 7 days to let the new tracks settle).
Jessica Dello Russo, a professor at BU, reports and requests:
It's taking some of my colleagues an hour and a half to return home from work M-F to nearby Boston 'burbs like Malden (missed connections). Please reinstate @MBTA_CR option, @MBTA, which was a real service and must have encouraged ridership on public transit overall.
Oh, and the auto-voices on the new Orange Line cars are NOT saying "NO CRYING!" as appropriate as that might be. Liz Lemongrab reports:
This was discussed elsewhere and it was determined that the train is saying "no prying" - i.e., no prying of the doors after they're closed. It seems like they need to choose another word. Or maybe it was done intentionally...
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Comments
Take home message
The MBTA probably lied to us all.
"Probably?"
"Probably?"
I was being
charitable. Or maybe sarcastic. I just can’t tell anymore.
This is disgraceful
The T once again lies to us, then doesn’t even have the decency to proactively announce the “new” work, describe what it’s doing, and when it will be done.
The organization is broken and cannot be trusted. When are they going to clean house and fix this disaster?
Charlie declared victory
even though there was still work to be done.
Typical MBA thinking.
“Mission Accomplished”
Reminds me of that other mendacious, good for nothing republican turd.
Disappointing so far
Nobody’s talking about the stretch between Tufts and Chinatown, which is consistently almost a minute longer than pre-shutdown, according to the Transit Matters Data Dashboard.
Overall, results are disappointing. Looking at the entire Orange Line route, it’s still 10 minutes longer to ride from Oak Grove to Forest Hills, now a 50 minute trip. Northbound rides are steadily trending faster, but still only equal to the pre-shutdown time.
Data
Here are the travel times between Orange Line stops from 2018, pre-shutdown (August) and now. A couple of notes: for very closely-spaced stations downtown, take these times with a grain of salt (dwells add up here) and check out the information at the bottom with total schedule times. If there were faster and slower times, I picked the fastest group.
Southbound:
Oak Grove – Malden: 1:06, 1:10, 1:06
Malden – Wellington: 2:36, 2:54, 2:36
Wellington – Assembly: 0:59, 1:01, 1:32
Assembly – Sullivan: 0:50, 0:50, 3:19
Sullivan – Community: 1:23, 1:23, 5:15
Community – North: 1:25, 1:28, 2:11
North – Haymarket: 0:29, 0:34, 0:34
Haymarket – State: 0:42, 0:42, 0:42
State – Downtown: 0:16, 0:15, 0:15
Downtown – Chinatown: 0:26, 0:33, 0:33
Chinatown – Tufts: 0:27, 0:27, 1:04
Tufts – Back Bay: 0:45, 2:12, 2:25
Back Bay – Mass Ave: 1:23, 1:40, 1:40
Mass Ave – Ruggles: 0:42, 1:12, 0:49
Ruggles – Roxbury: 0:56, 0:55, 0:54
Roxbury – Jackson: 0:54, 0:53, 0:50
Jackson – Stony Brook: 0:53, 1:04, 1:07
Stony Brook – Green: 0:48, 0:50, 0:49
Green – Forest Hills: 1:42, 2:00, 2:00
Full line: 37:10, 39:15, 48:20
Northbound:
Forest Hills – Green: 1:33, 1:32, 1:36
Green – Stony Brook: 1:01, 1:25, 1:22
Stony Brook – Jackson: 0:39, 2:36, 1:07
Jackson – Roxbury: 0:52, 0:52, 0:51
Roxbury – Ruggles: 0:45, 0:46, 0:45
Ruggles – Mass Ave: 0:43, 1:13, 1:13
Mass Ave – Back Bay: 0:57, 1:18, 1:18
Back Bay – Tufts: 1:12, 1:57, 1:27
Tufts – Chinatown: 0:28, 0:28, 1:18
Chinatown – Downtown: 0:06, 0:30, 0:30
Downtown – State: 0:24, 0:28, 0:28
State – Haymarket: 0:20, 0:21, 0:21
Haymarket – North: 0:29, 0:30, 0:34
North – Community: 1:29, 1:30, 3:13
Community – Sullivan: 1:18, 1:48, 1:54
Sullivan – Assembly: 0:33, 0:50, 1:15
Assembly – Wellington: 0:57, 0:57, 1:23
Wellington – Malden: 2:45, 2:45, 3:50
Malden – Oak Grove: 1:50, 1:50, 1:48
Full line: 38:30, 44:00, 44:30
A few line segments have gotten slightly faster than before the shutdown, but still slower than a few years ago. Several have gotten slower, and the Southbound service is more than 9 minutes slower than it was before the shutdown, and 11 minutes slower than 2018. Northbound service is about where it was before the shutdown, but that's still 6 minutes slower than it was in 2018.
Charlie Baker's MBTA
An 8 year, ongoing, umitigated disaster.
They lied to us continuously about the finances and the state of repair of the system, now they're lying to us about the "success" of the 30 day shutdown and the financial state of the MBTA going forward
https://commonwealthmagazine.org/transportation/poftak-sees-t-turning-co...
Never vote for someone to lead a public transit system who hates the idea of public transit.
My Dad, who worked and
My Dad, who worked and retired from the T, always said that the higher ups in the Transportation Building have always wanted to privatize the T and they get to keep their jobs "managing" it/.
As long as it doesn't crash
before Charlie is out of office, who in the executive branch cares?
Good luck, Maura.
8 year disaster?
I do remember what Baker inherited. I'd say go with at least a 16 year ongoing, unmitigated disaster, though in reality you may want to stretch that back to 32 years. Then again, I remember back in high school in the 80s just assuming that things like being stuck between stations for 10-15 minutes at a time being normal, though that time that the doors on my Red Line train wouldn't open for 3 stops until someone pulled the emergency cord I knew wasn't right at the time.
I'll always remember when Dan Grabauskas took a turn running the T. He did a great job at the Registry of Motor Vehicles, so I had hope. That hope faded fast.
Just for the heck of it, here's what was said about the T in 2009. Patrick did nothing. Baker did a little bit, but by that time a little bit was a drop in the bucket.
Dan G
I just want to say that Dan G was an awesome GM. The issue was not who was at the helm (as is the case most of the time), it was .. everything we say it is... The State House, Who's Governor.. political will.
Dan G was successful at the Registry because most residents use the RMV.. because you know.. cars. So always lots of $ and support for that.
Then he went to the T and lack of $, lack of political will, decades of neglect, and a culture of nepotism. A recipe for disaster.
Regardless, he's doing well. I think he's been managing the Honolulu's transit system for some time now. He must know what he was doing, but was not empowered to do so at the T.
Like Dr Scott, or anyone who is in that GM position....
Tracking down that 2009 report
I stumbled on this interview with the guy behind the report. It wasn't Scott. It wasn't Davey (livelong MBTA rider, now running transit in New York.) It wasn't Dan G. Poftak looks like he cares, but in the end, what can he do?
In the end, we get what we pay for.
But whatabout Deval?
Who cares? He wasn’t running the T for the last 8 years, and isn’t blatantly lying to our face about the state of the systems’ finances, TODAY.
It never fails, you criticize the terrible management and blatant ongoing dishonesty from the current Governor and someone yadda yaddas… “yeah, but Deval”
Except
That to say that it's been an 8 year problem ignores the problems that predate it.
Yes, Baker owns this, but I will also say that for the first 6ish years of his term, I was seeing progress on taking care of those unsexy things like track and signals. Never saw that when Patrick (or Romney, Swift...) was governor.
We're Talking about the Current Governor
No one's ignoring the past, I specifically mentioned "Charlie Baker's MBTA." If you want to bitch about Deval, reply to someone who's talking about the failures of the guy 8-16 years ago.
I really can't tell if you're a rube or if you're just a shill for Baker. The whole MO for Baker's MBTA was to dissemble and hide how bad things were so he could continue to starve the operating budget. It's all in the FTA report how bad things are. If only the T had waited another year before completely blowing up and killing people he probably would've been successful at running out the clock. Even now, he's pretending the budget is fine while rushing through a regressive $3 billion rebate to the taxpayers, in cahoots with Beacon Hill of course, who could change 62F tomorrow if they wanted to.
You mentioned the 8 year disaster
I just noted that it’s been going on a lot longer. In 2009, Deval Patrick got a report saying how bad the T was, then ignored it. In 2015, Baker was told how bad the T was, so we got a bunch of weekend closures so more maintenance could be done. Then towards the end of 2019, that kind of petered out, meaning maintenance was being cut back.
Most of what the FTA had to say was about the culture of safety at the T, or the lack thereof. There’s a line from drivers on the Red Line learning how to override the dead man’s switch so they could get their train through a faulty switch and having rail dispatchers working 20 hour shifts. The T was established in 1964. Do you really think that 8 years of Baker is stronger than 58 years of the organization?
He does
He also wants the legislature to override the voting public because, I can only assume, the politicians know better than the voters.
Baker Boys Will Say Anything
On the one hand, your guy deliberately underfunded the T operating budget and covered it up, didn't hire enough people to run the T safely so we're forced to run 15 minute headways during rush hour (AFTER the Orange Line "fix"), and is now lying about the current state of finances to avoid properly addressing the mess...that he helped create by saddling the T with big dig debt in the first place.
On the other hand, some other governors might not have been great either.
It's embarrassing what you'll say to try to defend Baker's abject failure of management.
Baker may own this mess now
But again, he inherited an MBTA that was underfunded since the dawn of this century.
I cannot fathom why you are insistent that things were going great at the T until January 2015. It wasn't. Look at the article I provided for Cybah above. And ask yourself why Deval Patrick, very much cut from the same cloth as his successor, deliberately underfunded the T. Why do you insist on defending his poor record with something that again, like his successor, he would never even think about using unless news crews were following him around?
Rank Dishonesty, Waquiot
Name one time I said this.
Name one time I said Deval had a good record on the T.
You can't. You're just shilling for your boy that has presided over the catastrophic failure of the MBTA. Deval is history. Baker has been governor for EIGHT YEARS and could be doing something right now, if he cared about public transportation.
You refuse to accept this and instead just resort to just making sh*t up I didn't say. This tells me you have no ability to discuss this honestly. Bye.
Really???
Do you really want me to cut and paste your comment from Wednesday that has started all of this, because unless you want to cut hairs, you very strongly implied that this is an 8 year long problem, to the extent that you challenged me when I noted that Patrick (and before that) also did a shitty job with the T.
But no, you once again infer that somehow this is entirely Baker's fault. And look, I will once again (because you selectively read comments and miss things) note that Baker owns the current mess, but it's taken you 4 days to admit that in 2009 Deval Patrick got a scathing report saying that things need to change at the T, yet Patrick did nothing. Perhaps in 4 days you will admit that between 2015 and 2019, there were a series of week-end closures that were necessary to work on the problems the agency had when Baker came into office. Because heck, I've admitted that somehow in 2019 the T started to lose focus and the closures became less and less, which leads us to today.
So, there is a healthy dose of intellectual dishonesty going on here, but you can see the person behind it when you look in a mirror.
Imagine
A legislature that actually cared and did anything useful about this.
That Would Take Leadership
Instead it's led by a couple of useless party hacks who are only interested in accumulating and maintaining power, not using it do anything mildly controversial. That might mean eventually having to cede that power.
I often cry bon the T and no
I often cry bon the T and no one says a thing.
I saw this morning that Back Bay Station was leaking all over the place but trashcans underneath.
I thought Mayor Michelle ...
Was running this project?
Huh?
Beacon Hill didn't even give the city of Boston a seat on the governing board. She has no control over the MBTA.
I'm glad they're doing the work.
It's not uncommon in software to turn over a rock and find a *whole bunch* of bugs crawling around. I imagine the same happens in infrastructure.
Absolutely
There’s a saying when starting a home renovation - you never know what you’ll find when you open a wall. Usually, it’s never anything good and will cost you big $$$.
And now Elizabeth Warren
will be having Senate subcommittee hearings about the MBTA next week. I wonder if she'll subpoena Charlie.